A Little Knit Magic

Look at that smile. That's the smile of a man who is happy to have a hand-knit vest.

I picked my parents up from the airport tonight and was finally able to give my Dad the Wall Street vest. It's about eleven thousand degrees in my house right now (on account of the concrete sanders in the basement -- don't ask, just trust me, construction sucks and it never never never ends) but he had to try it on. That's wool. Heavily cabled wool. He knew it would cook him like a lobster in a shell, but he had to try it on anyway.

Gotta love that reaction.

It was so hot that he wouldn't wear it long enough to settle the shoulders properly, and the vest looks like it's extremely wide, but that's just because of the way he pulled it on. It's actually a good fit, though a little loose around the bottom. But that's okay. The pattern is designed to be that way.

He's still smiling. The vest was removed, neatly folded, and left out on the table so he can show people as they come by the house.

I spent half the day fighting with Shedir, tinking round after round of the crown shaping, swearing up a storm at the pattern and the yarn and at my inability to put the two together and somehow get a hat. I made a map of the stitches on the needles, and then I made a map of the pattern itself to compare it to, and I still couldn't find the fix. I was within inches of sending Shedir to jail, but I kept thinking about the poor ill woman who needs a little comfort, and how what she's going through is far worse than a few miscrossed traveling stitches. Actually, that was my pep talk. To try to keep me knitting.

It wasn't working. I was that frustrated.

But then Dad opened his gift, and I saw him light up, and I remembered why I knit for other people. They don't always appreciate it, but when they do ... magic.

And just like that, I was able to see exactly where I got off track with Shedir. The fix is surprisingly easy, just a miscrossed cable right before a decrease, which was why I couldn't see it. The decrease masked it. It's too late now to finish it, but it will be finished tomorrow.

And here's hoping it brings a little knit magic to its recipient.

Finish-Itis

Today was one of those days. I started by looking at my home office desk and moaning. Same manuscript has been sitting front and center for far too long. So I finished editing it. And that sort of inspired me to finish some other stuff that's been laying around for too long.

So I finished the above pile of shit. Don't read this book unless you want your brain to die a slow death. I don't have anything in particular against Russian literature (loved Anna Karenina) or Victorian by-the-pound novels (loved Middlemarch), but this book just flat out sucked. It's basically a murder mystery, except there's no mystery about it. All you have to do is read any random five pages of this pro-patriarchy gibberish, and you know that the bastard son is the murderer. Sins of the father and all that. And then he confesses something like 150 pages before the book ends, but they still convict the wrong brother.

But it's done now. I can cross it off my list, and I'll spare you the rest of my rant about how not one of those brothers was even remotely likeable. Unless you like cult members, drunken libertines, or arrogant snowmen.

Wait. I said I would spare you the rant.




















I also finished these. Skacel Trampoline knit toe-up on size 1.5 needles. You might have heard me bitch about these socks recently. Ahem. I had to go up to a size 6 (!!!) needle to get a decent cast-off. But I love the look and the fit and the feel, so it was worth it in the end. Even if my cast-off edge looks a bit wobbly in this picture. And in reality. But at least it won't cut off the blood flow to my feet anymore.

And then ::drumroll::

















Wall Street is finished!

::confetti::
::tootie horn::

I do have a few ends to weave, and I'd like to re-block it, but that's no big deal. It took me a few tries to get the armholes right. But I think they look okay, the neckband looks okay, and all in all, it turned out about as well as I could have hoped.

The Vitals:
Pattern: Wall Street Vest from Best of Arans and Celtics

Yarn: Filatura di Crosa 501 -- 15 balls. I have roughly 30 grams of yarn leftover. That's about 80 yards, a little over half of one ball. This means the vest actually took about 1975 yards, a dab more than the 1960 called for in the pattern. That's pretty darn close.

Started: December 29, 2006
Finished: May 28, 2007

Trips to Knitting Jail: Three. First when it gave me tendonitis, second when the shoulder decreases didn't work out even remotely well, and third when the armhole absolutely refused to be picked up in pattern. All three of those jail terms were my own fault. I tried to knit it too fast, which gave me the tendonitis for partof January and all of February. I am numerically challenged and miscalculated the shoulder decreases. (Though, in my defense, there were inconsistencies in the pattern that threw me off.) And then, finally, the armhole -- I sewed the side seams before picking up the armhole edges for the ribbing. The pattern instructs you to do the opposite -- ribbing, then sew the seams. I foolishly forgot to decrease two of the picked-up stitches (the selvedge stitches, no longer necessary if the armholes would be knit in the round) and so my 2x2 rib wouldn't come out right. (If my brain hadn't been sent into a stupor by that godawful Dostoevsky book, I might have avoided that error.)

Overall Rating: This was an easy knit and an easy pattern. I'd caution anyone making it to add two stitches, front and back, so that you can center the repeats on the cable charts. (I don't know if that's an issue in all sizes, but it was in the 52" size.) I'd also recommend doing the shoulder shaping with a less sharp downward slope on the neck side, because it puckers a little there from the cables and the neckband ribbing pulling at it. But other than that, I'd give this pattern high marks for quality and results.

Un-Seam-ly

I've run into a few bumps while seaming the vest. First is that, despite knitting the exact same number of pattern repeats up to the armholes on both front and back pieces, and despite careful blocking with a ruler (sheesh!), the selvedges are not the same length. sigh.... I'm trying to ignore what this might say about my row gauge. Seems like after about twenty years of knitting, I ought to be more consistent than that.

That was glitch number one. Glitch two? Somehow I never notice this before, but the selvedge stitches are stockinette on one piece and reverse stockinette on the other. This means the trusty mattress stitch won't quite work. After consulting the Montse Stanley book and fretting for far too long, I decided on a version of a running stitch with backstitches every two to three inches. (I'm sure Montse would not approve.)

The results are decent but not flawless. I'm sure if you look closely, you'll be able to identify the side seam here. Shoot, you probably won't even have to look closely. But even though this vest is a gift, I've decided we can all live with the result. We have no choice, really. The way the pattern is designed, the chart repeat, if followed faithfully according to instructions, isn't perfectly centered but has an extra two-stitch channel of reverse stockinette on the left border of each repeat. If I had thought the pattern through before knitting it, I could have either added or subtracted two stitches to compensate for this, and my seams would be neater. Too late for that now.

And, because glitches always come in threes, glitch number three, the granddaddy of them all, comes in at the shoulder seam. I can't show you this now because blogger only lets me publish three pictures per post, but I'll get up a picture of the shoulder seams next time.

I've just described to you how the pattern has an extra two stitches on the left of each chart repeat. If you think about it -- if I had thought about it for ten seconds before casting on -- you'll quickly realize that this means the pieces are patterned off-center, meaning the patterns can't match at the shoulder seams. They just can't. I've jacked around with these seams for around three hours tonight, and I'm giving up. I can get them to the point where they don't look like a train wreck, but I can't get them to match, and that's that.

Oh, well. Next up, ribbed armbands. But not tonight. Tonight, I need the comfort of a plain sock, around and around, nothing but knit-knit-knit for miles.

Tomorrow, The Fold. :D

Hardly Worth the Trouble

Here is the vest back. This is now my FIFTH attempt to load the damn picture. I wouldn't keep bothering over it, but it's starting to feel like the holy grail.

There are several disadvantages to knitting with black yarn. It's hard to read your work, even under good light and with bright contrasting needles. It picks up every bit of lint in a four-mile radius. And it photographs for shit.

This is the back of the Wall Street vest which is intended for my father. He's a big, burly guy and the vest is sized accordingly. 52" chest. DK weight wool. Approximately nineteen thousand four hundred seventy-two cable crossings, not that anyone resembling me counted them as she was knitting cable after cable after cable. 234 stitches across for front and back each. So 468 stitches around per row. Depending on how much yarn is consumed by neck and armhole banding, I figure this vest will take between 1900 and 1950 total yards of Filatura di Crosa 501. There are entire sweaters, wearable by normal sized adult humans, that take less yardage than that.

Okay, I may have exaggerated the number of cable crossings ever so slightly for dramatic purposes. But those other numbers are verifiably accurate. But do you want to hear the funniest number of all? I honestly thought I would have this thing knit and finished in four weeks. It ran to about double that, not including the repeat sentences to knitting jail, which lasted almost as long as the actual knitting time.

But it'll be worth it if it makes my dad happy. He's worth every last stitch.

Score 3 Points to the Imps of Inconvenience

Paroled!

Look closely at that picture, and you'll see why this project is on parole instead of completely out of knitting jail. Damn miscrossed cables. The parole officer (a/k/a/ me!) is preparing to duplicate stitch over the miscross, because the thought of tinking back this far (over 10") just makes me want to cry. And I can't ladder that far down through this particular cable pattern. There are just to many layers of cables for that.

This is what the pattern is supposed to look like. See how well-behaved these cables are? See how they arch away from each other? These cables get to go to finishing school instead of to reform school.

Here's the vest front with the shoulders ripped back to the point before my math went wonky. I figure I have another 5 or so inches of knitting on either side of the V neck, and then this is ready for blocking.

Which leads to an important question. Do I fix the miscrossed cable before or after blocking? I can think of reasons for and against either method, but would like to hear from anyone with real experience in this kind of repair.

HEADLINE: Yarn Takes Revenge On Faithless Knitter

Chicago (KPI) - Two renegade balls of Filatura di Crosa 501 confessed to crimes of mathematics against a knitter, claiming she deserved it for knitting with other wool.

The crime was committed during a regular meeting of the South Suburban Stitch-n-Bitch in full view of a half dozen shocked knitters.

"It was awful," says Becca, a founding member of the group. "One minute, the cabled vest was knitting up smoothly, and then all of a sudden, seven stitches were missing from each side of the neckline."

The vest in question is the Wall Street Vest from Best of Arans and Celtics. Authorities confirm that the neckline is indeed seven stitches too wide on either side.

"I smelled smoke," claims Bethany, "so I took my eyes off my luscious pink baby blanket in progress. I was sitting right next to Knitterary, so I probably was the first to realize her brain wires had short circuited from the bad math."

Knitterary, the victim, showed signs of severe emotional trauma in addition to the lingering after-effects of the small brain fire. "I don't understand it. I did the math twice and got the same result both times. So how can I be off by fourteen stitches?"

When Knitterary learned that her wool had done it on purpose, she wept and cursed the heavens. "Why? Why would they do this to me? Don't they understand that ripping back hurts us both?"

The wool had no comment, but rolled itself into a ball and whispered, "Hussy, hussy, hussy." Authorities say it will be sentenced to at least a week in knitting jail in the deepest darkest corner of Knitterary's closet.