sorry for being so quiet...

It’s not like I haven’t been knitting, just that I didn’t feel I had anything new to say. Knit a ton of socks, five pairs of knee socks and still had a few bits so switched to hats. Made several hats and finally, here it is December! I didn’t mean to leave manfriend’s pullover to the last minute, but with just two weeks to go, I’m starting to feel the pressure!

I had made a couple of swatches back in November and I’d been thinking of the details like hems and bands - this is going to be pretty plain but still!
I was going to use my ‘hem with chain stitch’ (page 98, The Handbook for Manual Machine Knitters)  - it looks like a nice, plain hem that you can start off with – well, actually you start off with every other needle which reduces the bulk of the backside of the hem and there’s a chain across the bottom edge to give a even, straight line because a guy really wouldn’t want a picot hem, would he?
Thinking I knew what I was doing, cast on every other needle, knit several rows, pulled the needles out and chained in behind and then thought, what the hay? that chain needs to be pulled through the row. Still figuring I was on the right track, I pulled the every-other-stitch through the chain, saying to myself, why didn’t I do this before?
Well, probably because it doesn’t work!!
At this point, I went and got the book to read up on how it was really supposed to be done. Got that accomplished and then decided this would look so much better if the ‘ribbed-look’ from the purl side was on the front which just means an RTR (remove, turn, rehang) and it would give the opportunity to have a few less stitches in the hem…oh gosh, another day gone!

avoidance...

Straight up! All this playing around with socks! Maybe you noticed I never said anything about getting that yarn I ordered for manfriend’s pullover. I was kind of shocked when I got it and rather than deal with the situation, I put it on ignore. What happened is when searching for the yarn, I punched in DK weight and when he liked it, I just plain old ordered it without thinking too much. In all honesty, I thought it was 100g balls with 175m, but it really is 50g balls with 175m – that’s more like sock yarn than a DK weight that one would use on the LK150! And there was only 8 balls left so that’s what I went with, figuring it would be enough for a plain stockinette pullover in a mid gauge weight. Yikes! what to do? procrastinate, of course!
The gauge on the label says 20-23 sts and 26-32 rows to 10 cm which should be a mid gauge weight. It’s 65% merino wool, 20% baby alpaca and 15% silk. This is going to need to be gauged and washed for sure – the fulling process could really throw me off and I don’t have much room for experimenting – I should have at least ordered another ball of a different colour to play with. It's not like it really shrinks – well, it will if mistreated in the laundry – but what I mean is the initial washing fluffs out the fibres, releases the strands and fills in the fabric, making it thicker and denser that it looked when first off the machine.

I’m not sure I’ve ever said this out loud to you, but on any machine, I like to use the mid to high range of the stitch size, like on the LK150, the dial goes from 1 to 9, but my favourite stitch size is 5. I might use T3 to T7 or 8 but not very often. On the standard gauge, it numbers from 0 to 10 and I use mostly T6 to 9. Each machine performs best in this range with increasing, decreasing and shaping working well. If dealing with tight tension and small stitch size, it becomes more difficult to use the tools so the whole project becomes fraught with anxiety! I guess that’s why there are different gauge machines!
The point is trying to use a mid gauge yarn on the standard gauge or using a fingering weight on the mid gauge just becomes an exercise in patience and determination. There I go again, prolonging the agony! I finally jump in and make my preliminary swatch to see what stitch size to use, starting off at T5, 10 rows, a loose row to divide, 10 rows at T4.5, etc. to get the stitch size I want. After looking and feeling, decide that T3.5 may be optimal. Make my swatch at T3.5, another on top at T4 just to be sure and knit the whole ball. This way I can use it to measure against an actual garment of the final size to determine is there will be enough yarn - the swatch has been washed and dried at this point and can be re-used for the hems/bands in the final garment. I can tell already there is a need for a plan B - maybe insert a wide band of contrast colour at the chest...oh yeah, I should admit I found another tweedy DK yarn that was on sale (49 bucks for 10 balls, 74% acrylic, 26% cotton, 100g/260 m) so I ordered it along with some more sock stuff - he'll never know the difference!

sock options...

finished pair and more yarn!

Here’s my newest version of a simple ankle sock done on the LK150 – a quick and easy, advanced-beginner pattern, makes a great hostess gift – tis the season! -  because size doesn’t matter!


fix hole at edge of shortrowed heel



finished knitting, before seaming
 



toe is same as heel, same side

The yarn is Fixation from Cascade Yarns and I’ve put a couple of photos here to help you out! The link to the pdf file for the instructions is:
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Ab9230a00-59e5-41ee-817e-73df341b91e0

ponchomania...

I’ve had several enquiries about poncho patterns lately. And it begs the question, what exactly, is a poncho? Is it a blanket, a shawl, a wrap? Mostly, I’ve always thought of a poncho as being a thing that goes over your head and covers up easily, mostly worn for warmth. Back in the day it was in late winter way back when, I made this thing called It’s a Wrap. Made on the LK150, the pattern was in the Spring 1999, Knitwords No.8 and the caption read:
Call it a poncho, cape or cloak! Whatever, it’s lovely to wear and easy to knit! A great yarn (alpaca/wool), knit in stockinette, really wide, a long-sloped shoulder with a small cuff to create a ‘sleeve’ and a vee neck opening filled in with another piece of stockinette collar. One size fits all!

We had a great time at the photoshoot with it and I wore it a few times after then, sister Marnie fell in love with it and asked for it. Of course, I gave it to her but I kind of missed it.
I re-engineered it to delete some of the volume at the sides, re-knit it using a tweedy DK yarn and I’ve been wearing it off and on for the past almost 20 years, both spring and fall. When I got the first query about a poncho pattern, I dearly wanted to remake this one again and add a hood – I’ve already admitted to being a hoodie junkie – but because this one is black and goes with virtually everything, I didn’t feel justified in making a new one for myself. My d-i-l was over the other day and I asked her if she’d like a poncho – she was thrilled, tried mine one, picked out a colour and timidly asked if she could have a hood on hers!

done shruggin'...

I finished! (http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2017/04/whats-shrug.html )And it’s beautiful! And lovely and soft and so feminine! I can hardly wait to see it with her wedding dress! Got the second sleeve done and then all that needed to be done was make a band of the same edge as I used for the cast-on to trim the front edges and up around the back neck – I was able to do it in one piece and it looks perfect.

The wedding is this next weekend so Shannon came over to try it on and/or pick it up – she’s happy, her mom’s happy and I’m so pleased!!
I do hope to get a photo of her wearing it at the wedding so you can see how it looks with her dress but you know how these things go...

Is it bad of me to hope for cool weather?

progression of a design...

I have the base piece of the shrug knit and I’m really happy with it – it’s lovely and soft and the angora has a beautiful drape to it. I wanted to be sure that it would be long enough in the back before going any further so I decided that it would be good to get Shannon here to see how it was actually going to work for her – she’s like half a minute in size but reasonably tall and I thought this would be the time to see if maybe I should/could add a sleeve to it – after all, the date in June (the 17th) could be quite cool – there are no guarantees with our weather here and we’ve just had one of the worse ice storms at the end of freakin’ April so who knows?

Anyway, Shannon came and she was on the same page, that a sleeve might be a good idea – I told her I could make one, with a very snug fit and we could try it and then re-evaluate – the yarn is holding out really well - I have more than half left so I don’t expect any issues there – stay tuned! I'm heading to NC for this weekend and I have a few more samples to knit and some packing to do so I won't get to it until next week at the earliest...

some cheats....

There I was, all anxious to get going but I didn’t want to waste the yarn or the time to make a swatch (kids, don’t try this at home!) but I knew that would be incredibly foolish. With the angora, I had cast on 20 stitches and knit a few rows to get the tension that I wanted – slightly loose but not too loose - to make the yarn go farther and have the resulting fabric drapey and thinner - angora will be quite warm anyway and I didn’t want it to be like a quilted vest! I settled on T7. I unravelled that so as not to waste a drop!
 I had some alpaca that looked like the same thickness so I made a quick swatch with it. Technically, for a swatch on the LK150/6.5mm machine you want to measure 30 sts by 40 rows with the orange gauge, so I cast on 16-0-16 stitches wide and knit one full pattern repeat which is 28 rows – I was using pre-knit yarn from a previous practice swatch (😉). Pinned it out, steamed it, released it and then measured it, roughly a 6-inch square, to obtain a starting point, of 18 stitches and about 22 rows to 10 cm. So, I plugged that into my KR11 knit contour and found the mylar sheet with my original half-scale schematic from 1999! I’m ready to knit for real! I get going and I’m planning to mark my stitches on the real thing to be able to do an actual gauge as I’m knitting the back – (see ‘cheating at swatches’ http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2008/04/im-packing-up-to-go-teach-at-cardiknits.html). I’m not sure if I ever told you this but how do you hang yarn marks on the 16th needle on each side of 0 when one or both is out of work? You just count over to the next needles that are in work – on this particular row, #16 left is out of work (I pulled the #16 needles out for this photo so you could see) and looking at the right, #16 is in work but then there are two needles to the right of that out of work, so I need to count over 3 needles to the right on each one to find a working needle each side that will mark the 30 needles (NOT stitches) required for the correct measurement -OMG, hope that makes sense! Then I take a yarn tag, tie a knot in it so it won’t inadvertently pull out and hang the loop over the needles I want to mark – don’t pull this through or it will spoil your piece – you want to be able to cut these off the inside without loosing a stitch after you’ve done your measuring!

I hung my stitch tags on row 19, 40 and 61 so I have 40 rows from bottom to top for the row gauge. At row 70, I took the whole thing off on waste yarn and let it rest overnight before measuring for the final, more accurate gauge and oh my! Just like the professional I am, it is 18 stitches by 22 rows! 😉
Oh, and one more thing, on this pattern, I have set it up so when my carriage is at the right, the transfers are done, check that the correct needles are in or out of work and then two rows knit. If you are stopping to take a break, stop when the carriage is at the left. That way, you won’t make the mistake of just knitting two (more) rows before making the transfers! This is not exactly a fun pattern to rip back 20 rows because you didn’t spot the error sooner ;-(.
Hope you’re coming to Raleigh to see this thing – it’ll be your only chance!

what's a shrug?...

Have you ever had one of those times when you’ve regretted that generous offer you made to do something for someone? Well, it’s not like I am begrudging my time or efforts but I was seriously concerned that I wouldn’t be able to come up with something she’d like. Let me backtrack a bit and tell you the whole story. Manfriend’s son is getting married and I thought, it’s kind of like family and seeing as how I’ve been making things for the brides in my family, I could offer to make something for Shannon. She showed me a photo of her dress - it is beautiful with an illusion neckline and a plunging back. The wedding is mid-June and I know it’s going to be cooler in the evening at least and the venue is an old barn/farm setting that isn’t likely to be heated. Her dress was called blush but it isn’t really – the lining is blush but the lace overlay is ivory. When I made the offer, I thought I could dash off a rectangular stole easily – my thought was thread lace - and use it as a sample in one of the classes I am teaching at the Carolinas Guild Seminar (May 4, 5/17 in Raleigh, Carolinasmkg.com ).

I got out all my white/ivory/ecru/beige yarns and asked Shannon to come over and pick out the yarn. And the thing is, for some strange reason, I included this cone of French angora that has been on my shelf for at least 15 years and it’s a mid gauge thickness, 3/10– all the rest were standard gauge weight. I had a couple of garments near to show her choices of tuck lace, lace carriage laced, thread lace and my hand-transferred lace Church Cardi, done on the LK150. Wouldn’t you know, she zeroed in on the angora and the leaf and Battenburg stitch patterns of the Church Cardi and then I had to make it worse by saying that I didn’t really like shawls anyway because you have to hang on to them and it might be nice to have something more like a cape style that could be buttoned at the neck and leave your hands free. Cripes! I’ve been sweating for the past two weeks, worrying about how I was going to do this. First of all, I have only 10 ounces of the angora and I’m already worried about running out. Then, I’m thinking, sideways knit, okay but these stitch patterns are not really going to look that great sideways and add in some shortrowing and I just wanted to throw my hands in the air and say I give up!

But, you know I’d never do that… and then, yesterday, in a flash of brilliance, I remembered this cool shrug from way back in Knitwords #9, summer of '99 – I called it ‘a different shrug’ and it was knit in one piece and could be the perfect canvas for any of those lacy patterns – the cast-on edge at the lower back is curved and drapey, there are darts at the shoulder to create a cap sleeve and omg, I’m so excited! Now, if I can pull this off! ;-)