robknits

Conundrum, with short rows

The picture is not the conundrum.  It is a piece of stained glass that I bought a couple of weeks ago at the Texas State Arts and Crafts sale in Kerrville.  There was almost no fiber-based art at the fair at all, but I kept running into women who use blow torches and work with glass and metal   The artist who created this, Jan whose-last-name-Ijust-forgot, will be at next week's Texas Folk Life festival too.  I will make sure to pick up another of her cards.

The conundrum is about the Pearl Buck Swing jacket from Interweave Knits's Winter 2005 issue.  There are actually two conundrums.  The first involved my idea about lengthening it a bit.  I didn't think of that til I had already completed one side of the front up to the beginning of the armhole.  So if I want to lengthen it, I need to go straight up for a bit, though I don't think I would do it for more than 2 inches.  This blog entry by Bluestocking Knits, in what was apparently a knitalong for this jacket, mentions some concerns about lengthening a jacket that has a yoke and a pleat in back.  I still think it would be possible to lengthen it below the armholes and the yoke, but that pleat would need to be taken into account.  So then I thought, I don't need to lengthen it, I need to do some shortrows on the fronts of the cardigan so that the front will hang at the same length of the back despite my much curvier front.

And there's the conundrum.  I have quite a library of directions and instructions and explanations about short rows but I don't think a single item mentions doing this for cardigans. Usually when using short rows to create bust darts, the instructions talk about knitting them across the front piece of the sweater.  You work the extra rows from point to point, so to speak.  So, in a cardigan, do you make a separate pouch for each side of the cardigan?  Somehow divide the short row section in half so that it actually does continue across the entire front of the cardigan?  Does anyone know?

In addition, the band of the cardigan is knit along with the fronts, and has a charming design knit into it that is worked, of course, across a predetermined number of rows.  I could certainly incorporate the design of the bands if I were working separate short row sections for each side of the cardi -- basically the band would be put on hold as the short rows were being worked, and in the row when I return to working all the way across the piece I would work the next row of the design.  Right? 

I love this design, but think I especially need those short row sections on a short swing jacket.  So please chime in with recommendations.

And on the shawl/stole front, I have decided to use the purple copper novelty yarn for something other than the Lattice lace shawl.  Bascially because I found a stockinette swatch I did with this yarn and it is stunning.  So I am going to develop a stole pattern that uses a lot of stockinette for this particular yarn, and go back to the lattice lace stole some other time.  I also fell in love with Knitty's Jeanie, a wrap that uses fingering weight yarn, cables and drop stitches, but I am trying to resist buying 3 skeins of Dream in Color Smooshy.  Though I think it is a perfect yarn for that pattern.  I can feel my resistance dropping, oozing from my pores.  The only fingering weight I have enough of for this pattern is the self-striping Jojoland Melody, which I bought for another shawl.  And I don't think self striping is right for Jeanie.  I also have enough of Knitpicks Gloss in burgundy.  A gorgeous yarn, but I want something with subtle color changes or a heathery look.  OK.  I think I'll try to find the pattern I bought to use with the Jojoland.  That way, I can start something cool, use yarn I have already bought, and put off the purchase of the Smooshy for a bit.  Anyone taking bets on the odds of my actually doing this?  I might, because that would mean working on this intriguing stole:

You can see it at the Jojoland site, at knittingsoftware.com where Carol Wulster also has some notes about knitting it, and at the Knitting Zone, where I bought the yarn and the pattern.  All I have to do is find the pattern, which gives me some much needed motivation to tackle more organizational tasks here at the house.

Back to normal, weatherwise, and my loom is for sale

     Back to normal weatherwise means it is cold, very very windy, gray, and giving us a very lovely "wintry mix" of snow, sleet and freezing rain, so it is, of course, slippery.  Welcome to central PA!  But my Yak Trax were where they were supposed to be, I have clean wool handknit socks and mittens, and a good winter coat.

     Speaking of being prepared for the cold weather, I have joined a group called Macuwita sni.  They have a Yahoo!group as well as a group on Ravelry.  They are knitting sweaters, hats, mittens, etc. in the warmest possible wool or wool blend for Cheyenne River Sioux folks.  And, if I remember correctly, you send the items directly to the reservation.  Since I am knitting two large projects at this point, I have decided to pull out stash (I have some Cleckheaton 8 Ply I bought for a sweater and then decided not to use, as well as my palette of Lamb's Pride) and make hats and mittens.  They do need sweaters, though, so I thought I might use the Cleckheaton to make either a sweater or a vest. 

     The two big projects are going well.  The Pearl Buck swing jacket is going very fast.  I had avoided projects with enormous amounts of stockinette, but rows of stockinette with a little fancy charted cable at one end turns out to be fun and fast.  The other side has some shaping to it to, so this is fast without being mindless.  Problem is I decided to make it a couple of inches longer long after I started knitting, so I either have to knit even for a couple of inches before starting the armhole or keep it the length in the pattern.  I am not sure what it will look like if it has two even inches before the body begins to flare out. 

     The Vogue cabled cardigan is also going well and I have now completed several (or at least 3) repeats of the 28-row pattern.  I really like that the cables change as you go.  I switched to the Knitpicks Option needles and am having a little less trouble with splitting the yarn.  Too often though I discover at the end of the row that I dropped a stitch and have to go back and find it.  Must be because of cabling without a needle but I haven't yet identified at what point I drop it. 

     And finally, I have decided to sell my floor loom and buy a table top loom.  No, no, not quitting as a weaver!  So, anyway, if you want a great 45" counterbalance floor loom ... it is a Leclerc Fanny, 4-harness with cloth aprons, with a storage bench, EIGHT reeds, raddle, temple, lease sticks, ties, warp rods, assembly instructions. Also included: a Leclerc Nilus vertical warping reel. New vertical warping reels alone sell for hundreds of dollars. Disassembled, it all fit in the back of my station wagon when I bought it all. Pick up only -- Located in central PA. I will drive two hours in any direction -- if it is not sleeting! --  to meet you. Asking $600.

     Stay warm!

Knitting on the Penn Turnpike

     I am listening to a very intense wind out there.  The weather is nuts, so nuts that the temperature increased over night and I was too warm in a cotton sweater the last week of November.  The "summer clothes" and "winter clothes" categories don't make as much sense as they used to.

     This morning I got to knit on my newest project while sitting in my parked car on the Penn Turnpike.  Heading home from a 5-day stay at my mother's, gorgeous day for driving and traffic came to a dead halt.  No way to decide to take the next exit and sneak around Philadelphia to a later spot in the turnpike since traffic did not move at all for about oh, an hour or two.  So I put the car in park, called my mom (no, not me in the accident that closed the road), listened to music and made a bit of progress on the Pearl Buck Swing Jacket.  An IK Winter 2005 pattern that I have always liked suddenly connected with the Lavold Silky Wool in Verdigris that I bought at the same time.  I started it because I thought all that stockinette would make a good WIP to accompany the cabled cardi.  Because I really need the chart for the whole middle section of the cabled cardi, and the fronts of the Pearl Buck is very simple. 

     After getting home, I took a look on Ravelry, and it seems quite a few people have used the Silky Wool for this jacket.  I am not at all sure I will like myself in this style, but ya know, I decided not to agonize so much about that and just have fun.  Especially since I had agonized about what to do with this yarn.  When this combination grabbed me I dived in.  As usual, taking a picture of a project at night did not yield great results, but I might try again in the morning.  Not a whole lot to show yet of course, but I really like what the Silky Wool looks like.  Although...  this is a DK weight wool, and the jacket calls for the traditional DK gauge of 5.5 inch.  Perfect, right?  Well, I kept swatching, starting with the size 6 the ball band recommends, then dropping to a 4 and then....

I got gauge on a size 2 needle.  For a DK weight yarn.  So I am knitting this whole jacket on what I generally consider to be a sock needle.  But I am getting gauge.