Ruthless Knitting

Pattern: My own
Size: 34" bust, 42" at bottom hem, 18" total length, 7.5" sleeves
Yarn: Habu Wool Roving A-81 1/6 (100 percent undyed wool; 186 yds per oz)
Yardage: About 2,000 yards, held double
Sources: KPixie; Purl Soho 
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) and US 6 (4.00 mm) Knit Picks Harmony circular needles
Gauge: 26 sts and 40 rows = 4″ in stockinette
Notes: The buttons came first on this project, and the pattern followed. This direction of development is fitting for the first finished sweater in the new Button Collection. My father created these glass buttons for me as a Christmas gift, and I came up with the design in the hope of showcasing them properly. I was going for a garment with a plain, clean look to it, vaguely Japanese-influenced, but not boring. I think I hit the mark.

The Kinari cardigan was knit from the top down and hemmed along the button bands and collar at the finishing stage. I did run into a few problems en route. The most significant one was the result of a combination of yarn trouble and planning miscalculations. I initially bought 8.5 ounces of Habu Wool Roving from KPixie, but once I cast on I realized it wouldn’t be enough. I found what seemed to be the same yarn for sale on Purl’s website, so I snapped it up. Unfortunately, it was not the same thickness. I wonder if what I got (which, oddly, lacked any label) was actually Wool Roving A-80 1/3 rather than Wool Roving A-81 1/6. The latter is supposed to be exactly twice as thick as the former, which seems to fit the case, as one strand of the yarn that Purl sent ended up being a perfect substitute for two strands of the yarn from KPixie.

I didn’t figure this out for a good long while, and in the meantime I knit the patterned portion of the body using a strand of each of the two different yarns without going up a needle size, which made a rather stiff fabric. I also continued to increase at the same rate from the armpits to the bottom hem. The outcome was, sadly, both too wide and too stiff. I had made a triangle sweater. I cut it the edging off and tried again with a single strand of the heavier yarn and slightly larger needles, and this attempt worked out much better.

In addition, I had a small problem with the collar, in that I didn’t intend for it to look like it does. What I had sketched was a true boatneck, but I cast on too few stitches for the neckline and then compounded the problem by decreasing rather than increasing stitches on the neckline hem, which made the collar stand up rather than lie down flat. The good news is that I like it just the way it is, so I am considering it a happy accident rather than evidence of how much I have to learn about collars.

I am particularly pleased with the aptness of the button closures, which gave me a bit of a panic when the time came to make them and I realized that I simply had no idea what I was doing and no sewing or embroidery experience to draw on. As I mentioned in my last post, I owe the basic technique to Ysolda, who uses it to beautiful effect in her Coraline sweater (about to be released for sale; link goes to Ravelry), and who provides a great tutorial on her website for free. I modified the technique so that rather than making half-moon button closures, I made lollipop-shaped closures by partially sewing the two sides together at the attachment point. Though the closures were quite twisty when they came off the needles, they settled down when blocked, so that the sweater can now be worn entirely buttoned, entirely unbuttoned, or partially buttoned.

I am thankful, too, to Lorna’s Laces for making a red sock yarn that doesn’t bleed a bit, even in hot water. I tested it. Without Lorna’s, you’d be looking at a sweater with white button closures. I’m glad that you’re not.

In the end, this sweater came out uncannily close to my sketch. When David told me in response to this observation that I seem to be getting better at knitting things exactly how I want them, I said that may be true, but I also got lucky. Whatever the reason, I am proud of how well this design highlights the buttons, how simple it looks, and how striking it is.

Now I just have to find something to wear with it. It’s still far too cold here for elbow-length sleeves and skirts.

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Other posts about the Kinari cardigan:

• In which I begin
• In which I announce my plans and show off the buttons
• In which I wax eloquent about the uncertainties of knitwear design
• In which I have to reknit the body
• In which I make progress but am still not finished
• In which I show off a button closure

I have (finally!) finished all the knitting on the Kinari cardigan, and this morning I figured out how I want to do the button closures. I extend my deep appreciation to Ysolda, who has posted a very good tutorial with photos on how to make sewn button loops. I modified her instructions to make this hybrid creation.

Now all I have to do is sew down most of the hem, add the six button loops, sew on the buttons, sew down the rest of the hem, and block. The end is near!

After feeling stalled out for a few weeks, I’m making visible progress again on the Kinari cardigan. I’ve finished up the body edging for the second time, and this morning I started the second sleeve. When I tried the partial cardigan on yesterday, it looked much more like my sketch than it had the first time around. I have my fingers crossed that the sailing will be smooth from here.

Meanwhile, David and I took off for Chicago on Friday, where we had a fun time tromping around the city for a few days, visiting the Field Museum, and generally pretending that we don’t have jobs or responsibilities. I kept saying that we were on "vacation," but David tells me that other people call this "the weekend." Hmm.

I checked out Loopy Yarns while we were there, where I bought some Aslan Trends souvenir yarn at 60 percent off. It’s an alpaca/merino blend in lovely shades of blue and orange that I didn’t quite manage to capture with the camera. David will have you know that he was the one who picked out these colors as the best pairing in the sale bin. I have already planned a hat pattern.

Thanks for all the amusing comments on the last post. Your guesses entertained me (and my mother), but alas, you’re all wrong except Rachel, who is right that that is the pig I made in Mrs. Smith’s middle school art class. Rachel knew this because she and I went to middle school together, and she has a ceramic pig of her own. Since Beverly Anne had the closest guess — that I am "making a piggy, cowie, bunny toy" — she wins the prize, which is either two skeins of Lorna’s Laces in Amish or three skeins of Manos Cotton Stria in a bright red (links go to Ravelry; if you haven’t joined yet, you won’t be able to follow them). I have to keep the exact nature of my design under wraps for a while, but I’ll let you know what I’ve been up to just as soon as I’m able.

The Kinari cardigan continues to require a great deal of patience. As you can see here, I have finished a sleeve, and lo, it is glorious.

But the part of the picture that’s in shadow isn’t going so well. I did finish knitting the body. It took a week to do the edging: because the yarn I used for that part was somewhat thicker than what I had been using for the body but the needles were the same size, it hurt my wrists to do more than a couple of rows at a time. It really wasn’t any fun. And then when I tried the sweater on, it became clear that the edging really hadn’t worked out. I had put too many increases in, so the bottom was proportionately much wider than it had been in my sketch, and since the fabric was thick, it was also rather stiff, with the result that it more or less stood straight out from my body. Wearing it, I looked like a very fashionable pyramid.

To cheer myself up and restore my flagging confidence, I knit the sleeve. Having learned my lessons from the body, I got the edging right this time. Then I cut off the bottom 4.25" on the body and started over with skinnier yarn and larger needles. The knitting is much more enjoyable now, and it seems to be going a bit more quickly. I’m hopeful.

I’ve been slowed down some by a Secret Design Project that’s going to keep me semi-occupied for the next several weeks. I can’t tell you what I’m working on, but I can give you a hint. Here it is:

Anyone who can figure out what I’m up to from that picture gets a prize.

The Kinari cardigan has reached a tough stage. Progress seems slow, the sweater is all scrunched up on the needles, and I’m having periods of doubt about some of my decisions. Will it be too wide at the bottom? I don’t own anything swingy, maybe for good reason. Will the bright white of the buttons look okay on the unbleached white of the sweater?

I suspect that many sweater projects are abandoned at this stage, when the fantasy that propels you through the first half of the knitting starts to fade, papered over with doubts. The rows are long now, and the edges all curl under, and it’s hard to envision just how the final product will work out.

It’s been my experience that art in general hardly ever works out just the way I imagine it will. But it often works out in a different way than I could have imagined — a way that is just as good, once I’ve managed to let go of the image of the old thing and to love the new thing as it is.

So I press on, one long row at a time, because that’s the only way to find out what this sweater will be when it’s finished.

I’m someone who can’t manage to keep a white shirt long without staining it. Come to think of it, I don’t actually own a white T-shirt (long- or short-sleeved) at present, probably for this very reason. Thus, the fact that I’m designing an all-white wool cardigan should be understood as an indication that my practical side has been overruled by the Design Mind, which insists that these buttons (a Christmas gift from my father, who made them) —

 — will work best on a sweater that looks like this:

In case my scrawlings aren’t altogether clear, that’s an all-white wool sweater with elbow-length raglan sleeves knit from the top down in one piece. The body widens all the way from the cast-on edge to the bottom hem, as do the sleeves, so that the sweater is fitted at the bust and flares out gently below. The bottom 6" of the body and sleeves will be done in a texture stitch that incorporates triangle shapes to echo the shapes on the buttons. The rest of the sweater will be stockinette. All the edgings are meant to be hemmed, so there won’t be any bands or borders, just clean lines. The buttons will be placed on the upper chest and will close with some sort of fasteners fashioned out of yarn, which may or may not be red. (I think red might look nice, but I’m afraid it will bleed on the white sweater when I wash it.)

I pondered yarn possibilities for a while. My overall vision for this design is that it ought to be clean and somewhat Eastern-looking, but at first I considered some more rustic white wool yarns, because I liked the idea of a contrast between the rustic yarn and the smooth glass buttons. Peace Fleece DK (in Antarctic white) was a serious contender at this stage. Ultimately, though, I settled on Habu’s wool roving A-81 1/6. It’s an undyed laceweight yarn that’s very loosely spun, so it has a slight halo and is soft. I’m holding it double, which makes it approximately sport weight. I thought at first that I could get the whole sweater out of one skein of this yarn (about 800 yards held double), but it later became clear that at a gauge of 7 stitches and 8 rows to the inch on size 5 needles, that’s not likely to happen. I had bought the first skein from KPixie, and I found a second on sale at Purl. The undyed yarn color is listed on the label as "kinari," which is where I got the name for the sweater. I don’t know what it means, but I like the sound of it. I hope it means "undyed," or at least not something embarrassing.

For the raglan seams, I’m using a double increase that I found described in Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top. It’s worked by knitting into the back of the seam stitch, then knitting into the front of it, moving it off the needle, picking up the vertical bar in the row below the stitch just created with the left needle, and knitting that stitch. This technique creates a neat line with raised center stitches that look almost beaded.

Progress so far has not been rapid, and in fact the last few inches before the divide at the underarm were a real slog, with more than 350 stitches on the needles. Since I divided the body from the sleeves over the weekend, however, I’ve been moving right along.

All that stockinette is getting a bit dull, so I’ve been telling myself that I just have to do a few more inches, and then I can start the texture pattern. For that, I’d like to use this simple lozenge stitch from Barbara Walker’s first treasury.

This is the first sweater in a new collection that I’m working on. The genesis was the two sets of glass buttons that my dad made me for Christmas. I had started thinking of designs to use these buttons, and then I remembered that I have some fantastic green glass buttons that I’d also like to design a sweater around. And then I remembered that I want to design something for the lovely purple buttons I bought from Earthenwood Studio that didn’t work for my Middlebury cardigan. And I also have a whole bunch of vintage mother-of-pearl buttons from an antique shop in New York that I want to use in a Habu sweater for my sister-in-law. Before I knew it, I had five different sweaters in mind and realized that the Button Collection had begun to take shape entirely of its own accord. Who am I to buck fate?

I haven’t entirely closed the books on the Fall/Winter 2007 Collection, because there’s a stranded design I would still like to do, but my knitterly instincts are telling me to let that marinate a while longer. So it’s on to buttons!