Astrid wrote a comment about Roslin, “I can’t wait to see it. I know you’ll love yours as much as I do mine. How are you working the neck opening? It looks different. If you continued in the round that far up, how did you do it?”
Response to Astrid: I think it is an optical illusion in the photo. I started working back and forth right above the fair isle band as described in the pattern:
It may be hard to see, but the split is there.
It is amazing to me that this pattern is working! I know I should trust the designer 😉 , but even though the number cruncher is moi, I was not very trusting. So the fact that it is working makes me very happy.
I have about 2.5 more inches of raglan shaping to do and then the hood. I hope to be blocking by this weekend, which means there is no way I’ll be blocking by this weekend! My self imposed “deadlines” rarely mean anything at all, except minor to major disappointment…
 
I have been hauling this thing to work and getting a row or two done on break. It’s a lot to drag around, but the knitting is mindless and fun!!
PS: The temperature is supposed to drop 45 degrees between now and tomorrow, with 50 below wind chill — even WE [Minnesotans] can’t believe it’s happening to us!
PS2: The windchill is only 34 below — positively balmy compared to -50! I am 3″ into the hood! Maybe I’ll be wearing this bad boy next week…
Not me! That would send screaming hordes running through the streets in horror! No, it’s ROSLIN that’s topless– at least for the moment ;):
I joined the three main pieces and now it seems HUGE. You have the widest portion of both sleeves joined to the widest portion of the front and back. It seems like a lot of knitting at once! You decrease 8 sts every other row, which helps fairly quickly. Once you get to the neck, you go straight up to the hood and then, finito, Bandito. I did try it on, which looked a bit ridiculous: like an extremely rustic ballgown for the Oscars, and it looks like it will fit. Yay!
My Roslin has quite a way to go, but here is another finished Roslin from our German knitting friend, Joanna (aka, Asinek on Ravelry) — Guten Tag, Joanna!!
She used very fine merino sock yarn. It amazes me that people can use all these different yarns and come up with a finished Rossie! Thanks for sharing!
So, I will continue to plug away on Topless so she will not be topless for long.
PS to Lorraine: you will always be an honorary Rainey sister because of who you are! Maybe if we had designed the Fetching glovelets it would be a different story!
From Susan:
As I said when I listed this little project on Ravelry, “Is knitting a pair of Fetching glovelets a requirement of all knitters?” Honestly, I think every knitter on earth has made a pair of these! My pair was knit from some of the yarn we purchased at Knit New York on our trip: Art Yarns 5 ply cashmere. It could not be softer and my lil daughter actually likes them! Should I have a contest to see how long before she loses one or both of the little [$45 –eek] cuties??
Did I say she likes them? She LOVES them! She would not take them off last night, and I cannot tell you how happy that makes me feel! They look absolutely adorable on her. The last thing I knitted her was the lace top from Vogue Knitting which she wore once for a total of five minutes because I made her.
From Sally:
I was bored with my sleeve for the Pearl Buck cardigan about five rows after I started, so on the train up to New York I decided to finish my Wine and Roses glovelets from the Winter 2006 Interweave Knits. I had knit the first one ages ago, but never started the second. I knit them holding together a fine pure silk (Andrea in colorway greenjeans) and a pale green Kidsilk Haze. Here is the finished pair:
Then I, too, decided to make a pair of the Fetching glovelets/mitts out of the 5-ply cashmere. I really debated at the store (Knit New York) which color to buy and I think I chose poorly. I loved this yarn in the skein, but knitted up? Not so much. That is one of the real risks in my opinion with variegated yarns. Fortunately, these are just kind of a funky, fun knit so it’s okay. (FYI: I added a number of additional rows to these before reaching the thumb; I have small hands and they still would not have been long enough.) Here is the one I’ve made. I have started the second one.
From Susan:
I also started a pair of Dashing glovelets for moi. My daughter was HORRIFIED! “You’re not making the same ones as mine, are you?” No, but to her they are WAY too similar. She will not let me wear any fingerless gloves when she is wearing hers for fear that someone will mistake us for twins ;).
There are some problems with the pattern, but I am working it out as I go. The yarn was acquired as a result of the recent stash diving I did at Surly’s 🙂 — Manos del Uruguay, Color Prairie #104 (it does not look like any photos on a website — it looks exactly like stained wood!). I love this yarn and the color is spectacular. I will provide an update this weekend on my Roslin Hoodie. I joined the sleeves to the body so now it is moving as glacially as our weather has been!
I know it’s crazy, but tonight I went to knitting group WITHOUT MY KNITTING!!! I left my Roslin sleeve in the knitting basket next to my chair! Horrors! So there I sat at Panera’s feeling naked and bereft. Friend Kim let me start a pair of mittens for her: these. They are the classic Mitered Mittens from Elizabeth Zimmermann. Kim had yarn leftover from a lovely scarf — an extremely soft baby llama or alpaca (?). After a little whining, I did get an inch or so done. I may need to make me some of these! 🙂 They are really cute when they get started.
After rushing home for my Thursday night fix of !!NEW!! Grey’s Anatomy, I did knit on my sleeve:
The pink running thread is for counting rows: every 6 row increases
I have a way to go here! I did have to re-start this: my first attempt was too big — I have such delicate wrists, you know ;). But it goes fast and is very mindless — exactly what I need right now. Tonight is ‘weekend eve’ so I may stay up a little later and catch up on the knitting I missed!
I just finished up the last touches of dismanteling and remanteling my Roslin. I chronicled the entire disemboweling in pictures and none of them turned out, but I feel the need to include some pictorial evidence of my entrails travails (entrails — get it?: disembowel…oh, never mind!)! The pictures could not be retaken because these were one-time photo opportunities.
Per Surly’s request, here is a crappy picture of Rossie before I took a scalpel to her:
The surgery required removing the ribbing and grafting on the newly knitted bottom portion (knitted like the original pattern this time ;)). I know a lot of people hate to do grafting (aka Kitchener stitch) and would rather give up knitting than graft 268 sts! It does not bother me, which proves I’m an oddball.Â
Here I slipped a smaller needle through the row I wished to keep — everything below will be removed (the color in the picture is absolutely horrid!):
The above white marker was used to mark the center stitch. I had to make absolutely sure that I grafted center stitch to center stitch. In the next picture you can see that I snipped the yarn of the row below the row on the needle and pulled it out all the way around — this picture is both ugly and blurry!!:
Here, I’m grafting the new bottom half to the old top half. I started at the center front stitch but left enough tail to graft back the other direction (from the center out to both sides). I did not bother doing that on the back. On the back I worked from right to left across the entire back.
 Here is the finished job (the color is much closer to true):
 
The last step was to attach the top of the kangaroo pocket. I counted rows, centered the stitches again and “sewed” it to the sweater — a close up:
The back:
And a close up showing the back grafting line:
I think it turned out as expected and will improve with blocking, when I get to that point down the road. The only difficulty was due to the tendency of shetland wool to stick to itself — the grafting yarn and the sts were trying to “become one” as I went along!
Will it fit better? Will it look better on me? Who knows (and who cares!!)? I’m not about to reknit the bottom a third time, so it will have to work!Â
Now it is on to the sleeves — which means a trip to the yarn store for knitting needles — can you believe I don’t have the Size 5’s I need?!? Bummer! ;) In the meantime, I have picked up Lyra again, so the time is well spent.Â
I was heading to St. Paul today anyway. The Minnesota Knitters Guild annual Yarnover event is on April 12 this year (the website lists all of the instructors). I am on the planning committee, and we meet today. Yarnover will be held at Hopkins High School for the first time — it is a beautiful venue. We are really excited about the program this year.
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I’ve been having a really hard time figuring out what to knit next. It’s not for lack of yarn, “head start projects” already on needles, or even ideas. I just don’t know what it is I want to work on right now. Lace? Fair Isle? Something mindless? I started my Betsy cardigan, but realized I was not of a mood to knit any seed stitch, so that is going on the back burner. (I’m going to periodically try to knit a few rows of the seed stitch here and there so it will suddenly be almost finished when I least expect it.) I picked up Rosarie. I’m almost to the underarm. Meh. Not in the mood. I thought about starting the Paisley Shawl from Fiddlesticks or a Niebling doily. Nah. I also had an idea for something I want to design, so I’m spending time drawing (poorly) and crunching numbers. But what to do with my hands?
I finally settled, somewhat ambivalently I confess, on the Pearl Buck Swing Jacket from Interweave Knits (reprinted in their best of Interweave Knits). Here’s what it is supposed to look like:
I’m knitting mine from Cascade’s Venezia worsted, which is a 70% merino 30% silk blend. I purchased this at A Good Yarn in Baltimore on impulse. It’s wonderful to knit with, although the many plies can split if you’re not careful. I’m using an Apple Green (color number 125). I haven’t gotten very far yet.
I’m making one fairly significant change to the pattern. I’m inverting the back pleat, instead of having it fold the way it does in the original. I think that inverting the pleat will make the jacket hang better, at least on me. I don’t have quite enough knitted to fold it properly, but this will give you an idea. (I also liked the idea of letting the diamond pattern on the back “peek out” as the jacket moves.) I have a lot of yarn since I didn’t know what I was going to make when I bought it. I’m planning on lengthening the sleeves, and should have lots of yarn left over.
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Thank you again for all of your comments on the Cats and Mice Blanket. First, a photograph of the entire back. (I do love this pattern, though — it’s so pretty in person. My little assistant is asleep on my lap, wrapped in the blanket, right this minute.)
Some of you wanted to see more of the back. The back ain’t that great, people, but here you go.
A close up of the writing on the back:
A close up of the mouse hiding in the corner:
Some of you had questions mixed in with your comments on the Cats and Mice Blanket, which I’ll try to answer here:
1. Here’s something I wish you’d put under your Knitting Tips and Tricks. Your stranded knitting is always perfect. It’s neither too loose on the back or too tight. What is the trick for getting it right?
I don’t have any special trick. What I try to do is prevent the stitches that I’ve just knitted (the ones that I will be stranding over with the next color) from being bunched up. I try to keep the last few stitches knitted (now on the right needle) slightly stretched out so that they are the width they are supposed to be. That way, when I strand the next color, the length of the strand equals the width of the stitches it needs to cross. If you make the strand too loose, your first stitch in the new color can get too big and loose. If you make the strand too short, the stranding is too tight and the fabric will pucker.
I don’t think a lot about this while I’m doing it; it has just become second nature. If you look again at a close up of the stranding, you can see that the strands are the just the width they need to be. (I think it’s a mistake to try to knit loosely in order to keep the strands loose — Fair Isle looks better in my opinion with firm stitching and it is necessary to get the gauge required).
2. Okay, did AS send you enough yarn — or did you have to go to your stash of her yarns?
I had enough yarn for the blanket, and enough of the dark reddish brown (Tormentil) for the facing. I did have to dip into my personal stash of the lighter yarn (shade Spindrift) to finish the facing. (I did have enough of it for the first few rows.) I was concerned about yarn, but I had left over of almost every color. I do think they cut it close enough that if your gauge is at all loose, you are in danger of running low. Even when your gauge is spot on, it can be worrisome. I did run out of one color on my Widdicombe Fair. The first time I knit it, I had plenty.
3. Is there a pattern I can buy for this somewhere? and Where is the pattern for this blanket and the one with the horses??? How did you pick those colors and where did you get the yarn.
I bought the Cats and Mice as a kit from Virtual Yarns. This particular pattern requires you to own the book A Children’s Collection, which is where the chart is located. Carousel (Widdicombe Fair) I also bought as a kit, so I can take no credit for the color choices. (I don’t think you need a separate book for that one.)
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First let me congratulate Surly on a fabulous FO. Her Cats and Mice Blankie is absolutely adorable! She does such a wonderful job on her fair isle knitting. I’m sure she will write a post soon with the answers to your questions about the pattern/yarn source, etc. And she better include a picture of the lil mousie on the back ;)!
As for me, I hit an exciting milestone on my Roslin Fair Isle Hoodie last night — I finished the fair isle band :):
Okay, that’s the good news — I was really pleased with the way the band turned out. As you can see from the bottom couple of inches that show, I changed the look of my Roslin and did the same garter rib that is on the bottom of the Tangled Yoke Cardi/Pullover. It is a cute concept and looks great on all the Tangled Yokes that I have seen.Â
Yes, there is a “but.” The garter ribbing looks cute on the bottom of the Roslin fair Isle Hoodie, but it does not look good on me. I was living in an ancient, bygone fantasy world when I had a waist. Yes, THAT old story again!! In my deluded brain, I HAVE a waist, and I continue to hope that my delusions become a reality — however, they have not (and after my holiday indulging, it is even less likely :().
So now I will dismantle the bottom of the sweater, re-knit the body, and graft it to the fair isle band — I have no intention of re-knitting THAT (my wrists still hurt — I finished the band in 2 days, which is a lot of knitting for me). That is the minor set back I have encountered with my Roslin — all self induced, so don’t pity me and my fat tummy! Yes, I could diet away the fat tummy, but it is more reasonable in the short term to reknit the sweater – I guess I can still do the dieting later :(.
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Yes, as I am sure many of you suspected, my stealth Christmas knitting was the Cats & Mice Baby Blanket: a gift for my little assistant my daughter.
As usual, my assistant was always ready to help.
Inspired by our longtime reader, Kim, I chose to use a facing on the inside of the blanket to cover the steeks. (Because the blanket is knit in the round, and then cut, there are steeks on the long sides of the blanket.) I decided to repeat the “line and square” motif in the blanket in the facing, and so I knit the facing in the round. First, I picked it up through the same stitch I used to pick up the border. I picked it up this way because after doing some experimenting, I knew that I would get the flattest facing; the facing stitches would naturally turn in the direction I wanted them to.
I used two steeks to “jump” the gap between the short sides of the blanket (the top and bottom) where there were no steeks I needed to hide.
The way that I picked up the stitches meant that the right side was facing the wrong way — it was going to be on the inner, stitched down side of the facing. So, I reversed knitting direction in the middle of the first steek after picking up all of the stitches so that my knitting was going the direction I wanted it to. I then had to be careful when I sewed the facing down. I just “caught” the floats instead of sewing the facing to the actual fabric so that there would be no line on the right side of the blanket. (For more information on this topic, see Susan’s post here.
See the facing design? Isn’t it cute? On the other side, I knitted in the words “Christmas 2007.” There’s also a mouse in the corner. I can’t take a picture of that part of the facing right now because “someone” is sleeping on it.
Just for fun, and because I enjoy photography, I took some “artsy” pictures of the blanket. The first one shows the colors as they are. The second and third are black and white, except for one color tone in each. I think they’re kind of fun.
I really enjoyed knitting this blanket, at least until I got to the border. (It was a bit slow and tedious.) The recipient is happy; I would knit this again for someone special.
Oh! For those who like to see the stranding:
In anticipation of Sally’s ‘Christmas stealth knitting reveal’ (later today or tomorrow) I thought I would share the buttons I found for Kauni. No, they are not square! I like the look of square buttons, but do not like using them.
I loved these buttons (purchased at Skeins in Minnetonka, MN). I did not want to get too gaudy by having too much going on with the buttons. I need to reblock Kauni and gain 2″ in length, but otherwise, put a fork in it! 😉
I hope you had a wonderful holiday. Truer words would never spoken as when I described our trip to Grandpa’s as a feeding frenzy! I ate from the moment we arrived til the moment we left: non-stop!! Those who know me know that this is entirely possible. I love food and I’m not afraid to show it!
I received some good books for Christmas, so that will cut into knitting time — but well worth it. I am progressing on Roslin and will share pictures in a day or two.
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