The good and the bad

Now that the heavy sweaters are in full rotation and one of them is worn every single day, it's time to assess the things I like about them and things I don't really care for.  We will start with the most recent. 

The red Third Coast sweater is pretty amazing.  I am wearing it today.  If I was knitting it again I would do one more of the series of colour changes before the ribbing.  And I would make the raglan start with more stitches on the sleeves to avoid the too tight upper sleeves.  

The very best thing about this sweater is the folded over collar. I got the idea from Oline at the Norwegian Knitter Youtube channel.  Many of her knits use this and I am thankful for her inspiration. It is the coziest thing to wear.  The deep cherry red makes me happy and that is how it feels to wear this.  

My grey plain Saddle Shoulder sweater.  Perfect, though I don't think I would split the ribbing at the sides next time.  It's such a good way to start a sweater for my body though.  

This is sadly, the best photo I have of it.  There will be more. Sweaters like it not photos.

All the way back in April I finished an Utkiek sweater.  It is exactly what I wanted, a nice big coat sweater that I can wear over another sweater for the ultimate in winter warmth. 

The only problem with it is that I didn't do a really good job picking up the button band.  There is a wobble where there are a few too many stitches.  I have artfully hidden it but I know it is there and it bugs me but not enough to do it over. Though I finished it in April t has only been worn a few times out and about.  I do wear it in house when I feel particularly chilled too but it s not knit at a gauge that makes it a sturdy wearing sweater.  I find it easy to catch on the dishwasher rack my sweater nemesis.

Next up, my variation on Laura Aylor's Sundog.  I love this gently soft sweater.  The high neck makes it a snug and cozy garment for winter wear.

I also hate the high neck.  It doesn't work for me and I have considered redoing it but alas, I am lazy.

My Agate Cove sweater.  

I.  Love.  This.  The only change I might make is to make the back neck a bit higher.  Perfect.

And then a simple forest green raglan.  

This is my perfect for with collars sweater.  I would make the bunny pocket wider if I made this again.

Well that takes me back two and almost three years.  There are more sweaters, but these are my newest happiest sweaters.  Why am I thinking of sweaters past today?  This latest sweater is at the point where I have to decide how far I go.  And how I finish it.  The best way to know is to look at past sweaters and see what I like best.

I should talk about socks again too.  There are good stories there too.  Suffice it to say I believe you need to go knit some now.  So I will.

A picture paints a thousand words.

I am loving every minute of it.

Feeling Powerful

This is so much fun.  

The more I knit on this, the more it is showing up to be a really great combination of very talented designers ideas and is becoming it's own distinct sort of thing. 

I am so happy with it.

My gauge is different than on Ann Budd's Cait. The colourwork from Cait becomes something very striking and really interesting at this larger gauge.   The shoulder construction with its gentle slope gives the sweater a more natural set comes from Joji Locatelli's Lipstick but at its heart, it is a Basic Drop Shoulder from Ann Budd's A Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns.  

No doubt, you can tell I love Ann's Knitters Handy Book series.  It harkens back to the old sweater wheel I have from the time before I was a knitter but wanted to be one so badly.  I have the whole series and use them all the time.  Mittens. Hats. Gloves. Vests.  Sweaters of all sorts.  They are as valuable to me as anything ever written about knitting by Elizabeth Zimmermann.  They put you in the drivers seat of your knitting and I like that.  

There is something very cool about sitting down and putting it all together just the way you want.  It is very empowering.  

Lead On

Good things are happening.  Like the weather and babies, it comes in its own time.

I picked up the sweater of several patterns and worked on it yesterday.  I was chilly and its slightly heavier yarn was calling to me.  It is moving along smoothly.

Its really starting to look like a sweater too.  I am using my new method of colourwork where I hold both colours in my left hand.  I don't have it down perfectly yet but it is going well and I feel more confident and comfortable with it all the time.  It is not taking much longer to knit the colourwork than to knit plain.

The pattern is just starting to make sense from the right side and the inside looks pretty well balanced.

I am still finding that my main colour is the colour I knit too tightly and am having to watch the tension of it carefully but I am doing better.

I only have to finish the row I am on before I switch to my two rows of red as the main colour.  The idea of it makes me giddy.  This pop of red is really going to be fun in this otherwise very neutral sweater.

Lead on McDuff.  Time to knit.

Yarn Play Days

Friday I rose and I had the strongest feeling that something wonderful was going to happen. I did not feel much like knitting but I knew that my expecting wonder was dirrectly related to knitting.  I knit.  I made the first few rows of colourwork happen and then I set it aside.  I had to go digging in my stash for a tiny bit of accent yarn to mark the colour change on the Cait colourwork chart. 

I came up with this red Peace Fleece.  

I made a hat and mitts last year and there is a nice bit left from it. It is the smallest bit heftier than Regal, but there are only two rows, so I think I can get away with it.  

Then, the rest of the afternoon, I played with colors of Palette to use for the Flea Sweater I want to knit.  The goal is to have strong contrasts in the colours you chose.  

I started by picking sets which seemed to work.

  

I am not sue I have it yet.  The dark colours from the back right are purple, green, royal blue, teal, a greener teal, and the rust.  The darks read so close in colour here, but they read quite different in good strong daylight.  I have to play with them a bit more to see if it will work. I am hopeful.

The sweater design calls for six different 100 gram skeins of yarn.  I have only 1 skein of most of the Palette but as backup, I have full bags of black, white and a medium grey colour.   I am leaning toward using the the white for all the ribbing or welting at the neck, sleeves and hems. There is plenty of contrast and plenty of dark and to my eyes, white looks like the best bet to meld the myriad colours together.

After all the yarn play, I knit socks a bit.

and Sunday I pulled out the Hacho yarn Lipstick sweater.

 

I was working happily on it when Cassie called and needed some support and supplies for a school project.

It is a diorama of a story they read.  The story was a translation of a French story called The White Owl.  I am not sure if you can tell but the two people found a deceased person under a log near a sugaring shack and there is a large snowy owl hovering in a tree nearby.  That is all I know of the story, but I can tell you, I had huge fun helping Cassie create her people and her scene.

I have no idea if that meets anybody else's idea of a weekend of wonderful.  None of the things that happened were really big. None of them would mean anything to anybody else, but if I tell you I had the loveliest of weekends, and that it was deeply wonderful and exciting to me,  you will just have to believe me.  It was great!

And today I have to do laundry, bleeeech, because that is the way of the world.   

It's In The Air

The arm openings are corrected and it is looking great.

I am going to knit a few more rounds and then do the sleeves so that running out of light grey is off my mind.  

I am really enjoying knitting this.  At a gauge of 4 stitches per inch, it is knitting up wonderfully fast.  I love this one but I am kind of looking forward to getting back to the peppy colours of the Hacho yarn Lipstick sweater.  

It's a race weekend and I am expecting lots of good knitting time. It's expected to snow heavily this weekend,  the cupboards are stocked and the house is cozy and warm.  Something exciting will happen this weekend.  I can feel it. The feeling is in my needles and in my yarn.  

Updated to add:

I just noticed something.  There is the tiniest bit of another colour at the change of main colours in the Cait sweater.  I have to go digging in my leftover yarns for just the right thing.  I haven't looked through that bin in a while so it's going to be fun.  It's like going to Disneyland, but with yarn.

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.