Thinking of Waves

I have been missing the ocean.  It's nice to have the lake here, but it's not the same, not for someone who always grew up nearby the ocean.  The waves are small and soothing here unlike the dramas of the Pacific.

I wanted to make a shawl using short rows to create the curvy lines and shapes as tides and waves.  A medium blue was what I had in mind but I didn't have any yarn of that color in stash, so I used white Lana Gatto Mignon, a fingering weight, that I bought from Elann.

The design was pure improvisation.  This was the most improvised project I think I'd ever done. I started with few images of the top section in my head and just went for it, not even knowing how short rows will work for my ideas.  I started thinking it will be a swatch, but it just kept growing and growing.  Then rest of it was created on the fly.  It felt very intriguing to have little idea of how the shawl looked as I progressed.  A top-down sweater was always fairly easy to visualize.  But my shawl knitting experience was somewhat limited, and with the stitches all bunched up, I never got to see how it looked stretched out.  I half guessed in all my mental visualization with this one.  It was kinda exciting I must say. Whenever I wasn't sure what next, I'd just get up and eat some junk food. Boy, did I eat a lot of junk food during knitting this. Sometimes I'd return with clearer ideas, sometimes I didn't and I still would forge on, just pretended I knew what I wanted exactly. When I got to the bottom section, I actually sketched out quickly some general shapes on the paper and just winged it thinking it will look somewhat similar to the sketch.  Well, yes and no.  The shapes turned out very similar but I drew the shawl more a half moon shape when it turned out to be more crescent moon. The shawl was more elegant than my drawing. What a good thing.

It certainly was exhilarting when the project came off the needles and stretched out before my eyes.

I overdyed the shawl with acid dye.  It came out a bit uneven but not bad at all. I just mixed teal with blue with brown. I forgot to wash the shawl first with soap and the dye was running even after tons of vinegar added. I would definitely think twice before overdyeing a sweater.  

I do love the shawl very much.

Mistakes, Corrections.

 

Yarn: Elann Peruvian Baby Cashmere, color: pewter, cahsmere blue

Needles: US #2

This tunic took me a lot longer than usual.  I was bored after I finished the front.  It was knitted in all st. st with fingering weight yarn.  I was excited about the concept, but the execution was slow.  It was also interrupted by other unexciting things going on in life.  First, I got really busy trying to wrap up the end of semester, all the grading and critiques.  Soon as the semester ended I drove down to Bay Area to get a tooth pulled.  Fortunately even without any dental insurance I get all of my dental work done for free. My older sister is a dentist and her husband specializes in endodontis. I even had a total painless root canal done last year, painless both physically and financially.  My sister did the crown and all that for free as well.  She is like that, extremely protective of our family and always make sure that we're all OK and would never accept any payment from us at all even if I ever become a millionaire.

The concept of this sweater design was formed when I was working on the red Lichen II.  The idea of placing stone buttons as river rocks popped into my head and I knew I'd want to make it one day just to see if it works at all even if it sounds a bit cheesy.

I used Elann Peruvian Baby Cashmere in color pewter and cashmere blue. I love this yarn, it's true to the claim, luxury at affordable price, very very soft.

To do the intersia of big blocks of color I had to knit it in flat pieces of the front and back.  They were knitted from bottom up.  The front was completely done in improvisation as I knitted.  I knew what general shape it would be but as when to make curves was decided as I knitted.  The front and back were joined at the shoulders and at the sides.  Sleeves were knitted top down in round from the picked up stitches around armholes.

This tunic went through few transformations. Most of the mistakes and corrections were done out of laziness. The end result actually is not too far from what I originally envisioned.  But during the knitting coupla things didn't work out right.  First, the neckline ended up being way too small from I wanted.  But stubbornly I refused to rip it back because I was getting bored with knitting it and thinking it would be fine.  The second mistake was when I decided to make it short-sleeve even though I had longer sleeves in mind all along.  If I have to be very honest, I think that decision was again out of being lazy and getting bored with the knitting.  But I convinced myself it was for the design proportion to go with the smaller neck opening.  After the first sleeve was finished, I knew I truly should've ripped back for larger neck opening at the first place and make the sleeves longer, it was just looking awful otherwise.  However, because the sleeve was picked up stitches along armhole and knitted top-down, I'd have to rip back the sleeve and the neck area of body to make it right, and that would mean a lot of re-knitting.  Well, what's a lazy, unmotivated person to do?  The answer: come up with a different solution instead of re-knit.  My solution was to go ahead and knit the other sleeve longer to make sure the long sleeve is the way to go, then go back and lengthen the first sleeve. As to the neck opening, well, I can machine sew stitches around the opening before cutting it  to the  size I want, then pick up stitches to knit and finish the neck line.  So that was exactly what I did.  Along the neckline I did 2 rows of st st before I used applied I-cord edging to finish it.   Blocking helped keeping the neckline edge from rolling which would show the frayed ends from cutting.

Before lengthening first sleeve and cut neck opening

 A round of running stitches were hand sewn to indicate 

where to machine sew and cut the new neck opening. 

After some changes in placement of stone buttons.  I also added some gathering to give the area some texture. 

I played with the placement of stones and the gathering for quite a while, sewed and ripped, sewed and ripped.  I made least 20 trips to the bathroom mirror to check how it looks.   I like the sweater so much more after the details were set.

 

The reason I wanted a wide neckline at the first place was so that I could make a necklace to go with it.  Yes, it may be overkill but this girl loves some bling every now and then.   I found the stone links at the same stores I got my stone buttons, and used the same yarn to crochet the cord. 

Now I'm just glad it's all done so I can move on to some quicker knitting.  

 

A Sweater and Two Pairs of Boots

I made a sweater, but let me first tell you about the new boots I bought.

This is so exciting, I actually found not just one pair, but two pairs of boots that my thick calves and wide feet can fit into.  Even better, the store had a sale of "Buy one pair shoes, get two pairs free."  So I had to grab another pair of shoes too. 

I got them at the Bass outlet in town.   I had not bought any shoes in over a year so even though I felt very guilty for spending $110 but isn't it awesome that I got 3 pairs of shoes? A girl's dream shopping day!

For those of you with nice thinner calves, you have no idea how big this is.  It's like finding Holy Grail - tall boots that fit and the not making the legs look like gigantic elephant trunks, and stylish enough. This is seriously exciting.

 

So they're not exactly the best shoes to go with the new sweater I made.  But I didn't care, I just wanted to wear them and show them off here.

Oh, and the new sweater.  I dyed the yarn with Rabbitbrush flowers that I gathered earlier this fall.  I just had this idea of dyeing varied tones to make a sweater. The flowers yield very loverly and bright yellow.  The lightest yellow were quick dips, and iron was thrown in the dye to modified it to green.  The dark greenish gray was first dyed with Rabbitbrush and iron, then overdyed with Logwood Gray that I purchased.  They were mordanted with alum.

My idea was to make a sweater that is more modern than traditional Fairisle (which I love and I may still make one with the leftover yarn - though it will have to be a vest or very short sweater with the amount I have.)   

It was knitted sideway.  First the Fairisle band, then the multi-tones folding section.  I was kinda uneasy about it because I'd never knitted anything sideway, but the calculation was so much easier than I expected.  I'd love to do another sideway sweater soon.  The construction was very simple, all st sts.

The sad part was when I blocked the sweater, the pinning stained the sweater on the lightest stripes of color.  It was so so very sad.  I used stain remover which lightened up the stains a bit, but it also created few light spots.  In the end, it looked better than the stain spots, and in real life it's not as noticeable.

 
I have to say, I really love designing my own sweaters.  Part of it comes from my not liking to follow directions (in knitting and in life.)  I tend to get bored half way through knitting a pattern, even though I have enough discipline to always finish the knitting.  With designing my own, I get to think about it as I go, which is the process I love. I very often changed ideas as I knit. I love tweaking things and trying to come up with an idea within the specific confine of the material.  For this one, I dyed the yarn first and let them sit while allowing ideas to brew. The criteria here was to show off tonal variation, yet remain simple enough even with some fairisle thrown in.   My inspiration was the aspen trees that were so breathtakingly beautiful few weeks back.   I took the verticality of the trees and combined with tonal variation of the foliage.   To capture the flickering light when the leaves rustle I thought the band of fairisle may work.  The dark greenish gray was the pine trees of the woods surrounding it to give contrast.   So I called this "Aspen".


















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