The Tilsons

Wow. Its been a crazy week.  I can’t believe it is already Saturday, All Hallows Eve has passed, and November is here.  What the heck have we been doing?

1. We got back home from Linnaea Farm two days late (Monday) because the install of our veggie oil kit took a little longer than expected.  Our poor veggie guy (Bjorn) fell of some scaffolding and seriously hurt his back.  The silver lining in the clouds for us was an extra day at OUR Ecovillage and then just the right amount of time at Linnaea. (where we submitted our applications for the Ecological Farm Program!  Weeee!!!)
   



2. I didn’t get as much knitting done as I thought.  Justin didn’t get as much homework done as he had hoped. I truly thought I would be done the socks, and maybe even more, but no, boarding the Quadra Island Ferry, they looked like this.  You see, I had to rip them back, because I didnt’ put in the sole increases.  For some reason, I don’t know why, I thought that the socks would stretch.  No.  They did not stretch.  Rip back, put in increases.  Even now, I’m not sure that I did enough.
   



3. I finished the socks on the ferry, and then sewed the top when I went to dinner with Beth on Wednesday night.  Meanwhile, Justin worked furiously on his case studies for school.Then I started the toe of the other side (A great way to prevent second sock phobia is to make them for someone else, then you will have to finish them).  Here is the progress so far.



4. After we got back, I spent some time doing actual work, and then Justin and I applied for Bullocks Homestead.  That’s right, we have applied to two places.  Bullocks was lucky, because I found the application online THE DAY BEFORE IT WAS DUE.  Holy cow.  Luck they didn’t need written references like Linnaea.  The difference between the programs is that at Bullocks it is almost completely self directed.  Either program will benefit us greatly, I can’t wait to know whether we have been accepted.
5. Justin left for school the morning after the application scramble, and I finished the back of my brothers Retrofit Sweater.  You remember I frogged it, well after much debate (because it is handspun and not entirely consistent)  I have decided to knit the front and back, fit him with them and if it doesn’t fit, then add side pannels in ribbing.  After that, I will gracefully knit up to the collar, make the sleeves to fit the boy and then WHAM, I will have a slightly customized Retrofit ready for christmas.  I have drafted more fleece, which I will spin today.
   





6. THEN, as if that is not enough to make my fingers numb, last night I started the ribbing on MY sweater, the Nubby Cardigan by Deborah Newton (Knitscene Fall 2008).  The Small size length is 16″ from armpit to hem, and I plan to make it 2-3 inches longer.  Therefore, I have increased the ribbing by 2 inches.  I also plan to put cables in the sleeves… I think all women’s cable sweaters should have cables in the sleeves. Have you checked out Ravelry yet?  Lots of great info and photos there.
   

Well. Here it is, the back of the sweater…

Remember how I said that I was going to take the sides of the sweater in, and do real tapering for the waist on the front of the sweater?  Well, I had my brother come by for a fitting (I know, a luxury we don’t all have for christmas presents) and realized that the sweater was 36 STITCHES too big at the waist.  18!  That would be a lot of bulk to have dangling off of the inside of your sweater.  That would be a visible representation of my laziness that would be forever glaring me in the face - not laziness in making my own yarn, or knitting my own fabric, but laziness of pretending that after all that work, 36 stitches of fabric dongling around inside of a sweater is no big deal. Then deciding that no one would notice, even myself.  Its not even a complicated pattern for crying in the mud.

So, last night, I frogged it.  Justin’s opinion “You can’t hide that much fabric, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself!” pushed me over the edge.  So, I frogged not just the back, but the little bit of front too, because I had already gone past the point of tapering.  Frogging the whole thing took about 10 minutes.  That is roughly 1/10th of the time it took to knit it. Remarkable. Read the complete Post.

Wow. I love knitting my own handspun yarn. If you don’t have a wheel, and you are a knitter, I highly recommend learning so that you can knit with something you made! First off, it is so fulfilling to see yarn hanging and drying that is becoming plump and soft. Then, when you touch it, and roll it between your fingers, it is neat to say “I made this”, then when you knit the whole back of a sweater and hold it up poking your finger at the centre of it to check and see that it really is a solid piece of fabric, it is a little like giving birth (minus the pain). You say “I can’t believe you came from me!”

So the sweater. Retrofit is really simple, being stockinette stitch. It has given me a chance to listen to some great audiobooks, and speed up my knitting and thus has moved along quite quickly.
A couple of other recommendations: Read the complete Post.

Finally I have done it folks!  I have completed the Laminaria Star Chart. See the little stars in my knitting in the photo?  I didn’t have those the first two times…  The first two times it was like lines with bunches.  I’ve got it now though.  I am the MASTER OF THE STAR CHART!  Woa.

I realize just why knitting lace is so addictive.  It appeals to the strong inner perfectionist I harbour - when I knit lace, and I end on the right stitch on the right line of a chart, I know that my knitting thus far is actually perfect. PERFECT.  There can be no mistakes if I end on the right stitch.  I feel when I have accomplished this, as I have with the finishing of the star chart, that I have cheated someone out of making me skrew up. That sounds terrible, but I make mistakes so often, that it feels like there are little knitting pixies out there making my attention stray, or that stitch slip off my needle. Let’s add “satisfying” to lace knitting qualities.  Nothing like sticking it to the knitting pixies.

And now that I have jinxed my knitting forever - permanently etched my name on the pixies Knitter’s Blacklist, I’m going to go and try my hand at felting.  Hah!  Wreck my felting!  I dare you!

A couple of weeks ago I started spinning the yarn for my first “real” project.  Yes, I did some handspun that is still sitting in my chest waiting to be made into a felted roving ball holder, and I spun the yarn for Seva’s Lace Shawl… but those were simple.  There was no particular guage to maintain, in fact the lumpier it was, the better.

I chose the pattern from the Fall Knitty 2008 - Retrofit by Jesse Loesberg.  I like it more than his other pattern (Avast) and the Hero Pullover, both of which I was considering until I noticed some things.  Avast has cables.  Justin notified me that cables are bad for men. (too bad… I love knitting cables)  And the Hero Pullover, well… it has DROP SHOULDERS.  I don’t know about you, but I think that drop shoulders make men look slumpy.  Unless they are standing like the guy in the picture in the magazine all the time, drop shoulders drop.  Further more, men rarely stand like the guy in the picture.

Back to spinning.  I began slowly, drafting fiber… Read the complete Post.

Wow. I am a jackass.

So the charts all have this red line boxing in certain stitches. I have a b & w printer, and don’t read instructions well at the best of times, so missed them completely. Therefore, I would knit the row over and over and over again until the knitted row was done, and then start again on the next row. The funny thing is - it worked out. HOWEVER - the stitch count by the end of my second star chart was… well, double. (The pattern does look a little crazy…)

Is this because it’s my first time reading a chart and didn’t know what that little outline meant? I am using the fact that I found the answer to my question on Ravelry from Liz herself, which is evidence that, yes, it is beginners luck.

Are you repeating the stitches within the red lines?

The set up chart includes all the stitches, but by the time you get to the rest of the charts, the shawl is too large to include all the stitches on the chart. You knit the stitches on the right of the first red line, then repeat the stitches between the red lines till you have just enough stitches left on that side to finish by knitting the stitches to the left of the red lines.

In chart 1, every pattern row is essentially the same. You knit the selvage stitches, make a 1-into-3 star, the alternate k1 and 3-into-3 stars across the first half, finishing the half with a k1 and a 1-into-1 star, knit the center stitch thru the back loop, then repeat for the second side. Each 3-into-3 star should be made from one stitch from the star below and right, the plain stitch dirrectly below and one stitch from the star below and left.

The only reason there are 8 rows given in the star chart, is so that the stitch count is correct when you move into the transition chart.

Hope this helps,

liz

I can’t believe I have to frog again. Cocky ‘lil me didn’t use a lifeline. siiiiighhhh… on the bright side - it will knit up faster now that I am not making so many xtra stitches. zoooooom!

I finished a fairly simple lace piece out of some handspun a couple of weeks ago and immediately became enamoured with the idea of knitting a real lace shawl with real lace weight. I wanted to make something that gave me the feeling that Athena would have had wrapped in her spinning. So, I went to the store looking for lace weight, but didn’t find any that quite suited my purposes. I wanted some variation in colour so that my shawl would have a hand spun / hand died look to it. Then, as if answering the call of my whining and complaining about not being able to find laceweight I liked consciousness, my great friend Beth gave me some Knit Picks Alpaca Alpaca Cloud for free. FREE.

It is one of the weest skeins I have ever seen (473 yrds) but was enough to make a shoulderette. Good idea, start small… make the mistakes when I’m young and then fly from the nest with a completed shawl under my belt. This led me searching on Ravelry, and then to Knitty to find - Laminaria by Elizabeth Freeman. Totally tantalizing pattern.

Now. The thing about knitting patterns that I always forget, is that they are written by a person who is different than me, thus allowing me to interpret their creation. This last part sometimes creates less than desirable effects. Given that this was my first real shawl, my first real lace weight and my first ever chart reading, the fact that I spent over 1.5 hours on the first three rows was okay with me. But you might learn from my experiences. (Being that after completing two and a half charts I realized that I was making mistakes and had to rip it all back to restart) It always takes that rip back for me to learn how to read the pattern from the knitting.

Here are my beginners hints:

1. Here is a great crochet cast-on (provisional cast-on) video.
2. The two beginning stitches that you created with the cast-on will be knit over and over again to make the actual cast on row which is in the centre of the top of the shawl (hence the markers).
3. Basically, for the whole shawl you are making progressively larger “c” shapes around these first stitches, with a very defined centre line (hence the markers)
4. All ws (wrong side) rows are pearled (yes, this means the one after “Next Row (ws)”
5. Set Up Chart: this is where it is good to figure out what a 1-3 and a 3-3 look like so that if you forget where you are at, you can read your knitting.
6. K1 tbl yo k1 tbl: You knit into the back of the loop, without dropping the stitch of the left needle, yarn over and then knit into the back of the loop again, then drop the stitch of the left needle.
7. There is always a k stitch in between the “1-3″’s etc (this is even true if you repeat a couple of patterns during the first half of a row - ie before the markers) The marked stitch in the middle counts as the “k” stitch.
8. You will be repeating rows of the chart over and over again along the row of the knitting until you reach the end. You will knit the stitches in between the red lines over and over again to the end of the knitted row. (update) I cannot tell you how important it is to remember to put that k st. in between the repeats (and for that matter remember to repeat the whole pattern - I was occasionally confused and thus skipping the first 1-3 of the pattern once I got started for some reason, this led me to rip everything back)
9. The chart rows always finish before the marked centre of the shawl. The chart row 3-3 star never spans the marked centre of the shawl.
10. Since there are no stitch counts for every row, you have to make sure that you end your knitting with the end of your chart row (plus those two k st.) I was just k2ing when I had some extras. EEP.

The pattern has a definite look to it (to see it up close check out Emmaclitur’s flickr photo) Laceweight will be a little different, but you get the idea. Now back to knitting!

Today I made the trip out to Victoria to get my beautiful, gently used spinning wheel… and not only that, but an umbrella swift, a comb, a nitty-noddy, hand carders and a spare bobbin! I was so lucky to find Carol’s add on Craigslist, I would would have spent a lot longer collecting these things if it hadn’t of been for her. Now to give it a try!

The past week has brought many opportunities for knitting: the vancouver knitting meetup, my grandma’s stash of patterns and needles, my new spinning class and the prospect of buying a spinning wheel.

I began going to the Vancouver Knitting Meetup to meet other women doing what I like to do, and I have been pleasantly surprised at the welcoming, warm energy I found at the meetings. There are many different skill levels, and someone is always willing to help out if one (aka me) is stuck. It inspires me to try new patterns and different kinds of fibers when I see the challenging projects the other women have chosen to take on.

And just in time! My mom and I went through my grandmas craft supplies and found tons of patterns that all seem to be coming back in style (except for maybe the matching mens sweater and dog sweaters…) I find it fascinating to look through books from as long ago as 1945 and find advertisements that speak to the durability of hand knit things vs that of store bought things. It all makes sense really! Its too bad that most people have never seen a quality hand made garment, let alone owned one. With the pattern books, I inherited a huge size 35 needle, with which I knitted this scarf for my niece’s birthday on Sunday.

Last in the queue this week was spinning. I went to my first class on sunday, where I used a spinning wheel for the first time, and made my first (very uneven) ball of yarn! I have fallen in love the fiber art of spinning! So, of course I need a wheel to practice on, because once per week is just not going to cut it! I consulted my fave, craigslist, and found a beautiful, gently used Ashton Traditional Wheel for a fraction of the retail cost. I pick it up on Monday!