theraineysisters knitting and so much more

March 19, 2009

From Sally — Lost in Translation

Filed under: Large Lace Collar — surly @ 1:32 pm

My Large Lace Collar is finally completely finished! It’s a beautiful pattern, beautiful yarn, but I’m a slow knitter. As much as I love my Bohus, I’ll be very happy to work on something else without a black cloud of guilt, merino, and angora hanging over my head.

I apologize in advance for the quality of today’s pictures. The lighting is not ideal for photography today. This is a soft, subtle project, which makes it even harder to capture properly. It gets a bit lost in translation. However, I’ll subject you to them anyway (even though you might be getting as tired of this project as I was).

A rare shot of an actual person in the sweater:

Here are some close up views of the hem and cuff:

For those of you who appreciate the technical details, here is a photo of the underarm. Look, ma, no seams! (Note the little white hairs; DNA from my little assistant.)

Here’s a photograph of the wrong side of the yoke for the more prurient knitters out there. (You know who you are.)

Finally, one last shot of the yoke.

So pretty. Le sigh.

March 9, 2009

From Sally — The Sweater That Will Not Die . . .

Filed under: Large Lace Collar — surly @ 6:51 pm

Unlike my sister, I’m not a big fan of horror movies. Oh, I like some of them — but not the ones that are truly creepy. Not the ones that get under your skin. Not the ones that give you nightmares. And certainly not the ones that feature sharp weapons doing bad things.

Ahem. That was foreshadowing. Because sometimes a sharp weapon is just what you need when you’re dealing with The Undead.

Remember my Bohus?

I finished the first sleeve. I finished the body. I started the second sleeve. But somehow, prickling the back of my neck like the sound of a door opening when you think you’re alone, was the inescapable horror: it needed to be longer.

I made myself finish the second sleeve before I took action. I have enough singleton socks and gloves — not to mention a drawer stuffed with one-armed pullovers — to recognize my own limitations. So. I finished the second sleeve. The sweater still felt just slightly too short; I knew I’d be constantly tugging it down in the back. It would haunt me. So out came the big guns scissors.

Off came the bottom hem:

I ignored the shrieks of horror: “Where’s the rest of me?”

I put the fiend back on the needles, and Lucy is proudly wearing a new sash.

Stay tuned. The next time you see my Bohus, which I hope will be later this week, it will be finished. Of course, it was almost eighty degrees here yesterday, so I have NO idea when I’ll ever get to wear it.

Le sigh.

February 13, 2009

From Sally — Bohus Update

Filed under: Large Lace Collar — surly @ 1:01 pm

I love my Bohus. I really do. Even so, I was getting a little tired of knitting the body and the single sleeve I started. The cure: baking.

Thousands of calories later, I still was faced with knitting the rest of my Bohus. Wait! I had an inspiration — I could break it up by turning my attention to the neck. That solution was calorie-free and would also give me a better idea of how the sweater would hang, making it easier to determine the sleeve length. I wanted something that would be soft and cozy looking, but that would also evoke (in spirit if not in detail) some of the motifs of the color work on the yoke. After a few false starts, this is what I came up with (it’s a Japanese stitch pattern):

I plan to do the same stitch (in black) at the wrists. I may also use it at the hem, but I haven’t quite decided on that yet.

In the meantime, as most of you know tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. We won’t be going out because our son (17 years old) comes home tomorrow night from a two-week school trip to Greece and Italy. His flight is conveniently scheduled to arrive at 8:00 p.m. Therefore, we are having a nice romantic dinner at home tonight. Very near my home is an absolutely wonderful French bakery called Praline. They have the best croissants I’ve ever tasted, and I lived in France back in the day. I stopped there this morning to see if there was a small Valentine-y treat I could pick up. I came home with this:

It’s pistachio with chocolate ganache. Kill me now. Death by excessive calorie consumption. Just after I took that photo, these beautiful flowers were delivered for me.

Awww. Aren’t they pretty?

February 3, 2009

From Susan — All Bohus, All the Time

Filed under: Blue Shimmer,Large Lace Collar — lv2knit @ 11:54 pm

Sally and I were kidding that our blog is turning into Bohus Central!  However, the following link will actually help you feel like you are at the Bohus Exhibit itself, so I had to share:

Bohus Knits at the American Swedish Institute

From Sally — Slowly but Surly

Filed under: Large Lace Collar — Tags: , — surly @ 12:19 pm

I thought I’d post a quick update on my Large Lace Collar. Once you hit the solid color portion of these designs, it can be slow going. With the yoke, it’s easier to track and notice progress. That’s a bit harder now that I am on the body, especially since I am doing it in the round. Those are long rows and it takes many of them to add each inch of length. I’ve also started one of the sleeves. I did that so I could make sure my “do it in the round” adaptation was working and to give me an illusion of progress.

Here are some in-progress shots.

As you can see, some progress but still a lot of knitting left to do. (And I still need to decide exactly what I am going to do at the neck, wrists, and hem.)

January 14, 2009

From Sally — A New Bohus

Filed under: Knitting Tips,Large Lace Collar — Tags: , — surly @ 10:49 am

I’ve had the yarn to knit a new Bohus sweater for a long time, and I finally started it. My inspiration for doing so is The American Swedish Institute’s upcoming exhibition, Radiant Knits: The Bohus Tradition. I’ll be traveling to Minnesota (BRRRRRR) next week to visit Susan and go to the exhibit’s opening weekend.

The Bohus now on my needles is the Large Lace Collar, and I’m using one of the kits produced by Solveig Gustafsson. The directions for these authentic Swedish kits have you knit the yoke in the round, and then knit the back, front, and sleeves as flat pieces. I’ve chosen to rewrite the directions to knit the entire garment in the round because I love having the whole sweater finished when it comes off the needles.

As with my Blue Shimmer, I’m going to make some small changes to the design. I’ll do a different neck than the ribbing the pattern calls for. I’m not quite sure yet what that will be, so I started the sweater with a provisional cast on to keep my options open. I’ve just now finished the yoke, which is the slow but fun part. Here are some in progress photos:

As I was about to finish the yoke, I decided to rip back three rows in order to line the patterns up differently. At that point, I had 400+ stitches on my needle and I didn’t want to lose them. (I was on a size 2.5 mm.) So I pulled out the needle, and then used it to pick up the stitches in the row I needed to rip down to. Once the stitches were securely on the needle, I could rip out the rows above it without worrying about losing anything. In case you’ve never done that, here’s a picture of how it looked as I was picking the row up:

It’s a little fussy, but much faster than other ways of doing it. Now that I am in the all black portion of my sweater, I’ve gone down a needle size to a 2.25 mm. The reason for that is in my experience, I knit a little tighter when I’m stranding. If I didn’t change needle sizes now that the sweater is all one color, the knitting would look looser and the sweater might appear to “balloon out” from the yoke.

I’m trying NOT to think about the fact that I am knitting an entire sweater on the size needles I usually use for socks and gloves.

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