The Right Tool for the Shawl

Having the right tool in the garden is essential. I've learned this the hard way on many occasions. Struggling with a badly sharpened pair of clippers does more harm than good. Trying to dig a hole with the wrong shovel will take you twice the time. Knowing this did not stop me from struggling with the wrong pair of needles for the last couple of weeks.


I've been knitting a "Haruni" shawl for a friend's wedding. When I started knitting, the only 3mm needles that I could find were some short poplar straights. These were fine for the first couple of inches, but about midway through the body of the shawl it began to weigh on the ends of my needles. I struggled forward until the day I realized that I was knitting with my head cocked at an alarming angle and one needle balanced on my leg. The other needle was perpendicular to the ceiling. My back was bent and my wrists were burning. I stopped, searched for my credit card and went online to order a 3mm circular needle. I don't want to have to tell my grandchildren the story of the shawl that gave grandma a hump.


The needle I ordered is a Knit Pro Symfonie circular. After slipping all of my stitches over to the new needle I took it for a test drive. It's the difference between eating a tin of spam with chop sticks in a cold February rain and being fed homemade waffles on a sunny Sunday morning in bed with your beloved. These needles are fantastic. They are light with just the right amount of grip. The points are expertly pointy. The purple cord and dyed wood are stylin' and the joins are smooth. I'm at a point where it's taking me about an hour to complete 8 rows of knitting, but the needles are making it a pleasure. I can't really think about the fact that I'm about to double the number of stitches when I start the border. That's going to be one of those character building exercises. Hopefully the 6 audio books I've just uploaded will numb me sufficiently that I'll knit my way to the end in a trance. It will be a close your eyes and think of England thing....I hope.
I've also started a baby cardigan in a recycled cotton yarn I bought in a moment of weakness.


I'm not wild about knitting with cotton, and this cotton (Plassard Nature, Coton Recycle) is very splitty. To be fair, it has a nice drape and the simplicity of the pattern makes the knitting tolerable. The pattern is a pretty standard baby kimono called "Bella Baby Ensemble" from "The Knitter's Book of Wool", which is a great book with a good number of classic looking patterns. The color is a soft gender neutral mint green. I can knit it without charts or counting or cursing. It's the yin to my shawl yang.

Minerva

Today is my birthday. As a treat to myself I'm going through my vintage Minerva knitting magazines and trying to add them to the Ravelry database. I know that doesn't sound like a real treat. It sounds like work, but I swear I'm enjoying myself. The combination of organization, 30's style, and knitting is pure pleasure. Plus, I don't have to feel guilty about not being productive. My parents drilled that one in so far it's never going to claw it's way out of my psyche. Must. Be. Productive. So, as I was saying, I'm flipping through my old magazines photographing these designs and although I've looked at them dozens of times I'm still blown away by their beauty.



Can you see the splits at each shoulder, and the delicate glass beads on the end of each tie? She looks so calm next to her flowering bush.
This next dress is spectacular. That's about as close as a modern woman should ever get to a bustle. She looks 12, but the dress looks mature enough to order drinks. Those sleeves could probably order the martinis for her.


How does a woman dress like that? It must take her hours just to squeeze into her foundation garments. Can you really wear a hat that small and not look like you're about to hop out of a clown car? They pull it off. I don't know how they do it.



I really love the intarsia collar and cuffs on this one. It looks like it would be deeply annoying to knit, but with a little bit of length added to the ribbing at the waist this would be a very wearable sweater. I think it would make me look like a lady detective.


This next lady is sporting a bow that ought to be on top of a car at a dealership, and a hat that has ears. I'm not completely sold on this one, but the tunic does have some nice details.


I don't have any desire to wake up and worry about whether or not I've got a clean pair of gloves. I know that dressing like this isn't possible for someone with children, or a garden, or a kitchen, or a waist, or dogs. Oh god, can you imagine what a dog would do to a knitted dress? Still....I could probably get away with wearing that first lace blouse with a sturdy linen skirt. I really don't have time for new projects. Thank goodness I still have time for fantasizing. I'll leave you with the tam o'shantered sailing Scottswoman. Imagine the kind of life you would have to lead in order to justify this ensemble.

Planting, Spinning and Waiting

I have spring fever and have abandoned my knitting to spend more time outside. It's not quite warm yet but we've had a week of warmish days. I've been pruning, planting and hauling compost. My master lists are tucked into my moon planner and I open it carefully every day, as if it were a sacred text, checking to see when to plant what, and what to plant where. I can't stop smiling even though my back feels like it's one kink short of a Z . As if things weren't good enough, Jeanette called yesterday to tell me that she's back in her own home. We went to visit her today, and she has flowers popping up all over the place.


On the wool front, I've got two new hanks of freshly washed handspun. The first (pictured below) is posing with my lettuces.




It's a blend of dyed merino, yak down and some black Jacob. I think it's an aran weight. The next yarn is a worsted weight blend of dyed merino and cashmere.



I think it's destined to become a baby hat. Both of these skeins look like spring to me. Maybe that's just the spring fever talking.

Snow Drops and Sandwiches

The other day we went for a walk down by the Vers river.



This time of year there are carpets of snow drops along the banks.



The water is a delicate blue green.



It's a peaceful place. It feels like no one comes here. Everything is so still.




The Romans built an aqueduct along the cliffs because they liked the taste of this water. You can still find little well houses where later inhabitants tapped into the aqueduct's tunnels.



We finished off the walk with peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. It was a very good way to enjoy the final days of winter.

Little Signs

My witch hazel is witchy. There's one branch that decided to bloom yellow instead of red. The flowers are just starting to open so you'll have to look closely to see it. The whole bush is red except for this one little branch. It's remarkable. I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again, I love this plant. It's going to get a spot right next to our bedroom window, so that we can wake up to it every morning. It's always doing something interesting.
There are also some crocuses popping up under the plum trees. You can see one peeking over the shoulder of the baby cardigan.


This is my Jade Baby Cardigan. It's exactly what I wanted it to be. I ended up knitting the sleeves from either end of the same ball in order to get as much length as possible out of the paltry 270 yards I had (J-Knits Superwash Me, DK in pueblo). It's a light weight cardigan, so I don't mind the short sleeves. I think it will be just right for a spring baby.
I did make one small mistake right at the very beginning, and didn't notice it until I was well past the sleeves. See if you can spot it. I really don't think it was worth ripping back for. Hint, it's in the lace on the right hand side.


The buttons were bought at La Droguerie in Paris. They're like a cross between lace and snowflakes. I was saving them for a special project. They tend to catch a little when you button and unbutton the sweater. They're not very practical, but since babies only wear these kinds of sweaters for a month or two, I'm not going to worry about it. Life is too short, and these buttons are too pretty.

Unexpected Happiness

Sometimes when life gets really hard the best thing to do is to stop and look at all of the little things.


My marmalade and quince paste came out perfectly.


A knitter friend gave me a brown ball of dried plant, and after about three hours in a little water, it opened into this.


It's a rose of Jehrico.


I'm knitting a baby cardigan with no pattern, and it's working out beautifully.


Even the button holes are perfect. That almost never happens.

Couch-scapades

My husband and I have been couch warming for the past couple of days.


We thought that we had dodged our son's cold. Actually, we did dodge it for a day. We took our usual combination of homeopathic remedies and felt great. The following day I was feeling so good that I celebrated with a coffee eclair followed by a half a bar of chocolate. This is a stupid thing to do if you're trying to avoid a cold. My husband did roughly the same thing, and we both started feeling bad about an hour after the last piece of chocolate had finished melting in our mouths.
The positive side of this is that the cold has given me a chance/excuse to do some knitting. In an effort to avoid another failed sweater I have changed my strategy. I spent my first day on the couch making these.


These are swatches with nice blue note cards attached. I had entirely too much fun filling out the cards. Organization is such a turn on. Don't you think?


I know people usually swatch for a specific project, but I think this may be where I've been going wrong. One days worth of swatching has taught me a lot about myself. The first thing that it has taught me is that I am a way looser knitter than your average bear. I knew this, but I didn't know exactly how much looser I was. For a project that calls for bulky yarn and size 9 needles, I may need to pick a worsted weight yarn and size 6 needles. Shocking, I know. Before I discovered this fact, I would automatically drop a needle and a pattern size. I (wrongly) figured that this was enough to ensure a good fit. Now that I see that in writing, it seems delusional. So the key here is that I've discovered that not only do I have to change needle sizes, but I may have to change the weight of the yarn as well. Instead of picking out a pattern and then picking out a yarn, I'm going to swatch every yarn I own until I get a fabric I like, take notes, and pick a pattern accordingly.
The other thing I learned is that yarn labels lie. Worsted is not always worsted. I can not rely on the label, or Ravelry or even a well intentioned fellow knitter. I'm going to use classifications like worsted, dk, aran, sport, fingering, and bulky as guides, not absolutes. You can't look at a yarn and tell how it's going to knit up. I've got pretty good eyes, and I can pick out two yarns that look for all the world like they're exactly the same weight, but when I knit them up on the same size needles and I get two completely different fabrics. Fiber content is a factor, but even with two "aran" wool yarns you can get massive differences in gauge depending on the spin, the crimp of the wool, your mood, whether your watching an action adventure or a romance (this has actually happened to me), the weather, the sheep's diet...you get my point.
The hours on the couch spent wiping my nose, popping Tylenol, knitting little squares and watching the first season of "Mad Men" were bliss. I've decided that "Mad Men" is the "Dallas" of this decade. There are a lot of rich white folks, some sexism, cheating, fist fights, shocking amounts of booze, and a good measure of corporate hooha, but I digress. At some point, I paused the drama and crawled up to the yarn hole to raid a bin for more swatching material.
Up until this point I had thought of these stash yarns as specific sweaters. Each yarn had been purchased with a pattern in mind. Now, things are different. Every yarn is looking for it's soulmate. There are no more arranged marriages between a yarn and a pattern.
While looking at my finished stack of swatches I had another thought. I'm going to try to knit my way from one bin to another, starting with these yarns. Why not? I like all of them. I've got enough of each yarn for a sweater, or at least a vest. It's a stash busting/sweater knitting two fer. It also means I won't have to pull my whole closet apart looking for a specific yarn. In an attempt to avoid another sweater knitastrophy, I've made myself a few rules.

1. The sweater I choose must have been knit by at least 5 people on Ravelry, so that I'm not the (sucker, Guinea pig, lab rat) person who has to spend hours sorting out pattern errata.

2. The sweater must look good on most of the people who've knit it. I've noticed that some sweaters are much more figure friendly than others. I need to knit something that looks good on everyone, that way if I flub up the size I can pass it on.

3. I'm going to error on the small side. I thought that it was, when in doubt, better to knit a larger size. Maybe that's true for some people, but most of my friends are medium to small. If I have to give a sweater away it will give me a lot more options if it isn't an XXL. Add to that, knitwear stretches out over time. It almost never gets smaller, unless your husband felts it in the washing machine. The final argument is that finishing a huge hunk of knitting only to find that it's way too big is more demoralizing than knitting a smaller bit of knitting, only to find that it's too small.

4. I must achieve gauge before beginning. This is not optional.

5. I must check for errata every time. This is also not optional

6. I must read (most) peoples' Ravelry notes before I begin. There's plenty of good info in other people's notes, especially when it comes to sizing.

7. I must read and re-read the pattern all the way through before beginning.

Following these criteria, and using my new swatch system, I've chosen to knit this. This is "Rosamund's Cardigan" by Andrea Pomerantz. It can be found in the Fall 2009 issue of "Interweave Knits".


I chose this sweater for a couple of reasons. It's a cardigan. People liked knitting it. Most people who started it finished it. It's knit from the top down, which means I can try it on as I go. It can be made to be reversible. Yeah, I know, reversible stuff is cool. The other people who have knit it had relatively few problems with the pattern, and it looks good on almost everybody. Looking at the photo in the magazine I would not have guessed that it would look good on most body types, but I swear it does. It's been in my queue for awhile, but not at the top of my list of things to knit.


The yarn was really the deciding factor. It's called "Ecolana", and it's made by Aslan Trends. It's a blend of alpaca and merino, which gives it a slight drape and soft shine. There are some white guard hairs which give it a fuzzy look. It's not unlike the yarn that this pattern calls for. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be "the one", but even if it's not, at least I'll be able to give it to someone who will love it.