New Resolve

Spent £50 on knitting aids today. I am recovering from the misery of knitting failure because disaster isn't a mysterious punishment from the gods - the whole process of getting it wrong was due to human error and therefore can be fixed. The first mistake I made with the shrug was to ignore the pattern instructions for tension because I wanted to use my nice wooden needles and was too tight to pay out for another set. The moral of the story is to buy the needles you need. I've send off for them. And double pointed pins for making the sleeves in the round, so that's 3 sets of needles straight away, and it is expensive. But what's the money for needles compared with wasting 3 weeks knitting time and feeling horrible?

The next mistake I made was in not reading the pattern carefully before I started. I started knitting the wrong size because I misread the pattern. Then, once I'd noticed, I thought, oh, it'll be OK, and carried on. I could have stopped and done a tension square, or bought the right needles at that point. NEVER ignore that little voice that tells you you're making a mistake! Stopping when you hear it and spending an evening investigating the problem can save a lot of pain and wasted knitting hours. Last night I did a little tension square, and I get perfect tension on the right needles. (Horrid charity shop needles, by the way, that's why I didn't want to make the garment with them, but now I know that I do need that size.)

The last mistake I made, which delayed getting to the point where I realised I'd made the wrong size, was in letting my tension go on the sleeves. I made both sleeves and sewed them up BEFORE I even tested them against the armhole. If I'd made one and checked it that would have saved a lot of time. Anyway, the sleeves were huge. I thought I'd made a pattern error so I ripped one sleeve back and knit it again. (Yes, that's right, without checking the tension, so that's a whole second sleeve I knitted that was a waste of time!) It came out exactly the same size. Finally decided to test the tension. HUGE. It had gone from 23 stitches per inch on the body to 19 stitches per inch on the sleeve. I think what I'd done is to concentrate while I was knitting the body because of all that shaping, so my knitting was neat and I worked on the tips of the needles. Then, I got to the sleeves and thought, I can do sleeves. Sleeves are easy. And relaxed - and whoosh - there went my tension out of control. Ripped both sleeves back and re knit one, this time keeping it tight. Ever so slightly too tight this time, but it didn't matter because this is where I discovered that the body is too big.

What a tangle. And it's all due to my methods of working. Slapdash, mean, arrogant and lazy! No wonder I was upset and crushed. I've learnt too much to give up knitting at this point - the technical execution of the stitches was perfect! The bodice was so neat and perfect to every last stitch so far as numbers went, even though I chose the wrong size. I am fast now as well - if I didn't make any mistakes, I could knit this shrug in only 2 weeks. All that's left to master is buying the right equipment, tension, setting off right in the first place and checking as I go along! Who would have thought that knitting would be so character building?

I sent off for two more Lucy Neatby DVDs as well - one that includes setting in fitted sleeves and the first intarsia one. I will not give in.

The brown yarn I'm using washes and re balls very well, but the balls are getting smaller and smaller as this is about the fourth time they will have been pulled back! Oh well. It's only practice yarn.

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.

Pause for Thought

I completed two of the panel repeats, then followed Maggie Richetti's advice and put the work on a thread so that I could Knit Klip it together, try it on and measure it and think about it. Very interesting. I started measuring in metric, but caught myself just in time. Never again! 4" in not the same as 10 cm, whatever the pattern might say. Now I always measure in the system that the designer used. This is an American pattern, so imperial all the way.

I do not like baggy sleeves, so it feels exactly right at the moment, but several people said it turned out small, so it probably won't be wide enough at the top. OK, I'll carry on increasing for the large size, but because I started increasing every 8 rows (as given for small) and not every 10 rows (as given for large) I'll carry on doing this so the increases are in proportion. And I will write all this down, so that I know what to do on the other side!!

Each repeat is 4.75 inches - so even my math knows that 10 panels will not make 60". I will knit two extra pattern repeats. This being so, I need to stop after one more panel repeat, put it back on the thread and see what I think about the placing of the markers for the back panel.

I feel as if all the kind advice I received from the Ravelry knitters will bring me luck. I'm sure this will be the garment I wear!

When I was making the various swatches a few days ago, I used a pair of Clover needles I bought years ago when I lived in Japan. This pair were white plastic with yellow tips, and the coloured tips helped me understand why my tension in the Turbulence U-necked sweater got smaller and smaller as I went. I suddenly realised that I wasn't pushing the newly formed loops off the tapered tips and onto the main part of the needle.

I'm trying to follow Lucy Neatby's instructions to knit on the tips of the needle because my knitting used to get larger and larger as I used to stretch the original stitch by shoving a complete second needle in. Knitting at the tips avoids this. BUT the second error I was falling in to was knitting at the tips, and not making sure the new loop went off the tip and onto the body of the needle so that it formed the correct size. And not knowing that I was doing any of this meant that none of my stitches were consistent. Leading to knitting hell. This could be a useful discovery.

Hurray for the Cavalry @ Ravelry

Before I went to work yesterday I went onto Ravelry (the Internet knitting community) and emailed a couple of people who had already made the Aran shrug. When I got home from work I had replies from around the world. Isn't the Internet brilliant?

The people who had most liked the shrug were those who didn't bother much with tension (gauge). The shrug had turned out too small or the neck hadn't worked for a couple of people, which suggests to me that there are problems in the pattern. Experienced knitters were able to jump over the hurdles, others smacked into the barriers caused by a less than perfect pattern.

Me? With my history of failure, shouldn't I quit now? But I like this shrug!! Decided to carry on, bearing in mind all the kind words and shared experiences sent by the other knitters, I'm going to try to apply common sense to the garment and see if I can make it work.

Above is the swatch that I'm keeping. (I've used a ball and half just swatching!). It's knit on 5.5 mm needles and the yarn is Pingoun Aran - I have 11 balls (Or I did have!) and another ball that I started to knit some fair isle mittens with and got bored. I can rescue that if I need to. I also have some green mohair which I can use as a contrasting trim if I run out of yarn.

The row gauge is slightly too small, and my favourite jacket measures one inch more than the given size for the smaller version, so I'm going to knit the larger size. A jolly Californian knitter suggested changing needle size for the collar to get the larger gauge. A light bulb went off in my head. Do I not own a DVD with Lucy Neatby demonstrating how to make a rib roll-neck sit beautifully by changing needle size as you work? If you knit an inch, then change to a larger needle, knit another inch and change up again, the rib expands slightly and wants to lie flat. It's a nice theory, isn't it?

Well, I'm committed now. Here we go...

Tension Hell

I should have known there was no easy knitting! I gave up on the 'Simple' (the very word makes me want to scream) jacket. I should have ignored the word simple in the title and paid more attention to the two star rating. I'm beginning to realise that I'm a one star kind of knitter.

So, I rummaged in my stash, fetched out some Aran and waded in to the cabled Aran shrug. You can buy the Crystal Palace yarns here, if the test is a success. Which it already isn't. I didn't rush in! I don't deserve to suffer - I was a good knitter and checked Ravelry first. About a dozen people had knit the cabled shrug. Nobody reported any horrors, although one person hated the finished garment and one said she'd made one for her mum, who loved it. Which made me wonder about the fashion element inherent in that statement. Which then made me wonder about my attitude to mothers. Hopefully it was a mother of the fashionable variety who loved that shrug.

So, after checking I waded in. I knit a half swatch and got the stocking stitch tension of 14 stitches and 19 rows. I cast on, and bar a few of the inevitable snarls caused by me mixing with cables, I did 5 happy inches. And then I stopped to measure. Oh my paws and whiskers. What is going on here? It was far too big - and open and sloppy. I went back to the pattern. Oh, yes, they give a second tension for the Aran panels. I did notice that, but I remember deciding to knit on and check the tension once I'd done a few inches. The tension for the Aran panel is 21 stitches and 21 rows. Wait a minute, here! Isn't that rather a long way away from 14 stitches and 19 rows? In the same piece of fabric? No needle change or anything.

I've spend several hours wrestling with this and coming to no useful conclusion. I started again on needles that got 21 stitches in the Aran, but it looks too small and the row tension is off. Calculating the pattern repeat I can see that it would be 35" long instead of 54" long. This is progress. Once over I'd have knit the whole thing and then found that out!

Baffled! I wish I'd stuck to baffling short rows now. Now I have two garments in pieces that I can't do. To make matters worse, we called in at a yarn store. Oh, the glory of real wool! I wish I could knit.

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.

Brown Alef

This is to prove that I am getting better! Another horrible test Alef that took the long walk to the dustbin. It is vile in so many ways - especially where I've done half the lace on 5mm needles, then picked up 4mm needles and finished off the other side and not noticed! How can you not notice something as glaring and awful in the mistake department?

Today I watched Lucy Neatby on DVD on grafting, then had another go at grafting the lace strip together for Tangerine Nightmare. And this time I got it! I suddenly understood how it worked. BUT, probably influenced by mattress stitch, where you leave the stitches slack and pull them up at the end, or in batches, I left the grafting loose - it's only 11 stitches. But they wouldn't pull tight at the end. Tightened them one by one, then overcast a section of lace to the bottom of the main garment and went to the mirror. (You see, I'm getting smarter - I didn't do the whole strip and weave in the ends and then check in the mirror.) I looked in the mirror, and DOH!

One of my least favourite instruction is 'lightly stretched'. It is so difficult to interpret. I did knit the lace strip a bit shorter than measurement of the hem of the main garment, but when I blocked this lace strip it grew several inches, and then was slightly too long for the bottom of the garment. I ignored this and sewed it on anway. It looked frilly and naff. I took the unsewn section and stretched it lightly. It looked smart and lacy. Undid all my sewing. Undid all my grafting. Undid several lace repeats. Redid the waste yarn knitting ready for grafting, and put it all away until tomorrow.

As ever, Lucy Neatby is so, so right. Don't weave in your yarn ends until you are certain that everything is exactly as you want it. This little tip has saved me much anguish.

Thank goodness for stocking stitch. I am storming up the back of the Turbulence U-necked sweater. Thanks to my new, neat, Lucy Neatby inspired knitting, my tension is staying the same all the way up the piece. This is good!

I have just thrown the swatch in the washer. It will be just my luck if this is the only cotton in the known universe that shrinks rather than stretches - because my tension has stayed even, the garment, as it is, is slightly too small. It'll be all right. I'm on a diet!

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!!

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!

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!

Would You Spend One Whole Hour Blocking Tangerine Acrylic?

No, I thought not. But I am learning to how to block more than trying to improve artificial yarn - I find the measuring and getting it square very hard - left to myself I produce parallelograms. luckily Andy was around this morning and he helped me again - he might have to go through it ten times, but I'll get it eventually.

It's come out exactly the right size, which is a bit of a mystery because when I did my tension square I got 1 stitch and 1 row too many, but decided I didn't care. In the past, my Alefs have turned out too large, so I'm obviously doing something wrong.

I've already knitted up the shoulders - I did it Lucy Neatby's way. If like me, you struggle to knit off shoulders, use a double-pointed needle to do the three-needle bind off and you can do it in two easy stages - first knit the two shoulders together, then go back and bind off the row of stitches. It's so perfect, so easy, so Lucy.