Completion

It's been a long journey to get to this point, but now I can officially say that I've completed my first stranded garment and cut my first steek.

Pattern: Ivy League Vest by Eunny Jang, winter 2007 Interweave Knits
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette (100% Peruvian Highland wool), colorways Twig, Bark, Mist, Fog, Blue, and Navy, one skein or less each
Needles: US 3 (3.25) and US 1 (2.25) circs
Started/Completed: November 29, 2008/January 14, 2009

There are so many things to love about this vest. Above all, I love how well the colors ended up working, especially after dithering over my choices for so many weeks. In the end, I decided to go with two shades of three colors -- brown, blue, and gray. It turned out exactly as I wanted.

I also really liked working with this yarn. In the skein, it felt a little scratchy, but it didn't feel at all rough when knitting with it. It is rather loosely plied, which gives it a lovely lofty look, and has just enough "grip" to it to give the finished fabric a smooth appearance after blocking; that little bit of fuzziness fills in any spaces between stitches. Although my color decision took so long, I'm rather glad that I weighted so many options, because now I have plenty of shades with which to knit some pretty stranded mittens and gloves and things!

The most difficult part of knitting this pattern (aside from taking scissors to my knitting) was following the chart and keeping track of my start and end point as I completed increases and decreases. Eventually, I was able to read my knitting and judge where I was based on what I'd already completed, but it took some time to adjust.

Cutting the steeks turned out to be not nearly as scary as I was expecting. I would not have done it without reinforcing the steeks on my sewing machine -- but, in fact, getting the vest under the machine in order to sew those reinforcements proved to be more difficult than doing the actual cutting. While the idea of purposefully cutting a hole in my knitting still seems a little bit like sacrilege to me, I don't think I'll ever purposefully avoid patterns that have steeks in the future.

In addition to helping me get over that fear, this pattern also helped to practice and perfect my continental knitting technique. I do colorwork two-handed, with the main color in my right hand and the complimentary color in my left. While I'd managed to knit left-handed before, I could never quite get purling down. This vest has faux purled seams along the side and corrugated ribbing around the neck that forced me to purl with the color in my left hand, and I've now mastered that skill. It's still much less comfortable than knitting and purling with my right hand, but it's good to know that I can do it with both hands for colorwork projects.

For the most part, I'm very happy with how the vest turned out, but there are a couple of minor issues. The bottom flips up a little bit, as you can see in the side view above, but I think that can be combatted with some additional blocking.

The larger issue (no pun intended) is that it's a bit big. I knew that the finished size might not match the pattern when I started out, because I decided to go with the needle size that gave me the fabric I liked rather than the size that gave me gauge and went up a size to account for the difference. I also probably exacerbated the problem by blocking rather aggressively to counteract another problem -- puffing of the fabric on either side of the neck (probably caused by a difference in gauge when I went down two needle sizes for the neck band and because I misread the directions and didn't pick up enough stitches). Clearly it's not so big that it's unwearable, but I would have liked a little less ease had I been able to make the numbers work.

You know the most amazing thing about this vest? It took a skein or less of each color of the yarn to knit -- no more than 230 yards of any one color. The blue took the most -- I had only a yard or two left when I was done -- but there's a good half skein left of both shades of gray. I had two skeins of each color to start, so theoretically I could make this again if I wanted to.

Finally, what would a post on a fair isle garment be without a shot of the guts?

Resolved.

This time of year, it's very common to hear about resolutions and big goals for the year ahead, even as they pertain to knitting. Now, I'm not usually one to make resolutions, particularly as I can only remember ever keeping one (and that was to floss my teeth every night -- not exactly a life-changing thing).

Still, when the new year rolls around, I like to think about my knitting, my stash, and my plans for the 12 months ahead. I like to think about all the projects I intended to knit in the year before and all the intentions I had for my yarn. So, rather than making specific resolutions for my knitting in 2009, let's say that I have some very specific aspirations.

First, and I know this will shock some of you, is that I don't think I'll be knitting my usual number of socks this year. I have no doubt that I'll still have a sock on the needles much of the time, but they just don't give me the thrill they used to. I think that some of that has to do with the fact that my sock drawer is extremely full right now, as is The Mister's. Certainly those socks will wear out and need to be replaced one day, and I do intend to continue to work my way through New Pathways, but for the forseeable future, I think it will be mostly handspuns socks.

So what will I be knitting in 2009? I predict this will be the year of the sweater. I fully intend to seriously try to knit from my stash this year, particularly as I have sweater amounts of yarn for about six or seven adult sweaters. I may have to knit a few baby sweaters this year, but I'm going to embrace the idea of selfish knitting and seek to replace the old, store-bought sweaters in my dresser drawers with handknits. The Mister's Big Thaw Pullover is likely the next sweater on the needles.

I also predict you'll see a fair amount of lace on the blog this year, with the first order of business being finally finishing the Icarus Shawl that I cast on in August 2007. After that, I plan to work through my laceweight stash, especially some of my handspun.

Though you haven't seen it on the blog, I've been working on a design for about a month now and hope to finish it in the next few weeks. Then I will need to decide what to do with it (offer it for free here? make it a free Ravelry download? try to sell it?) and may ask your opinion in the future.

Finally, in continuing my efforts to "go green," I'm going to keep up a pretty steady supply of knit dishcloths and other household cleaning items. I've gotten one cloth done already this year (knit during the Steelers game on Sunday), and I hope to knit at least two a month.

At the very top of my knitting goals for 2009, however, is finishing my Ivy League Vest. Only a handful of rows on the neck and dealing with some ends stand in my way.

What are your knitting aspirations for 2009?

Snip, Snip, Snip

Well now, that wasn't so bad!

Socks 2009.1

Remember this yarn? Well, it's now grown up to be a pair of socks.

Pattern: stockinette worked over 60 stitches, with 3x2 ribbed cuffs and slip-stitch heels
Yarn: my handspun two-ply sock yarn (specs here)
Needles: two 12" US 1 (2.5 mm) Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: December 20, 2008/January 6, 2009

These are a little more pink in real life; even with a good camera, I can't get really good shots without some natural light.

These socks are delightfully soft, but I think they'll hold up better than the last handspun pair as they're superwash. It's amazing how enjoyable knitting a boring stockinette sock can be when you're knitting with handspun. If it didn't add on a couple weeks to spin the yarn, I'd knit The Mister's large socks out of handspun, too!

Meanwhile, I did some knitting last night, and you know what this means:

I'm too much of a chicken to cut the steeks just yet. I might need the support of the Hurricane Knitters tomorrow night to get the guts to actually do it.

My Pretties

As promised, I have a little bit of eye candy for you this evening. First is my newest fiber, which arrived in the mail yesterday and was promptly on my wheel.



This fiber was the latest for the All Spun Up spinalong on Ravelry. This time around it's a superwash merino/alpaca blend in a really stunning colorway. I think just about every color in the rainbow is represented here, although the deep purple seems to be the predominant shade. I split the top in half lengthwise and plan to Navajo ply the two bobbins of singles into sock yarn, so I should get more or less matching socks.

Up next, the latest shot of my Ivy League Vest, which is moving along much more quickly these days now that I've completed the armhole shaping and most of the decreases for the v-neck.

I'm just a handful of rows away from starting the back neck steek, which is the last, and shortest, of the four. Every time I pick this project up, I'm just amazed by how much bigger it seems to have gotten. I'm hoping to have this done, blocked, and ready to wear within a few weeks, because I owe The Mister a sweater!

An Update

I'm a little brain inpaired this evening, so I can't really put together a good blog post. Will you settle for a progress shot of my vest? Okay.


Moving right along. I'm just a handful of rows away from starting the neck steek. I don't think I'll have it done in time for Christmas, but maybe for New Year's ...

Chugging Along

Knitting continues here chez Knit/Wit. I'm still working on the socks for my brother-in-law; miraculously, I'm already into the gusset of the second sock, having finished the first last Friday night. They're not much to look at, so I'll spare you the in-progress shots for now. (I'll bet you can imagine what a ribbed navy man sock looks like anyway. Right? Okay, moving on.)

I had to take a break from my stranded knitting last week when I had cold brain, so I decided to do a little charity knitting and whipped up a chemo cap with some, well, interesting novelty yarn that Jen forced on me donated to me last year.

This would be the No Hair Day chemo cap or, as I like to think of it, the I-Skinned-a-Muppet-and-Made-a-Hat chemo cap. I know this picture is blurry, but trust me when I tell you that it looks very much the same in real life.

I was ready to get back to some patterned knitting after dealing with all that fuzziness, and I've made some progress on my Ivy League Vest since last you saw it. I'm now through the waist decreases.

Meanwhile, I also have some blocking going on. Full reveal to come later this week!

Just a Taste

It's slow going, but my Ivy League Vest is coming along.


I'm getting more and more used to the two-handed knitting thing, but this pattern is just complicated enough that I'll be taking a simpler project to Hurricane Knitting tomorrow night (Waterworks Barnes & Noble, starting at 7 p.m.).

A Conundrum

So, I was a good knitter and swatched for my Ivy League Vest. I even swatched in the round, which is a bit of a pain, what with all the loose ends hanging every which way. And I even used two needle sizes! Here's what I got:

That's with a flash so you can see what the stitches look like. This is without a flash and a better representation of what the color combination looks like:

Amazing how one little swatch can cause so many problems. You see, the bottom half of the swatch, which is knit on a US 4 needle, gives me gauge (7 stitches/inch), but I don't care much for the loosey-goosey appearance of the fabric. There's a chance that this may have been exacerbated by the swatching technique and that the fabric might not be so loose when I'm knitting "for real" in the round. The top half of the swatch, worked with a US 3 needle, gives me a fabric I really like but at a gauge of about 7.6 stitches/inch. I did a little math and figured out that, at the smaller gauge, I can knit the largest size and wind up with a vest that will be approximately my size -- approximately being the key word here.

So I can use the needle that gives me gauge but risk getting a fabric I don't like or use a needle that gives me a fabric I like and keep my fingers crossed that the math works out. Add to this the fact that the pattern specifies that the v-neck accommodates up to five inches of negative ease and I'm really confused. I'm hoping some of you will have advice for me or at least a strong opinion, especially those of you who've done a fair amount of colorwork before (Rebecca and Pat, I'm looking at you!).

In the meantime, I'm focusing on the second half of my mystery stole -- should finish clue 1 tonight! -- in the hopes of having it done to wear to my office holiday party a month from today.