Overcaffeinated

I'm handing in a first draft of my licentiate thesis (see Sweden) to my supervisor on wednesday. This means that I am at the office writing like the wind (or should be). There is much caffeine and a whole bunch of sugar in my body. Why is it that without a deadline, one tends to procrastinate, and then once a deadline appears on the horizon you do the same amount of work in two days that would have taken weeks in the state of procrastination? It amazes me every time.

But enough about me. Here's a picture of beaded wrist warmers that I finished ages ago but forgot to blog. Naturally, this is the time I get the urge to tell you about it - when I should be doing something entirely different. How typical.

Specs:

• Pattern: based on a pattern in Håndplagg.
• Yarn: Baby garn from Gjestal.
• Needles: 1.5 mm.
• Start-finish: I forget.
• Modifications: Bead pattern adapted to single colored beads.
• Weight: 26 g.

There was a small surprise when I washed them, the paint on some of the beads disappeared, leaving behind the brightest yellow color you could imagine. I will only be using pure glass beads from now on, I can assure you.

Total stash reduction: 1160 g.

Now, back to thesis.

The Bubble Pullover

I finished sewing the buttons on the bubble pullover on monday and have been wearing it every day since. We've had chilly weather lately which is sort of perfect because this is officially my new favourite sweater!

It was an enjoyable knit, the body is made up of pentagons, you start with one and after finishing that one you pick up stitches for the next one, and so on and so forth, as they say. This keeps you entertained and is a welcome relief from the bottom up approach. The risk with the sweater construction is that it's very difficult to see how it's turning out, and there really is no way of knowing until you've finished, washed and dried it. I was pretty convinced that mine wouldn't turn out at all like I wanted it too. I was aiming for a baggy style like the one on the photo in the book, but it looked like I was getting a considerably smaller size. I put all my hope on the washing - the yarn I used (Nalle) is quite stiff when knit up, but softens a lot when you wash it.

Well, turns out that it's absolutely perfect! Not baggy, but I really like the tighter fit.

Specs:

• Pattern: Bubble Pullover from Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan.


• Yarn: Novita Nalle (75% wool, 25% polyamide, 390 m/150 g skein) held double, 4 skeins.


• Needles: 3.5 mm for ribbing, 4 mm for pentagons and 4.5 mm for sleeves.


• Start-finish: April 7-23.


• Modifications: Did the sleeves in the round to the armholes.


• Weight: 598 g.

The sweater used up 600 g of my large Nalle stash but I still have 850 g left! I could knit myself a hat, a scarf, a pair of mittens, a pair of knee-high socks and possibly pants, and go around town like a crazy fan of handknit, heathered green outfits. I think I won't, though. I don't want to get sick of the color, which I like a lot. Oh, and knitted pants arent really something I'd wear... I think.

Total stash reduction: 1134 g.

Sock trouble

A few weeks ago I met Terhi (of mustaa villaa) for coffee. I don't know any knitters in Finland so it was really nice to meet up with her and do some social knitting (and of course discuss the merits of different yarns and admire each others work). It was fun to get to know the person behind the blog - and she's a very nice person.

She was working on a sock from the Hedera pattern and I fell for it. I have some variegated Koigu that I've wondered what to do with. I didn't feel like doing plain socks and Hedera, with it's simple lace columns, was a perfect fit. A few days later I started it, copycat me.

I made the leg portion a little bit longer than in the pattern, remembering that the last time I used Koigu I had a lot of yarn left over. (One shouldn't waste Koigu, right? At least not when one had to fly across the Atlantic to get it!) After the leg was done, I knitted the heel as instructed, not thinking about the fact that the heel on this sock is very high, and the gussets crazy long. I worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn to complete the sock. I have about 12 g left.

Yesterday I was thinking about the dilemma and the two roads I can take. I could weigh the yarn I have left, calculate the number of stitches I have knitted and have yet to knit, and use that information to estimate how much yarn I'll need to finish. The second option would be to try the method I've read about on countless blogs: knit as fast as you can to outknit the end of the ball. I couldn't decide.

I then tried the sock on and found out that the heel is actually too high and the gussets too long, so it seems that a decision has been made for me. I'll take a few days off before I rip back my work, though. A few days will help me feel a tiny bit more indifferent about it. The important word there being tiny.

Oops, another sweater!

Sometime last year I bought Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan. I was captivated by the designs, and there were several designs that I really wanted to knit from it. The pattern that I got most enthusiastic about was the Ram's Horn Jacket, and I decided that was to be my first (of many) projects from the book.

A while later I was at a local yarn store when I spotted a sales bin filled with Novita Nalle in a heathered green colorway and I love heathered colorways. Although Nalle is essentially a sock yarn (approx fingering weight), I thought that it might work to knit with two strands to get a suitable gauge, so I bought 10 skeins of it. Just in case. Not remembering that each skein is gigantic, weighing 150 g (5.3 oz) and containing 390 meters (426 yards) of yarn. Yes, I had almost 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) of heathered green Nalle.

It took a while before I started seriously thinking about casting on for the Jacket. It was precisely when I realized that I would be shipping stuff back to Iceland soon, and packing 10 skeins of Nalle seemed ... weird. So I swatched, swatched some more, and swatched yet some more. I couldn't get gauge. Either I had the perfect stitch gauge with the row gauge way off, or the opposite. I was frustrated.

I gave up and looked throught the book some more, since there are several sweaters in it that I'd like to knit some day. Turns out that my gauge fitted to a lot of them, and in the end I chose the Bubble Pullover.

I have to admit that the picture you see here is old. I took it last weekend, but my camera ran out of batteries before I could upload the photos to the laptop. Then I kept forgetting to buy new batteries. I actually finished the sweater yesterday, and it's blocking right now. I went to a local market yesterday and got some buttons that I think will fit really nicely. It should be dry by tomorrow.

Acceptance

Thank you for your helpful comments about the washing of my sweater. I hadn't thought about the thickening of the fabric when you felt, so it was most appreciated that many of you pointed that out to me. I have accepted my poor child as it is.

I did run a swatch through the wool program on my machine, and indeed, as Sonja mentioned in the comments, it didn't felt at all. I'm just sceptical about wool programs. I also used to be sceptical about superwash wool. It took me a while to dare to wash my socks in the machine. I handwashed them all the time, but now I've accepted that superwash wool is really machine-washable. Clever stuff!

Righty-o. The sweater.

Specs:

• Pattern: My own, colorwork pattern based on a design from Lopi #12.


• Yarn: Plötulopi from Ístex, colorways 1038 (light) and 1422 (dark).


• Needles: 3.5 mm's for ribbing, 4 mm's for stockinette.


• Weight: 536 g.

I see that it's good to start a stash reduction effort with a sweater, my stash has lost 536 grams, just over half a kilo. That makes me feel real good.

In the pictures, the darker color just looks dark but if you look closer, it's actually a really pretty heathered colorway. I'm thinking it even deserves a whole sweater for itself, someday.

Detour

I'm having bad sweater karma these days. Perhaps you remember the sweater of giants? That didn't quite happen again, but a milder version of the same phenomenon. After my new Lopi cardigan was dry, I tried it on and found out that it was a fair bit larger than I had planned. It seems that I was feeling more relaxed than anticipated when I knitted it, because my gauge is larger than on the swatch (a.k.a. the sleeves). So instead of a tight, fitted sweater I got one that is a bit baggy and I'm not sure I like it.

Because of the looser gauge, the yoke is too deep, which means that the sleeves sit lower and are therefore too long. This Easter sunday I finally sat down with the disappointment that is this cardigan, sewed on the buttons and shortened the sleeves. I wanted to keep the old ribbing on the bottom of the sleeves because a new one would be knitted in the opposite direction (top down) and there would be a difference between the sleeve and the body ribbing. What I did was to cut the yarn in one place, after securing stitches on either side of the gap, and proceeded to rip out my own hard work. I have to admit that it was sort of fun!

Then I ripped and ended up with a separate cuff

Finally, I grafted the two sleeve pieces together. It worked beautifully...

... except for one thing that I can only blame on my own stupidity. I had marked off the correct length of the sleeve and when ripping, I stopped at that spot. Then I grafted the ribbing to the sleeve, except the ribbing of course adds about 2.5 cm (1 inch) so the sleeves are still a little too long! Grrrreat.

Right now I'm running a swatch through the wool program of my washing machine and hoping that it shrinks a little. If it does, I'll wash the sweater too, and see if I can get a tad smaller size. If anyone has concrete reasons as to why I should really not do that, please speak up! :-)

Sweater for summer

So. What do you do when you face seaming together the ends of a beaded pulsewarmer and after trying 5 different seams conclude that they all look like shit? Well, you start thinking that maybe button bands aren't that bad after all. So you do them and suddenly find yourself having a cardigan blocking!

Nothing goes better with a nice cup of Espresso Brutale than the smell of wet wool. And there's no better time to finish a thick wool sweater than the beginning of summer when you start sweating just looking at the thing. Luckily I'm moving back to Iceland soon... the country where you need a thick sweater in summer too. Hail to shitty weather!

I've already picked out my next big project and found some stash yarn for it. I'm making another long shawl, there's just something about them.

Since I'll have to ship a bunch of stuff to Iceland when I move, I'm trying to use up as much stash as possible. I know I'll have just as much wool to pack, but the shipping rates go by volume, and knitted stuff packs better than skeins. Although I realized a while ago that skeins will make a perfect padding material for fragile boxes. Anyhoo, I think I'm going to do what I've seen Fríða do, to record the weight of used stash. It will be interesting to see how much I'll manage to knit up in the next few months.

This doesn't mean I'm on a yarn diet. On the contrary, I might buy a whole lot of yarn just before I move. There are some lovely yarns available in Finland that aren't sold in Iceland, and I have to stock up. When I have finished all that I bring with me, I have a backup plan. I've been strategically doing my friend Markus a bunch of favours in the past year, like babysitting his cats and such, just so that I'll be able to make him send me yarn when I'm back in Iceland. I'm a devious girl.