Knititude

Truro Hat

Now available on both Ravelry and Loveknitting: the Truro Hat pattern! Like the Wellfleet Hat, it uses an innovative new cable from Norah Gaughan's Knitted Cable Sourcebook, AND it looks great from the "wrong" side (see the 3rd and 4th photos), making it effectively reversible. Instead of a pompom, I decided to add a fun tassel to the crown of this hat. 

The yarn I used, Cascade Yarns Boliviana Bulky, is a Super Bulky weight yarn, with label gauge of 2 to 2 1/2 stitches per inch in stockinette stitch, and recommended needle sizes are US 13 (9 mm) to US 17 (12 mm)! So if you are looking for something you can work up in an evening or two, the Truro Hat would be a great choice. You cast on only 68 stitches for the adult size, so I had to find a relatively small cable stitch pattern. Even though it's a smaller repeat than the cable I used in the Wellfleet Hat, it's a bit tricker to work, because you have to move the cable needle from front to back (or vice versa) in the middle of working the cable cross. 

The circular needle length I recommend for hats is 20 inches (50 cm), which I've recently realized is quite hard to find (thank you Paradise Fibers for carrying them!). Most knitting stores jump from 16-inch to 24-inch-long needles, but 24 inches is really too long to do most hats, and I find the needles on the 16-inch-long ones awkward to use because they're so short.

As a bonus I've included detailed instructions on how to do a felted join (otherwise known as "spit-splicing"). If you are using a non-superwash wool or other animal-origin yarn, this is a great way to invisibly join new balls of yarn, and decrease the number of ends you have to weave in when you're done.

I really love the way the three-dimensionality of a simple cable is enhanced in such a thick yarn. The "right" side of the fabric reminds me of snow-covered tree branches.

 

The towns of Truro* and North Truro are right next to Wellfleet, on Cape Cod; if you visit, be sure to see the Highland Light. It's the oldest lighthouse on Cape Cod, is still in active use, and was moved 450 feet west in 1996 to keep it beach erosion from causing it to fall into the ocean! (Photo below: John Burk)

*I was informed by a knitter who saw this pattern on Ravelry that there is also a Truro in Nova Scotia (and she lives there).

An unusual yarn

It was a year or two ago that I started thinking about designing a cabled pullover, often called a fisherman or Aran sweater (or jumper if you're British). There's no mystery about where this idea came from-- they were all over the fashion pages from Fall 2014 ("run out RIGHT NOW and buy a fisherman sweater," from Glamour online) through Fall 2015 ("Fishing for Sweaters for Fall 2015," from T magazine). 

Although I love the oversized slouchy look of a big fisherman sweater on a model (or a man), I personally don't wear a lot of oversized clothing, and I don't usually wear wool; although I like to knit with it, I find it itchy to wear, and overly warm for most situations. So I didn't relish investing the time designing and knitting a cabled sweater if it wasn't something I was likely to wear. 

But then I got the idea of streamlining the fisherman sweater by using set-in instead of dropped sleeves, and using a yarn that was more warm-weather friendly, in a bulky weight so it would knit up more quickly; I pictured a cool summer or fall evening, outdoors on the beach or on a boat, and throwing a fisherman sweater on over a summer dress, or cropped pants (above photo from knitgrandeur.blogspot.com). In a worsted weight or thicker yarn, cotton by itself can be heavy and saggy when used in something as dense as a cabled sweater, but what about a cotton blend? 

I looked at many, many yarns: two of my favorites were Spud & Chloe Sweater (organic cotton and superwash wool) and Rowan All Seasons Cotton  (cotton and acrylic). But these were both a little thinner than I wanted. And then I found Katia Bulky Cotton.

The construction of this yarn is unusual: unlike most yarns, which are made of several thinner fibers twisted together, it is a mesh nylon tube with a cotton core (above photo: Spud & Chloe Sweater on the left, Katia Bulky Cotton on the right). It definitely has some pros and cons:

Pros:

• It has a pleasant soft, squishy feel and very good stitch definition.
• It's relatively light for a yarn of this thickness.
• It doesn't split easily.

Cons:

• It feels a bit like knitting with stockings, which takes getting used to.
• It's very stretchy, which means that it can easily be knit too tightly; tensioning the yarn lightly is important.
• The mesh tube snags fairly easily; although snags are almost impossible to fix (think fixing a snagged stocking), I found them easy to hide by making sure they are incorporated into the stitches,  and they don't compromise the integrity of the yarn.
• Any unevenness of stitches appears to be amplified. In the photo below, the stockinette stitch section shows "rowing out," which I usually don't notice in my knitting: up to the bottom of the armhole, the fabric is pretty uniform, because it was worked in the round (every row knitted), but after the start of the armhole, the fabric looks uneven because the wrong side rows were purled. 

In addition, my gauge was very different than the ball band gauge: when I used US #9 (5.5 mm) needles as recommended, I got a worsted weight gauge of 4 1/2 stitches to the inch, instead of the 3 1/2 stitches stated on the ball band. After going up two needle sizes to US # 10 1/2 (6.5 mm), I ended up with a gauge of 3 3/4 stitches to the inch.

The conclusion? I still liked this yarn because of its feel and stitch definition, but I'll have to see how it wears (and whether snagging is a big problem) before making a final recommendation.

Save

He took my needles away!

Ha tolto i miei ferri!

For the first time ever, I lost a pair of knitting needles while traveling-- a security guard in Milan's Malpensa airport decided that my 20" long US size 4 Addi circulars looked dangerous, and confiscated them.  Apparently wood doesn't show up on their xray machines very well, because he ignored my KnitPicks interchangeable circulars with the lovely wood tips.

Per la prima volta ho perso un paio di ferri mentre stavo viaggiando-- un guardiano di sicurezza ha deciso che i miei 50 cm 3.5 mm Addi ferri circulari apparissero pericolosi, e li ha confiscati.  Evidentemente il legno non si rivela bene nelle macchine radiografiche, perche' non si e' interessato ai miei circulari KnitPicks con i punti di legno.

I would have been more upset-- Addis aren't cheap-- but I had nothing on the needles at the time, so there wasn't the added insult of having to strip any work-in-progress off of them.  Plus, the husband and I had just endured the stupidity of the clerk at the check-in counter, who informed us that our carry-on bags, at 12 and 13 kilos, were too heavy, but if we wanted to go to the little store across the hall, we could buy a couple more bags and split the contents, bringing the weight of each bag under the 8 kilo limit (we were allowed two carry-on bags apiece).  Did it do any good to point out that the total weight would be the same (even slightly increased, because of the two new bags), but the total volume would be much greater, because half-empty framed suitcases take up the same amount of room as full ones?  No, it did not.  And by the time we got to the security line, the zipper on my cheap new bag had already broken. 

Mi sarebbe stata piu arrabbiata-- gli Addi sono cari-- ma allora non ho avuto niente sui ferri, e quindi non ho dovuto rimuovere niente da loro.  Anche abbiamo appena soffrito io e mio marito la stupidita' della impiegata al banco check-in, la quale ci ha detto che i nostri bagagli a mano erano troppo pesanti, pero' potremmo comprare due bagagli in piu, e dividere i contenuti, cosi' il peso di ognuno sarebbe sotto il limite di 8 chili.  Ed anche se abbiamo fatto notare che il peso totale sarebbe uguale, pero' il volume sarebbe molto di piu, perche' i bagagli rigidi hanno lo stesso volume, vuoti o pieni?  Non ha fatto una differenza.  E dal momento che abbiamo raggiunto la coda di sicurezza, la cerniera della mia valigia nuova era gia' rotta.

My friend Emily

For some reason I really enjoy figuring out how to work decreases and increases into stitch patterns:  witness all of my hats (Beaufort, Maple Seed, Rose of Sharon, Cinnabar, and Coin Cable) as well as the Chinese Lace Pullover and Wisteria child's dress (both based on the same stitch pattern), and the Dayflower Lace camisole.  Even so, I was getting sick of my latest hat by the time I had plotted out the crown increases maybe ten times and swatched them, oh, a half dozen times.  I'm going to look at the process I went through, in hopes of seeing how I might do it more efficiently in the future!

I began by looking at the stitch pattern (see first photo), which has two distinct motifs: a mini zigzag with eyelets (pattern #1 in all photos), and what I'll call a fountain lace panel (pattern #2).  Early on I decided I wanted the mini zigzag to begin as close to the crown as possible, and my first swatch reflected this, including beginning the purl stitch borders in the first few rounds.  Issues with the first swatch:  I felt that the patterns overall just didn't "read" very clearly, and I thought including the purl stitches early on was at least part of the problem.

In this swatch, I decided to wait until much later to begin the purl stitch columns which divide the two motifs in the final stitch pattern.  I also tried using more paired yarnovers for the increases, because the fountain lace pattern uses paired yarnovers.  Certainly the two stitch patterns would be harder to distinguish if I hadn't circled them (and these swatches are unblocked); nevertheless I felt the mini zigzag was clearly established early on in this swatch, and the fountain lace panel has a nice symmetrical look to it.

Unfortunately, the increases came on much too fast in the above swatch, yielding a pretty ruffled look completely unsuitable for a hat crown!  In looking back, maybe I should have been able to foresee this; although I've found that lace patterns in particular can be very forgiving of irregular increases and decreases, there is surely a point where blocking will not smooth things out.

I tried a couple of swatches with single yarnover increases (not pictured), but the problem was making the beginnings of the fountain lace panel look symmetrical.  I then went back to including purl stitches early on (next swatch), which helped define the mini zigzag, but didn't do much for the fountain lace.

Aargh!!

At this point I had also decided that one of the nice things about the fountain lace pattern was that the openwork was set off by solid panels, so I was afraid that the crown area would look too open in comparison; in the next swatches I tried using different types of increases to make portions of the fabric look more solid.

I found that increasing by knitting a stitch in the row below (see section "2" in the photo at left) was unattractive in a fabric that would be as stretched as a hat crown; this was made more obvious now that I had the rate of increases more or less figured out, and the fabric was lying flat as a result.

Finally  I was starting to get somewhere.  In the last swatch, I really cut down on yarnovers, increasing instead by lifting the running thread between stitches and twisting it to make a new stitch (M1).  I really liked the contrast between solid areas and the mini zigzag, and the areas that would segue into fountain lace were looking mostly symmetrical; for the final version of crown increases, the only change I made from this swatch was in one of the very early rounds, to make the point of the outlined triangle more symmetrical.

And Emily?  Well, up to now I had used Emily Ocker's Cast On for one project, with some difficulty, and when I decided to use it for this hat, I had to refresh my memory (using this web tutorial) on how it was done.  And it is a little fiddly.  But after doing it 7 or 8 times in a row, I think we're best buddies-- and it does create a lovely beginning for a top-down hat.

My hints for a happy EO's Cast On:  1)  When creating the first loop (the one pulled thru the finger loop for each stitch), make it nice and loose so you can pull the 2nd loop through it-- it will naturally tighten afterward.  2) Use a crochet hook smaller than your knitting needles; having the stitches tight will make it much harder for the needles to slip out of them for the first round or two, when you only have 2 or 3 stitches on each needle.

Selva Skirt Backstory Part III

To be quite honest, the Hearts of Oak pattern is not the speediest knit around, especially when worked on US #3 needles.  The unblocked fabric is fun to look at in different lights, and its almost crunchy texture invites you to grasp a handful and squeeze-- but even so, it seemed to me that I knitted endlessly on Selva before finally reaching the point where it was time to start the waist decreases.

I had swatched the "ribbon" stitch pattern I used for the top of the skirt, and measured the swatch stretched to determine whether a zipper was necessary:  I decided no.  As I progressed toward the waistband, decreasing steadily in the plain purl sections at the sides, I instead started to worry that the waistband would stretch out of shape:  the "ribbons" weren't quite as firm as I had hoped, and of course the reverse stockinette wasn't firm at all.  That's why I decided to add the elastic to the waistband.

In the case of this pattern, the sizing was dictated by the stitch pattern:  the difference between sizes is two repeats or 20 stitches (or 2 1/2 inches) at the hips.  Having said that, it is easy to change the frequency and number of waist decreases to customize the fit for a larger or smaller waist in relation to hips.

Filatura di Crosa "Zara" is a great choice of yarn for this skirt; it has tight twist, lots of resilience, and seems to be fairly durable (standing up well to frogging).  It also comes in an extensive palette of colors.  If another yarn is substituted, I would encourage using something with similar characteristics.  A quick glance at yarndex suggested these as possibilities (note that I have no personal experience with any of them):  Jaeger Matchmaker Merino DK or Extrafine Merino DK; Dale of Norway Falk; Classic Elite Classic 150; Debbie Bliss Rialto DK; Louet Gems Opal; or Knit Picks Merino Style.  Note that for most of these (as for Zara), the suggested needle size is larger than US #3, and the gauge thus looser than the 6 sts to the inch I got in stockinette stitch with #3s.  SWATCH!

12-inch-long dpns??

I stopped by my LYS today to pick up a set of US size 6 dpns, and the only ones on their wall display were 12 inches long!  I mean, is there really anyone who would rather use 12-inch-long dpns than, say, a 24 or 32 inch circular needle?  Someone who works as a security guard and can use them as weapons in a pinch, perhaps? 

Luckily, a helpful saleslady found a set of normal-length Brittany birch dpns tucked into a basket on the floor.  I know I had a set of #6s, but they seem to have disappeared, and I need to complete a sample of a special edition of Beaufort I'm creating for sale at a certain LYS (not the one I just visited); the owner requested a version using a thinner yarn.  I feel somewhat awkward about offering a pattern for sale that is gratis on the web, but I am rewriting for a different gauge, in a larger range of sizes, and I plan to use a new photograph, and reformat the whole thing to make it more suitable for display in a bricks'n'mortar store (and more portable for the on-the-go knitter).

After I got home, I realized that I had a pair of metal 14-inch-long dpns that look to be about a US size 8.  I have no memory of ever having used them for anything, and why do I only have two?  Did I use the others to stake tomatoes or hang curtains?   Hmmm.

P.S.  Thanks for the well-wishes concerning the sailing accident; the victim is mending, and gives his assurances that that particular mishap will never happen again!

    

Of merry men

I've been so busy, what with trying to finish my project for Big Girl Knits 2 and planning for our family's pending move to Italy*, that I almost forgot:  the fall Knitty will contain one of my patterns, for a pullover.  Woohoo!  Of course, I can't say much more than that, but I offer this photo as a hint.

*Travel bulletin:  I've been on a dozen flights in the last 3 months, both transatlantic and within Europe, with both metal dpns and circs, and with not a peep from a single security checkpoint.