Sweater Reverse Engineering

Last night I went on a shopping trip with my friend, Jeanne. A store-that-shall-remain-nameless-but-has-fruit-in-the-title was having a substantial sale (25% off, 30% if you possessed their credit card).

I purchased several things, among them a pair of pants with attached cummerbund, and the sweater below.



The sweater was $130 without the discount, and the fiber content was mostly wool, with about 10% nylon + 16% cashmere, and I think there may have been something else in the mix.

Well! I know this is very possible to replicate, so that is what I intend to do. Of course, at a machine-knit gauge of 9 st/in, I am not going to go all-out and knit it in sock yarn! However, I feel I can capture the spirit of the thing.

So I took photos of it.


And another photo, from the front.


Oh my god, do I actually have a defined waist?! Not really, it's all the jacket (at least from the back view).

I love the overlayed double-breasted style of the jacket. It has a 1" band of 2x2 rib around all the edges, and long ribbed cuffs. The sleeves are a tad puffy up at the shoulder, and are set in. The collar is a long bit of ribbing, too.

I measured the crud out of this sweater! Everything that I thought would be critical, got measured. Sleeve width, rate of decrease (so I measured about halfway down the sleeve, and then at the beginning of the cuff), cuff length, panel dimensions for the back and two half-front panels, button placement and relative distances (especially important because the front panels are not actually rectangular).

For $130, I think I can use a much nicer yarn, and possibly do it in the round. Damn right. The Spirit of EZ is with me, Hallelujah! Praise Saint Cascade and All the Sock Yarns!

Book Review Time

I just splurged and bought two new knitting books:

Reversible Knitting, by Lynne Barr

and

The Enchanted Sole, by Janel Laidman.

"Reversible Knitting" is just what it sounds like - a stitch dictionary of fully reversible patterns. I also enjoy several of the patterns included in the book - my favorites are a sweater by Wenlan Chia that you can wear top-down or bottom-up, a bubble dress / tunic with flubby cables on one side and a texture on the other, and a double knit tank dress with a great labyrinth pattern.

"The Enchanted Sole" is Laidman's second book, that I have, and I love her colorwork designs for socks. All her socks in this book are based on myth or fairy tale. My favorites are the Tree of Life and Firebird socks. She also has some interesting sideways-knit socks that intrigue me.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago I bought Cat Bordhi's new sock book "Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters" (Rav link to patterns). I love Cat. This new method she has is certainly unique, but I am anxious to finish knitting my friend Priscila's socks so I can try it out. She has you make a cardboard cutout to match your foot, and then you knit a closed tube, essentially, to match your foot, and then use lifelines to cut a hole at the top of the sock, wherein you pick up stitches and knit up the leg. Neat!! And she explains it far better than I do here.

Meanwhile I am finishing up a book not about knitting, called "Bacchus and Me", written by a wine critic who I fear was not well known (Jay McInerney), but it is very delightful reading! He details his travels to different wine regions around the world.

I am off to relax for the evening and think about sleeping soon... pilates class tomorrow!

Flapper Hat FO

I finished my Side Slip Cloche hat on Friday, while eating my way through Portland with a friend of mine. :)



Here it is, on the floor:



I was really worried that one skein of Dream in Color Classy wouldn't be enough for a hat. I don't know what I was thinking - I have about half the ball left!

The hat construction is interesting - you knit the band around, then you block it (and I wove in ends), and then you pick up stitches around the top and knit up the hat in the round.

My hat is not as poofy as the pattern suggests, but it just might need some blocking to stretch out a bit.

Overall, I'm very happy with it! And I loved knitting with Classy - the colors are saturated, and the yarn is nice and tightly plied, which I love. In my opinion, it feels like a high-class Cascade 220.

...Now what to knit???

I have yarn wound off for many projects, but I think tonight I will work on my Spring Forward socks for my friend Priscila...

Fiber Destashing

ETA: I sold the Lincoln Fleece!

I'm cleaning out my closet, and getting rid of some things! I want them to go to good homes, so hopefully posting them on Ravelry will be fruitful. I already sold a raw alpaca fleece, as well as a large bump of alpaca / Merino top.

The listings are on Ravelry: Lincoln fleece.

Here are the pictures. I have approximately 1 lb of raw fleece. Average staple length 5". $10 + shipping. It washes up to a beautiful white color (you can see it in the lower left of the picture below).


Below is a picture of an average lock, showing staple length.

The Uber-Sweater

I think I have decided what to make with my Blue Moon yarn (BFL Sport) that I purchased at OFFF.

An Uber-Sweater. A basic, wear-it-around-every-day, colorful sweater that looks good on me.

I present a sketch:

Ignore the shadow on the paper. A childhood spent yearning to be a fashion designer, yet feeling I never really could until I wasn't overweight (have you ever seen a fat fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld pre-weight-loss not included? OK, I should say - have you ever seen a fat female fashion designer? No. Because 90% of those women are neurotic, smoke, eat too little and party too much to be healthy anyway. And I bet none of them could do any sort of deadlift at all! Bam!)

I digress. So... sweater details:

- Nalgar shoulder shaping (courtesy of EZ; notice the two diagonal lines at the shoulders above. Since I haven't browsed Ravelry yet for real-life pictures of a Nalgar in the wild, I am relying on translating her drawing of a Nalgar from her "Knitting Workshop" book into what it would like on a body.)
- EZ's knit waistband (vs. a ribbed waistband, so it doesn't tuck in and bubble out around my waist)
- deep ribbed arm cuffs (cuz I like that!)
- waistband hits mid-hip. I learned with my February Lady Sweater that cropped things hitting at my actual waist are Not. Flattering to me. At All.

A note: I find it interesting how my perception of proportions on bodies has changed over the years. My initial sketch had the shoulders too broad, the arms hanging out to the sides beyond the ribcage, and the arms too long. The forehead was too high, initially. Also, the legs were too fat (at least to represent ME **thank you Mom and Dad for not afflicting me with Cankles, Saddlebags, and giving me Nice Leg Shaping!**). Thank goodness for pencil erasers, and patience. I think, for a 20 minute sketching exercise, this is a fair representation of myself. :)


***

What's this? The beginning of a new hat! The "Side Slip Cloche" from Boutique Knits, to be exact. This is the lower band of the hat, with the side ruffles. It's about 14" long right now, and needs to be 20.5" before I proceed with the rest of the hat. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy worsted in "Flamingo Pie". It is a beautiful base yarn, more tightly plied than Cascade 220 (which is what I originally thought the base was), and the dyers do a wonderful job. And there is more yardage than Cascade 220 (well, 30 more yards!), although it is much more expensive than Cascade 220... but I think for a one-skein project, it works great!

OFFF 2009

My friend Jen and I went to OFFF again this year! We had a great time!!

We left on Friday at 5 AM, which wasn't hard for either of us, as we are both early risers. We arrived in Canby at the fairgrounds shortly after 8 AM, including a couple of stops for bathroom breaks and coffee.

We signed in for our classes (I took a lace spinning class in the morning, and a sock spinning class in the afternoon, and Jen took a Navajo spindling class), and wandered around for 30 minutes before going to our respective classes.

Rejoining for lunch, we compared notes. Jen discovered she didn't really enjoy Navajo spindling, but was glad she took a class to confirm that suspicion. I picked up several tricks for lace spinning - mainly the tenet of "overspin, underply". My teacher, Sheila January, also showed us how to spin cobweb laceweight yarn - that is, yarn that, at 2 ply, would be about the grist of sewing thread. She told us how a teacher of hers spun yarn for Orenburg shawls, and gave her about 2 oz, if that, of ultrafine Merino locks, and told her it would be enough for a 6 foot diameter Orenburg shawl.

We also got to spin a variety of fibers for each class. For the lace class, Sheila gave us some superwash Merino, then followed that with silk brick, then a Merino / yak blend (70/30?), and finally we tried our hand at cobweb spinning using some BFL locks. I was pleased to learn it is possible, though it is a technique I do not see myself using, except as a means to keep myself sharp and able to spin a variety of yarns.

After lunch, I went back to Sheila's room for the sock class (turns out she taught both classes!), while Jen amused herself by wandering and knitting. In this class, the main thing I came away with was to spin firmly for sock yarn, and that nylon as a strengthener is unnecessary, because all it does is make a skeleton to make darning holes easier. Natural alternatives for nylon in sock yarn include silk, mohair, or considering not using a fine wool to spin the yarn in the first place. In fact, one of the samples was Wensleydale top, and it made a great, firm 2 ply yarn for me! Other samples we used were a Shetland top that was quite lovely, a BFL top, a pin-drafted CVM which was lovely, and a Merino / alpaca blend.

Some seedheads at sunset in a state park in Canby

What did I buy? 3 oz Jacob top, two different Shetland preparations (one 4 oz ball of top, and 8 oz of Shetland prepared in two batts), 7 oz of BFL (the same preparation I spun in class), a skein of BMFA Laci, a skein of BMFA Socks That Rock Midweight (a Rare Gems color that reminds me of an aquatic rainbow), and two skeins of BMFA BFL Sport in "Jabberwocky", an autumnal rainbow colorway that enchanted me (and, at 600+ yards each, two skeins will knit me a fine sweater).

I thought I would share some photos of Canby itself, rather than the yarn I bought. You can see all that on my Ravelry stash page.

Moonrise at the park

I hate to have noticed this, but the demographics of a fiber festival are fairly predictable - mostly women, and probably 90% of those women are overweight. I don't know why. Maybe that is why I subconsciously chose to wear my Crossfit shirt on Friday.

Jen and I at the river

A dahlia farm

OK, I suppose I should show a picture from the actual festival... excuse the lack of focus from the camera!

A fuzzy picture of a ...fuzzy ram

I can't wait for the 2010 class list and another trip with Jen! :)

I hope to post my sample pics up here soon...

Yarny Update

I got some stuff in the mail!

The September Rockin' Sock Club shipment! I was waffling whether or not to sign up again next year, and you know, Cat Bordhi's patterns reaffirm my love for this club.



Here's a skein of BMFA Laci I got at OFFF for $6.80 (Keep in mind this yarn retails for $50)!! I'm going to use it for another try at Hanami.


Here is a 2 ply skein I spun from a Shunklies Shetland top. I am extremely happy with their fiber prep; the Shetland spins like a dream. I think I got around 160-180 yd at around 2 oz.


Finally, here is my first Fair Isle FO! An Opus Spicatum hat. I used orange and green Cascade 220 for this... it turned out really well!


Next up: OFFF pictures!