Harvest Cardigan: Complete!

I finished the Harvest Cardigan yesterday.  The knitting was all done a month ago, but the buttonholes needed some reinforcing and I just couldn't bring myself to pull out my crochet hook and weave in all the darn ends.  But I actually went to Sunday afternoon knitting yesterday and made myself do it.  Now all the buttonholes have a lovely chain stitch edging around them, and all the ends are woven into the back.

I'll attempt to do more close-ups another time. It's blocking right now. I'm probably going to have to steam-block the button band and buttonhole band to reduce curling.

Oh! And I got a new (to me) washing machine. It has a just-plain-spin cycle. THRILLED. This baby will take far less time to block than it would have if it had to air-dry completely on its own. All my sweaters from now on will take less time to block/dry.

Also, I'm about to be gone for a week of travel/conference knitting. I'm thinking about cranking out a ton of socks. Stay tuned.

Making Quick Work of a Bad Situation

I was determined that the Minimalist Cardigan Situation wasn't going to get me down.  Or, more truthfully, I have no compunction about engaging in retail therapy when it's necessary, and it was definitely necessary.  I was in Montpelier, home of Vermont's Friendliest Yarn Shop, and I knew I would find some sympathy.  And some yarn.

So I bought (more than) enough for the Harvest Cardigan.  And I pretty much cast on the second I got home.

I love corrugated ribbing.  It's what I used on the cuffs of all those Selbuvotter mittens I did a few years ago.  And I looooove the idea of doing multiple colors so there's a gradient effect.  Very awesomely cool.

The yarn is Rowan Felted Tweed DK, and I'm following the pattern pretty carefully (using needle sizes 4 and 5).  So of course I didn't get gauge at all and didn't even bother checking until I'd knit half the dang body.  But once I'd gotten about 10 inches in, it started looking kind of...small.  Fortunately, 10 inches in is before the steeked armholes, so I could still try it on.  But 10 inches of a lovely 5-color Fair Isle is more than I want to frog and start again.  And sure enough, it's small, but not toooo small.  I can get away with it... but the sweater would have been way too short, particularly in the front.  Apparently midriff-baring clothing is back in this season, but I'm not so trend-driven that I'll let that bad idea be my excuse for making an ill-fitting sweater.  I have more control over this project than that, and I'm not an idiot.

The solution I chose was to short-row the front to add an extra vertical iteration of the charted pattern.  In short, the actual sweater pattern calls for four of the lightest stripe, and I added a fifth.  But using short rows.  Which effectively made a gusset for my chest.  It'll either look completely bizarre or completely subtle.  I'm hoping for the latter.

The back still has four rows, meaning that it's shorter than the front -- to balance this, I ended up adding short rows of the red after I got past the finished pattern.  Those short rows I added every inch or so, instead of all at once.


Then we had that giant blizzard that hit New Haven really hard -- 3 feet of snow, biggest storm in a century, shut down the entire city for days (church was cancelled on Sunday!  Weird!!!) -- Nemo, Charlotte, whatever we're calling it.  I basically sat on a piano bench in our bay window overlooking a busy-ish intersection (we have a second-floor apartment) and knitted for two days while watching cars get stuck in the unplowed streets.  I finished the entire body of the sweater, front and back.  I also started the sleeves, and as of this writing I have about 8 inches of sleeve done.  It's currently serving the purpose of a purse sock, which is helping me to delay making a decision about my actual purse sock.  Retail therapy, productivity, and procrastination--all in one blog post!

One of these days I'll get around to taking photos of all that progress I made during the blizzard.

Oh, and at some point I need to figure out how I'm going to get someone to reinforce the steeks so I can do the steek-cutting thing.  I am spending a lot of time with costume designers right now, so I can probably find someone with access to a sewing machine.  We'll see.

Taking a Mulligan

I'm trying to make the lining for the hat that will match these mittens.

I went to DC last week to visit some friends and take a little mini-break. Through a perfectly normal series of plane-delay happenings -- which seemed rather surreal due to a significant lack of sleep the night before -- I managed to get stuck in Kennedy airport during the first half of the Superbowl. And what else can you do when you're stuck in an airport during the Superbowl but sidle up to the bar, order dinner and a large Cosmo, and watch the game and halftime show?

Oh, yeah. You can cast on for a hat, too.

Now, I did my math well. I did my math sober and after a good night of sleep, even. And I double-checked that-there gauge. I was supposed to cast on 140 stitches of this Cashsoft for this hat, and that's what I did. Twice, in fact. The first time, during the Superbowl, I managed to twist my stitches, and only discovered the mobius-strip quality of my knitting the next day. So I frogged it, and made extra-sure (no Cosmo this time) not to twist my stitches when I cast on my 140 again. Two days of travel-knitting: in the car, in the DC Metro, in Jennie's living room while watching movies... came to the end of the ball... aaaannd the darn thing is huge. The above photo is me, wearing the hat lining over my glasses. It fit quite comfortably that way, thank you. A little hard to see, though.

I did attempt to salvage the work by trying out my friend Tara's serger -- not on the Cashsoft, thank goodness, but on some spare knitting scraps that Tara had lying around her apartment. (And forgot to take photos, of course.) The serger idea didn't so much work, so...

Into the Frogpile with you!
There goes all the travel knitting from my time in DC.

Ah, well, frogging builds character.

Then again, I forgot to recheck my gauge before I frogged, so I just had to guess. I cast on 126 stitches last night, and hopefully that'll be a better fit.

Knitting up a Storm

I'm a bit behind on my picture-taking, and therefore a bit behind on the blogging, too. Then again, when have I ever bothered to worry about that before? There are tons of things I've made and photographed that I haven't gotten around to blogging yet...

The shop was having a closeout sale on some older Tilli Tomas yarn. Now, that's a yarn that is firmly out of my price range, even now that I get an employee discount, but closeout yarn is even deeper discount, and so I figured that this would be my only chance if I ever were to buy any. So I went for it. After a long and tortured decision-making/bullet-biting process, I bought four skeins of navy, and decided to make a hat and mitten set for myself.

The yarn is called Flurries, a worsted-weight singles merino yarn with glass beads spun in about every four inches. Beautiful. The company changed the yardage of a skein (from 130 yards to 70 yards!), which is why we had to close out the older (larger!) skeins. Otherwise, Tilli Tomas does not go on sale. Period.

I had a random ball of a lavender/pink-y Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply laying around (another sale bin purchase), and decided to use that for the inside cuffs of the mittens. I cast on 52 stitches, using size 4 needles, and knit stockinette in the round for 2.5 inches (20 rounds).

(gauge for the Cashsoft: 26 sts. = 4 in.)

Then I switched to size 7 needles, joined on the Tilli Tomas, and decreased down to 46 sts. at the same time: k2tog, *k8, k2tog.* Next round, I purled so the cuff would turn under nicely. I knitted in stockinette for a couple of inches and realized that the mitten was going to be too big around -- but that frogging would be a horrible experience (even more than usual) because of those beads. So at that moment, I decided that these were going to be felted mittens. (GASP! Felting Tilli Tomas! My heart did skip a beat for a moment, it's true.)

(gauge for the Flurries before felting: 18 sts. = 4 in.)

I kept going, knitting the cast-on edge into the Flurries when I got that far, and started increasing for the thumb gusset at 4 inches (28 rounds after the purl round), doing paired M1 increases every other round until I had 13 thumb stitches (yes, I messed up in there somewhere and added an M1 when I shouldn't have -- so I did the same thing on the second mitten). including the two "center" stitches around which I was increasing. Then I put those 13 sts on a holder, rejoined in the round with two added stitches for the hand (to make up for the loss of the two "center" stitches that became part of the thumb). (So, still 46 sts.)

24 rounds after the thumb-hole/rejoin, I began decreasing heavily for the top of the mitten, and after a few rows made it down to 10 stitches, then cut and pulled the yarn-end through those last ten. This is also where I stopped taking pictures, apparently.

I did make a thumb. I did make a second mitten to match the first. I did felt them. At some point, I will post finished-object photos.

Just not today.

Also, I will make a hat to match at some point. But I haven't done it yet. Fodder for future posts!