Completed Katarina

Within the course of a week, I finished two projects! It feels so good to get things completed and to have two in one week feels doubly good.

This time around, I finished Katarina by CocoKnits out of Cascade Greenland, which is a discontinued yarn, but of which I have at least 3 sweater's worth in my Stash. I love Julie Weisenberger's aesthetic, and this sweater is no exception.

There's a seamless version of this sweater, but I chose to knit the seamed version. I don't mind seaming and I knit this in pieces as a substitute for my sock knitting at work. Because I did it piecemeal, it  meant that I could finish it a bit faster as it was always accompanying me to different places. (I also prefer having a bit more structure to my knitted garments that seaming affords).

While the body of the sweater took very little time, the garter stitch shawl collar took forever to finish and was fairly boring to knit. I also did some short-rows along the collar because I wanted the collar to have more substance and to stand a bit taller.

Consequently, I ended up working on the Viajante instead or reserved the Katarina for mindless t.v. knitting whenever we binge watched on Netflix or Hulu. However, I'm very pleased with how the collar turned out.

Here's the final sweater on me. It fits perfectly.

And the Greenland softened up considerably after washing it. I didn't quite block the sweater, but rather threw it into the dryer. It handled the dryer very well and didn't lose any of its shape.

Hawaiian Waters Cardigan -- First FO of 2017!

Before we left for vacation, I started working on a new cardigan, Watercourse by Carina Spencer. 
I had the opportunity to try on this cardigan while at Stitches two years ago, and I fell in love with the sample. I knew I had to knit it.

However, it was fraught with mistakes of my own making and I ended up tinking back multiple times and frogging back at least once. But, it did become my very first finished object for 2017!!

For this sweater, I used Malabrigo yarn for the very first time. I had this yarn in my stash from an impulse buy ....to my credit, the yarn was on sale. And luckily, I had just enough for this project. I have to say, this yarn is just simply amazing to use for knitting. It has a superb hand and feel. I can see why so many knitters love this yarn.

I had a hard time getting gauge (pre-block), so I used several different sized needles. It bloomed a lot after washing, and I definitely got gauge with a US 6.

My Knit Companion app makes keeping track easy. It was only coincidence that the yarn I selected was the same color as the pattern.

I knit on this cardigan throughout our Hawaiian vacation. The blue was nearly the same color as many of the beaches we visited.

The pattern itself is well written. There are a few mistakes in the ribbing pattern, especially as it transitions from one part of the pattern to another, but if you're very careful, you can tell where it goes off and catch it quickly -- unless you're like me and aren't paying attention, and therefore have to tink back a couple of rows to fix the issue.

Or in one case, I had to rip back about 10 inches, because I put the waist decreases in the completely wrong place. I almost threw the entire project in the time-out bin. However, the only saving grace was that

1. I wanted this sweater.
2. Malabrigo yarn is amazing and is such a joy to knit.

After much teeth gnashing, I eventually I got to the point where I was finished with the body. I was very happy

The instructions for knitting the sleeve cap is rather clever and one that reminds me of a set-in sleeve for sewing. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn to do both the sleeves and a deep enough hood, so I started with the sleeves first.

In the end, it turned out that I had more than enough yarn so I have enough for any repairs, if needed. I knew that the finished sweater would grow slightly once I washed and blocked it, and it did!

It grew slightly in length and width, but I prefer it that way.

And the hood grew slightly too, which I wanted. Many Ravelers had lamented that the hood was a bit too shallow per the original instructions so I had made it longer and deeper while knitting.

I'm so very glad that I finished this cardigan!  It's going to prove rather stylish and versatile in the office, especially with our wonky A/C and heat issues.

I love the color. It'll always remind me of our vacation.

Sweater Inspirations

This is an older project that I finished back in July but have only finished writing up recently over the holidays.

About a year ago, I saw a sweater in a shop that I absolutely loved, but all of the sizing was a it too large (and much too expensive) for me. However, I thought, I'm a knitter! I can make something like this or at least an interpretation, thereof.

The elements that I really liked are the colorwork sleeves and the shawl/cowl neck. With these elements in mind, I looked for appropriate yarn & colors at Stitches 2016 (even before I knew what pattern to use). I bought enough yardage to complete whatever pattern (sans cables) that I could find.

 

Luckily, I made a huge swatch of this yarn -- i.e. a hat -- and discovered a problem with the yarn, which was not-quite-set red. It was heartbreaking, but at least I found out about the problem before I knit the entire sweater.

After solving the yarn issue, I looked around Ravelry for a base pattern that I could use. Eventually, I decided on the pattern On the Beach by Isabelle Kraemer.

I like v-neck sweaters that are somewhat fitted -- not quite the cowl neck and boxy look of the original, but mine would be an interpretation. I also decided to make a matching cowl, because I wanted to the option to remove it when I got warm. After all, I live in California and the weather never gets as cold as it does back East.

After some planning and sketches, I eventually came out with this sweater.  I initially had problems with shoulder increase of the sweater, but that was mostly due to my lack of understanding. I had to re-do the shoulders three times before I got the hang of the construction.

I also made a matching cowl using the Big Herringbone Cowl by Purl Soho. The pattern was exremely simple, and I double stitched the line color work going up the side (also to hide a funky beginning of the round changes).

Overall, it's a loveliy sweater, and I've gotten a few good uses out of it.

Last Finished Object of the Year: Red Iced Cardigan

Well, the sweater that I was trying to get finished in two weeks...didn't. However, it did get finished on Christmas day; a small present to myself. It took a total of 21 days to finish this sweater, which all things considering, isn't too shabby.

I really did try to get it finished in 14 days. At day 15 (December 16th), it looked like this:

It wasn't quite done, but it definitely looked like a sweater. I had finished the whole body including the sleeves. But the shawl collar wasn't anywhere near started. 

However, I had to put it aside because we were going to be hosting a Christmas Eve dinner at our house. There was a LOT to get done, which wasn't going to happen if I knitted on the sweater.

Part of the house cleaning involved completing the organization of the craft room, which meant that a lot of stuff would get taken out of the dining room (i.e. off the dining room table), which meant that we could actually using the dining table AS a table. (I'll post about THAT later...)

Insofar as this sweater, I really loved this pattern. It was extremely simple, yet elegant and functional. The seed stitch looks awesome on the shawl. There's a bit of waist shaping so that, despite it being a chunky yarn, it is slightly fitted. 

I LOVE the yarn too -- Queensland Chunky Kathmandu -- is a Merino, Cashmere, Silk blend. It's warm AND soft. Heck, I wore it a few times before I got around to putting buttons on it.

Finding the right buttons was a bit of a challenge. I went through my button box and tried a few that I had. I picked these out as they seemed to work, but I'm not even sure that I like the buttons. The jacket was perfectly serviceable without them.

I might replace the buttons at a later date, when and if I can find something more appropriate. But for now, these will do.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE this sweater?

Quick Knit Sweater

After the disaster with my sock that I put into time-out, I wanted to start a quick knit project, preferably another sweater that just involved stockinette. (It's been COLD lately.) So, I went to my Ravelry queue and looked at projects for which I had yarn.

I came across, ICED, on Knitty. It pretty much met my requirements.

• I had the yarn, which was Queensland Kathmandu Chunky (merino, cashmere, and silk). 
• It was a sweater.
• It was primarily stockinette.
• Many Ravelers said that it was a really quick knit.

So, on a Friday evening, I swatched and got gauge at a US 10.5 (after steam blocking).

I pretty much knit on it non-stop over the entire weekend, which gave me half a sweater. I knitted at work during meetings, and even at the Mythbusters tour.

By Wednesday, I had the full body of the sweater completed, including adding pockets!

I still need to add the sleeves and collar, but if this continues at this pace, I'll have finished a sweater in two weeks! Woohoo

Gift Crafting for 2015

My gift knitting is usually pretty sparse and limited to extremely close friends & family who are "knit-worthy" and whom I know will use their hand-made gifts. And I spread them out throughout the year as in-between projects.

However, this past month, it seems that I have been gift knitting a lot as a form of procrastination on my existing larger projects (two sweaters and a shawl).

First, I made a hat for a dear friend who is going to be spending a summer internship on a boat doing marine geology.  Consequently, I had to knit her a Jacques Cousteau hat! As she was slated to go out on the boat in June, I had to finish before she packed up and moved!

When she received it, she immediately sent me a text telling me she loved it and that it had been a big picker-upper for her as she is bogged down with school, finals, and the ilk. That made me feel good.

For another, a friend whom I've known for more years than I care to count was going to have a baby. I'm normally not one for knitting baby things, but I found one that was cute and (supposedly) a quick knit. It was definitely "cute", but not necessarily a quick knit for a variety of reasons  --- including not being able to count and running out of yarn, which was discontinued and having to scour the internets for another skein...which luckily I found. But, it got done. The baby is due in June, so it also had to get done relatively quickly.

I also found some cute dog buttons. Both parents are very dog-friendly, and the baby's older brother is a wonderful dog named Hank.

For them, I also found an almost-completed pieced quilt. It had been pieced together, but not quilted together. It was about the size of a baby blanket or mat.

 I took it home and (badly) quilted it together.

And the not-last project that I'm currently working on are holiday gifts. My BIL is a big San Diego Chargers fan, so I'm knitting up Charger themed hats for him as he loves knitted hats (and he is one of those people for whom buying gifts is difficult).

I've also got one more gift project on the needles, but since I'm not quite done with it yet, and the recipient might be reading this blog, I'll not mention it quite yet. :-)

Finishing a 5-Month Sweater

After more than few months, I finally finished my 3-in-1 Sweater by Atelier Alfa. It's made with Cascade 220 Superwash Sport. It's so soft.  I started this sweater back in October 2014!!!  I remember when I could finish a sweater in under two months, but then again, I used to have a one-hour one-way commute. Now, I have a 15-minute commute and 5-month-sweaters.  I think I can live with the trade-off. (Maybe....)

Of course, now that I've finished said sweater, the weather is gorgeous outside...and WARM....very warm; the type of weather where people wear t-shirts & shorts outside, not sweaters. Ah well.

When I finally bound off everything and wove in all the loose ends, I found that I had a problem. I had absolutely no buttons that would work with this sweater, despite having a fairly large collection of buttons.

I'm sure there must be some a law somewhere that says you will never have the right buttons for your project, despite your overly large button stash.

So, I had to go to the store to get buttons. It's always a chore to decide what type of buttons to get. The store has so many to choose from, but it's a matter of size and availability. I eventually  chose red ones for some contrast, although, admittedly, the red button on red fabric doesn't show up all that well. I thought to put contrasting green one on the red fabric, but I didn't think it looked all that great.

It's a bit longer than I had anticipated (a little past butt length), but I don't mind it. I also lengthened out the sleeves so I could add thumbholes or fold it into a cuff.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I think it'll look great with jeans or some black leggings. Now, I just have to wait for it to get cold again.

My Opus Medius -- Finishing my Aran Sweater.

Remember the St. Brigid sweater by Alice Starmore that I started nearly two years ago? Well, this past weekend, despite, many trials and tribulations, I finally finished it! (kinda sorta).

This cardigan has become somewhat of a opus magnus for me. (Okay, maybe not quite opus magnus, more like opus medius....) Nothing about it was overly complicated, but, it did take a lot of work and effort to finish. It is definitely one of those things on my knitting bucket list that I can now cross off -- completing an Aran sweater!

But, before I could cross it off, I still had some finishing work that needed to be completed over the weekend. And I was very determined to finish this cardigan!

First, I had to do surgery on the sleeves that were much too long for me. My Viking had helped me determine where the sleeve needed to end.  I cut nearly four inches off, and then proceeded to tink back several rows.

Then carefully seamed the sleeve band onto the sleeve.

This process took nearly two entire weeknight evenings to complete. After work, I would eat dinner, then sit down and work on a sleeve. The cutting of the sleeve was quick. The tinking back to the appropriate location took a while to finish. And I had to carefully graft the band onto the sleeve.

At this point, the cardigan looked pretty darn good....or so I thought. When the weekend rolled around, I hoped to have the cardigan fully completed and wearable after the weekend. At one point during the weekend, I wasn't sure I was going to live up to that early expectation!

The nearly finished cardigan...or so I thought

The second thing I did was all of the necessary finishing work, including:

• Putting an edging treatment on the sides of the cardigan to keep it from rolling and to add a zipper later.
• Reinforcing the seams (shoulder, side, and neck) with a single crochet. (For how's and why's, see this article by Tech Knitter or this old blog post by the Yarn Harlot).
• Adding grosgrain ribbon down the length of the saddle shoulder.
• Adding grosgrain ribbon along the edges of the cardigan.
• Adding a backing ribbon on the sleeve cuffs and collar.

I used Nancy Wiseman's book, "The Knitters Book of Finishing Techniques" to help guide me.

It was a lot of extra work, but the extra finishing work that I put into this sweater helped take it to the next level. I actually finished one side first (all the seam reinforcements, etc), and wore the garment for my Viking. He told me he could see a difference in the finishing work, and pointed to the correct side that I just completed.

Finishing Work Details

Edging Treatment: For the edging treatment, I was undecided between an icord edging or using a crochet edging. There are pros & cons to both, and the hive-mind of Facebook suggested using icord. I took my original swatch for this sweater and tried both things, and found I could get the look of an icord using a crochet hook with a lot less hassle. I completed both sides.

Sleeve Band Facing: At my local sewing store, I found a pretty ribbon (width= 2 inches/5cm) that I wanted to use as a neckband and facing to the sleeves. The ribbon has very little give so would act like grosgrain.

Sleeve cuff band

Attack of the Sweater

At this point, I tried it on, and saw my first big issue. If you look at the photo of the finished cardigan above, you'll notice something about the collar. It's TOO BIG. I tried to fix it....using darts, taking it in at the back of the collar, but to no avail. The collar band was simply too big by nearly 10 inches, and I was going to have to completely undo a lot of the work that took me a few hours to complete.

Why 10 inches? Because I measured the length of the seamed body and came up with a number (26 inches). However, where I wanted it to sit only required 17.5 inches of collar......

Isn't amazing how it only takes 20 minutes to undo about 2.5 hours worth of work?!? Ugh...I was kicking myself while I ripped out the edging and remove the collar. My Viking was nice enough to help me figure out how much of the collar to rip out. I put the sweater on myself, where I wanted it to sit, then he took the collar and marked where it should end. The collar was SIX inches too big.

I pinned the sweater on my dress dummy, Esmerelda (or maybe Harley? Or Morticia? I have still yet to decide....), where I wanted it to sit as the finished garment, and pinned the collar to it. There was some easing that needed to occur, but it wasn't too bad.

Afterwards, I seamed the collar onto the body with the aforementioned easing. I added seam reinforcement to the back of the neck, and then added the crochet pseudo icord back.

Neck Band Facing: With the neck finally completed (and sitting correctly), I added the grosgrain ribbon and neck facing. The grosgrain and crochet seam reinforcement would help keep the saddle shoulders from slipping and stay where they should when I wear the cardigan.

Grosgrain down the side saddle (along with seam reinforcement)

The ribbon would add additional structure to the collar and keep it from flopping over.

Neck band with the edging grosgrain pinned to a tailor's ham

It's looking pretty darn sharp! I really like the splash of color that the ribbon gives.

Now, I just need to find an appropriate length zipper in a matching color. My local sewing supply store didn't have them in the correct length of a matching or similar color. Nor did any of the other colors work. :-(

I love these cables!

As a costumer, I know how much finishing work can make or break your costume.
I'm really pleased with how much the finishing work helped pull the cardigan together....even if it took two days to finish all of the finishing work! For a sweater that took nearly two years to complete, what's an extra two days?

I might wear it as is, until I find a zipper of the right color / length. I'm extremely happy with it.

Could this be one of my opus magnus? I'm not sure yet. I'll let you know when I work on something far more complicated.

FO Wrap up!

I'm a bit behind on my blogging activities as of late, mostly because I've been knitting and have managed to finish a few projects that have been languishing on the needles. I'm also still working on my quiver, but I'm missing some hardware that I need to buy, so that project is languishing now until I can get to the store.

First, I finished my Ribby Cardigan by Bonne Marie Burns using Cascade Greenland (discontinued). It came out lovely. I added grosgrain ribbon to the edge, but have not yet put in a zipper because I can't seem to find one in the right size or appropriate color (either matching or contrasting). However, I have worn it a few times without it as I tend not to close my cardigans.

I also finished a hat, but it's for a gift for someone who reads this blog, so I can't post it here. In addition, I've been working on socks, and used my cat as a prop for a photo of the finished object.

Of course, when he woke up, he was like, "What is this? SOCKS? Nom nom nom!"

(He actually didn't hurt the socks, but it was a cute photo.)

Ravellenics Victory!

This weekend, I went off to Gallifrey One, the Doctor Who convention. As there was going to be a lot of waiting at the airport, it was a good chance to continue with my Ravellenics project. I brought my I had wound up half of a cake of new skein of yarn, figuring it would be enough.

Here's the sleeve at the airport, waiting for our flight. I'm done with 5/6 cables for the main body of the sleeve.

At Gallifrey, I managed to get some knitting time in at various panels, interviews, and at dinner/lunches. There were some hiccups, including one where I had to drop down 8 rows to fix mis-crossed cable. Plus, I kept looking at the shrinking ball of yarn, hoping I had brought enough. (I also brought my Color Affection with me, so I had plenty of knitting, but I really wanted to finish this sleeve!)

At one point, I actually stopped knitting on this project and picked up the Color Affection because I was very concerned about not having enough yarn. However, I did pick it up again at the airport on my way home, because, at least if I ran out of yarn, I'd be closer to getting it done and I'd be home in few hours.

LUCKILY, I managed to finish all 8 inches (~20.5cm) of lenght with about 12 inches of yarn left to spare!

I have to say, these black airport chairs at LAX are very uncomfortable. I had to keep getting up every 20-30 minutes to stretch out. Here's the entire sleeve, bound off, along with some of my carry-on luggage (filled with knitting, naturally!)

 

 Finished the second sleeve! And by the grace of the knitting gods, it matches the first sleeve.