Pioneer!

I’m not sure, but I do feel the word “pioneer” almost always demands an exclamation point after it.  Not in a commanding sense, as in attracting the attention of said pioneer to yourself, but in a joyous, almost cantabile way.  In my head it sounds like Ralph Wiggum singing the opening line of “O Canada”.  But I digress.

I have finished something, yaaaay!  As is almost always the way with these things you keep on putting off, once you actually sit down and make yourself finish a garment, it goes by far more quickly than you were anticipating.  I only had one sleeve to do on Pioneer (Rav link), the collar and the bind off to re-do on the other sleeve but, as I am discovering more and more, procrastination seems to rear its ugly head in me, even more so when garments need something unpicking.  It’s can be quite soul destroying.  Even when it’s not, like it was with Pioneer (just a sleeve edging, not much, 30 minutes work max), the “why destroy when I could be creating?” mentality comes over me.  Ho hum.  Anyway, back to Pioneer(!).  I enjoyed making this.  Despite some gauge issues at the beginning (20sts over 10cm on 3.75mm in SPORT WEIGHT?!), I cast on quickly and within a few short evenings I had almost reached the underarm section.  Then I went away to Stratford (this was supposed to be travel knitting) but the allure of Dark Isle socks came too much.

Pattern: Pioneer by kbomb (it’s from Knitty and free but I can’t find it, it’s the Rav link)
Yarn: Louisa Harding Kashmir DK
Needles: 4.5mm (body) and 4mm (neckline edging)

Modifications:

–  No crochet neck edging, I can’t crochet.  Instead I redid the moss stitch edging from the sleeves and bottom edge.  This also added enough so that I can wear it without anything underneath and not feel like a scarlet woman.
–  Lengthened sleeves – not really a short sleeved t shirt fan
–  I added a couple of increases at the sides of the back panel, the original pattern has no shaping at all and, let’s face it, my body shape is by no means the body shape of woman modelling the top on the pattern.
–  I changed the increasing part of the pattern by not doing yo, I didn’t like the effect (yos are for lace and buttonholes and I have yet to be convinced otherwise).  Instead I did coordinating M1 increases.  An increase row went a little like this:

Knit to in pattern to one stitch before marker, RLinc, k1, sm, k1, LLinc and so on a so forth.  I thinking that’s right, I always get my LLincs and RLincs mixed up.  Do whichever you prefer!  Here’s what it looks like:

I have turned it upside down so it looks like it does when you’re knitting it.  Sort of.

 

–  The thing I love the most and am most proud of about this pattern is the finishing.  I wanted to give it a little extra something so I decided to try out a tubular bind off.  As with most new techniques, my shining light in the woolly darkness is TechKnitter.  Immensely useful and knowledgeable lady.  If you have not added her blog to your Google Reader feed, do it.  Do it NOW!!  I’ll wait, it’s fine.  Done it?  Honestly?!  Ok, onwards!  Link to the tutorial is here.  However, I only did one of each set up row and in moss stitch pattern:

Round one: Purl over every knit stitch and slip every purl stitch
Round two: Slip the purl stitches you’ve just done and knit all the slipped stitch (ie over the previous round’s purls).
Follow the whole slipping stitched onto alternate needles and graft together as described by Her Techness.

Try it.  It’s a damn sight easier when you’ve got yarn and needles betwixt your crafty hands.  It took me a while to figure out which combination worked best but I’m quite happy with how it turned out.  Photographic evidence:

I’m not convinced it’s my bind off in shining armour I have been looking for but I like it, it makes a difference from the traditional cast off and looks neater.  I also tubularly bound off (??!!) at the hem but I messed the grafting up.  So no photos of that, I prefer to hide my shame.

More generally, this is a really nice pattern, I think it’s a good starter project for anyone new to topdown projects.  It’s simple enough and the cable motif keeps you interested.  Ooo, speaking of the cable pattern, here’s the back.

The yarn is nice and springy and I’m hoping it’ll get even softer after a wash.  I’m not a big one for soaking and blocking, I appreciate its role in the knitting process and I WILL get into it one day but when I’ve finished something, I just want to get it on!  Now all I have to do is finish the other three cardigans and jumpers I have hidden around the house.

Loose Ends

The other day, I cast off a delightful two-nighter of a project (Beanpole Beanie – Rav link) and found myself at a loose end.  I had nothing to do.  I say nothing, that term is relative.  I only had two things to do, both of them jumpers.  Royale needed a sleeve (still does) and Displeasure, well, the less said about that the better.  It doesn’t need a lot of work, but I’m still angry with it.  One of these days I will finish it and then write a dissertation-length post about it and why IT ANGERS ME!!!!!!!!  I find jumpers tricky things, the idea may be simple, the knitting basic but then you run into the roadblock that is tailoring and fit.  Fit is why Displeasure has annoyed me, fit is why I knit to the specified measurements of Royale, fully in the knowledge that I would have to rip back a good few centimetres.  However, Displeasure aside, I have started to accept this in good heart and of zen mind and go about my knitting/ripping business.  Hey, my body is just like that, why bother, it’s not going to change your shoulder to boob ratio any time soon.

However, I find sometimes that fitting a jumper to yourself can take more time (factoring in procrastination here) than the actual making of the garment, even though (with a helpful friend/partner/lover/accomplice/mother) all this rigmarole can take only a few minutes.  You put the thing on inside out, get that special someone to tack in the sleeves and, boom, you sew it in.  Simple.  But it’s still annoying sometimes and with my patience level (not high), I tend to leave projects that won’t be perfect straightaway to fester on the table next to my chair for a few days (/weeks/months).  Maybe I should stick to hats, scarves and socks.

So, back to my point.  I was at a loose end, not being in the mood to finish anything, and I started browsing around for new things to do.  I already sort of have one, this cabled jacket from Drops design.  I want to knit it in Sirdar Romance which I have used before and really quite like considering the closest it’s been to a natural fibre is what I’ve rammed it against in the Box of Stash.  I wanted a close-fitting cropped cardigan.  I had also decided that I wanted to repeat the cabled motif on the sides of the cardi and adjusted the ribbing accordingly.  It didn’t really work (K2, P4 looks a bit odd at the best of times and having a K4 at the sides looked, well, odder).  So right now I’m sort of up in the air about what to do with, to P4 or not P4, cable or no cable.  Hmmmm.

I have been trying to knit from stash (there’s a reason I bought all this yarn, for goodness’ sake) but some (ok, a lot of) Araucania Lonco has me stumped.  It’s light fingering mercerised cotton and I cannot find a pattern for it anywhere.  I tried knitting a Jaden with it held double but after extensive reknitting and ripping and reripping I lost the will to live.  Knitting is supposed to be about joy, not suicide.  I may try it again, maybe my problem was that I held it double.  Someone else did it in this yarn and it came out lovely.  Anyway, I have found this pattern from Drops (again, feel the Drops love here).  I am keeping everything crossed that this goes OK.

In other news I am going away on Friday to Stratford -upon-Avon for the weekend, yaaaaay!  I’m going with my three best girlfriends from uni and it’s been ages since we’ve been together, as always with these things.  Stratford is supposed to be lovely, I feel the papparazzo coming out in me.  Now to decide what knitting to take with me…

Why I love knitting

So a while back I wrote about why I hated knitting, or, rather, how having knitting as a (fairly serious) hobby can get in the way of your other hobbies, in my case, films.  However, there is just so so SO much I love about knitting, it’s hard to know where to begin, but a good place is the variety of knitting.  To keep this from turning into another dissertation, I have restricted it to two subjects: cabling and colourwork.

Basically my knitting life is a sort of chicken and the egg problem; which came first from me – cabling or colourwork?  Actually, that’s total rubbish, it was cabling.  What little colourwork I had seen looked a bit weird, not in a “I’d never wear that way”, but in a “how do they make that…?  Meh, not too bothered” way (this opinion was to be revised).  I started out by picking three cables I liked from the Lion Brand website and set to work making a scarf.  It was actually pretty successful, although if you have a head that’s about the size of Mars, please email me, I will end you this early prototype with pleasure, it will fit you just fine.  I love the criss cross nature of cables, how it raises up out of the relief of the rest of work.  Thinking about it, it’s sort of like sculpture, only with wool.  The photo below is my main current project, Royale by Glenna C. (ravelry link).  It was the type of project I had been looking for for a while – something to test myself.  Knitting books tend to be for beginners; godammit, I wanted something HARD!  I love the cables so so much in this, it pretty much sums up everything I love about it aspect of the craft.

However, no sooner do I cast on for one cabled lovely than I see something fairisle that catches my eye and reminds me why I love colourwork so much.  I absolutely adore seeing a pattern grow and take shape under your hands.  I KNOW colourwork can be a particular pain in the arse (cf. puckering, floats etc) but when it’s right, it’s bloody wonderful.  In projects I have seen around Ravelry, it’s the colourwork projects that transcend that line between art and craft.  Phew.  I am currently knitting a pair of argyle-style socks that I love already, even though they’re on 2mm dpns and a snail would think their rate of growth is slow.  I love Scandinavian sweaters, the Drops design website is my second favourite knitting site after the mothership that is Ravelry and I will keep knitting those Scandi sweaters, even though, as a busty kinda girl, yoked sweaters sooooo do not suit me.

So there’s two things I love about knitting, that invidious hobby.  In other news I went to the Stitch and Craft show in Manchester with my mum.  She beads, I knit.  The wool showing isn’t that great, the event tends to be dominated by paper crafts but I got some nice Sublime Organic wool that I intend to make into a basic cardigan for work (because I have a JOB now!!  Yaaaaay!  Like I need another reason to knit more!!) and some Araucania Ranco Multy that is very exciting. The colours were really hard to capture but the picture here is probably the best.  After the show we went into Manchester to Purl City.  It’s the first time I have been, we always seem to be in Manchester on a Monday, naturally, the only day the blasted shop is closed.  Here I touched what I think heaven would feel like.  It was a Fyberspates yarn, 65% cashmere, 35% silk.  I’m tearing up just thinking about it.  I wouldn’t know what to do with that yarn.  Marry it, probably, and have lots of yarn babies that feel like heaven too.

Also at Purl City mum got me the wool of Obscenity.  As in Obscenely expensive.  Yes, I have a skein of Lorna’s Laces, in Flame.  I also got a ball of Opal Sock wool, which any other day would have been just lovely but next to the Lorna’s Laces feels and looks cheap and tacky.  Stupid high-class bitch wool.  I know those people at LL’s have got to eat but I get the impression they are having Beluga caviar for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  With some nice Cristal champagne to wash it all down.  So now I have lots of lovely sock wool.  I don’t mind having sock wool – everyone needs socks and now I have a noble quest – to be store-bought sock free within the near future.  Considering le job doesn’t start until September and I’m only working part time, I should say I have a fair chance of completing my mission.  Should I choose to accept it, that is.  And I do accept it.

Gratification – the aunt of invention?

Ahhhh, the innumerable pleasures of the Quick Knit.  But what a foul temptress she may be too, Ms Q. Knit, distracting you when you KNOW you should be getting on with that fairisle dress you have half done on your 2mm circs.  But sometimes, though, the Quick Knit comes at the perfect time and provides the perfect opportunity for you to try out a new technique or to test knit free-stylee.  I have found the above to be an excellent example of this.  As I wrote previously, I have several things on the go at the moment, a couple of them socks on rather tiny needles (I have no idea how I managed to finished the first fairisle sock on 2mm, God knows how I’m going to finish the second.  I really wish He’d tell me).  I was getting bored.  Then I watched Doctor Who and saw Rose Tyler’s mittens.  I wanted them.  I wanted to rip them off her nail-bitten fingers right then and there.  But, instead of assaulting my TV with the newly purchased Wii Fit Balance Board, I grabbed a pen and paper started to scrawl…. *fade out to montage*

Reasons why I am super duper satisfied with these:

• I worked them out all by my little self.
• I got to use the Tubular Cast On of Joy (see right) which, in my opinion, is fabulous, looks dead professional and may actually be a blueprint for world peace.  It makes me weep in its perfection, you do a provisional cast on, knit a few rows, do some weird pick up thing and then…. it’s there.  Just there.  It’s magic on a Gandalf the White scale.  Gandalf the Grey wouldn’t stand a chance.  You can find it here.  However, I would suggest not knitting through back of loop on the pick-up row; although it is a rather stretchy cast on, if these gloves had been any longer they would have been a wee bit too snug.  I tried to use it for my Royale but alas, to no avail, for it did not look good with the rib design and I liked it too much to abandon it for plain 1×1.
• I also used the Magic Loop method so I could make them symmetrical and to avoid stupid counting and recounting.  Although it can be fiddly and is a down right bugger to start off with (curving wires flailing around everywhere), I really like this method, things that come in pairs seem to go much quicker when knitted together (although my fish socks would beg to disagree).
• I invented a new cast off!!!! *trumpet fanfare*  Well, I have not seen it on the net (yet).  A while back I discovered the decreasing cast/bind off after I found the traditional cast off too tight.  However I soon discovered that this new cast/bind off would “flop” to the right side of the work.  I found this ugly, so ugly that it physically repulsed me.  How did I remedy this?  By purling the stitches, not knitting them tbl.  This makes the cast off “flop” the other way, giving you a much neater, near invisible row of itty-bitty bumps.  Happiness reigned supreme.

In short:

Rose’s Gloves
1 50g skein of Sirdar Romance(ish).
Magic Loop
Tubular Cast On of Joy – 38 sts.  1×1 ribbing for a bit.  Increase to 58(ish).
Various cables (twists reversed to make them symmetrical) with moss side on palm-side of mitten.
Gusset thumb (gusset – sounds like it was a naughty word circa 1926).  I did not insert it directly half way around the glove, as you would normally.  Cabling causes knitting to contract (duh); if I had gone about my gusset business as usual, the main pattern would have not been central on the back on my hand.  I stuck it in about 3 stitches in.  It worked, much to my surprise.  Free-knitting tends not to work out for me.