Now it's finished

The sweater is official done. All of the ends are tucked it and it only need to dry before it can be worn. Hurrah.

Details:

Yarn: Knit Picks Swish Superwash. 7 skeins of Truffle and 6 of Fired Brick.

Needles: Mostly knit on a 4.5 mm circular and 4.5 mm DPNs for the sleeves. The cuffs and bottom ribbing are knit using size 3.75 mm needles, and the neckband was knit using 4.5 mm, 3.75 mm and 3.5 mm needles.

Pattern: This is a version of Barbara Walker's Top-down Raglan sweater. It is heavily influenced by Brooklyn Tweed's version. About the only differences are that my sweater uses a slightly different red and is longer and less wide.

This is the first sweater I have knit for someone else. I wanted to make Ken a sweater and having shown him several different patterns he chose this one. Brooklyn Tweed's stuff is always so nicely knit and beautifully photographed that it is really no surprise that anyone should want a copy of it.

The sleeves were the only real tricky part of knitting this. It took several rips and reknits to get a nice even rate of decrease. Looking at it off the needles and on the recipient I think next time I would decrease faster at the top of the sleeve and leave the bottom a bit wider. Knit and learn.

Tomorrow I will probably show off the handspun sweater that I started as soon as this sweater was off the needles.

Endless End

I always forget just how long it takes to get a sweater off the needles. Last night I was sure that I would have this sweater done sometime this morning. But then there was some ripping out and reknitting to get the cuffs the right length and look. Then picking up and knitting the neck sucked up a bunch of time.

So now I just need to finish up the bottom so that it matches the rest. Then there's the tucking in of ends. So much for finishing in the morning; it is a good thing I wasn't tempted to try to finish up before going to bed last night. It doesn't look like it will be finished tonight before I go to bed.

Tomorrow I'll finish it for sure and have a chance to wash and block it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the super wash wool doesn't make it stretch out too much. I did knit a swatch and wash it but the weight of the whole sweater will probably make it inaccurate. At least this sweater is knit from the top so if it gets too long it is easier to rip out and adjust. Needless to say I'd still rather not have to rip anything out.

I'll post pictures tomorrow when its finished and there's decent light.

6 random things

Last Thursday OzB tagged me to do the 6 random things meme. Since I used up many of my current pictures in my last post, it seemed like a good idea to do the picture-less post today.

The rules:

Link to the person who tagged you [check]. Post the following rules on your blog [check]. Write six random things about yourself [check]. Tag six people at the end of your post [skipped]. Let each person know he or she has been tagged. Let the tagger know when your entry is up [I'm sure she'll spot this].

Random Facts About Me:

1. I have a pet snake named Slithergadee (from a Shel Silverstein poem). She is currently pretty active because she is trying to pick out the perfect spot to hibernate (and probably looking for some fellow snake to spend the winter with). I know that she is a she because most springs she lays a bunch of unfertilized eggs. [edited to change 'fertilized' to 'unfertilized'. Wishful thinking got the better of my typing I guess.]

2. I spent the summer of 2003 looking for Meteorites as part of the Prairie Meteorite Search. Thanks to this I have handled a variety of meteorites and know that most meteorites are magnetic.

3. I learned to crochet well before I learned to knit. I was 12 or 13 when I started to crochet hats. I was 25 when I asked my mother to teach me to knit so that I could make a baby blanket for the best friend of one of my brothers. I have never followed a written crochet pattern, though.

4. I love making (and eating) rice flour waffles. They are lighter than their wheat flour counterparts and there is really no danger of over stirring the batter. A waffle iron was one of the first things I bought for my kitchen when I moved away from home. The best waffles have toasted pecans in the batter and are served with real maple syrup. Mmmm. Now I'm hungry for waffles.

5. I love writing with fountain pens. Since high school I've primarily written with a fountain pen. I only really use a ball point when I have to fill out a form that uses carbon copies. My current pen is a black Lamy Safari with an extra fine nib. I had an identical red Lamy but I lost it (the black pen is its replacement).

6. I started my undergraduate program in Pre-med because I was interested in becoming a forensic pathologist. I didn't enjoy doing all the first year science courses all at once, though, so I switched to a double degree in philosophy and mathematics with a minor in classics.

I don't know who to pass this on to so I will skip the tagging of 6 others.

The way things are going I should have a finished, or almost so, sweater to show off tomorrow. I really want to cast on for my hand spun sweater which has motivated me to finish the one already on the needles (though not the two which need to be sewn up).

NaBloPoMo 2

It's November and I want to get back into the habit of blogging so I've decided to do NaBloPoMo again. I think this should actually make me write about all of the projects I'm working on or have finished since this summer. Hurray for motivation!

I was going to start with the random 5 meme that OzB tagged me for but I think I will leave that until tomorrow. Tonight I'm obsessed with the idea of knitting myself a sweater out of my own handspun. That I knit a swatch, washed it and am now waiting for it to dry is one of the only reasons I haven't cast on already.

It all started back in September while I was trying to get a sense of my new neighbourhood. I discovered that Ariadne Knits was within walking distance and that it advertised some spinning supplies. I picked out a 4 oz braid of dark BFL dyed with blues and greens. As I was spinning it up I decided that it would be nice as part of an argyle sweater.

I went back to Ariadne and got another 4 oz braid of Coopworth dyed in the same blues and greens. Because it was a white fleece the colours were much clearer and I hoped that they would make the colours in the dark fleece show up a bit more.

I then spun some of the 2 lbs of Falkland wool that I bought some time ago from Hello Yarn.

The yarns then sat around for several weeks while I debated whether I really wanted to knit an argyle vest or whether I wanted to go with something simpler like stripes. Then the other day I happened to move things around and ended up setting the dark BFL next to some Dark Welsh that I spun up on a whim while trying to spin loosely. The yarns looked so good together that I decided that the Dark Welsh needed to be part of whatever I knit up.

So today I finally took pictures of all this yarn and decided that I have enough for a sweater instead of just a vest. I knit up a swatch using 3 different needle sizes and a variety of stripes. Although I spun the white Falkland especially for this project I think I will leave it out. Looking at the swatch I think the 3 darker wools look really good together but the white just doesn't fit. I have about 590 yards of Dark Welsh, 290 yards of the blue/green BFL and 290 yards of the blue/green Coopworth; all three yarns are somewhere between a DK and a Worsted weight. I think I will alternate Dark Welsh stripes with blue/green stripes.

I really hope that I have enough yarn to complete this project because I don't think I can easily get more of any of it.

A trip, a finished object, and a nasty surprise

Last weekend Ken and I made a return trip to London for the wedding of some great friends of ours (one of whom I am inducting into the secret cabal of knitters). The drive was lovely; lots of trees in various states of fall grandeur. It was also really nice to hang out with my school friends again, though, I didn't manage to make it to a knitting get together. Next time.

My camera made the trip with me but I failed to take any pictures. Sorry. Driving is just not conducive to taking nice pictures of the countryside and I was driving the whole way. In fact we were both driving the whole way since we needed two cars to carry all of the stuff we left behind when we moved in August. All of my yarn and fleece is now in Montreal and I really need to work out how I want it all put away. While I'm at it I now have all of my books to house too.

Anyway there was very little knitting over the weekend, but I made up for it by knitting up a quick neck warmer yesterday.

I used some black merino that I spun up last fall (I think). It was about a DK weight 3 ply (navajo plied) but I wanted something chunkier so I added more twist and plied the resulting yarn to itself. I don't think I'd try to make yarn this way again but it worked well enough for my purposes. You can't really tell from the photo (thanks to the lack of light and presence of black yarn) but the scarf is knit in a zig-zag 2x2 ribbing.

I intended to use loops to button it up but Ken asked for button holes. Since I hadn't knit the button holes in and I didn't want to rip back I just stuck my finger in the scarf and pulled at it until I'd made a hole. Then I wrapped some yarn around the hole to keep it open. This is by no means a sophisticated pattern but it sure way quick. Since all of my other knitting seems to be sweaters at the moment, quick is a welcome change of pace.

Between making the neck warmer and managing some progress on a sweater I'd count yesterday a success. It doesn't, however, make up for discovering that someone knocked off our car's side mirror sometime last night/early this morning.

Needless to say there was no note claiming responsibility. Grrr. We now get to find somewhere that will fix this for us (hopefully without charging an arm and a leg). Maybe we can find a mechanic with a strong desire to exchange hand knits for car repair...

Strange old spinning wheel

After not having blogged for so long I have ended up out of practice and with a backlog of things to talk about. I keep thinking I should address them in order but then I get excited about talking about a new thing that I want to share. I don't post about the new thing, though, because I still feel like I should be doing things in order. Gah.

So today I am going to talk about my new old spinning wheel. I call it my new old spinning wheel because I have another old spinning wheel I acquired in September (I promise to blog about the latter very soon).

The new old wheel is made up of parts from at least two separate wheels. The wheel is from a smaller double drive while the 'body' is an old scotch tension wheel. The maiden may also be from a different wheel; the wood turning looks different and it sits at an odd angle. Once it is clean I should have a better idea of what matches.

The whole thing cost me $30 so I'm not upset that it doesn't all belong and won't spin (at least not without some replacement parts). I'm just curious to see what it looks like under all the grime.

I'll end this post with a picture I found while bumbling around the Montreal library website. The wheel this woman is sitting at looks quite similar but I'm not sure what she is using it for. This wheel is just a bundle of mysteries.

Fools rush in

I'm back and this this time I have pictures. But first I wanted to say thanks for the comments, ravelry messages and email. It is nice to know that it wasn't only my mother who missed my blog. I have enough finished and semi finished objects that I'm having a hard time deciding what order to show them off in.

Today I actually finished a project which made the blogging decision easy.


I cast on for this vest on October 3rd and really rushed through the knitting of it. It is a modified version of Eunny Jang's Deep V Argyle Vest. I didn't want my neckline to plunge as much as the pattern suggested and I wanted the fitting a bit looser. So I drew my modifications onto the chart and started knitting. The whole thing was a bit seat of the pants. I did a swatch using 3.5 mm DPNs and almost got gauge so I just grabbed my 3.75 mm circular and started knitting (with my fingers crossed).

When I cut the steeks I realized that there was too much fabric at the top of the vest. I needed to get rid of a couple of inches to make things fit properly.

I decided to wash and block it first in case it was going to fix itself. After letting it dry for a couple of days I realized that I would actually have to do some ripping back. I was worried that this would be a really complicated procedure but it was actually quite easy. I ripped both fronts back a couple of decreases/inches and then I ripped the backs a couple of rows to match. I had to adjust the crochet on the steeks but that was also easier than I feared it would be.

All in all I'm happy with my first sweater vest. I'm trying to ignore/forget that I missed a row in the middle of the thing so some of the diamonds are a bit off.

Now I can start planning a proper argyle vest using some of my handspun...