Shalom Update

The Shalom Cardigan knit up really fast. Like, realllllly fast. Two weeks after I started, I was nearly done. I did not set out to knit a sweater for Lent, but that's kind of what I did.

But then I encountered two problems.

First, I didn't have quite enough yarn to finish the second sleeve. I knew it was going to be down to the wire, but... I really like the length of the first sleeve (seriously, I think this is the first time I've ever been truly happy with sleeve length -- most of my sweaters end up with sleeves that are slightly shorter than my arms, and I always think "It'll get worked out when I block it," and then it never does), so I'm reluctant to rip out the bottom of Sleeve #1 in order to make them even (and uncomfortably short).

The second problem is that I tried to make this sweater fit my "curves" and I overestimated how big my curves actually are. The danger with using chunky yarn, we know, is that it can sometimes make you look like a chunky person. And I'm not a chunky person. Ain't nothing wrong with being chunky, but that's not what I am and I want my sweater to fit ME! Anyway, I overestimated how big my biggest curves are, and the sweater is... not flattering this way. It's a cardigan, not a ballet wrap -- but I can wrap that baby and get about four inches of chunky overlap. Not pretty!

The good news is that the solution to the second problem (ripping and reknitting the body in a smaller size) then provides a solution to the first problem (more yarn for Sleeve #2). The bad news is that I have to rip and reknit half the dang sweater. But since I'd prefer to have a sweater that actually fits me and I want to wear, rather than spending the time and effort to knit a sweater I won't wear because it doesn't fit... yeah.

Stay tuned... I may or may not have achieved Shalom before Easter.

Shalom Progress

It's a lot easier to knit a sweater named "peace" than it is to make peace happen in the world. That's my deep observation for the day. Still, both are worth attempting. I figure, if I keep knitting peace, the real thing might come a bit closer too.

The only visible mod you can see here is the buttonband: I've added buttons all the way down, rather than only one at the top. They're spaced strategically -- allllmost evenly, but not quite -- so that the sweater doesn't make a gap in, um, certain places. And there are two close to the bottom (you can't really see the bottommost buttonhole, but it's there and you will see it in future photos). Invisible mods include making a bit more room for my bust, and moving the waist shaping to a place where it actually gets smaller where my waist gets smaller and bigger where my hips get bigger.

There's a smidgeon of an in-progress sleeve on the right-hand side of this pic, too.

This is the progress of a week, amazingly enough. For the first three days or so, I really was knitting up a skein a day. I slowed down a bit, though, when the math for the sleeves took a bit more thought and I was in a not-math-thinking-y kind of place. More on the sleeves when I actually, um, have them done.

The Selbu Project: Part II

So the big secret behind the Selbu project is this: some seminary friends and I get together every year for a clergy women's retreat, and this year it was my turn to host. Since most of these friends live south of the Mason-Dixon line, I had the brilliant idea to knit a pair of mittens for each of them, to welcome them to the cold weather -- different patterns, different color combos, but all with the same cuffs and from the same book. Originally, I thought I'd be making something like 12 pairs of mittens (not hard: one pair per month would be plenty doable), but as the weekend grew closer and closer and things came up (notably a wedding that several of us were IN, but also just other life-stuff), it became clear that there would not be anything close to 12 people at this weekend. Turns out, we were four strong. And it was a great weekend. We really missed our companions who couldn't make it, but we also felt good about "carrying the torch" this year. (It also turns out that the weather was unseasonably warm and we didn't even need coats most of the time, much less mittens. But still. We had them.)


Coincidentally, all the women who came to visit me have names that begin with C. Since I didn't get their permission to use their names when I posted these pictures, we're just numbering them. The photo above (with the NHM#9s) is C1. C2 (with the NHM#1s) and C3 (with the NHM#3s) are below, hugging goodbye at the airport. I found it fascinating who chose which mittens -- they all knew right away which ones they wanted, and no two people wanted the same pair. Conflict-free mittens! Woo!

I actually have two pairs of mittens left over, and I haven't decided yet what to do with them. Stay tuned, but be warned: they may just marinate in my mitten basket for a while.

Everything Works out for the Best

Sometimes, the knitting gods work to make everything come together for you. Sometimes, you have to help them out a bit.

I picked up six skeins of a lovely mustard-y Debbie Bliss Donegal Tweed Chunky on super-sale at Northeast Fiber Arts Center at the end of February. I would have bought more, but six skeins was all they had -- and the point of the sale was to get rid of the discontinued stuff, so six skeins was all there was.

Poking around on Ravelry, I decided that the Shalom Cardigan was the sweater that this yarn wanted to be. And a-ha! I had a conference coming up and, even though I was bringing my Confirmation class with me and therefore would be attending to them the whole time, I would still need something to knit on while sitting in the plenaries and workshops. I got myself all ready: wound up a couple of skeins, went to the store to buy the needles... and then all kinds of chaos and drama hit at work, and I stalled on the preparation a bit.

Friday, I went to the conference by myself (fortunately, this conference happened to be in Burlington, at a conference center a mile or so from my house), and I ended up arriving late, straight from the office, and didn't have my knitting with me. That was something of a bummer. Friday night, I went home, printed out the pattern, figured out which modifications I wanted to make and did all the math to make the sweater fit my body a bit better (it's made for a tall skinny gal, and... well, I have curves), dug out the needles I'd bought that week... and realized they were too short. I'd bought the 16" length, and there's just no way I was going to fit all 169 chunky stitches on only 16" of circular needle. But it was 11:30 at night. And I had to pick up the girls at church at 7:30 the next morning, and because I had ducklings to lead around all day, there was no chance of slipping out and hitting the yarn store when it was open.

Cell phones to the rescue. I texted Aubrey: "Are you still up? Do you have size 10.5 circular? Mine is too short -- 16" -- do you have longer?" She texted back: "I only have 40", is that too long?" "Perfect! Can I come pick up now?" And I did. 11:30 at night, Aubrey meets me in her driveway. She's wearing a very long coat and probably not much else. I'm wearing pajama pants, sweater, no bra. I'm trying to make some kind of "needle exchange" joke here, but it's not working. But picture it. (Needle exchange: get it?) What an awesome friend. Thank you, Aubrey.

I finally got to bed about 1:30. Got up at 6:45, made coffee, got dressed, and hit the road. Spent the day at the conference with the girls -- we all had an *awesome* time, and they were so inspired and excited. It was a long day (14 hours!) but an excellent one. And I knitted exactly one skein -- about 2/3 of the whole yoke. At the beginning of the day, one of the girls (the one who isn't the daughter of a heavy knitter) looked at the pattern and said "how much of that are you going to make today?" and I told her I thought I could get the yoke done in a day. Turns out, I was about right: if I hadn't had to rip out half my work at lunchtime because I'd knitted a row I should have purled, I would have had the whole yoke done by the end of the day. As it is, I was pretty happy with 2/3 of it. I worked up exactly one skein of yarn: a football field in length. Nothing to be ashamed of, for sure. When's the last time YOU knit a whole football field in a day?

The next day, I knit up a whole 'nother football field after church AND took a long nap in the afternoon. Yoke done, plus a smidge of the body. A third of the sweater completed (I'm adding sleeves) in only two days. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty decent work. The knitting gods and me, we make a good team.


(more about the mods I made in another post.)

The Selbu Project: Complete!

Many people (not just my Mom) have been asking to see a picture of all the Selbuvotter mittens I've knit. Since I'm probably done with this project for a while, I thought this was a good time to post a pretty picture of them all lined-up. Or circled-up, as the case may be. Anyway, the gray pair at the top of the circle is the pair I actually wear -- the first pair I made. (You can see how much the pointy fingers have softened after even one winter of wearing. The rest of the mittens... well, that's for another post.

Kiki Mariko in Its Natural Habitat

I cleaned my entire house so I could take this picture. Also because I had a houseguest coming. Turns out, knitting a rug is a really great incentive to get your spring cleaning done. I'm not even convinced that it's spring yet, but now I've done my spring cleaning! Woo!


(Also, can you tell I'm trying to get a lot of blog mileage out of this rug? This is the end, I promise.)

More Kiki Mariko

Before felting...

(Husband: You're working really hard to hold it up. Try not to look like it's heavy.
Me: But it is heavy!)

(You can't see, but the bottom edge is hitting the floor in this photo)

Cutting the steek!


(I think they call it a steek because it has the word "eek" in there.)




And after felting/steeking/trimming.

It Really Ties the Room Together

Kiki Mariko is done!

It started small, last May...










And grew...














And grew...












And then it got too warm to knit on such a big heavy wool project for a while, and there was the whole mittens craze anyway...


And then Mango totally lapped me. She started a Kiki a couple of months ago (claiming to be inspired by me... flattery will get you, well, not everywhere, but close) and actually finished it in a timely manner. FINE. I picked up mine again during the Olympics (not as a Ravelympics project, just as a "I really have to get this done and I am watching a lot of TV anyway" project), and finished the first week of March! Woo! I knit a rug, and it didn't take me a year to do it!


And I figured that, if I didn't felt it right away, I'd let it sit there for an annoyingly long time. So I finished it on a Monday morning (unusual for me to knit during the day on Mondays, unless I'm so drained I can't do anything else) and took it to the laundromat the same day (Husband laughed when I said, "I'm going to do one load of laundry... and felt that rug." Why would he laugh, do you think?). Cut the steek and put it outside to dry (Monday happened to be a gorgeous day), did a little scissor-trimming of stray bits... and voila!

It's a rug!

If I had it to do again, I'd do a few things differently. First, I wouldn't have used the black. It doesn't look quite so bad felted, but it was jarring enough during the knitting that I stopped using it toward the end. Second, I would have made a narrower steek -- four or six stitches would have been just fine, ten is excessive. Mango pointed this out to me, and I went down to eight stitches, but the whole rest of the knitting process I kept thinking about how much yarn those ten stitches (or even eight) wasted. It could have made the rug a smidge longer, right? It probably wouldn't have made a significant difference, but still. What a waste. That was a lot of yarn in the trash when all the trimming was done. Otherwise.... I'm totally happy with the pattern, and with the finished project, and I may very well make another one sometime. Fun knit!

Also, I did ~160 stitches (plus the steek) so the finished rug would be wider than the original. Finished measurements, felted: 51" x 42" I probably need to do a smidge more felting, but for now I'm too excited to have a new rug to let uneven felting stop me from putting this baby in the yellow room! Woo! Rug!