Category Archives: Knitting

Recently gifted

Posted on 23 May 2014 by Kris

Oh, goodness. So much for semi-regular knit blogging. But I suppose that would require some regular knitting.

Last year was fairly light on the knitting front. I can’t even blame the great Carpet Beetle Invasion of 2013, although that was certainly part of it (you can’t knit yarn while it’s in the freezer, after all). I just… wasn’t feeling it, for the most part.

But! Now I’m back in the swing of things. I do plan to go back and post my older FOs at some point, but let’s start with my latest two!

I may have been a little overambitious with this one, but… go big or go home, right?

Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton-Ease in Vanilla, Turquoise, and Cherry
Needles: US4 / 3.5mm Hiya Hiya bamboo interchangeable circulars

Yes, that is an attempt at a Captain America Shield blanket! My first knit blanket ever, actually. I was originally intending for it to be a baby blanket, but made some errors when attempting to scale up my prototype. That, combined with the weight of that much cotton/acrylic yarn, meant I ended up knitting a 55” diameter blanket. Ah well. In my head I’m calling it a belated wedding gift to the couple instead, makes me feel a little better about the sizing.

It’s certainly the largest project I’ve ever knit, dimensions-wise, and it’s tied with the Forest Path Stole for most time-consuming. But hey, at least when I eventually decide to knit my own, I don’t really have to recalculate anything and can use my notes mostly as is!

I’m pretty happy with this blanket overall. It’s not perfect – I don’t love how I did the increases, that’s something else that didn’t scale up well from my prototype. It ended up a bit more angular than I would have liked. So I’ll have to do that a bit differently, the next time I feel like knitting a large round blanket.

On another technique note, I attempted no-purl garter stitch in the round. I didn’t want a curling stockinette blanket, and I didn’t want to purl that many stitches, so… had to figure out something else. I’m pretty happy with how it looks; while the jog is still visible to me, it’s still way less noticeable than some other methods I’ve tried for garter stitch in the round. I’m not happy with the sheer amount of ends it meant I had to weave in, though.

I knit one other project for these friends. Well, for their adorable baby, rather. And this one actually is baby-sized!

Pattern: Minion Hat by Maura Houston
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton-Ease in Banana Cream, Licorice, Vanilla, and Stone
Needles: US2 / 2.75mm and US4 / 3.5mm Hiya Hiya bamboo interchangeables, US4 / 3.5mm and US5 / 3.75 Plymouth bamboo DPNs

I don’t have as much to say about it from a knitting/finishing standpoint, since it was so quick and easy. The eyes are slightly crooked because I made the rookie mistake of not actually pinning them in place before I sewed them on, and I also think I should have sewn them on a little closer together, but other than that I’m pretty happy with it.

These were by far the best received gifts I’ve ever knit (not that I’ve made all that many), and the blanket in particular was a good challenge, so yay, I win!

Posted in Knitting | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The perils of yarn substitution

Posted on 15 April 2013 by Kris

Hi! Long time no blog, because [reasons]. But I’m back for the moment. I have several FOs to post about at some point, as well as a couple of WIPs to talk about. The latter have been, well, full of hiccups, but I think I’m finally ready to deal with all of those. So! Let talk about one of those troublesome WIPs today.

I had a little less than a full skein of Baruffa Cashwool when I started the Chamomile Tunic. Which is less yarn than the pattern calls for in my size. But I figured I’d be fine, since I often knit sweaters with significantly less yarn than called for.

Except this time around, I made a couple of fairly boneheaded mistakes. While my math did include calculations for a different gauge and for my desired waist shaping, I completely forgot to account for two things:

  1. I wanted LONGER sleeves than those of the pattern (as opposed to shorter, which is my usual modification).
  2. There’s crochet in this pattern. Which uses more yarn than knitting. How much more? I had no idea, because I had never seriously crocheted in my life, which meant I had no point of personal reference.

So, as you’ve probably figured out, I ran out of yarn. After I’d already attached the sleeves and knit 18 rows with 550+ stitches. And cannibalized my swatch. Whooooooops. What’s a knitter using a discontinued yarn to do?

Well, I figured I’d lower the neckline a bit, so I calculated how much more yarn I’d need to finish the shorter version (thank you, yarn scale!). And then I removed the sleeves and unravelled them (down to about as long as the original pattern called for!), before unkinking the frogged bits and winding them up for reknitting.

And now, here’s what it looks like, with the yoke but without any sleeves.

I haven’t reattached the sleeves yet because I wanted to wait until I was done with the neckline, just in case I needed to cannibalize even more yarn. As far as I can tell, I’ve got two options, neither of which I particularly like the prospect of:

  1. Graft the sleeves back on.
  2. Pick up stitches around the armhole and knit/crochet back down.

I’m actually leaning toward the first one, as daunting as that sounds, because I think it might take less time than unravelling the sleeves entirely, picking up stitches around the armhole, and then knitting and crocheting rounds and rounds of 150+ stitches. But we’ll see.

Posted in Knitting | Tagged | Leave a comment

Opus Spicatum

Posted on 09 November 2012 by Kris

I recently went stashdiving and picked out two of the oldest skeins for this quick project:

Pattern: Opus Spicatum by Kate Gagnon Osborn
Yarn: Elann Peruvian Highland Wool in Light Grey Heather and Charcoal Heather
Needles: US4 / 3.5mm and US7 / 4.5 Plymouth bamboo DPNs, US7 / 4.5mm Clover bamboo circulars

The original’s a beret, but clearly my version’s more of a beanie, which is exactly what I wanted! I don’t get much use out of berets. (I actually recently reblocked my Beret Gaufre into a beanie shape, which is more my style!)

My gauge was different from that of the pattern. The pattern’s is 19 sts and 23 rows to 4“; mine is 26 stitches and 24 rows to 4”. I cast on 100 stitches for the ribbing, which in retrospect was too many. I then increased to 120 stitches for the colorwork, giving me 12 pattern repeats per round instead of 11. I knit an extra row of ribbing and four extra rows of colorwork before starting the increases, the latter of which may have been unnecessary.

I made a bit of an error – the contrast color should be a purl ridge at the edge of the brim, not a knit one. But when I finally realized it, I decided it didn’t bother me enough to rip back.

It was a super fun knit for me, and the pattern was pretty easy to follow. Quick, too – only took me two days!

Posted in Knitting | Tagged | Leave a comment

Change of plans

Posted on 05 November 2012 by Kris

Installment #5 of my self-imposed sock club was supposed to be Cablenet by Ariel Barton, in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock. However, I got one repeat in before I realized that this wasn’t my best yarn-to-pattern match ever.

It’s actually even less visible in person than it is in this photo. Which is kind of baffling, seeing as I’m actually using the yarn called for in the pattern. But somehow, the cabling doesn’t show up as well here as it does in the sample. Maybe it’s because of the color? I’m using a darker shade, after all.

So as I saw it, my options with this yarn were:

1. Keep knitting Cablenet anyway.
2. Knit Cablenet, but twist all the knit stitches.
3. Knit a completely different pattern.

I decided against #1 because, well, it’s an awful lot of work for a not-clearly-visible pattern! It’s not like, say, Spey Valley, where the pattern got slightly lost in spots but wasn’t much effort to actually knit.

I seriously considered #2. But then I remembered I just knit two sock patterns with twisted stitches in a row. And, I’d really like to knit this pattern as is someday – just with a different yarn, one that better shows off tiny cables.

Which left option 3:

I’m now knitting Evening Stockings for a Young Lady, from Knitting Vintage Socks. Which I’m going to shorten, because I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough of this yarn for knee socks. Ahh, much better!

Posted in Knitting | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Twisted Flower

Posted on 02 November 2012 by Kris

I finished my fourth pair of socks this year!

Pattern: Twisted Flower by Cookie A
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Velvet Plum
Needles: US0 / 2.0mm ChiaoGoo circulars

I’m clearly still behind schedule for my self-imposed sock club, but… whatever. I’m not completely without hope for finishing that on time. I’ve got plenty of travelling (aka knitting time) planned for December, and one of my two remaining pairs is just a 3×1 ribbed sock, so it’s possible, right?

Anyway, back to this particular pair of socks. I knit the small size as written. I’m a little sad that the pattern doesn’t show up better on my feet, especially since it showed nicely on the blocker in my WIP post. Oh well. I still like these.

It’s a pretty fun pattern, and more intuitive than it looks.

I have a surprisingly small amount of Jitterbug left over, and I can’t decide whether it’s due to the pattern eating up yarn, the yardage of the original skein, or both. Good thing I have short legs and average-sized feet, otherwise I wouldn’t have had enough of this yarn to finish the pair.

Posted in Knitting | Tagged | Leave a comment