sophy's knits, notes, etc.

remember the lace leaf pullover i began three years ago and frogged earlier this year? well, i frogged it again.

this time, it's going somewhere not too distant from the lace leaf pullover design, but modified to play nice with my oft-unraveled new zealand wool: knit in the round, seamless, short sleeved... essentially a sweater dress version.

almost finished with the sleeve increases.

when i began it, i thought i would knit the body of the sweater with increases along the side for an A-line shape. but, after i finished the sleeves, i thought perhaps increasing with dart-lines (or princess seams similar to this baby dress) would be a better idea; so i went with that:

here, you can see the first couple of darts... and the puffed sleeves!

it looks great from the front, but quite poofy from the back... and, since i am increasing 8 stitches every increase row (instead of 4 stitches for A-line shaping), it will only get poofier and more bell-shaped. also, i'm concerned that i won't have enough yarn for so many increases or for a sweater dress length. i need to decide if i want to continue on with this design or unravel a few rows down and knit the A-line shaping instead... what do you think?

happy friday!

p.s. i'll try not to begin all my next posts with "remember <this project that's been on the shelf for ages>?"

i finished my featherweight cardigan this morning! [ravelry]

i'll have more pictures as soon as i wash and block it. since i'm not ready to post my notes on it, i thought i'd talk about the part of the cardigan i spent the last two weeks knitting, unraveling, and knitting again: the sleeves.

keep in mind, this is a top-down seamless cardigan; they're very simple sleeves and i shortened mine to reach my elbow. at the start of the sleeve instructions, the designer gives you 3 options for knitting them:

slip held sleeve sts onto 12" circular, or spread evenly over dpns or 2 circular needles.

now that i've finished the cardigan, i don't think i recommend any of these methods. here are my not entirely objective reasons why:

12" circular needles only work if your sleeve circumference is larger than that. my upper arm is at most 11" around and i know this isn't the case for everyone. but, if you're knitting this with the specified yarn and needles, your stitches are already very loose and if you're me, you don't want to stretch them out even more on needles that are too long.

knowing this from the get-go, i actually bought a pair of 9" circular needles (so cute!) in US 6... except that after i knitted a few rows i realized these were 4.25 mm instead of 4 mm. guh. unraveled.

knitting with dpns is sometimes not comfortable for me and causes crazy ladders. i think dpns are great for knitting socks with short rows, knitting all things for a baby, or for finishing hats. but, once again because this is a laceweight yarn knit very loosely on 4 mm needles, it just seemed a lot harder to keep my stitches even when i passed from one needle to the next. progress was really slow, so halfway through one sleeve i switched over to the third method.

knitting with 2 long circular needles can be finicky, otherwise i have nothing against it. when you divide stitches between 2 circular needles to knit in the round, it's pretty likely that you're using 2 different lengths of needle, right? i mean, unless you're like me and habitually forget what lengths you have in stock, there's really no reason to have multiple circular needles of the same length. in this case, i had 36" and 24" inch needles; everytime i pulled them out of my bag, i had to untangle them from each other and from the delicate yarn.

although this is usually my preferred way to knit in-the-round, soon enough i was fed up; i removed the 24" circular needle and switched to magic loop knitting on the 36" needle.

magic loop knitting on the banks of lake merrit while i waited for erica.

with this method, i quickly finished the first sleeve. then i tried on the cardigan and decided i'd shortened the sleeve too much; it fell at least 2 inches above my elbow. i unraveled it again.

after those false starts, i actually finished both sleeves in a matter of days using only magic loop. so much faster and easier to handle... project notes soon to follow.

happy knitting!

it took a while, but this weekend, i finally knitted past the raglan shaping for the sleeves on my featherweight cardigan. here you can see the back right-side raglan:

buscando azul... i think i found it; isn't the color amazing?

it made me think over hannah fettig's tutorial for her cardigan, in which she discusses M1 increases for raglan sleeve shaping...

there's a perfectionist in me that insists on symmetry when i knit — i don't think i've ever NOT used pairs of slanted increases or decreases when shaping a garment...whether it's the side seam of a fitted pullover or a raglan yoke, it's only natural that one side should slant to the right and the other side should slant to the left. and in the case of raised slanted increases, i really don't think one requires any more effort than the other; i love the result:

a closer look at the back left-side raglan.

i've probably mentioned before that whenever i'm in doubt about a knitting technique, i typically follow interweave knits's glossary; so my right and left slanted increases were done in this manner:

M1L With left needle tip, lift strand between needles from front to back. Knit lifted loop through the back.
M1R With left needle tip, lift strand between needles from back to front. Knit lifted loop through the front.

the featherweight cardigan itself is very elegant in it's simplicity — for me, it was love at first sight. but other than raglan shaping, it's all pretty much just stockinette until you get to the edge; then, it's knit and purl ribbing... yes. you can read into this that it's not an exciting project; the tediousness is only relieved by the beauty of Malabrigo. i'm very anxious to finish this — and yet, i want to knit at least another one...

happy knitting!

nupps are those clusters of stitches that look like little bobbles or beads. they're made by increasing 1 stitch to 5 or 7 stitches. then, in the next row, working those 5 or 7 stitches all together to decrease back down to 1.

so... close... to being... finished.

without the nupps, i think i would have finished this already. they're like speed bumps; each time i get to one cluster of stitches (on the WS), i have to pause and insert the needle carefully through all of them to purl together.

but i have to admit, they do get easier as i knit more of them; or maybe i'm getting the hang of how loosely i need to increase in one row, to make the decreasing easier in the next.

and you know what?—the lily of the valley lace pattern wouldn't look the same without 'em.

nupps are those clusters of stitches that look like little bobbles or beads. they're made by increasing 1 stitch to 5 or 7 stitches. then, in the next row, working those 5 or 7 stitches all together to decrease back down to 1.

so... close... to being... finished.

without the nupps, i think i would have finished this already. they're like speed bumps; each time i get to one cluster of stitches (on the WS), i have to pause and insert the needle carefully through all of them to purl together.

but i have to admit, they do get easier as i knit more of them; or maybe i'm getting the hang of how loosely i need to increase in one row, to make the decreasing easier in the next.

and you know what?—the lily of the valley lace pattern wouldn't look the same without 'em.

I first learned the tubular cast-on when I knitted Eunny Jang's endpaper mitts. I thought it was awesome, if just a bit awkward to begin. I mean, if you remember, the method she references for this technique (the Italian Tubular Cast-on) required alternately wrapping the tail-end and working yarn under and over a single straight needle. Sounds pretty finicky, right? But, once you got the hang of it, you could easily speed through the entire process.

That was really the only technique I used for tubular cast-ons. I even referred to the same method when writing my pattern for Kim's Tasseled hat. It worked, so I never researched other methods.

Well, a few weeks ago, during one crafting salon event, Hilary showed me another method. A method so much simpler then the first. A method that produced a much cleaner (i think) cast-on edge. I was enthralled. Of course, at the time we were watching Mistress of Spices so I wasn't really paying too much attention. I'm sure that a few details are missing, but I did understand it went something like:

• Use a crochet hook and waste yarn to chain half the number of cast-on stitches required for your project.
• Using knitting needles pick up stitches and knit two rows in stockinette.
• Knit the next row, alternating between knitting from your working row and knitting into the back loop of a stitch picked up from the cast-on edge.
• When all stitches are knit, you have the required number for your project and you can pull out the crocheted waste yarn.

During my ill-fated attempt to knit a simple ankle sock last week, I didn't have a crochet hook handy so, naturally, defaulted to the old tried-and-true familiar technique. You know what happened there.

I guess it was the motivation I needed to look up better cast-on techniques. In the end, I used the method Hilary described mashed-up with a technique Anna Bell describes (with very detailed photos). Talk about simplicity.

I've started working on some small baby items (which I can't wait to share with everyone). And when it comes to baby items, I want stretchy edges and little or no seaming. Can you see how it all falls into place?

More to share soon.