splityarn

5th blogiversary AND a finished object

Seems an appropriate way to celebrate 5 years of blogging; the Studio Raglan is finished. Finally!

The basic pattern for this started with Barbara Walker's Classic Raglan Pullover from Knitting from the Top. Realistically though, I only used the numbers for the cast-on and then just knit on my own from there. I was winging it almost the whole way but with a raglan, that's easy to do.

I'm fairly happy with how it came out, even if it's just a touch too big in the arms and the chest. When I knit the next version, I'll give myself less ease in the upper back and I'll increase even more at the hipline. I keep saying that the chest and hip measurements don't need to be equal in a sweater, but I shy away from really just going for it. Next time I'll just do it.

I was somewhat at a loss for how to finish the neckline in a way that would complement the pink edging on the hems so I flipped through Nancy Wiseman's The Knitters Book of Finishing Techniques. Ooooh! Applied i-cord edge! Perfect height and easy to try. (The Purl Bee has a great tutorial for it.) I think it works well for this application and it allowed me to reshape some of the scoop neck wonkiness at the collarbone where I was testing out increase rates.

More details on Ravelry

And 5 years of blogging! I'm kind of shocked really. Thank you all for reading! I wouldn't still be doing this if it weren't for all the comments and notes and feedback. (Actually, I would probably still be doing it, it just wouldn't be as fun.) As is the custom, please leave a comment and next week I'll randomly pick a winner who will receive a splityarn boxbag as a prize. Hurray for 5 years!

quoth the raven

February marked 200 years since Edgar Allen Poe's birth. Seemed fitting to knit the Lenore socks in the Lenore Socks that Rock colourway, right?

I cast on just after Poe's birthday and finished the first sock two weeks later. The other is still mid-cuff, but it's in my purse and gets picked up from time to time.

With a few knitterly gatherings coming up on the schedule, I'm sure I'll get the second sock knocked out by say, oh, next February.

holy smokes! a post about knitting!

Back in November, Minty cast on and knit an amazing sweater in under two weeks. (It's gorge, you have to go look.) When I saw how quickly it was all coming together, I thought to myself, hey! I can do that. And I could do it, I'm pretty sure, but like a lot of things I plan to do, I didn't. I came really close though.

I'd been wearing Husband Sweater #2 in my office for a few weeks and decided that I needed my own sweater to work in. It needed to be a little more feminine, with less than the 10 inches of ease that the Husband sweater has on me. I was thinking top-down raglan, three quarter length sleeves, deep scoop neck (I have that pullover-strangulation fear thing) and turned hems. Easy. I ran into Woolcott in Harvard Square and bought the last 4 balls of Hempwol (35% hemp, 65% wool) they had in Italian Plum.

I swatched, measured, cast on and knit like the wind. After a week, I had most of the body finished.

But as sometimes happens, the first problem you encounter where you have to rip back, some of the magic goes out of the project. It went like this:

Knit the body and bind off. Needs more waist shaping.
Rip back and add more increases to offset womanly curves.
Finish the body and bind off.
Knit first sleeve and bind off.
Begin second sleeve and knit to two inches before bind off, run out of yarn.
Swear.
Rip back both sleeves.
Reknit first sleeve with less ease. Pretty!
Reknit second sleeve and halfway through and still run out of yarn

Run to Woolcott to procure more yarn.
No more Italian Plum.
Swear. Buy pink Hempwol instead.
Swear more when ripping of sleeve and body becomes necessary to add in pink hems.
Stall for 2 months.
Rip a few inches back on body, sub in pink, reknit and bind off.
Rip back on first sleeve, sub in pink, reknit and bind off.

And that gets you to where I am right now. Half a sleeve left to knit and I'll be finished. Just in time for warmer weather and no need for sweaters. The silly part is that I've been working really hard to lose some weight and by next year, this sweater is going to be too big. Turns out the 4 balls of Hempwol would have done the trick, but then that wouldn't have been any fun, right?

made from scraps

On the flight home from holidays in Vancouver, I cast on for Thorpe with a scrap ball of Cascade 220 leftover from Husband Sweater #2. I had weighed it before I left so I knew I would be tight on yardage, but I decided to give it a whirl anyway. By the time I changed planes in Houston with only 3 rows left on the second ear flap, I ran out of yarn. I wove in the ends on the rest of the hat, spit spliced the tiny bits together and managed to eke out enough to bind off half of the last row.

When I got home I scoured through the stash, but found no more of the yarn. Not even a scrap. My plan had been to use a contrasting yarn for the crochet edging anyway, so I bound off the last row with my favourite Cascade 220 colour, 9404. It blends in seamlessly with the rest of the edging, so I needn't have bother tearing my office apart looking for a 12 inch snippet of the charcoal.

Because I was running so tight on yardage, I skimped a little on my modifications. I was using a worsted weight instead of the chunkier weight suggested by the pattern, so I worked a few extra increase rounds but not as many as I should have. The result is a tight-ish toque that looks great straight on, but sort of like a helmet from the side. Function before fashion though, right? At least my ears will be warm. (And next time I'll make it bigger.)

Details on Ravelry

coronet revisited

I knit Coronet back in December 2006. Again, like most of my handknits, it didn't see much wear in Austin. Boston, however, gave it new life. If it's cold enough for a toque, this is the one I reach for every time. The cabled band around the bottom is perfect for non-helmet-like toque wearing. It gives it just enough of a chunky weight that it doesn't suck down to your melon giving you that little desired Q-tip look. Plus it's perfect to wear straight across my eyebrows in that old-school ski resort employee way. (Check it out next time you go up the hill. Five bucks says all the employees wear their hats low across their foreheads.)

The only downside to this hat is the yarn I chose. The Cashmerino Aran while soft, doesn't hold up to any sort of wear. It's beyond fuzzy and pilly. So much so that I'm going to eventually knit myself another Coronet in some other yarn that will look nicer for longer than the FO photo shoot.

Original finished object post and the details on Ravelry

well worn

I've had it in my mind since last year to do a rundown of previous knits. I mean, you post the FO shots, you rave about how happy you were when you finished, but there's so rarely a post-knit, post-wearing review. I think I may just devote January to exactly this point. I'm busy getting the shop ready for the next boxbag update anyway, so FO's are going to be in short supply for the next few weeks.

First up, The Husband Sweater.

Out of the two sweaters I've knit for the Husband, EZ's Seamless Hybrid gets the most use. I finished this in December 2006 and while it didn't see a ton of wear in Austin, it's a wardrobe constant here in Boston. Seriously, sometimes it's hard to get it away from him long enough to wash it. That fact alone makes it hands down my most satisfying knit, ever. (I only got these photos because I told him it was still drying.) This is the sweater that other knitters point out to their spouses to convince them that they need a handknit of their own.

During the first few wearings it pilled like CRAZY. I was worried for a bit, but like a new carpet, it only needed to shed a little and now is back to only minor pilling here and there. After a few washings, the stitches are all perfectly even and uniform. Cascade 220, you're my hero.

Eventually I'll make him another just like it with only two mods:

The bottom hem, because it was knit closed, has a tendency to flip up. (TechKnitting wrote a great post about why this happens.) Next time I'll just bite the bullet and seam it down rather than muck about with the provisional cast on.

The purl gutter on each side of the front raglan decreases is at times charming, but mostly I just think it looks messy. I'll try the next one without it.

There will definitely be another one for him and most likely one for myself. With a little waist shaping? Heaven in a sweater.

Original finished object post and the details on Ravelry.

9th socks finished

I finally finished those Noro striped socks that I started way back in July. JULY! I can't believe it took me 6 months to knit a simple pair of stockinette socks. I can unequivocally say that sock knitting is not my passion. I like sock knitting, but mostly because it's small, will fit in my purse and because I knit on DPNs, has an air of complication and danger when knit in public. 

It's almost Christmas Eve, so I'll make this quick and all about the photos. As always, the dirty details are on Ravelry.

they say purple is the new black

Well, JulieFrick does and I'm not one to tell her no.

The Husband and I are taking some much needed time off this week. After a hectic summer we're heading to Minneapolis to visit some pals and kick back for a few days. (I never thought I'd vacation in Minnesota, but at least it won't be as cold as the last time I was there.) As always, the tricky part of travelling is deciding what knitting to take.

Ms. SotoSofties and I went to Windsor Button on a yarn mission yesterday and I picked up a couple things to make the decision that much tougher.

Do I take the fiddly Garden Snail that I started?

Do I start in on a pair of colourwork mittens in my favourite colour combo of the day?

Continue the second of the Noro striped socks?

Or chuck all the gift knitting and work on a mini-Hanami Sea Silk scarf for myself? Think I can juggle the beaded cast-on on the plane?

Decisions! I need help!

striped

I've finished the first Noro Striped Sock. It really isn't that momentous until I consider that I haven't finished a sock since last September. By the time the second is off the needles, it will have been a year. A year! I've started a few socks over the months, but none have them were working for me. Every single one, riiiiip.

After the last post someone asked how I was alternating between the two ends of the skein. All I'm doing is carrying the yarn up when it's time to switch every 5 rows. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to colour changes too; I simply wrap the two strands together as one for the first stitch and then drop the old yarn. I did the colour changes directly down the back of the leg until the heel. For the foot I moved it over to the side so I won't have to walk on the line of extra yarn. Easy!

The yarn was coming out in clumps of the center of the skein so for the second sock I've split the remainder into two balls. Should make things a little more manageable for Wednesday's airplane knitting. Gotta go pack my flipflops...

maybe it's the stripes

It feels like forever since I've posted about knitting. After ripping out and reknitting the first sleeve cuff for Tangled Yoke three times (yes! Three! I don't want to face up to what may be a greater gauge issue) I just haven't been super motivated to knit. It's hot, it's summer and I haven't been really excited to cast on for anything.

Then last week while knitting with the girls, Cheryl was working on a Noro sock. She's using two skeins of Noro Sock yarn and holy smokes did it ever sing to me. I had one skein in the stash that I bought at my first WEBS trip, so this week at knitting I cast on. I'm knitting from both ends of the skein and alternating every 5 rows.

Exactly the motivation I needed. Colours, stripes, yarn changes and it's not a giant wool sweater sitting in my lap. Sweeeeeet!

all in one place

(Thanks Elinor, for letting us all poach this great mosaic)

I had the good fortune of going to Philadelphia a couple weekends ago to hang with an amazing crew of women that I've known online for ages. Some I knew better than others, but safe to say that they're all much much closer now. We knit, joked, laughed, snarked and gossiped our way through 3 days. I sincerely wish I'd had the gumption to organize something like this myself a lot sooner. Note to self: don't wait for someone else, just do it yourself. It's well worth it.

Part of the fun heading in to the Philly weekend was a cowl swap suggested by Ashley (she's a smartie, that one. Wait til you see the one she made for me.) With a few weeks notice, I figured it was the perfect sized project to jump in and design my own. It's a cowl, so size isn't critical and no better way to knit up one skein of something yummy.

Behold! The Philly Cowl in Malabrigo Worsted (in Stonechat.) Full details over on Rav where the pattern is now available as a free pdf download. Christy has the original. I'm currently finishing up a smaller one with the leftovers of the skein. And dig, the Queen of Cowls herself knit one too!

harlotry

I always have the best time at Yarn Harlot book signings. It's wonderful to be surrounded by like-minded knitters in such a positive environment. I come home exhausted but happy, my pocketbook lightened and new yarn in hand.

Mum and I made the trek out to Northampton with Jess, Maryse, Kellee, Stitchy and Ms. Melanie. Those girls are made of good times. I'm fairly sure that we could have stood around in the parking lot talking for HOURS afterwards. And really, we kinda did.

The event was flawless, WEBS was packed and well organized and much yarn was bought. Whew!

When do we get to do it again?

falconry isn't my gig

The body of the Tangled Yoke is finished. I confess I haven't put much effort into it lately. Spring is in the air and I've been busy at the sewing machine instead. The only time I've worked on the sweater is at knit night and on Saturday afternoons watching marathon sessions of Deadwood on DVD.

I cast on for the first sleeve this weekend and despite a niggling feeling, kept knitting. It just seemed so big. By the time I finished the ribbing and started into the stockinette portion it was confirmed. It's a gauntlet. Hawks can swoop in and land on my wrist kinda big. Mum is flying into town this afternoon so I'll try it on her then, but my suspicion is that it'll be frogged before I go to bed tonight. Sigh. I had really hoped I could make a push and finish it to have Mum model it and take it home with her, but I think I have to frog that idea too.

Over the ribbing and through the woods

Garter rib is not my favourite rib. Even though you work the actual ribbing every other row, it always seems to take longer than a plain ol' two by two. I feel like I'm always double checking my work. I can't zone out as much as with a regular rib or like with stockinette. I don't know if it's just the way my mind works or what, but it drives me a little batty. Thankfully I have the worst of it behind me now. The body for Tangled Yoke is worked as one piece so the only ribs I have left to think about are the sleeves and they're still a ways away.

On to the stockinette!

positives and negatives

I really wasn't sure how I'd feel about a pullover sweater when I began knitting Wicked. I'm such a dedicated cardigan girl, that I had concerns I'd feel trapped. It's not so much a claustrophobic thing (because obviously I can wear t-shirts aplenty) as not being able to cool down whenever I want. The biggest selling feature of a cardi is that someone who is always too hot can just unzip or unbutton a bit to regulate her temperature.

As it turns out, Wicked works nicely for me. I wore it all yesterday afternoon post-photo shoot and didn't feel trapped once. The silk in the Brooks Farm Fourplay gives it a lighter, drapier feeling than straight up wool would and the short sleeves and wide neckline don't make me overheat.

In the end I went pocketless and I'm ok with that. The last thing I want is to add some poochiness where I don't need it. Overall, I think Wicked v.2 is a winner. Just remember, if you knit it, heed my warnings and knit it with plenty of negative ease. I knit this one two sizes below my measurements.

Project details on Ravelry