Nothin' But a Plain Pink Pullover

I have this odd affinity for pale pink v-neck sweaters. I've always got at least one in my closet. The one in the picture above will be folded and shelved right next to its near twin, a store-bought model in cotton with a higher rest on the neckline.

I still have a few minor ends to weave, and then I'll set the seams and neckband, but this one is pretty much in the done column. I love the way it fits. It's very loose and cozy through the body and arms, but the shoulders are exactly right and the length is perfect.

The Specs:
Yarn: almost ashamed to admit that it's wool from Joann Fabrics bought on sale for under two bucks a ball. The brand is Sensations Tesoro, and I must say, this is a really, really nice wool. I had expected to knit a vest with it, but was pleased to see that I had enough yarn for a sweater. Just enough. Just barely enough. There might be ten or twelve grams left over out of the 650 I started with.

Pattern: My own, adapted from the Ann Budd "Handy Book of Sweater Patterns." I started with her template, but shortened the arms and tightened the armscyes. The change to the armscyes was crucial for good fit. The body fit is very loose and fluid, oversized and drapey. I always think that when you do that with the body, the arms and shoulders had better fit properly or you'll look like a little kid wearing her mommy's clothes.

That's 650 g into the "yarn out" column of my stash minder, and I can already predict people will get sick of seeing me wear this thing.

How to Not Knit

So far, in the quest to rest my index finger, I have:

1. Blocked the pink sweater. I did it in stages, and the final stage was the sleeves, which you can see here. They look like they're two different sizes, but that's because of the funny camera angle you get when you stand on tiptoe with your arms way overhead.
2. Wound off about eight skeins of yarn. I have to do that slowly, with long breaks between skeins, because the crank irritates my knuckle.
3. Put loose patterns into plastic sheet protectors in binders.
4. Spend eleven million hours browsing patterns on ravelry. I've been in the habit of storing patterns I like in my favorites folder. And then one day, my favorites folder was suddenly empty. I've spent some time trying to recreate it -- ha! as if that can ever happen -- and printing loose copies of freebie patterns I'd like to knit.
5. Found a sock pattern for some green Cascade Heritage sock yarn to match Catherine Parr. I wanted a diamond-like trellises that mimicked the Catherine Parr cable chart without actually being that chart. Because I'm sick of knitting that chart. The answer arrived in the form of Snicket socks, formerly of Magknits and currently a ravelry download.
6. Reorganized my knitting bookshelf. Knitting books are so oddly shaped. They never line up in a pleasing fashion.
7. Read my Harmony guides and other chart books for substitute cable patterns for my FLAK, which I expect to cast on in two weeks or so. I'm currently leaning towards a summer motif -- a trellis cable up the center, some vine and leaf cables on either side.
   
8. Stared dolefully at my knitting, wishing I could touch it.
9. I tried to make a pot of soup, but can't chop vegetables with a wonky index finger. Pizza!
10. Moved all the yarn for knits-in-progress out of the back room dresser where I so cleverly put it for safekeeping. Thank goodness I found it.
    

The swelling is going down, and the pain is fading. I knit a half a round of the gray socks last night, trying it out, but the knuckle started to twinge almost immediately. A couple more days rest should do it.

Also, movies are way more enjoyable when you can knit through them. I don't know how non-knitters can just sit there and stare at the screen. I kept wanting to make popcorn just so my hands would have something to do. But I watched Duchess, the Keira Knightley/Ralph Fiennes adaptation of the Amanda Foreman book. It was very good. I didn't expect to enjoy it because Keira Knightley annoys me, but she was restrained enough to be watchable. Shame it wasn't a faithful rendering of the historical character, who was far more interesting and quirky than the movie would have you believe.

And I watched Burn After Reading, which was about as good a Coen brothers movie as I've ever seen. Definitely worth renting.

Change of Course

They say the devil lives in the details. Not that I would know anything about that....

On Friday, I realized I was within two rows of dividing the front of Catherine Parr for the neck shaping. As this is a crew neck, more or less, that means there's very little knitting left to do. I did some rough math and realized I could probably finish the sweater before the end of the year.

And then I also realized I would need a second ball of yarn to knit from, once the neckline is divided into two pieces.

This isn't the kind of detail that would normally pose a problem. Normally. I had wound off several skeins of the dark green Cascade 220 and put them in a sack in my knitting bag for just this moment. Er, better make that the previous moments when I finished skeins. All the pre-wound balls in my bag have been used.

Again, not normally a problem, right? Just haul out the swift and wind off another cake. So out comes the swift, out comes the winder, and both are clamped in place. Then I went to my storage closet to get a skein, and that was when it hit me.

I had no idea where the rest of the yarn might be.

You might remember that a couple of months back, I photographed and catalogued most of my yarn in preparation for moving it to a storage location. At that point, I tried to also reorganize it more neatly -- like yarns together, every bin filled, and so forth. Somewhere on that journey, I decided to remove the "knits in progress" yarns from their usual home in the stash closet and put them --

Somewhere else. Somewhere really clever. Somewhere, I'm sorry to admit, that I couldn't for the life of me remember.

While I tried to remember what my brainstroke had led me to do, I grabbed the pink sweater and cast on the sleeves.





















Because I'm not sure there's enough yarn for full sleeves, I decided to do a provisional cast on at the widest part of the sleeve, just below the sleeve cap shaping. You can see the gray waste yarn of the provisional cast on in the picture. Then I knit the sleeve cap in usual fashion (bottom up). Then I picked up the stitches at the provisional cast on, and will knit down until the sleeves are done or the yarn is gone, whichever comes first.

I've used this "middle out" sleeve construction technique in similar circumstances, and it's the best argument in favor of knitting the sleeves last. Do both sleeves at once, and you won't end up gimpy-armed if your yarn runs a bit short.

The Pink Sweater

Maybe I should have titled this post, "Why I'll Never Be One of the Cool Knitbloggers." The proof is in the picture. I thought I'd be all clever and such, and lay out the sweater back under the sweater front to demonstrate how far along we are in this project. It was such a great idea in my head, and believe me, my imaginary photos are more visually magnificent than that curly, bunchy mess up there.

Anyway. I'm past the armhole shaping for the front, and within maybe four rows of splitting for the V-neck. Precious little knitting time these days. Luckily, this project is so lickety-split fast that it makes up for the scant time I'm spending on it. Yesterday, during 90 minutes of Sunday morning new shows, I knit about3.5" of the front. Fast knitting. With only an hour a day, it's possible I could wear this thing to Thanksgiving dinner.

Yeah, right, like I'll get an hour a day for it.

I'm using one of the Ann Budd "Handy Book" charts for this sweater. If you haven't seen these books with the sizing charts, you're missing out. She gives precise instructions in chart format for standard patterns in a huge range of sizes. You pick the finished size you want along the top of the chart, pick your yarn's gauge along the left side of the chart, and she tells you everything you need to know: how many stitches to cast on, how many inches to knit, how to work any shaping -- it's all there in the charts.

Of course -- and this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my knitting habits -- I can't just follow the charts. I have to change them. God forbid I should knit a pattern as written.

I decided I wanted a little less armhole depth, so I cobbled together chart instructions from two different sizes on the chart. If you think about it, we knit sweater pieces in two dimensions, height and width. I preserved the width of the body pieces, and preserved the height between the hem and the lowest point of the armscye. For all that, I followed the charts for my true size.

But for the armscye, I switched to a smaller size spec so that I will have a neater fit under the arm. This means I also have to knit the sleeves to a smaller size on the chart, so that the sleeve cap matches the shaping of the armscye.

This is an incredibly easy alteration. And the Ann Budd book makes it even easier. No math, just plug-n-play with the charts. Anyone can do it. Heck, I can't even take a decent photo, and even I can do it.

Pink Things, and Why I Love Australia (Even Though I've Never Been There)

Here's the back of the pink wool vest. Seven inches into the armholes. 4.5 to go. Also, that ball in the upper right corner is only ball four. I have thirteen. Which means this vest might end up with sleeves.

Blah blah blah, enough of that. Look what the mailman brought!

























Yes, I have Tim Tams. No, I won't share them. Mine! All mine! (And a clever viewer might note the package is already open.)

Tim Tams, for the uninitiated among you, are like the Oreo of Australia. Two chocolate wafer cookies, sandwiched with chocolate cream, and the whole lot drenched in milk chocolate. Dude. These cookies make me happy. Big happy.

Other good things from Australia:
-- Violet Crumbles. Imagine a crunchy honey pillow coated in chocolate. (Imagine, because I won't share these either. Heh.)
-- Chocolate koala bears filled with caramel. Like a chocolate Santa, only Australian style. (These didn't make it into the picture because my dad made off with them. The candy koala rescue posse will be meeting in the front hall in five minutes. Bring weapons.)
-- Wool. Of course! I didn't put it in the picture because I was wearing it and forgot to take it off, but Bron knit me a lovely buttoned scarf. That girl can knit.

Best thing of all from Australia:
-- that book!!! Hot diggity day-umm! I was going to read submissions all weekend, but screw that! I want to read Bron's book! It's not available in the US yet, and I feel downright special for being able to get an advance look at this book from "a thrilling new Australian voice." :D

So, if any of you are looking for me, I'll be the sugared-up reader clutching candy wrappers and turning pages as fast as I can read them. Oh, yeah, baby, that's what I call the makings of a great weekend!

Happy September 29!

I MADE IT!

I went two solid months without casting a new thing on. Not socks. Not slippers. Not hats or scarves or mittens or sweaters or vests.
Not.
One.
Thing.

*snoopy dance*

And of course, I celebrated by casting on two things.












This is some pink worsted-to-bulky wool which has been marinating in my stash for, um, well, let's see.
*gets out calculator*
*performs complex math*

Yeah. Forfreakinever. That's how long. 13 skeins, 87 yards each, taking up a lot of space. All I ever wanted to do with this was a simple stockinette vest. No frills. Just knitting.

So I cast it on, and with a gauge of 4 stitches to the inch on size 10s, it whips up quick. That's about 2.5" of the back, knit this morning while I loafed for as long as it took to watch last night's Mad Men episode on demand. (Roger's an ass. I hate Jane. Pete is mean.)

This project will live on my desk for a while. Here's my theory on this one. I've been keeping plain socks on my desk, and socks in my purse as my travel knitting. With only one sock OTN now (woo hoo!), I'll carry that in my purse and leave some other plain, simple knitting on my desk to work while I dictate revision letters and read slush. And I need to clear out drawer space currently occupied by this pink wool. Hence, a new desk knitting project is born.

But you know what I've really been longing to cast on....
---drumroll----

The Kyoto!












Oh, baby, how gorgeous is that. Look at that sheen, that halo. I think I'm in luuuuuurve. This yarn feels like a dream.

I cast on the sleeve, ignoring the directions -- well, not ignoring them precisely. More like, I looked at them, said, "Nope. Not doing it that way," and cast on something different. So I did pay enough attention to the directions to decide to throw them out. That's not exactly ignoring, is it?

Right. Semantics. Now that I've knit three inches of the cuff, I reckon I'd better go figure out what I'm doing here. I don't want to get caught in my usual cycle, which as we know goes like this:

1. Scorn the pattern with much harrumphing.
2. Knit blithely without doing any math or planning.
3. Realize what a disaster I'm making.
4. Keep knitting anyway.
5. Realize the disaster is failing to magically self-correct.
6. Frog it.
7. Do just enough bad math to have to repeat these steps indefinitely.

But not with this yarn. This yarn has a high mohair content. I'd forgotten what that meant until I started knitting with it this afternoon. So now that I've remembered, three inches into my knitting-on-the-fly highwire act, I'm going to pause and redraw the pattern and calculate my increases, and all that good stuff, and then I'm going to double and triple and quadruple check my numbers, because DANG it I DO NOT WANT TO RIP THIS BACK. EVER.

(Bonus points to anyone who remembers those pink needles.)
(No, I haven't found my addis yet.)