Warming a New Home

I Ab-Fabbed in secret for a friend. I finished months ago; the Absolutely Fabulous Afghan by Colinette does knit up quickly. My friend has been over for coffee a couple times since the knitting was finished but I had about a dozen ends to weave in and the Ab-Fab afghan really needed a good blocking before I could hand it over. I finally delivered it yesterday, so now I can post about it.

Not only did I Ab-Fab in secret, I Ab-Fabbed in purple (the things I'll do in friendship's name).

Details.

Absolutely Fabulous Afghan by Colinette in Amethyst, which originally contained:

Mohair - Heather

Mohair - Cinnamon

Mohair - Lilac

Wigwam (cotton tape) - Lilac

Fandango (chenille/eyelash) - Lilac (?) (might have been Heather)

Zanziba (thick and thin rayon) - Heather

Zanziba - Lilac

Skye - Damson (although despite its plum-like name, Damson is Not Purple. Which makes me wonder if it was a substitution on the seller's end).

Knit on US 11/8 mm Addi Turbos.

Substitutions (Of course I did, I couldn't help myself). I'm a little vague about the details. This really did all happen about 6 months ago and I don't seem to have kept the labels of anything. Something purple and curly by, I think, Louisa Harding for the much-too-pinkish Lilac Fandango. Malabrigo Twist (?) also in something purple (Velvet Grape?) for the very pink Lilac Wigwam.

I'll knit purple, but I draw the line at Barbie.

The Closure Post

Just for the record. I did finish Their Father's sweater on Friday.

Details.
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Mallard/2448.
Needles: Addi Turbos US 7/4.5 mm.
Pattern: Based on the Set-In Sleeve Cardigan from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns.
Modified: According to Their Father's Specifications.
Buttons: Leather-covered 3/4" shank buttons from JoAnn Fabrics.

Things to remember.

With a little patience and planning, it is possible to grow 2x2 cables out of 1x1 rib. Witness the knitting on the left. I admit, I had to chart it out before I could see it, but it was as simple as moving the stockinette columns over by 1 row.

Cables make knitting go faster. I'm convinced I knit both the front pieces in half the time it took to knit the back.

Things to reconsider.

As mentioned in the previous post, use short-row shaping and three-needle bind-off for the shoulders, move the armhole decreases in another stitch (I still can't help wondering if this is why the seams look so wonky to me).

Pay closer attention to ending the cables. There's still a part of me that wonders if I didn't do something at the bind-off that unbalanced the two sides.

Rethink the whole set-in sleeve thing. After all, would the sky really have crashed or the heavens tumbled had I opted for the modified-drop sleeve instead?

All things considered, I begin to see the advantages to knitting in the round and steeking.

Was it worth it? The jury's still out. Their Father's initial reaction seemed, to me, to lack whelm. In fact, I would go so far as to say he seemed distinctly underwhelmed.

On the other hand, it was seen in the wild. He put it on last night to read the paper without any whingeing prompting from me.

Enough

I bet you've all been glued to your terminals waiting to hear if I finished the sweater in time.

Define "finished" and then define "in time."

Does finished mean all the knitting is done? Then it's finished. Does finished mean all the pieces are blocked and sewn up? Then it's finished.

Does finished mean the ends are woven in and the buttons sewn on? Does finished mean I'm happy with it? Then it's not.

I need to remember that a cardigan can be knit in almost one piece. I need to remember short row shaping for the shoulders so I can join the shoulder seams with a three-needle bind-off. Should I forget about short-row shaping again, as I surely will, I need to remember to slip the first stitch of the bind-offs. I need to remember to place my decreases farther in, maybe two stitches instead of only one.

Most of all, I need to remember that set in sleeves are just not worth it. I actually kind of enjoy sewing side seams. For that matter, I don't even mind the stitches to rows at the sleeve cap or the stitches to stitches under the arm. I think it's the whole setting the sleeves that gets me. All that pinning. all those transitions, from cap to sides, from the sides to the underarm. What with the pinning, stitching, ripping back, re-pinning, ripping out, I probably spent three times as long attaching the sleeves to the body as I did on all the other seams combined. The worst part? Even with all the checking of techniques from my various knitting books, even with knittinghelp.com and Berroco how-to videos on YouTube, even with all that evidence that I have sewn the sleeves in exactly how they should be, I'm not happy.They don't look as bad as they did before I steamed the seam allowances toward the sleeve,

but I'm still not thrilled.

It didn't help that the sweater still looked like an amoeba when Their Father got home. So, dinner and cake and pie and other presents and cards later, I picked up the sweater and finished the side and sleeve seams. Ends still hanging all over. No buttons. But at least it looked like a sweater. And it was before midnight, so I say it counts (my blog, my knitting, my rules).

Consider "enough." "Enough" means wanting for nothing, "I have enough." Enough can mean having too much, "I have had enough of this [fill in the blank]." Enough is adequate, sufficient, satisfactory, decent.

So, was it done? No. Not really. But it was done enough.

I Ask You

What kind of man invites people to dinner when his wife needs to go off on a button quest?

All I can say is, it's a good thing he needs to be around to wear this sweater. Dire things could happen to such a man otherwise.

Not Much

That's all I have to show for days and days of knitting. Remind me next time that I don't want to use cables for a sweater. I don't have pictures of the failures. Sorry. The fact is, I'm not even fully satisfied with the "success." I've knit the neckband four times in four different ways now. I think it was four times. It might be more. In between completely reknitting it, I've dropped stitches down and tried in situ modifications.

I've finally realized that the crux of the matter isn't the neckband it self. It's the way the cables feed into the neckband. I want the left and right fronts to match, allowing for the fact that I mirror imaged the cables.

They don't. Match, that is. It looks to me like the left front has an additional row of knitting. I'm wondering if it has to do with the way you have to bind off on a right-side row for the left front and a wrong side row for the right front. That's the comforting fiction I'm going with. I've run out of ideas and I don't think I can bear to frog the neckband again.

All of the above means that I am drastically behind on my time table. I've got the sleeves blotting in towels now and will pin them out and hide them in the Princess' room this morning. The only reassuring thing is that I checked stitch and row gauge over 8 inches of knitting and came up with 39 stitches and 52 rows, which worked out to a ratio of 3 to 4, which is the ratio the stitches to rows is supposed to come out to for the button-band. Thank the knitting gods, because I have to finish the knitting today.

Now, will someone please explain why I have only 6 buttons?

Not much. My worry is that, like the buttons, it will be not enough.

Impossible Dreams

If, when I first contemplated this madness, you had told me that by 9:30 this morning I would have bound off both front pieces, I would have laughed myself into a stupor. Truly, looking over this past year or so, with the notable exception of the Christmas gifts, knitting here has been more about dwelling in the realm of possibility (sounds so much nicer than slacking) than actual production. (Remind me that at some point I have to blog about the Cedar Leaf Shawlette, finished lo these many months, in the last flush of energy from all that holiday knitting.)

I have one week to block, assemble and (here' s what's got me a little panicky) knit my first button and buttonhole bands.

I can do this. I 'm pretty sure. There's at least a chance. Doing it in secret had me stymied for a bit,(I can hardly use the dining room table or our bed; it's supposed to be a surprise, remember?) but the Princess and I have conspired. I'll do it in stages to accommodate that lack of large flat surface areas. I'll do it with her blocking board, which is twice the size of mine. And I'll do it in her room (their Father having a praiseworthy respect for his children's privacy, i.e. he just about never pokes his head in there).

On the theory that the next steps are the shoulder seams, the neck band and the button and buttonhole bands -- all which require the the back and fronts -- I've got the body pieces prepping now. I've gone for wet-blocking at this stage, rather than spray and pin or hit the steam button on my iron. If I'm going to have to pick up some number plus infinity stitches, I don't want to find that I've used a skewed ratio of rows to stitches. The schedule is pretty tight. Having to do the math is bad enough. Doing it with inaccurate data is not in the cards.

The plan is that tomorrow I can finish the neckband while the sleeves are blocking. In an ideal world I'll get the stitches picked up for the front bands, too. The weekend is not an ideal time for secret knitting, but I'll see what I get through - he will take off for a run at some point. And then there's all that nap time. If he comes down with my cold that could prove extensive. With a combination of chance and careful planning (and depending on how many times I have to redo the button bands), I can finish the seaming by Wednesday and do a final blocking in time to astonish him Thursday night.

Hey. It could happen.

Single-minded

I have a dreadful head cold.

I find misery focuses one's attention wonderfully.

You Know You've Been Missing It

The return of Foolishness on Friday.

I've been an awfully good blogger ltely. I think I've earned some foolery, and this appeals to the failed Psych Major in me.

You are Energetic and Bright

You view people with optimism. You have many meaningful relationships in your life. You had more conflict with your mother than your father. Your relationship with her was healthy but challenging. You deal with stress in an effective and competent matter. You are able to remain calm. You are a natural multitasker. You enjoy being busy, even if the amount of things you need to do is overwhelming.

The Inkblot Test

Blogthings: 100's of Fun, Free Quizzes and 3 Stupid Ones

Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 11:22 A.M.

Guess what I found?

An Ace Up My Sleeve

The front (s?) of Their Father's sweater is still missing. Looking at the last photo I have of the project, it occurred to me that I may be looking for the wrong thing. I've been searching for yarn. Perhaps I should be searching for the muslin project bag with the yellow birds.

And I will. It's just that the days are slipping by. In that deep dark secret part of my brain where my knitting fantasies live, I keep envisioning giving him the sweater for his birthday, more specifically, this birthday. I know I do, because when little bits of fantasies bubble to the surface of my brain and pop open, in between the ones where I knit like Elizabeth Zimmermann, or the ones where suddenly the Blog is one of the top 200 knitting blogs and has the comments to prove it, I envision him opening a box and being astounded by the reality of his sweater.

Yes, yes, I know it's not going to happen. That's why these are fantasies. Still, my fingers are itching to work on this particular project.

I've been chasing ideas around my brain like a dog chases squirrels. I could marathon knit. People here are old enough to fend for themselves. So what if the Lord Protector will live on Flaming Hot Cheetos and the Pirate subsist entirely on birthday cake? I could double, no, quadruple my knitting speed. Hey, it could happen (and pigs may whistle but they've poor mouths for it). The sweater could knit itself, like the ones Mrs. Weasley knits (I seem to be having a hard time separating fiction from reality here). None of them, however, will work if I don't have enough yarn.

That's the crux of things. Memory is notoriously unreliable (seen Rashomon lately?). Yet my memory insists I have not one (as pictured) but both the sweater fronts started. Not knit very far, but started. It's not the loss of work that has me chewing my fingernails as if they were made out of chocolate, it's the loss of the yarn. Two sweater fronts means two full skeins of yarn. That's a lot. I could knit my fingers to the bone. I could knit so fast my needles smoke and I need to keep a fire extinguisher by my side. It won't matter if I run out of yarn.

I've been staring at my remaining supply. It's about 2.5 skeins, maybe a little more. In between wondering if I really overbought the yarn by that much, or if my doppelganger slipped in, frogged the fronts, reclaimed the yarn and wound it back into skeins, complete with manufacturer's label, I've been trying to gauge how much I've actually used so far, trying to determine if I have enough. I don't think the back took more than two skeins. Will two and a half be sufficient? I have to consider the cables. Cables eat yarn. I know each sleeve took a little more than two skeins. Will the fronts use more than that? There's a button band to consider. How much more will that need?

Well, you get the idea. All dithery I've been, when I'm not tearing apart knitting bags and stash baskets. When not occupying the forefront of my brain, it's been niggling at the back. Neither of which is actually knitting the sweater for me. Conditions were ripe for a brainstorm, and last night as I was winding up one of the remaining skeins, that's what I got.

I have a kitchen scale, well, the Princess does. We picked it up so we could translate some of her trans-Atlantic recipes. If it works on flour and sugar, it will work on yarn.

The back weighs 7.5 ounces. The sleeves weigh 9.4. The remaining yarn?9.6 ounces. That's close. That's really, really close. I could just make it. Or I could just miss.

Know what I just remembered?

I have the Swatch.

Celebrate! Celebrate!

It's the Lord Protector's Birthday.

Are these the best candles or what? (Well, they are if you know his favorite class is Latin.)

The Clean Version

Darn. Drat. Heck.

You know what the trouble with de-cluttering is? Sometimes things disappear.

Dang it. Shoot. Spit.

Their Father's birthday is the end of the month. Given my recent track record, I don't expect to have his sweater finished by then. Okay, maybe I indulged in a few delusions, which is why I went looking for it in the first place.

Nuts. Goldarn. Odd rot it.

I did, however, expect to be able to lay my hands on all the pieces before I made that determination.

Blast. Dad gum. Cheese and crackers.

Which One, Which One

I've reached the point where I need to make a decision time. Sooner than I expected. The Green Shawl has reached the it-takes-forever-to-knit-a-row-while-at-the-same-time eating-yarn-like cup-cakes stage. That ball of yarn is only 2 or 3 inches across. I'm betting it's only got a couple more rows left in it.

I'm pretty sure I need to know what color to make the border.

And whether to add an inner border in black.

Going In Circles

The good thing about abandoning projects is that you have something to go to when the current ones pall.

The good thing about being forced to bring 26 years worth of storage into your living quarters is that it makes you pathological about de-cluttering anything and everything you can.

The good thing about de-cluttering is that you have someplace to put the stuff you actually want.

The good thing about having someplace to put the stuff you want is that you can find things again.

Like the long lost skein of yarn I needed for the Green Shawl.

Which is why it got abandoned in the first place.

Playing With Color

Way back when, at last year's Stitches, I bought these from Tess Designer Yarns for a gift afghan/housewarming present. When I figured out that the bulky variation wasn't going to work, I switched the yarn from 4 skeins of bulky to 4 skeins of worsted weight. Ever since I knew the worsted yarn wouldn't pan out for the afghan, either, I've been looking for another project for it. Otherwise I have to count it as stash, and I have a lot of it. Trading bulky for worsted resulted in a lot more yardage (570 yards per skein compared to 115). That much yarn kind of sings crochet to me.

I have this book. It has this afghan. I find the color scheme muddy and discordant, but I like the stitch. And the stripes.

Once again proving my firm grasp of the obvious, let me note that stripes mean more than one color. The Tess green is a given, but the pattern calls for four colors altogether. I'm thinking about Dream in Color Classy in China Apple. I'm debating between the Copper Penny Madelintosh DK and the Dream in Color Classy in Gold Experience. I'm wondering if Dream In Color November Muse would bee too dark. Maybe I should use up some of my Madelintosh DK in Turquoise. Maybe I should use five colors.

Further, since I can see no reason to be decisive when I can dither, perhaps I should confess that I also hear the call of the Moorish Mosaic Afghan from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Crochet. That calls for a different color strategy. This one I think, needs the colors from the rug in the front room. It wouldn't be quite the stash-buster the stripy afghan would be. While crochet eats yarn, I will need to buy at least two skeins each in two or three more colors; I am sadly lacking in Golds and Neutrals.

Maybe I'll do both.

Maybe I just want to crochet. It has, after all, been a while.

Two Weeks

So now I'm more or less up to date on the knitting front, I feel free to admit that the high point of the summer -- pause for dramatic effect -- has not, in point of fact, been knitting. It's been Our Company.

There was the getting ready of course, a summer's worth of it, but rather than go into that in exhausted exhaustive detail, let me, like Inigo, "sum up." First, the 3 deep 6 high incursion of storage boxes that has dominated my dining room since Last October(!) has been reduced to 3 boxes of recycling and 6 boxes of shred-first-then-recycling (All right, so the wall in my bedroom is now home to a 6 x7 row, but it's just a single row. There may be a few odd ones tucked stacked into corners). Secondly, we discovered the source of our chronic hanger shortage - they were nesting in the back corner of the Boys' Closet, unbeknownst to us because we haven't been able to get much beyond a foot on either side of the closet door for years. Let it suffice to add that the lists were impressive, and that we managed to get everything done and crossed off except for the two items at the top of List #2 that we could never decipher.

This is supposed to be a (mostly) knitting blog, so let me focus on that a little. There was Stitches Midwest, of course, but I'll save that for later. She knit and finished one project while she was with us, which means she pretty much knit every day she was here. She has a good start on her top-down model sweater from the Stitches class she and The Princess took. She may not be leaving us as a knitting convert -- I'm pretty sure she thinks we're a little mad, albeit in a nice way -- but that triumph of finishing a first knitted object is a pretty powerful thing.

So now it's the last day of Our Company. The word that comes to mind is "delight." The Princess, the Lord Protector and Their Father all approved her long ago. It was only two weeks, yet she slipped into our lives like she had a place waiting for her, a spot that was empty that we hadn't known about until it was filled. And yes, I know she's leaving today, but her place will remain intact, occupied.

Last night, she asked if she was a knitter now. We said that was for her to say. But we gave her knitting needles and a project bag for a going away gift.

A Disturbance in the Space/Time Continuum

That's the only possible explanation for the lack of blogging going on here. I've got three, count 'em, THREE more posts, all written over the past few weeks, waiting for photos. I'm going to finish them up today and publish them all in one fell swoop. I never do that -- I always post on the same day I write -- but drastic times call for drastic measures. I think I'll even leave them with their original dates. They'll pop up periodically today as I finish them. Anyway, you've been warned.

Just to keep you interested, here's a photo of my souvenirs from Nashville. All from Bliss Yarns.

The clever little bag is a small (because they come in various sizes) Knitsack, local produce from the very talented Erin Lane (it says "tink" on the back). That bigger skein of yarn is blue-faced Leicester fingering/sock, also local produce by Jan Quarles at Daily Fibers (couldn't find a website), colorway #9498. The pretty stitch-markers are even more local produce by the also very talented Tactile Design and Press. I tell you, those Tennessee women are a talented lot.

The smaller skeins of yarn are my very first Koigu, bought with a someday second Barn-Raising Quilt in mind - which at the time I thought might have to happen sooner rather than later because I crashed face-first into a Serious Dye Lot Issue with the Claudia Handpainted Walk In The Woods. That's a story with a happy ending, though, and it involves Stitches, so I'll save it for later.

Presto Chango

I have been avoiding the decision for way too long, but last night I had the amazing good fortune to be surrounded by a team of young realists. That would be the Princess and her regal counterparts, the Eldest Niece and the Visiting Royalty. The result of our deliberations is that the Oldest Nephew's sweater has to go.

I may have paled at this news. Even gone a little green about the gills. Done some deep, sorrowful and heartfelt sighing. All that frogging. All that yarn reclamation. All that knitting to do again. Not that I mind the knitting. It's the starting from nothing all over that gets me.

Honestly, though, these young women are Thinkers. I'd really like to believe it was me (age and guile), but I'm pretty sure it was their (youth and skill) idea that I do the starting over part before I do the ripping out part. As they pointed out, I have many skeins of the yarn left un-knit. There is no reason why I couldn't cast on with one of the remaining skeins before I actually rip and reclaim. Kind of like knitting two sleeves or two socks at the same time, or the front and the back of a flat knit sweater.

I find myself irrationally cheered by this. It doesn't change anything. The sweater is wrong and will have to be knit over. I find myself taking great solace, though, from knowing I won't be at ground zero when I rip out what is now the largest swatch I have ever made.

As a sort of bonus, I think I can say that I'm pretty confident of my gauge now. Despite my concerns that the knitting was too loose, the fabric of the blocked no-longer-a-sweater looks good. This means I have a 12 inch, 242 stitch swatch - a pretty impressive sample on which to base my gauge. Admittedly I had to recalculate all my percentages a la Elizabeth Zimmermann. What's art without a little angst?

So, in an astounding feat of prestidigitation, albeit not of the "now you see it, now you don't" variety, behold the New Sweater.

That's 2 inches of 2 x 2 ribbing using the new, improved gauge swatch.

Snap. I just realised that I'll have to re-knit the sleeves from point zero as well; no saving the ribbing because 1/3 of 232 is not the same as 1/3 of 242. Good thing The Oldest Nephew's birthday isn't until November (and that there's always Christmas when I blow that deadline).

Three R's Redux

Um. Yeah. About those gauge issues I mentioned last time. Once I measured the gauge for the sleeves, I took a good look at the body of the sweater. I've been dogged by a vague unease while knitting this project, a sense as I'm knitting of the general looseness of the fabric, a growing suspicion that the loops I'm knitting into feel awfully not-so-tight as they should. I've been ignoring this, because I planned the whole sweater to adjust for the change in my gauge, for going from a flat swatch to an in the round garment. As long as I had the tape measure out, I decided to check.

Everybody knows that knitters purl looser than they knit. This is like the given in a geometric proof, right? Like all triangles have three sides or the sum of the angles in a parallelogram will equal 360 degrees or that Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter. It's the fixed star in the night sky of knitting. Therefore, if one is going to knit in the round, one's gauge will be tighter.

Not this one's. The body of the sweater measured 46 inches instead of 44.

The Oldest Nephew is not stocky. The Oldest Nephew is not scrawny, either, but he is lean. The decision to knit a sweater with 4 inches of ease was made, in part, to accommodate the incontrovertible fact that the actual sweater would knit up at a tighter gauge. The expectation was that the sweater would eventually measure closer to 42 or 43 inches, not a whopping 46.

In a last ditch attempt to cling to my delusion, I decided to block what I had. Rumor had it that Rowan yarn initially stretches out and then pulls in. Rumor didn't prepare me for the sweater stretching out to 50 inches. It didn't lie, either, because once dry the sweater measured less, just not enough less - 46.5 inches to be precise, which is still Way Too Big.

Apologies to the Oldest Nephew. He'll have to go off to Grad School gray sweater-less. This time the Three R's stand for Rip, Reclaim, Re-knit. Or maybe Rail (as at the heavens), Rend, beRate.

The Three R's

One would think, on an 8 hour drive, that serious knitting would happen. One would expect results. One might, and not entirely unreasonably, expect to show significant progress. So not the case on this Nashville trip.

In part, that's because I did more driving than I expected. I'm not sure if it's that Their Father likes to drive more than he thinks he does, or if he thinks I hate driving more than I do, but as a general rule, once he gets behind the wheel, there's no dislodging him. I anticipated miles of Grey Sweater Knitting for The Oldest Nephew. That's miles of yarn, not miles of road. I did knit for miles of road, just not as many miles as I expected. Factor in the late start thing, so we drove more in the dark on roads that accommodate non-glacier-modified land forms (those caves in Kentucky? They're under hills. Big honking hills. Did you know?), and, well, on-the-road knitting just didn't happen.

The knitting at the conference? Not so much. Jinxed by a sliver of wood that caught the sweater about 3 inches down and sliced through 2 strands of the yarn - enough to make me feel I had to go back and splice. The sweater got traded in for blanket squares.

Once back home, I dealt with that repair (thank you spit-splicing gods)and, still in that delusional place where I would get the sweater done in days, started the sleeves. Then noticed they looked awfully wide for their length.

Through some mysterious concatenation of knitting circumstances, and despite the huge gauge swatch and previous sleeve-in-the-round experience with the Lord Protector's sweater, my gauge on the sleeves is horrendously off, almost a full stitch. I now have a second huge swatch, this one to determine which size wooden DPN's will render a sleeve that is in proportion to the body of the sweater.

The Three R's? They would be Repair, Remeasure, Recalculate.

Off the Road Again

We're back. Nashville was hilly and beautiful.

The view from the back porch.

And sad and historical.

Stone's River Civil War National Battle Site (A.K.A. Murfreesboro to us Yankees).

And surprising.

An exact replica of the Parthenon, built for Tennessee's Centennial in 1897.

And even more historical.

The Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson, A.K.A. Old Hickory. Which nick-name he bequeathed to a confusing number of streets in Nashville and its environs (or maybe it's really one multi-directional street).

So you see, I haven't been neglectful. I've been Travelling. Circumstances combined to send us off to Nashville at the end of July (I know, who goes south in July? It hadn't been hot enough here and we needed to suffer heat more intensely?) It was wonderful. Even The Lord Protector said he'd go again.

And wait 'til you see my souvenirs.

Yeah, I Did

To continue (you never dreamed I could milk a grey sweater for three posts, did you?):

I really did lose the original chart. I think it's probably somewhere in my Temporary Storage Locker (formerly known as the Dining Room), but I'm not about to disassemble that fragile ecosystem. I made a semi-valiant attempt, a sort of scratching about the edges of the thing, but determined pretty quickly that I was courting disaster at best. At worst, the EPA would have been all over me.

Then The Nephew had to go and get accepted at Grad School. Shouldn't he have his sweater before he goes? Would a Loving Aunt send him off to the wilds of Higher Education without a sweater? Yes he should. And no, she wouldn't.

The obvious solution was to go back to the sample sweater with which I had been entrusted, check the measurements, pull out the books and start again. Presumably this time I would end up with something I would like - at least well enough that I wouldn't have to lay it aside for months before I could convince myself it was worth knitting.

Behold, Chart #2. On real knitting graph paper, even.

Here was something that would work, I thought. Here was a sweater I would just love to knit. With this chart, Priscilla and Gladys at my side, I could produce a Knitted Wonder. I got as far as knitting the front and back welts. I even achieved the first join.

Then I did that thinking thing again. First, I bought Knits Men Want by Bruce Weinstein (photographed by Jared Flood) and read through it. I quote:

"Rule #2: Men Resist Change. . . . If he's over 15, he's probably got his style locked in - and he likes it."

Then I took a good look at the sweater he had given me. At which point I figured I might as well lose Chart #2.

I can't quite bring myself to knit a fine-gauge, v-neck, grey sweater entirely in K1P1 rib. Is it any surprise, though, that I'm knitting an EZ Hybrid Sweater? For my knitting excitement, this time I think I'll knit saddle shoulders instead of the Shirt Yoke variation.

Easy as Pie

First off, let's establish that pie is not easy. Anyone who has ever made pie from scratch will tell you it is a process fraught with danger, a theater of high drama indeed, resulting in a dessert that gladdens the eye and heart or a tough, soggy, bitter-tasting disappointment of no small order. Forget the salt and you're eating mushy fruit in baked wall-paper paste. Don't ask how I know. Hey, I was a newly-wed at the time.

Precisely so, the quest for the simple grey sweater was not without its pitfalls. This is, in part, due to my nature. Just as I can never follow a recipe for pie exactly (I do not approve of skimpy pie filling), I can never make the simple straightforward knitting choice. It seems the path must always be convoluted. Twisty is the only way I know how to go.

Back when all this started, when I began to realize The Nephew was serious, I was fired by ambition. I would do some Real Knitting. I would knit a gansey, or at least gansey-style. With this goal I bought up what I think of as key texts (I can't help it; I was indoctrinated at an early age to research and original sources): Beth Brown-Reisel's Knitting Ganseys, Gladys Thompson's Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys and Arans, Sabine Domnick's Cables, Diamonds and Herringbone, and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts Knitting in the Old Way. Over the months I added XRX's Arans and Celtics and Alice Starmore's Fisherman's Sweaters.

I am so contrary. None of the patterns pleased me. Or if the pattern pleased me, I didn't like the construction. I wanted to knit the sweater in the traditional method, which meant in the round from the bottom up, split for the front and back yokes, join the shoulders and finally knit the sleeves in the round from the top down. This wiped out the XRX book. I didn't (and don't) like the wide necklines on the Alice Starmore sweaters. The Beth Brown Reisel patterns were mostly for children and women. That left me with Gladys and Priscilla, nether of which was big on actually giving a pattern to knit a whole sweater.

That's okay, I thought, I can be an Intrepid Knitter. I decided to go really traditional and make up my own. I charted out a knit-purl pattern for the yoke that pleased me, planned a welt instead of ribbing for the waistband and studied up on gussets. I had the yarn. I had the swatch. I adjusted for stitch and row count.

Then I set it aside to incubate or marinate or something. And then I lost the chart.

Strawberry rhubarb, anyone?

I Have So Been Knitting

Right around the time I posted last month, it occurred to me that a summer of, "Here's a square," and "Oh, look. Another square," followed by "Surprise! I started a square," might not make for the most fascinating summer blog reading.

I began to cast about for a supplemental project, something to relieve that endless iteration, to vary the fugue on one note. Perhaps I could pull something out of the archives. I could knit on a project that I had been ignoring. One I had seemingly given up on. One that will let me take a high moral ground as I knit with stash yarn and clear out a knitting promise. It can't be Their Father's sweater - I still haven't resolved my cable up the front but not the back issues. An afghan in the summer seemed foolhardy to the point of madness.

Ah yes, just the thing. The Nephew's Grey Sweater.

Because nothing says fascinating summer blogging like miles of stockinette stitch in dark grey yarn.

Summertime

I have summer knitting. I hadn't actually focused on this before, but the only time I work steadily on the Barn-Raising Quilt (from Knitalong? Remember?) is when we're on the road. And we are only ever on the road in summer.

In fact, we were on the road this weekend and I'm still recovering. To and from St. Louis in two days. All five of us. And while we had to book it on the way down (Exchange/Renewal of Vows at 6 and Their Father asked to take the part of Best Man), the ride home was almost leisurely. We didn't get close to the Gateway Arch, but we stopped at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers - you know, where Lewis and Clark started off.

There and back and in public at the breakfast buffet/Sunday brunch at the hotel on WWKIP Day, I expanded my collection of Barn-Raising squares. They're perfect travel and/or warm weather knitting. Small. Portable. Easily remembered even if I leave the pattern behind and easy to read if (when) I make a mistake.

I've added some colors. The dark green that shades closer to brown than I expected --over there on the right -- is Claudia Handpainted in Navy Olive. I note that she seems to have lost the navy in this dye-lot. The brighter green on the left is Claudia Handpainted in Jungle. See, I needed the Olive Navy because the colors were all too bright. Then the Olive Navy turned the Moss into kind of a bronze-ish gold, so I needed a real green to take it's place and . . . never mind. It made sense at the time.

At the rate I'm knitting them, I should have enough squares to complete the afghan in, oh, say, about four more summers.

Recovered

Within the hour of reporting the loss here. Never underestimate the importance of actually emptying out your knitting containers.

Amazingly, my sense of humor, sense of perspective and general good humor were found at the same time and in the same place.

No such luck on the modicum of patience. I suppose it's a sad truth that what one never had in the first place cannot be restored (Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after surgery? . . . The wonders of modern medicine! I never could before.).

Missing

1 sense of humor.
1 sense of perspective.
1 measure patience.
The sense I was born with.

More importantly, though:
1 skein Claudia Handpainted Fingering/Sock in Taupe.
1 partial skein ditto in Moss.
5 Barn-raising Quilt Squares, 1 each in Claudia Handpainted in Walk in the Woods, Moss and Taupe, and ShibuiKnits Sock in Dragonfly and Pagoda.
1 set 8" KA bamboo dpn's, US 2/2.75 mm.
1 set 6" (5"?) KA bamboo dpn's US 2/2.75 mm.

I know I had them. If I doubt myself, I can look right here. As of a year ago yesterday they all existed, ergo they must all exist now. It's called object permanence, or maybe it's the conservation of energy and matter. Something like that. So where did they go? And when I find them, will I also find my sense of humor, my sense of perspective, my measure of patience . . . ?

Knitting in the Tunnel

It isn't a very good place for knitting. For one thing, it's dark. Also kind of twisty. Not to mention dank. But I'm not actually digging through the rubble at the moment, so it seems a better place than it's been. Undeniably, though, knitting has been rather thin on the ground. I can give you a litany of all my failures or a fantasy preview of all my plans. Perhaps both, clearing the decks and then going on to prove my cockeyed indomitable determined optimism (Hark. Is that Bernstein's Candide playing in my head? "Once one dismisses the rest of all possible world's one finds that this is the best of all possible worlds . . . .Objection! What about snakes?").

Anyway. It is said that confession is good for the soul. With that in mind, a not comprehensive, albeit indicative, exposition of -- let's err on the side of charity here and call it -- interrupted knitting.

The Great Race for Afghans for Afghans? Lost it. On three counts, because I didn't even manage to rid my house of the purple sweater.

Their Father's long-dormant cardigan? I am seriously looking at frogging the back because I don't want the cables from the front to just stop at the shoulder seam. Right now I just avert my eyes from it. Some ostrich-ish notion that if I keep it out of my direct line of sight I won't have to actually do something about it.

The Ab-Fab Afghan I Intend to Absolutely Love? Not even cast on. Even a one row, 17 stitch repeat of Old Shale is apparently too much. (One of the reasons the Great Sweater Race fell apart was because I kept blithely --blindly? -- knitting stockinette when I should have been reading the pattern, with the result that the green sweater lost it's cables and the blue one needs to find it's neckline decreases.)

Enough. On to the fantasy part.

Er. Hmm. It's seems that well is dry. How disconcerting. How fortuitous, then, that I have been invited to produce a piece of knitting that -- based on the above recitation of aborted knitting projects -- precisely fits the current shape of the knitting hole in my life.

Small.

Simple.

For someone else.

Too bad it's a secret so I can't tell you much more. How about this, though? I have to make one decision.

Which color? I can't be expected to decide - the light in this tunnel is terrible.

Two Hours

Less, even.

Yarn - Tess' Designer Yarns Hand- dyed merino bulky in colorway Maine Woods and Waters.

Needles - US 11/8 mm Addi Turbos.

Pattern - Paddington Neckwarmer by Roxanne Wood/netofbeing.

Buttons from stash.

Skinny buttons and bulky yarn do not a good match make. I stripped one strand off a short length of the yarn, pulled the rest through the button holes with a fine crochet hook and knotted it several times to make a shank. I fastened the buttons on by tying the yarn around a stitch (as opposed to threading both ends through the same space).

I continue in the Tunnel of Life. While I am not yet convinced that the light at the end is an oncoming train, I grow mightily tired of finding out the light is only a place where the tunnel has collapsed and, not only have I not reached the end, I have to dig through all the rubble and repair it before I can go on. If someone could please send me a sense of humor I would be most grateful.

Two hours only, but it was two hours with my knitting needles in my hands.

Giddy

Such excitement over here at Chez WoolGathering. We have been hoping and planning for some time, but now it's definite. We are to have a Guest from a Foreign Land this Summer.

We're taking her to Stitches, even though she's not so much into the knitting thing.


Yet (cue sinister and diabolical laughter requisite for villainous, knitterly plotting of the taking over the world variety).