Damn, Knit & Blast It

I was just looking at a Knitting Forum and saw a query about Rowan Tapestry.

“I’ll add my two-penny’s worth into that thread”, I thought, “Where’s those piccies I used to blog about Ben’s “Serge” jumper I made in Tapestry?”

I couldn’t find the pictures.

I couldn’t find the blog post about the jumper.

I could find Ben and the jumper so I knew I hadn’t gone completely ga-ga and started fantasising knitting projects!

The truth dawned on me that this was a “Pre Blog Project” that had never been photographed or blogged

How could I not have blogged this? It’s a rather successful jumper!

Ben was duly stuffed into the jumper, flung against the wall and photographed before he could protest.

So this is Serge …

…From Rowan magazine No. 40 . This one from Winter 2006…

The garment itself was very easy to knit - a basic, round neck men’s jumper with minimal shaping. The interest can from the self striping yarn and the “flaps and straps” details. Oh Dear, I’m making sound like bondage wear!

The Straps and Flaps are knitted separately and sewn into the seams as you make up the garment.

This is the shoulder flap,

and here’s the waist and wrist straps,

There wasn’t much information in the pattern about how to attach these so I improvised and sewed them into the seams. I also put a few stitches behind the shoulder flap to stop it pulling out of place with wear. (And to stop Ben resting his had under it in a Napoleon like fashion! )

The Tapestry yarn is a mix of pure wool and 30% Soy bean protein. Sounds odd but does feel good to me. It’s quite loosely spun so does have a tendency to split if you’re careless and can snap it you tug at it - this didn’t happen to me but I know some tight knitters had issues.
The other important subject to cover about this yarn is itchyness. Ben is not a fuss-pot about itchy yarns and does not have especially sensitive skin. When he first put this jumper on, he lasted less than 10 minutes before tearing at his neck and having to take it off because it irritated him so much. I was horrified! That’s a big jumper and a lot of knitting to be unwearable.
I stiffled my sobs and gently hand washed it and added some fabric softener. This has improved it greatly and it is now wearable, but only with a T-shirt under it. I really wouldn’t recommend this yarn for next to the skin.

Serge is now 2 years old and has been regularly worn and washed. It’s a little pilled but still looking good!

I have finally accepted that a favourite old handknit top of mine needs to go in the bin. I love it to bits but it has been regularly worn, machine washed and tumble dried and has now shrunk to the point where it is a crop top showing way too much belly!

Here is my poor old friend in an “infront of the mirror” shot….

…(spot the feline supervisor )

I love the stitch pattern on this - it’s a very easy 6 row pattern repeat but looks much harder. If you’ve got the Vogue Stitchionary - Volume 1, it’s pattern 188, “Chevron Panels”.

The pattern is an old Jaeger leaflet - the copyright on the back is 1997 but it doesn’t seem to have dated at all. It’s a beautifully thought out pattern - all the shaping puts seams in the gaps between the the chevrons so you don’t get that messy half a pattern effect. This is the pattern guilty of switching me on to Jaeger and Rowan designs and away from nasty acrylic, shapeless sacks!!

It’s Jaeger JH 0029 The Hildegard Sweater…

I made my Hildegard in Jaeger Pure Cotton DK in a rich burnt orange colour - a beautiful mercerised cotton that has stood up well to some serious maltreatment - it’s faded quite a bit! When I made it (in about 2002!) I really didn’t make it long enough - I think I was too eager to get it done and didn’t knit it quite to the measurements. It’s also a clingy top that gets shorter when the pattern is stretched over my curves - We live and learn huh?
I don’t often knit the same pattern twice. I like new challenges and the excitement of seeing a new pattern emerge. This is the exception. When I first made it, my Mum liked it so much I made her one for Christmas. Now, I’m making my third Hildegard.

I thought this one deserved some luxurious yarn and some more respectful treatment. Out came my jealously stashed Jaeger Pure Silk in a dusky pink…..

I’ve just finished the back and I think it’s looking sumptuous…

I’ve just realised that, in the photos, my new Hildegard looks almost the same colour as my old one! I wonder if that’s a subconscious way of trying to keep my old friend??

I’ll give you a Completed Knit Report for my first Hildegard - then I’ll get on with knitting my new one!!

Completed Knit Report
Name:	Hildegard (First one…)
Pattern:	Jaeger JH 0029 - designer unknown!
Yarn:	Jaeger Pure Cotton DK
Pattern Problems:	None except it does pull up as the pattern stretches to the correct width so measue while stretched or you’ll end up with a crop top like me!
Pattern Modifications:	None on this one
Washing and Wearing:	Quite thick cotton so warm to wear. Has been washed and tumble dried 100s times and only problem is slight shrinkage.
Knit It Again???:	YES!!..and again…and again..
Difficulty:	Medium (because of keeping pattern correct while shaping)
Rating:	5/5
Other Postings Relating To This One:	None

This week I’ve been visiting my big sister, Carol and her lovely husband, Steve.

While I was being spoilt rotten, I remembered to take some photos of a couple of Carol’s jumpers that I made.

The first is a fair isle design from Rowan 38 called Electra - guess what?? It’s on the cover

The pattern gives the sleeveless version and a cardigan version. At the time I made it (2 years ago exactly - dates on photos are a wonderful thing!) I thought, “Yuk! Tank top!” so I decided to make the cardigan for me. I’ve since caught up with fashion and no longer think sleeveless knitwear belongs in the 1970s but please forgive me for that fashion lapse this once…

I was very happy and a felt a little “Stash busting virtue” as, being fair isle, it only needed a couple of balls of each yarn - 2 colours of Yorkshire Tweed DK, 1 colour Felted Tweed and 1 colour Kidsilk Haze (used double). I had a lovely mix in my stash and only had to buy 1 ball of cream KSH. My local John lewis had run out of cream KSH so on the spur of the moment, I decided to use one strand cream KSH and one strand cream Kidsilk Night - a good decision - the subtle sparkle really worked.

Choosing the cardigan was rather ambitious as my only previous fair isle experience had been a pair of Snuggle Bed Socks.

It hadn’t occurred to me that a cardigan has 5 pieces and lots of shaping. A tank top I mean slipover, has two quite simple pieces. I also wasn’t experienced enough to realise that making the pieces flat on two needles was hard too! Purling and wrapping the stitches with two handed fair isle - ick!

I slogged through and finished the beast - Montse Stanley’s Knitter’s Handbook was open on the fair isle section most of the time.

The nice thing about this particular fair isle pattern is that although it’s a 34 row repeat, there are only 7 rows which have two colours in them - the rest are stripes. Nice cheat huh?

Here’s the beast “in progress”…

The sleeves were pure evil to fit - it took three attempts to get the pattern matching on one of them - Grrrr It didn’t help that I was not happy at work at the time and I think I’d knitted a lot of my emotions into this garment!

I finally sewed on the buttons and guess what - I HATED IT!

It looked awful and frumpy on me and too big and the wrong colours.

Who do I know who takes a slightly larger size than me, loves blues and creams and I love enough to give a precious handknit? My big sister !

Carol tried on the cardi and I was truly amazed. What looked like the most disastrous mess on me looked fantastic on her. It fitted. It looked stylish and trendy. It was her colours. She wasn’t going to give it back again without a serious fight! It has since become one of her firm favourites - I’m so pleased on so many levels!

Here’s Carol modelling for me .

And the back…..

Want to see one of those difficult shoulders too?? It just matches…

I think the right buttons can really lift a garment and I think I did really well with these - they are sold as plain cream buttons and have this beautiful mottling on the back - you can see which side I liked!

I suppose all of you out there are thinking, “Yes. OK. But how neat is the back?!” If it was me, I’d be itching to turn it over and take a look…

With the benefit of hindsight and reading about other people who have made Electra, there are several things I’d do differently if I made another.

1. Investigate Steeking the whole thing - Eunny Jang has a fantastic intro to steeking on her blog.
2. At least knit the whole thing - Cardigan or Tank top - in one piece up to the armholes - darning in ends is not my favourite occupation!
3. Check my tension more carefully so I get to wear it!I have learnt that fair isle does make my tension go loose!
4. Cast off the button band even looser than I did (it’s a little tight)

This was a sad and miserable garment to make that turned out to be a very happy cardi when it found a home where it is loved!!

Completed Knit Report
Name:	Electra Cardigan
Pattern:	by Louisa Harding from Rowan 38
Yarn:	Yorkshire Tweed DK, Felted Tweed DK, Kidsilk Haze and Kidsilk Night
Pattern Problems:	None (that weren’t to do with my inexperience!!)
Pattern Modifications:	None - but I should have considered the points above!
Washing and Wearing:	It’s been regularly worn for 2 years and still looking good!
Knit It Again???:	I’m tempted by a tank top for me
Difficulty:	Hard - mostly because of doing fair isle on two needles.
Rating:	3/5
Other Postings Relating To This One:	None

If you read any number of knitting blogs, you will have already heard of Ravelry.

I was luck enough to hear about Ravelry quite early on in it’s quest for Beta testers and got my invite in July. If you want to look me up, my username is the fabulously imaginative “susancrowe”….

For those of you who have assumed I am now blogging in another language - I’ll explain that….

Ravelry = A community driven website where you record data and pictures of all your knitting and crochet projects, books, needles, hooks and yarn. If you’ve already blogged it, you can link to your blog post! It also has forums! Yours and everybody else’s projects are then in a huge searchable database.

So….imagine if you are thinking about knitting a certain pattern, you can look it up in Ravelry and see that there are 20 people who’ve made it, what yarn they used, what they thought of the pattern, problems etc. You can do the same with yarn too! Click the Ravelry link for more info…

Beta Testing = Ravelry is new and is being written and developed as it goes along. It hasn’t been released “Live” to all users yet but is up and running and needs controlled numbers of users to use the complete website and test it’s functionality. Then give feedback on improvements and bugs. That what a beta tester does - go on and use it report back bugs and improvement suggestions but don’t throw a hissy fit if it’s not perfect yet!!

Invites = because it’s not “live” to the general public yet, everybody can’t get on at once so there is a queue to join. When it’s your turn, you get an invite! The anticipation has been driving some knitters quite mad!

I have just got to the point where I have loaded up pictures and details of all my projects that I’ve already blogged about and have just started to load projects “yet to be seen” on my blog.
Not fair on my loyal readers huh?

OK - there’s only one so far - my Daisy Scarf - I’ll show you….

This is the Daisy Scarf from Rowan 38, this book…

And this is the Rowan piccy…

I used the Kid Classic given in the pattern but mine is squishier and softer than it looks in the picture. I suspect it had been starched and blocked to death for the photo shoot!

The pattern is a strange sort of “bunchy stitch”, wrapping the yarn around the needle 3 times then dropping the extra wraps on the next row and knitting them together to make the swirl (Don’t try and knit it from that description - you’ll need the pattern!)

Here’s a close up of the pattern stitch…

It grew really fast and it is a favourite. Especially as I don’t really knit a lot of scarves!

Here’s an “action shot” of the scarf on…

The edging is cute but sewn on afterwards - it felt a bit like a design after thought to me. Then scarf is much better with it though…

I only used two of the three balls called for so I will at some point make some matching gloves (assuming I ever finish the Blankie!)

My knitting news this week isn’t the stuff that will make an enthralling blog post….

I haven’t touched Eveleen but I’ve made lots more blankie squares (I’ve now done 30 out of 81 required!)

There. That was dull huh? Don’t change channel yet readers!

I think it’s time to share with you the reason I twitch whenever felting is mentioned! This is a story of not knowing when to quit when a project is clearly cursed by the Knitting Gods…

Way back in January 2006, I saw the Flint felted skirt display garment in John Lewis in Oxford Street - I fell in love! It looks so much better “in the flesh”. I bought the yarn and rushed home to knit it. Deep Blue Yorkshire Tweed and blue and pink Kidsilk Spray for the underskirts.

It’s from Rowan magazine 38 - the one that had a big article about felting and lots of felted projects.

Here’s what the picture in the book looked like…

Ignore the “everything in the dressing up box” styling and look at the skirt!

The wrapover skirt is mostly stocking stitch - acres of it - - not my favourite - but really pretty cables and embroidery on the front panel and,” Ohhh!!!, Those Kidsilk Haze under skirts!” I ploughed on making a gigantic stocking stitch blanket it seemed….

I knitted it, sewed it together, took a deep breath and threw is in my washing machine…..

Ben said “Are you mad? I’m not sure about this slinging your knitting in the wash lark. Are you sure it’ll work?” (He’d seen how hard I’d worked on it.)

I said, “Of course it will, Darling. I’ve followed the instructions in the pattern…”

It hadn’t shrunk nearly enough. I was still massive. Bugger.

I have since learnt that using fabric softener was a mistake and I should have put some old towels in the wash with the skirt too…all useful stuff not mentioned in the Rowan mag. I should have done more research…..

Ben was smirking. “No worries! I’ll just throw it back in again on a super hot mega long wash - that’ll do it!” , I said confidently.

Oh huge error!

The skirt I pulled from the washing machine was tiny and so felted it had the consistency of a navvy’s donkey jacket.

I sobbed. I tugged. Ben helped me tug and resisted the urge to say, “told you so”. (He’s a sweetheart really .) Try and visualise it readers, one of us at each end of the wrapover skirt having a strange game of tug of war in the living room. The cats hid. Ben did however say it was one of the strangest evenings he’d ever spent …knit, sew, wash, cry, tug, cry some more!

We had partial success but managed to pull most of the carefully crafted shaping out of the skirt. It was still indecently short but at least it wrapped around me… bugger again.

I ploughed on, “I can save it!”

I knit the underskirts double the length to try and bring the skirt out of the “indecent zone”.

Here’s the underskirts…nice huh?

I tried to do the embroidery with the Kidsilk Spray…

The Kidsilk Spray’s varigation ranges from light blue to dark blue. I was trying to embroider on dark blue. Half of it just blended in! Bugger! (that’s 3 “Buggers” if you’re counting)

Determined to wear the “buggering” skirt, I cut out the dark blue and just used the light blue sections and completed the embroidery.

I even sewed on some Prada ribbon as hanging loops…

Lastly a posh button….

At last! I can wear it!!

It hung strangely (mainly due to the tugging). I had to wear in on the hips to make the length suitable. It took an hour to place the buttons in the optimum place to almost make it look right.

Here is is….

I bravely wore it to work with opaque tights and boots. No one laughed and pointed….It might just have been worth it!

By lunchtime there was a problem. Even though it was incredibly thick, the skirt was stretching. Bugger. (that’s 4)

By the end of the day I was desperately hanging on the my skirt with the aid of several safety pins. It hasn’t been worn since.

It has languished on my desk pending being made into a bag…

All that happened was Thug fell in love with it…

He went out for a prowl in the garden so Mewsley decided to give it a try….

It spent a few weeks as a favourite cat blanket - just enough time to make sure cat hair was irremovably embedded in the fabric. Then the curse even affected my hand knitting loving cats…

Even they won’t sit on it now

I think it’s time to utter my final Flint related “Bugger” and let this one go…

I was taking a peek at Diva Maggie’s blog
and saw she was doing the Rowan International free gift - the Dolly bag.

I said, “Ohhh, I’ve done that too”

Maggie said, “It’s not on your blog- let us see????”

So here is the little beastie…

I really enjoyed doing this bag, even the finger blistering bobbles!

Here’s a close up of the pattern and “evil” bobbles…

The question is though, what on earth do you use it for? It’s too small for a handbag - at least for me with my “survive a week on a dessert island” kit normally housed in my bag

I’m a bit too old to walk down the street with it anyway too (anyone over the age of 8 years is too old!) It’s too pretty to shove away in a box…

I’ve finally found it a use hanging up with my hair dryer, holding the nozzle from my hairdryer and a travel hair curling wand thingy.

What do you girls think - any better ideas out there?

I belong to a knitting circle - The Knaughty Knitters. Two or three times a month on a Sunday, we rattle the doors of Starbucks at opening time, bag the best comfy seats with our knitting, grab a coffee then sit and spend the whole morning knitting, chatting, coffee drinking, “oohing” over each other’s knitting books, correcting each other’s mistakes and generally being a fabulous support network for all concerned.

The staff in our Starbucks are super. They don’t mind us taking up residence. They take an interest in our projects and do their best to accommodate our idiosyncratic coffee orders.

So, at Christmas, I thought it would be a nice idea to make the staff a little something to say “Thank you” from the Knaughty Knitters.

This is how “Buck the Bear” was born….

The logo on the apron is cut out from a leaflet and sewn on. The coffee mug is made from the lid from an old lip balm, a piece of yarn poked through a slot cut in the side and knotted on the inside to make a handle, a logo cut out from a leaflet and glued on, coffee coloured Yorkshire Tweed for the coffee and Kidsilk Haze froth!

The bear pattern and pattern for the clothes was from an ancient old Sirdar booklet called Teddy Bear Parade, originally produced to raise funds for the disabled.

There’s three sizes of the bear and a myriad of fun outfits - mostly crochet but some knit too. I love this book and have made and given away several bears.

The Starbucks staff were stunned and thrilled when we presented them with Buck. They even bought us some flowers to say thanks!!

Completed Knit Report

Name Buck the Bear
Pattern Sirdar’s Teddy Bear Parade
Yarn body - body -cygnet 4ply, paws- Kidsilk haze, clothes rowan 4ply and rowanspun 4ply tweed
Pattern problems - None - pretty fiddly though.
Pattern modifications None - just changed colours.
Washing and wearing N/A
Knit it again? Oh Yes!
Difficulty easy if you can crochet and don’t mind “fiddle faddle”
Rating 5/5

Here’s another from my back catalog.

This is from Jaeger’s JB35 Siena book and is on the front cover…I seem to have a habit of knitting what’s on the front cover … maybe the best garments are chosen for the cover??

I found this to be a very challenging knit - the only lacy thing I’d ever done in the past was the Birch shawl from Rowan.
I did change the pattern slightly - in the picture above, hopefully you can see that the lace pattern is not taken to the sleeve’s seams. Instead there is a glaring strip of stocking stitch. I thought this look horrible so I worked out the pattern to the edge - a brain bender but worth it.

Stitch detail close up…

Misprint!! The worst part of this pattern was the misprint on Row 2 in my copy of the pattern! I spent a whole Sunday sitting on the sofa casting on, counting stitches, swearing saying “Damn, Knit and Blast it” and other choice phrases and ripping out the stitches to starting again. Eventually I sat down with a pencil and paper and added up the increases and decreases and realised that row 2 could never come out with the number of stitches I was supposed to have. The error has been corrected in later editions but if you have an old copy, Row 2 should read:-

P7[1,7,1,7], *P7, yrn, P2tog, P5, yrn, P2tog, P8; Rep from *to last 6[0,6,0,6]sts, P6[0,6,0,6]

I have worn and worn this top for work (with a pale blue vest underneath for decency’s sake). The lace pattern makes the top stretchy width ways so although the pattern is straight down from the arm holes, it looks fitted on (I like that)

I did get one negative comment about it - my now ex-boss asked, “why are the sleeves too short? Run out of wool?” Grrrr……
Completed Knit Report

Name Rosita

Pattern from Jaeger book JB35

Yarn Jaeger Siena

Pattern problems mistake in Row 2 of pattern “P5″ missing after first “P2tog”

Pattern modifications Lace pattern taken to edge of sleeve

Washing and wearing Washes in the machine at 40 no problem when line dried. However, it did shrink a bit lengthways after Ben put it in the tumble dryer (Ben was in the doghouse for a week). Needs to have a vest underneath - at least!

Knit it again? Yes, almost certainly - Siena in my stash is begging for it. But I’d probably knit it 2″ longer so I can tumble dry it with abandon.

Difficulty I found it pretty hard to keep the pattern correct on the increases and decreases. I had to count my stitches after every knit row.

Rating 4/5