It's all about me

My former loopy swap buddy Christine tagged me with a Meme to tell six random things about myself.  

1. Don't challenge me to any game involving recalling 70's song lyrics because I will kick your ass! 

2. If you leave me alone in a room with a pan of brownies I will eat them alllll. 

3.  I wish I were talented enough to sing and dance in broadway musicals.  

4. I've laughed loudly and often enough at work to have been reprimanded for it.

5.  If there is a ball/frisbee flying through the air toward me there is a 85% chance it will hit me in the head. Don't know why, but it happens.

6.  To me the trifecta is taking a shower, putting on freshly laundered flannel jammies and getting into bed where the sheets are also freshly laundered.  Ahhhh bliss.

I'm not tagging anyone because honestly no one springs to mind.  And I'm antisocial, see you got a freebe!  :)

Knitting is a great hobby because you can be as social or antisocial as you want.  Even though I'm generally a lone knitter it's a lot of fun to talk about it and get comments from you guys out there.  So Thanks!

At the end of Thanksgiving vacation we went with the extended family to visit Pennypacker Mills.  The house was renovated in 1901 by Gov Samuel W Pennypacker as a summer retreat for his family. Right now it's all decorated up for christmas and you can walk up and join a tour.  The photo here is the upstairs area for the family to get together and engage in womanly pursuits.  Isn't it great!  I would have loved to sit down in that window seat and pull out some knitting. There was some half started knitting on a chair for affect along with some embroidery.

 My husband and I left to go home from there which meant a brand new route home that took us through the town of Skippack.  I'd never been there and commented, "You should pull over and let me go shopping."  Boy was I surprised when my husband did just that! We wandered around the stores on the main drag popping into the ones that interested us. I was busy staring in the direction of jewelry stores when my husband said, "Hey there's a yarn store over there. Don't you want to go in?"  God bless him he's a good man.  Yarnings was a very nice store with an upstairs and downstairs to browse around in.  I almost bought some more sublime cashmere/merino/silk blend and their new baby pattern book but stopped myself.  Can't remember why now, maybe it's harder to go nuts in a yarn shop if your husband is there. :)

There was one thing that had to come home with me.  Frog head buttons...Ohhhhh Yeah.

FO Number 2 - Little Birds on a Yoke

This sweater is a bit difficult to write about because all the pieces for it fell together so neatly it's almost like it knit itself. There was no swatching, sketching or working out the math beforehand, I just cast on with the thought that it would all work out. 

The germ of the idea started something like this..... I'd been thinking about knitting another tangled yoke and had purchased the gray felted tweed from my local LYS.  At the same time obsessively checking the finished Little Bird cardigans made by other ravelry users.  A beautiful design that would not work with my bust/waist configuration, but the birds were perfect.  Then the idea just popped into my head, why not knit a tangled yoke and just substitute the cable for some colorwork birds.  Why not knit the whole thing in the round to make stranding really simple and then learn how to steek. Why not cast on Right Now!!!

All the garter stitch rib in the tangled yoke pattern was replaced with the beaded ribbing specified in the Little birds pattern.  This changed the number of cast on stitches for all the pieces to be divisible by 3. The body size is basically the size 34 in Eunny Jang's pattern with about an extra inch of ease and the 8 steek stitches added. There are 26 birds on the yoke, 13 facing in each direction with a little geometric shape on the center back.  (An egg would have been better but needed too many stitches)

Rowan Felted Tweed turned out to be a good choice for a first steek. I followed Eunny Jang's hand sewn steek instructions and then zig zigged with my sewing machine alongside the hand stitched line.  The extra zig zig probably wasn't needed because the felted tweed didn't unravel past the hand stitched line.   The cardigan was then finished off with a double thickness button band and some blue wooden buttons that almost match the birds.

Other than the button band concerns that I blogged about on the 25th this cardigan feels almost perfect.  The tubular cast on for the ribbing looks excellent, the fit is great, and the little birds make me smile every time I wear it. 

FO Number 1 - Fair Enough Cardigan

I'll be blogging about a couple of new FO's during this week since knitting sweaters isn't that interesting until they are completed. Let's start with the Fair Enough Cardigan which was finished for weeks but languished around waiting for buttons. Fair Enough was knit in Karabella Aurora 8 in the pattern's suggested colors on a number 7 needle.  I needed two additional balls of the main color due to my gauge being smaller and my changes to the bottom width of the sweater.

This cardigan didn't get much blog time during construction.  That might be because it was a straight forward knit with very little deviation from the pattern. The only change was increasing the stitch count for the bottom of the sweater, since my hip measurement is not the same as my bust. I took my gauge and did some simple math to figure out how many stitches would make a 41 inch width.  Then calculated how many decreases would need to be made to get the pattern's waist stitch count in the suggested length. 

The rest of the sweater was knit according to the pattern which is clear and well written.  I'd recommend this design for anyone wanting to dip their toe into stranded knitting.  The yoke colorwork is very simple even when having to strand from the wrong side.

Things that I would change if knitting this design again.....

1. The Aurora 8 grew in length a lot more than expected.  I'd knit the sleeves and body at least an inch shorter than suggested in the pattern.

2. I'd knit the neck band double the length and use a three needle bind off on the inside to keep the band from stretching out of shape. 

3. The button band is not to my liking which was talked about in the last post.  I'm still not sure how I'd change that but there is plenty of yarn to knit a new one. 

All three of these are minor gripes and this sweater has been getting plenty of wear in the last couple of days. It's gotten the husband seal of approval because it is super soft and a flattering color.

Button Band Blues

Sewing buttons on two new sweaters has brought to my attention that my button band skills are sorely in need of improvement. Some of my problem is an inability to evenly space buttons or buttonholes along a sweater front. Maybe because the mental connection that there should be the same number of stitches between buttonholes was just made today. Duhhhhhh. But beyond the problems caused by flexible math, it seems like there should be some knitting tricks out there for better button bands. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction or recommend a resource. 

Here's the skinny on badly behaving button bands and some poorly lit photos.

On the Fair Enough cardigan I picked up along the edge, knit a one by one rib and used yarn over buttonholes. Then the band was finished off with an invisible one by one cast off for a nicer finish. The result is that the button band seems to floppy and the yarn over buttonholes stretch and gape in an unsatisfactory way when buttoned. 

On my little birds cardigan I tried something a bit different to try to counteract some of the problems in Fair Enough. The band was picked up along the edge and was knit in the beaded ribbing pattern used in the rest of the sweater. Once the band width was reached a purl turning row was knit and then 8 rows of stockinette finished with a 3 needle bind off on the inside. For the buttonholes 3 stitch one row holes (from interweave appendix) were made on both the right side and facing side. The problem is the extra buttonhole stitches make the the band edge bulge out, which only gets worse when actually buttoned. 

Does anyone have some advice they could pass along? Oh and I promise nice modeled FO shots of these sweaters later in the week if you promise not to stare at my buttonholes. :)

Perfect moments

Biting into a warm cookie and tasting the sharp edge of fresh ginger and the sweet ooze of chocolate.

Walking in the early hours of the morning through a gentle shower of snow and seeing the flakes glinting off your sleeves.

Sliding wool socks still warm from drying on the radiator over cold feet.

Picking up your sticks and string with Brenda Dane's voice in your ear.

Realizing your skeins of wool have ceased to be just raw materials and have been transformed into a garment.

Tomorrow we cut it open.

We missed you Web

My household is finally connected back up to the internet. Whoopee!!!

Though the upside of having no internet is way more knitting time with very few new projects to distract you.

I've been power knitting through a improvised tangled yoke cardigan where the cable is being replaced with some color work.  It seemed like the way to have a sweater with Ysolda's little birds sweater motif that would work for my body.  So far the progress seems to be going well. If all goes to plan the felted tweed with lengthen a bit after blocking and my first attempt at steeking won't be a disaster.

Sorry for low quality pics, it's been raining almost nonstop here.

Sharing my Sleeve Love

Loveeeeee you sleeves.




















More details later since I'm buring internet time at work. Cross your fingers that Version will show up at my house on the right day and give me internet access again.