Cable Aran Shrug the Third

Cloud is stuffed in a bag until I feel strong enough to tackle finishing it. Finding errors in the rib was very disheartening. I will finish it. Just not yet.

Having made one cabled Aran shrug that was too big - the shruggigan as my S-i-L calls it - and one that was too small, the red version that's sitting in a cupboard waiting for a recipient, it's now time to make the third version. The one that's just right. It's knit on 4.5 mm needles, using four strands from a cone of cream wool. As you can see, it looks a bit industrial with the four lines of yarn running up from the containers and being twisted into a strand as it's knitted. The yarn feels lovely and looks OK as well. Because of the four strands, I am using a needle to cable with, but I have stuck with purling backwards on the bobbles so that I don't have to turn the work every time and this is getting easier. Much easier and quicker, so a technique worth mastering. I know the cable pattern off by heart now, so that saves a bit of time as well - no staring at the chart and muttering.

Have been both sick and busy this week, so not much time for knitting - or blogging, but even snatched moments add up. 6 of the 12 panels are finished.

Another Walk to the Trash Can

Andy's ribwarmer is done. The good news is that he likes the fabric and it fits him perfectly. The bad news is that the added collar and sports vent look naff. Truly, horribly naff. I think they are too small. The original instructions are for a tiny rib warmer - and I followed those instructions for the variations, but I upscaled the body of the garment to fit Andy. Threw it, and the rest of the cone away, heaving a deep sigh. From now on, I will test variations on tiny sample test pieces - there's a lot of knitting in a man's ribwarmer.

Sick Knitting

A perfectly horrible week. Andy & I got a stomach bug, followed by a vile cold. When I did feel well enough to pick up my knitting again I'd gone wrong. My excuse is being driven demented by toothache - I thought I'd followed Meg Swanson's instructions for the knee length rib warmer, but clearly I hadn't. I wanted to make the garment a bit longer so it would fit Andy, but I'd over compensated and it was 50" around, because making it longer had made it wider as well. All that frogged yarn went in the bin. I don't actually like knitting with this yarn - it's rough and smells faintly of machine oil. It's the knitting equivalent of eating your sprouts. Once the rib warmer is done, the rest of the cone goes in the bin.

Knitting with Toothache

I've had trouble with a crown all week so I put aside Cloud, which is all sewing up and discovering problems, and started another rib warmer. This one is for Andy. It has the collar, and the sports vent (for gentlemen) and follows Meg Swanson's instructions for the knee-length rib warmer in order to get it long enough to fit him. (Thinks: should I go back and insert the word 'hopefully' in front of the word 'fit'?) Nice peaceful garter stitch.

Decreases in K2 P2 Rib

TA DA! The actual knitting took about 20 minutes. Figuring out what to knit about three weeks. It took me nearly 40 attempts to get this right. There are people who say that dyslexia is an excuse, but I'm sure my head doesn't work like other peoples! This pattern has one star for easy in the Rowan book, and lots of people said it was a 'straightforward knit.' I seem to have spent months struggling and getting stuck in various places. With reversing the shaping for the right side of the front, despite help from Ravelry, I was making several classic errors.
I wasn't considering all the data:
1. If you decrease a single stitch in a double rib, you must end up with an odd stitch - does it matter if that stitch is before or after the decrease? Yes it does. Could it possibly be different depending which side of the fabric you are working? Oh yes, it certainly could. Should you therefore write down whether you work a stitch and then the decrease or the other way round? Absolutely. So that was one learning point.
2. Does that pattern suggest that you start a new set of ribs up the side of the armhole? Oh yes, if you follow the instructions for the sleeve and back, that's exactly what you get.
3. Have you modified your own knitting in any way that might conflict with normal instructions? Taken up Lucy Neatby's alternative purl, for example? Because my knitting was very uneven, I sent off for one of Lucy Neatby's DVDs that promised to examine the 'mysterious 2-row gully'. (That's the effect that makes the back of stocking stitch look like a ploughed field and the front like a half-trained monkey knit it.) She explains why it happens, and shows you how to solve it. I think this may be what some people call combination knitting, but you form the purl stitch differently so that the yarn doesn't travel so far and it doesn't get a chance to pull loose. On the DVD, Lucy shows how you make your decreases differently to allow for the fact that your purl stitch is now seated differently on the needle. I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THIS VITAL FACT. I didn't even try to work out what I should do. I simply reseated the stitches that were about to be decreased.

The buttonholes deserve mention - they are Lucy Neatby's buttonhole for k2 p2 rib, and they are much, much nicer than even Maggie Richetti's Neatest Buttonhole Ever which I used in Cloud one and mashed up the rib somewhat.

I sewed the side seams last night, and knew a moment's panic when it looked as if it wasn't going to fit, but adding sleeves changes it a lot, so I think I'll go ahead and set them in. I might pull back the shoulders and short row them - because the rib is uneven - some lines of four or one at the top and there's a different number of stitches, I thought it might be easier to sew the shoulders, but it looks so messy.

Cloud and Butterfly

My knitting is very poetic this week! This is the back view of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket. She does call it a jacket, not a shrug or bolero. Odd little beast, isn't it?

Cloud is causing me grief. Even with help from the Internet I'm lost in the thicket of reversing P2tog Tbl and so on. Decreases in K2 p2 rib are hard. I had a look back through my scribbles and I've done it at least 30 times. I got it exactly right last night, then smoothed out the left and right fronts for a final check and DOH! You guessed it - two left fronts. At the moment I've got the front right and the arm wrong. I might have one more go. I must be able to do this. The same way I must be able to parallel park a car with a caravan attached behind it? Maybe it's not going to happen. There's something about reversing anything that makes my head spin wildly.

No Cable Needles were Harmed in the Making of this Swatch

Actually, it wasn't meant to be a swatch, it was meant to be my third attempt at the cabled Aran shrug, but I was concentrating so hard on knitting backwards and cabling without a needle that I got one stitch out somewhere and I couldn't get the next panel straight. I've been playing with it while waiting to hear back about Cloud 3, and now I have help with those pesky decreases, it's time to go back to Cloud anyway. So I cast it off, called it a swatch and threw it in the washer with yesterday's muddy gaiters to see how the yarn would stand it. That large cone was 50p. Two strands held together make a good Aran weight yarn. From the cone, the yarn is a bit stiff and smells faintly of machine oil. Washed it softens nicely and smells only of washing powder. It doesn't smell of wool, burns brightly and leaves a blobby residue rather than ash, so I think it must be mostly artificial fibre. However it's very flexible when wet and has felted slightly, so it might have a bit of wool in it. When I make the shrug, I'll hand wash it, I think, to be on the safe side.

I've just about got the hang of cabling without a needle now - the trick is to drop the stitches off the needle, freeze, and then stop breathing until the cable is done and the stitches are safely back on the needle. Or in other words, keep everything as still as possible while working. Knitting, or rather purling backwards to do the bobbles is hard. My poor head goes into meltdown at the very idea. At the moment it takes three times longer because I have to turn the work around, see where the yarn and needles should be for each step of the process, then turn the work back and have a bash. Then I realise I've got it all wrong. Undo it. Start again. Just once or twice have I managed to purl the last stitch of the three bobble stitches backwards, but by the time I've knitted three I've forgotten again. Never mind. It'll come. It's not that I'm planning to knit that many bobbles, but think how useful knitting backwards will be for knitted-on edges.