theraineysisters knitting and so much more

Happy Mother’s Day to all moms, aunties, friends of children, etc.!

Last post, I described my brief foray into jewelry making.  Today, I’m going to discuss my second fiber habit, crocheting.

I don’t crochet often, but really enjoy it when I do.  I like granny squares.  There.  I said it!  I made a granny square cowl a few years ago that I absolutely love.  I recently became smitten with these Granny Square Chickens.  Yep.  More chickens!  What is it with crafters and chickens these days??

Here is my first attempt.  You make two granny squares and then sew them together in a particular way to get the chicken shape.

I loved it and thought, hmmmm.  Should I try another color combo?

Liked it even better!  Then my friend, Christine, made one out of fingering weight yarn…so, I had to give it a go.

When I was making this one, I thought a pansy-themed chick would be cute…so, one more:

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with a basketful of chickens!

My girls will come over today and one has already expressed interest in a chicken.  I may have to make a replacement!!  I also made the basket.  Another crafting rabbit hole!!

ETA: Laura took chicken #2!!  The one with pink petals.  I’ll need to make a replacement.  Jena didn’t take one — her dog would eat it!

ETA2: The replacement chicken is done!

PS to Chloe: I had to laugh when you called this a herd of chickens instead of a flock!!  🙂

PS2 to Chloe: Chloe shared that Frankie Brown has a free KNITTED granny square pattern on Ravelry for you non-crocheters!  It’s called How to Knit a granny Square.

I have been interested in many crafts and handiwork my entire life.  I have dabbled in so many different things!  Oftentimes, I’ll do a little one-off project to try something out and move along.  Knitting stuck for some reason.  But even though I enjoy the other activities, they are usually fleeting.

Case in point.  Surly and I decided that our trip to Rhinebeck was fun, but too expensive to warrant another go.  So, we looked into a “local” event in Loveland, Colorado called Interweave Maker Festival that would mean no hotel or car rental fees.  Yay!  We wanted to take a class but couldn’t find a knitting class that suited us.  We decided to sign up for the “Chased and Knotted Cuff” taught by Anne Mitchell.  She said it was for beginners.  Hey!  We know nothing!!

The plan hit a small snag when Sally and hubby bought a vacation home in Tucson and would be there when the class was to take place.  It meant a lot of extra coordination and travel, but we made it work.

The class was great!  Sally and I ended up being the only real novices…everyone else had taken a class from Anne before.  Anne had everything set up for us.  We each had our own fully stocked workstation.

The bracelet started out as a pure silver strip of metal and two pure silver wires.  Pure silver is almost 100% silver whereas sterling silver is only 92%.  We found out what annealing is.  It was fun to learn new stuff!

Anne took us through it all step-by-step.  She would demonstrate and then we would do it ourselves.

Here the wire has been annealed, bent, and annealed again.  Then it was hammered flat.  We had to use a blowtorch and everything!!  The next picture shows it several steps later:

After this, a sterling silver cup was soldered on for the center stone and the bracelet bent into shape.  There was pickling and anodizing and whatever else she told us to do!!  Here are the results:

Sally’s Chased and Knotted Cuff

Susan’s Chased and Knotted Cuff

Yep.  We made those!  I still can’t believe it.  Yes, it cost 3 times what it would have cost to buy.  No, I am not going to become a jewelry maker.  BUT, it was really fun for a one-day experience!  I highly recommend thinking outside of the box and trying something new.  It was very interesting being so “green.”  I felt like some of the students I have in my knitting classes where the content is just out of their reach.

The next day we spent at the Maker Festival Market, which included both yarn and beads.  Then off to Tucson:

View of the mountains

Poolside

There are two cute yarn shops in Tucson, and we did some damage at Grandma’s Spinning Wheel!  I made this cute little Derecho when I got back, just in time for the warmer weather.  The yarn is Queensland Brighton Beach, color Orange Cup Coral.  It only took 3 skeins, but I had purchased six!  The extra has already been sold to a peep.

I’m not a huge fan of summer knitting but I LOVE this top.  The pattern is great.

PS to Susanne: You said it so well!  Thank you!

I am not a fan of summer knitting: loose knitting with linen or cotton yarn.  Ugh!!  But, I do like wearing flowy, summer tops so I knit one and started another.

Here is Agave.  Designed by Yumiko Alexander for DanDoh fibers.   It is knit with DanDoh Linen (purchased at The Yarnery), the yarn called for, in color Oasis.  It is blue and green.  NOT blue-green.  It looks like spruce from afar.  Sally is making the same sweater in red.

I worked the sleeve differently than the two options in the pattern.  I picked up the number of sts for the longer sleeve, but then did some shaping and added the lace pattern to the bottom of the sleeve.  Here is the original “flutter sleeve” version:

And the longer sleeve:

My sleeve:

Because my arms are so long, I added 5″ to the length of the pattern’s longer sleeve!  I love this sweater and have already worn it.  I went to Tucson to see Surly’s new vacation home and wore it when we went yarn shopping. 🙂  I’ll get a lot of wear out of it when the weather warms up here.

I also met Yumiko herself at the Interweave Maker Festival:

God, I hate pictures of myself!  Oh well.  In another post, I’ll share what Sally and I made at Maker Fest!!

PS to Sherry: Actually, I did not lengthen the pattern.  There are 3 different lengths: the short one has 5 repeats and the long one has 7.  Sally and I often knit the same things.  We both have great taste!

PS2 to Chloe: Yumiko has come up with so many beautiful designs!

Sometimes I break my arm patting myself on the back…this is one of those times!  I think I’m a genius!  Uh, calm down, Susan.  No one cares!

Sally and I both bought the yarn to knit Structured Loop.  We love the stitchwork which reminds us of mattress ticking!

Structured Loop picture from Pattern Page

We chose Önling No. 1, which is butter soft, gorgeous, slightly fuzzy yarn.  Beautiful to knit with!!  Surly finished hers first, so she was the canary in the mine this time around.  We both decided we didn’t like the ribbing down the side “seams” (top down, in the round, so no real seams!).  If you run the cute stripes all the way around, it creates a serious jog problem.  The stripes consist of color changes, ribbing, garter…you name it!  A challenge, to be sure, but Surly and I decided to go for it.

My first stripe after joining ITR was the larger one. I fudged my way through using all the methods I could muster. It looked just “okay.”   Then a thunder bolt struck!!

Could I use the old, out-of-favor, jogless method where the BOR is moved one stitch to the left on every round?  This method causes issues when done over a great number of rows because who wants the BOR to change drastically and affect other aspects of the sweater? And a weird line appears.  However, this only takes place over a few rows, so I thought it might work.  It’s not 100% perfect, but pretty darn close!

I describe what I did in full detail on my Ravelry project page.  Like I said, it’s not perfect, but it is very easy to do — much harder to describe!  I am wondering if this would work in other situations?  It is certainly worth a try!

Here is an updated picture of my finished Riddari:

And a PS to Sue, who commented about the large size of her own Icelandic sweater: in all fairness, I may have chosen a size that was too big.  So many people knit successful colorwork yoke sweaters, myself included, that I cannot really conclude what made the difference.  All I know is that it now fits perfectly!

PS to Chloe: I wouldn’t call my sweater black, either!  It is the darkest green, blue, blackish, navy?  It is just deep and complex!!  Like the Galaxy after which it us named!

If you buy jumbo eggs, you are often rewarded with a double yolk.  Nice if it’s an egg.  Not as great if it is a yoke sweater!!

I started a Dreyma top-down yoke sweater earlier this year.  I used very similar colors and absolutely loved the look of the yoke.

As I continued, it became clear that the yoke was just not working.  There was WAY too much fabric in the chest area, above the bust line.  Handfuls!

The body fit.  The neck fit.  But what was wrong?  Using the following formula, the numbers were right.  However, reality begged to differ!

So, I cut off the yoke and started a bottom-up yoke instead.  I cut off the sweater on the round right after the underarm cast on.  Then I reversed direction to head up.  I calculated all my numbers and, using the same stitch count, converted it to the Riddari, bottom-up, yoke.  I provisionally cast on the sleeve sts so they could be knit top down.  It worked perfectly!!

Here you see no bulging, no extra fabric, absolute perfection.  So, if the stitch count below and above the two yokes were identical, why the difference?

I attribute this to three factors.

1. The repeats of the two yokes are different.  Riddari has an 8-stitch repeat, and Dreyma 10 stitch.  That means for each dec/inc there is a change of 36 sts (Riddari) and 29 sts (Dreyma).  That is about an inch and a half difference for each dec/inc.  When I say “dec/inc” what I mean is: Riddari decreases per repeat; Dreyma increases per repeat.
2. The placement of the dec/incs are different.  Riddari has sets of 5 decs and Dreyma has 4 incs.  On Riddari, they go lower down on the yoke.
3. As I was knitting, I changed needle sizes.  I usually go up a needle size for colorwork.  The body is being knit on sz 7, so I started the Riddari colorwork on an 8.  There was a single-color row in the Riddari chart, so I changed back to a 7, but I did not change back to an 8.  Later, there was a second single color row.  Again, I went down to a smaller needle (sz 6) and did not go back up.  I finished out the yoke on a sz 6.  On Dreyma, the colorwork was done on a sz 8 throughout.

I think all of the above variables contributed to the improvement.

I prefer the look of Dreyma, but I wasn’t able to transfer it to the Riddari chart without major rework and thinking!  I did incorporate a few elements, but it does look much more like Riddari.  It is growing on me!  If this didn’t work, into the bin it would go!  I am thinking of knitting some ribbing onto the Dreyma yoke to make it into a capelet.

I haven’t had this trouble with every yoke.  I have had successes with these:

Alpine Bloom

Pagan Sky

I guess I am wondering why my first Jennifer Steinglass was a flop when so many people have made her sweaters without issue.

PS to Chloe: My neckline was fine, so I’m not sure that that was the problem.  I usually do a provisional cast on for top-down sweaters so that I can control the size of the neck opening.  I start with a stitch count AFTER the first set of increases.  I prefer a larger neck so it’s not so constricting!  AND I like tighter knit ribbing so I need more sts to do that.

PS2 to Lisa: Patient or lazy?  I really didn’t want to waste all the knitting I had done below the armholes!!

Loyal readers will be at least vaguely aware that my husband John is a cross country ski fanatic.  He has skied the American Birkebeiner since before we got together.  It is a 50 km (~35 mile) trek through a hilly section of beautiful Wisconsin countryside.  There have been bad snow years in the past.  One 60 degree day stands out!  But this year took a prize.  No snow to be had!  The remedy was trying to make enough man-made snow to cover a long enough loop to make skiing worthwhile.  They were able to cobble together a 10-km loop.  Elite skiers were already nearby thanks to the World Cup races in Minneapolis the weekend before.  The most thrilling of the skiers was Jessie Diggins, who leads the Women’s World Cup in points and is a local celebrity!!

The big news for John was that this was his 4oth Birkie, out of the 50 total Birkies that have been held.  He missed three or four finishes due to illness or conditions.  We were worried that this year wouldn’t happen, but they made it work.  He only had to ski 30 km to call it official (elite skiers did 5 loops).  Here he is at the start of the strangely configured race day.  I was able to stand right next to him as he entered the gate.  Unheard of!!

He had a fantastic ski and loved every minute!  Here he is receiving his 40-year award:

You may notice his hat!  I knit him an official American Birkebeiner 50th Anniversary Hat for his birthday (always during Birkie week!).  The hat was designed by Allison Snopek Barta, who was there touting machine-knit versions of her Birkie sweater.  Here are some additional pictures:

I used Rauma Finull yarn from Norway to be more authentic.

PS to Chloe: Last year we had TONS of snow!  We have no idea what’s in store!

My little sistie, Surly, is celebrating one of those “big” milestone birthdays today!  So I am in Boulder for the festivities.  Yay, Surly!  You know how much you mean to me.  Let’s have a really fun day, because…

Some projects seem to drag on forever.  This was one of those!  I made a cute little sweater called Bea a while back.  Loved the silhouette, loved the style, loved the fit.  I decided to knit something along the same lines, but with pockets and long sleeves.  I call it Wannabea.  I would drag it to social knitting when I was between projects, so it never got my full attention.  I finally got close to the bottom (it’s top down) and decided to put it on the top of the pile, so it did get done!

Original Bea

I used Harrisville “Shear” Merino-Dorset DK held with Pascuali Manada.  It is butter soft.

Wannabea

I added pockets and placed brass grommets at the corners.  They are for looks only.

It is a cozy cardigan, perfect for cold winter days.  We have not had many of those and right now it’s 45 degrees without a smidge of snow!!  Well, maybe next year…

The pattern was my own kind of mash up of things I like about sweaters, so no real pattern.  It won’t get published because I don’t have the bandwidth to recreate it in ten inclusive sizes.  It is a one-off Wannabea!!

Lately, the simple things are my favorite to wear!  I do like knitting more complex projects, but I love the simpletons.

Case in point.  Surly came into town for a very quick visit.  I needed a really simple, dragalong project to have with me.  She was already planning on going to The Yarnery since she ordered yarn for pick up.  I found some BC Hamelton Tweed 1, color 002 for the simplest capelet ever, The Ponchetta by Elizabeth Smith.   It is a big rectangle with a cowl-like turtleneck.

My gauge was dead on with the suggested size 8, which is unheard of for me.  This quick project took a little over a week, but ended up being very cute and very wearable!!

I added the ribbed sections to the back and did a different 3-needle bind off.  I also lengthened it a tad.  I highly recommend the yarn and the pattern.  A+ from me!!