Tuesday, December 8, 2009

My give up

... for now anyway.

I am being punished for some previous crime against knitting, I just know it.

After going on and on and on about how much I wanted a dark red heavy cabled sweater I gave in and bought a bunch of Berrocco Inca Gold in Vino on sale and the Vivian pattern.

This yarn is lush. I love it. It makes lovely popping cables and its soft but firm at the same time - Also favorite shade of red ever.

This pattern is gorgeous and flattering and intricate and interesting.

This sweater when its done will be the hotness.

Now, I was doubly good about this. I swatched the yarn before I invested in the sweater's worth and by swatch I mean I knit half a freaking sleeve.

Seriously.

My swatch is over a foot long. I used half a ball of yarn to do it. I used two needles sizes because one looked pretty close but I went down anyway in case it blocked out some (it did).

I washed it.

I blocked it.

I carried it around in my knitting bag for a week and took it out to pet it and reconfirm that yes, the gauge is workable and yes the cables look good, and yes the seed stitch is lovely.

Now - Technically the pattern calls for aran/bulky yarn and Inca Gold is definitely a worsted weight. But this is fine. Other people have successfully made this pattern in worsted yarns and I went through and read all their notes.

I want this to fit with zero ease, but I want that to be zero ease over something more than a cami. So I measure myself with a dress shirt on and then with a light v-neck sweater and a t-shirt and figure that to accommodate the slightly finer yarn and half stitch off of gauge I have that I should go up one size from my bust. Especially since my last sweater was massively too small.

All this sounds reasonable, yes?

One reason I was really feeling this pattern is that its knit in one piece from the bottom up so I can try it on as I go and adjust as necessary. I'm pretty sure while I'm casting on that this is going to work out extra well because *if* for some reason the size I've chosen looks like its going to be a little loose come the end of the shaping I can do some extra decreases in the waist and slim it down a size at the bust line. I am a little on the hippy side anyway so this works perfectly in my head.

I have knit the first 25 rows or so this week which gives me about 5 inches of fabric and I decide that this is a good point to try it on.

I don't really need to tell you how that went do I? (Just for the record this time it was too big. By something like 4 inches - and i tried it on over jeans and with a sweater on)

Thankfully I was only 1 ball in and so I quite un-neurotically (aside from the brief stomping fit and banging of my head against the wall and cussing) pulled it all out and set it aside.

I will try this again in January.

Maybe 2010 will be my sweater year because clearly 2009 is not.

(Thankfully Inca gold frogs well.)

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Oh! Shiny!


spindleset2
Originally uploaded by kleighb
One of the women at my Thursday night knitting group has been working on making a line of drop spindles and I've been having entirely too much fun playing with them as she's worked out how to put them together. Tonight she brought in the first finished batch and they are quite lovely.

One of them (made out of a cool sounding wood that I've already forgotten the name of... it starts with a "Ch" sound I think. Its pretty and kind of iridescent) decided that it needed to come home with me. Because it loves me.

Which is good because I love it back.

(It is the smaller of the two in the picture, the big one is an earlier prototype that came home with me awhile ago. It is also very nice but more of a plying weight at a bit over 1.5oz - the little lovely is 5/8oz. which is right in my favorite weight range. And Oh! their cutouts match! Its like having a paired set!)

I sort of lost interests in top whorls after I first learned to spin, but I am rediscovering the appeal here. I have never had one that's done a thigh roll quite so nicely. And she does spin and spin and spin and spin....

Also did I mention the pretty shiny part?