theraineysisters knitting and so much more

October 23, 2007

From Susan and Sally — Roslin Fair Isle Hoodie

Filed under: Roslin Fair Isle Hoodie — Both Sisters @ 3:13 pm

While we each plod along, trying to make progress on some other projects we thought we’d share a sweater we designed together a few months back.  We wanted to create a design that incorporated some fair isle knitting into it.  The challenge was that we wanted the fair isle portion to be in jumperweight yarn, but we didn’t want to have to knit the entire sweater out of such small gauge yarn.

Did we have to? No, we didn’t.  Jamieson has several weights of yarn in the same colors.  Susan came up with an ingenious way to transition invisibly between Jamieson’s Dk weight yarn (3 ply) and Spindrift (2 ply). Sally did the playing around with colors and design for the fair isle band and did virtually all of the actual knitting (that’s only fair — it was knit to her size).  Susan did the math.  Who got the better deal?

Sally adapted the fair isle design from a typical Shetland-style pattern. Here’s a photo of one of the original swatches.

The sweater features a hood, raglan sleeves, and a “kangaroo” pocket. Here are several views of the finished sweater:

Fairislehoodie.jpg

 FairisleHoodieSideView3.jpg

FairisleHoodieBack.jpg

Susan came up with the idea for a cute little pocket on the sleeve. Here is a close up view — isn’t the button cute?

hoodiepocket.jpg

Finally, this picture shows how nice the transition looks from 3-ply to 2-ply.   

fairisletransition.jpg picture by lv2knit 

The knitted weight of each section is identical: the fair isle band and the body of the sweater have the exact weight and feel. 

The sweater fits Sally perfectly and is great for fall.  Susan keeps threatening to knit one up and by doing so enlarge the pattern — a lot.  Right now it exists as a “one size fits few.”  We debated sending it off to try to be published, but that would require a lot of brain activity from a very dormant brain. 

Mom would be so proud: we have finally learned to play well together!

October 20, 2007

From Susan — Mini Lyra Update

Filed under: Lyra by Niebling — lv2knit @ 1:01 pm

Woo hoo!  I’m in the 60’s for rounds (out of 180) and totally loving Lyra.  The following graphic shows approximately where I am so far (dotted circle).  Talk about slow!  I really don’t know how Soo finished this in two weeks.  I would have to quit my job, leave my husband and abandon my kids to finish this in two months!   Hmmmmmm…….nah! ;) 

Lyra10-20-07.jpg picture by lv2knit

October 19, 2007

From Susan — Well, THAT Didn’t Work!

Filed under: Updates — lv2knit @ 11:11 am

I have yet another knitting snafu.  Homage is totally HUGE!!  The back is at least 2.5″ too wide.  I have about 12 inches done and will have to rip back yet again.  I am starting to feel cursed unlucky.  So I will rip back another day.  I love the way it was looking so I will give it another go, just not today.

I started Hanne Falkenberg Plisse instead.  You begin at the back with the center strip:

plisse-ryg-1.jpg picture by lv2knit

I have about 10 inches of the strip done and will show more once I get the back started.  It is supposed to be knit on US 1 & 2 needles, so I automatically went up a needle size — look, Ma, no swatching!  I have done enough Hannes to know how my gauge compares with hers.  The color I chose (#98, Lagoon) is very nice and similar to Sally’s Tangled Yoke:

Color.jpg Color picture by lv2knit

I am very happy with Lyra once again – I am almost back to where I had to rip out.  The chart itself is very easy to follow; the mistake was all mine.  The Fino Alpaca is really nice yarn to work with.  It is a slow moving project, but nice to work on when you want to focus on your knitting.  I am hoping that Plisse has less mental effort involved so it will be portable.

I am thinking of putting the Modular Tote/purse together soon (maybe this weekend?).  All the main knitting is done — just the constructing and handle to do.  Kauni is not far off the radar either.  It will be very wearable so I’d like to get it done soon.

One of our French readers finished this intriguing knit:

LionBrand.jpg picture by lv2knit

I had already purchased the pattern (Lion Brand!!), but have not found suitable yarn.  This is one of those projects that looks like it could go horribly wrong, so I was glad to see that someone had finished it successfully.  We’ll see if it makes it up the queue! 😉

It’s the weekend, so start your knitting!

October 17, 2007

From Sally — Mermaid Finished

Filed under: Sally's Mermaid — surly @ 12:34 pm

I’ve had very little time to knit the past four or five days, but I did manage to finish the second sleeve of Mermaid and finally finish this project. I’ve even worn it. Indeed, I probably shouldn’t have photographed it after it wadding it up and letting it sit in my car for two days, but such is life. (I could have given it a light steam, but I had so little time to post I didn’t. My bad.)

This is one of those garments that looks best while it is being worn because of the way it moves and drapes. Half-naked Lucy just doesn’t give the same effect. Nevertheless, here is my completed Mermaid.

October 15, 2007

From Susan — Monkey Hat

Filed under: Sock Monkey Dresses — lv2knit @ 7:06 pm

Today they had an article in the paper about Sock Monkey Girl (aka Rebecca Yaker), famous for her sock monkey ball gowns, etc.  It reminded me that I had forgotten to post this picture from 3 Kittens of this very “cute” baby hat. 

MonkeyHat.jpg picture by lv2knit

Check out the earring!

October 13, 2007

From Susan and Sally — Peeps on the Road

Filed under: Back Story,Homage — Both Sisters @ 1:53 pm

What a day I had!  It was peep-tastic!  Yesterday was the start of the Second Annual Yarn Shop Hop sponsored by seven local knitting stores:

Amazing Threads, Maple Grove
Coldwater Collaborative, Excelsior
Needlework Unlimited, Minneapolis
A Sheepy Yarn Shoppe, White Bear Lake
3 Kittens Needle Arts, St. Paul
The Yarnery, St. Paul
Zandys Yarns

We started north and worked our way to White Bear Lake, south through St. Paul, down to Burnsville, up through Minneapolis, west to Excelsior and back north to Maple Grove.  “We” consisted of several of my favorite knitting peeps: Kim (who drove — yay, Kim!), Mary, Roseanne, and Linda.  We had a ton of fun.  We received a small token at every stop and got to see/buy some great yarn and patterns. 

Did yours truly buy anything?  Mais oui, mes amies! 😉

First off, I need to back up and give a brief update on Loll.  It flopped.  My aforementioned peeps told me so on Thursday evening.  They gave it a definite thumbs down :(.  Good friends don’t let bad knitting happen.  The fringes are cute but the ribbed section was not up to our stringent standards — so it must go.

Loll-1.jpg picture by lv2knit

I will make the fringe into a hat…maybe.  With that decision made, I took the yarn back and bought this instead:

Tapestry.jpg picture by lv2knit

WOW!  Beautiful Rowan Tapestry (70% Wool 30% Soybean Approx. 131 yds/50g Weight: DK Gauge:  5.5 sts/1in Needle: US 6) in the color Lakeland — it looks like the ocean.  Sally already bought this same color.  I LOVE IT!!  I’m not sure yet what I will make, but it is fabulous yarn.

I also bought a couple of patterns — one for a vest and then this one for Lopi yarn:

LopiPattern.jpg picture by lv2knit

I think I have enough Lopi in my stash to make this — it takes ten skeins.  They had a shop sample knitted up and it really is a nice wearable sweater for Minnesota winters.

The other knitting update for me is that “Whisper,” which I was knitting in Kidsilk Haze Aura, is another major flop!  Oh yeah!  Yours truly is really cranking out the disasters.  Sally is turning out FO’s like hotcakes and I can’t even get anything started :(.  It looked just awful.  So, I ripped out that lil sucker and started something else. 

You may remember from a very early post, my mother knitted this many, many years ago:

MomsMohair.jpg Mom\'s Dressy Mohair Sweater picture by lv2knit

It is in mohair, much like La Gran, with a stitch at the hems and front bands that LOOKED like seed stitch until I looked more closely.  It is actually a slip stitch:

Start with an odd number of sts:
Rows 1 & 3 (RS): knit
Row 2: *k1, slip 1 as to purl with yarn at back (to the RS), repeat from * to last st, k1.
Row 4: k1, *k1, slip 1 as to purl with yarn at back, repeat from * to last 2 sts, k2.

I am going to knit a boxy jacket-style cardigan based on mom’s sweater and call it “Homage.”  I started it and have this so far:

Homage003.jpg picture by lv2knit

I love it.  I am knitting with yarn spun from clouds.  It is night and day compared to what it looked before.  I thought it was ugly, and now I am in love.  I am knitting with US 8’s instead of 6’s, which makes it looser and allows the light to filter through.  This is a wonderful and very easy stitch.  I will do about 6″ in this and then switch to stockinette, and do raglan-style sleeves.

Lyra is still a joy to work on, though I do not have the time to devote that I would like.  I am on the ~ the 50-ish roundout of 180.  Lots left!  Had a Lyra mishap and am now back to round 40.  BUMMER!!!!!  I had worked on it all day yesterday, too… 🙁

I am feeling much better about my knitting prospects.  Life is good!

P.S. From Sally

While Sue was out yarn hopping, I met a friend in Baltimore for lunch. I didn’t even realize that Stitches was taking place there until I drove by the venue.

I DIDN’T STOP!!!!

Aren’t you all impressed? (Don’t be. If I had been with a knitting friend I would have stopped on a dime.) I did stop at A Good Yarn. I ran in and bought yarn in less than five minutes. I’ll post about that later. I’m happy to see how Susan’s Aura is turning out since I have twenty skeins of it my own self.

October 10, 2007

From Susan — We Walk Among You

Filed under: Lyra by Niebling,Uncategorized — lv2knit @ 12:43 am

‘Those who walk among you’ are knitters who have discovered Herbert Niebling and are now obsessed!  Apparently there is an underground cult of sorts of Niebling Followers — who knew?  I would never have heard of Niebling myself except for the influence of fellow bloggers.  Soo left a nice little comment about my Hemlock Ring Throw so I innocently clicked on her blog, not knowing that it would change me forever.  I found this:

SooLyra.jpg picture by lv2knit

SooLyraCloseUp.jpg picture by lv2knit

My jaw still hurts from hitting the table.  All I knew was that I had to make me one of these!  I am not much of a lace knitter but decided to not let that be a barrier! ;)  The most immediate barrier was finding the pattern.  Niebling died over 40 years ago.  This pattern, called Lyra, was only printed twice.  The most recent was in a 1986 Burda magazine, European issue.  Soo kindly provided many details and I found the magazine in an ebay auction that very day.  It had to be mine!  I paid way too much for it but it was worth every penny.  It arrived last Saturday.  It is written in Dutch, I bought it from a woman in Germany, and it included an English translation.  All the charts are done using Niebling’s unique charting style. 

I started my Lyra already.  I laid out my knitting supplies like an operating room: yarn (Fino Laceweight Alpaca with a Twist — check), needles (Size 2.5 mm — check), reading glasses (check), small crochet hook (check), valium (sorry — all out!), bead mat (check), lamp (check).  I used the Emily Ocker cast on and for the first several rows had the highest anxiety going!  I was so worried I would drop a stitch — then I did and actually fixed it :), so I am off and running. 

Here is my progress so far:

Lyra10-09004.jpg picture by lv2knit

I am not far enough into it to be at the hard part but so far I have not had any trouble.  I have put many hours into it so far and it is still very TINY, though it already has over 300 sts!  Soo finished hers in two weeks.  That’s right: TWO WEEKS!  I will not even attempt to match her pace. 

Because I can’t work on Lyra in anything but the most optimal conditions, I also started this (Rowan’s Calmer “Loll”):

Loll.jpg picture by lv2knit

I am making mine in ivory (Rowan Calmer in “Drift”) and I have about 5-6 inches of the back done; all of the fringes complete — whew, are they ever slow!  I’ll post a picture later.  Why a summer sweater??  Who the heck knows!  It’s something to work on as my take along project.

PS in response to pjknits: I buy 99.9% of my yarn from my LYS’s — I find almost all the yarn I want locally.  If there is something I absolutely must have and it is not readily available (i.e., the Kauni yarn or the Swedish Bohus kits) then I shop on line.  I know a lot of people do not have access to the quality of yarn shops available in the Twin Cities.  We are tres lucky here!

 

October 9, 2007

From Sally — The Damask Pattern

Filed under: Susan's Kauni Cardigan — surly @ 8:29 pm

I know many readers who like how the Kauni yarn knits up in the Damask pattern are wondering if we have it to give or whether we know where it can be purchased. Sadly, we cannot provide it because of copyright infringement. It’s a Dale pattern and was published in 2001 as a leaflet. It was part of Dale’s “Home” collection and was intended to be knitted as a pillow (at least that’s the case based on the copy I have). I believe that the same pattern and chart may have been used in a sweater, but that’s a vague recollection. I found a link to a sweater with the same name, but I can’t tell if it’s the same pattern or not from the photograph.

I know that there are other, similar patterns out there. It may also be possible to chart it or adapt it yourself by looking at it, but we can’t provide a copy of the chart. Again, I am sorry for that.

On the other hand, a slightly “used” copy of the pattern might be a nice prize for our next bloggiversary.

October 8, 2007

From Sally — A Kauni of My Own

Filed under: Sally's Kauni — surly @ 5:29 pm

My two giant balls of Kauni yarn look like some kind of desert pottery.

The colors, as you can see, don’t look subtle. Why would I knit a sweater out of tomato soup red and pea green yarn? That was one of the questions I kept asking myself, and it was why I hadn’t yet started knitting with my Kauni yarn. Susan and I (along with regular reader Kim) got ours at the same time. Susan’s Kauni, almost finished except for the dreaded last sleeve, is lovely. See?

I know that the change from one color to another is not as stark as it looks when the yarn is in the ball. When I wound these skeins, watching the color change was magical — like time lapse photography. Even so, every time I looked at the raw yarn I had doubts. I kept getting seduced by other projects, too, which often happens to me. Then Ruth Sorenson, who designed the Kauni Cardigan, put out another design.

LeafCardigan.jpg picture by lv2knit

Although I wasn’t sure I liked the style of the ribbing at the bottom, that design rekindled my interest — it reminded me of some of the sweaters in Solveig Hisdal’s Poetry in Stitches. I vaguely thought about trying to adapt one of the Hisdal patterns or some other fair isle. Then I promptly forgot all about it and went on to other knitting.

Fast forward to the other day, when my sister sent me a link to the blog of another Minnesota knitter named Maria. I took one look at her Kauni and gasped: it was the Kauni of my dreams. Maria used a Dalegarn pillow pattern called Damask. Looking at her beautiful work-in-progress, I remembered that I had bought some of Dale’s pillow patterns when I worked in the yarn store. Why? Who knows? I’ve never knitted a pillow in my life. But lo and behold I had that pattern.

I did a provisional cast on because I didn’t want to waste valuable knitting time trying to decide what kind of finishing I wanted at the bottom. I didn’t do a gauge swatch; I based my needle choice on knowing that I usually knit on one size smaller needle than Susan does to achieve the same gauge. I did a quick calculation of how many stitches I thought I would need, adjusted a bit to center the pattern on the back and started. I’ve knit one full repeat. I don’t know what I’m doing the for the neck or whether I’ll use the same pattern for the sleeves, but I think it’s gorgeous.

I’m trying to make myself finish my lone Mermaid sleeve, but this is pretty hard to resist. How wild do I want it to be? I have these beautiful buttons from an abandoned Intarsia project. The color is perfect, but I think they may be a bit too much. We’ll see.

From Susan: When I saw Maria’s Kauni I felt like I wanted to throw up!  I was so sad that I had already started mine and felt I was too far along to rip it out (though I did consider it!).  I asked myself, “Would I rather knit 1-7/8 sweaters and end up with one sweater, or knit two sweaters and end up with two?”  I may still knit the Damask Kauni at a later date.  Sometimes it pays to wait :(.

There is a benefit to knitting the original Kauni: it takes much less yarn and is much faster because you do not need to follow the pattern so closely: you only do stranded knitting on 4 out of 10 rounds instead of every round. 

When I was still considering ripping back my Kauni, I brought it out and thought, “It’s cute.  I like it.  I don’t want to rip out my lil Kauni.”   So, Lil Kauni, I still love you!

 

October 6, 2007

From Sally — Wow, Thanks

Filed under: Tangled Yoke — surly @ 8:24 am

Thanks for all of the nice comments on my sweater. I had a few moments of real doubt while finishing it.

I wanted to answer one additional question that was asked (I’ve answered lots of questions within the comments). The question was about how much yarn I used. I had meant to address that. My size called for 8 skeins of Rowan Felted Tweed, which is the yarn I used. It’s a light yarn, and you get a lot of yardage per 50 gram skein (191 yards). In effect, I used 6 skeins, not 8. I used every bit of those 6 skeins — I only had a few yards left over. (I say in effect because I redid part of the neck and in doing so broke into the 7th skein. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have touched it.) So, although my changes may have meant I used less yarn, I still think that means that the yardage amounts suggested in the pattern are quite generous.

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