Cloud Three

It's a funny thing about holidays - I've had lots of knitting time, but no time to blog! Our new 40" television has arrived WOW! Movies look terrific, and I feel a serious bout of nature & travel programme watching coming on - all of which is great for knitting.

Here is Cloud. The Sidar Denim is lovely - very soft and cosy to work with. The k2 p2 rib looks quite neat - but stretches nicely, so I've great hopes of this garment actually fitting. It knitted up very quickly - and so it should: this is my third attempt at this particular Kim Hargreaves cardigan. I found the increases in the k2 p2 rib very confusing at first. The instructions in the pattern are perfectly clear. I made the mistake of trying to understand what was happening which led me into a wilderness of different slanting increases. I get very confused with left and right, so add the front and back of the fabric to the mixture and it's no wonder I went wrong.

I only frogged a couple of rows - each time because I either read half of an instruction and started knitting without checking the end of the sentence for the infamous 'at the same time' instructions, and once because I turned "rib until there are 13 stitches on right needle and turn" into " knit until there are 13 stitches on the left needle and turn". I have no idea why someone as dyslexic as me should love to knit.

Keeping a knitting notebook helps. A few weeks ago I bought an A4 artists' sketchpad. It is spiral bound, so it folds back on itself. It looks neater than the old clipboard and scrap paper I was using, and has the advantage that I can refer back to it if need be. I don't bother with photos or long rambles - the blog is perfect for that - but I find if I write out the instructions for the size I am making, a section at a time, along with any modifications, along with all the row and stitch counts, that I go wrong far less often. I've started making a note of when I frog as well - maybe I'll see patterns in my errors that will stop me going wrong as often.

A kind knitter on Ravelry has responded to my email asking her how she'd found Alef the cardigan in Classic Kid I've had such trouble with - 4 failed attempts no less. "BAD" was the answer. She sounds like an accomplished knitter who is not accustomed to failure,but every time she wore Alef the collar flipped up. She advised me to ditch the pattern and have no more to do with Rowan. I would not knit another pattern with twiddly bits by Leah Sutton, that's for sure, but I can't wait until I'm a good enough knitter to buy Rowan's lovely yarns without the fear of ruining them.

This year, by the way, I plan to enjoy my knitting!

NVQ in Knitting

Thank goodness I'm better at last - other than still having to whisper as my voice hasn't come back properly. While I was sick, one of the things I missed most was my knitting blog (TV or computers made my head ache so I couldn't update it). So instead, over the week, I thought about why I missed my blog so much, and I think it is helping me to knit in the same way that an NVQ is supposed to help you be more efficient at work. I thought NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) were rubbish when I was first introduced to them - partly because I was told they were the same as A-levels, which they clearly are not. A-levels are more about critically examining an academic subject. NVQs encourage you to examine your approach to a practical subject - and that's what my blog does for my knitting. Several times I've written down a problem or described a situation that I didn't understand and shortly after clarifying the issue, the answer has arrived. It's like keeping a nature notebook or a record of scientific experiments. There's also a touch of zen in there - by recording what's happening in the moment, I'm learning to be more mindful.

They say you should always write down your goals, so here's my knitting goal: I want to be able to knit beautiful designer garments very quickly. Oh, and they have to fit and be perfectly finished as well. And after a year or two on that happy pinnacle I might move on to designing my own garments. That's pretty ambitious, and it's not happening quickly. This week I've been wondering why.

I was browsing through some knit alongs and then looking at people's finished projects at Ravelry and the huge variety in outcome on the same pattern is fascinating - even when knitters use the specified yarn, the results vary, so the answer has to lie in the skill of the individual knitter. At the moment my knitting lies at the rubbish end of the spectrum. So how do I get to the fabulous finished garment stage? I've been hopping from pattern to pattern - thinking, well this one didn't work so I'll throw it away and look for the magic pattern that will work, or the magic yarn, or hey, maybe there's a magic needle out there. Instead maybe I should settle down to knit several versions of the same simple pattern and not leave it until I can knit it beautifully?

I hunted out another of my disasters from before I started blogging: Cloud by Kim Hargreaves. This is my third attempt at it - I spent ages struggling with increasing and decreasing in double rib (all I had to do was follow the pattern to the letter, but I managed to get tangled up). I made two test versions using 2 strands of a big cone of Shetland that came from a charity shop for 50p. The first one was such a mess of tangled ribbing that I threw it away and started again but the second attempt came out too small, so that went in the bin and I decided to make the 'real' one in the largest size. Unfortunately, it too was tiny, as you can see, but I think I know what went wrong - I substituted a fine wool for the specified cotton of Calmer, and the wool is far too elastic. I knit a swatch of double knit cotton and you can see how flat it lies in comparison to the wool. It's Jaeger Extra Fine Merino in Alpine green, which is far too good to waste, so it's the frog pond for this particular yarn.

I made the sweater version of Loll from the same Rowan Calmer book using some white vintage Jaeger double knit wool for Andy's sister, and that turned out beautifully; she looks like a snow princess in it, so substituting yarn obviously has a lot of angles to it. What works beautifully in stocking stitch might not work at all in rib - in fact, it didn't! Never mind, I will make another test Cloud when some cotton-type stuff turns up to see if my theory on the nature of the yarn is correct. I do like the look of this cardigan and one day I'll own it (beautifully made, of course) in coffee-bean coloured Calmer.

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.