Knit-Forever Cotswold Sweater Started!

Yes, I have finally started the much-anticipated Cotswold project! Since I have lots of yardage between the two balls I decided I would knit a sweater and I fully expect it will take forever to finish because the yarn is so fine, thus the name! LOL! My Luxury fiber sweater was a drop shoulder so I decided this time I would knit an Elizabeth Zimmerman-style yoke sweater.

 

I am going to model it after EZ's Spiral Yoke Sweater on this video and this free Lion Brand pattern #50894 Ultimate Sweater. I will make the bottom section out of the grey and the upper yoke from the white. I haven't planned much more than that right now.

Then I did the usual; cast on an indeterminate number of stitches, knit for a bit, changed needles twice until I liked the fabric, came up with a rough gauge and then cast on for a sleeve cuff. I ripped it out, but only once because it was going to be too small. I used the tried and true 1x1 ribbing, making the knit stitches through the back loop so it was springy and firm.

I settled on 3mm needles, which for me, is very small - smaller, in fact, than for the Luxury yarn sweater at 3.5mm. That means many rows and many, many stitches to the vertical inch. It will, indeed, be a Knit-Forever sweater! But I don't mind - really! I'm still way too self-satisfied with using my own handspun to mind how many months it's going to take to finish one sleeve, never mind the whole sweater! Ha! This is mostly because I can't sit and knit for hours with such fine material or my hands complain for a long time, so it's become my sit-for-a-minute-and-knit project. Surprising how many rows I actually get done in a day, even just doing that. Behold the progress over about 10 days...

It's not baby-bottom soft but it does have a very pleasing hand and it will NOT be a sandpaper sweater. So don't expect it to grow by leaps and bounds but I promise to post it's progress occasionally. This is, after all, Chronicles of the Lazy Knitter - and I'm not likely to be racing to the finish line with this one! Cheers all!

I Earned The Title Queen Nerd - Yay!

A Small Town Half An Hour From Us.....

Friday Freebie Boyfirend Sweater

I don't often post crochet projects as the Friday Freebie but this gorgeous sweater from Caron yarns is a real stunner! They named it the Boyfriend Sweater because of the "sweater curse" which centers around the idea that knitting your beau a sweater which effectively spells the doom of the relationship. They figured this garment would beat the curse because it's crocheted not knit. They also added that if the relationship bites it anyways the sweater will look great on you too! LOL!!

 

I think what I like best about this pattern is that it doesn't really look like crochet. One of the biggest reasons I would never make a crochet sweater is because of it's basically hole-y fabric. You have to wear something under it or everone will see everything under it! These stitches at this gauge make a pleasing fairly solid fabric and I really like the subdued palette too!

Note Card Site Up and Running!

It only took about 6 hours and 2 trips to the neighbor's to use the internet but my new notecard site is finished! (Yes, our internet is THAT bad that the site-builder interface won't load here!). Not especially elegant but certainly functional and I guess that's the main thing! I have also ammended my blog sidebar with the address. If you're wondering why the rush to get it set up, I signed up to be a contributor this month to the Phat Fiber boxes and in it I included tags with both my Etsy Shop and my note card website, which at the time was only a domain name! Eeep! 

If you haven't heard of Phat Fiber, where have you been??? I first read about them in Knitter's Review a little while back. They accept merchandise samples (minimum 1/4 oz of fiber), including things like stitch markers, handspun yarns, discount coupons and everything else fiber-related you can think of. They advertise a lot and even have a Yahoo Group and newsletter which lets subscribers know when the boxes are available for purchase. They sell out within minutes! Last month they sold over 150 boxes! Anyways, I thought it would be a great opportunity for exposure so I sent off a box of individually packaged and tagged cards as well as a deck of business cards to go in this month's boxes. The theme this month is "Master Painters" - referring to indie dyers but the gal I talked to said my cards qualify (LOL!! how funny is that?) so on top of "everything else" going on right now I spent an afternoon packaging things up and then 2 more afternoons re-sizing images, making Paypal item-specific buttons etc etc - in fact I even have my own browser address bar icon for the site. If you go there you will see a little blue box with GP on the page tab and in the address bar of your browser (I'm so proud - I made it myself!). Whew! So, back to work now! LOL! Have a peek, eh? Your feedback is always welcome! Cheers!

http://www.gloriapatre.com

Introduction to Brioche Stitch

I'm not much of one for filling in surveys but since I have a Venture One account with Canada Post I was sent a request to participate in a rather extensive one. Naturally I wasn't too keen - until I read down the page a bit and found out they were offering a $75 gift certificate to Amazon.ca for completing it! Sign me up! LOL!
So although I still believe I own every knitting book I'll ever need or want, I used part of the gift cert to purchase this...

 

The Essential Guide to the Brioche Stitch. I admit I was half expecting it to be a lot like Knit One Below but to my amazement it is a thick (256 pages) of technique, detailed photographs and beautiful patterns! I had no idea there were so many variations on the Brioche stitch, never mind 2, 3, and 4 color techniques! The publisher was generous in excess with the photographs, which are large and comfortably laid out. The type font is not the typical itty-bitty book type either! It's like the most knowledgeable, patient teacher in the world giving you 100% of their attention. If you can't learn brioche from this book you'll never catch on!

In short, I'm tickled with it! It makes me want to drop everything and knit a few swatches... like I have time for that right now... *sigh!* but some day I will, I just know I will!

Vine Yoke Cardi Progress

I've been posting about so many other things, but now that the luxury yarn sweater is done I've turned (part of) my knitting attentions to the Vine Yoke cardi. In spite of the rather dubious start with the button hole band I am really enjoying knitting this sweater. First, it's in a worsted weight - so after the luxury sweater's very fine yarn this thing seems to be just flying off my needles! Second, even though it's knit flat, the main body is garter stitch so I'm not missing purling one bit! 

 

This is the right front. I realized after that I should have taken this photo before I put the yoke stitches on a holder - d'uh - so the yoke pattern would show! 

As with so many of Ysolda's designs, this has a very interesting construction; it is knit sideways with almost no seaming which is why it starts with the button band. The leaf lace pattern is very simple but it's the kind that makes a sturdy decoration which I really like in a sweater. If I want flimsy, I'll knit a shawl - sweaters need to be able to bear the wear and tear of garment life - especially one like this which is outer wear.

So far I am managing to work with the reclaimed yarn without too much difficulty. I know that sometimes it is desirable to steam out the kinks from it's previous life but this yarn is so nice and firm it isn't difficult to make it behave. The only real annoyance is that I am finding out that my daughter was more concerned with dismantling the sweater than saving the yarn. Every time she had a tangle she just snipped the yarn, sorted it out and then tied a knot and continued winding. It's not so bad when the distance between knots is long but it certainly tests my patience when there are four knots with about 4 or 5 yards of yarn between each! *sigh* I can say with confidence that I am becoming an expert at knitting in ends! LOL!

 

My other happy note is that I started with the biggest ball she wound and I have made the right front and will probably make most of the first sleeve before it's used up so I am fairly confident I can get the entire sweater out of the yarn I have. I mean, when I started I was pretty sure I had enough - now I'm almost positive. Yes, I'm tempting fate but life is too short not to take a few risks, right? Ha!

I do have a little insurance plan though - the pattern, as written, makes elbow length sleeves with an edge that matches the hem. I have this thing about being old and cold so I want long sleeves. I am going to make the sleeves as per the pattern but without the edging. When I'm done the sweater I'll pick up stitches and make the sleeves the length I want, This way, if I'm a bit short on yarn I can always do it in a complimentary color since I do have more in this same yarn. Always have a back-up plan, I always say, that's because, the way I do things, it's often necessary, so I make sure it's a darn good one!

Cheers all! And I hope your long range forecast isn't as cold as ours! 

Friday Freebie for Nasty Cold Temps

This week's Friday Freebie is a smooshy-warm moebius scarf from Caron Yarns.

I think it's just great! It looks like it's knit in a basket weave sort of texture - not completely sure as I haven't had time to read through the pattern - but it certainly has me thinking about that skein of oatmeal colored bulky yarn my DS has us wind the other day. I like the fact that it's so big it lays nice and flat across the chest. The twist means you can fold it nice and close under your chin... mind you I'd be wearing it under my coat on a day like to day (daytime high of -27C). Quite frankly I don't care a fig about the two-color border even though I'm sure it's a carefully though out design feature. When I look at this, all I can think is how toasty it would be to have it secreted away under your anorak in the biting wind with the plush edge kissing the bottoms of my earlobes.... wish I had one done already  - I have to go to town! LOL!! Cheers all!

Cotswold Goes For a Whirl

Having finished the luxury cabled sweater, the way is cleared for the Cotswold to take over my knitting life - sort of... I so loved picking up the skeins and feeling the silkiness! But in order to use them they have to be wound into balls, so it's onto the swift!

 

I took out my jumbo ball winder for this job! That's something I really love about spinning my own yarn - the control! I can make big balls of yarn and knit something like a sleeve, or even a whole sweater with no knots. It's all a question of capacity. I think I'd go buggy having to do everything in itty bitty 50 gm lots, you know what I mean?

The only thing about this winder that made the job a bit of a nuisance it that it has a gear drive in it. That's a great thing, really, because of how nicely it winds, but it means I can't just wind off the swift like I do with my small ball winder which is direct drive. This large winder doesn't perform well with that much applied tension so I had to pull the yarn by hand off the swift, then wind it on. And just when I thought it was going to be tedious something magic happened.... which is especially wonderful, given how early in the morning I was doing this...

Someone sweet puttered out of bed and thought it was a real treat to be able to crank the winder for me! And aside from several I-can't-believe-I-let-this-happen catastrophic yarn muddles from occasionally turning it the wrong way, the job went very quickly! It meant that as I pulled, he wound and in fact regularly got ahead of me and had to wait, which is how he wound the wrong way a couple of times. And being only 8 he also got a bit tired and wandered off a couple times, which was also OK. Each time he came back with renewed interest and settled in again. Patience prevailed and we finished both skeins in very little time. The funny thing was, I expected he would be glad to be finished. When I pulled the second ball off the winder he got up from his stool and I though for sure he would go off and watch Treehouse. Nope! To my astonishment he went and rooted through my stash and brought back a lone skein of bulky yarn and insisted we wind it too. I guess it bothered him that it was sitting around "in skein" so we had to wind that before he would let me put everything away! It's the oatmeal one in the back. Go figure!

I have to admit to feeling a certain amount of satisfaction just looking at those balls. The yarn is the finest I've ever spun and it's consistent, thanks to the fiber. It has a lovely hand and I just know I'm going to enjoy knitting with it as much as I enjoyed spinning it. It just doesn't get any sweeter than this... oh why, oh why, oh why isn't everything in life like this???? ROFLH!! 

We Interrup Your Knitting For A Weather Report

January 22 hoarfrost

 

This morning I didn't want to go past the front door...