Ruthless Knitting

New ideas are being hatched here at Ruthless Knitting. Maybe it’s because spring finally seems to have arrived, or maybe it’s just that my pesky Secret Design Project is nearly finished, but I have knitting excitement percolating in my brain for the first time in what seems like a long time!

To go with it, I present to you a new swatch:

I’m working on a design that will combine these two colors, with a patterned intarsia pattern inset between plain stockinette. The maize-colored part looks sort of interesting in the picture, as if I had come up with some sort of elaborate design featuring both lace and cables, but in fact I was just experimenting with different patterns. The bottom is a variation on feather and fan, but I didn’t think it was open enough to work for the project I have in mind. The top is supposed to be staghorn cables, but I messed up the pattern several times, producing both something that looks like a mean owl and one cable that sort of reboots partway through. No matter — I got the information I wanted from the exercise, which is that I like the cable and the needle size (US 5) and that the overall plan will probably work. Now I just need to figure out some measurements, and I can get moving on something new. Yay!

Tomorrow, I’m headed to Neenah for the Midwest Masters conference, where I will take an all-day socks class with Lucy Neatby. On Sunday, I’ll take an afternoon class on brioche stitches with Janet Szabo. While I’m looking forward more to the second class, I am definitely interested in finding out what Lucy’s class will be like. I’ve never actually taken a knitting class before, and I understand that she is an excellent teacher. I’m looking forward to learning new things and getting lots of great ideas.

When one has been working on a commissioned design project for several weeks and is thoroughly sick of it, it turns out that there’s nothing more thrilling than knitting a little bit on a plain old stockinette sock. The allure of the Shiny and New can be powerful, indeed.

I’m still not quite finished with my Secret Design Project, but having something different to knit a few rows on now and then is really taking the edge off. And I’m pleased to have a project on the needles that I can blog about!

Since that last post was a bit of a downer, I thought I’d share something more positive. Last weekend, I went to a baby shower in Chicago, and my aunt Cathy gave me my grandmother Thelma’s knitting journals. She used these journals to list, in brief, everything she knit in a given month, who she made it for, and, sometimes, what size she made. Here’s what she knit in the spring of 1978, thirty years ago:

March - 1 pr gloves (Jack); Nan’s Vest - Lulu; Jim’s Afghan - started in Jan.; sweater (1) Sue Kane

April - sweater - Cathy H.; sweater (Thelma) 

May - Sweater (2-3) Bertha; dress (2-3) Linda; sweater (1) Darlene Karla

So in the space of three months, she finished an afghan and made a pair of gloves, a vest, five sweaters (two sized for babies), and a baby dress. Only one of those items was for her. Is that amazing or what?

Just for fun, I’m going to adjust my sidebar a bit and add a list that will change each month of what my grandmother was knitting in that month in some earlier year. I hope you’ll find it fun and inspiring!

Gather ’round for a tale of knitting gone awry.

It all started more than a year ago, when my good friend Rebecca sent me an e-mail link to a garment at an online shop known for its beautiful knitwear, along with the question, "We could knit this, couldn’t we?" The garment in question was a pullover sweater with very short sleeves, a deep U-neck, and a full skirt. The zoomed-in views available on the website revealed that the bodice was knit side-to-side in stockinette with purled rows every inch or so, while the skirt portion seemed to have been picked up from the bodice and knit straight downward. "Sure," I told Rebecca, "we could totally knit that." But we didn’t — at least, not right away.

The top stayed in the back of my mind for a year or so, until last month I got a cold and wanted to work on something that involved larger yarn, interesting construction, and plain knitting. I pulled out some yarn from Gryphon that had been in my stash for a while and set to work on a knockoff of the top Rebecca had introduced me to.

The bodice portion went quite well, all things considered. I worked a tubular cast-on to create what would be the edge of the right sleeve, made a 1×1 rib edging, increased for a few inches to the full sleeve length and width, and then did a provisional cast on for the front and back stitches on either side of the sleeve. I worked straight for four inches or so, bound off the stitches for the right side of the neck, worked just the front to the far side of the neck, went back and worked the back across to match, cast stitches back on for the left side of the neck, rejoined and knit for another four inches, put all but the left sleeve stitches on holders, made the left sleeve to match the right, and worked a tubular bind-off. (Whew! Did you follow that?) I grafted both sides together and seamed under the arms, made a strip of 1×1 ribbing for the neckline and sewed it in, and sat back to admire my handiwork.

So far, so good. The only problem was that I was clearly going to run out of yarn.

Now, I knew when I started this top that I didn’t have enough yarn, but I sort of hoped that I miraculously would have enough, somehow. The yarn I used has 280 yards per skein, and I had two skeins. Last time I used the yarn, I was amazed how far 280 yards would go, so I crossed my fingers that it would do the trick. But the bodice itself used up about two-thirds of the yarn, so there was simply no way I would be able to knit the skirt-like portion with what remained.

I could have ripped the whole thing out at this point, and maybe I should have. But I knew that if I did, I would never reknit the top, and it would probably be a very long time before I reused the yarn. Also, I had a cold, and I didn’t want to have to think too hard about anything. So I just pressed on, and when I ran out of orange yarn after about four inches, I changed to some blue yarn of the same type.

When I ran out of blue yarn at about eight inches, the skirt part still wasn’t long enough, but I had a plan, so I changed to yellow yarn of the same type and continued. Finally, when I was almost out of yellow yarn, I worked a few rows of ribbing and bound off.

At this point, the top looked like something a clown might wear. Individually, the orange, blue, and yellow yarns were lovely, but together, they were frightful. I had a plan, though: I had already decided to dye the whole thing black. So that is what I did. Then I blocked it, dried it, and tried it on. 

The result was rather disappointing. So disappointing, in fact, that I wasn’t able to bring myself to look at the top again or write about it for a few days, and then I drafted this post and avoided taking pictures of myself in the top for ten days, leaving me unable to complete the post. Then I took the pictures and left the draft post unfinished for another week or so. Clearly, I just haven’t been ready to think about it.

After all that stalling, here, at last, are the pictures. They are not terribly good pictures, but they are as good as they’re going to get.

The sad truth is that the skirt is too wide, resulting in more gathering than I would like. That would not be so bad, except the way that the neckline pulls in and the bust pushes out makes the front of the skirt ride quite a bit higher than the back of the skirt, and I don’t like the result. It would almost make a cute maternity top, except that even if that had been my intention, the height discrepancy between the front and the back would be a problem.

What I need to do, I suppose, is rip the skirt back and reknit it with smaller needles. (I don’t think I need fewer stitches, I just need to stick with size 9 needles instead of increasing up to size 11). What I’m not so sure about is the high front / low back issue — I could use short rows to remedy that, but I dread the very idea of having to work out the math. Perhaps short rows won’t be necessary if the skirt itself is not so dang voluminous. I don’t know. What do you think?

At the moment, the project has been sitting in my sweater chest, and I’m pretty content to leave it there.

I haven’t been getting too much knitting done lately, and what I have been knitting is Top Secret, which has left me with not much to post about.

Also, it snowed last night. The tulips are coming up, which is some compensation, but still — snow in April? Can we get a break here?

In good news, the cedar chest I ordered from Harmony Cedar arrived last night, and this morning David and I moved it into the bedroom and packed it full of sweaters. Isn’t it pretty?

I’ve been saving money to buy this chest since November, and I finally had enough pennies hoarded to order it about three weeks ago. The exterior is made from cherry, and the interior is cedar-lined.

Prior to the arrival of the chest, I kept my sweaters on the shelves of our closet in cloth bins. Every time I wanted a sweater, which was every day between November and March, I had to pull down the bins from the shelves, and inevitably at least one sweater would fall out and land on my head. This is  most certainly a change for the better.