Despite having grad classes sucking up an enormous amount of time over the past year, I have managed to keep knitting projects going as a sanity-saver. Even if it’s just a few minutes a day, I try to carve out some time to pick up my needles. I find the rhythm of knitting and the feel of the fiber to be soothing and centering, and it helps ensure the creative part of my being fires up regularly. While I cozy up inside for winter knitting, in the summer I move out onto my back porch when I can and enjoy summer afternoons or evenings, listening to an audiobook on my IPad while knitting and accessing the pattern in my Knit Companion app.
So since my last knitting post (Gack! December 2018?!), here’s what’s come off my needles.
I started off the 2019 by knitting two surprises. I should note that giving handknits as gifts is a great pleasure to me, and a significant part if that is the element of surprise. I love when the recipient doesn’t have a clue that something is coming. While having my car serviced over the winter, the gentleman at customer service (and it’s the same crew there for years so we’re all familiar with each other) saw me knitting in the waiting room asked me if I were making him a hat. I was making shopping bags, as it turned out (more on that in another post) but saying that to a knitter? Like waving a cape at a bull. On my way home that night I stopped at a local store, picked up some yarn, and set about whipping up a hat, the Statement Hat. When it was done, I headed over to the garage and delivered it. It was so gratifying to see his surprise. Good thing he hadn’t teased me about making him a sweater! Also in January, I completed a pair of socks for a colleague who had gotten some difficult news and I thought that a pair of socks with a touch of cashmere might be just what she needed: having cozy toes can help when we’re feeling a little low. (See blog post about handknit socks). The pattern is Papermoon Socks (one of my favorites) and the yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Tonal.
A second sweater I’ve had in the waiting line for ages, an Icelandic sweater through a Blueprint (formerly Craftsy) class. Blueprint/Craftsy is an online crafting platform in which you can watch video classes on a number of craft/arts areas: knitting, baking, photography, drawing, weaving, etc. Craftsy allowed you to buy a class a time but Blueprint is a subscription. This is a top-down sweater, Maren, designed and taught by Ragga Eiríksdóttir. I loved the color combination for a winter sweater, like wearing a sunny day. (The color in the top photo is closest to the actual yarn.) I’ve done colorwork before but this was my first using Icelandic wool: Léttlopi by Ístex . It’s very light and airy and super warm, although a little prickly. I wouldn’t want to wear it as a first layer against my skin. The challenge in this pattern is that it is steeked, which means cutting the front opening. It’s an age-old technique so it’s tried and tested but heart-pounding for the uninitiated to cut through knitting. It works with 100% animal fibers as the cut ends will felt themselves together and it won’t unravel but I think it will take several more exercises before I lightheartedly cut away. It’s often used in colorwork because it’s easier to keep the continuity of the design. A few stitches are knit into each round to indicate the cutting line, the edge is reinforced with crochet or, if you’re timid as I was, a line of machine stitching then snip! As with Coda, the colorwork yoke and steeking was the challenge; the rest was straightforward sweater knitting. I did start using a technique called a cable cast on and cast off for the sleeve and bottom ribbing edges. It looks like it disappears into itself for a nice-looking finished edge, and it’s one I’m going to use a lot going forward. The button bands are backed with ribbon, it covers up the snipped ends and stabilizes the edge so that it doesn’t stretch out. I’ve found a wonderful company, Renaissance Ribbons, that has really gorgeous, unique products. I had used their bee ribbon when I made my sewing weights some months back. I’m finding that getting interesting buttons requires some looking around online, and it’s hard to get the color right as computer monitors vary so much. I finally found some at Makers’ Mercantile out of Kent, WA. This pattern doesn’t have the traditional button-to-the-bottom button band and I’m not sure I’d do it this way again; I suspect it was chosen as it’s an easier approach for the online-class platform.
I have a substantial amount of yarn stashed away in my craft room, much of it in sweater-amount yardage. In order to keep myself from drowning in yarn, sometimes a self-imposed yarn diet is enforced and what better way to whittle down the volume than actually making some sweaters? First up was Coda, knit in Berroco Ultra Alpaca, from Brooklyn Tweed. I love this company’s aesthetic and have many of their designs in my Ravelry queue (Ravelry is like Facebook for knitters and crocheters; you can save patterns to a list for future reference, post projects, interact with other crafters, and such. I’m there as edithgrove, should you be a member; come look me up.). What I liked about Coda is that the design is reversible, and I thought that was a clever design element. Brooklyn Tweed patterns can be challenging, but I like to have a project going that takes some brain power along with some more automatic knitting projects. The cable details took some attention but most of it was straightforward sweater knitting so it didn’t take too long to finish. The arched cable is a little wonky because it is knit from each side, using short rows to bend it to the center, then grafted; you can see the little hitch in the middle photo to the left but I decided I could live with that. For non-knitters, short rows are a technique in which you knit only part of the row before turning your work to knit back, which shapes that part of the fabric by adding rows to only one part of the fabric—no added rows on the ends but building the middle part. Grafting is fancy sewing that re-creates the knitted fabric to join two sections of knitting seamlessly. Grafting a cable is tricky business, at least for me. And I played the closest game of yarn chicken ever; barely any left over.
I pretty much always have socks going while other projects are underway because they’re so portable and easy to pick up and put down. I often have a pair going with no particular destination in mind when it becomes clear that they should to go to someone in particular; this happens fairly frequently. Using my favorite (now discontinued) Classic Elite Alpaca Sock yarn and Twisted Limone pattern, I was able to (surprise!) gift them to a friend who I thought might be able to use some cozy toes. The next pair was an intentional yarn purchase (Papermoon in Alpaca Socks) for a colleague departing for greener pastures who has a passion for purple. Using a fellow colleague who enjoyed hearing about sneaking up pathways to stash the surprise Twisted Limone socks into a mailbox, she followed the same stash-and-dash technique but reported that she was sure there was a video doorbell and we were busted. On Instagram, I try to search out smaller, independent yarn dyers and found Lola Bean Yarn Company, who happened to give a shout out to CeCe’s Wool, a store near me that was just about to open, for stocking her yarn. Always interested in a local yarn store, I went out on their first day open and bought a sock-pair’s worth of Lola’s yarn in appreciation for the information. They ended up being for me, using Lola’s Thunder and Lightening colorway, worked up in Speckled Space Socks.
Every summer, I buy a CSA share for flowers from Flower Scout. She has an urban garden in the city and we have an ever-changing bouquet each week. My garden is solely veggies and some edible flowers so it’s wonderful to have this weekly bonanza. She was expecting her first child this summer and I had been wanting to knit a Welcome to the Flock sweater, with its yoke of woolly sheep, for the right new arrival, and I knew this was the occasion. It’s so cute and I’ll be knitting it again, I’m sure. I used Cascade Yarns 220 Superwash Sport. Superwash means that the wool yarn can be washed and dried in a machine; I never give new parents anything that needs to be handwashed—too cruel! For some reason, I just couldn’t get the button holes spaced correctly; I must have re-knit the button band five times. Sometimes projects or parts of projects are just cursed for no apparent reason.
Welcome to the Flock also included a sheep hat that I didn’t have enough yarn for, and my sock-delivery partner at work thought it was just a shame that I didn’t get to the hat, and also lamented that it was too bad adults couldn’t wear a sheep hat. Ultimately we decided that wasn’t true and I would knit her a sheep hat. We first considered an adult version of Welcome to the Flock but, after some trial and error on the color, went with the Baa-ble Hat, knit in Sugarbush Bold, another superwash wool. A successful project, already being worn in the office before we’ve turned the heat on, but missing that element of surprise of which I’m so fond. Only one solution—mittens. I had plenty of yarn left over from the hat so I used a basic mitten pattern and adapted the colorwork chart from the hat and presto! My first pair of mittens. Definitely more of those to come. Of course, after I had finished them I discovered the original designer had added a mitten pattern, along with a cowl. What did I say about cursed projects?
After all my sheep-themed projects, I’ve just cast on a new sweater, Aimee by Kim Hargreaves a gorgeous knitwear designer, with Knitpicks Aloft yarn, a luscious blend of mohair and silk. It’s like knitting a cloud! Just started on the sleeves so stay tuned for progress on that (the color is much more of a sky blue than it appears in the photo). I hadn’t realized that I’ve managed to complete as many knits as I have, so collecting this recap was very satisfying. But with only one project on knitting needles, time to cast on another pair of socks.
I’ve had plenty of other projects going outside of knitting: preserving from the garden and baking bread, among others, and I’ve taken up some sewing again. Plenty more to come!
Auntie
14 Oct 2019All are gorgeous. Keep it up!
Handmade Bits and Bobs
15 Oct 2019Thank you! I had finished more projects than I had thought 😁