Dolman sleeves are back?!

Apparently they are and I just finished knitting one up to wear this summer.  I didn't set out to make one, in fact the yarn, Comfy fingering by Knit Picks, has been in my stash for over a year now.  Initially it was earmarked to make a Tempest cardigan, but I was really unsure about how the stripes change sizes in odd areas, like towards the bottom of the bust, but not under it like an empire waist.  So I rethought and decided perhaps Paulie would look better, some easy garter stitch at the shoulder and the same size stripe after that for the rest of the sweater.  The yarn however continued to sit as I worked on other projects that excited me far more than this cardigan did.  Until the fateful day while perusing the patterns on Ravelry I discovered the Roxborough Dolman by Courtney Kelley and was smitten, I had to have it.

Okay, the dolman sleeve thing was a bit odd I thought, and I wasn't really sure how the fit of it would work on me with my remaining post baby belly (still working on reducing that sucker down), but when I looked into the sizing I realized it was given in ranges so it would fit me now and if I ever manage to make my goal of losing 10-15 pounds it will still fit, awesomesauce!  Even better, I just happened to have a discount code from Interweave that I was able to use to purchase the digital verision of the magazine.  It was in my hot little hands, er, my laptop and then my ipod within minutes.  I did my gauge swatches that night.

The pattern is simple, just change the color after a set number of rows, and work increases on each side seam after another set number of rows, repeat endlessly.  It made for great tv knitting.  The yarn makes for a really nice light and so soft fabric when knit up, I am in love with it!  Now that it is all done I am hopeful I will be wearing it quite a bit over the summer and am again perusing patterns on Ravelry looking for fingering weight tops, they take awhile to finish but are oh so nice.

Of Failure & Triumph!

I started with trying to make a cardigan out of one of my issues of Verena knitting, #49 Milk.  It did not go well.  In fact it went so badly I never even bothered to take a picture of it before I destroyed it.  Lesson learned here, try to keep to a yarn not only with the same weight but also the same general fiber content, and don't keep trying when the gauge is really off, sometimes even going up a size or 2 won't work.  Of course I didn't figure this one out until after I had the back and one front done with the second front halfway done.  I guess I really liked those cables!

I did learn to re-skein and wash my yarn after frogging because of this debacle though, it really does take the kinks out once it is all dried out again.  I also have gotten really good with my nostepinne after winding it all up into balls for the second time, sigh.  The biggest pain was that the yarn, Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, is rather 'sticky' so it kept grabbing onto itself both while frogging and when I was winding it up after it's bath.

My second attempt at a cardigan with the yarn has gone much better and sadly enough is what my intuition was telling me I should have done in the first place, Snowbird.  It's a great pattern that gives fantastic results.  The start is kind of tricky, but once you get going it is pretty easy to follow.  I did notice that the back of the neckline is too big for me (possibly due to the yarn stretching out some after washing) which I fixed by doing a crab stitch with a crochet hook along the seam to pull it in.  This has helped a little, but it still feels like it might slip off my shoulders at any second.  Next time I'll follow the next size down for the back of the neck instructions.  I say 'next time' because knitting Snowbird has gone so well that I think I'll do it again with the knit side of the stockinette being the right side and using the cable and garter edge I liked so much from Milk for the collar instead of reverse stockinette.  I could of course just use an appropriate yarn for Milk, but I've been burned once and don't want to have it happen again!

Summer knitting

After an aborted start working on a Poolside with my stash of Rowan Calmer I started again on Irish Coffee and am quite pleased.  I stopped the Poolside because I realized my yarn wasn't a really good match, Calmer acts a lot like a wool yarn, not very much like a cotton so I decided it would work better for me in a  pattern that actually calls for wool.  I also have come to realize that living in southern California doesn't really require wool for sweaters, at least for pullovers.  As cold as I can get (hey, I got cold in Lahaina, Hawaii, true story!), I still can feel like I am suffocating in wool when I wear my one wool pullover, so perhaps a blend is the way to go for me.

I have also heavily altered the neckline and fit of this sweater, it is supposed to fit like a tunic, rather loose, but I am making it significantly more fitted.  The snugger fit is also me hedging my bets a little knowing that cotton tends to stretch and definitely more so in a full garment than in a 4" x 4" swatch.  For the neckline I cast on far fewer stitches than are called for because in just about every project on Ravelry with a model, she is wearing a t-shirt underneath since the wide neckline is so wide their bra straps would show otherwise.  Since I want to be able to wear this as a sweater without something else underneath I knew that neckline would need to change.  So I grabbed my copy of Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard and took inspiration from her raglan pattern Pink to adjust the sweater more to my liking (plus copious amounts of math using my gauge swatches, checking and re-checking myself to be sure).  Thus I have a great v-neck for this fabulous sweater.

Once I got to the split for the sleeves I have pretty much faithfully followed the pattern.  I really love how the cable on this one comes together, so very pretty.  Thus far I am loving working on this and as always Thea writes a great pattern, I highly recommend this one, I may even make it again but following the original neckline!

A Quilt for Lil' Miss

I finally got around to picking out fabrics for Lil' Miss to have her very own quilt.  Since I already made one for Destructo-boy she needed one too, plus her bedding is getting kind of sad looking and needs to be freshened up.  I found a great collection of prints from Michael Miller Fabrics called 'It's a girl thing" that called out to me.  I wasn't sure at first if it was too sophisticated for her but after consulting with a few friends at our Memorial weekend bbq I was convinced that it was something she would enjoy now and could grow into.  Because who really wants to make a quilt that after a few years the child says 'But Mom, princess ballerinas are for babies!', yeah, not me so more grown up fabrics it is for this quilt.

I wasn't even sure what kind of quilt pattern to make at first, I wanted something interesting but not too complicated for a novice quilter like myself.  I've done 2 quilts now that are essentially large squares with other fabrics used as sashing around them and want to move on and work with some piecing in the squares.  I searched for some nine patch quilt tutorials (we read the Little House books together and there were several times she wrote about them working on their  nine patch quilts) and came across this great tutorial on the blog Oh, Fransson! for a crazy nine patch lattice quilt.  Yes, it is for a baby quilt, but doubling the size of the quilt results in finished measurements really close to a full size quilt so I'll be doing this one doubled.  I am pretty excited and can't wait for the fabrics to arrive so I can start cutting out and sewing them up.

A book review: The Knitters Curiosity Cabinet

After loving everything in Silk Road Socks by Hunter Hammersen and really enjoying knitting two of the patterns already, of course I had to get her newest volume of patterns, The Knitters Curiosity Cabinet in spite of not being even close to finishing the patterns in her first book.  Taking her inspiration from the collections of the Victorian era middle class that inspired vintage botanical prints, she created 10 different paired patterns for socks and a coordinating accessory piece.  As of right now all I have is the e-book, with the physical book due to arrive in another month or two, but what I have is beautiful and impressive in and of itself.

I love how she begins the book with a history of curiosity cabinets detailing their evolution along with photographic examples of them.  It serves as giving a sense of how she came about with the creation of the patterns and explains how the patterns in the book relate to one another resulting in a very cohesive selection of knitting patterns.  The photos of the patterns are all charmingly taken in the location a library from the looks of it.  Each pattern is photographed beautifully with both close up images of the stitch pattern and a full shot of the knitted piece being worn.

As to the patterns themselves, they are well laid out and easy to follow.  Each pair of patterns are accompanied by an inspirational botanical print and a brief description of the plant in the image along with describing what exactly served as the inspiration for the stitch patterns created.  The patterns are charted, which I prefer, and if you don't know how to follow charts I strongly suggest you learn as it is so much easier to work then following written instructions!  An improvement over Silk Road Socks layout was that as opposed to just having a a master stitch key at the beginning of the book, there is also a stitch key included with each pattern listing just the stitches used for that pattern.  This will make using the book while knitting each pattern much easier as all relevant information is right there on one page, instead of forcing the knitter to flip back and forth to check the chart symbols.

In closing, I am delighted with this book as not only does it have a wide selection of patterns I can't wait to cast on, but it is a lovely book in and of itself.  Available in e-book form now through Ravelry.com or it's own site The Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet, available in print form late spring or summer of this year, 2012.  There will also be Knit-A-Longs for the book in her group on Ravelry beginning in July 2012.