theraineysisters knitting and so much more

Funky Grandpa is adorable and we wanted to keep its charm, with a few improvements in construction.  Susan started her FG before Sally and forged ahead through the uncharted [modification] jungle.  Whoever goes first has to wield the machete!!

We both used Carol Sunday’s 3-ply – Sally used Dove and Susan did hers in Smoke, with the same black and Zauberball.  Carol’s yarn is wonderful to knit with and unbelievably soft.  It worked perfectly here!

Susan’s Funky Grandpa

Sally’s Funky Grandpa

Our Mods
We started with the black rectangles at the shoulders with a provisional cast on.  We doubled the width of the shoulders for more support.  Then we attached the gray MC yarn for the back at each shoulder, increasing every other row at the neck edge for a bit and then cast on across the back.  This dipped the back neck down slightly.  The cast on across the back gave the sweater more structure.

We worked the back and fronts together even before joining at the underarm.  For each contrasting color (CC) stripe, we knit the 2-row CC stripe across the back, broke the yarn, worked the CC stripe across the right front, broke the yarn, worked the CC stripe across the left front; then for each section we knit 8 rows in the MC.  We continued this process to the underarms.  This meant that all the stripes match perfectly throughout.  Once the back and fronts are joined, the striping is no longer an issue.

The back folded over the front to show matching stripes

Because our shoulders were wider to start, we needed to adjust the front V-neck shaping.  Our V-necks are not as extreme as the original, so we did fewer short rows on the front bands.

Susan did increases throughout the body to create a longer, more A-lined silhouette.  Sally added a bit more length to the cropped body:

Instead of doubling the yarn for the bottom ribbing (1×1 in the original), we chose to do 3×1 ribbing on all edges in single yarn.  To bind off, Sally doubled her yarn, whereas Susan used some leftover 5-ply in the same color from her Milkweed.

The pattern called for afterthought, CUT IN buttonholes.  Ack!  No.  Absolutely not!!  Instead, we picked up front band sts so that the ribbing and buttonholes would be spaced properly and align with every other stripe.  That was a design feature we really liked in the original.

We were both able to find cute vintage buttons to go with the funky grandpa theme!

Susan found her buttons this year at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival

Sally had purchased her buttons earlier at Yarnover

So two Funkys for the price of one!  We were both surprised at how little yarn these took.  Sally only used three skeins of gray for hers.  Susan has no idea! 😉

First off, Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there!  Yay to us!!

Happy yet possibly not about my latest tiny FOs.  I made a set of très easy washcloths as a hostess gift for someone to accompany the soap I bought for her at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival.  I ended up having to make three Leafy Washcloths.

These are the two I gave a way:

This is the first one I made (the second is the one on the right in the top picture).  When I put both of them in water to wetblock, the blue color ran and left spots on the pink one!!

Why isn’t Lily Sugar ‘N Cream colorfast?  Why??!!  And why is my rowing so bad on these leafy thingies??  Why oh why??!!

I like the third one I ended up making better anyway (left in top picture) and prefer the decreases, etc. that I used as well (described on my project page), so I guess it was worth the extra knitting!!

PS: Thanks for the comments and suggestions!  I typically get rowing with particular yarns and knitting with cotton is likely the culprit.  I saw a cotton, machine-made (store-bought) sweater one time and noticed that it had rowing!  I wanted to take a picture of it but I was at a funeral so I thought it would be tacky, but it surprised me that it could happen in that situation.  Most of the cotton leaf projects also had rowing, so I guess I am in good (?) company!!

Love the Sinkmates pattern!  Thanks, Pru.  And good luck with your project, Julie!

PS2: to Natalie.   Rowing out  is described well in the linked article and actually mentions cotton.

I actually jumped right into a project after I bought the yarn and finished it in a flash.  Okay.  Small project, but I really like it.  I posted about it a week or so ago:

The scarf is called Reverse Psychology and is perfect for gradients.

Here it is blocking so you can see the fun shape:

I added about 30 rows so I could get to the light gray!!

The yarn is beautifully soft, vibrant color.  Very nice!!

It rained last year and it rained this year.  We really didn’t expect two bad weather years in a row, but we came prepared!!  Susan stuffed three pairs of rubber boots from Target into her suitcase (two pairs for Sally to try!).  We tromped merrily through every puddle we encountered, without a care.

This little fella didn’t care either!!

On our Ravelry Group we had announced that we would attend the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival.  We ran into several readers 🙂 , and spent some quality time with Pru (aka Tigermum).  What a delightful fellow knitter and hopeless enabler!!  It doesn’t hurt that she has a beautiful British accent so everything she says sounds better.

Inspired by Pru, we both bought Fiber Optic Paintbox Gradient Sets.  Susan bought Espresso-Crimson-Gold:

Sally got the Light Into Darkness colorway.  (The photo at the link is better than the photo I took if you want to see the true color.)

Susan also found a set of vintage buttons for her Funky Grandpa (now finished!!), and Sally bought some Signature needles to try out.  We did not go overboard and feel pretty good about it!