Done and New Project Thoughts

Gausta is done. Turned out long, but the men in my family tend to have long torsos so I should find a taker for this one.

Next up is a simplified and modified version of Suitable Fair Isle by Lori Ihnen from Knitters Magazine, Fall of 1996. 

I have had three skeins of chocolate brown and about the same amount of a light tan, called parchment, worsted for forever. They seem to like each other very much.  The problem is that they add up to about 600 grams and the worsted sweaters I've been making are 730 to 760 grams. I was looking for ideas that were mostly two colors, but with some bit of otherness. This model looks like it will work. Instead of doing the while fair isle thing, the wide bands will be just chocolate and parchment. The narrow bands will be black background and red for the pattern. Same red and black I just used for Gausta. The narrow bands are edged by a few rows of yet another contrast color, but I don't think it adds that much, so I'm skipping those.

I also think the welts will be black, just to make sure there is enough of the browns.

Other modifications will be gauge, of course and making a fully fashioned sleeve, of course, and probably making it a pullover. The model is a V neck, but I'm leaning towards my normal crew neck. That decision is weeks away.

In other knitting news, I am finished with the first draft of all the writing for TKGA Level 2, and all the knitting. I spent this morning working through formatting and flagging where I need to add or relocate references. Tomorrow I plan to take on the bibliography, which will be a pretty big job. I expect I will want to rework a few swatches. So, there is quite a bit of work to do yet. I hope to have it ready to go in a few weeks.

Time Warp

Oh look! More repeats!

Just divided front and back at the armholes.

I hear about sleeve island. I get it. The body is done, but the project is not. Starting sleeves is like starting again on the same stupid thing.

When I can, I do sleeves first. I like the spinning around and how the length grows so quickly. Such excitement at the beginning of the project.

When I start the body, I'm astonished at how long it takes to get around the pattern once. Sooooo slow.

Then, it is time to decrease for the armholes and everything speeds up again.

That is where I am today.

Oh, and I made these socks for the TKGA Level II. I still need to finish my history of knitting report, buy a binder, then check the whole package.

Nordic Sweater Body Coming Along

Four repeats done on the body; planning five and a half before starting the pattern to separate the grey from the black. Not bad progress.

I also finished knitting an argyle sock for the TKGA Level II certification. I started that project in January and hope to finish it this month. 

Quite a lot of writing for the certification, but I'm mostly done with that as well. I have the last half of a report on the history of knitting to finish, then a review of all the work to make sure it is all correct and ready to go.

Sleeves and Choices

I finished the sleeves over the weekend for the current project.

Thanks for all the advice. There were suggestions that I look for similar yarn.  I'm not really interested in trying to match that grey yarn. It was in unlabeled hanks and quite old.

Part of my game for working through the stash is to figure out how to incorporate what I have. So, in a way, this hank of bad yarn provided some pleasurable inspiration.

I played a bit on StitchFiddle with some lice but was not happy with what I came up with.

I did find some charcoal Sesame4 so I'm going with the black bottom/grey top and will use the charcoal for the little border pattern.  My goal is to finish this project in April so if I work a few inches most days I can get it done.

Nutz

One of the challenges of working with vintage yarn is that sometimes you encounter the unexpected. I find myself delighted by the spring and yardage of the old Bernat Sesame 4 and wish that product was still available.

Yesterday, I found that one of my hanks of mystery grey wool was ruined. For some reason there was a cut about 3/4 through the hank.

So, where I once had plenty of yarn to make a pullover using the pattern from the Sandness Gausta pattern, I am now short. While I have plenty of red, I will have 6 ounces of grey, and my estimate is that I need about 8 ounces to finish as planned.

I brainstormed with my husband and came up with several options. I rejected just placing the pattern on the front and also not interested in making a crop. Below are really terrible drawings describing the choices in play. Imagine the grey spots and scribbles to be the very organized Gausta pattern.

Feel free to comment on any of them or suggestion an additional option either here or on Ravelry.

For what it is worth, I have three 4 ounce skeins of worsted in black and 8 ounces of white that can be added to the mix.

Stitch Fiddle diagrams that are more comprehensive:

Choice 1

Choice 2

Stash Thinking

I joined this "Race to the Bottom" thing on Ravelry. I was in it last time, but the debacle that was the Henry VII tripped me up. I do find these things motivating, and it challenged me to reevaluate the worsted stash that I still have.

This Ravelry group has me thinking again about choices. I decided years ago that I prefer making sweaters. Socks, hats, scarves, blankets don't do it for me. The idea of hand knitted dish cloths is baffling. The other things I think end up in the back of a drawer for the most part. So far, most of the sweaters I make get worn.

There is a lot of talk about "sweater quantities". Since I decided to concentrate on sweaters that idea frames my thinking, but not in the sense that I have enough of a particular yarn to make a sweater. Instead, I have learned that for a medium adult sweater I use about 750 grams of worsted wool. I use the stitch fiddle application to figure out stitch counts when working out color schemes. Those get moved to a spread sheet where I do the calculations to figure out how many grams of each color I need to work a pattern.

Sure, there is some fudging that goes on.

So, last week I organized most of the remaining stash into sweater quantity groups. Looks like I have the makings for eight sweaters. I may re-arrange a few more times, but what that tells me is that I can see the end of this worsted weight project.

Oh, I also finished this sleeve, and started the second.