The Tilsons

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.  I am pretty pissed at this point.  Knitted the back of the sweater - too big.  Ripped and knitted it again - soooooo small. Added side pieces (ack!) - fits better. KNITTING UNEVEN??  Look at this.  Just LOOK!

See my finger there in the left hand corner?  See how the front is coming up over the back?  Then see the other side - upper right hand corner, how there is a bit of ripped knitting there?  See how the ripped knitting doesn’t meet up with the back?  Those two sides of the front, they are supposed to be even with the back two sides.  Neither one of them are! ARGH!

Justin suggested that I not worry about it, and give the sweater to him.  He would wear it even if it is a bit crooked.  Sweet of him.  But I said no.

He then suggested knitting a triangle and sewing it in there (he is clearly less of a perfectionist than I am)  I said no.

He asked if I was going to frog it.  I said yes.

And I did. Then I washed it, and put little hooks in the wall so that I can look at it.

And think about how much I am dreading trying again.  I think I have depressed knitters syndrom (DKS).  I think I need to knit something very easy to bring my confidence back up.

Handspun.  Who would have thought.

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.

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!

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!