Knititude

Substitute yarns for the Lace Cable Rib Pullover

Since the yarn I used for the soon-to-be-published Lace Cable Rib Pulloverhas been discontinued, I have swatched with a number of possible substitute yarns to make sure the proper gauge can be achieved. When substituting yarn, it is especially important to knit a good-sized gauge swatch and measure it after blocking.

I chose possible yarns based on ball band gauge and fiber content, hoping to find yarns with similar drape and weight.  This proved to be rather difficult!  The Tilli Tomas Fil de la Mer is in a sort of in-between class, on the light side of DK and on the heavy side of sport.  My comments are below.

Clockwise from top left:

Debbie Bliss Prima, 80% bamboo, 20% merino wool, 100m/50 g skein, color #35704, using US size 4/3.5 mm needles.  Nice luster and drape, quite splitty (as Ysolda pointed out in a comment on an earlier post), a bit on the heavy side (it has 100 m per 50 g, compared to the Fil de la Mer at 128 m per 50 g). 

Misti Alpaca Tonos Pima Silk, 83% pima cotton, 17% silk, 327 yds/100g skein, using US size 5/3.75 mm needles.  Gorgeous subtly variegated color, a bit of sheen, really nice to knit with, not quite as drapey as the Fil de la Mer, but I really liked this yarn a lot.  It also comes in solid andhandpainted colors (although my preference would be for the subtly variegated or solid colors for this pattern).

Classic Elite Allegoro, 70% cotton, 30% linen, 152 yds/50 g skein, color #5650, using US size 5/3.75 mm needles.  Quite lightweight (a good thing, in my opinion), nice dry hand, moderate drape, a matte surface without much luster, knits up a tad loosely (I first tried US size 6/4 mm needles, but then went down a size, and I wouldn't be surprised if a US size 4/3.5 mm needle was required for some knitters to get the proper gauge).  I liked this yarn, but it is quite different from the Fil de la Mer.

Patons Grace, 100% cotton, 136 yds/50 g skein, color #62246 Leaf, using US size 6/4 mm needles.  Nice stitch definition and sheen, but the fabric has a crisp feel and lacks drape; I ended up not including this as a suggested substitute in the pattern, even though I achieved the correct gauge.

Frog Tree Picoboo, 60% pima cotton, 40% bamboo, 116 yds/50 g skein, color#1000, using US size 5/3.75 mm needles.  Nice sheen and soft hand, a bit on the heavy side, moderate drape.

Mirasol Nuna, 40% merino wool, 40% silk, 20% bamboo, 191 yds/50 g skein, color #1009, using US size 5/3.75mm needles.  This is a very lightweight yarn with a lot of luster; a pleasure to work with; more bounce and less drape than the Fil de la Mer, but this and the light weight will actually help the sweater hold its shape (as I state in the pattern, with the Fil de la Mer you can expect the body and sleeves of the sweater to stretch an inch or more in length while worn--this may not be the case if using the Nuna).  This swatch wanted to be a tiny bit small, so if you decide to use it, block heavily and make sure you can get the right gauge.  Lots of lovely colors. 

I also swatched with Louet MerLin sport weight, a merino wool/linen blend (I used the worsted version of this yarn for a recent unbloggable project and liked it), but it knit up at too fine a gauge.  Finally, after I did all this swatching, I noticed the tempting Madeline Tosh Pashmina on a website somewhere, and I think this could also work nicely.  As always with MT, the colors are just amazing.  It's 75% wool, 15% silk and 10% cashmere, so it would probably be less drapey than the Fil de la Mer.

New pattern coming soon!

 

After close to a year, I'm finally almost ready to send the pattern for this sweater off to my tech editor.  Other projects and life in general just kept pushing this pullover further back in the to-do queue!  In addition, this was my first top-down project, and took a fair amount of re-knitting to get it right just for me-- and then a fair amount of thinking before I came up with a user-friendly formula so the pattern will work for sizes XS-3X (garment bust sizes will range from 28 1/2 to 49 3/4 inches; I'm wearing size S with about an inch of negative ease).  More information about this pattern coming soon!

 

 

Finally finished!

But still nameless (suggestions welcome!).  After my latest unbloggable prject is finished, I'll get to work deciphering my notes from a year and a half ago, so I can write up the pattern.

Finalmente finito!  Ma ancora senza nome (suggerimenti benvenuti!).  Dopo il mio ultimo progetto segreto e' finito, cominciero' di decifrare i miei punti da un' anno e mezzo fa, cosi' posso scrivere il modello.

I know exactly where I went wrong...

 

So bene dove ho sbagliato....

So I got the body of this sweater re-knitted; it's now longer (in the year-and-a-half since I started it, I've gotten to like the elongated silhouette that now seems to be in fashion), and has a wider edging at the bottom (above photo).  I took out the twisted stitches that were supposed to shape the waist but in fact did nothing, and I planned to make the sleeves a bit elongated too.

I knew making everything longer would mean using every bit of yarn I had, so I reclaimed most of my swatches and ended up with a gaggle of tiny gomitoli (below)-- an ugly sight for someone who hates to work in ends, but hopefully I'll have enough yarn to finish.

I finished one sleeve and started on the second, but when I got to the bottom edging, I realized it was angling in the opposite direction compared to the first sleeve.  I didn't see how this could be possible:  since this pullover is worked in the round from the neck down, the stitch pattern begins at the exact same point for both sleeves, and thus should end at the same point.  It took me several go-overs to find the mistake, and of course, once I did, I couldn't believe I had missed it:  when I unraveled the bottom edge of the first sleeve and started knitting again, I repeated the same 8 pattern rows twice-- you can tell because the eyelets inside the cable don't switch from left to right. 

Then I noticed another error-- I had added an extra row of eyelets, or two extra rows, to each cable section.  Oops!  And I suddenly realized why I did this.  For the edging, I just kept knitting until it looked wide enough, and it turned out to be 16 rows long, which I noted was the same as one repeat of the main stitch pattern, which includes two cable crosses.  Then when I started to lengthen the sleeves, I was thinking "8 rows between cable crossings, or 4 eyelet rows," and I forgot that the cable cross itself takes two of the stitch pattern rows, meaning that each cable section should have only 3 rows of eyelets.  RRRIPPP!!

Sailboat Knitting: The Sequel

Last August during our annual sailboat trip I was working on Sorelle; this year, the as-yet-to-be-named top-down raglan pullover (Tilli Tomas Fil de la Mer) is still torturing me, although I have finally got the sleeve worked out, and hope to finish soon.   As you can see from the calm water and lack of sails (and the fact that I am letting $$ worth of yarn and hours of labor sit there untethered), there was very little wind the day I took this photo.

 I saw this gorgeous swift at the Nantucket Whaling Museum-- while at sea, whalers apparently spent their ample free time creating gifts for their womenfolk out of whalebone.  Note the carved fist that forms the base-- with wedding ring, no less!  (Was this a message to the wife to remember her marriage vows during her husband's long absences?!)

And below, a little fellow we met on the beach (no worries, he was returned safely to the water).

One-sleeved bolero

I'm thinking I'm done!  Just bind off, and...just kidding.  But mostly so far, so good, although I'm going to rework the sleeve cuff; I was thinking I would do a fairly snug ribbed cuff that would be best worn pushed up on the forearm, but this one is too tight and unyielding.

The color of the yarn is better represented in the second photo.  I reworked the neck four times using various edge treatments, including a twisted cable rib, but in the end I decided simpler is better.  I also blocked right after casting on stitches for the underarms, to make sure I wasn't misjudging the final gauge; if you look carefully, you can see the transition between the blocked and unblocked fabric.

Breaking radio silence

I think this has been the longest time I've gone without posting since starting this blog.  The time just slipped away:  somewhere between leaving Italy for the summer, arriving back in the U.S., and taking care of various home- and family-related needs, suddenly, it became July.  I haven't done a great deal of knitting either, although I have made an important step in regard to my future designing and knitting (or perhaps non-knitting) life:  I've hired a test knitter.  I'm anxiously awaiting the results, but in fact there's probably no turning back:  I just want to design more things than I can possibly knit with my own two hands.

Near future plans:  by the time the kids are back in school, there are several things I want to accomplish, design-wise.  I want to write up designs for a hat or two; and for a child's vest with which I hope to kill two birds with one stone (surely there's a kinder way to express this sentiment!), namely create something personal for my two sons, for whom I've neither knit nor designed in the past almost-two-years, and create a design which will be relatively quick and fun to knit.  I want to work up various submissions including one for Twist Collective, which to me is an intriguing and exciting twist on the online knitting magazine.  I want to finish my top-down raglan sweater using Tilli Tomas Fil de la Mer, on which I am slowly progressing; I didn't take any photos of the four different neckline treatments I tried, or the three different sleeve cuff ideas I had, but next post:  photos of what still remains. 

Mi sto divertendo un sacco

 (I'm having a blast!)

In spite of the fact that I've ripped back the sleeve I'm working on twice already, I find this working from the top down to be somehow more magical than from the bottom up.  Maybe it's because I just finished reading the last two Harry Potter installments (late to the party, indeed), or maybe it's just something about being able to pull on a sweater and see it growing from the shoulders down.... 

Growing slowly, unfortunately.  As intriguing as I find this stitch pattern, it just doesn't want to cooperate with any of the other stitch patterns I've put next to it.  I was originally planning a slightly belled cuff with a stitch pattern with an arched effect, but it just didn't work.  I think the combination of the wavy cable and the slight openwork is complicating matters-- I want to keep this pullover solid enough that it can be worn without an underlayer, so I've been avoiding any lace with too many eyelets.  I'm running out of ideas, but I do still have one or two up my sleeve (ha ha).

(These photos are all of unblocked work, by the way; judging from the swatch, I think the effect will be quite different after blocking.)

Of seaweed and slipped stitches

Now that the Interweave Knits Summer 2008 preview is up, I think it's finally safe to show a detail of my Wakame Lace Tunic.  I found the lace pattern in a Japanese book of stitch patterns and fell in love with it; the undulating curves of the cables and the foamy effect created by the eyelets immediately reminded me of breaking waves.  And since the yarn (Tilli Tomas Fil de la Mer) contains seaweed fiber, I thought "wakame" would be a good name; I'm glad IK saw fit to keep it!  (By the way, the fabric in the photo is doubled; I draped the tunic over a chair to get the picture.)

As for the Roped Shell, the design was originally for a sort of tube top with cable straps, and the yarn originally chosen was Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, but when they were reluctant to ship their yarn to Italy,the IK editors chose Filatura di Crosa Luxury instead.  This silk yarn has a lovely drape but very little stretch, which seemed to me to be an unforgiving (and very difficult to fit) combination for a knit tube top!  In addition, the slipped stitch pattern loses its nice curvy effect if it is stretched much, so I suggested that we change the design to a sleeveless shell instead; the Cotton Fleece would have suited the more casual style of a tube top, but I thought that this finer silk yarn would work better in a somewhat dressier top.  I also wanted to find a way to hide the jog in the stripes at the beginning of each round, so I took advantage of the slipped stitch pattern to create a vertical stripe at each side "seam."  Not the best photo, but at least you can see how light and drapey the fabric turned out to be.

The Invasion of the Tomas Swatches

With each of my last few projects, the number of swatches I have done has steadily increased (I hope this trend doesn't continue!).  I've done multiple swatches for different reasons; for my project for an upcoming issue of Vogue Knitting, it was to find different stitch patterns that played well together, while for Etrusca, it was to find an assortment of yarns in different gauges that could be substituted for the Karabella Empire Silk I used-- and to choose among several stitch patterns.  The swatches pictured here are for the next project I hope to turn into a pattern for sale:  a top-down* (my first!!) raglan pullover using Tilli Tomas Fil de la Mer, a lovely, lovely yarn.  By the way, I'm NOT planning to incorporate all of these stitch patterns into one garment.

On a COMPLETELY different topic, I read in some trashy magazine at the gym that various actresses have "girl crushes" on Angelina Jolie, and I thought, "Hmm.  To each her own, I guess."  Then I wondered who my girl crush would be, and having recently seen A Bridge to Terabithia, Zooey Deschanel came to mind.  Then I saw this article about her recent CD release; in the article she is called a "crafty girl" who knits and crochets.  OK, found my girl crush.  Who's yours?!

*Knitting From the Top by Barbara Walker is a great book, but I kinda wish they'd update that cover photo.