November » 2011 » Untangling Knots

Happy Birthday to Me!

I told myself no more buying yarn until I worked through some of the projects I had planned, but I decided to break the rules and buy myself some birthday yarn.

I absolutely adore Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande, but it’s kind of pricey so I rarely buy it and I only make small things out of it. I have two cowls made from this yarn and I love them to death so I’m going to make myself a third one. It’s the best way to use this yarn in my opinion because it’s low yardage and practical. The cowls sit close to your neck so you get to feel how soft and cozy the yarn is every time you wear one.

A Stitch In Time Vol. 2

I finally got my copy of A Stitch in Time Vol. 2 and I have surprisingly mixed feelings about it. It’s a beautiful book with gorgeous photography, but that’s one of its major flaws. The photography creates a beautiful ambiance, but, like in Vol. 1, there is a handful of patterns with lovely photos where you can’t really see the garment well.

I was also pretty disappointed with the 50s patterns. Very few of them screamed 50s to me which isn’t the end of the world because 50s patterns are still easy to find, but that was the time period I was most looking forward to seeing in this book. The 1950s over view references the idealized hour glass shape, lower necklines, and the Sweater Girl look, but very few of the 50s sweaters in the book reflect that. Some of them are incredibly dowdy.

I feel like A Stitch in Time Vol. 1 was a much better book and the patterns better represented the styles of the periods they were from. It was easy to crack open that book and know what decade the section I was looking at was from. It’s hard to do that with Vol. 2. It doesn’t seem as deliberately curated and edited.

Complaints aside, there are a lot of patterns that I love and want to knit. They’re just not the patterns I expected to love and want to knit. This is kind of a weird review for a book that I’m happy with overall, but most of the reviews I’ve seen have gushed about the beautiful patterns (there are quite a few of them) without really going into other details.

I’d love to hear other thoughts on the book.

Granny Squares

I’m not sure when this happened, but granny squares have become my procrastination craft of choice. I worked up a handful of these squares while working on an essay proposal earlier this week. I have a vague plan for what I’m going to make them into, but I’m not sure if I want to use this yarn for that.

The yarn is Malabrigo sock that someone gave to me. I really like the colors, but I’m not a huge variegated yarn fan. I’m debating what to do. I might switching to a solid colored yarn and maybe use this for an edging (or not at all). I also might just continue on with this yarn and then make a second project with solid yarn if I like my FO. I have quite a few essays coming up that I can procrastinate on with granny squares.

A Successful Sweater Experiment

Whenever I read sweater care advice, the first thing I see after “DON’T PUT WOOL IN YOUR WASHING MACHINE” is usually “LAY FLAT TO DRY. DO NOT HANG YOUR KNITS.” If you hang knits, especially wet knits, they’ll stretch. Generally you want to avoid that, but I found myself wondering if I could use the stretching to my advantage when I last washed the first sweater I knit without a pattern.

It had always been too short with the hip shaping starting too high on my body. The sweater didn’t get worn very often because it didn’t fit well so I didn’t see any harm in experimenting on it. After I washed my sweater, I MacGyvered a way to hang my sweater that still supported the yoke because the armpits are already pretty deep and I didn’t want them to stretch any larger. I left my sweater to dry and then I packed it up for school without ever trying it on.

Today was the first time I’ve worn it since I hung it to dry and I have to say that my experiment was a huge success. The hip shaping now starts where my hips start and the length compliments the slouchy, casual fit of the sweater. The only adverse side effect was that the sleeves also stretched longer and need to be cuffed, but I’m a fan of cuffs so that’s not much of a problem.

I’m curious what will happen next time I wash the sweater. I don’t know if it will bounce back to its original shape and I’ll have to hang it every time I wash it or if that will just stretch it further. I’m glad I decided to risk ruining it with my initial experiment because I’m quite happy with how it looks at the moment. I’ll have to do a few more experiments to figure out what I need to do to keep it this length, but I think I’ll be a bit more careful with my sweater now that I know that it has the potential to fit well.

Hello!

I finished the body of my Such Flattering Puff Sleeves the other day. I pinned the shoulders so I could try it on. I was worried about how the color would look on me, but the color is fine. That’s not the real issue I discovered when I tried it on.

The sweater makes me look just a little bit busty. And by “just a little bit” I mean extremely. I think I could get a nice sweater girl look going on if I had a bra that was the right shape, but I’m not sure how this is going to work on me with puff sleeves for everyday wear. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Summer Style Knit For Winter

I’ve been wearing my hair up a lot lately and I found myself wishing that I had a woolly headband to keep the tops of my ears warm. I decided to knit one based on how I like to wear a bandana in my hair in the summer.

This was a super quick knit that I worked up in one day. It was nice to have a fast project after working on my Audrey in Unst for so long. The stitch pattern is regular old seed stitch with the edge stitches slipped to keep them nice looking. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I used my leftover yarn from that sweater on 5 mm needles. I just barely had enough left to finish my BO. It was pretty lucky. For an hour I was afraid that I would run out a few rows before the end.

It’s shaped like a folded bandana and ties like one at the top. I like having the option of tying and untying it for days when I’m worried that slipping it on will mess up my hair, but for the most part I plan on leaving it knotted. I’m not sure how well the ties will wear if I’m constantly redoing the knot every time I put on my headband.

Audrey in Unst

It’s finally done! It’s a good looking sweater, but I feel a bit indifferent towards it like I felt about knitting it. I originally started knitting my Audrey in Unst because I needed to replace my basic grey cardigan and that’s exactly what I ended up with. It’s just not as exciting of a FO as some of my flashier knits even though I know it will get worn all the time. I think that’s the lesson I’ve learned. I shouldn’t knit things where I just feel like I need the FO in my wardrobe. I should knit things that I really want to knit because they’re more fun and just go buy my basics.

I made a few mods to the pattern. I added a few inches of length because I knew the pattern as written would hit me at a very unflattering point. I also added more stockinette and worked less twisted rib. That was mostly because I got sick of doing the twisted ribbing, but I also thought that less ribbing might look better.

I knit the whole thing on 3.25 mm needles because that’s what I got gauge for the body on and I didn’t bother moving down a size for the sections of the pattern that originally called for smaller needles. The sweater was a bit of a challenge to knit because my unblocked gauge was different from my blocked gauge. It was hard to guess lengths and visualize how the sweater would look in the end. On the left is the sweater before I blocked it and on the right is after. The sleeves grew about two inches and the body lengthened three of four inches. This is why you should always block your swatches.

I’m glad to be done with this and I think my sweater will get worn all the time. It just will never be the star of the show in a wardrobe as loud as mine.

Fat Dog

I finished my Audrey in Unst and it’s blocking. I’m playing around with this swatch right now, but there’s nothing too exciting to show yet so today seemed like a good day for a bunch of pictures of Bean.

I took these pictures of her when I was visiting my parents in October. Bean looooves how much attention she gets when I’m home.

So Close!

I have one body, two sleeves, and 1.5 front bands. I told myself that I was going to finish the sweater over the weekend, but clearly that didn’t happen. Today I decided that I’m going to finish my sweater this week so I dug out the buttons I had picked out so I could calculate my button holes. I added length so I can’t simply follow the pattern.

When I dug out the crinkly paper bag that my buttons were in it hit me how long I’ve been telling myself that I was going to finish this sweater soon. I bought these buttons almost a year ago while I was still studying abroad in England. I went to stay with family in York over American Thanksgiving weekend last November and I picked these out at Duttons for Buttons because I thought I was going to finish my sweater soon. Oh, how wrong I was!

But seriously, I am going to finish my sweater soon.

Simple Knitting

I was cleaning my desk off and I realized when I went to move my Such Flattering Puff Sleeves that I just needed to bind off the back. It had gotten pushed into a corner on my desk and I had thrown my Audrey In Unst on top of it. I had completely forgotten about it.

I’ve just finished the underarm decreases for the front. I know I go through phases with it but, I’m really enjoying working on this sweater again because it’s nice simple knitting. That’s one thing I enjoy about the patterns in A Stitch in Time. They’re not very demanding.