Completed Projects Archives - Page 27 of 35 - theraineysisters theraineysisters

February 24, 2007

From Sally — Berry Cluster Pullover

Filed under: Eris Cardigan,Feather and Fan Shawl,Sally's Berry Cluster Pullover — Sally @ 6:04 pm

It’s so hard to take good photographs of knitted garments. Susan and I would each like to have a half-mannequin, so that we could get decent pictures. If we lived closer, we could invest in a really good one and share it. But we don’t, and I haven’t had the time to look around to see if I can find one. So, in order to show you photographs of the finished Berry Cluster Pullover, I tried:

1. Hanging it up. It looks okay, but not great.

2. Draping it over a chair. Just no.

3. I flirted, ever so briefly, with modeling it myself. It fits nicely, but I just wasn’t of a mood. So, I asked my twenty-year-old daughter if she would model it for me. She said yes, but I knew the fit would not be quite right. She’s very slender, and her shoulders aren’t as broad as mine. (I said shoulders. Shoulders, people.) It fits me better than it fits her, but I don’t have the cute stomach. So it’s a tradeoff. (And I should have had her change into a smoother under garment. See, we need a mannequin.)

Here is a detail of the hem so you can see the pearls.

In other knitting news, I did start Eris. I have half of the collar knitted. Like Susan, I started with a provisional cast on (the white row you see at the wide end) and my next step will be to pick up those stitches and start knitting in the opposite direction.

I’m knitting my Eris using Ultra Alpaca, which I described here (you’ll need to scroll down a little bit). I think this yarn will be perfect for this project and I am loving how it knits up. It looks rather sad here but I’ve stretched with my fingers and I know it will look much better once it’s been blocked.

Alison — I know you’re concerned about the lightness of the cash soft you’re using. I think you’ll be okay; I might worry a little whether that yarn will pill because it is so soft. That’s the one little concern I would have and some of that depends upon how hard you are on your sweaters.

As for the grey behemoth — my Feather & Fan shawl — I’m still plugging along. Twelve rows left. It will get finished soon.

PS — For Wendy O:

And from the book:

Comments (19)

February 20, 2007

From Sally — Already Behind

Filed under: Feather and Fan Shawl,Sally's Berry Cluster Pullover,Uncategorized — Sally @ 11:11 am

Well, I’m already behind in our knitalong since I a) haven’t started and b) find the mere task of printing out the 8000 pages of directions and figuring out which ones to follow exhausting. I shall do so, though, before she gets any farther ahead.

I still must finish sewing the pearls onto the hem of the Berry Cluster Pullover. I have a few ends to weave in as well. Why does that last little bit of finishing seem so boring (and therefore unappealing)? And then there is the Feather & Fan shawl. Sixteen rows. Ack. I feel like Commander Scott heading back from the South Pole and realizing he may not make it.

The good news: I just spent the weekend with two friends. It was Red Cashmere Glovelets girl’s 50th birthday and her husband flew me and another friend, Jody, down to surprise her. Jody has wanted to learn to knit and so this weekend I taught her. She’s a natural! She’s well on her way to knitting her first scarf using a nice variegated yarn. She has mastered knitting and purling. She can already tell when she should knit and purl if she is doing stockinette stitch, can count her rows of garter, and knows almost immediately when she has made a mistake. Her gauge is amazingly even for a newbie and she has even thrown in a few rows of (deliberate) drop stitches here and there. Getting stuck in the airport for five hours yesterday helped her have more time to practice.

She’s already chomping at the bit to buy more yarn and needles.

Comments (4)

February 17, 2007

From Susan — Thanks for the Comments…

Filed under: Oregon Cardigan — lv2knit @ 10:37 am

…on my Oregon Sleeve excitement.Â Some of you may have wondered why I needed to figure any of this out — doesn’t the pattern lay it all out for you?Â It should and Alice does.Â She will instruct you to start the armhole steek on Round #x and pick up the sleeve with a certain color to do the patterning.

The problem is if you need to adjust the pattern OR if you are even fussier than AS herself and have a particular way you want it to lay out.Â I needed to add 3.5″ to the sleeve length (which I hope is enough, but will also rely on blocking).Â Also, AS did not line up the sleeve stripes.Â If you don’t start the sleeve at the same round as the body ended, the stripes will not line up.Â This may not matter to everyone, but I thought, if I can do it the “right” way, why not?Â

I did not get anything done last night — I went to bed before 10 pm and got up after 8 am.Â I was so frickin’ tired!Â Today I may do a bit more or start something new.Â Sometimes the sheer effort of starting a new project will keep me plugging away at the old, boring and familiar.

Comments (2)

February 16, 2007

From Susan — Stripes

Filed under: Oregon Cardigan — lv2knit @ 10:09 am

This is the part of knitting that I find exciting when it works (“What a gripping life you must lead.”) and extremely frustrating when it doesn’t.Â All the planets need to align when knitting fair isle stripes:

1) body length = 25-1/2 inches (determines where the armhole steek starts because the armhole depth must be reasonable)
2) sleeve length = 21-1/2 inches (AS has unnaturally short arms and mine are unnaturally long)
3) the start of the sleeve pattern is 100% determined by the armhole placement (last body round before armhole opening = first round of sleeve)
4) the END of the sleeve MUST match the pattern at the bottom of the sweater = the large leaf border plus ribbing.

In other words, the sleeve had to be one exact length AND start on one particular row AND end on one particular row — no substitutions and FEW opportunities for fudging.Â And I wanted the sleeve to start at a good spot (the bold red/navy stripe).Â About the only fudging I could do would be on the ribbing.Â With a pattern repeat of 48 rounds, there is very little wiggle room — any change wouldÂ add or subtract ~4″ to the sleeve length (though I could maybe stop in the middle of a main pattern repeat — still 2″).

Anyway, all the planets DID align — perfectly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you can see, the sleeve matches up perfectly.Â It is the exact length I wanted (21.5″).Â All the stripes match, even though there is an additional repeat in the sleeve to attain length.Â

I did adjust the placement of my steek to guarantee that the planets would align.Â Thank goodness the shoulder placement did not matter or that could have screwed up the whole thing.Â

This background planning is the kind of thing that people don’t “see” when they look at your knitting.Â They don’t realize how much timeÂ is spent poring over row gauge and stripe placement and sleeve planning.Â But it sure bugs ME when I don’t get it right.

Thanks for letting me share the back story.Â Non-knitters (and probably 99% of you!) glaze over when I talk about this stuff!! 😉

Comments (14)

February 15, 2007

From Sally — A Stitch in Time Saves Eight (Not Nine)

Filed under: Feather and Fan Shawl,Knitting Tips — Sally @ 4:27 pm

First, I’d like to say thank you for the birthday wishes and for all of the advice and encouragement on the Pearl Crisis. I went ahead with the large pearls I have. Having no invisible thread, which was a good suggestion, I chose not to care. I’ll post some pictures of the finished product eventually.

Today, however, I’ll tell you a story about the hazards of not paying attention. No, it’s not the starting-my-hair-on-fire story – it’s something far more horrible: making a really big mistake in your lace knitting a number of rows back when you have 1300+ stitches per row. Yeah. That.

There I was, knitting happily along on my Feather and Fan shawl. I was doing the pattern row, where you place yarnovers and decreases to get the feather and fan shaping. I did a series of 8 k2togs, and then I was supposed to do 8 yarnovers separated from each other by a single knit stitch. There was a problem, though: I didn’t have 8 stitches left in my pattern repeat. I only had three or four. Looking at my knitting I realized that four rows earlier — the last time I was supposed to do a pattern row — I had forgotten to do the yarnovers on one half of this particular repeat. I’m not sure how I did something so stunningly careless, but I did.

Now, if I had forgotten or dropped one yarnover, it would be no big deal. I would simply use a crochet hook to create a yarnover between the appropriate two stitches by stretching the running thread between them and then “laddering” my way up to the current row using the running thread on the intervening rows. That after-the-fact yarnover would be a bit smaller than the rest of them because it would be created using less yarn than truly necessary. Moreover, the stitches on either side might get pulled a bit tight. It’s not a perfect solution but after blocking, it would be pretty imperceptible. That solution would certainly be far preferable to ripping back.

That trick wasn’t going to work to replace 8 missing yarnovers. There simply would not be enough yarn to do it in such a concentrated place. Let me just remind you that I have 1300+ stitches per row right now; it takes me almost an hour to knit one row. So ripping back was not an option, either.

So here’s what I did. I undid the k2togs that overlapped where my yarnovers were supposed to have been. Then I ripped back the 8 stitches that were supposed to have yarnovers in between them. (Four rows total.) That left me with four long strands of yarn. I broke each of them in half. For each row, I wrapped new yarn around my needle 8 times to roughly calculate how much yarn I needed for each new stitch I was going to create and then added a bit extra. I then felt spliced that new length of yarn into the middle of what was already there. (Is this making sense?) I then had enough yarn to add in the yarnovers on the first row and then ladder up the stitches created by them on the subsequent rows.

It was a pain in my birthday ass, but a lot easier and faster than reknitting four rows.

Comments (9)

February 13, 2007

From Sally — A Pearl Crisis

Filed under: Sally's Berry Cluster Pullover — Sally @ 12:04 pm

I’m finished with the Berry Cluster Pullover, except for sewing on the pearls. And therein lies the problem.

I had 6 mm pearls for this project, but I’ve misplaced them. So, I went pearl shopping the other day and bought some gorgeous ones in the perfect color — but they were 8 mm. I knew they were slightly larger than I needed but they looked fine when I placed them on the sweater. The problem, though, as I try to sew them on is that because they are larger, they sit higher off the knitted fabric. As a result, I think that the thread used to sew them on may be too visible (because there is more of it that shows between the hole of the pearl and the fabric). I don’t know if I want to continue, even though they look lovely if you stand back and squint.

So, I called around to some bead shops to see who might have 6 mm ones in stock (nothing like buying three times as many pearls as necessary). Only one store seems to have any, but I’ve been warned over the phone that they aren’t perfectly round — they’re somewhat irregular. It’s snowing, and it’s going to turn into an ice storm later. So I’m sitting here wondering if I should just keep sewing beads on that I will be tempted to remove and replace, drive in bad weather to look at beads that I may end up rejecting anyway, or give up all hope of wearing this tomorrow.

Comments (6)

From Susan — Rib It Rib It

Filed under: Oregon Cardigan — lv2knit @ 8:51 am

No, I am not ripping out, I am ribbing the sleeve!Â I can’t believe I’ll get this sleeve done today.Â Picture to follow!

Comments (2)

February 11, 2007

From Susan — Can you stand another…

Filed under: Knitting Tips,Oregon Cardigan — lv2knit @ 11:02 am

…post about my &^%$##%&*&%$ Oregon sleeve? Oh, good!

Which would you rather deal with (in terms of weaving in ends), this:

or this?

My thoughts exactly! When you knit a fair isle cardigan, you join new colors at the center front. The ends get cut off in the “cutting the steek” phase, so you don’t need to worry about them. However, for pullovers and sleeves, there is no cutting so there is no trimming so the ends need to be dealt with somehow. Some people simply tie the ends together and trim them short. Others weave them in. I WAS a weaver, until my last fair isle when I became a partial splicer.

With Rona I spliced the colors that had gradual changes — you can see from the picture that some changed like water colors and other color changes were very abrupt. For abrupt changes, you can do a Russian Join, but that can be very time consuming. I wish I had taken the time! When I turned my sleeve inside out, it looked like the picture above — LOTS of ends!!

This time I am splicing every color change, even if it is somewhat abrupt. I don’t care if the splices look like a candy cane! I made a very conscious decision to not give a rip. Here is what the under sleeve looks like:

I don’t think you can tell that the colors are spliced. So, I am very happy now and will be REALLY happy when this puppy gets done, if that ever happens ;). The dog hair that shows up in every picture comes free of charge.

Comments (9)

February 9, 2007

From Sally — Berry Cluster Pullover Update

Filed under: Feather and Fan Shawl,Sally's Berry Cluster Pullover — surly @ 6:07 pm

It’s finished! Sort of.

Both sleeves are complete and I’ve sewn in one. But . . . I sliced the index finger of my left hand very badly yesterday. Yeah — there was a lot of blood. Kind of a crime scene look. It reminded me of that SNL skit in which Dan Aykroyd impersonates Julia Childs.

Anyway, it hurts like hell and I can’t knit very well. I didn’t feel like tackling the second sleeve or the pearls, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get to that this weekend. In the meantime, I’m attempting to knit on my Feather and Fan shawl. But it’s slo-o-o-o-o-w. I use that finger to push the needle when I’m knitting. I can knit without it, but it feels awkward.

Comments (8)

From Susan — A Bit of Pixie Dust

Filed under: Oregon Cardigan — lv2knit @ 12:38 am

I got lost down the rabbit hole last evening (aka websurfing) and stumbled across the cutest baby and hat I’ve ever seen. The picture is from Cast on Cast Off (a U.K. blogger):

I mean, how cute is this lil one?

The pattern looks adorable on the above cutie and is called the Baby Pixie Hat from Crystal Palace Yarns. I have no one to knit this for (thank goodness)!

I have 12 inches on my sleeve: over half-way done! Woo Hoo!