FO: Scrollwork Hat

After my last blog post, I totally shamed myself into finishing this hat:

The Scrollwork, a classy little number from Wool People Vol 4. It sat crammed on a shelf (a former CD tower, now useful as a place to put all the odds and ends of life when you live in a 1 bedroom flat- flashlights, stationary, pens, pocketknives, sunglasses, a button jar, scissors, and odd balls of yarn and anything you want off the table when you sit down for dinner) with just the brim done for more than a month, waiting for me to just put a couple of hours in to turn it into something more useful.

And finally:

The color is much more accurate in the first photo: a lovely, dusty pink with bits of tweed (as it is still permanently nighttime here, it's hard to get knitwear photos during good light, especially if one might be a desk jockey for pay all day).  The yarn is Classic Elite Portland Tweed, now discontinued.  Why?  Because it's weird, most likely.  It's a blend of 50% wool, 25% alpaca and 25% rayon, which is just...odd.   While I didn't curse it and hate it, it was not my favorite to work with- very little give and spring and life to it.  It's not terribly soft, and the alpaca/rayon makes it drape really nice, but I was warned up and down the internet that it would grow terribly huge and lose shape right away.  Also:  it is labeled aran weight, and it is nowhere near that chunky- it knit up DK.  So I knit it down 3 needle sizes for a very tight fabric, and the moment the heat from my head warmed it up during my victory lap (I always don whatever knitwear I just finish, at least for a couple hours when I finish) it started to relax and grow slouchy and loose and start to creep down my forehead and splay out where it hit the back of my neck, threatening to eventually suffocate me and perhaps even eat my brains.  

What to do?  I washed it and threw it in the dryer, tightening it up quite a lot, and with these puny Euro energy efficient driers, it was nowhere near enough heat or agitation to felt the fabric into a stuff, unyielding mass .  It's better now.  I would never normally do that- knitwear gets washed by hand in a bucket and dried flat in world.  I just recently started using the spin cycle on the dryer to wring it out to expedite the drying.  

But looksie, it fits perfect!  At least my head, which it is not intended for.  

FO: Shawl-Collared Lattice Sweater, Pour mon Mari

I am always on the prowl for the perfect guy sweater. Men are very particular- they usually have a well-defined comfort zone when it comes to fashion, and anything teetering on the edge of normal will not get worn. It has to have unique details, but not too complicated or fussy or delicate. Color is important as well- the more drab and boring the color, the more loved it will be. Think of dirt, of UPS Brown, or the color you get when you mix all your watercolors together. That's what we're aiming for.



Cables are okay, but he says, "nothing too Irish". So no crazy cabled fisherman sweater, which aside from the basic plain sweater, seems to be the most popular men's pattern.

I found a pattern in Knitscene the fit the bill. It's called "The Lattice Sweater". I dug around in my stash and found some appropriately drab Cascade 220 Heathers in the color "Sparrow". I got to work on it- I knocked out the sleeves first and then did the body up to the 'pits when I was in Orlando on a business trip.



Everything gets joined at the yolk with raglan decreases, and the neck is split and the lattice cable gave me something interesting to do, finally. Except that I mis-read the instructions and ended up doing half the amount of decreases necessary and realized pretty late in the game that this would fit off-the-shoulder. Sigh.

I tinked back to the armpits, joined everything again, and did the correct amount of decreases. Much better now. Funny fact- when I realized my error in decreases, I denied it at first and continued to knit another few rows before I ripped it back. What the hell is wrong with me? In the end, knitting the yoke a second time didn't kill me as much as I thought it would.

I am going to re-knit the shawl collar though. As it is now, it's not big enough, and it's always teetering on wanting to stand up on its own. I want it to be bigger and drapier. He agrees. A little drama is okay once in a while.




Despite the fact that half the sweaters I've made haven't gotten any use at all this year due to the fact that it rarely hits a temperature cold enough, I keep slogging on with woolie knitwear with the plan of moving to someplace very cold one day. Maybe I should start taking classes in Scandinavian languages and brush up on my reindeer-herding skills.





At the suggestion of a friend, I think there should be some short-rows in the back to give it more shape. The front wouldn't ride up if there was more space for the shoulders. When I fix the collar, I might as well just keep going and rip back a few inches into the sweater as well.



Aside from the minor fit issue, he loves it. It was finished in time for his birthday, but since I fitted it to him multiple times it wasn't a surprise. Surprises when it comes to fit = not a good surprise at all.

I used a full six skeins of Cascade 220 and size 6 needles (size 5 for the ribbing and the collar) to get 19 stitches per 4 inches. I made the 44 3/4" size- his chest with a t-shirt on is 42". It's fitted, but it still gives him a good amount of ease. He loves it (and if he didn't, he wouldn't have the heart to tell me, but since he's already worn it a bunch I'm just going to stick with "he loves it") and I'm happy with it as well. Viva winter!

FO- Devon Pullover

I love cabley things. I also love huge swaths of stockinette.



I make Bry a new sweater every winter. Here's the deal- he gets to choose the pattern (it's usually based on a commercially made sweater, and I either re-create the pattern or find something similar in my library) and the color. That way, he'll actually wear it. He's starting to amass quiet the wardrobe of handknits.

I whipped up this beast of a sweater in no time at all. It took me about 3 weeks of half-assed knitting to get it done. Bulky yarn and size 10 needles make for a quick knit, no matter what the size.



The yarn is Cascade Eco. It's a bulky woolen-spun 2-ply. It's not super-soft, but good for an outer layer. The yardage of each skein is huge- 478 yards- so this was a project that didn't leave the house. The wound ball of yarn took up my entire hand bag, so I stuck to my sock knitting when I left the house. It's warm, but because it's woolen-spun, it's fairly lightweight.



The color is "lichen". It's a perfect guy color.



The only modification I made was I knit the body in the round. I'm going to go back and make faux seams to give the sweater a bit more structure. That should help with the weird wavy thing it's doing at the bottom edge.

Once I seemed everything together and blocked, the sleeves grew and grew and grew. It was amazing, and my washed swatch didn't reflect that. I ripped back about 8 inches and re-ribbed the cuffs. Now they are perfect.



The pattern is from "Norah Gaughan Men" booklet. There are a few winners in that booklet.

I ended up buying way too much yarn for this sweater. I thought I would need about 1200 yards for this sweater, so I bought 3 skeins- over 1400 yards. I ended up using only 1 full skein, and about 400 yards off a second. I wasn't counting on that and I need to think of a new project idea for the remaining 600 yards.

This is part of my A-Z stashdown challenge. Slowly, my stash is getting smaller. Except for that gift certificate that my awesome coworkers got me, which made the stash much bigger. Damn them for foiling my plans.

Some Works in Progress

I've been a busy worker bee lately. I need to take advantage since I usually get sluggish in winter. I'm totally on a roll and checking things off my to-do list at a furious pace.

We made beer.



I don't even like the taste of beer. I keep trying it, thinking one day I will get over it and be the average beer-drinking american. I drink beer and I feel bloated and full of burps and unwell. Because I drink it so slowly, I never get a buzz going and spend the rest of my time desperately searching for a glass of wine to wash the taste out of my mouth.

I do like to make things though. I seem to like to make things that people will ask/tell me, "You could get that at WalMart/Target/Safeway, etc for cheaper/easier". Also, isn't science fun? Starches and sugars being converted into alcohol for our pleasure? It's entertaining on so many levels. Get to work, you yeasty bastards!

Please observe my wort.


I'm in love with the way everything smelled in the brewing process. It's currently sitting in the fermeneter, getting big and strong and alcoholic. If anything, I figure the one with the beer is the one with the friends, so this will get drunk by someone eventually.

My brew-happy co-worker also informs me that no one has ever died from drinking home-brewed beer. Always a huge concern of mine.

So I cheated and even though I took a dumpling-making class, I went out and made someone else make them for me.

Mandoo in Koreatown makes their own dumpling, right then and there. They are beautiful little gems that are the perfect cold-weather cheap-but-delicious eats. There's pretty much no limit to how many dumplings I can eat.



If this woman goes missing it's because I've kidnapped her. She'll be safe in Brooklyn, I assure you, making a mountain of dumplings in the comfort of my own kitchen.



Now I'm inspired...I will make dumplings very soon. I've been also making pickles lately. Cukes and cauliflower and garlic and hot peppers and pretty much anything else I can put in jars. Then I make bloody marys with the leftover pickle juice. It's fantastic.

I've been knitting and spinning as well, but I'm slow with the picture taking.



This is the Devon sweater by Norah Gaughn. It's from her lovely little book of men's knits that was published by Berocco a couple of years ago. This picture is a bit old as it is now done the sweater with the exception of the ribbing around the neck and blocking. It took no time at all- I really love making sweaters that are huge swarths of stockinette stitch, with some interesting details thrown in to keep things interesting. I used Cascade Eco in the lichen colorway (the yarn color doesn't show up true in the above photo at all, and that's my fault).

I finished another handspun hat, but I need daylight to do it justice in photographs.

I cast on for a pair of ribby socks in BMFA yarn. Socks are my daily commuting activity and I feel kind of lost if I don't have a pair in the works.

I spun up some fiber:



I made a big fat 3-ply from it. It's very soft, and I would imagine that it really blooms up nicely with all that downy baby camel in it. I'll post pictures soon.

Oh, and my mom got me some Angora fiber. She bought it at the Fryeburg Fair, which is an enormous agricultural fair that happens every fall in picturesque western Maine.



It's lovely and soft, but I think the downy fibers need some humidity in the air in order to be manageable- the static really creates a monster.