Knititude

Snow white & rose red

I finished this hat about a month ago, and wrote a quick post promising the pattern, once I had finished a variation using SSKs instead of k2togs.  I worked on said variation over the weekend, and when I started the crown decreases this morning, I anticipated a half-hour or so of following the directions I had written out for the first one.  Well, as the husband likes to say, nothing is easy; I soon realized that the SSKs form a much more dominant spiral pattern than the k2togs, and would thus require a different sequence of decreases.  That half-hour stretched throughout most of this afternoon, but I did end up with something that pleases me.  Modeled photos and pattern to follow!

Oh, I (ahem) almost forgot:  another hat pattern of mine will be available in the June issue of MagKnits (soon, very soon!).   I would have bragged about it earlier, but I only just found out today.  :-) 

Maritime mega-bulky

This 100% polyester braided multi-ply knits up super-fast on size 36 needles at 2 sts/2.5 rows to 4".  Incredible stitch definition; stands up to hard wear, hot sun and salt water (although I still wouldn't recommend this for that handknit bikini--"crisp" hand is an understatement).  And look at the forearm workout I'm getting.  Hint:  Don't try to break this yarn without a pair of hedge clippers handy! 

Dayflower Lace

Is this gorgeous, or what?  Am I in a lace rut?  (If so, I'll happily wallow there for awhile.)  This is Dayflower Lace*, from the incomparable BW's 2nd Treasury.  When I first spotted the photo in the book, I wondered what patterns already incorporated it, so I did a web search and found this scarf pattern, and then I found this free sweater pattern from Berroco.  They're both quite nice; the sweater is a little too tunic-y for my liking, but utilizes the lace to good advantage, especially for the V neckline.  And then, just today, I noticed that the latest issue of Spun Magazine includes a pattern called Licorice Bullet Skirt, which contains Dayflower Lace panels.  (Note to Spun Mag:  "whispy" is not a word.  "Wispy," yes, meaning filmy, fragile, delicate; "whispery," perhaps, meaning low, soft, sibilant; "whisky," of course, meaning, well, you know--you'd have to get creative to use "whisky" to describe a knit skirt, but I suppose it could be done.)

Digression over.  My point is that although there are a few Dayflower Lace patterns out there, the world could probably use a few more--certainly one more--so I'm on it.

And I'm on the improvements to this dear old friend, too; in the comments to my earlier post, there seemed to be some doubt that she was in fact too short, so I offer this photo as proof.  I mean, she's not indecent or anything, but those ribs are not being allowed to do their lengthening, slimming work when they're truncated like that.   

*There are a few booboos in the pictured piece, or to be more precise, there are two of them, repeated across two different rows.  In this case, I chose not to rip, because I don't think the overall pattern is compromised (and, okay, because I'm a lazy girl at heart).  Damned if I can figure out how I did the first one without ending up with too many stitches, though.   

Shoot me! Kiss me!

I was thinking that my visit to Milan would yield photos of tempting and imaginative knit confections, so I was surprised that several afternoons of  window shopping yielded only three (3!) windows containing any knitwear at all (and not much crochet, even though that seems especially big in the U.S. this season).  Pictured is the best of the bunch, if you can believe it.  Knitwear designers, if we want to keep the popularity of original knitwear high, apparently we aren't going to get huge amounts of help from the Italians.  Or maybe come fall those windows will tell a different story--I hope so.

Oh, and the post title?  Checked my e-mail and found out that my two pattern submissions to Knitty were rejected.  And in the time it took me shake myself, hard, and tell myself to get on with it, I got another e-mail, this time accepting my pattern submission for Big Girl Knits 2.  HOORAY! 

LYS, Bellagio style

I stopped into an interesting LYS today, in Bellagio.  No, not that parody of classic Italian design in the Las Vegas desert!  I mean the Bellagio on Lake Como, in northern Italy, where George Clooney likes to hang out.  In fact, I saw him by the boat dock...not really.  Yes, those are indeed baby bibs; along with yarn, this store also sells bibs, T-shirts and other sundry items of clothing.  I didn't recognize any of the yarn brands (where's the Filatura di Crosa?  the Filati?  the Berroco*?).  No needles or patterns, or at least none visible, and the yarn, aside from the tempting window display, was stacked in boxes on a high shelf behind the counter--no tactile temptation there!  And although I loitered in the store for nearly ten minutes (a really long time in these kinds of circumstances), no one ever appeared to sell anything to me!  No wonder they keep the yarn out of reach.

Oh well.  After a splurge at the latest WEBS online sale, I'm finally on the dreaded yarn diet, anyway.  I wish my husband would go on a cigar diet.  This is his favorite store in Heathrow airport.  As one can see from the cigar box labels, the husband likes to practice the art of ignoring good advice.  These labels go on cigarettes in the U.K. too, and they hit every angle, from the high to the low:  motherly and fatherly instinct ("don't make your children breathe your smoke"), consideration for others ("smoking seriously harms you and others around you"), fear of death ("smoking kills"), vanity ("smoking causes ageing [sic] of the skin"), and the dreaded below-the-belt "smoking decreases blood flow and may cause impotence."

*Ha ha.  Although it sounds Italian, Berroco is actually a Massachusetts company.

Ready for her close-up?

Well, here she is, and she's..not...quite...right.  I don't mean the two different sleeves (still dithering about which one to use), nor even the eyelets near the lace sleeve's raglan seam, which have grown frighteningly large and must be hauled into shape.  No.  These photos show this sweater at her absolutely most good-sided, well-posed, aging-diva (Barbra?  Is that you?) flattering light and angle; in unfettered sun and especially viewed from the back, her shortcomings are revealed.  Literally, for she is too short from the lace border to the shoulder.  In addition, although she is certainly not too large (a recurrent problem for me--did I say recurrent?), I may have gone too far in the other direction, especially since the ribs--at least if they weren't wet-blocked into submission--could provide gentle shaping.  Mostly, though, she is just too damn short.

No problem (through gritted teeth); I will just rip her back to the armholes and re-knit.  I did consider cutting, knitting and then grafting, but really.  That would probably be no faster.

Oh, and the neckline trim?  Simply bound off in pattern.  Since I have to re-knit anyway, I think I'll make the neckline a little lower and do one of those more stretchy/decorative bind-offs I've never tried before.

Digital wizardry

As  you may have noted in the photo in this post, I seamed Chinese Lace together with two different sleeves.  Yet here I have two sweaters, each with matching sleeves (ignore those blurry areas just above the lower lace borders).  But how?  Am I a speed knitter?

Emphatically, no.  As Carol suggested in her comment to the above-mentioned post, I cut the photo in half, flipped the halves, and then put them together to create two distinctly different sweaters.  (And then, since that process also flipped half of the lace hem, I superimposed the original hem over each.) 

Seaming Chinese Lace

Just a short update today; tomorrow morning I'm off to "Milan, dahling. Milan."  (Edna Mode?  The Incredibles?  Never mind.)  Anyway, when I write up the pattern for this sweater, I will probably write it for knitting in the round, but I do want to point out how cool this lace pattern seams--like pieces of a puzzle.  Can you find it?  The seam curves along with the lace panels.   

Boat neck, crew neck, V neck, square

No, I haven't forgotten that at some point I need to decide what kind of neckline to use.  Indeed, that point is now, as I'm well into the armhole shaping of the front.  Here is roughly how a boatneck would look, and at left and below give some idea of crew, deep-ish V and square necklines.  Conclusions?  The square neckline is right out, as those wacky fellas at Monty Python might say; as for the V, its point promises to be less neat than I'd like, placed in the middle of a rib.  The crew will have to be shallow, or else I'd have to make the top of the sleeves shorter at the front than the back for a smooth curve at the neck. 

Shallow crew it is. 

As for the neck finishing, I do know it will be narrow, but whether it will be a plain rib, an eyelet or waterfall rib, or something ultra-simple like a crocheted edging--that decision must still be made. 

The TS likes

I was wondering about the fit of the Chinese Lace Pullover, so I decided to "try" it on--if trying it on with no back and only one seamed sleeve can be called that.  I believe the fit will be good; the waist is slightly shaped, and then the ribs are form-following. 

A few days ago, the partially assembled Chinese Lace pullover was sitting on my desk, and the Teenaged Stepdaughter (TS) spotted it.  "Ooh.  I like that."  Pause.  "I'm not usually that crazy about sweaters, but that's kind of cool."  Pause.  "The color's kind of weird though."  (She favors black, and lots of it.)  Anyway, we both decided the all-lace sleeve was much more interesting than the ribbed one, although I'll leave that one on until I finish the back, so I can put the whole shebang together and see how the raglan seams look; I do have some concern that if the sleeve caps are too narrow, the lace will look overly stretched.

(I won't be able to call her the Teenaged Stepdaughter for much longer, as she turns 20 in June--but the same initials work for Twentysomething Stepdaughter AND Thirtysomething Stepdaughter, so I can use TS for another couple of decades...can you imagine?  Do you think we'll still be blogging twenty years from now?!

As for her birthday gift, I did knit her something for Christmas, but although another project for her has been in development for awhile--a sleeveless shell with a large openwork dragon slithering up the front--there's no way it will be done in time.)