Liesl

I knit a Liesl yesterday.

Ok, you're right -- I didn't really knit an entire sweater in one day. I did knit the entire body in one day. I used some really lovely bulky weight Venezia that I'd bought on sale at Bad Woman Yarn. It's a beautiful deep, dark purple. I haven't taken a picture yet, but it's #128 if you follow the Venezia link.

I knit the size 30" with the low neckline, knowing that my gauge loosens when I knit and that the lace would block out a bit wider. Have I mentioned my new technique for sizing fitted sweaters? I just knit to fit my under-bust measurement and then add huge bust darts right under the arm holes. In this case, after putting my shoulder stitches on waste yarn, I added two YO's in place of one K2tog in the underarm. In the next lace row I again made only 3 k2tog's in the underarm and made YO's for all stitches in front of them. I began decreasing in the next lace row by still only doing 3 k2tog's in the underarm but, after my usual 4 YO's, making k3tog's across the extra stitches. I did the same in the next lace row, too, and regained my original stitch count.
This sounds like gibberish, I realize, but just get in touch if you want more details.

I knit 16 lace repeats total below the underarm, 5 rows garter stitch, and bound off knitwise on the wrong side.

Then I blocked it.

It grew.

It got longer. Donned wet, Liesl reached my knees.

I'm being a little melodramatic. I just pulled the lace width-wise and achieved more or less the sweater shape I'd intended. But know this! A Liesl in this yarn can be as loooooong as you want her to be. Save some yarn and knitting time by just blocking it to length. She could have stretched by almost double.

Now.
Now Liesl fits perfectly across my back...
But.
There are some other problems. The arm holes are HUGE. I can easily fit my head through the arm holes with room to spare. I remember this problem from the Cloud Bolero I made ages ago, which was the free version of this same pattern.
Related to this, the bust shaping below the saggy armpits now hits at my belly button. Shoot.

What to do?
To hike up the armpits and place the bust shaping back at my bust I'm going to cut off the top of the cardi 4 lace repeats above the shoulder opening. Then I'll knit on a garter stitch trim to finish the collar, probably with some decreases to draw in the neckline.

Ok, did it. There are 113 stitches on my needle after The Cut. I'll k2tog every stitch in the first row of garter. I'll let you know how it ends up!

Oh, and here's a picture to make this post more interesting (thanks to Sooz!). My finished "Favorite Cardigan":

Confessions

OK, I have to confess some things here. Firstly, I made a resolution to post weekly, and in that I have clearly been remiss. I have not been posting weekly. Not even close. And that last post about my finished Koolhaas has no meat at all. I know, sorry. I'll edit it.
I have another thing to confess. It's included here as a sort of excuse for not writing about knitting. It's kind of juicy and personal... but I know that whatever I post here is practically private anyway because no one really reads it. ;)
Even though I've been knitting and knitting and knitting, the only thing on my mind is my friend Nelson. We kissed on New Years, and I'm so in love with him now. Shhhh! Don't tell him I said that.
I promise more knitting talk soon.

Koolhaus

Here's the finished Koolhaus hat.

Knitting Rockstar!

Jared Flood came to Seattle! He's from this area originally, which was fun to find out. I went with Sooz to see him speak at the Knitters' Guild.
The setting was a Wedgewood neighborhood church. Here we are, all worshipping our knitting while Jared showed slides of his inspirations and his work.













I cast on a Koolhaas hat on the drive there and worked on it during Jared's talk.

After speaking Jared signed books for all of us and was very charming. He was in town for the whole weekend teaching classes over at Churchmouse, but I couldn't make it to any of them. I would have loved to have taken a class from Jared. I think he'd be a very good teacher.

Alright, and here are some nuggets for the scrapbook. Kids, this is a picture of the time Auntie Turbo met Jared Flood.
And look, could I be anymore flustered? Could I gush more profusely? Note, the hand upon my breast -- I'm sooo taken. Do you see? Jared Flood is knitting some stitches on my Koolhaas. Isn't he nice?



My face is so red, I can't think of another time I've blushed like that. I swear, I thought I wasn't the blushing type.
For comparison, I've met an actual rock star. Yes, I have. Dave Matthews actually lives in my neighborhood, and I've met him on several occasions. I did not blush. No! I did not! I really think I was totally cool. No blushing.
Apparently it takes a really good knitter to color my cheeks.

Here is my Koolhaas pattern -- signed by knitting rock star Jared Flood.

Burning sweaters

What can you do with yarn at Burning Man?
You can wear fantastical yarn dreads, thanks to the work of your wonderful and patient little sister. Thanks, Bree! Yarn-head was actually a very popular style out there.

I also got as far as you see on Wendy Bernard's "Favorite Cardigan", which I've lengthened in the body and sleeves. I've since finished the knitting and am looking for toggle buttons for it.
Sadly you only get to see aftermath pictures because the dust destroyed my camera in the desert.

And yeah, I know that Burning Man happened a month and a half ago. Ahh, well... no, I have no excuses. But here, I've written this tiny blurb about it now, so there we go.

(Finished pics of the sweater here)

Arghh... :S

I'm struggling, struggling right now. Why could I not do math last night at knitting group? Could it have been the two seasonal ginger beers? Could it be that I was, ahem, impatient? Perhaps I should build better habits around my measuring and calculations before taking important steps in my projects.
No pictures, so sorry.
In the case of knitting disaster number one, I excuse the lack of pictures with my ambition to submit it for publication once I work out the kinks. As for the crochet disaster in very expensive alpaca, well, sorry. I ruined my camera at Burning Man.

Idyllic Frog Pond

I went to a tree house resort last night for a sweet little concert with my friend Kolbe. So lovely! There are tree houses! There's also a pond and a river and hammock webs in the trees. I had a great time, but... While happily knit, knit, knitting during the concert I realized that I would have to rip back the nearly completed cardigan front of my Sunrise Circle Jacket to the top of the sleeve.

See, I'd done some fudging because of my larger gauge. Recall, I'm knitting at 3.5 rather than 4.5 stitches per inch. However, when I got to the top of the sleeve, which is actually a bit snug on my arms, I had 2 stitches more than the stitch count for the size small. Weird, hmm? I do have hefty biceps after all those years of rugby.

So I figured, good, good enough. I'd knit more or less the instructions for the size small, but I'd work my raglan decreases on every RS row instead of skipping every few rows to compensate for my bigger gauge. It seemed like that way I'd use up all the sleeve cap stitches before the piece measured too much more than the 10.5" in raglan shaping that the schematic specifies.

Not so fast, I found. After only 8" of raglan shaping I am out of stitches to decrease. What to do? I think I should tear it back and try following the pattern as written for the small size and see how that goes.

Done, ripped. I'll start over now on the front shaping.

I want to point out right now that this type of project is super hard for me. I don't follow directions very well, and I don't like having to refer to a pattern for every stitch line by line. There's no logic that I have found in the increases for the front pieces, nothing that I can just memorize or calculate on the fly while I'm out and about.
Ok, that was my plug for extra praise when I stick to it and finish this project. Finish. Yep, I'm committed to finishing. Finishing, finishing, finishing.... (oooo... there are so many ideas I want to start, start, start...!)

I know this sweater will be beautiful when it's done. I love everyone else's projects. I know I will learn a lot from following Kate Gilbert's thoughtful pattern. This is still a really good plan. :)