Lucky Me!

Look what I got for 50p! It would have been nice to find any Rowan magazine on the charity book stall (except perhaps the one with Aleph in, which I already have, and continues to haunt me because I paid so much for the book and the yarn and still have nothing but a pile of failure to show for it!) but today, in a pile alongside Sugarcraft 1978 and Easy Patchwork 1983 is this winter's Rowan magazine!

I raced home and devoured the photos - and I suddenly saw why the magazine had been thrown out - there are some lovely garments, but, oh, my paws and whiskers - do you ever have to be thin to wear them! They are mostly chunky in style and fabric. Much too chunky for ordinary people. And the thinner knits are very tight fitting. Fine if you are tall and thin and elegant (or live on a wet British island with no central heating and only the sheep to see you). Terrible for real people with cars and central heating. I did find one item I liked: Stockport by Sarah Hatton. It's basically a low-necked T-shirt, and although it's knit in chunky wool, there are some very cunning lines which run up the front of the garment and (hopefully!) give the illusion of slenderness.

Spent a couple of evenings delving in the stash and swatching. Finally settled on a strand of green Aran worked with a strand of 4-ply. This gave me row tension. The stitch tension was too big (or should I say there were too few stitches meaning the garment would be too big? I still get confused) so I cast on for the smaller size and packed it for my camping knitting.

On the way to the Lake District, we stopped at a yarn store and I stroked the balls of Cocoon. They are so soft and yummy, and I love the dark colours, but don't dare buy any more expensive wool, not until I'm sure I can knit the garment! Here's the link for those lucky people who can already knit.

http://www.knitrowan.com/patterns/Rowan-Knitting-and-Crochet-Magazine-46.aspx

Butterfly Wings

Look what a difference needle size makes. These are the arm openings on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket. I'm putting I-Cord around the openings and also using the three-needle I-cord cast off across the shoulders. (As the name implies, that's having live stitches on two needles and using the third needle to work I-cord - tricky, but not impossible.) I didn't want the trim to look baggy and ethnic, so I overcompensated with 3.5 mm needles for the I-cord. It did look neat, but it pulled in the armhole too much. This could be a useful trick to remember if I ever make a sleeveless vest with baggy armholes. I frogged it, steamed the yarn to get out the kinks because I didn't want a knot and finished the garment using 4.5 mm needles. It actually fits me! And there are no major errors in it!! Definitely time to do that modest but triumphant jig. Do I like it, though? Ah, yes, slight problem there. It's an odd little beast, this butterfly jacket. I'll get Andy to take some pictures of the back and you'll see what I mean. It's quite cute, but the 'wings' leave a very open bit on the back - it might work in summer, but leaves an odd draughty spot in winter.

Rowan haven't replied re my reversing shaping query on Cloud. Maybe my email went astray. Maybe the knitting guru is on leave. Maybe they are not speaking to me because I haven't bought the yarn yet. I suddenly remembered how nice knitters on Ravelry were and fired off an email to a knitter who'd finished a beautiful Cloud. I had an answer the same day. How cool is that? I'm going to try the left front again tonight.

Incidentally, I drove myself nuts last night trying to post some photographs on Ravelry. They use Flickr, and Blogger use another system. I once managed to log in and create a Flickr account, but it wouldn't let me back in. It wants me to use my Yahoo ID, but my computer will only show a dialogue box with my broadband ID showing. I did link the relevant post to each garment. Until Ravelry add a bit that lets you upload easily from your computer, that will have to do.

Frustration!!

I've posted another Nostalgia shot rather than try to photograph the tangle I'm currently in. This sweater is an Icelandic Lopi sweater. They are very quick and easy to knit, yet look rather impressive - and they used to be cheap. The local market had a stall that used to feature bin bags full of yarn and crates full of cones left over from the mills - thinking about it now, I wonder how Icelandic wool got into the mix? I used to buy piles of odd balls and make sweaters for everyone, whether they wanted them or not! The one in the photograph was either knitted in Japan, or knitted while on a trip to America. I know that's 2-day stopover in San Francisco in the background of the photo. My American boyfriend took me on a ski trip to Colorado - and we had a day trip to Aspen which was just about the most glamorous place I'd ever been too. For some reason my response to being in a place that had a plane park bigger than the car park was to urgently need to buy wool. We went to a delicious yarn store in Aspen with snow on the roof and fairy lights all down the street - I clearly remember enjoying the American-style service, so different from the UK's grudging sales staff, and I remember buying a pile of Lopi, but after all this time, I can't remember which colour yarn I bought there. I made a Lopi for the BF as well - he really liked it because he was so tall he'd never had a sweater with long sleeves before - the advantage of custom knitting.

Well, that's enough pleasant nostalgia - back to painful reality. I simply cannot get the shaping for the right slope of the last side of Cloud Three. I can't parallel park either. It's the same kind of skill. I cannot do decreases in double rib without clear directions. Something in my head simply won't translate P2tog tbl at end of row for the left slope to what you need to do for the right slope. The pattern simply says: 'reverse shaping for right side'. What do I reverse? Work at the beginning of the row not the end? Is P2 tog the opposite of P2 tog dbl? Or is it K2tog tbl? Or simply K2 tog? I would have thought that I'd tried every available combination over the last couple of days. It's a problem because you have to shape on both sides of the work - so I need to know what you do at the beginning and end of the row for both sides and it's just not working. I admit defeat. I'm going to email Rowan for help and knit lace for a bit instead. Although I can knit the lace now, I still need to be alone in the house so I might start my next project while I'm waiting to hear back from Rowan - Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly in Portuguese knitting - so of course it will be the Portuguese Butterfly.

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!

Norwegian Mittens

Found another disaster to photograph. These are supposed to be Elizabeth Zimmerman's Norwegian mittens. I'm only not throwing them out because the grey yarn is wool from an Irish rare breed sheep and there's only one ball. When I do learn to knit (I'm still saying when! That's a triumph of hope over experience) I might need that grey to finish the perfect pair of mittens that I will knit one day.

I was brain dead on Friday night so I knit at the sleeves of Turbulence while watching TV rather than going back to the cable.

And this morning I made myself set in the sleeves of Tangerine Nightmare. I hate that garment! It was worth setting in the sleeves as an exercise because I can see that the fully fashioned edges are a disaster! For my next test Alef, I will make the sloping decreases, left or right as the side of the garment dictates, but I will make them at the very edge of the fabric.

I made a start on sewing on the button bands, but I'd had enough. I will do them, though, because the only way to make a good Alef is to practice, practice, practice!

I know what I'd really like - a plain pattern for Rowan's Classic Kid that uses three buttons. Then I'd never have to knit another Alef in my life!

Peach Alef

Here's yet another practice Alef knit in peach acrylic. I changed the bottom trim to cobweb lace which is knit from the bottom up - it almost worked. I like the part where it joins the body of the garment, but I don't like the bottom part - it looks tatty.

By the way, look, no seams. I knit it in one piece. When I first discovered lovely Addi needles and the concept of knitting in the round, I went through a phase where I knit EVERYTHING in the round. Now I'm not so sure. I think many items fit better if they have side seams, although I still do all plain sleeves in the round.

Because I didn't like the cobweb lace when I saw it on the body of the garment, I committed a fatal error. Laziness always comes back to haunt one. I took it on the long walk to the dustbin. And I didn't practice making the collar and button bands. Which means I don't know how to do it.

Today I wrestled with Tangerine Alef, grafting the lace band and over sewing on the button band. After a couple of hours of frowning concentration, which resulted only in ugly, sore looking joins, I pulled it all back and threw it in the basket. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to do it.

I already know that I will need to make yet another Alef before I attempt it with the Rowan Classic Kid. I'm finding this such a hard pattern.

Knit six inches of the back for the test Turbulence U-necked sweater yesterday. My, I love time off work!

Awful Alef

Here's a photo that both depresses and cheers me up. Depresses because it's so unutterably awful - (look at my face! Did you ever see such a thoroughly fed-up knitter?). The good side is that looking at the above mess, there is no doubt that I'm improving! There's at least twenty things wrong with that Alef. It's the first one I made after a break of 20 years or so. I had to give up knitting because I needed two pairs of glasses, one for watching TV and one for knitting - impossible, and I'm not really a radio person so I gave up knitting. Then I got wonderful varifocal lenses. It's over £300 for the lenses (not the frames, that's extra!) but oh, is it worth it. It's like having eyes again! I can read maps, look at labels in shops, well, I won't go on, there are many convenient uses for eyes. And then, in February 2006, I suddenly remembered how much I like to knit. So, I went to the local yarn store, bought the current Rowan book and some yarn and launched in - with the above result.

I don't think I ever was a very good knitter - 80s garments had a lot of slack in them! I also knit a lot of ethnic type jumpers, which again don't call for a lot of technique. I used a lot of colours as well, which hid a multitude of sins. I must dig out some old photos - everyone I knew got one of my jumpers. It never occur ed to me to wonder how much they appreciated them! Old sweaters had a second life because they'd go to the local hippies. I went away to Japan for five years and when I came back I saw a couple of my jumpers still walking around the street or drinking beer in the pub.

I spent all night knitting tension squares, so Tangerine Nightmare took a holiday last night. I will do the grafting and sew it up this weekend, because we're at home. It would be nice to finish the last sleeve (still at 6 rows) this week.

I think the big cones are 2-ply anyway. I tried knitting with various needles and numbers of strands last night, but although 2 strands held together gives the right number of stitches for 4-ply, and 3 strands held together gives the right number of stitches for double knit, the row tension seems off, there's always too many rows - I wonder if that's because of the two strands? I think I've noticed this before with trying to get tension with my various bargain cones. Vintage Vogue books have glorious garments in 2-ply and 3-ply yarn, but where would I ever get the time?

If I don't have time to knit with 2-ply, and I can't get the tension for double knit and 4-ply patterns, does this mean I should stop stashing cones? Probably, but I don't think I can! Not when I see all that yarn for so little money!

The Stash Grows!

Couldn't resist this cotton glace from the hospice shop, even though two of the balls had been used. It was only £1.50 for 4 balls, and Rowan is such lovely quality that it should be worth the washing and rewinding. Four balls probably isn't enough for an item, but it's the right colourway for my ongoing Poppies project.

I have lots of failed attempts at Poppies, that I'll photograph one day - but basically I've come up with the idea of a French-style jacket (you know who I mean even if we're not supposed to use the brand name) in Kafee Fassett's good old Persian Poppies pattern. I love Kafee's fabrics, but his designs don't suit me. I disovered this by spending nearly a year knitting the Turkish Carnation jacket - it looked wonderful spread out on the bed or on a chair, but it turned me into a hippie garden gnome. I'd say you need to be a minimum of six foot high to wear any of Kafee's designs, so, I'm using Jean Frost's basic jacket - at least that's the idea.

I had about four goes at it before I gave up. I had lots of trouble with tension (this is before I discovered Lucy Neatby) and also, my matchy-matchy me didn't like the range of colours that I started with. Some people liked the mad peasant look of throwing every colour of the rainbow in, but I want more colours that are closer in tone. I haven't bought any new colours for ages, so today's cotton was a welcome find.

The buttons are real shell (60p worth) There are two small, four medium and four large. The large ones are not right for Tangerine Dream - too bright. I chose the brown buttons you can see on yesterday's picture before the lacy bits went on, and now I'm not so sure about them. There isn't anything else suitable in my stash, and even if it gets finished, I'm not sure the Tangerine Dream warrants a trip to Duttons for Buttons for special matching!

Good Enough

This is a sweater I made for a friend's little boy. I'd never knitted with cotton before, and I made it before even knowing about Lucy Neatby's DVD on intarsia so I'm sure it would be neater if I bought the DVD and made it, but for whatever reason it turned out OK. Lots of mistakes and faults if you look closely, but overall, perhaps because of Louisa Harding's great pattern or Rowan's lovely cotton yarn, it turned out good enough.

And so, finally, have the collar/lapel/button bands on my tangerine practice Alef. At last I can move on. I've been struggling with them and re-knitting them for so long I was surprised to have reached this point!

Last night I started the lace trim for the bottom edge of the garment. It's going to be another challenge. In the finished original, I didn't like the fact that the left side looks different from the right at the front - the edges are quite different and my matchy-matchy streak just hates that. I emailed Rowan for help, and wonderful Rowan, they replied. I'm not exactly doing what they said, but they gave me the idea: knit one bit of the lace trim in purl and one bit in lace, then graft the two edges together. That way the lace band will have two similar edges at the opening.

Lucy Neatby shows a great way to graft: knit extra rows in slippy contrast fabric, then you can join the graft with your sewing needle by following the path of the waste yarn. I can't wait to try it!

Little Things Make a Big Difference

No wonder knitting is so hard. I suddenly wondered if the lapel would look better if I left the last stitch on the other side of the lapel loose. It didn't work, but look how much bigger that side is? It flips more as well.

Made a pair that are loose on the increase side only. I actually assembled all the lace in the right order and knitted up a button band, only to find that I'd made a mess of the band this time. First I did the knitting too loose, then I messed up the number of rows (the pattern instructions are for a two-row buttonhole and this is a one-row buttonhole) so that I tried to do Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn cast off on the wrong side AND on top of that I started doing the cast off wrong. And then I found little holes on each side of the buttonhole. I can't be wrapping the yarn properly. Got out a pair of scissors and hacked it all back. One day, I'll get the hang of it!

But I am starting to think that I might have to make yet another test before I approach the Classic Kid yarn with any confidence.

Alef Collar Version 35

Well, that's what it feels like. As well as all the attempts I've had at the garment, I used up a whole ball of pink acrylic trying to make a lapel that wouldn't flip up - the room was covered with little pink tongues of knitting. I wish now I'd photographed them all.

Then I emailed Rowan for advice - and good for them, they replied. Rowan suggested doing the increase by knitting into the front and the back of a stitch, and doing it two stitches from the edge. This worked better than anything I had been doing, but it still wasn't right. The lapel still wanted to flip up. Rowan also suggested adding a stitch to hold it in place - but there must be a way to get the knitting to lie flat.

Of course, Lucy Neatby knows - she draws a diagram to show how the edge stitches get stretched and 'unhappy' when you shape them. She also drops in that it's something to do with isosceles triangles, but anyway, what you have to do is 'be kind' to the edge stitches, because increasing along the bottom of the lapel means they have to stretch further - that's why they go tight. I made one lapel by using a bigger needle at the edge, which was fiddly and still a bit tight, so the second one I kept the same needle and tried to knit with loose yarn on the last 6 stitches and that seemed to help.

Now to learn Lucy's buttonhole for the other side.

Tangerine Nightmare

This is the fourth time I've tried to knit Alef by Leah Sutton (Rowan Magazine 40). I have to succeed, because I bought the lovely Rowan Classic Kid yarn in cream. And the buttons. Do you know how much Rowan yarn costs? Exactly. I'll learn to knit or, well, there is no or. I'm going to learn to knit! Here's how I got to the frame of mind where knitting with Spanish tangerine acrylic yarn seems like a sensible thing to do.

1. Feb 2006. I buy yarn, and the magazine, oh, and the buttons (you could buy a winter coat in Primark for what those buttons cost) and set off knitting. I sew it all up. I try it on. I burst into tears. Frog entire thing.


2. I carry on knitting. Nothing works. I don't know why. I read blogs. I buy books. How hard can this knitting be?


3. Feb 2007. I must be able to knit by now. I reknit a practice Alef in brown acrylic yarn. I sew it all up. I try it on. This time I don't burst into tears because I was kind of expecting trouble. My DH gets to carry the soft pile of disastrous knitting to the rubbish bin in the yard outside. It looks horribly like a pet going to the vet. I wave it goodbye.


4. I carry on knitting. I read more blogs. I buy more books. I knit miles of practice knitting. Surely I can knit by now?


5. September 2007. I make another practice Alef in peach acrylic yarn. I've learnt a lot. I get cocky. I make all kinds of alterations. I sew it up. I heave a deep sigh. Realise that I am now so hardened that I can throw my own rejects into the bin. I think this counts as knitting progress.


6. I carry on knitting. I discover Lucy Neatby. I spend all my money on her DVDs. I find the tangerine yarn. I must be able to knit by now....


7. I'll let you know how it goes