Fiber Fool

Earlier this spring, Amanda went to a sale of a local sewing guild and picked me up a few sewing patterns she thought I might like. There was one in particular, Butterick 4304 from the 70’s that I was excited about. I found some knit I had stashed and dove right in. I still haven’t done the finishing yet - apparently I can procrastinate on sewing finishing as bad as I can with knitting. But wearing that loud geometric print all over is a bit over the top for me. So, when I remembered I had 8 skeins of Sedona Red Cotton Fleece from Brown Sheep’s Factory Store in my stash I checked and it was a great match.

Because the vast majority of my knitting takes place over my lunch hour at work and occassionally down at the end of the day if things are particularly slow I need knitting that is quick to pick up and put down, which in general doesn’t mean something I’m designing. Not to mention, I learn a little something from almost every pattern I knit so it is good to knit other people’s patterns. I eventually settled on DROPS’ Mirabell, a little lace yoked short sleeve top.

Now, I had planned all along to lengthen the sleeves a bit. With my weightloss and skin needing to catch up, the nearly cap-sleeve length is not a good choice. Plus I knew we’d be headed towards cooler temps when I finished. So I had been thinking sleeves to just above the elbow. But, throw in 3 weeks of no knitting due to shoulder/neck issues and I find myself using the heater under my desk almost daily, drinking nearly a full box of Bengal Spice tea a week, and thinking a longer sleeve might not be a bad idea.

The knit of the skirt is double knit so it is thick enough to be worn this fall and winter with tights and boots. I’m also thinking the sweater might look really cute with my skinny jeans and my button down navy shirt and boots. But layering in my mind puts a bit of a monkey wrench in the sleeve length debate. I’m at a point where I can’t quite decide. But I kind of need to make a decision as I’ve completed the lower body now. I’ve seen a lot of layering shorter sleeved sweaters over long sleeve tees and even shirts or blouses but I’m certain how I feel about the look. How do you feel about layering an above the elbow sleeve over a full length tee? Shirt? Or 3/4 length sleeves over the same? Or are you strictly a long-sleeve for layering all the way type of person?

I am starting to lean a bit towards binding off the underarm and then using a provisional cast-on for the yoke stitches so I don’t have to make a decision yet but can continue to move forward. Since there is no stitch pattern to the sleeves that should work okay. That has the advantage that I could in theory try it on at different sleeve lengths with the shirts I plan to layer it with. What would you do?

Yesterday morning I bound off the last stitch on a design that has been about 6 weeks in the making. It has been a fantastic journey and one I hope to repeat in the future. It involved many swatches, two of which I blocked like the finished object (in two different weights of yarn). Now it is time to block the final object and I don’t know how to do it.

I do only have one pointed edge shawl I’ve knit, Seraphim by Miriam Felton (shown above) and I did so in a sport weight yarn (Brown Sheep’s NatureSpun Sport). It was not nearly as pointy a design as this or knit sideways to the body either so I had just pinned out each tip individually.

I’m not quite happy with the blocking job on either of the swatches for this project. Now it is time to block the final project and I’m uncertain about how to proceed. Let me show you extreme close-ups that don’t give away too many details, as I probably shouldn’t be talking about this project…

For the first swatch I used wires to block the main portion, then I used T-pins to individually block each point of this sawtooth edge. The swatch was only about a quarter of the size of the final project and I ran out of T-pins about three-quarters of the way through those. In addition to my needing to purchase at a minimum two more boxes of T-pins, it takes a long time to block each of those out. If I could have shown you a wider angle you would also see more clearly that the points were not equally blocked and I’m pretty sure I could have fussed with pin placement on the swatch for the entirety of a day and still found ones that required slight adjustment.

So, when it came time to block the fingering weight swatch I decided to try a different tactic - run my blocking wires through each point on a side and pin the center 1-3 repeats individually as needed. That way they are all pulled the same distance from the body and blocked probably as equally as is humanly possible. Absolutely a fantastic idea in principal. In practice, not so great a fit with a knitted on edging whose stitches run perpendicular to those on the body. I found I had to run the wires through two stitches for each point. If I only caught a single stitch it just drastically distorted that stitch and did not effectively block the edging. I continued on merrily thinking it was going to be great. It looked good while it was lying on the bed drying. Wrong! Notice how each point is actually two rather distinct loops? Not quite the effect I’m going for here.

Up to this point I’ve used welding rods for blocking wires. They are great for straight lines because they don’t bend and bow as easily so if you aren’t doing extreme blocking they only need pinned down at the ends. When I stopped in at MSK today I picked up their last in stock blocking wire kit. These blocking wires are probably nearly half the diameter of my welding rods. What is your experience? Will I lessen (or hope of hopes eliminate) the two-loop points with a smaller circumference blocking wire?

How would you go about blocking something with an almost saw-tooth edge like this? Keeping in mind that there are well over 100 points to be blocked in the full-size finished object?

Why don’t I turn this into a contest! Give me a suggestion and your name will go in a drawing for a free electronic copy of the pattern once it can be released to the general public. I’ll draw one more name from that pool for every 25 suggestions I get on this post. Because I’m under a deadline and need to get this blocked and photographed soon, comments will close on Friday, August 6th at 11:59pm MDT.

Would you like more chances to win?

• Share the contest on your blog and trackback or leave a comment with a link to the post in a comment (trackbacks and comments for extra entries do not count towards the 25 suggestions increments).
• Follow me on Twitter and post a tweet about the contest. Be sure to include @fiberfool in your contest tweet so it gets counted and please tweet only once per day!
• Like Designedly, Kristi on Facebook and share the contest on there. Leave a comment here with a link to your Facebook post.

I can’t wait to hear your suggestions!

I’m excited to announce some fun classes for early 2009. In addition to teaching at My Sister Knits in Fort Collins, I will now also be teaching at Nanytutu’s in Wellington, CO.

Some of the classes on the schedule:

• Archimedes 3-in-1 Hat - learn top-down, no-swatch techniques for hat and beret knitting, including a variety of techniques for starting and finishing a top-down hat.
• February Lady Sweater - for those who don’t want to spend hours reading through forums on Ravelry to help choose the right size and modification, sign up for the class and I’ll help you make the decisions right for your body.
• Triple-T Socks - for those with second sock syndrome, learn to knit two socks on two circs from the toe-up.
• EZ’s Miters - explore different methods of increasing and decreasing to create miters, then choose your favorites to make Elizabeth Zimmermann’s mitered mittens and ganomy hat from Knitter’s Almanac.
• Colorwork Hat Workshop - wanting to learn more about two-handed colorwork knitting? Learn the tips and tricks of fair isle knitting while working up a hat in this all-day workshop.

Get more detailed descriptions and the schedule on the Fiber Arts Classes page. Also, for those who use Google Calendar or other calendar or scheduling software you can view the teaching schedule in HTML (and add relevant events to your own Google Calendar), XML, or iCal formats.

This photo captures much of the weekend. Perhaps I should have stuck a few of our remote controls and our box of season 5 of X-Files in there too…

If you’ve been around this blog for too long I am guessing you are not too surprised at the number of Scandinavian knitting books in that stack. You had to have seen it coming, despite the lack of much colorwork in my FOs.

Much of that stack of books does not belong to me. There are two great volumes in there - Chatterton and Lind - that Julia kindly sent my way over a year ago after a fantastic score at an estate sale. The top book and the bottom three I have borrowed from Knitter Sansablog for further inspiration. The rest are my own, with one very new acquisition.

I just picked up Knitting in the Old Way. I have borrowed it from the library and from Ashley several times. I think combined I’ve borrowed it 5 times or so. And while I was kindly offered the opportunity to do so again, I decided at this point it is time to have it in my fiber arts library. As DH said, “sometimes the affair has gone on long enough and it is time to get married.” I suspect it is one of those books that will achieve a lovely worn in look like the Walker books. It is packed to overflowing with great insight and wisdom on sweater construction and it is well organized to make it an easy reference.

The socks in the pile there that you have seen a lot of yet not seen a lot of progress? They need frogged (yes, again) back to the completion of the heel. That was the knitting pattern that I discovered won’t work easily in the round. I think I need to form a new habit - putting in lifelines at key points when I’m designing a sock so that I can more easily rip back to a location. For toe-up like these I should have been putting in a line at the completion of the toe, the start of the heel, and the end of the heel.

I’ve got about 18 - 20 rows of lace knit after the heel that needs to come out, but it is complex enough that I can’t really place a lifeline after the fact. The elasticity of the yarn also makes it difficult to frog and pick live stitches back up. I haven’t quite steeled up the courage or gathered the patience I need to do that task yet. I suspected I was at such a point on Saturday and had it definitely confirmed on Monday at SnB. I also need to do some new stitch calculation and hope that it won’t require frogging all the way back to the toe. You would think I’d be ready. I know I’m ready to have these socks done. I love the final look, but they have been a real headache in the design phase and I just want them off the needles and onto my feet!

Any positive prayer or juju sent my way will be gladly accepted :-)

Despite the heat, the gardening, the canning and all the other craziness of summer stuff there has been a bit of knitting going on. I finally settled on a stitch pattern for the Panda Cotton toes I had done. The color combined with the stitch pattern had me thinking of a half of a ruby red grapefruit so I was thinking I’d call them ruby red, but the gals at SnB didn’t think it fit. Plus, I kind of hate to be married so closely to a specific color with the name. They thought it looked like a crystal structure. What does it look like to you?

There hasn’t been a ton of progress on this one. Partially because I’m knitting them two at a time. Partly because I still need to consult a chart and until we had printing working here I had to work out of my knitting journal which isn’t portable or TV watching friendly (not enough contrast).

I’m thinking I’m going to be trying out a new heel on these. I’m not yet sure what, but I’m feeling a bit in a rut on the heel front. I suspect the heel flap and gusset will always be near and dear to me. I have mixed it up and done some short row heels this summer, but I’m feeling like branching out :-) Do you have a favorite toe-up (or direction indifferent) heel?