Christmas knitting is fast approaching. I have nearly finished one sweater “My Brother the Hero” aka “The Hero Pullover” by Ann Budd from the Fall 2007 Knitscene. It has taken me a while to knit, which is fine, I just wanted it done before October at which point, the Christmas Knitting commences officially. Revenons a nos moutons (returning to our flock) I blocked the sweater yesterday, and today it is lovely and flat. I didn’t stretch the life out of the ribbing, but I did make it so that it was all the right shape.
Today I will seam it and tomorrow I will buy the zipper and install it. Wahoo! done by October!
Also on the needles is Gail or Nightsongs (Ravlery link) by MaweLucky/Jane Araujo, on Ravelry for FREE! I haven’t progressed very far on it since we got back from Ontario, maybe one repeat? The sweater has been the focus.
Then there is the Milkweed (Ravelry link) Sigh… the poor thing has been sitting in my basket since before we left from Ontario. It will be a gift for someone special and will be done by christmas.
Finally, I got the yarn for Justin’s Legwarmers. Beautiful Malibrigo Sock Yarn - Camophlage (actually 851 Turner) I think I am going to do something fun celtic knots to keep things interesting.
There you have it folks, September’s projects! Stay tuned for Christmas Knitting!
Today is a beautiful summer day on Manitoulin Island! This morning Justin and I watched the tree filtered light cast a shadow of the window frame and slowly move accross the wall as we read together in bed. Then we watched pairs of birds barrel rolling through the morning sky and the woodpecker peck at a log! But of course my first thought as the sun was rising into clear blue sky was “The day has come for Muir to feel the glory of the sun.” Well, it wasn’t quite that profound, but you get the idea!
Here is Muir on the Fairy Bridge leading to our sacred spot on the property
And in the sun
A tunnel of muir
And in the cherry Tree
I received your card today Sarah! It almost made me cry! I love ya dah’ling, and can’t wait to see you and gift you with this, too bad its a little late, it would have looked quite pretty with your dress.
Well, I can’t really say that for sure because I have never beheld any other blocking boards, but from the ones I read about online, these ones seemed the best. I read accounts of boards arriving in the mail and knitters being shocked at just how large the boards actually are in real life. I must admit that even though I used a tape measure and measured it out on the floor of the cabin, I still was a little bit shocked at the amount of space on them.
The boards are called Sew-Ez Boards from Guardian, a table pad company in the US. I found a rave reviews for them on the Knitters Review Forum. They come in two sizes, the two I ordered are the larger ones, 51 X 33″ and the smaller ones are 27 X 21″. They have gridlines at 1″ and fold in half with handles for carrying. They weigh more than I thought they would and are more dense than I thought as well. I’m very very pleased with the quality.
The reason I ordered two large ones is that I want to be able to block long things (Muir) as well as entire sweaters. We’ll see if I can block an entire sweater at once when I have finished the Larry the Hero Sweater. For now, I will quench my blocking thirsts with Sarah’s Muir… when it isn’t 9pm at night.
I have finally blocked my first true lace project: Muir by Rosemary Hill. Remember how I started Laminaria but never finished? Ya. Then I decided that it would be a good idea to tell my best friend Sarah that I would knit her a shawl for her wedding. After a minor colour mix up with Knit Picks (just so you know, they sent me the true yarn I wanted right away, no questions asked and let me keep the old stuff - they rock)- the web guy (or gal) apparently had the photos/serial numbers mixed up at the very moment that Sarah and I were choosing her colour - I got the yarn and began knitting on April 24. I thought that I had tons of time (clearly, or I wouldn’t have also started my Larry the Hero Sweater during the same week) and even though I knit like mad and didn’t rip it out once - dispite several mistakes - the darn thing was only half done by the wedding.
So, I knit along, promising myself that I would not start anymore projects before it was done. Well this proved to be quite the marathon! I finished knitting it on July 22nd! Wow. I have to say, that though I know that Sarah will love the shawl, I found the pattern to be a little bit too repetitive, and by about the halfway point was wishing for a pattern change (this does not mean that I didn’t make any mistakes).
Muir on the train
Muir on the new blocking boards
The yarn, Knit Picks Shimmer Hand Dyed Lace Yarn in Eucalyptus. I love the feel of it, and how light it is. I would never choose such a light colour for myself, due to my propensity to collect dirt marks, but for Sarah it will be perfect.
Today I blocked the beast, which is quite a bit bigger than it was supposed to be (22×82″). It is not an inordinate size for a shawl, and is so weightless that it will seem smaller when wrapped.  I will be able to hand deliver it to her as we pass through Edmonton on our way home at the peaceful hour of 6:30am - Sorry Sarah!
Photoshoot as soon as we have a sunny day.
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?
- 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!!!)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
