Another decade, another sweater

Well, maybe not quite that bad. But I am not a very prolific sweater knitter.



This is the sweater I've been mumbling about for a while. I've done several rounds of rip-and-redo. Finally, I figured out exactly what I wanted to do. And then the knitting went smoothly.

The entire sweater is knit from spindle-spun yarn. I dyed the colored yarn; the gray and white are natural.

The body of the sweater is from a friend's Icelandic sheep. She had sent the fleece to a new processor and didn't like the results, so I ended up with it. It wasn't the easiest thing to spin. But it was fun anyway. The yarn is mostly bulky, thick and thin with slubs. I actually do like it a lot. It's white with some black hairs.

The rest of the sweater yarn is from commercial roving, though I'm not sure exactly what. Some of it was used two-stranded, since my normal spinning is quite a bit thinner than the Icelandic yarn is. It's from my Yarn Library, which is what I call all those small amounts of hand-spun and hand-dyed yarn I've accumulated over the years.

The yoke pattern is adapted from a pattern I found on the Istex website's free pattern page.

The sweater style is the typical Icelandic round-yoke pattern. I made it up as I went along, though it is mostly based on Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage system.

I finished it just in time for today's very cold weather. I'm wearing it now as I type this.

I think I might have enough of the Icelandic left for a second sweater, especially if I add even more color-patterning. This was fun to knit and I like the results, so.... Check back in a few years to see if it ever happens. I also have a couple of other batches of yarn in quantities sufficient for a sweater.

In the last post, so many months ago, I wrote about Opal socks I was starting to knit. Here's a photo of what they looked like back then. As you can see, it's a simple toe-knit plain sock.



The socks were finished soon after that post. I don't have a photo of the finished socks. Since then, I've knit a few other pairs. One sock was highly annoying. I knit it two-stranded. When it was done, I discovered that it was too tight! That's not very common for me. Usually, I know my gauge, I measure as I go, and I try on socks as I go. Oh, well. I unraveled it for future socks. Unraveling and re-winding a ball of yarn that has been knit two-stranded is Not Fun. But it is done.

My latest travel-knitting project is yet another scarf. It is based on a pattern from the May/June 2010 issue of Piecework by Galina Khmeleva. The original pattern is a very lovely and elegant wrap, a large rectangular scarf with fringe on both ends knit from laceweight merino/silk. Mine is a humble scarf knit in a thicker (and very fuzzy) mohair blend yarn. I took the honeycomb lace stitch pattern and went from there.

An open stitch pattern such as this really makes the yarn go a long way! The scarf is getting longer and longer and longer. I still have plenty of yarn left. Soon I will decide that it is Long Enough and that will be that. I'm not sure what I'll do with the leftover mohair. Will there be enough left for a cowl or neck-warmer? I can combine it with the leftover mohair from the other mohair scarf I did, the dark blue one with a cable and lace design.



The photo below is a close-up of the lace pattern. It's garter-based. It's very easy to knit -- two rows of one kind of knitting followed by two rows of another. The only stitches are knit, yarnover, and knit two together. The lace is quite open with no blocking whatsoever. There is a slight bias, though. I'll probably give it the usual minor wet-blocking treatment after it's done.



I might write out the pattern for others to use. If you like it, I urge you to check out Piecework. Galina Khmeleva has been publishing beautiful patterns there for a while.

There's been more knitting and spinning and crocheting and what-not since my last post. But it's all pretty boring, nothing worth going into unless/until I have photos. I don't even have any good doily-knitting photos to share.

I'm not sure what I'll be making next. Hats. Mittens. Scarves. Shawls. Another sweater, perhaps. Maybe a doily. In other words, the usual.

The End of the Endless Scarf and other tall tales

First, here is a photo of the completed socks that I mentioned in my last post. As you may be able to tell, they look remarkably like socks. They function like socks. I am pleased.

I don't make all that many socks at the finer gauges. I like making and wearing thicker socks. These 8+ stitch per inch socks are lovely, but not as warm as the 5 stitch per inch quickies. I don't usually wear socks with regular street shoes, so thinness is not usually an issue. It is fun to make the finer gauge socks as well as the larger-gauge ones. I'm going to make a few more pairs, interspersed with some of the thicker socks.



I finished the diagonal garter stitch scarf. That's a photo of it above, in all its variegated clown-barf colored glory. Autumn-colored sounds better than clown-barf, but the phrase, once introduced, has a certain unforgettable vividness.

I'm not sure of the exact finished dimensions, but it's something like 6 feet long by 6 inches wide, give or take a bit. I used about 400 yards of this worsted-weight yarn. Since it was all garter stitch, and since I re-knit half of it, it seemed to take quite a bit longer than necessary. I'm glad it's done. I'm tired of doing diagonal garter stitch for now.

I used the following diagonal garter stitch scarf pattern variation, mentioned way back when I first wrote about this project.

Cast on 3 stitches.

Increase row: knit the first stitch, knit in front and back of the next stitch, knit to end of row.

Repeat the increase row until the scarf is wide enough (measured along the selvedge edge).

Decrease row: knit 1, knit 2 together, knit to end of row.

Alternate an increase row with a decrease row until the scarf is long enough, or you're just about out of yarn or patience.

Then, do decrease rows until you're back down to 3 stitches.

Cast off. Hide ends. Admire. Swear off garter stitch for a while.





Here is a close-up of the scarf, showing the stitch pattern and how it interacts with the variegated yarn. You can also see the ever-so-lovely selvedge. I knit the first stitch of every row. Big deal. It's a good choice for garter stitch, though.

I do like the way diagonal garter stitch looks with this variegated yarn. It almost looks like tapestry or needlepoint or something. Or maybe clown barf.

The scarf is a good length and width for wrapping around my neck and face. It is warm and soft. We're expecting snow tonight and tomorrow. The scarf may well get its first workout this week.

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Now I am all out of travel projects. Yikes! What shall I cast on for my next travel project? It should be something that's on a circular needle, even if it's knit back and forth. It should have shortish rows or be totally circular, so I can put it down with very little notice. It should be relatively mindless.

Another shawl? Even the flat-knit ones can start out as travel projects, though they become house projects after they get large enough. I already have several circular-knit ones -- the usual pi shawls, spiral shawls, square shawls, doily shawls, etc., that any long-time knitter ends up having around the house. I could always use more, I suppose.

A hat? Another scarf? A plain sweater? (As opposed to the one with the cable up the front, which requires keeping track of where I am in the cable pattern.) A moebius thing?

The moebius thing has me thinking and plotting, since the moebius I've been wearing lately proved to have a few flaws when worn during a hike this past weekend. The weather was cold and foggy, with snow and some wind. The snow and ice encrusted on the outside of the moebius got my chin rather wet and cold whenever the wind blew. Given the temperatures and the wind chill factor, this was less than pleasant. Clearly, the design needs a bit of work. It's pretty reasonable for shoveling snow, and for hiking in less windy and/or snowy weather. I need something that will also work in yuckier weather.

One possibility is simply to make it a bit smaller in diameter. If it's a bit more snug, it won't blow around as much in the wind. Another possibility is to make a simple tube rather than a moebius. Those often go by the name of smoke ring or neck gaiter or wimple. It would keep my neck warm, yet I could pull it over my ears and lower face if necessary.

I'm doing research now -- online searches, checking out books, asking friends. Then it will be time to experiment and decide what works best for me. Perhaps I'll need several, depending on weather conditions and the social occasion.

In addition to the above, I've been working on my current socks, another toe-up pair at a relatively fine gauge. The sweater is coming along slowly, and ditto for the doilies. I've been in the mood for mittens and hats, so no doubt I'll soon be casting on for either a hat or mittens or both.

A Pair of Socks

No photos yet, but sock # 2 is done. I have achieved sockitude.

The stripes on the two socks started out at slightly different spots on the toe. By the time I reached the top, they were at the exact same spot. I wonder why? I don't think my gauge could have shifted enough to make up the difference. As far as I can tell, the two socks are the same, both in the number of rounds and in the actual measurements. Are the repeat lengths in Opal sock yarn exact or approximate?

I have enough of this yarn left to make at least one more sock. OK. My chances of ever getting this dyelot again are close to nil.

I probably have enough to make some wristwarmers. Or, I could strand it with another yarn to make another pair of socks or some mittens or a hat. It's enough for a small bag, though I don't know what I'd do with such a thing. Most probably, it will go in the oddball bin. I'll use it eventually.

It was hard not to cast on immediately for the next pair of socks. Tomorrow. Or maybe later today. Chances are they will be toe-up, too. Dunno if I'll choose one of the patterned yarns or not.

I'll have to wear this pair for a while before I decide whether I like this style of short-rowed heels.

Ecce Sock!

I'm not sure if there's a Latin word for sock. The free online translator websites didn't seem to think so.

Sock #1 is complete as of a few days ago. It went fast. Sock #2 is nearly to the heel. It should be done in a few days.

The yarn is an old ball of Opal from my stash. As you can tell, the main color is gold/mustard, and there are occasional narrow stripes of yellow, red, and blue.

This is a toe-up sock with a short-row heel. I did Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' short-row version, with yarnovers instead of wraps. It's OK, though it seems more fiddly to me than the wrap or no-wrap versions. The two sides of the heel don't quite match; one set of decreases is slightly looser than the other. We'll see if I can improve on that in the second sock.

It seems like half the knitters I know are knitting socks right now. I wonder why? Is it the cold weather, the hibernating instincts of late fall? Is there some kind of Group Think going on? I know that a lot of knitters usually have socks on the needles at all times. However, those of us who knit them in fits and starts suddenly are knitting them again. New sock knitters are joining the Great Sock Knitting Conspiracy.

Not that there's anything wrong with this, of course. The world needs more hand-knit socks and more knitters who know how to make them.

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Fleegle wrote (in comments to the last post):

That's really a blue doily...don't know if I care for it. It looks a bit boring to knit. 5000 stitches for a doily round? Or is that the total number of stitches you have left?

The 5000 stitches is the approximate number for the rest of the Azalea doily, 12 rounds of knitting. Those are rounds 51-62. The doily has close to twice the usual number of stitches per round. They're tedious stitches, too. The design is economical, using only a few maneuvers to create its beauty. Most of the stitches are stockinette.

The blue doily is indeed blue! Actually, it was rather fun to knit. Only the outer rounds were a bit tedious, when I was at over 400 stitches per round. That's the section where those outer fan motifs are developed.

For most of the doily, you are doing something interesting every few stitches. Each little section of motif is small and easily memorized. There are remarkably few stretches of plain knit stitches, never more than 5 in a row. The rest consists of yarnovers, decreases, increases, twisted knit stitches, and so on. There are sections of double yarnovers in most rounds and plenty of k5togs scattered throughout the doily.

I'm not really up on art terms, but I like the aesthetics of this design. A lot of Niebling's patterns are flowing. They may or may not have a lot of symmetry. This one is very restrained and highly symmetrical. I like that. It has a different, more restricted kind of energy flow compared to the more swirly designs. However, this can look boring if your preferences are for the more open and lively doily styles.

I finally got around to fixing the dropped stitches in my Lyra. Talk about fiddly--I hate doing that. On to round 157 tomorrow. Can't wait to finish it so I can start Aldelaida. Or Lotus. Or something!

Congratulations on fixing the dropped stitches in Lyra! It's always a relief to be able to recover like that. For me, that's usually mixed with the self-annoyance that the time/effort was needed in the first place! I don't mind the simple errors that are easy to fix. Major fixes are stressful and frustrating.

Adelaida and Lotus are pretty patterns. Are you going to do them as doilies? As shawls? When a doily gets to a certain size, I usually consider whether it would work well as a shawl. With all the work it will take, I want the result to be large and readily displayed. Since I don't live a doily lifestyle, shawls tend to get way more public exposure than a large cloth would.

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It's almost December. Already! I'm not ready.

However, tomorrow is National Pie Day here in the US. Perhaps I should celebrate. National Cookie Day is December 4. I also have my eye on Eggnog Day (Dec. 24) and Chocolate Day (Dec. 28).

Happy Pie Day Eve to all!