Another One Gone

This is the cabled cardigan back piece. Or I should say, WAS the cabled cardigan back piece. I was, as the guys in the trades say, balls-on with my gauge. The finished piece was four inches narrower than the pattern specs called for, though, even after I tried to block it wider.

So I spent a pleasant half-hour last night trying to rework the pattern schematics to come up with a garment that would go all the way around me. But this is a very tailored, fitted piece, and I gave up without even fighting too hard.

Check out the kink in that frogged yarn. I wound it into loose round balls to let the yarn relax a bit, and then will wind it into cakes in a few days or so.

My list of KIPs is shrinking, and I must confess, it feels good to ditch things that aren't right. It's liberating. Not sad or depressing at all. This is my mindset when I stare down Catherine Parr, still laying on my kitchen table in all her botched glory. I still haven't decided what to do about this one. It's the toughest call on the list.

Five!

I'm so very happy to be able to blog again. And here to help me celebrate is sock number five for the SOS07 challenge. I love this sock, love the way it turned out, love everything about it -- pattern, yarn, color, everything. It's just a happy squooshy sock.




















The pattern, corded rib, was taken from Charlene Schurch's SKS. I love how the texture changes when you wear it. Look at those eyelets that suddenly appear. Very nice. Me likee this pattern, and it couldn't be easier to knit.


















I also set out the back of the Silver Creek cabled cardigan to block. Before I pinned it out, I would have sworn that it would never in a million years stretch to the proper dimensions. But it did, and now I'm less worried about knitting the fronts.

I don't know why I can't get the Silver Creek to photograph properly. No matter what I do, the color is off. And not just off by a little, either. The actual color of this yarn is midway between a royal blue and a dark turquoise. It's very bright and vivid, but it always photographs as a charcoal or navy. I messed around with the photo editor to get it closer to the true color, but the photos still disappoint me. The yarn is too beautiful to be misrepresented like this!

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

This is a close-up of one side of the short-rowed sleeve cuff for the sweater I love enough to call "my husband." Except he'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.
















And this is the other side.

I have a long list of things that are pissing me off today. In order of annoyance, we have:

1 and 2. These cuffs. I'm supposed to use short rows to create a bell curve of sort that will drape over the back of the hands. Problem is that the wrapped stitches look like absolute crap. There is no way, none whatsoever, that this passes the prancing pony test. Let alone passing my own personal version, the crawling pony with a magnifying glass test.

Anybody have any ideas on how to fix this? The stitches are wrapped as the rows are shortened, and the wraps are picked up as the rows are lengthened. What you see there are distorted stitches. Not wraps. Usually, I don't bother picking up the wraps, but this pattern called for it and I wanted a smooth fabric, undistorted by the "mock purl bumps" of unpicked-up wraps. I can't figure out what I did to distort the stitches, and I've knit these cuffs twice now with identical results. (Thereby proving that consistency really is the hobgoblin of little minds.)

3. My camera -- I mean, look at those pictures. What the heck is going on there? Blurry, and not even close to the actual color of the yarn. I snapped dozens of pictures under several different lights/backdrops, and the two above were the best I managed. Look here for a more accurate view of the color.

4. The *&$%* cicadas. OK, they were an interesting diversion at first. But I'm over it now. I want them to shut up that infernal racket and, for pete's sake, stop flying into my car when I am trying to drive. They're going to make me crash. Into their beloved trees. With a firebomb.

5. Blogger. Ate two of my posts this weekend. I managed to save one (Note to Self) but had to sacrifice the pictures. Why does blogger hate me? (pout)

6. The DVD player which, for completely mysterious reasons, refused to play the movie I rented for tonight. That would be the movie I wanted to watch while knitting that breast cancer Shedir out of the Rowan Calmer which I couldn't show you because Blogger hates me. Anyway. This is a new DVD player. It should not be misbehaving like this. Plus, I really do just want to watch a movie and knit. I need it!

I know this is a grumpy post, but it's been that kind of day. I've had real problems demanding my attention today, not just the petty things on my list. Which makes it doubly insulting when the petty things go wrong.

Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. In the meantime, sorry to vent like this.

And seriously, can anyone tell me how to fix my husband's short rows?

Introducing My Husband

This is my husband. He's a very good husband, as husbands go. Even when other women want to pet and fondle him (and they do! Oh, do they! You should have seen the heavy petting at the Harlot's booksigning!) he remains Mine, All Mine. He's very nice to touch -- hence the hordes of women wanting to stroke him. He's an extrafine merino and you know what that means. Very soft, almost feels like cotton, but retains some of the elasticity and hand of wool.

When I knit the gauge swatch on this a few weeks ago, I was so amazed by the hand and feel that I took it to my SnB and went into paroxysms of ecstasy right there in the old coffee shop. Total yarngasm. I confessed a desire to have this yarn's babies, and now all my SnB buddies call the yarn my husband. They also keep acting like a buncha husband-craving hussies, but that's a whole other story.

I bought this yarn at The Fold, which is a very holy and mystical place, and also very dangerous. Do Not, under any circumstances, take credit cards with you to The Fold. The Fold has been sanctified to the worship of extremely gorgeous and elite natural fibers. When plastic crosses the threshold of a place like that, the plastic is cursed to its limits. Sometimes, in rare cases, this curse has been known to exceed the plastic limits.

Ask me how I know.

Don't mess with The Fold's supermojo is all I'm saying. Next time, I'm taking cash. Lots and lots of cash, because I'm only human after all. But still. Cash.

Anyway. Silver Creek Yarns sportweight merino, color Marine. The top picture probably comes closest to representing the true depth of color. That's the cardigan back of a fitted cardigan. The cables angle in at the waistline by decreasing the reverse stockinette field between each cable, then increasing again above the waistline. This picture shows the upper part of the waist with some of the above-the-waist increasing.

The hardest part of this project so far has been related to this waist shaping. There is a single purl stitch separating the columns of cables at the narrowed waist. That single purl stitch was distorting like crazy at first. I've never had ladders in anything before, but my first go on this almost looked like a cabled clapotis. Big honking holes.

I tried ptbl and other standard fixes, but nothing gave me the result I wanted. I ended up ripping back and re-knitting and paying very, very close attention to the way that single purl stitch seated itself on the needles so that it would not distort. It was slow and tedious, but it seemed to work. I'm not 100% satisfied, but it passes the prancing pony test.

Just to complete the picture, here's a shot of the below-the-waist shaping on those cables. It's a very simple cable with a 12-row repeat, cable crossings on row 3 and 7. I like the hourglass shape that the irregular crosses give to the cable and I think it complements the shaping of the actual cardigan. (I hope! Still lots of knitting left on this one.)