Susan's (Un)Sensational Saggy Sweater

I checked my e-mail yesterday afternoon to find a posted comment from Sandy (who must have been reading some back posts) asking when I'd do a F.O. report on my green tea raglan - as I'd been obviously negligent in that area. I decided that there was no time like the present - so when I got dressed this morning I reached for my purple raglan - and within 5 minutes was mentally composing a post on why this sweater has really, really, REALLY disappointed me.

I don't think it's the pattern - I didn't discover any huge errors or suchlike in it at all, and don't get me wrong either - I love the yarn. It's softer than I ever imagined bamboo (100% bamboo!) would be - and I just adore the colour I chose. It's just that the sweater - which fits me for the first 2 minutes of wearing - starts to sag and droop and just kind of fade around me somewhere after the 2 minute, 30 second mark. (But, oh, for those first magical 90 seconds how I do love it so.....)

But two perfect minutes are just not long enough.

The first day I wore the sweater all was good - all was GREAT in fact - until I went into the bathroom and noticed that my sleeve, which had started out nicely snug and slim against the underside of my arm, was starting to bag a little bit. "Hmmmmmmmm............................" I thought. "Well........... that's probably okay - I don't want the arm to be too tight, right?", and so I didn't give it another thought.

But then about an hour later as I walked across the library I looked down and saw that the hem, which had previously been just a hand's span below my bellybutton and smoothly sleek against my pants, had stretched so much that it was starting to........sag a bit lower, and to blouse and ruffle around me. Now while I might be a bit blase about my arms, I'm anything but when it comes to my hips. No extra weight or yardage around those two monuments of mine nosireethankyoubob. So that broke my stride and made me frown a bit as I kept on walking around the building, running my little errands.

I had already come to terms with the fact that it was - due to the nature of the yarn & the needle size I had to use to get gauge - essentially see-through and reminded me more of a piece of chain mail than a sweater. I had even gone out and bought camisoles to wear under it, I had decided that I was *that* okay with that particular design element. (If you can call it such a thing.)

But for me the final straw came when, at the end of the day, I walked outside to mail something in the blue U.S. Post Office mailbox on the corner. As I walked I heard this sort of.............slapping flapping noise and looked down. My sweater hem, which had previously started out a few inches below my bellybutton and was snug around my hips was now down to the middle of my thighs and was literally flaring out like a dress. If I had just a pair of opaque tights on instead of jeans nobody would have even blinked - they'd have thought I was wearing a purple knitted minidress. Not Cool.

Not Acceptable.

So I pondered that evening what I could do to the sweater to fix it, and as I had been reading some Elizabeth Zimmerman not too long before that, suddenly I got the urge to Tell My Knitting Who Was Boss! - so I took a measurement, yanked out my scissors, and simply cut off a huge whacking piece creating a new bottom hem. I pulled out the stray pieces of yarn, shoved the raw stitches that were sticking out on a size 7 circular needle, knitted a row, and then cast off, leaving a rather silky crumpled heap of chopped yarn behind. While that has most certainly helped, I still can't quite get over the 'growth' factor of this yarn - how much it stretches upon wearing, how see-through it is knitted at this gauge, and how while it's lovely and light and silky I can't really feel any of that like I'd like to because I have to wear a camisole under it to keep from showing everyone my bra seams & hooks. Plus the neckline keeps on stretching and showing both bra straps and camisole straps after just an hour or so of wearing.

So, I'm 99.9% reconciled to frog it - my only question is do others think that this yarn, knitted at a much tighter gauge, will sag and droop just like this sweater does, and therefore should I make something completely different? Or should tightening up the gauge give the sags the old heave-ho and knitting a second sweater in a tighter fashion is certainly worth a try?

And while you ponder all of that for me, here are some pictures of what else I've been doing during my recent silent time.................

One finished sockpal sock.

One finished 'Picovoli' gauge swatch.

One almost finished Ribbed Baby Jacket for Maxine. With mods.

.........and last, but certainly not least, for Mel - pics of our beloved Takezo, the Wonder Pup.....

.....then........

............and this very morning, a few weeks after his summer haircut.

Knitting during meetings & suchlike

This post coming to you from the beautiful conference center of the 2007 MLA (Maryland Library Association) meeting.

I am knitter - hear me roar! More specifically, hear me roar that during the first half of this morning's presentation titled "Blogs and Podcasting for Everyone" I finished my last Chart 1 repeat of Icarus. I now need to do a few more rows before I can move over to Chart 2 (and that is - unfortunately - no little thing to say as I'm up to - what - 375 stitches or so per row now?) - but man o man - the second chart is in sight, and I can hardly wait!

No pictures, because my cell phone camera isnt' fantastic & who needs a blurry picture of what is still at this point a silky blue blob?

But I am close - so close that I can almost taste it.

Now I'm off in search of coffee before the 2nd half of the presentation kicks in (the podcasting portion) and after that I am going to play hooky from the beginning portion of a demo this afternoon for a wee bit to sneak in some lunch w/ Peggers as I am a mere 15 minutes from his workplace and the man's offered to buy me lunch!

How could a girl resist a free lunch?

Happily, though, the demo that is slated later this afternoon is as knitting-friendly as this morning's presentation is, which means by the end of the day I'll be that much closer to starting Chart 2 than I currently am. Hip hip hooray for meetings and presentations and demos!

Booo booo booo to Honors Convocations when I'm not allowed to knit!

(That travesty happens today at 3:30. Boo! Hiss!)

;>

Pictures & info about my Gryphon Traveler sock to come next week, plus pictures of Icarus into Chart 2, plus a final synopsis of my Green Tea Raglan sweater as well - my month from hell is wrapping up (my month bled into about 6 weeks instead of the more standard 4!) and I'm starting to emerge!!!!

Plus - Maryland Sheep & Wool is this weekend and baby I'll be there - Kim and I are catching a knitting bus up and we're planning on meeting up w/ Gryphon and her MD knitting bloggers group at 1 - hopefully I'll see some other folks there for a fun get together!

Jumping Across the Pond

I have been coveting (majorly, majorly coveting!) Skinny Rabbit's knits for ages now - ever since I randomly stumbled across her blog more than a year ago.

The first thing to do it for me was THIS - her ribbon cardigan with 3/4 sleeves from Phildar's Eté 2004 pattern book, using this really cool (but now, sadly, discontinued) ribbon yarn by Phil Ruban in this incredible apricot colour 'Cuivre'. I did a frantic search for the pattern, and read somewhere that the Canadian shop Knit n' Tyme carries Phildar mags, and when I e-mailed them they quite kindly told me that yes, they did carry that particular issue and that yes, the sweater I was coveting was in it. And then they told me that this issue was only in French. And people, languages are not my strong point. Without coffee I even struggle with English in the morning - just as Peggers. (Or, as he'd probably quite kindly point out, I also struggle with it after a single glass of red wine - case in point? Last night after dinner - which involved one single solitary glass of Merlot - and a few errands out with a very very very wired Munchkin.)

A photo of the lovely - sadly, now impossible to find - Phil Ruban ribbon yarn. A quick Google search brought this to me from a 2005 (!) stash sale that is now long long long over.
The irony that pains me particularly is that this is even the exact colour that I dream of......

So after realizing that the Phildar issue was in French I simply gave up on it and contented myself to just read Ms. Rabbit's blog entries and willed myself to Let Things Go. Of course, I kept returning to the pictures over and over and over again, but I resisted. Oh, how I resisted. Then after I met Gryphon and listened to her talk and post about knitting and designing her own pieces, I realized that I could probably knit and design the thing myself from my basic knowledge of how knitted pieces are made and fitted together, with a knitted leaf/lace pattern put along the edge of the cardi all on my very own. So the pain eased a wee little bit.

Then yesterday, realizing that because Fluffa/Skinny Rabbit does not in fact have an RSS feed and so is not something that I can add to my list of updatable blog links, I went over and browsed her back back back postings. And read all about the incredibly adorable intarsia linen jacket that she knitted her little boy (she's SUCH a good mommy - she knits him a jacket every year to go back to school in!), and at the bottom of the post she mentions this really neat zipper facing trick that she learned the previous year while making her son's knitted cotton jacket. And a nifty zipper trick with facings ("Facings?" I wondered to myself, "what are those???") is something that I was interested in reading about. Heck, this woman is so funny and entertaining when she writes that I even read eagerly about her afternoon snacks - she's that engrossing a person! (Hey, an American ex-lawyer who moved to France, got married and had an adorable son, and is now enrolled in fashion school? With a perfect bod for draping clothes on and a wack dance style? Engrossing is too weak a word for her!!!!)

So dutifully and happily I clicked on the post to read about her son's cotton jacket.

And totally fell in LOVE.

An asymetrical jacket done in 3x1 ribbing that melts into plain stocking knit on the front panels, with this wonderful collar that stands up just the wee-est bit and a zipper'd front. Ribbed sleeves. It just screamed out to me to make it for the Munchkin - - he so adores wearing his little jackets and just loves loves loves practicing with his zipper. Plus it would make me so incredibly happy to knit him something else other than the rooster sweater that I finished for him when he was about 6 months old (I made it in a 2-year old size) and haven't made him a thing since.

Plus I have this really cool Katia (?) yarn that I got on a major whack discount from The Fine Needle about, oh, 2 years ago and it would be perfect for a jacket. It's this funky wool/something blend, where the something is this sort of ribbon thing that twists around the wool in an acid yellow green flecked with orange, brown, and red. Totally something that a child could wear as a jacket but nobody else could wear as a sweater because it would just be Too Bizarre. Plus it's a bit stiff, which is even better in terms of jacket & not in terms of sweater.

So I did it. I popped right over to Knit n' Tyme and found the Phildar mag with the asymetrical jacket pattern in it and bought it, despite my total lack of French-speaking abilities. (A knitters dictionary in multiple languages is now apparently on my knitting purchase list!!!! AHEM! PEGGERS! Major mother's day present idea just stated here! Pay attention, Mr. Buggs!!!!) I also went out last night after dinner (and - hehehe - the afore-mentioned glass of red wine) and bought a copy of Katharina Buss's Big Book of Knitting because the Rabbit also mentions this several times in many of her posts - including this one with the cool trick with the zipper facings.

And lemmie' tell you, that Rabbit is one woman who turns out some muy polished looking knitted pieces. She's totally the boss of her knitting - and isn't afraid to rip out, re-work, or re-stitch something if it doesn't look exactly SO. And while my basic knitting skills are certainly up to snuff after all this time, my finishing skills need some boosting - so I figure this is about the time that I need to work on them - and this might just be the book to help me to do so.

I realized this for several reasons, but the most major one being that I finished & seamed & wove-in the ends on my Green Tea Raglan sweater last night and am wearing it today. And while it looks lovely (.....albeit long! See how the pic in Interweave shows a cute little jean-clad backside peeking from beneath the sweater? My sweater - knitted most carefully to the measurements in the mag!!!! - covers the back pockets of my pants. Comes to the ball & socket joint in my hip. Is most certainly tunic length rather than slightly-long-sweater-length. What to do about this, I am not certain at all.) it doesn't look nearly as professional as I'd like. I don't think it looks Home-Ec from 8th grade, now, mind you - but it doesn't look as polished as it could.

So 2007 might very well end up being the Year Of Learning Finishing Techniques here at Chez Pointy Sticks...................

Easter TONS

....tons and tons and tons of knitting was done this weekend, that is!

(Despite 6" of freakish snow, a 5-6 hour power outage,
and not being at home for all of Saturday and half of Sunday)

I'm actually a bit amazed myself at how much was finished! And I'm a s-l-o-w knitter compared to many (being the 'grabber' type knitter instead of the continental or other styles of knitters makes me considerably slower than most, I've always thought) - - yet despite my turtle-like tendencies with the needles here is what I managed to work on this weekend:



I finished my Green Tea Raglan and blocked it and seamed it all together. All is left is to finish weaving all of those hellish ends. I have also tried it on & happily enough it fits (!) altho' I do have to say in the sake of modesty I will buy a cami to wear underneath it before I actually sport it outside of the house.








I also did a ton of knitting on the Backyard Leaves Scarf using Gryphon's amazing yarn. This stuff is pure gold, lemmie' tell you - very very very soft (and passed my patented sniff test with its very first whiff!) and just lovely lovely lovely colours all melded and melted together. It is actually due to Gryphon's lovely yarn that I credit actually finishing the first half of the scarf, as I rapidly grew tired of the pattern repeat after about, oh, the 6th one. Finishing those last two (you do 11 repeats before finishing off the pointy end) took some serious discipline! I'm guessing, however, that my lack of enthusiasm was not because of a failure in the scarf pattern, but rather because I did all of this scarf knitting in a day and a half. I will cast on for the second half very soon - I have determined that I will finish one pattern repeat every day at the very least - which means that the scarf will be more of less done in a week and a half. PLENTY of time to make my Mother's Day deadline!

I interspersed the scarf knitting with some Icarus knitting - -

(my progress shot taken outside Saturday afternoon during the power outage!)

- - my Jaegerspun Zephyr from Sarah's Yarns came stunningly soon after ordering it - - I ordered it around 1PM on a Thursday and it was literally on my doorstep time-stamped by the UPS guy at 12:40 PM the very next day. Talk about the speed of light! The yarn is wound for you by the Sarah folks - - they take their huge-mongous cone of Jaegerspun and wind off 2 ounces for you and then sell you just that 2 ounces at whatever percentage of the total 1-pound cone price would be. In my case that came to just $5 and some change per two-ounce ball. Can you believe it? Apparently they're a bit controversial in the yarn-retail world because of this practice, but as a person who literally snorts out loud when I read People magazine or US magazine and see the prices on those "designer" bags or "designer" jeans that celebrities wear ($700?????? For a pair of JEANS?????? Unless they magically turn my ass into a size 6 and do the dishes for me every night, I'm hard-pressed to shell out $70 for a pair of jeans!!!) this discount pricing model sits just fine with me, thankyouverymuch!

(Above is a progress shot taken this morning - I've finished the first repeat of Chart 1...the outside shot above is much much much more true to colour than this particular shot - something about the indoor light plus the grey-ish background - that is - it's grey in real life! - just washes out the intense intense intense robin's egg dark blue that is truthfully is...)

The bugger part of the Icarus story is that I also ordered an Addi bamboo size 3 (24") needle to knit it on, but decided to go w/ the size 3 Addi (16" - one of the circs that I use for socks) that I had to get started. You know - starteritis - I totally couldn't wait until the longer needle arrived in the mail......until yesterday when it actually did arrive and I slapped my forehead in disgust. I already HAVE a size 3 Addi (24") needle (turns out those sock needles that I bought were in fact ALL 24" long!) - in fact, that was exactly what I had been knitting the sucker on in the first place!!! So now I have three Addi naturas size 3 in 24 inches. I just didn't bother to check & measure (or heck, even READ the packaging!) before my silly self went crazy online ordering with reckless abandon. So now what do I do? Do I try and send it back? Do I even think that 24" is remotely long enough for such a huge shawl in the first place - so do I try and send it back and ask them to send a 36" long needle instead? Do I offer it in a swap to a friend? Do I burn it, offering it up to the gods in an attempt to prevent future Online-Knitting-Supply-Ordering Stupidity???


This morning I also started organizing my current batch of projects. Below what you see is nothing other than my patented "circular needle method" - which for me means that anything remotely small that I knit on a circular needle I stuff in one of these $1 Target bags that I bought over the summer and keep labeled (and therefore organized, as in my world this counts as organized!) with little ring tabs. While I haven't yet started Seraphim, what I currently have in that particular bag is a freshly-wound yarn cake of the Handpaintedyarn skein (didn't like the skein too much, but love love love the yarn cake!) and a pair of Knit Picks Options, size 5.

Pointy little suckers, those.

Ketchup

Sorry - I'm hungry - that should really be *catch up*.

Quickly, as I've got about 15 minutes to myself before I need to run - so just the basics:


My Green Tea Raglan bamboo sweater: I'm down to the last few rows on the front - and already the back & sleeves are done. I'm so excited about this - my first adult sweater (for me!), and out of cool nifty bamboo nonetheless. I'm going to block it and seam it and try it on before deciding if I should knit the little belt or not.

The weather here is finally turning nice (with this weekend being a nasty, cold, drippy, wet exception!) and so I'm anticipating lots of fantastic wearing of this perfect mid-weight sweater in the next few months.





Next, I have a picture of Gryphon's yarn that she so kindly hand-dyed me to knit the Backyard Leaves scarf with. Isn't it AMAZING?????????

It should arrive in the mail sometime this week, and as soon as I'm finished with the sweater (Friday? Saturday? Sunday?) I'm going to start right in on it. Looking at the lace chart I know already that I'm going to have to translate the chart from chart form into column form instructions, but that's okay.


Icarus:

Yes, I'm going to knit Icarus, but not for my retiring co-worker, but rather for my wonderful Grams who I am going to see in May. I **just** ordered 2 skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk in Agean Blue (shown obligingly in the pic below from Miss Ewe Knits' Blog) from Sarah's Yarns and lo and behold not 5 minutes later (!!!!) I received an e-mail telling me that the yarn has been shipped via UPS Ground and they even included a tracking number. Holy shit!!!! I also ordered not the Addi Lace Turbos that you see in the picture below as they're sold out pretty much everywhere I quickly looked but instead a pair of Addi Natura circs, size #3 from Angelika's Yarn Store, where I've heard the shipping is almost as equally fast! I'm a bit bummed that I couldn't find the Addi Lace needles, but as I love love love the Addi Natura needles and know that I'll use these for ever and ever and ever I'm not really that bummed. Besides {snicker, snicker} I know that once the Addi Lace needles stop being *the* thing that everyone wants I'll buy several pairs eventually!




And what, you might ask, am I going to do with the yarn I bought earlier that I had intended for Icarus?

SERAPHIM, BABY, SERAPHIM!!!!!

Here is a beautiful example that I found on Knit/Wit's blog via her posting in the Seraphim KAL (which I joined, right along w/ the Icarus KAL, of course!) - she did hers in KnitPicks Gloss - I think that this is going to be incredible in the hand-dyed deep blue laceweight that I got for my co-worker!


Well, my 15 minutes are up - time to grab my book and run over to my trusty reading spot so that I can digest my necessary three chapters in the time allotted before I get to run back and sit desk for two hours.

The good part of today, though? Getting to have dinner tonight at a local Vietnamese/Thai place w/ a candidate (never met the candidate & never eaten at the new restaurant!) and then green tea raglan knitting once I get home and bath/bedtime is over! Peggers bought the Keven Smith 2-disk set (his tour around various college campuses) and we watched part of it last night - it is HYSTERICAL! Fantastic knitting watching - great listening, loads of laughs and interesting stories, plus as it's so interesting it keeps me awake - and therefore knitting! - long past my normal bedtime of 10:15 PM!

Woefully Behind

I am terribly terribly behind in my posts - I have been a virtual knitting MACHINE lately - - I'm on my third Shedir, and have started the Green Tea Raglan out of my plum-coloured bamboo (a yarn that is everything - and more! - that it was promised to be!!!!) Before I finished the 2nd Shedir I knocked out a knitted & lined purse for my mother-in-law and between finishing the 2nd Shedir and starting the third I also churned out a Shetland Triangle shawl for my grandmother in a mere two days.

I am on FIRE.

(whose knitting skills I am drawing on to do all this, I have no earthly c-l-u-e!)

Luckily, though, while I'm behind on posting I at least have pictures of everything and will try my absolute best to post as many descriptive and picture-laden posts as humanly possible this coming week. Happily enough I'm not planning on having a second bout of the stomach flu (what happened to me LAST Monday morning from 2-6:30 AM!!!) and so should not miss work and correspondingly be behind at work for an entire work as a consequence....and so should have loads of time to post & wrote & edit pictures.

But in the meantime I'll leave you all with a picture of the new yarn that lays immediately on my horizon - and the best part? I didn't even have to pay for it! (Of course, neither do I get to keep the finished product, but that's okay - I'm totally willing to sacrifice long-term gains for short-term greedy-animal gratification!)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...................I can hardly wait to get my hands on it!!!!!!

I Don't Believe I Just Did That

I'm totally jumping the gun here, as I have a post edited & 90% written, just waiting to be posted, and I finished a Knitted Object yesterday (started & finished!) and have pictures of that to show you too, but first I apparently must post about what I just did.

I got the new Interweave Knits mag (Spring) in the mail yesterday and looked through it last night between the hours of 12:30 and 4 AM during which I was up with my son as he played in our living room. (UGH!)

And today, while at work, I went online and bought yarn for two sweaters I saw in there yesterday. TWO.

I just hopped online, did some comparison shopping, and then hit "Add To Cart" and bought a grand total of 18 skeins of yarn.

Man. O Man. I never EVER do stuff like that!

(should I blame it on the lack of sleep and cold that is slowly but surely overtaking my body?)

I bought 5 skeins of SouthWest Trading Company's Bamboo in Plum - the most amazing colour that will just be so much fun to wear. Plus the yarn should be incredible - all of the raving reviews really sold me on this stuff - plus 5 skeins of it (and 5 is buying one too many, but better to have one extra than be one short, right?) at only $12/skein is MUCH better than buying the pattern-required Classic Elite Bam Boo - at $7.50/skein but having to buy a whopping THIRTEEN skeins! (Classic Elite comes at only 77 yds/skein, but SWT Bamboo comes at an amazing 250yds/skein!!!) A grand total savings of over $30.

The Bamboo in Plum is for the Green Tea Raglan by Cathy Payson that is on page 56 of IK.

Which I will present to you here & now:

I've been dying to knit (myself) a raglan for AGES now - and I adore adore adore the way that the designer contrasted the smooth knit of the sleeves with the seed stitch of the body - and the way that there is a teeny slight break between the body & the shaping stitch before you hit the sleeves.......well I could go on & on. Simple as anything yet stunning, I think - and while I know that someone of my hourglass-type shape needs to wear v-necks to help keep me even more shape-focused and defined I think this boat-ish neckline will still look nice on me - and the knitted belt (if indeed I decide to go ahead with it) will help to add definition to my waist even more.

So, that's sweater #1 - I can HARDLY wait to get cracking on it!!!

Sweater number two lept out at me almost as quickly. I sat and stared at the sleeves a bit until I suddenly realized that I could ignore the extra cable on the sleeve that was so distracting to me and that would make an already-incredible sweater all that much more incredible (although bearing in mind Emily's advice about designers throwing in extra stitches to compensate for the amazing way that cables pull in a knitted fabric I might need to swatch a bit and cut back on my number of sleeve stitches correspondingly!) and with that realization I was a goner again for a second time.

(Now just think about this - how many times have you seen a sweater in a magazine that you just loved and how many times have you gone out and bought the yarn for it RIGHT AWAY? I've never done it - never! - and today I did it not once but twice!!!

Sweater number two calls for 8 skeins of Gems Worsted at $14.50 a skein - a grand total of $116. NO WAY. I know it's a cheap hobby when you break it down by time spent and total cost per minute/hour/etc. but still. I couldn't bring myself to do that. So instead I went looking for worsted weight substitutes and remembering a favorite blogger's passion for elann I went looking there and found myself just drooling over their Peruvian Pure Alpaca - but what colour? The price was certainly VERY right - and I needed 13 skeins due to slightly shorter yardage per ball but still - at $3.98 per ball you do the math and realize how much I was saving on this sweater by again switching yarns! I looked at all of the colours and then looked at the top of the page where they had some already-knit items and saw this picture below which is apparently the 'Lift & Separate Cardigan' from Amy Singer's Big Girl Knits. Also knit in Peruvian Pure Alpaca and the colour just LEPT out at me........

But which colour was it? Was it in a now-discontinued colour, or was it in a currently available colour and due to monitor differences I just couldn't really tell which colour it was? I thought I knew - but a look at the colour card that Elann offers made me doubt myself. So I spent about 45 minutes looking all around all over trying to find out WHAT colour this sweater was knit in and then simply decided "oh the hell with it!" and went ahead and bought myself enough yarn in their 'Celery' dyelot and figured that probably no matter what I'd be happy with any shade between what seems to be the two that I keep finding in my searches.

But which sweater is it ultimately for, you ask?

Why, the Cable-Down Raglan by Stefanie Japel, of course!

The part that I don't like on the sleeve is the simpler of the two cables - the ones that appear to be on the 'sides' of the arm - both front and back. Makes it far too busy to my eye and really detracts from that most incredible cable that runs down over the to of the shoulder straight down to the back of the wearer's wrist. So I'll take those cables out and it will - I think - make the sweater look all that much more incredible because of it. And the way that the simple cables on the back of the sweater pull it in like a corset? For a curvy girl like me that's how you spell love love love in wool!!!

So - that's what I did and that's how I spent the last four hours..............between answering reference questions and putting more paper in the printer, of course!

;>