Archive for May, 2011

May 24

Stockinette fatigue

I have three projects on the needles right now: a snuggle sack for my niece- or nephew-to-be, a pair of men’s socks and a cardigan for myself. They are all knit in stockinette stitch. They are all boring.

I am plowing ahead on the cardigan, because it is a cotton blend, and I could potentially wear it on a cooler summer night. But it is taking every ounce of willpower not to put it down and cast on for something new. As I knit row after row of stockinette, my mind drifts to other projects I want to work on that would be far more interesting — fair-isle Christmas stockings for my niece and her soon-to-be sibling, a cabled hat, a crocheted basket. All of them sound a lot more interesting than what I’m doing now. But I know that if I put that sweater down, I will never pick it back up, and I will regret it.

You see, here’s the rub: The things I like to wear are not necessarily the most interesting to knit. My uniform is generally a plain, brightly colored cardigan with jeans, a skirt or pants, depending on the occasion. I know I will love wearing the cardigan I am knitting — it is bright yellow, simple top-down construction, with garter-stitch borders and 3/4-length sleeves. I plan to finish it with buttons in a contrasting color. It is perfect for me. To wear. To knit? I don’t know.

I have always been a small-project, instant-gratification knitter. Even if I was knitting a basic stockinette hat or pair of mittens, it was done in a few evenings. Now that I’ve embarked on some sweaters, that plain stockinette is suddenly taking much longer. But the problem is, I’ll never wear a lace sweater, or a beautiful patterned shawl. And neither will most of the people I knit for. I have the pattern, yarn and needles set aside for a gorgeous sweater for my husband (Brownstone by Jared Flood), but when I think about the acres and acres of stockinette stitch involved, I shudder. I love stranded colorwork, and even though that’s (usually) stockinette, it’s different. There is something else to focus on. The snuggle sack I’m making had about 20 rows of colorwork near the bottom, but once I flew through that, the plain stockinette is killing me. It’s going to be super-cute, but it’s mind-numbing in the meantime.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I’m trying to plan my next few projects so that I’ll have some different things going on. Those colorwork stockings will be fun, and shouldn’t take too long. But I don’t know if my poor husband will ever get that sweater.

What about you? Do the things you like to wear (or give) mesh with the things you like to knit? And if not, what do you do about it?

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Posted in Chat

May 13

Weekend inspiration

First, congratulations to Leigh, who won a copy of Kirsten’s Kapur’s Andokides Jacket pattern! So many people left comments on the blog — thanks to everyone who stopped by. I was touched by all the sweet compliments for my sweater, and I giggled at some of the funny comments about steeking. I do hope you’ll give it a try (though maybe on something smaller than a jacket to start) — it really is a fun and rewarding technique.

And now, just a few little bits and bobs to keep you busy this weekend:

  • I am completely obsessed with the Idlewood tunic and its giant cowl neckline. I will absolutely be knitting this with Cascade’s Ecological Wool.
  • I’m a sucker for any variation on the classic granny square, and this modern granny stripe blanket is one of the best variations I’ve seen. I love that it puts a contemporary spin on what is sometimes considered an old-fashioned motif. I think it would look awesome in a neutral color of Eco Wool (yes, again), with a bright color of Cascade 128 for the accent stripes.
  • Have you seen Jared Flood’s new hat pattern, Fortnight? It features subtle ear flaps that are created with short rows. I recently FINALLY got the hang of short rows, so I’m looking forward to knitting this. If you’re looking for some practice on this technique, this pattern would be a good small project to get your feet wet.
  • If you knit for kids, don’t miss these adorable monster-themed pants. I mean, please — how cute are these?

What else has caught your eye recently? Leave a comment and I’ll share your links in next week’s post.

Happy stitching!

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Posted in Chat, Patterns

May 06

How I cut my knitting … and lived to tell, part 2

Thanks so much for all the nice comments on my last post. It’s so much fun to share a process like this with other knitters. You’re the only ones who could possibly understand what it means to take a pair of very sharp scissors to several weeks’ worth of knitting!

When we last spoke, I had just made the first cut in my sweater. I suppose it’s not really fair to say that there was no turning back; after all, I could have stopped right there, grafted the stitches back together and given up the whole endeavor. But as I said before, the sweater was not particularly attractive as a knee-length pullover, so I really had no choice. Let’s look at the cut up close:

Look at those raw edges — kind of makes you shudder, doesn’t it? But there’s no time to dwell on it. Must keep cutting. Do you ever marvel at how little time it takes to frog a piece of knitting? You can work on something for weeks, and it literally takes under a minute to rip it all out. It’s the same thing with steeking; you’ve been knitting your heart out for a month, and it takes about 45 seconds to cut it in half. Hmmm … Lots of folks commented on the last post that steeking seems scary, but honestly, as long as you’ve done your homework and reinforced the steeks properly, it’s really not so bad. The machine stitching is especially secure — you can tug at the yarn and see that it’s not going anywhere. Though I should add that it might not hurt to do your first steeks on something knit from stickier yarn. Get yourself a nice, hairy 100 percent wool. Trust me, you’ll see how the fibers hang on to each other for dear life. They’re not going anywhere. (Ideas for small steeking projects at the end of this post.)

DONE! I was a pullover, and now I'm a cardigan, thanks to the magic of steeking.

So that’s that. The scary part is over. You can open your eyes now. But really, there’s still work to be done. Now I’ve got raw edges that need to be taken care of. The next step is to add button bands to the front of the cardigan. (First, at right is a nice gruesome shot of the cut edges. Yikes, right?) In this pattern, Kirsten has you pick up stitches to create fairly wide garter-stitch bands. No actual buttonholes, because you’ll use loops and toggles. (Though certainly it would be easy enough to add buttonholes, if that’s your cup of tea.) With the right side facing, you pick up stitches at each edge of the steek. In other words, you had five steek stitches — you cut down the middle of stitch No. 3, and now you’re picking up stitches underneath stitches No. 1 and No. 5. You just zoom right up one side of your cardigan, picking up two stitches for every three rows. When you’re done, you knit 10 rows in garter stitch, and then repeat for the other side. Here’s what it looks like when you’re picking up stitches for your bands:

And remember earlier, when I told you that those steek stitches would eventually fold inside the sweater? Well, the photo below shows what I mean. It’s kind of hard to see what’s going on here, I’ll admit. This is the inside of my sweater, and you can see the blue cable from my needle at the righthand side of the work, holding the stitches I picked up. You can see the pink stitching, and to the left of that, the cut edges. I don’t have a photo to show you, but after everything else was finished, I used gray sewing thread to tack down this facing. I also could have sewn a pretty grosgrain ribbon over the facing to hide the raw edges, but you know what? I didn’t.

The five steek stitches are folded inside the sweater to create a facing along the button bands.

After I knit the button bands, the only thing left to do was attach fasteners. This was harder than I imagined. Kirsten used toggles and leather cord, but I wanted to play around with other options for the loops. I looked at the other finished jackets on Ravelry, knit some i-cord, made some braids. But everything seemed too bulky. Even using smaller needles, i-cord knit with this kind of yarn is pretty serious. Nothing looked right. So finally I decided not to mess with success, and I ran to the craft store to pick up some leather cord. I LOVE the way it looks, though I’m not entirely sure that I won’t be repairing these loops after several wearings. Despite my best efforts, they don’t seem very secure. You’ll notice that I didn’t use toggles all the way down the coat. A note to my curvy sisters: This sweater ended up a bit narrow in the hips. You’ll notice that Kirsten’s gorgeous daughter does not have this problem in the photograph. The style of the jacket works fine, however, because it seems unlikely you’d actually want to button it all the way to the knees. But you may want to keep this in mind when you knit this sweater — it wouldn’t be hard to add some shaping in the middle of the sweater. Cascade 128 does grow a bit when you wash it (my sleeves are now a little too long), so don’t overcompensate too much if you decide to add shaping.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t have modeled shots of the sweater, but I hope you’ll see be able to appreciate how lovely it is. I am so in love with it. Drum roll, please …
And here’s a closeup of the toggles, in case you decide to do it this way. I so happy with the way this sweater turned out. It’s really, really cozy — heavy enough to stand in for a coat during the fall (and maybe even early winter, if I add a few handknit accessories). It’s also incredibly soft. I am interested to see how it holds up to washing — I’ll let you know. Andokides is a very well-written pattern, which is typical of Kirsten’s designs — detailed, but not overly detailed. Remember, you can try it for yourself — Kirsten is giving away a copy of the pattern. Just to make things easier, please keep comments on the first post and I will let the random number generator choose a winner next Friday, May 13.

I also promised that I would offer a few suggestions for steeking projects. Look, you could go through your whole knitting life and never steek a piece of knitting. But don’t you kind of want to try? It’s one of those things to check off your knitting to-do list. I don’t think I said this in my first post, but usually, steeking is done on stranded colorwork projects. This is certainly not hard-and-fast, but the fact is that when the yarns are twisted around each other, that’s kind of a natural reinforcement. In fact, my sweater is a perfect example: The colorwork portions feel more sturdy around the steek than the plain gray area.

Two patterns that I recommend, both of which are very small and not at all scary:

  • Mushroom Pulsewarmers: This free pattern by Adrian Bizilia of Hello Yarn was my very first steeking project. You could easily substitute another colorwork pattern — this is a pretty straightfoward project. Or, if you don’t have any fingering-weight wool (or have no use for wristwarmers), just cast on with some worsted-weight wool and use this as a practice project.
  • Amazonium: Another wristwarmer, this one from Mandy Powers of Zigzagstitch. I bought this pattern a while ago, but I haven’t knit it yet. But one thing I love about this pattern is that Mandy has you knit both wristwarmers at the same time on a 16-inch circular needle. You don’t have to use double-pointed needles. You can do this because you’re just going to cut it apart anyway. Now that I look at these again, I think I need to put them in my queue. Woolen bracelets — awesome!

Also, two steeking tutorials that I highly recommend:

  • Eunny Jang’s Steeking Chronicles: Everything (seriously) you need to know about the process.
  • Elinor Brown’s tutorial on Exercise Before Knitting: Not as comprehensive as Eunny’s, but still contains all the basics. I love when Elinor says, “Cutting your knitting is shockingly easy to do. Really, it ought to be harder.” So true.

Thanks so much for sharing this project with me — I hope I’ve taken away some of the mystery about steeking. And I can’t wait see some more finished Andokides pop up on Ravelry, so start cutting!

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Posted in Patterns, Techniques

May 05

How I cut my knitting … and lived to tell, part 1

Warning: Seasonally inappropriate knitting content ahead. Bulky sweaters in May — don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I just cut my knitting. On purpose. Almost everyone who hears this has an intense reaction, including my mom, who was quick to tell me that my grandmother (a talented knitter whom, sadly, I never got to knit with) would NOT support this technique. But I did it, and I will do it again. And I thought you might like to see how it all turned out.

The technique is called steeking, and it’s actually a pretty traditional technique used in fair-isle knitting. Basically, you knit in the round and then create seams by cutting your knitting in a certain spot. This way, you can knit a cardigan in the round; create a V-neck on a sweater or vest; or position armholes in a pullover.

Courtesy of Kirsten Kapur/Through the Loops

The project I steeked was a gorgeous colorwork sweater-jacket — the Andokides Jacket by Kirsten Kapur of Through the Loops. (That’s Kirsten’s sample jacket at right, on her beautiful daughter.) Kirsten is an amazing designer; her designs are absolutely beautiful, but also generally really simple, when it comes down to it. And let me pause here to say that Kirsten has agreed to give away a copy of the Andokides pattern to one Knit and Stitcher! So after I show you how easy it is to cut your knitting, you can do it too! (More details at the end of this post.)

The major benefits of steeking in this pattern are: 1. No purling! Maybe this isn’t a big deal to you, but it is a HUGE deal to me. I hate to purl, and am slow at it. I just can’t seem to get into the same rhythm that I have with my knitting. But when you use steeks on a stockinette sweater, you can knit in the round and then cut the front opening of the cardigan. 2. This is sort of related to No. 1: You can do stranded colorwork in the round. It’s certainly possible to do colorwork in flat knitting, but for many people (me!), it’s far simpler to do it in the round.

Before I show you how it all works, a few quick details on this pattern: It’s knit on size 10 needles with chunky yarn. So even though it’s a sizable project (the largest thing I’ve ever knit!), it goes fairly quickly. I used Cascade 128 Superwash, which we sell in the shop in tons of great colors. In fact, choosing the colors was the hardest part of knitting this sweater. The pattern begins at the bottom of the body — you knit a giant tube that starts with a garter-stitch edging, goes through the colorwork pattern, and ends with several inches of plain stockinette in the main color. Then you set aside the body and knit two sleeves, which are knit in the round. (I used Magic Loop, but you could use DPNs.) And then you take the body and the two sleeves and knit them all together to form the yoke. There are a few painful inches where you’re knitting around the entire yoke, but then you get to do more colorwork and lots of fast decreases, and all is well.

The "checkerboard" pattern is the five steek stitches; eventually, I will cut the sweater right down the middle of this section.

While you’re doing all this, you’re knitting a band of “steek stitches” into your garment. The photo at left shows the steek stitches up close. See right in the middle where it looks like a checkerboard? Those are the five steek stitches. (If you’re eagle-eyed, you can also see some pink machine-stitching. Ignore that — I will tell you about it in a minute.) As you can see, the steek stitches interrupt the colorwork pattern. But that’s OK, because I’m going to cut right up the center of that column, and those stitches will eventually disappear into the inside of the garment. Depending on the pattern, there may be more steek stitches — sometimes 7 or 9. This yarn is pretty bulky, so you don’t want to use too many, because those stitches will be folded inside the garment to create a facing. Too many stitches would be bulky and unattractive.

OK, knitting is (basically) finished. I tried it on. It fit, albeit as a very unattractive sweater dress. (Please don’t get me started on sweater dresses — it is a topic that I’m very passionate about.) I blocked it, which was a challenge, considering how gigantic this sweater is. Here’s what it looked like after blocking:

But before you can get out the scissors, there’s one more step. And honestly, this part made me MUCH more nervous than the actual cutting. Before you can cut, you need to reinforce the steeks so that the entire thing doesn’t just unravel into tiny shreds of yarn. (Technically, it is possible to cut steeks without reinforcing. But as I am not a wily Scottish woman, I do not intend to do it that way.) There are a few ways to reinforce steeks, including machine sewing and crochet. I have steeked a few small baby sweaters before, and because I am a crocheter, I always used that method. (For excellent tutorials on all the methods, see Eunny Jang’s Steeking Chronicles.) But when I did that, I was using non-washable, “sticky” wool. That’s the best kind of fiber to use for steeking; the fibers stick to themselves, and even start to felt a bit, so you don’t need to give them quite as much reinforcement.

But the yarn I used for this jacket was superwash, and pretty bulky at that, so it needed some more serious support. Enter the sewing machine. Now, I do know how to use my sewing machine, but under the best circumstances, we are not best friends. So putting a bulky sweater through the machine seemed like a scary proposition. But I had spent a month knitting this sweater, and by gosh, I was going to finish it. So one day, I did it. And you know what? It was fine. The basic idea is to use the machine to stitch on either side of where you will cut the knitting. Remember those five steek stitches? I was going to cut right up the middle of the third stitch. So I machine-stitched TWO lines on either side of that stitch. The photo at left shows the four rows of stitching on the inside of the sweater. I used hot pink thread so I could see what I was doing. (And also because that was what was in my machine and I was too lazy to change it. Just being honest.) If you go back to the photo above where I showed you the steek stitches, you can see that it’s barely visible from the front. And it won’t be visible at all once I cut the steek and turn the facings to the inside. See that space between the two columns of pink stitches? That’s where I’ll cut the steek.

Now honestly, once the machine stitching was done, I was home-free. (This illustrates how much I am not a fan of my sewing machine sometimes.) Cutting the knitting didn’t scare me that much. Maybe that’s crazy, I don’t know.

OK, time to cut. You really need to find the sharpest scissors you have. And the smallest ones, too. Even though it’s a huge sweater, I cut each stitch individually, so you want to have tiny, sharp scissors to make that possible. Many steeking tutorials advise a swig of liquor at this point, but as it was the middle of the morning, I just took a giant gulp of coffee.

And then I cut:

The first cut!

I feel like this is getting a little long-winded, so I am going to leave you with that image for now. What will happen? Will the sweater unravel into a pile of wool on the floor? Will I curse my decision and give up knitting forever? Stay tuned …

And while you’re waiting, let’s do that giveaway. As I said, Kirsten will give away a copy of the Andokides pattern to one reader. She will send you a PDF, so all you have to do is come by Knit and Stitch, buy yourself a big bunch of Cascade 128, and start knitting! (Though I will admit, you probably will only want to knit this sweater with the A/C on full blast if you’re going to do it this summer. But think of how it nice it will be to have a cozy sweater all finished when October rolls around.) To enter, please leave a comment on this post. To give everyone lots of time to enter, let’s choose a winner next Friday, May 13. And I’ll be back soon to show you the rest of my steeking adventure, and to offer some suggestions for much, much smaller patterns that will let you practice steeking.

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Posted in Patterns, Techniques

May 02

A winner!!

Congrats to Annie, who won a pattern from The Brown Stitch!! She will get the pattern of her choice from Elizabeth. Annie, be sure to share your FO so we can see how it turned out!

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway — it’s also fun to see people get excited about new designers. If you’re looking for a good first sweater project, I really can’t recommend Elizabeth’s patterns highly enough. I think you’ll be really pleased with the result.

I’ve got ANOTHER giveaway coming up from ANOTHER great designer, so stay tuned …

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Posted in Patterns