Turbulence U-neck is ready for the Exciting Bit!

I did sew on the lace trim for Tangerine Nightmare this weekend. It took three attempts but I finally got the overcasting to look neat. The instructions were in a tatty old second-hand book that I nearly didn't buy (what, spend a whole pound on a book with a grubby cover?) but I'm so glad I did. There's something about the way the instructions are written and drawn that make sense to me, when other, posher books leave me baffled. The secret of overcasting is to only take the edge bump of the stitch - the less you have in the seam, the neater it looks. Once I'd got my head around that, it worked fine.

The graft on the two pieces of lace for the trim went much better this time as well. I seemed to end up with a lot of loose ends that were difficult to sew into lace without them showing. I think I need to buy a sharp needle and split the plies. I'll try that on my next test.

Then I'd had enough of test Alef AKA Tangerine Nightmare. It still needs sleeves and the troublesome collar/buttonbands sewing on, but I'm feeling like I'd like our relationship to be over! I want to be with a fun item!

The front of Turbulence seemed to take longer to knit than the back, which would be the cable slowing me down. I did start a test once before, but the yarn - a cone of green un spun 3-ply - was a nightmare to handle so I threw into the poppies stash. There's a strong possibility that if it was a nightmare on a plain garment, then it won't be any better for intarsia, but I hate to throw yarn away!
But it was useful because I'd got the cable twist one row out in a couple of places and it looked sore, so I used a row counter this time.

I plan to be very careful with the cable front of Turbulence - I will use the row counter. I will write down in words what I'm doing for each row. I will check the pattern once I've written the words down to make sure I've got it right. If I can knit 36 rows without frogging, I'll know I'm improving!

You can see rowing out on the front of Turbulence - I'm still not as neat as I'd like to be, but hopefully that will come. This is only my second knit using the alternative continental purl stitch (as suggested by Lucy Neatby) and I'm sure I'll get neater. One thing I am pleased about is that this garment has not distorted as I knit. My tension is pretty even. Not perfect, the front is a tad smaller, I don't know why, unless it's that I'm still improving! When I knit ordinary continental (left leg of the stitch in front) my tension used to grow as I worked my way up the piece. This was also due to not knitting at the tips of the needles. Making these two changes has given me a sight of the knitter's holy grail - even tension you can rely on.

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.

Sleeve Frustration

The good news is that I finished both sleeves.

The bad news is that they don't match. The tension on the second sleeve is bigger, so it's bigger all over, and floppy looking

The good news is that the second one is neater than the first one, which is what I set out to achieve.

I am not going to frog and reknit- not a test garment. Not orange acrylic. But oh wiffle and spot! How annoying!!

Dream On!

I took this book back to the library today - it does have some glorious knitting in it, but I won't be buying it for about ten years, because that's how long it will take me to get good enough to be able to use it. The garments are beautifully constructed, and the patterns are a joy BUT the styles are, well, let's just say they do nothing for a short round person like me! I'd love to be able to take the fabulous knitting elements from this book (wonderful trims and details: you should see how the patterns match up under the arms! Perfection) but use them in flattering and fashionable styles - those knitted French-style jackets I'm always hankering after, for example. It's beyond my skills at the moment.

I've finished one sleeve and up to the arm of the second sleeve of Alef. The knitting is vile! It's so hard to knit on the very tips of four needles and keep it all even! The stocking stitch is knit on size 5 mm. I bought a 30 cm Addi, and it's maybe a bit too chunky for knitting such a small tube. It seems awkward to knit with, somehow, in a way the smaller 30 cm needles didn't. I tried hard to make the second sleeve neater, but with such a tiny improvement that it is depressing! It all adds up though. Keep knitting!

It's From a Sheep All Right!

I spent last night playing with the new cream yarn - still knitting various samples to see what it will do. I think that by holding three strands together, it will make a pretty good double knit - the row tension isn't quite right, but maybe I could get my head around the math and compensate for it - it will only be test garments after all.

Then I wondered about using 9 or 10 strands together. I have a couple of cute jacket patterns for very thick wool and 8 MM needles (and yes, I know what you are thinking, but they really are cute jackets - which takes some designing skill, right?)

The swatch survived hand washing OK, and the house filled with the redolent smell of a sheep on a wet hillside proving that it is indeed real wool. Next I threw it in the washing machine and it came out improved - softer, fluffier and neater. I've read that coned wool softens as it's washed.

Anyway, if I want to sew up my Tangerine Nightmare this weekend, I'll have to leave the new yarn for now and get on with the sleeve - it takes me at least three good knitting sessions to do a sleeve, and there's no saying I'll actually get them, life being what it is!

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!

Could You Have Resisted These Cones?

Honestly? When they cost only three pounds? We were away this weekend so I knitted about six rows, and bought enough yarn to keep me busy for about six years! Why do knitters need a stash? Thank goodness for the Internet - at least I know I'm not the only hoarder around.

The cream cone weighs 1500g, and it burns brightly, leaving a residue that crumbles when you rub it, so I think it may be wool. The pink/beige cone weights 760g and feels much softer. It too burns, but when the flame goes out, it leaves a sticky lump behind that won't crumble, so I think it may be artificial.

It's so thin! I do have patterns for Shetland 2-ply garments and vintage 3-ply garments (I love 50s styles) or it might work if I knit with two strands held together - to get double knitting - that would be the best option because there's lots of practice garments I want to make. I'd need more time to knit than I have now (six rows over a weekend!) to embark on anything in fine yarn. And then, what if it didn't fit after all that effort?

I couldn't get into Blogger on Friday because all my settings changed after I unwisely let the computer install the updates it's been asking for for weeks. I couldn't find anything, nothing worked...Bah! I hadn't taken a picture anyway, because I haven't figured out how to do real good close ups that demonstrate what you want to show, but I would have said how poor the knitting on the first sleeve for the Tangerine Nightmare was.

If you want to knit beautifully, Lucy Neatby has you form the stitches at the very tips of the needles, so that when you have two needles in one stitch, it's only the tapered ends that go in, adding up to no more than one needle at any one time, so the stitch never gets stretched. She demonstrated the way I used to knit, cramming the whole needle in at any old angle next to the other needle, so there are two needles rammed into a single stitch and called it stitch abuse!

I knit her way for the body of the garment, and it is a huge improvement - my tension stays much more even as well, and that has to be a bonus. But, when it came to four needles and a circular for the sleeve, I must have gotten excited and forgotten her rules (and no purl to bother about either!) How messy it looked, even with mohair hiding many sins. I'm not frogging. No way, not tangerine acrylic mohair, but I am going to knit the second sleeve beautifully. Watch this space!

Lace Trim Ready to Graft, Captain

So there's a purl strip and a knit strip nearly ready to graft. I think it needs one more repeat on the knit strip so that it fits properly. I'm going to wait until the weekend to do the grafting. I need daylight and time to concentrate.

I found that by using a lace book, the trim knitted up real quick. The system I've ended up with at this point is to use the labels template in Word. On each label I write the number of the row, the stitches to knit, and the number of stitches there should be at the end of the row. I did use a row counter with the print out at first, but it's quicker to use a small coin and just push it along as each row is finished. It acts as a place marker as well.

Sleeves, next. I think I'll knit them in the round, because there's going to be quite enough sewing up to do as it is.

Late Night Knitting

Sore, aren't they?

1. One set of lace strips must have been assembled upside down. They can't both be right, seeing as they are different! The left one is even different on the same lapel. It had been a long day, that's all I can say.
2. The lapels are different sizes - that's because I used a different technique for each one. The larger lapel was knitted on the same size needles, but working loose at the edges, the smaller one, was knitted changing to big needles at the edge. It's not loose enough. It flips horribly, so that needs reknitting.
3. The bands look different - that's because I used the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast off on the one that looks smaller. It looks neater, and I like it better, but I was kind of forgetting that the two sides should match.
4. I forgot to do the chain edge on the left-hand side - I think the bottom edge will look better and the top edges will sew better if there are no garter stitch bumps in the way.
5. The good news is that the buttonholes went OK, eventually!

I'm going to make an instruction sheet and start again from scratch. Hopefully they'll be done by Friday.

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.

The Royal We

The Royal Wool Winder and me, that is. We are now a perfect partnership. It's a truly wonderful gismo from Japan that winds up your yarn into a soft, perfectly tensioned cone that sits neatly on the floor.

I have Lucy Neatby to thank for my new wool winder as well. This vintage Royal was sitting on a shelf at my local charity shop in a box marked 'sold as seen. £1' . I peeped into the box, but I had no idea what it was or how you used it. So I left it on the shelf. A few days later I reached the bit in Lucy's DVD where she shows you how to use a niddy noddy, a swift and a BALL WINDER!! Oh my gosh, so that's what they are! I managed to detour back to the shop on the way to work the next day and it was still there. What a delight!

There were no instructions, and anything with a Krypton factor does my head in, but Andy figured it out and helped me set it up. What a great gadget. The little ball it makes sits quietly on the floor, calmly unravelling from the centre. No more stopping to tug and pull at the ball because the yarn's gone tight. No more stopping to untangle the yarn from around a chair leg. And perhaps most importantly, no more yarn bouncing around the floor getting grubby. The way an ordinary ball runs around the floor when you knit was bothering me. After all, would you buy a new jumper and rub it over the floor? Problem solved! Last night I wound all the yarn for the Tangerine Nightmare.

It makes me wonder how many other wonderful things I leave on the shelf because I don't know what they are or how to use them. Thank goodness for gurus like Lucy.