Only a bit

I joined at the underarm and knit a few rounds.  All is ready for a try on.

And now I am going to rip back.

It's just three rows so not a biggie.  The arms openings are not quite right and I would rather they be right.  

So, back to the drawing board, but only a bit.

So many choices. So much fun.

My knitter errant ways continued.  The upper back is compete and front 1 is at the base of the collar.

Front 2 is picked up and needs to be knit and joined to make the complete front.  There are a couple inches of working across the full front but it wont take long.  The shaping is leaning to the general shaping of a Lipstick sweater.  It's a good thing too considering how far into it I am.  

I have had company the last couple days.  My brother stopped by.  It is always great to visit but I need to be more responsible about feeding people and tidying up when company is here.  The world can fall around me if I am knitting on my own.  I am not quite as far as I hoped and yet I am pretty pleased with my progress.  The gauge of the sweater is 4 stitches per inch and it is working up nice and fast.

Because I am working with a limited yarn color issue particularly for this light grey, I am going to knit the sleeves as soon as the upper body is complete.  Not quite sure yet how they will look.  I prefer all grey but because of the yarn issue, there might be a switch to the bleached white with the colourwork zigzag from Cait and the darkest grey lice like the bottom section of the Cait.   Or perhaps they will be only white with the lice.

So many choices.  So much fun.

How did that happen?

With five other active sweater knits, all of which I am eager to finish and wear, I have no business starting anything else.  And yet here I am.  And to think, I was concerned about becoming a monogamous project knitter.

I am knitting the Briggs and Little Regal that I said I had a plan for.  I do have a general plan, but in some ways, my needles seem to be leading me to an entirely new place. 

I saw Ann Budd's Cait sweater when the pattern was published.  I love the clean fit of it.  I love the simplicity of the colouwork.  You don't need tons of colourwork for a big impact. And I felt pretty sure that the fit of the sweater would be great considering my constant referrals and use of her books, A Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns and The Knitter's Handy Book of Top Down Sweater Patterns.  I use these books all the time.  

The problem is that I don't want to knit such a lightweight sweater as Cait at the moment.  I want this simple design idea in my Regal yarn. So I pulled out The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns and I am using the design dimensions from the modified drop shoulder sweater.  Or rather, that is where I started.  

All of a sudden the shoulder shaping from my Hacho yarn project popped into my head and my needles sort of wandered that way, only I had a full back width cast on.  Joji starts Lipstick, the pattern I am knitting with my Hacho, with the shoulders on a provisional cast on,  joined at the neckline after some shaping is begun.  I goofed around and that is when it hit me.  

What I was doing was the general back shaping from Ysolda Teague's Anyday Sweatshirt  . It is a bit hard to see it here but it is.  Interesting.  I am going to keep going here and see what I get..

I have no idea what this thing is going to turn out to be, but so far it is an intriguing journey.

Yarn Fumes

I had a wonder filled weekend.  I played with all my yarn.

Friday morning (because there is always the post blogging day), I did not feel like working on my sweaters.  Any of them. I have been almost too monogamous to a single thing and it was starting to feel weird.  I picked up socks.

I could really use a few more pairs and tis the season for good warm socks.  

I happened to glance at the bag and I realized that all of these yarns have been in the bag for a very long time and that I may be a bit bored of them.  The bag was supposed to be for yarns to that had to go back into the sock yarn bin, but I just kept working from it and here we are.

I emptied the bag out to see just what was in it.  Not just old sock yarn but yarn that never made it into the bin from first purchasing.  Time to deal with that.

And that is when chaos and joy happened.  I love my yarn stash.  It is an utter delight to play in it with wild abandon.

The first thing I did was to pull out the sock bin so I cold get a few new ball of yarn for socks.  That was were responsible me left and crazy with yarns fumes me went to town.

The first thing that popped into my head was the Flea Sweater. I have set my heart on using the many many colours of Knit Picks Palette that I have, to knit this sweater.  I love the tones of the men's version of the pattern so that is the pattern I bought.  I don't really need the pattern to knit from but  I bought it. The designer had idea of it and the colour inspiration and I have no problem paying for those.  The Palette bin went with the sock yarn bin.

Then I searched for the cones.  I needed to find my cornflower blue Harrisville Shetland to repair my Myrtle sweater.  

Accomplished.

And then I puled out some other cones of yarn that I have had forever.  I had been wondering if I had enough to double the yarn. The blue is a very fine fingering weight but the colour is kind of glorious. 

I love it held double.  Above is the held single swatch and here is the doubled one.

Ooooo that is yummy. Maybe a Felix pullover?

I had a couple smaller cones of this wonderfully mossy Jaggerspun 3/8 Heather.  Is there enough for a sweater if I double it?

It will be close but if I am vey careful with my pattern choice, yes, I think so.

If I add a bit of the white single, also held double, I am sure it will work. The single cream yarn is Custom Woolen Mills Single Ply Mulespinnner.

Then I pulled out the remainder of my Harrisville Falx and Wool. 

I made an and Ursina from it and while I do love the sweater, the neckline is just too big now and falls off my shoulders.  It is too nice a yarn to not be worn so I am pulling out the sweater I have and will make something else.  

The next thing to catch my eye is this.

When Joji designed the Elton sweater, she showed that you can use two quite different yarns together so long as you keep the same gauge. These are worsted Ultra Alpaca and the sport ish weight Socks that Rock  (not the lightest sock weight they sold) and I am going to knit an Eltonish sweater of some kind.  A mashup of a couple different inspirations, no doubt,  to be a sweater I will love. 

Then I hit the boxes with Briggs and Little  I am devoted to their yarns.

This is the most amazing heather brown not brown.  I am not a big fan of brown but I love a natural sheep grey brown.  This mimics that and I cannot wait to knit it.  Colourwork perhaps with a nice cream?

I pulled out some Briggs and Little Regal from my display cabinet too.  Now that I am working on the Hacho yarn sweater, I need to think about this yarn.

I have 2 light grey and two bleached white.  

I also have 7 skeins of dark grey.  It should be plenty for two sweaters, one only in dark grey and another using the other colours.

I know what I am doing with the mixed color sweater.  I may have even cast it on but have no idea what the dark grey will be. Lots to ponder.

I wanted to pull out and play with so many more things, but this is a lot of yarn.  A winters worth of things to knit, and that doesn't even count all the projects in my WIPs bin or all the things I pulled out in spring and have in my display/inspiration/next to knit cabinet.  

Ah, yarn fumes.  So much fun. 

Kids! Knitting! Snow!

I am here!  My house has been filled with young people the last few days and writing just couldn't be done in any meaningful way so I gave myself a fall break.  It was lovely.  We baked cookies, we had movie nights, we played board games, we tried to sleep at night.  Okay, I slept at night.  They goofed off, quietly, so that I thought they were sleeping.  And now they have all gone home and it is snowing gently outside my window and I am missing them but I feel so very lucky.  They are, each and every one of them, all seven of them, such wonderful big and little people.  I often wonder how I got so lucky.  

I did get in some knitting too.  

The fronts are joined and I think there are 4 rows to knit before I can join to knit in the round.  

This is one of the places I changed the pattern.  The original is a cardigan, but I always wear things closed so I am making this a pullover.  Ì did think about making the cardigan and just closing it when I put the buttons on but I really like the simplicity of working in the round.  

I am doing a bit of a detail center front.  I am repeating the twisted rib

  

in  three columns right where the button bands would normally overlap.  I like the way that little detail looks in the middle of the reverse stockinette.  

There will be knitting today, and coffee and I am sure to spend a lot of time watching big flakes gently cover the world outside my window with a peaceful winter blanket.  

Two Days and Two Balls of Yarn

Two days and two balls of yarn means things happen.

Back yoke ready to go. First front yoke half done.  I am utterly thrilled.  

I must say that after the worsted weights I have been working with the last while,  I was thinking a lot about working with this lighter weight yarn.  It isn't  much lighter.  It is a Dk according to its label, and the yarn I was using for the Anyday Sweater was a Dk.  The yarn for my gorgeous yellow sweater is a Dk weight by label. It's a weight I love knitting but these last two knits and sweaters were definitely worsted.  I was worried that I would find knitting this project in an unquestioned Dk, slow and that it would feel it was taking forever.

There are no stripes in this sweater.  Stripes absolutely keep your interest when you knit the body of a sweater.  There is always something to look forward to, something to focus on rather than the amount of knitting you have to do.  

This is one ball one yarn, no stripes.  All colour.

One small ball of yarn.  After the last sweater with Ecologicals very giant balls, it is almost a relief.  I have room for my coffee! I have space for my handy side pad of paper and a pen.  I love it, but this is a light Dk yarn.  

This first bit of the sweater was so much fun.  And ever so difficult to put it down.  It is much easier to use so I can work longer.  A lot of knitting went on the last few days.  

I made a concession to speed.

The ribbing in the Lipstick pattern is a twisted rib on the right side.  This means a purl through the back loop on the wrong side.  I don't mind purl through the back loop but it does take more time and is a little harder on my joints.  I did the same thing on both sides.  I knit all the knits to twist the base of the knit stitches and purled in my normal fashion on purls.  Instead of every stitch of a stack of stitches being twisted, every second stitch in the stack is twisted and both sides are the same.

I have also answered another question I had about this yarn.  

The purl side is going to look really interesting.  The right side is really interesting too.  The colours switch so frequently that they never leave you feeling poolish.  

This one is a pleasure to in a different way than the others have been.  

One last bit.  I just finished reading a lovely book called a Month in the Country by J L Carr.  It is lyrical and gentle and makes you think about really big feelings, really hard feelings in the most gentle way.  Reading it was a complete pleasure. 

Another Thing

I meant to get to sewing yesterday, but the recent weather, even though it was good, is hard on me.  I did not have the mental energy to start anything.  Today, I will get to printing out and assembling the patterns for the next sewing and I will prepare for box making.  I bought a bolt of black cotton a while ago and that is going to be perfect for that.

What I did do yesterday was start something new.  I really have no business starting anything new.  I have sixteen WIPs and don't really need anymore, but it seems, I want more. I would like to say that it is because of my happiness with my last few projects, but no.  There are always more things to want to make, more yarns to want to work with, more colours to play with.  It all is so exciting to me.  

I started to make another Lipstick sweater by Joji Locatelli.  I loved making my first.  It's my dressy sweater, the one I wear when I want to feel good.  It's a very simple sweater, but it is an interesting simple sweater.  There are twisted stitch bits, reverse stockinette bits and a bit of very simple lace.  I did not do the lace bits last time and because of the yarn, I won't be doing lace this time either.

As you can see, the colour is very busy.  It will be the star of this show. I watched a podcast earlier this week, where a sweater they were showing, was multi coloured in a very similar way to my Hacho yarn and they found the reverse stockinette side almost looked nicer than the outside.    Lipstick has a very wide reverse stockinette panel at the center front so I can't wait to see if the same happens with my yarn.

My first Lipstick was knit with Rios, an Aran weight yarn, perfect for the patterns four stitches per inch gauge.  My  yarn, Hacho, is a DK weight.  No way will it make a good fabric at 4 stitches per inch.  So I am doing the math.  It doesn't take much math because this is such an easy to knit sweater.  

It's  not much knitting but it's a good start.  It's hard to leave the yarn and knitting to go to the sewing room but to the sewing room I must go.  Need the boxes for the kitchen and tights for the cold. 

For the Next Thing

It's  done.

I am so pleased with this.  

Great choices:  

The v neck.  Much easier to deal with than a zipper, even though they are trendy at the moment.

Sticking with the folded collar.  I.  Love.  It.  In my search to feel warm and cozy, this is a winner and is going to happen again.

The three colours rather than two.  If it were only cream and red, it would be too much red.  I love having the extra flow of such a gentle colour as this oatmeal mixed in.  I just love it. LOVE IT ( This is me dancing.)

The oopsies:

I miscounted the sleeve stitches and the are closer fitting than I generally like.  However...I won't redo.  Once it's washed and worn a few times it will be fine.  

The v neck.  I didn't want to have the flat base of the vee.  It made the collar a bit more complex.  At the rate of increases I used, the v bottom would have been at my navel - not a good look.  I will do better math next time.  

I should have made the back hem a bit longer as the pattern does. I chose not to split the hem so if I do change this, the entire bottom ribbing will be redone.  That means that the whole second red skein of yarn will be used up. Two sweaters from this yarn?  What was I thinking?  

I am wearing it right now and I love it.  It has been such a fun knit. On top of everything, it has been great for practicing my single handed stranding.  

For the next thing.

This may or may not work.  Internet weirdness this morning.

So close to complete.

I can't wait.

Perfect

I tried the red sweater on yesterday.   It is so good it is almost unbelievable.  

When I pulled it out this morning, I held it up and just looked at it for a while.  And appreciated it.  I love this sweater. I urge you to knit it because ... stripes.  Because ..easy colourwork.  Because of the sturdy woodsy look of the combination of yarn and construction.  Because it is a sweater of the ages.  It is not trendy.  It is a forever sweater.  

I made it to the ribbing of sleeve 1.  I swear, the stripes knit themselves.  

The sleeve rib will be as long as the hem ribbing or till the sleeve is a nice three quarter length.  

I have been trying to save the red yarn but I am no longer thinking that way at all.  I may be fickle but Third Coast is just that good.  I don't feel the need for a Bountiful Bohus if I have This sweater.  I still want to knit Ingrid or a sweater very much like it but I have other yarns that are just right for it.  Third Coast pushes all my feel good buttons.  It's a fun, fast knit in wonderful colours in a good simple wool.  

Good Things and Childish Glee

It was a terrible and wonderful weekend. Terrible because all day Saturday was waiting for the rain in Sao Paulo to stop so they could run F1 qualifying and wonderful because the race on Sunday was utterly brilliant as was my knitting.

The collar was completed Saturday while waiting for the qualifying.   

Sewing it down double and closing the front can wait till after the sleeves are done.  Sunday was sleeve one day. I have one more row of cc 2 before starting the red again.  

Stripes, even stripes with the bit of colourwork at the change, feels so fast to knit.  

I also completed going through all my bits and bobs and stuff on Friday.   I made it through all of the places I hid things and sorted and found better homes for everything.  There wasn't really that much stuff, it was just stored so spread out.  Best of all, the places they are stored now are places I already use. 

I found and old chart of knitting and crochet hook sizes that was kind of fun.  I think I got it with a set of hooks just as Canada was switching from the old British notation to metric needle notation.

I also found my instructions for various kinds of grafting such as garter stitch.  I don't do it often enough to remember it, so having it written down is great. I found the notes about chess moves that Cater made me take last time we played, so I could remember that too. I like having these notes even though I can find the information on the net now.  For most of my life, you just did not have such easy access to bits of useful knowledge.   

The weekend also had out first snowfall.  It was only enough to see that there was white over roofs, sidewalks and streets.  It didn't stay.  It was not notable in any way but for the fact that it was.  That skiff of snow made my heart beat with childish glee.  Begone the adult thoughts of icy roads and shoveling snow and cold winter and let me just enjoy the child like thrill of the first snowfall.  Sleds and snowballs and snowmen.  Snow Angels and making tracks in fresh snow.  So much for a childish heart to look forward to.

And a very short time later, I saw a wee fellow waking along peering intently at their feet making tracks on the sidewalk.  Wee fellow understood.  I felt such kin ship with that wee person.  The first snow.  A moment later, mom and the bigger siblings came along behind and I was left with a very full heart.  

Stuff

The bottom of the sweater ribbing is cast off.  Even bigger news, I picked up stitches for the collar. Yesterday was one of those days where  I felt like  I could knit for hours.  At the end of the day,  I tried to put it back in its bag and it simply would not fit.  I left it like this overnight.

  

I never do this.   Yarn and projects are always put away.   I am gong to find a bag that can hold the yarn I am not using so the sweater will fit in its long term storage tote.  There will be more knitting today, but first, I am attending to a task that I have needed to do for a long time.

This is my notions box.  It is a photo box sized about 4 x 6 inches and I have used it for years.    

It is a little small and over full and likes to pop open unannounced.  There are a lot of things in it that have better storage places, like dpns from finished socks and crochet hooks. They belong in the needle case.

 These are also places I keep knitting notions and bits and bobs that are sometimes useful.

This is where I keep the extras or the things that are too are big to fit in the photo box.  They seldom are used. What they are is excess.  They are stuff, that generic term that means I have no idea why I have them if I am not using them.  This is, of course, opposed to the things that others may see as stuff, like yarn and books and fabric and the vases of knitting needles or knitting books, but which are important to me.  

That is the thing about our stuff. What is really important to each of us, holds little or no meaning to someone else.  We might have an attachment to it but no one else understands or cares.  They have their own stuff that we don't understand. 

Then there is this.  It was a 'good deal' which means that I was able to rationalise why I 'needed' them.

It is helpful to have markers of different colours to remind me where certain things have to happen.  This last one is staying as is, but the other two hiding places are being cleaned and sorted and put where these items might get used, or they will go to a new home.

Step one.  

Things are sorted out and moved to a new, larger notions box that I will keep at hand.  There are things that don't need to be here but I will sort that out as I am going through the other stuff. (There is that word again.) That will be step two, three and four. And maybe five. At the end of the day, the goal is to have everything I use in one place and any useful extras in one, one other place that I also already actually use.  

I am not sure yet just where that is.  Funny, that.

The Next Big Thing

I did not knit much yesterday.  I want to finish the sweater but ribbing is ribbing.  It can sometimes suck up your will to live.

I treated myself to doing a gauge swatch for the next thing.

This is one of the yarns I dream about.  

It is Mirasol Hacho.  Way way back I knit mittens with some and I fell in love.  One of the things that happens in yarn stores is that a colour just doesn't work for people and it sits.  Occasionally it sits forever.  I often felt compelled to give these yarns a home.  This Hacho is one of these.  

I love this yarn.  It is spring, bouncy, stretchy, lively.  It was great for mittens.  It will be great for a sweater.  I always knew that I wanted something drapey with this yarn.  It's a very colour busy yarn so the garment needs to be simple.  I love Joji Locatelli's  Lispstick pattern and I think that is what I will do with this.  

Hacho is not the gauge needed for the pattern so there is math in  my near future.  That's  okay.  It's a pattern I have knit before so I am familiar with what I need to do to get the fit I want.  Yes.  This is my Itty Bitty gauge swatch.  I usually do a row or two more but it's good enough to tell me what I needed to know.  

Ribbit

There was a good amount of knitting yesterday. The bottom ribbing is half done. Most of the day was spent, busy, meandering inside my head.  

I was busy thinking about the Anyday Sweateshirt.

I had decided to frog this one.  I was not happy with the size I had picked and I did not like the way the back was looking.  It puckered oddly at the pickup.  My nifty little starting strip, which was a really sweet little design detail, was still too tightly knit. I had knit two thirds of the sweater and I wanted to take time to reassess.  Would the problems I had stop me from enjoying the sweater? Was the way I was looking at the sweater when I set it aside just frustration or were the problems real.

I took a good long look at it.  I tried it on.  I looked at the neck fit.  I looked at the way it say on me.  The problems were real. Oh well. I set up my newest ball winder and frogged it completely.  

I had ordered a ball winder a while ago to replace my last one and got a dud.  It went back and I left ordering another for a bit.  Did I really need one?  Yes I did.  I thought about all the coned yarn  have and how I wanted to use some of it for some after Christmas knits,  and thought about all that hand winding.  Yes, I needed a ball winder.

This time, I thought about a wood one, but they are pricey.  I also did not like the way the cheap wood ones set the hand winder.  It would be much harder on my hands and on my arms.  I ended up ordering from my usual source but I picked a Knit Picks ball winder.

Wow.  I had seen these before and other than being a different colour, they were the same as my old ball winders. This new one is made of much heavier material.  And it has the bottom screw set up so if I ever need to realign the sprockets inside, I can do it easily.  Its one shortfall is the handle.

It still has a fully plastic handle and since both of my previous ball winders failed on the handles, I would say this is a problem.  Other than that, it looks pretty good.  And it works.

There are chores to be done, patterns to be printed and put together and the start of some sewing to be gotten to. Lots on my plate today but first coffee and a wee bit of knitting.  It's like starting with desert.  Get in some good in the day first.

Knitting and Racing and Happy Hands

First thing, there is an extra r in Fridays post.  I laughed and laughed when I read that.  It stays.  That is the way it goes when I try to do it right.

I had a really good knitting weekend. I worked in the mornings and later in the day and in between was the Mexican Grand Pix.  What a race. Carlos Sainz won which made me happy except that it meant Lando Norris did not win.  But what a  stupendous race.  

My hands are doing just fine.  The last few years I had to be really careful with them as I did my fall knitting,  but by taking decent care of them routinely, they are holding their own.  Weird to speak of them as if they were a thing of their own, I suppose. 

The sweater is looking like a sweater.

It is a fairly wide back of the neck but that is okay because I plan on a double layer wide collar that will tuck in behind itself at the front.  

The first row of ribbing is at the bottom so the body is near the end.  Sadly, I am going to break into ball two of my red before the rib is done and I suspect that I will end up using a good portion of ball two for that, the sleeves and collar.  So it goes. It was only a dream to get two sweaters out of this glorious red.  It's okay because I love this sweater so much and I will think up something great to use these yarns for.  

I have to talk about the yarn.  It is Cascade Eco + and Ecological.  It can be knit at a much larger gauge but when you knit it at this gauge, it becomes a great sturdy sister to Cascade 220, one of my favourite yarns. (All yarns are my favourites).  I did this with some green I had and wear it a lot.  It stays crisp and clean looking through all the daily torture I put it through.  At this gauge, pilling is minimal and performance is king.

My mind is starting to meander through things I would like to knit next.  It's always one of the best parts of the journey.

With Morre Care

I ripped back about half of the work I did yesterday.  I started the morning by working on some plain rows and then merrily knitted the bit of colourwork and on the second row of that, I came across this.

This alternating colour work is a very simple thing and I felt comfortable and confident but I did not watch closely enough that the stitches were where they needed to be in relation to the other colourwork rows.  

Harumph.  

I hate when that happens. 

I did not end up doing much knitting yesterday.  I looked on it as a day off for my hands. Hand care is such a good excuse to account for the frustration I felt. So much more sensible than saying to myself that I am mad at my knitting (or myself as the case may be).  

I feel much more with it today and have finished the pull back and restarted knitting much more carefully.   

Progress Across the Board

Yesterday was the definition of success.

I got a good chunk of the red sweater done.  

You can start to really get a feel for how it will look.  Fantastic!  

Socks ?  

Yup.  Toe is done.  

Other sweater?  Yes!

I put in a stitch marker so I could see in this stitch pattern.  I gave it minimal time and made actual progress even though it still looked the same as before I started.

I'm  not sure if I can repeat this progress today.  The red sweater is a very hard task master.  And I love it.

Remember Socks?

Remember socks?  Yes. It is sock season as well as sweater season.  This year I have been paying attention to my sock drawer.  I have finished four pair and am actively working on a couple more. There are others on the go but there are reasons I am not working on them.  I hope to finish two more pairs this year.  It isn't a goal mind you.  Goals always seem to get in my way and end up making me feel like a failure. It is more of a 'would like to' scenario where if I don't, I don't and if I do, hooray. 

The first pair I am working on is a plain pair from the last of my Big Fabel stash.  I wish there were more super washable and machine dryable yarns on the market in this weight of yarn. 

It looks a little long for my feet.  I haven't stated the second sock in case I needed to take off the toe and reknit it.  When I do that, I can't really knit a garter square toe to end a sock so I need to know the fit of this sock before I start the second of the pair.  

I pulled out my favourite, best fitting pair of socks yesterday.   

They are knit in Kroy held double and are the nicest thing I have ever had on my feet.  If they are clean, I wear them.  I held them against the Big Fabel sock.

Pretty much a match.  It will do.

The red Third Coast sweater might not let me go long enough to knit on the Linger sweater or on socks, but if I start with those, they might get some time in too.  

Off to socks.  It's a great way to start the day.