Yarn Doesn't Grow on Trees, You Know!

But it almost does at £4 for 8.5 balls of vintage cream mohair. It's 90% mohair and 10% artificial fibres, and it's going to make me another test Alef. I put it out on the rosemary bush to air - although it doesn't really need it, since reading about a blogger who put soap in her stash to make it smell fresh, I've started to collect bargain soap bars from TK Max and today I suddenly thought herbs might be nice as well.

Alef has been on my mind. I still have all that lovely Rowan Classic Kid upstairs in a box, along with 3 wickedly expensive buttons and they are not going to be wasted!

I've found a lace trim to try that seems fairly simple and has plain edges - and my new Lucy Neat y DVD (Finesse your Knitting 2) tells you how to make lovely button bands. So, I could use a new lace trim, because I just can't like the other one, abandon the troublesome collar with its flippy edges and knit plain button bands instead. But that's a lot of modifications to make for lovely, but fragile yarn that's already been ripped fifteen times, so, I was happy to find exactly the right yarn for another test Alef.

No More Alef - We're Through!

I'm off work with a cold and no voice today, so I finished sewing Tangerine Alef . Then I spread it out and took a long sad look at it - it's hopeless. I still don't like the gap at the front of the lace trim, even though I knitted one half of the strip and purled the other then grafted them together in order to have the edges match, which they do now, but now the edges match and are no longer annoying my inner neat freak, the gap seems to show more and I just don't like it!

Then even though I must have spent a month of my life knitting and re knitting that collar, I cannot make it lie flat. It looks very cute lying flat on the floor, but as soon as it moves - FLIP! Rowan suggested stitching it down, but I can't find a way to do it neatly. That's it. I quit. I knit the first Alef in Classic Kid, then a peach test, then a brown test and now this tangerine test, not to mention a shed load of swatches and I'm just not getting it. We're through.

The fault probably is my rubbish knitting. I fully fashioned the sleeves, which looks messy and doesn't help them set in properly, so I wouldn't have been happy with this garment anyway. There's a great photo showing the difference between flat decreases and fully-fashioned decreases in Stitch and Bitch. I don't think I'd properly grasped the difference or the uses before. I'd got a fuzzy idea that only one way was correct, but in fact both ways are right. It's just a case of what effect you want. Say you are knitting up a right side, If you want your stitches to lie down and form a decorative ridge (this decorative effect is called 'fully-fashioned') you use a left slanting decrease, if however you want the stitches to stay pointing straight up and decrease without any fuss or showing off, then you use a right slanting decrease.

I am pleased with the graft on the lace trim, the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast off, Maggie Richetti's neatest buttonholes ever and that my sewing is improving. I can see that the sleeves are odd, but it wasn't glaring. One sleeve was knit in my old haphazard way, the other Lucy Neatby's way at the tips of the needles - guess which one looks best? More care and attention, that's always the answer!

I'm going to email Rowan and ask if they have a pattern that uses the same amount of Classic Kid and 3 buttons.

Farewell, Tiny Turbulence

I threw the Turbulence U-necked sweater into the washing machine - and it promptly shrank back to the size I knitted it - blocking to a larger size was only temporary! Every other cotton I've ever worked with has stretched into a saggy baggy faded sad thing after a couple of washes. I wonder if Patons still make Laguna?

I had another light bulb moment when I realised that the shoulders must have seemed to be too long because I'd knitted the sleeves too tight so they didn't fit into the armhole. If the sweater was the same tension all over, I might have finished the neckline and found a tiny person to wear it - but the sleeve line is horrible so into the bin it goes.

The given tension is 22 stitches to 4". I can't remember what I did about tension when I started, but in the actual garment, the body turned out at 25 stitches to 4" and the horrible sleeves at 26.5. The good news is that, thanks to knitting a swatch the other day on Clover needles with coloured tips, I now understand that I wasn't sliding the loop far enough over the tip - it was forming on the tapered part of the knitting pin and that's why each stitch came out too small.

I will make this pattern again. It's my knitting that's at fault, not the design. I like the cabled neck line - and I should be able to do the cables OK next time! I like the bracelet sleeves, the cable up the centre and the twisted rib. I wouldn't make even a test in a light colour - and I happen to have some olive green Jaeger Extra Fine Merino which is currently all knitted up into a failed Cloud by Kim Hargreaves. I could frog that, recondition the yarn and have another go at Turbulence.

Half Way There on the Aran Panel

Eight Panels done and only half way there? Didn't the pattern say 10 panel repeats made a whole garment? Well, yes, but I thanks to the advice from the Ravelry members, I'm trusting a tape measure more than the pattern. I'm also trying it on a lot.

Here's an interesting fact - and one that might explain why people found this shrug came out too short for them. The pattern shows the garment laid out flat. When I measured myself (with Andy's help) I stood up and put my arms out straight. My arm span measured 53 and a half inches. The small size is 54 inches, so, I'll knit the small length I said. BUT, Andy is a careful soul (he works with expensive materials) and he said: 'Put your arms down and measure.' This time I measured 57 inches, much closer to the large size of 60". That's a huge difference, certainly enough to ruin a garment.

Exploring this finding further, we measured Andy first with his arms up and then with his arms held down. The difference in measurements was the same. Then we measured a fleece that fits him perfectly. The fleece, when laid flat on the ground, measured the same across the arm span as Andy did with his arms held down. In other words, you need the larger measurement, the one that you get with your arms held down, in order to get the sleeves long enough. So you have to be careful when you measure yourself. It is safe, however, to measure a favourite garment, because that will come out at the larger size.

Very, very interesting!

I got lost a few times in the pattern - because the increase was every eight rows, and you did it 8 times, I got the number eight in my head, and started making the cable twist every 8 rows instead of every 6 rows. I'm not frogging! I'll just be more careful from now on and if I make a 'real' one I'll count the rows as I go.

Test Yarn

Why do I knit a test garment? Why work with vintage acrylic and oddments? Because I hate waste! If my knitting goes wrong and I'm working with under a fiver's worth of yarn, I can shrug and put it down to experience. The time that went into it was pleasantly spent - like doing a crossword or a jigsaw. If however I have bought fifty pounds or more worth of yarn, and buttons, and the garment goes wrong, it's a tragedy. I feel that I'm a bad knitter and a wasteful person and all kinds of other horrible feelings that I don't want attached to my hobby!

Sewers make lots of test garments. They keep a supply of gingham or muslin and quickly run up a shell to see how the design works. One book I read said that you can expect to throw away 5 patterns for every one that you will make up with good fabric - fashion fabric they call it, to distinguish it from the test fabric. I thought this was a great idea. When people see me knitting they often say that they gave up knitting because they would spend time and money on a garment, put it on and think: nah! I don't like it. It doesn't suit me. Knitting a test garment saves you from this disappointment.

It takes time of course, but you'd be surprised how much knitting time is spent puzzling out the directions and thinking what the *** does that mean? The second attempt knits up in half the time. I also learnt to knit faster. I was an English knitter, or a thrower. Now I knit Continental, which is nearly three times faster. That makes a difference.

It is always difficult to find a bargain pack of double knit, especially if you want a nice colour as well, but my stash is full of other bargains - so much so that I'm getting stricter about what I buy. Even though I want to test a Kim Hargreaves design in Calmer called Cloud, I passed by a bag of Stylecraft cotton in a bright coral pink. It wasn't my colour! It's shameful how acquisitive I am - part of me still yearns for that bag of yarn - it was a bargain after all!

The Yeoman shade card came - their merino wool looks good (I wasn't keen on the acrylic). Buying direct from them would cost around £20 for a garment. When I get better at knitting, I'll probably start doing my test garments in this kind of yarn - a kind of middle road. There are colours like black, cream, pink and burgundy that are always useful because they go with everything. Then if I really love a garment and it suits me, I'll splash out on the fashion wool in the perfect colour. And when will I be this good? By next year. By the end of next year. By the year after for sure!

November Project

I have sewn up one sleeve on the Turbulence U-necked sweater, but seaming isn't knitting. When I get home frazzled after a long day with only an hour or less to relax before bed, I don't want to do seaming, I want to KNIT! So I've started the simple garter stitch jacket. I think it was the word 'simple' in the title that attracted me. 'Simple' sounds good to me! Maybe I can manage simple without the sturm and drang that accompanies so many of my projects.

The pattern is from a book published by Vogue in the 1980s - a collection of vintage patterns. There is a picture of a model with 80s hair wearing the jacket - but no schemata or measurements. We have much better patterns these days. I also like knowing who designed a garment. Then you can look out for their pattern books and read their blogs or websites. It makes the garment feel more like a friend designed it somehow. I think one of the hardest things about knitting is finding the right patterns, and if you love a designer's work and their patterns turn out for you - Kim Hargreaves and Norah Gaughn spring to mind - it helps the selection process.

The yarn is also vintage. It's 100% wool in Aran-weight, in quite a nice soft green with flecks in the wool, and there was heaps of it, which is good, but it's not that nice to knit with. It's very 'grabby' and keeps making a butcher's knot around my yarn-holding finger, which is annoying as I have to keep stopping and undoing it. It's been treated to be machine washable, but this has made it very rough and hard, so it's more like stroking porcupines than kittens. Well, maybe I exaggerate a little. Imagine stroking baby hedgehogs, that about describes it.

I saw an advert for Yeoman Yarns in December's copy of Yarn Forward, so I've sent off for the shade card. Their double knit acrylic is only 79p a ball - and the advert promises it's much better quality than the acrylic you can buy on a market stall. I used Robin acrylic from a market stall to knit a 50s 'Ladies Jacket'. Luckily my knitting was so awful that it had to go to the trash can. I say luckily, because although the acrylic was a nice colour and knit well, it did look cheap and naff in a finished garment. I tried it on with the tweed skirt it was knitted to go with. The skirt is a good one in a beautiful fabric (a Paul Costelloe snapped up in a sale) and the acrylic knitted fabric looked so wrong above it. Even though I use thrift shop finds for my test garments, I still always start out with the hope that they will be wearable!

I'm already thinking that I'll need to make another Turbulence before I knit the 'real' one. This is because I'm going to add waist shaping to the next one, and knit the sleeves in the round. That's two changes to test out before launching into one knit in expensive wool. I also want to make one in a dark colour. If the boxy shape of the garment still makes my middle-aged middle looked even more middle-aged than it is, even knit in a nice dark Gothic colour, then I'll save the lovely Jaeger for another project.

Turbulence Cable Swatch

This swatch would have looked neater if I'd done a garter border, but hey, Inner Neat Freak, hush your mouth! This is a swatch for a practice for the real thing. Let's not get too picky.

It's going pretty good - only one mix up - can you see it? There's a kind of lump where I purled a cable instead of knitting it. It will be a few days before I can get back to it because of college and a trip to a concert, but hopefully it'll be done on Friday.

It was a lot easier to concentrate on just the cable - and of course, a lot quicker. Another time I'd do the practice swatch first. I lost so much time going wrong, re-knitting great long rows, frogging again, re-knitting great long rows...as usual, the longer way round is often the fastest.

DOH!!

Oh, I give up! Last night I undid the whole cable panel and sulked. I'll tell you what I did. I made the classic knitting mistake. I ignored that little voice that says, you should have 4 stitches here and you've got five. There's something not right here. Stop. Stop now BEFORE you knit another 17 rows, get to the end and then realise it's so sore you can't live with it. It was nattering me all night, but I ignored it. And I paid for it too!

I've begun a practice for my practice garment! Would that be a practice squared? Or, if it's a test for Turbulence would it be a wind tunnel? Anyway, I cast on in thick wool for the cable panel and I'm going to knit a test panel before I go back to knitting the test garment and then, and only then, will I get out the good yarn. Just as well. I would have killed Jaeger Extra Fine Merino with all this fumbling!

Seams the Neatby Way & A New Project

Nobody likes seaming, do they? But I did almost enjoy using mattress stitch for the sides of Tangerine Alef - I did as Lucy Neatby said on her DVD. I carefully examined the edge stitch, making sure I had a full stitch, and I carefully went under every bar. Ahh! Pause for big sigh of satisfaction. Beautiful seams, really, truly, honestly beautiful seams, even in tangerine acrylic.

Have nothing to do with those books that tell you to do mattress stitch every few bars - do it Lucy's way. One stitch per bar gives a perfect result, and it doesn't take very much longer at all.

The next job is sewing on the button bands - as yet I don't have a DVD by Lucy Neatby to help me through the process. I got out an instruction book, but the rinky-dink diagram for overcasting made my head ache, so I didn't do any more seaming. I made a swatch for my next project instead - Norah Gaughn's wonderful U-necked Turbulence sweater.

The test yarn is Paton's Laguna- pure cotton double knit. I'm not sure of the vintage. It was a charity shop special @ £1.99 for 10 balls. I suspect the yardage might be a bit mingy, so I'm going to do the back, then the front, then divide what's left in half for what might be rather short sleeves. The real garment is going to be knit in some delicious dark purple Jaeger that I got in a sale - the extra fine merino has been discontinued now, but handling it is like stroking kittens (as the wonderful Yarn Harlot would say). What I do know now (thanks to Lucy) is that it is a single ply yarn, and it will bias, which might cause problems.

Even without potential bias trouble, I know better than to launch into even a simple looking pattern in the 'real' yarn. There are so many, many ways I can mess up a jumper - and the merino is fragile. It doesn't like being messed with (I'll tell you sometime how I discovered this, the hard way, naturally), so, on with the test garment.

I'm knitting it on 3 mm needles. This gives a slightly small gauge - but it's a style that will look OK with some negative ease, my knitting tends to expand, and cotton stretches, so I think it will work out OK.