September » 2011 » Untangling Knots

Kevin’s Hat

Even though I knit the crown twice, photographing this hat was a lot more difficult than knitting it. I managed to break the filter on my lens and kill the battery in my remote.

The hat was an easy knit. I worked the crown twice because I decided that the swirly single decreases I did the first time didn’t match the band. It’s just a basic beanie with a cabled band so it went really quick.

Kevin seems to like it and insists that he will actually wear it. I don’t entirely believe him, but I enjoyed knitting the hat and he’s pleased with it and that’s what counts.

Henry the Chunk

I’ve been busy essay writing and I think that makes today an appropriate day for puppy pictures. I took these pictures of Henry last December when he was still small. He’s a lot bigger now, but he is still just as awkward and clumsy! He’s all legs and is unusually tall for a Springer Spaniel.

Eyelet Button Holes

a mini series of button holes

The Eyelet Button Hole tends to be my go-to button hole. It’s tiny and unobtrusive so it’s nice for cardigans that might be worn unbuttoned. It’s simple to work (k2tog + yo) and can be accomplished in one row. It makes a nice small button hole so it’s handy when working with a larger gauge and it doesn’t tend to stretch very much over time. It’s my favorite.

It’s by no means perfect, though. It’s not especially strong because a lot of stress is placed on the single strand of yarn from the yo. I only ever use it with sturdy yarn and I generally only use it with worsted weight or heavier yarn. I would never ever ever ever use it with single ply yarn. I just wouldn’t trust the button hole to hold.

Is there anything else that you’d like to know about button holes for these posts? I don’t think I can accurately give the size of them or anything as specific as I did with the stretchy BOs & COs.

First day of…

The weather might not know it right now, but it’s the first day of fall. In my mind that means it’s the first day of proper knitting season. I have yarn for two big fall projects. At my current rate I probably will only get to one of them before winter, but that’s not the end of the world.

I’ve got a couple skeins of red Cascade 220 that’s destined to be a full length version of my blue cardigan. You read that right. I’m knitting a full length sweater. I keep starting projects that I intend to knit full length, but when I see them at waist length, I get too attached to how they look. I’m stating my intentions for everyone to read in the hopes that I actually follow through and knit something full length.

The orange Cascade 220 is the shade that I’ve been using for my Mini Series. I’ve gotten pretty fond of the color so I decided to knit a sweater out of it. That might be a horrible idea. My mom voiced her concern that it might clash with the red/purple tones of my hair, but I’m going to knit with it and hope that it looks okay. This is definitely going to be cropped. That’s not much of a surprise. I just haven’t decided if I want to make a cardigan or a pullover.

What are your fall knitting plans?

Hat Swatch

For as long as I’ve known my friend Kevin, he’s been wanting a hand knit hat. When I first met him, he asked me to teach him to knit so he could make his own. For some reason or another that never happened. Then when we were better friends, he straight up asked me to knit him a hat. I said no because he never wore hats. After that he stopped asking me to knit him a hat and started saying, “If you knit me a hat, I would wear it.” The last time he mentioned the hat was when he was visiting me in England and probably could have used a woolly hat so when his birthday came around this year I finally offered to knit him a hat as a present.

He really likes plain things, but I didn’t want it to be too boring. I’ve been swatching ribbed cables for the brim and I think I’m going to go with this one. It makes a simple “O” shape. The cables aren’t super noticeable, but I think they’re a nice detail. The body of the hat is just going to be stockinette so it should be a pretty quick knit once I have time to get it started.

Tubular Bind Off

The Tubular Bind Off is pretty much identical to the Tubular Cast Off, so it wasn’t surprising that I had similar problems with it. My 2 inch swatch stretched to 4.5 inches, but it didn’t snap back.

That’s an obnoxious feature of the Tubular BO, but it does have its perks. It is a very good looking bind off and it matches the cast on method perfectly so it is handy for projects that are knit in multiple directions. I wish I had thought about this before I started my Audrey in Unst. The body is knit bottom up and the sleeves are knit top down so the edges won’t quite match perfectly with the CO and BO methods I used.

As you probably know, the Tubular Bind Off is a sewn bind off. I find sewn bind offs to be a bit fiddly and I’m one of those people who has to look up directions for kitchener stitch every time I use it. That makes this method kind of obnoxious for me, but I can still see myself using it where things need to look as perfect as possible.

This was the last in my series of Stretchy BOs. I’m thinking of doing button holes next, but I haven’t swatched anything yet so I’m open to other suggestions! I’d really like to do a crochet related Mini Series, but I can’t figure out what to do a series of for that.

Agatha

It’s done! It’s been edited by me, tech edited, and test knit so I guess it’s time to let my pattern out into the world. It ended up being 12 pages long. I wanted to try to get it under 10 pages, but I would rather avoid “at the same time”s and “reverse shaping for left”s and take up a few extra pages on something this complicated. It’s definitely an intermediate to advanced knit. You can get the pattern on Ravelry here for $6.50 or buy it now.

You can read more about the construction in detail in my older posts, but to sum it up, Agatha is a seamless top down sweater with lace panels and cuffed set in sleeves. The body is knit first in one piece and then the sleeves are picked up and worked using short rows. It uses Cascade 220 and 4.5mm needles and comes in seven sizes ranging from 29″-53″ busts. My sweater is the 37″ bust and is modeled with two or three inches of negative ease.

What I really like talking about when I finish a pattern I’ve been blogging about is the pictures. These ones still amuse me. They look nice and fall-like with all of the colorful leaves, right? Well I took them in January in Lancaster. Those are flash frozen leaves. There were a few pictures that didn’t work out where you could see snow on the ground. I was very cold when I took these which is probably why I ended up with zero pictures where I’m smiling.

I was also reading a lot of gothic literature for class at the time and I think that spilled over into the pictures a little bit. I like the sort of lost-in-the-woods vibe I ended up with, but I’m not sure how well that will work for selling a pattern. Most pattern photos have smiley models.

Anyways, thank you for all of the supportive comments I’ve received through out this process and thank you to my test knitters and tech editor. This was a huge project for me and I really appreciated how encouraging everyone was. Thank you.

And for the record, this pattern is named after Agatha Christie.

What’s this?

It actually looks like a sleeve now! I finished the short rows and have gotten through the first two of 9 sets of decreases. I might actually finish this sweater in under a year and a half. I’ve been making jokes that this sweater was going to take me two years to knit because I seem to pick it up every couple of months, finish a section, and then forget about it for a bit.

You might remember that I was worrying about the sleeve length after I finished the first sleeve. It was a good length, but it was longer than I expected and I was afraid that it would grow after I washed the sweater because my swatch grew in length. Well, it turns out that I knit an extra decrease repeat so my sleeve is longer than it was meant to be. I’m trying to decide if I want to rip back the first sleeve and make it slightly shorter or if I want to knit the second sleeve the slightly longer length that I like and risk having to rip back both sleeves later.

EZ’s Sewn Bind Off

When I got around to EZ’s Sewn Bind Off, all of my EZ books suddenly vanished. A quick internet search pulled up some instructions that I followed, but I’m not positive that they were correct. My swatch looks weird, but I’ve never used this BO before so this might just be how it looks. I’ve read that it’s supposed to match the Long Tail Cast On, but my swatch only matches that if I look at it cross eyes.

The BO was fiddly to work like most sewn BOs. I had a difficult time figuring out how tightly/loosely I should adjust my sewn stitches because there wasn’t a point of reference for me like with the Tubular BO, but overall it was easier than the Tubular Bo. It does lose points for being kind of ugly if this is how it’s supposed to look.

My 2 inch swatch stretches 5.5 inches, but it doesn’t snap back down. You have to tug at the edge and reshape it yourself. That always annoys me.