Aran Pullover For Baby Take Two

After finishing the Sweetheart Pullover, I decided to work on another pattern in the same booklet, the Baby Aran Pullover.

I spent some time figuring out how to cast-on in the round and tons of time figuring out how to make increases in seed stitch without messing up the pattern. (They said it couldn’t be done – but when you spend enough time on it, I assure you, IT CAN!)

And then, after all that, I started messing up the cables left and right.

So far so good, no mistakes.

See the mistake I made in the bottom left of the center section?

And then I made the mistake AGAIN on the back.

And then I made the mistake on the FRONT.

So here I go again - Baby Aran Take Two

Tags: Aran, Baby Knitting, Cables, Knitting, Knitting Mistakes

Sweetheart Sweater For My Little Sweetheart

I’ve finished my very first baby sweater! I am due in January and have been slowly working on various baby knits – mostly mitered squares for a baby blanket.

• Pattern: Sweetheart Pullover
• Needles: Size 5 and Size 3
• Yarn: Worsted weight
• MC: Baby Bees, Sweet Delight Twist, Teddybear colorway
• CC: Brown Acrylic

This pattern came from a booklet called  Time For Baby. I used Baby Bees, Sweet Delight Twist yarn in Teddybear. It’s a white, beige, and light blue colorway that I bought before I knew the sex of the baby because I knew if the pattern was frilly enough it would work for a girl too. It’s worsted weight and very soft. It has a “warm” feel even though it’s acrylic. Who knows if it will fit or be comfortable, but it’s just adorable.

Plus, it’s my first try at Intarsia! The funny thing is that the Intarsia heart went faster than any other part of the sweater. I always do better and knit faster when I’m doing something I find interesting. Too much stockinette stitch puts me to sleep, and makes me put the knitting down.

The thing I liked least about this pattern was sewing the seams. I loathed this part and it brought made the perfectionist in me scream! If I do this pattern again, I will knit it seamlessly in the round. It made me realize I need to be more picky about choosing patterns and be more proactive about modifying them if need be. But all this comes with experience, and the great thing about knitting for babies and children is that you can finish entire garments much more quickly, whether they are practical knits or not.

She Knits Again! One Sweater Becomes Another

This is a sweater that I’m going to frog – that’s unravel, for you non-knitters.

The pattern is Snow White, by Ysolda, and it is beautiful, but not working out for several reasons:

1) I think I need to knit the next size up.

2) I don’t think that Knit Picks Shine worsted is the right yarn for this project – at least not in this size. I should have used a wool yarn, I just fell in love with this yarn and color.

3) I didn’t buy enough yarn for the project anyway!!!

So, because I’m not ready to tear it out just yet, I’ve started knitting a new project with the unused balls. Once that is going well, I won’t mind unraveling this for the new sweater.

I’m currently working on Stephanie Japel’s Textured Circle Shrug from Glam Knits, which is available for free from Lionbrand.com.

Here is the current progress:

Oh, the Pains of Being a Perfectionist!

Want to know what I’ve been working on for the past several weeks? A scarf which is supposed to be simple, easy! You all know the pattern: Old Shale, also known as Feather and Fan…. Simple right?

Except, I’m a perfectionist. Except, I wanted to make it just perfect, exactly what I was seeing in my head. For instance, this is the classic, basic pattern for Feather and Fan:

• R1: Knit edge stitches [K2tog 3 times, (YO, K1) 6 times, K2tog 3 times] repeat, knit edge stitches
• R2: Knit
• R3: Knit
• R4: Knit edge stitches, Purl, Knit edge stitches

Except, I decided I didn’t want the waves to be so deep or so wide because I was using this crinkly yarn with a lot of elastic, which I had been having trouble finding a suitable pattern for (I had been dying to make Veronik Avery’s Lace Ribbon Scarf from Knitty: Spring 2008, but it simply did not work with the amount of elasticity in this partly nylon yarn). So I decided to make the pattern be a repeat of 12 stitches instead of the usual 18.

But that wasn’t enough. I had seen somewhere a pattern where the purl rows didn’t continue all the way across. Laurie Osborne calls it Waves & Shells and it’s really pretty, she got a lot of compliments on it.

And here is my version, modified with the 12 stitch repeat:

 

But something didn’t seem right. I had a hunch that the shells would look better if they were wider, as in the original 18 stitch repeat pattern. So I tried the original Feather and Fan with 12 stitches:

Go ahead and click on the pics to see the pattern up close.

Again, I thought it would look better with the original 18 stitch repeat (which I tried, but then frogged before photographing – didn’t like it at all for this particular project). One last experiment. I found this really pretty pattern on Ravelry, by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer

Well, unfortunately, i just didn’t think this pretty pattern was suitable for the scarf I envisioned. It’s a neat pattern because the edges are all included in the pattern and the project does not require finishing. But it really looks better as a blanket with many, many repeats.

So in the end, after all that, I am back to this! 

Except….I can’t even use the many inches that I’ve already knitted because I’ve decided I want a scalloped edge as in the Feather and Fan version above. Well, I’ve cast-on again and it’s going along fine. It certainly won’t be done in time for Christmas though, which was the original plan! Why was I born this way? Please tell me I’m not the only knitter who is this neurotic!

Tags: Feather and Fan, frogging, Knitting, Modified Patterns, Old Shale, Perfectionism, Waves and Shells

Swatches, Again

After an evening at home with my dog while my husband was on call, I decided to catch up on all my blogging.

I couldn’t resist posting another, better, picture of the most pleasurable knitting I’ve done in months:

I’ll make it brighter so that you can see the details I am so proud of!

And, darn, it’s hard to get the color from turning out too wonky, as in Figure B above. The green is pretty bright, but not quite that bright.

As a result of all this swatch knitting, as I mentioned before, I really, really improved in my knitting. Because I’ve become more fearless, I tackled a sweater in the Stephanie Japel mini-sweater/Julia Allen anthropologie-inspired tradition, incorporating patterns and elements that I really love. Following is a sneak peak.

And photographing this made me wonder, Am I the only one who can take 50 pictures of the same sweater in the blink of an eye and then spend 45 minutes trying to choose photos for her blog? My perfectionism really comes out here. It would be grand if I could just snap a couple of photos and be done with it. But no, you see, I love the two photos above because the light shines through the pattern on the back so prettily, and you can still see the stitch patterns very well.

Check out the following photos. Which one is the true color? GRRRR!

Anyway, I can’t wait to model the finished product for you, but the finishing is taking a little while because I’m terrified of running out of yarn and have been unraveling swatches in an attempt to get enough to finish. I haven’t yet checked to see if I can get this same yarn, but in the end, I might have to.

Tags: Knits, Knittin, Knitting, Mini Sweaters, WIPs

Swatch Day Tuesday

Here is a picture of the swatches I’ve been knitting up with all the old acrylic yarn I have laying around.

As I mentioned before, my husband and I are broke, broke, broke, so I’ve been knitting up anything I can get my hands on now that my summer knitting break is over. But the truth is, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to my knitting.

Knitting patterned swatches is the most fun girl can have with cheap yarn. I grabbed stacks of pattern books from the library and I’ve learned SO much about the way knitting works! Bobbles and cables and lace. Increases, decreases. It is amazing what a person can do with two sticks and a string.

Because of all this swatch knitting and leaps and bounds of improvement in my knitting, I decided to design my very first little sweater. I mapped it out on graph paper and everything.

I know you’re waiting on pins and needles, but things like the computer and the digital camera work very slowly around my house at the moment, so I’ll get back to you on a detailed description and photo album of the sweater.

As my favorite uncle used to say: “Over and out.”

Tags: Acrylic, Knitting, Swatches, Yarn

That’s the Breaks

Hey! Yeah, I know I’ve been away for quite a while. My husband and I started the summer by moving from one side of Denver to the other and then spent the entire month of August on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. Unfortunately, my camera wasn’t working while we were there, so I have no photos of the red rocks and dirt, huge blue skies, fluffy white clouds, sage brush, Navajo tea and other unidentified yellow and purple flowers, or the giant tumble weed in our back yard. I have no photo of the cliff where I though my husband and I had gone to die on a hike (which, he had only warned me, was a little steep). Nor to I have photos of Windo Rock, the Canyon de Chelly, or any of the old Anasazi ruins.

I’ll try to make some links to some of the photos of these places which are already on the Internet – pending copywright permission.

But now we’re back home, settling back in. Most important, my camera has decided to start working properly again, so I’m able to take some pics of my current knitting projects.

What have I been knitting?

Right now I have several projects to finish:

My mom’s lace scarf (how many years have I been knitting this?!?!?!)

My husband’s gray sweater.

My new fall “Wavy” scarf.

Other than those, which I’m having trouble picking up, I’ve recently been knitting up a storm of swatches from any pattern book I can get a hand on, using all the old acrylic yarn I can find in my stash (because I’m too broke to buy yarn this month).

Two center-pull balls of yarn from unfinished and frogged sweater. Beautiful, no?

So, what am I going to do with those balls of yarn, you ask? I’ve been searching on Ravelry to figure out what I can make out of these two skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece yarn. The best I can com up with is a small shrug. I’m just trying to decide if I want to use a stitch pattern besides stockingette stitch, for once. Here is my “Norwegian Fur” swatch:

Okay, I’m gonna get back to swatching. I’ll publish a pic of all my swatches and perhaps my mini-sweater plans, tomorrow.

Tags: Knitting, Swatches