I think the designer knits English

I will admit to the fact that I haven't done much knitting of late. I blame this on the number of children running around and on the fact that my Etsy shop just hit it's 300th sale since I opened it on Dec 4th. Yesterday, though, I spent the whole day knitting play food for a 5 yr old little girl's birthday party, which was today. I enjoyed just sitting and knitting something that was not lace, or business related, that I decided to cast on something else today. Since I have been out at the barn feeding horses every day for the last 2 weeks, I have realized that my gloves just aren't going to cut it. My fingers are quite long and thin which means they have almost zero cerculation. If I ball them up in the hand of the glove they keep from going numb, which makes me think I need MITTENS, not gloves.

It just so happens I have a lovely fair isle mitten kit by Sarah Annexstad with Misti Alpaca and Noro Silk Garden that my lovely swap partner from the Knitting Parent's Yahoo Group gave me in December.

So, while children were marrinating in the tub tonight, I cast on the first mitten. Knit the first row in main color in K1, P1 rib. Check. I can do that. Rows 2-16 are K1 in main color, P1 in Contrast color. This produces lovely vertical lines up the cuff. Ok, now, I haven't knit fair isle since I knit Alex's Spiderman gloves over a year ago. I am a continental knitter normally, so I put the main color in my left hand and put the Noro in my right just like I learned to do while doing stranded knitting. I knit a few stitches and realize that I have forgotten to put the Noro to the back while I knit with the Alpaca. This means that I now have lines of pretty blue in front of my creamy alpaca knit strips. That's not right. So, I tink back. I now very carefully move the Noro to the back after purling and find this incredibly slow, tedious and anoying. This is going to be a LONG cuff if I have to do this the whole way.

The babies are ready to get out of the tub by now, so I dry them off and put the second load of children in and then rethink the knitting. Oh, I think to myself. Back when I was new to this I used to carry both yarns in the left hand and just picked whichever one I wanted. Since I am only knitting 1 stitch with each yarn before I need the other, the tension won't get uneven, that'll be perfect. So, I switch so both yarns are in my left hand and breeze through a couple of rows of knitting happily swinging both yarns between the needles together for the K1, P1 rib.

I look down at my knitting and see that it is now a beautiful double knit cuff... Hmmm. That is not pretty verticle lines. That is flat alpaca on the outside and flat Noro on the inside. Yes, I remember thinking when looking at the pattern that if I knit 1 with 1 yarn and then purled with a different yarn I would get double knit. I have made quite a few things with double knit before, but I thought surely the designer knew what she was doing. There's got to be a trick here. I examine the knitting closely, then it hits me. In my beautiful double knitting, the running thread between stitches has the alpaca in the front, not the Noro. If I kept the alpaca in the back all the time and just pulled the Noro to the front for the purl stitches the running thread in between will be blue, not cream. Well, why didn't the designer say not to bring them both forward?! That's kind of important. True this pattern was made for a class where she would have shown the students how to do it, but I still think it needs mentioning.

Then it hits me. I bet the designer knits English. It makes perfect sense. She held the main color (the alpaca) in her RIGHT hand, which is her main knitting hand. It would have been more natural for her. With it in the right hand, it could stay in the back all the time without interfearing with the purl stitches. With the Noro in the LEFT hand it can swing easily between the needles back and forth with each stitch without all the cumbersome twisting of the entire right hand and the needles. It maks sense why she wouldn't say anything. It would have been awkward to move both yarns back and forth. It explains everything.

The designer knits English. I'll just pretend I do too. ~.^

That man's a keeper

I will admit that I was in a bit of a funk yesterday. It seems that I get that way on Sundays. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I take the day off and supposedly relax or what. Unfortunately, there is never a day off from being a mom and everyone is home on Sundays. Combine that with the fact that I was dehydrated and I was definitely in a funk. I just wanted to sit under a blanket and snuggle, or knit, or something. Babies tend not to be cooperative with this kind of plan, though. They want to be held, or to be played with, or generally wreak havoc on the world if you're not paying attention. The funk continued until DH floored me with a single request.

"Would you teach me to knit?"

What? What was that? The man who has admired my knitting, but generally shown absolutely no interest in anything yarn related wants to learn to knit?!

"You like it so much that I think I should try it. Plus I love you and I should know more about the things you like"

Well, I can't think of a thing sexier than that. Not only does the man want to learn to knit, but he wants to learn so he can be closer to me. That man's a keeper. Forget the fact that he supports our family, or that he has worked 2 jobs, or that he tells me constantly that he adores me. That statement right there speaks love on a whole new level.

I spent the evening happily snuggled up next to him while he knit away with a pair of size 8 bamboo double pointed needles with rubber bands on the ends and a skein of Shetland Chunky.
Wouldn't you know, but DH is GOOD! Check out that swatch. That was his very first knitting ever. He even did the long tail cast on.

I'm so proud!

I read about this once...

I finally read the Yarn Harlot's first book last week and cried with her when she tried to block her friend's superwash wool sweater, only to have it come out of the water twice as wide.

Well..... This has just happened to me and I'm devastated. I have been working on the Nantucket Jacket for a month or so now and finally put the buttons on yesterday. I tried it on and it was lovely, but I thought it could use a good blocking. So, I threw it in the washing machine as per the ball band instructions, but when I pulled it out to lay it flat, it was GIGANTIC. It grew far more width wise than it did length wise. I remembered that people had suggested to the yarn harlot that she should put it in the dryer, so I did that. It still looks bad...

I'm going to try to block it again today and stretch it down, but I don't have high hopes. If that doesn't work, I think I may just have to frog it. I know that I won't wear it this way.

I suppose it's all my fault, since I did do a gauge swatch, but I didn't wash it. If I had washed it like they say to, I would have known that it would stretch. I wonder if the designer had bothered to wash their swatch either. I already went down a size in needles to get gauge, but in order to adjust for the growth, I'm going to have to go down a lot of sizes. I love this yarn, and it took a lot of courage to buy the yarn. This is the most I have ever spent on a project, ever. *sigh*

Any one else had this problem?!

Almost There

4 1/2 of 5 pieces completed. Once I realized that I only had 1 more piece to go before this sweater would be done, you can barely tear me away from it! This last stretch just makes me itchy to get it done. At this point, I have the basic pattern stitch memorized. Once I do the setup row, my knitting tells me what to do, and I've got my handy dandy number chain counter to keep track of the repeats (cross the cable at 5).

I look forward to the seaming and the crochet and am seriously impatient that the second sleeve is taking so long. I know that some of you hate seaming and finishing. I actually don't mind it, as long as it's seaming. I'm not so fond of weaving in ends. Especially since they tend to worm their way out. Since this is a superwash merino, I think that I'm going to have to tack the few ends that I stupidly have in the middle of the piece with some matching thread. I have this unnatural aversion to wasting any yarn. It has taken me years to learn to leave more than a tiny tail when I start a new ball of yarn. This same aversion leads to obnoxious tails to be hidden in the middle of a piece of flat knitting. There is no knitterly logic for this shame, other than I can't really bring myself to leave a BIG long tail at the edge of the knitting where it belongs. "Maybe I'll make it across" I tell myself, even though I know I won't. Then when I inevitably don't, I don't want to tink back. Maybe it's because I think that if I don't use up every last bit of a ball that I won't have enough for the sweater. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense either since I DID buy a whole extra ball, and the next size up in the pattern calls for the same number of balls. I think by the end of this sweater I have finally convinced myself that my life would really be a whole lot easier if I leave the ends on the edge (where I can hide them in the seam) and that I WILL in fact have enough yarn.

I am a pretty good seamer, though. My pieces seem sturdy and the seams are pretty, so this part of the finishing has never worried me. I'm not fond of patterns that have lots of tiny lengths of things that need to be seamed (like darts). This breaks the rhythm and creates more ends to hide. I think, though, that after the bazillion sweaters I have taken apart by now that I have a feeling for how sweaters should be put together. Seam the shoulders. Sew the sleeve cap in. Seem the whole sweater from cuff to waistline. This is much easier than my random version of seam the shoulder and sides, then seam the sleeve, then try to fit one round object into another round hole.

I should have some finished object pictures soon! That is, assuming that DH will take more than one picture so that I have a CHANCE of getting a flattering one to post.