I’ve made an unofficial start on the Cheesylove sweater my sister and I are doing as a knitalong. (She’s not doing the ruffle and I am, so I’m starting a little early.) Good grief. Do you know how long it takes to cast on 504 stitches? Frickin’ ages! And technically you have to do that twice, because the real ruffle’s supposed to be 1008 stitches. Now I understand why they have you do it in two parts, otherwise you’d need a circular needle about three feet long.
Tag: knitting
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Stitch and Bitch II
Hey knitters! Debbie Stoller is taking submissions for a sequel to her Stitch & Bitch book. Sounds pretty cool!
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Knitalong?
My sister has caught the knitting bug and is ready to try her first sweater. She wants to do Cheesylove (the sleeveless version) from Knitty but she’s a little apprehensive. So we’re going to do it as a knitalong! We’re both going to knit it at the same time so we can help each other over the rough bits. Any of you other knitters want to join us? We’re aiming to get the materials this week and start next weekend.
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Another FO – Columbine Peak Socks
(That’s “Finished Object” for you non-knitters.) After doing two pairs of simple basic socks, I was ready to expand my skills. So I cracked open my copy of Socks Soar on Two Circulars* and picked out the “Columbine Peaks” pattern. The leg of the sock has a lacy pattern that forms little v-shaped mountain peaks that continue down onto the foot. It wasn’t too hard, though you do have to count and sometimes I have difficulty with that. (Handy tip: Knitting and wine don’t go together so well.) Now they’re finally done. Unfortunately the Sockenwool I had was rainbow-colored so the pattern doesn’t show up so well, but I still like them. They give me the craziest urge to buy some Birkenstocks and walk around like a German tourist. (Note: That second image is a big scan and shows the stitch pattern nicely.)
* Although I like the technique used, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book for beginners. I’ve found several frustrating errors in the patterns. You can see a list of some corrections here.
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Australian sheep produce world’s finest wool
Australian sheep produce world’s finest wool. That’s not a generalization, like saying that Aussie wool is the best. They really have produced a bale of the finest – in terms of thickness – wool ever seen. It’s worth thousands of dollars and will probably be sold to a top fashion house. Gee, you could make some lovely soft sweaters with that!
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The Sign of the Beast
I haven’t given you a knitting update in ages, have I? Yes, that’s me in a custom knit devil-horned hat. The pattern’s from Debbie Stoller’s book Stitch ‘N’ Bitch and I whipped it up in about six hours. (Pattern note for those playing at home: I used two balls of Heirloom 12-ply on 6mm needles.) I discovered some black wool in my stash so I might try the kitty-cat hat next. Now I just have to wait for it to get cold enough to wear!
Catching up on other projects… I also made a jumper/sweater for my iPod! My old case was getting grubby and I rarely use the belt clip anyway. There’s a pattern in Stitch ‘N’ Bitch but it requires sewing, so I just made up my own. (I started by knitting a flat rectangle about the size of the bottom of the iPod, and then picked up around the edges and knit in the round to the top. Then I cast off the front and continued knitting flat to make the flap. I even put a yarn-over in the right spot to leave a hole for the headphone jack!) I haven’t sewn any velcro on it yet, which is why I have to hold the flap closed here. Also note: I finally got my iPod in-ear headphones! As Ron suggested, they are a bit tinny. I only really notice it on the badly-ripped songs though. I’ve fiddled with the equalizer settings to boost the bass and that helps. But I’m back in the Cult of the White Wires!
Another recent finished object is the red scarf I’m sporting below. The wool is some handspun and hand-dyed stuff I bought at Camp Creative in January. The thickness varies from thread-thin to finger-thick. I just cast on eight stitches on my 10mm needles and knit til I ran out of wool. It went about six feet. I’m loving it. Oh, and my sister tells me that “skinny scarves are in” in the US, so unbeknownst to me I’m already in style for the winter!
Oh, and there’s a work in progress in that last picture too: my muscles. I’m on Week 3 of my weight training regimen and I’m feeling pretty darn buff!
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Knitted VW Bug Vest
Someone has constructed a knitted vest for her VW Beetle. That person is now my hero. (Link courtesy of not martha.)
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Barcode Generator
Check out this Online Barcode Generator. I’m totally using this to generate stripe patterns for my knitting! How cool would it be to wear a scarf with a secret code in it?
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Weasley Sweater
Sorry for the silence… but I’ve been busy finishing my Weasley Sweater! It’s a seamless raglan in deep maroon with a great big gray “K” embroidered on the front. It’s 100% wool and warm as hell. It’s probably actually a little nicer than the ones Mrs. Weasley makes, but faced with a choice between filmic accuracy and my desire to not wear a lumpy boat-necked monstrosity, my sense of fashion won out. (Apologies for the lack of contrast in the picture; Snookums took it at midnight as soon as I finished the thing. I’ll post some better ones – and pattern notes for you knitters – tomorrow.) My costume for the Azkaban opening is taking shape… I just need to make myself a Gryffindor scarf and locate a grey pleated skirt. The Snook said I can use his black academic gown. Yay!Update: Better photo and knitting notes added.
First off, if you want to knit a sweater as painlessly as possible get Jacqueline Fee’s book The Sweater Workshop. It won’t teach you the basics of knitting, but if you already know how to knit and purl it’ll show you everything else you need to know to design your own sweaters. This is my third project based on the book (after the sampler and the Snook’s sweater) and it turned out great.The wool is Naturally Guernsey DK from New Zealand in the Mackenzie (purple) and Dundee (gray) colors. I started by measuring one of my existing sweaters from armpit-to-armpit to get my key number. Everything else in the pattern is based on percentages of that. I wanted it to be a little big and baggy too (to match the ones in the movie). Then I knitted a swatch with a couple different size needles to find a gauge I liked. Once I had that, I started the body on a big 80cm long 4.5mm circular needle. I did about two inches of ribbing and then knitted the body up the armpits in straight stocking stitch. Then I set it aside and started the sleeves.
I decided to be clever and knit both sleeves at once on two circular needles. It was actually almost a little too clever for me but I got it in the end. I went with the “full” style sleeves from the book, which means that you do all the increases as soon as you finish the cuff and the rest of the sleeve is knit straight. It’s a baggier style which I like. Once I had knitted them to the armpit, I carefully joined all three tubes together. (It’s actually not that complicated and Fee gives you great instructions.)
Once everything is on one needle, away to the collar you go. I decided that since my jumper was going to be plain, I would liven it up with a decorative raglan seamline. (Raglan sleeves are like a sweatshirt, where you have a diagonal seam running from the armpit up the collar.) I used seamline “E” in the book, which consisted of PSSO, K1, and PSSO-R. Not complicated and I got into the rhythm pretty quickly. Eventually I had to stop going around and round and start going back and forth to prepare for the collar. I went with the standard crew neck setup but planned to do it as a rollneck instead. (For a rollneck you just knit every round instead of ribbing them.) Once I got the rollneck on, though, I didn’t really like the way it looked. So I frogged it back and did a conventional ribbed crewneck instead. Looks much better.
Next I had to graft the underarm openings, which again sounds difficult but isn’t too hard if you follow Fee’s instructions. Lastly, I had the Snook help me print out a large pixellated letter “K” to use as a pattern for the front. The letter had to be done as swiss darning (or “duplicate stitch”) because there’s no way to do intarsia when you’re circular knitting (unless you want to weave in a million loose ends). It ended up being somewhat like doing cross-stitch. Once that was done, I just had to weave in my ends and it was finished!
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The road to hell is paved with best intentions.
Knitting is supposed to be fun, right? Not this week. I have become embroiled in a scandal involving two knitting mailing lists, a major knitting magazine, and a craft board. Let’s see if I can recap this coherently. (Names are, of course, obscured to protect the innocent – not that there are any.)
It all started when one person, I’ll call her B, sent a forward to the knitting list I’m on. It was a cute little humorous piece which B was forwarding on from another list. She also said that it had been written and posted by A, and that A had given her permission to forward it on to us. I took that to mean that the piece was in the public domain, since it had already been forwarded to two separate mailing lists apparently with the author’s blessing. It turns out that was a slight mistake on my part, but it’s fairly understandable, don’t you think? When you get a forward, you assume that you’re safe to pass it along.
Anyway, I posted the text on a craft board I belong to, of course crediting it to A and mentioning that I’d gotten it from my knitting list. The next day another person, C, e-mailed me asking where it had come from. C’s e-mail address indicated that she worked for a prominent knitting magazine, so I was eager to help. I was happy to think that I might be helping A to get her great work published. I replied to C explaining that I had gotten it on a list from B, who in turn had gotten it from a list from the author A. Then I e-mailed B to let her know that someone was trying to track down A. B wrote me back and said she’d heard from them and that she’d be happy to hook them up with A. She also mentioned that she’d contact A and let them know that the knitting magazine was interested. That’s when the shit hit the fan.
It turns out that A had actually already submitted the piece to the knitting magazine as “unpublished” and wasn’t supposed to share it with anybody. C had spotted it on the craft board and wanted to track down how many knitters had actually seen it before her magazine paid for it. A was pissed and evidently gave B hell, because B posted a long screed to our mailing list about the importance of copyright and how A, a free-lance writer, was going to be hurt by the fact that her text had suddenly appeared “all over the Internet”. In damage control mode, I quickly deleted the post from the craft board and all references to it on w-g. I even e-mailed Google and asked them to purge it from their cache. I felt like a complete ass.
Today I got another message from C apologizing for getting me into trouble. That was appreciated. She pointed out that what I’d done was an honest mistake and I shouldn’t beat myself up over it. More importantly, she made me realize that I’m not the ultimate one to blame – A is. A wasn’t upset that her piece was getting circulated; she was upset that the magazine had discovered that she’d shared it at all. I was merely the last link in a chain and ultimately it was A’s responsibility not to put it out there in the first place, especially if she’d represented it to the magazine as “unpublished.” So that made me feel a little bit better. I mean, even if I hadn’t posted the text elsewhere, C just as easily could have been a member of either of the first two mailing lists and found out that way.
The final chapter: B e-mailed me today to let me know that the magazine has accepted the piece anyway. Whew. Now I’m going to go crawl in a hole and hide.
