Another Project Completed

 The vintage graphic sweater made with vintage yarn is finished and blocked. In general I am pleased with the result.

I do need to watch out for gauge differences when I use a slip stitch though. I make increases on the sleeve cuffs as a matter of procedure, but not normally on the hem. Here, you see a bit of flare, but when it is being worn it is not noticeable.

Then again, there are so many details I should be more careful about in my knitting. I received my TKGA Level 2 box back, and well, I will be doing a lot of the work again. It is a well timed and deserved bash on the head. On the bright side, I'm learning about issues I either did not know I had or had decided to overlook. Like seed stitch. Even better, I am learning how to fix those issues.

Level 2 is mostly about seaming and finishing skills. I'm a whole lot better than I was, and I actually understand the differences in seaming stockinette and reverse stockinette. Honestly, I did not realize there was a difference. Now, I am much wiser, but still sloppy.

Here is a peek at the next sweater. Please tell me if it looks like an odd-ball sweater to you. It will be going on semi-hold as I work through TKGA Level 2 again.

I suppose that would mean that I think people are reading this and they actually consider hitting the comment button. 

Sigh.

Evolution of Stash Management

All the knitting is done except for the collar. I have several hours of working ends first.

While I was defiantly confident about having enough grey yarn, I became anxious just before the armhole decreases. As it turned out, I was right the first time. I finished with about 25 grams left. It was a good idea to not use the main color for the cuffs and welts as I would have surely run short.

Two of the color bands represent one-skein (four ounce)  members of the stash. I had eight ounces of the light yellow and used six. Would you consider this to be an odd-ball project?

I'm getting close to the bottom of the worsted stash. It is causing me to ruminate on what an odd ball actually is, and how to identify that I am finished with this self-imposed quest.

One could say that the last eight or so projects were odd ball projects. I did not have enough yarn for any single project and I did not collect the yarn with projects in mind. Instead, I trolled eBay accumulating the discards of others. I figured then that at about 50 cents/ounce it was a good deal. I suppose it was until I realized that I had a lot of wonderful lots but no real plan and no real projects.

After trying to organize what I had again and again I finally came to a strategy that I have been following the past few years. I found that I resisted using yarns where I had twelve or more ounces. I felt that that was enough for part of a sweater. Once I figured that out, I focused only on one weight and grouped the yarns into sweater sized projects. For some I bought a color to blend them together. The challenge was to use only stash.

I learned that sixteen ounces of vintage worsted was enough for half a 40" adult sweater. This is important as many multi-color sweaters depend upon a background color to provide continuity and a harmonious look. The sweater above used 13 ounces. I figure about 1.5 ounces for the welts (cuff, collar, waist), so an easy modification is to substitute something for the edges if I find myself a few ounces short of half.

The next two projects are true odd-ball projects, and represent the easiest approach to oddballs: Enough of one color for background and bands of coordinating color. The goal is to make them look intentional, like the one above.

Circles and Squares

Two sleeves - just like that. The slightly larger gauge sure speeds the progress. Woe to me when I beat through all the worsted and tackle the lighter gauges.

As far as quantities, I was a bit worried about the background color. I began the body with 9 ounces, or 4 1/2 two ounce balls. Paper and head trip calculations drove me to knit like a mad person through the first ball. After measuring and recalculating, I am now confidant that I WILL HAVE ENOUGH!

Whew.

That also means that I am past the first pattern repeat on the body. Photo of that next week.

Seems like I have had quantity issues the last few projects, and it is nice to not have to go there this time.

I'm finding this pattern more difficult than many. The shapes are mostly different, and different by just a little bit. I must pay attention on each row all the way to the middle. Sometimes I get distracted, and have to pull a row or two out. I filled in a circle that should be open or made a solid shape instead of a hollow space, or that one is a stitch off.

I also learned from the sleeves that the pattern is not symmetrical, so I decided to mirror the back and the front. That way the patterns will match at the shoulders. This means I read the pattern front to back, then back to front. Another source of confusion and mistakes.

I do like how it is turning out. It is a lovely mix of organized and slightly off, modern and dated.

RetroVogue

Next up on the worsted weight work list is this number from Vogue, 1997. It was designed for DK weight and a 24 stitches/4 inches gauge, but it's looking fine in worsted at 22 stitches/4 inches. I loved the graphics since the magazine came out and I'm happy to finally be working it. Of the written pattern, again, I am simply using the graphic. I have 30 ounces of the light grey, which should be OK even though the background color is a bit more than half of the stitches. I am using  linen stitch with three odd balls of grey for the cuffs, collar and waist welt to save the background color for the graphic sections.

I like the way it is turning out.

I'm also trying this thing from Arenda Holliday's blog. She marks every increase and decrease while she is knitting. I think she does it so that she can write the pattern later off of the markers. My situation is that I am somewhat haphazard when it comes to sleeve increases. I go for every forth row, but if I forget, I just put them in when I remember. Eventually I get the the right stitch count, but the sleeves are not exactly the same. Most people do not notice, but I'm trying to up my technique and skills to the next level. That means the sleeves should match. I'm about 40 rows into the second sleeve and so far, so good.

I finished up the KidLin scarf over the weekend. It was exactly the fill in project I was hoping. Not too hard, but busy enough to keep my attention. I would have liked it a little longer, but not a whole skein longer. It is light and floaty and will make a nice accessory in the winter or a gift for someone.

Something Different

I finished the suitable fair isle jacket over the weekend. All the knitting and some of the finishing was done by Friday. There was a bit of a glitch in easing in the sleeves as I misread a pattern that I have used at least ten times. There was always 9" between the beginning of the armhole and the beginning of the shoulder bind offs. For some reason I read 7.5" which is where the neck should begin if one is making a crew neck. I ended up with 8" and figured I could ease in the extra 1/2 inch, but discovered that I really was an inch short.

By this time I had already cut open the work and attached the button bands, so no going back. I tried the sleeveless piece on and was grateful for the generous armhole that the pattern provided, so missing an inch did not cause a fit problem. It did create a sleeve cap problem as I was not going to smash that much fabric into the resulting space. So, I pulled out the sleeve cap a few inches and reworked that part. Success. A complete project that fits.

As far as new projects, my brain rejected jumping into yet another worsted sweater. Yes, that is my stated goal for now until the worsted stash is reduced to oddballs. But I've been cleaning and re-organizing and longing to work with something else.

So I did.

I acquired this KidLin years ago on a half price shelf. Two skeins of pink and five of a very light grey. I wanted something not too complicated that would be airy and light and smooshy. A free pattern on Ravelry named tumbling blocks suited those requirements and is the sort of pattern that can be worked until the yarn runs out then cast off.

 Perfect.

It was good timing to start that on Tuesday because my husband had a medical scare that took us to the emergency room for five hours on Wednesday. Working on finishing would have been too messy, so it was nice to have already established the pattern for this project. Now, a week later, I have worked through one skein and started the second. It looks like it will finish up between 48 and 50 inches.

Perfect.

Much Suitable Progress

We took a car trip this weekend so there was considerable car knitting. Yesterday, my husband had a mohs procedure, hopefully his last for a wile, so there was some doctors waiting room knitting. Now that I think about it, most of the first sleeve was made while he was getting a minor knee surgery. So, this is a car and doctor's office knit. 

Funny how projects can be associated with major events. The Drops squares sleeves were knit while visiting my FiL in the hospital. The Dale Inverness sleeves were knit on the trip to his memorial. 

Needless to say, it's been a weird year so far with all the minor medical stuff for my husband and the huge emotional slap when his dad passed.

In any event, here is a weekly progress picture. The front is done. The photo sort of shows the steek for the cardigan opening and the slant of the neck on the left. 

I may have enough yarn to make this a full length jacket after all. I started the body with 180 grams of the brown. 80 grams lasted past the half way point of the central motif. Seem is I end with over 45 grams I should be able to make it work. It would not be that hard to again, snip off the ribbing, knit up the band I left off, then graft it back together. 

I'll weigh what I have left when I finish the back before making any decision. In the current configuration the ribbing lands just at my natural waist, which is fine.

Short Again, so Make it Short

So, two sleeves now, but not without a small kerfuffle. I got near the end and realized I had made a mistake in the graphic near the sleeve.

Grumble.

Ignore or fix? Ignoring would be very easy. My husband would see it, because he has eyes that work that way. I'll probably give away the sweater, so why would that matter. On the other hand, I've grafted whole sweaters before and a little sleeve is not that big a deal. The pattern has a few single color rows, so easy peasy. My original intention with this brown and tan yarn was to create a graphic that flipped dominant/background color every stripe. I have about the same amount, and that would have worked out.

Here is the mistake. Can you see it on the left?

And fixed. No worries.

Yet, this project still in trouble.  I again find myself short of yarn. Instead, I decided this already made pattern would work better. The patterns didn't flip well because part of the rhythm of the piece is the dark bands on either side. So now, with the sleeves done, I'm running long on the tan and short on the brown.

After considering some options, I've decided to make this a jacket instead of a pullover. V neck like the pattern model. That should save some yards, but not enough. So, cropped is stylish.... let's crop it.  Regular black welt, but the body will begin with the second red/black graphic. Time to cast on. 

Another Sleeve

The suitable project is on her way. Here is a picture of the sleeve on my messy desk. I wasn't sure about the color combination at first, but I'm liking it better in the picture. I should get to 17" about the end of the current pattern stripe, so it is coming along.

I mailed my TKGA L2 package yesterday. Nothing to do but wait and see.

Thunderstorms rolling through this week. Husband had minor knee surgery and is recovering well. Weird MIL is continuing to be weird. 

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.

Working the Stash

2019 makes it three years, I think, of concentrating on my worsted weight stash. I've made quite a dent, and maybe will be through it this year.

I told my husband a few weeks ago that I feel somewhat responsible for my stash. I thought about just dumping a bunch of it at Goodwill or some other outlet, but that feels wrong.

Instead, I fuss over who goes with what and how I can create complete adult sized sweaters out of what I have. It is a puzzle I have created for myself that has no real reason. Sure, I can make scarves, blankets, felted bags, and other projects where size and fit do not really matter, but that is not what I want to do.

So, the red from the Henry VII that was abandoned has found a new place as part of a two color sweater. The weird reasoning is that I want some red for a mostly brown sweater that is queued up next.






After working this much I think it looks like a nice pattern for Christmas pajamas.

I finished the Inverness sweater. The sleeves lined up nicely with the body, don't you think?

Been a While

Well, Henry 7 is history. Frogged and ready for another try with another design. I just was not liking it and even worse, was not liking to work on it.

In the mean time, we moved back into our house. Yeah! That is another story, but the bulk of the flood chaos is behind us now.

Oh, knitting. I made this brioche sweater using five kinds of yarn. I wanted a shawl collar the size of Texas and it worked out pretty well.

 This one is all stash yarn and uses the Drops 44-6 pattern.

 This one is mostly stash yarn. The dark blue is from Knit Picks. You may recognize the colors from Kiyomi (orange), the turquoise Ocean Glow, and Lemony. It is a copy of a Dale of Norway design called Inverness. It is a nice stash buster if you have about 3 ounces of the three pattern colors.

Maybe I'll be finished in May

The arms are attached, and I'm working on the yoke. Have I lost my mojo again, or am I simply not enjoying this pattern?  I can't tell.

Five Skeins In

Compared to last year, this project is going soooooo slooooowly. I managed to finish the first repeat and I'm about to the end of the fifth skein of yarn. I still have issues with bad spots, so there will be a lot of ends to work in when I'm finished.  I hope to have the yoke put together by the end of March. We will see.

Not Worried Any More

So, where are we with the Henry VII?

I started on the body and finished one four oz skein with less than 4" complete. Since the yarn is vintage there are a lot of bad sections causing me to toss 10-20 yards with each skein so far.

This was trouble.

The body needs to join the sleeves at the same 18", 1.5 pattern repeat place. If one skein only made 4" then I would need all my remaining six skeins just to get to the yoke. Great.

I kept on, because I had no other ideas. I'm pleased to find that that border was just a yarn eater. I am now most of the way through the first page of pattern and have worked through less than a skein. Now, the calculation is that I get to the armhole/yoke using 2.5 skeins and have over 3 skeins to finish the project.















Yay!

Two Sleeves

I'm done with the second sleeve for Hank 7. Easier going now that I have a feel for the pattern. I plan to work the body on a circular so that should speed up the progress.

I used almost one skein on the first sleeve. I was eight rows from finishing the second sleeve and encountered a series of bad spots in the yarn. The joys of working with vintage. I kept splicing until I got to the next to last row and realized it turned into a big mess. So, I ripped and reknit and am much happier now.

I'm planning for a 42" body. Using the sleeves as a giant swatch that means 3.5 repeats per side.

Awkward.

But, I have read Meg Swanson, so I know that I can just center my pattern and make a fake seam. So, that is what will happen.