Knitter Monkey

Last night I began the dubious process of swatching for Venezia. Since I needed to make a large swatch, in the round, in all seven fair isle colors to check for color as well as gauge, this started out kind of ridiculously.

However, I am enormously pleased with the results:

In short, I love love love the colors together. My gauge is a little big, so I might tinker around with going down a needle size or I might just do the necessary math and then knit the appropriate size from the pattern based on my actual gauge. Also, this was two full pattern repeats width-wise and one and quarter repeats vertically, so I have overly optimistic time projections for this considering I did such a "large" swatch in one day's time.

Posted by Erin at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yeah, that's right. On Monday, I had my first yarn-dyeing experience. It was fun but also kind of nerve-wracking, because I really had no idea how the colors were going to look and the only way to find out is through experimentation. BUT, yarn to dye and dyes themselves cost money, and I only have so much of them before I would have to order more even if they didn't, so the temptation is to throw myself into it blindly. The result is this slightly gaudy variegated yarn consisting of bright turquoise (too much turquoise), dark brown (the brown is nice), and a kind of weird splotchy yellow and tan section where I was going for a lighter shade of brown, realized it was still too brown when i put the yarn in, so I added a sprinkle of gold ochre - bad idea. It's not terrible yarn, but it's not pretty either. I'm thinking of putting it to good use with the Fiber Trends Felted Clogs that have been sweeping the Internet this week - felting would even out the colors a little and make it actually nice.

Part of the reason I was so set on "saving" the yarn and the dye was that I thought I might have to dye some yarn for the Venezia Pullover, depending on what the Palette colors looked like in real life. My yarn came on Wednesday, though, and I am so happy with my choices. I haven't gotten a chance to swatch yet, but the colors are all fabulous and look fabulous together, and I'm excited about embarking on this lifelong sweater project.

The week overall has been the work week from hell, so knitting-wise all I've really managed is to keep plugging away at the sweater I had to rip out completely twice already. I'm about a half a ball away from being back to where I was on December 28th when the first rip back occurred. I have all of these grand knitting plans for so many things, but on a week like this when my brain is fried and my hands are a little sore, I really, really love the mindless mostly-stockinette sweater. Until I hit the armpits, it's just around and around and around I go, knitting all the way, with two pairs decreases or increases every twenty rounds or so. It may not be an accomplishment, but sometimes just plain stockinette is all you need.

Posted by Erin at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have expressed before that I kind of hate the way that toe-up sock toes look, because no matter what method you choose, the toes end up square and pointy and really duck-bill-looking, which is not the way my feet or any of my other socks are shaped. What I didn't mention here, is that a few months ago I came upon a pretty workable rounded toe.

I keep misplacing the scrap of paper I wrote it on, but basically you start it like any other toe-up sock but with a few more stitches - traditional cast-on methods call for a total of 16 stitches cast-on, and I start this one with 20. It doesn't matter how you cast them on, just make sure there are 20 stitches.

So, your typical toe says to knit the first round plain, then knit the second round as K1, M1, knit to last stitch on first needle, M1, K1, K1, M1, knit to last stitch, M1, K1. You alternate between these two rounds until you have your prescribed number of stitches, and your toe is angular and probably too narrow for anyone with feet bigger than a women's size 6.

For my rounded version, you still knit the first round plain, then knit the second round as K1, M1, K1, M1, knit to last two stitches on first needle, M1, K1, M1, K1, K1, M1, K1, M1, knit to last two stitches, M1, K1, M1, K1. Depending on the size of sock you are making, you alternate between these two rounds a total of two-four times until you have about two-thirds of the total number of stitches needed for the foot. (I usually use two for my size 8.5 Women's feet and four for my husband's size 13 Men's feet, your mileage may vary.) At this point, switch to the regular increase round described in the previous paragraph and alternate between a plain knit round and that until you have the prescribed number of stitches.

Increasing twice at each end of the needle is kind of a pain in the butt, but the toe looks so much nicer and feels way more comfortable on my feet.

Posted by Erin at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in September, I saw some Cascade Lana Grande in a yarn shop that kept catching my eye. I wanted to make it into a cute, pink, cabled hat, which is absurd because I don't really knit with bulky yarn, I don't really wear a lot of pink, and let's be honest, I never dressed weather-appropriately when I lived up north, so why would I wear a hat now, in Georgia? I kept coming back to it regardless, so I bought three balls of it. Last night, I turned it into the cute, pink, cabled hat I had in mind, and I couldn't be happier with it. It only used three quarters of a ball, which means I have plenty left for gloves and maybe even a skinny scarf.

Yarn: Cascade Lana Grande in #6027 Needles: US 11 circular (magic loop) - the ball band said US 17 but I thought the fabric was way too loose Pattern: My own ... Using circular or DPNs, CO 64 stitches (long-tail cast-on) and join to knit in the round. Round 1-3: *K2, P2* around Round 4: *K6, P2* around Round 5: *Hold next 2 stitches in front of work on cable needle, K2 off left needle, K2 off cable needle, K2 off left needle, P2* around Round 6-7: *K6, P2* around Round 8: *K2, hold next 2 stitches in back of work on cable needle, K2 off left needle, K2 off cable needle, P2 off next stitches on left needle* around Round 9: *K6, P2* around Repeat Rounds 4-9 until hat reaches to the crown of your head from wherever you like to wear your hats (I did four repeats) then proceed to decreasing for the crown. Decrease Round 1: *K6, P2tog* around (56 stitches on needles) Round 2: *Hold next 2 stitches in front of work on cable needle, K2 off left needle, K2 off cable needle, K2 off left needle, P1* around Round 3-4: *K6, P1* around Round 5: *K2tog, hold next 2 stitches in back of work on cable needle, K2tog off left needle, K2tog off cable needle, P1 off left needle, K2, hold next 2 stitches in back of work on cable needle, K2 off left needle, K2 off cable needle, P1 off left needle* around (44 stitches on needles) Round 6-7: *K3, P1, K6, P1* around Round 8: *Hold next stitch in front of work on cable needle, K1 off left needle, K1 off cable needle, K1 off left needle, P1, Hold next two stitches in front of work on cable needle, K2tog off left needle, K2tog off cable needle, K2tog off left needle, P1* around (32 stitches on needles) Round 9: *K3, P1* around Round 10: *K1, SKPO, P1* around (24 stitches on needles) Round 11: *SKPO, P2tog* around (12 stitches on needles) Break yarn and graft top of hat closed.

Posted by Erin at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two years after I first learned to knit in order to recreate our childhood stockings, I finally recreated the stockings.

I reverse engineered the pattern from my own stocking, adding a few improvements, like joining the stocking in the round at the color change from green to white so it is less noticeable, and making the i-cord "hook" significantly sturdier. This December found me making three of these - one for Dan, one for my mom's wife, and one for my sister's partner. December also featured a collection of knitting mishaps, from the grossly misshapen sock to the far-too-big sweater, to drive home the lesson that I can not get away with being lazy about swatching, measuring, and trying things on in the process.

After months and months of never posting here, I've decided to try to re-commit to using this blog more, especially as I embark upon my latest Knitting Challenge. I couldn't really tell you what it is that makes me want to tackle overly complicated projects on very tiny needles, but the attraction is strong. So, I am planning on knitting the Venezia Pullover from Interweave Knits.

It is a little difficult to see in the photo, but the gist of it is that it is a ten-color all-over Fair Isle sweater knit out of fingering weight yarn on size 0 and size 2 needles. I wasn't planning on knitting this when it came out because the colors are not particularly appealing to me, I've never really done Fair Isle before, and believe it or not I do actually have a brain in my head that alerts me when something is going to be unnecessarily arduous. I read Eunny Jang's blog, though, and I read that someone had actually completed this amazing task, and I went off in search of pictures and stumbled onto a Craftster thread. This is how it started. The completed sweater was like the one in the magazine, but with red instead of yellow and suddenly it was much nicer to me. Other people had pictures of grays and pinks and autumn-y palettes.

The first step was not colors, though - the first step was whether or not I could even figure out Fair isle. Where better to start than Eunny's Endpaper Mitts? It turns out that I can, in fact, figure out Fair Isle.

So now I get to think about colors. I wanted to try to stay within the range of KnitPicks Palette since that makes this a $20 endeavor, and considering the likelihood of my never finishing this...

I hemmed, I hawed, I used crayons and photoshop and a demo of some chart software, and I think I have picked a color scheme:

I have one other combination to try once the yarn gets here, but since it is just the same colors in another order I can just figure that out in a yarn swatch.

Here's to new crazy knitting adventures.

Posted by Erin at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)