These seeds are cursed!

So I thought it was about time that I gave an update about my Seeds of Change jumper. I’ve finally got a sleeve written and knitted up after much procrastination and one failed attempt. Here it is!

Ok, it’s not a terribly exciting picture (and it’s a bit blurry) but considering how long it’s been in the making, I think it merits a bit of a showing off. Look it’s even got a bit of a bell curve!

My initial attempt looked a bit trapezoidal, so I frogged it and went back to my notes from Knitty. They didn’t seem to be helping much, until I realised I needed the 3rd article from the series! Check it out here.

And incidentally, if you ever thought to yourself when you were in math class ‘When am I ever going to need to use Pythagoras theory?’ …well now you know! Seriously I think I’ve used more ‘real’ math in knitting than I’ve ever used in my life (adding and subtracting doesn’t count, cos everyone has to do those).

Back to the sweater. So I think it’s been almost a year since I originally started this project. And I thought that I might get lucky and finish it up by the end of the month. Except being me, I had to go and check that my calculations and math had actually been worth it, so I sewed in the sleeve (why make 2 mistakes when you can get away with just one?). Except it looked terrible. For some reason that I still can’t figure out, none of the seams seem to line up properly. I tried fudging a few rows here and there but there just seem to be too many on one side and too few on the other. Even though they’re identical in shaping (well, the sleeve is anyway).

I considered leaving things the way they were but it was much too stressful. So I’ve unpicked all the seams (and the border I crocheted around the neck. Which maybe isn’t a bad thing, I might come up with a better idea for that) and I’m planning on blocking all the pieces separately. I’m not really sure if it will make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but at least I can say I did all I could even if it still insists on going pear-shaped.

So I guess the fact that I’ve done all the hard maths-y parts that I can say I’ve actually gone and designed my own jumper.  Yay! I’m so proud of me, even if it does end up looking hideous. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that blocking might help though. Stay tuned to see what the final result will be!

Industry

It’s been a long couple of months at Alterknit HQ with knitting spells arriving and disappearing as quickly as the sunshine in Wimbledon inspired weather. My job’s been making me blue lately and I’ve found myself drowning my sorrows in rows and rows of knitting (far better than rows and rows of something else).

I finally came back to my sweater, after a prolonged absence. Math, is seems, is something I will try to avoid at all costs. But I pushed through and have finally managed to complete the front and back pieces. I’m especially proud of the shape of the vee neck, as I wasn’t sure it would end up the way I had hoped. Admittedly, I’m not sure this is exactly what I had hoped for, but if it wasn’t then I must have been wrong!

The 'vee'

Now if  could only be bothered to work out the sleeves….

Next up on the completed projects list is my North Star Tam, designed by Donna Druchunas. I love it so much. I consider this to be another step in my journey to become a Master Knitter, as I had to learn how to read lace charts. Once I worked out how it’s possible for you to still have the same amount of boxes on the chart representing the stitches, the little light bulb of clarity shone above my head, like the North Star itself Incidentally, if you’re new to charts, the Arctic Lace book is awesome.

I don’t have any quivut, nor do I think I’d be able to afford any any time soon (what with not being paid!) so I used one of my delightful balls of Habu Silk Mohair, that had previously lied to me about it’s yardage. I think it turned out really well.

North Star Tam

I also found out that using the regular bind off method is just not working out for me. I’ve tried using larger needles, trying to ‘loosely’ bind off but it’s just not happening. Lucky for me then that I found out about Cat Bordhi’s ‘Stretchy Cast Off’. It takes longer than the regular bind off (and I’m pretty sure it uses much more yarn), but I luffs it and it has become my saving grace on more than this tam.

There’s been a few more projects on the go but I think I’ll save those to write about another time. Until then thanks for reading!

What doesn’t kill you only slows you down

Lots of people have been asking how my jumper’s been coming along, so I thought I’d give a brief update. It hasn’t really progressed too far because of the story I will tell you now.

After Christmas, due to my hinting not quite working out as I’d hoped, I placed an order with Rowan for one years membership. To sweeten the deal, Rowan were giving away a free project kit, which looked pretty cool too. So I remember getting to the final stages of my order and being asked to select a colour. The colour choices were red, white, blue and purple. I didn’t much like the white or the blue, so I was obviously left with the choice of red or purple. Here’s where it gets hazy, did I order the purple, like I think I did OR did I order the red because I thought it would be a lipstick red, rather than the rusty red that came in the post? Who knows, all I know is that I hated the rusty red and my invoice didn’t specify what choice exactly I had made.

Despite this, I thought I’d push on and make the project. I thought I’d go for the shawl option, thinking ‘Someone’s bound to like it if I make it, and what the hey, it’s free right?’ Except, I’ve found if I hate the yarn for a project, I’m just not going to make an effort to get the pattern right. 2.25 balls of the hideous yarn in, I see it, the completely impossible to ignore mistake. Now the dilemma, do I keep going and hope no one notices the mistake with gleaming neon lights around it or pull the needle out and try and fix it? I’d come so far. If I carried on, I’d never wear the shawl, so how could I expect anyone to love it as a present? So I pulled the needle out, frogged back and it all went pear shaped. My attempts to catch the stitches failed and the lace started to come apart before my eyes. Nooooo! I’d spent so much time on this bloody thing and now it refused to be saved!

So I frogged it. All 2.25 balls worth of knitting that I’d hated every minute of. Then I felt a pang of sorrow for my jumper, left neglected because I didn’t want to make a mistake from lack of concentration. I immediately searched online for someone looking for the yarn in question and offered it up to them. This supports my theory of ‘deny, deny, deny’. If it doesn’t work out, hide all evidence you tried.

On the plus side the lack of the evil project and yarn means that I’ll be able to work on my jumper. And I’m taking a lot more care with this one.

Seeds of Change

What do you think of ‘Seeds of Change’ as a name for my sweater pattern? I thought it had a nice ring to it firstly, because of the autumn orange colour of my yarn, which makes me think of ‘changing seasons,’ second, because it’s a sort of play on the fact that I’m using a seed stitch border and finally because if it works out well, I hope it’s the first of many patterns to come.

Here’s a pic I took of it in it’s early stages…

I love it so much I can’t stop wanting to work on it! I only stopped last night because my wrist started making that weird clicky sound again, that makes me think it’s either going to snap or solidify so I can never knit again! I consider that reason enough to take a break.

I have to admit though that it wasn’t all plain sailing from the word go. I cast on and knit about 11 rows before I realised that something was VERY wrong. It seems that when I knit my gauge swatch, I had a different tension to when I was making the actual jumper. I was only about a stitch off (curse those fractions of stitches!) but it was clearly enough to mess up my calculations. Anyway, I re-measured and re-jigged and it seems to working out well now.

I am still a little worried though about whether my waist shaping is going to end up in the right place, haha! According to the schematics it should be ok, but when I hold it up next to me, things seem a little off. I’m hoping that it’s more to do with the fact that it’s on a straight needle, and that the edges keep curling in than because it’s actually wrong.

I’m also not sure what I want to do with the neck. First I was going to go with crew, but then decided that the yarn didn’t really suit that plan, so I agreed on a vee. (Yes I had an extensive debate with myself in my head. No I don’t consider myself nuts. Yet.) Now though, I feel myself leaning towards a slash neck. I kind of don’t want to go with a slash neck, because my books don’t really offer any advice on how to proceed with them, but at the same time, it’s not like there’s much shaping or anything involved with them! I think I just see mself as binding off too early and messing it up. And while many a lesson can be learnt from messing up, I don’t want it to happen this time, the yarn is just too nice.

Anyway, that’s all for now, but I hope to keep updating soon. Thanks for reading!

I’m Designer!

A while back I managed to get in on a destash of some Artfibres Nirvana in colour number 7 (a rusty , autumn orange). I’m not really sure what possessed me to buy it, whether it was the artful shot of the 3 cones next to a flower pot or just the thought that it was a silk/cashmere blend at an irresistible price, but I had to have it.

When I pulled it out of it’s protective plastic baggy it felt just as delicious as it looked. And it was MINE! The only problem was, I had no idea what I was going to make with it. I searched all over Ravelry, and on a couple of occasions nearly came close. I considered making Green Gable by Zephyr Style, but there seemed something intrinsically wrong about making it in orange.

So then I hit upon my plan. I would design my own sweater! I made a gauge swatch (I know! Me!). I trawled through the guidance notes in Ann Budd’s ‘Handy Book of Sweater Patterns‘ and Stephanie Japel’s ‘Fitted Knits‘. Last night was a frenzy of measuring and calculating and then asking stupid questions like “‘Circumfrence’ is the whole way around a circle, isn’t it?”

Finally, I think I have it. The tentative beginnings of my very own sweater pattern. To an outsider it can only resemble the scrawlings of a mad woman, but to me, it’s a taste of things to come. I hope like crazy that it will turn out the way I see it in my head, that I’ve interpreted the advice in my books correctly, that there won’t be too many froggings and that finally when it’s all done, that it fits!

I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something amazing and I’m giddy with excitement.

Tonight the knitting begins!