FO Friday

Remember this Rhinebeck yarn:



Well in just 8 weeks it became this:

Pattern: Drops 119-25 (Terribly long pattern name here)
Yarn: Bartlett Shetland Sport Cone in color dark jade heather - Probably a little more than half the cone. I think there is enough left for another sweater!
Size: Modified Large. I followed the size large pattern, but after I went 4 inches past the underarms I realized it was way too big, so I ripped back and didn't cast on any of the underarm stitches.  This required some changes to the sleeves which ended up being somewhere between the medium and large size at the start and decreased down to the medium.
Needles: Awesome Ninja needles size 4.

My Beau

Every year, my beau, the best husband ever, gets a sweater. He wears them, sometimes, every day. He appreciation and pride for the hand knits makes the process a joy for me. He helps me pick the yarn, the pattern and gets all excited whenever he sees me working on it. I love knitting for him. 2009 was no different, even though it was stretched to the very end of the year, he got a sweater.

He has a Cambridge Jacket, and a Cobblestone (mine), and of the two he prefers the zip up style of the jacket, so he requested his next sweater be of that style. It really is more versatile for southern life, where wool sweaters are not required in the same way as they are up north. He also went through my books and requested this for his next sweater. Those two requests being completely opposite, required some knit-mods on my part. I was feeling brave so I decided I was up to the task.

The modified Beau on my beau.

Basically, I followed the pattern for size small, but just knit the front in two pieces, adding an extra stitch at the center front (for each side), which I knit on the right side and slipped on the left side to form a nice edge where the zipper would go. Then I eliminated the bind-offs where the placket was supposed to be and incorporated those extra decreases into the neck shaping. Everything else was just the same as the pattern. There was a little ripping and fixing in the neck area, but mostly that's because I wasn't paying attention.

To put in the zipper, I followed Grumperina's directions, and added a striped grosgrain ribbon to make it look finished. I thought about putting it in the sewing machine, but in the end I chickened out on that. It's time consuming to do all that hand finishing, but well worth it.

Overall, I'm pleased with it. I think it's a little snug in the shoulders, which is something I'll have to address for the 2010 sweater, but he's happy and it's been well worn so far.

Pattern: Beau from Rowan Vintage Knits zippified.
Yarn: Filatura Lanarota Chaco, purchased at Rhinebeck in 2007. It's a standard worsted 100% wool (just under 6 balls, I still have 4 more left)
Needles: US size 5 and 7 from knitpicks harmony interchangeables (love!)
Zipper purchased from zipperstop to get the correct length.

Baby Knitting (not for me)

So now that we've see all the '09 sock fails. Let's talk about some successes.

My friend Ellen, who you've heard about before*, had a baby. A really cute baby. Now, we know the baby knitting rules. If you were in the wedding party, baby gets a gift. If not, baby maybe gets a gift. Ellen falls into the former of these two categories, so a gift was happening.

Since I'm notorious for taking longer than necessary to knit things, I typically start to plan these things from the moment the news is first announced, and finish them two months after the baby arrives. This time was no different. I bought the yarn in Maine this summer. Cast on just about the same time little Shelby arrived (actually hours before I received the email in some creepy psychic sort of way), finished just before Christmas, and sent it off in the mail on New Year's Eve.

Ellen, in classic style, sent a hardcopy photo of Shelby in her sweater, which arrived back here by January 8th. If we were TV sitcom roomates, she'd be the smart on-the-ball one, and I'd be the one with the best intentions who can't quite get it all together. Pretty much living together was just like that. :)

The knitter's among you will recognize this as Elizabeth Zimmerman's iconic Baby Surprise Jacket. One of which I have knitted before. Same comments, the women is brilliant. The pattern is fun. It must be for me to have knit it twice.

The yarn is a rare gem, purchased in a small shop in Bar Harbor, ME, which had just recently opened. It's called Superstar, by a company called Starcroft fibers. It's superwash, so it's baby friendly. I bought it on a day off from our busy field season. The deal was, I'd give the grad students a day to visit the National Park, but they had to take me to the yarn store! Since then I haven't been able to find a website for the store, but it's right downtown and hard to miss.

I used almost all of two balls (one in teal and one in nutmeg), on size 4 needles. The colors at the shop were limited in the gender neutral sense, I thought this combo would work. I used a random striping pattern, first by flipping a coin, then by making a random list in excel. I picked up stitches around the neck and did a picot bind-off to make it just a little girlie, since by then we knew she was a she. The buttons were a happy coincidence from my button stash. Nothing fancy, just shell buttons available at most craft stores, but they picked up the yarn colors nicely. All in all a classic, cute, squishy BSJ!

* No, the afghan is not done, but we are up to 26 of the 99 squares. Coming out with that fact is making me think that it needs to be next on the finish it up list.

knitting

I've got some finished stuff to show off. It took me a while to get some pictures so some are little old, but better late than never. Last week the knitting gals got together and did a little photoshoot. Thanks very much to ashpags for taking all the pictures for us. These are just a few shots, it was so hard to pick from all of the beautiful ones she took.


This sweater got done the night before we took of for home in December. Good thing too because I wore it almost everyday since it was so cold and snowy up there. You can see it already has the fuzz of a well loved comfy sweater.

Pattern: Petra from Cocoknits
Yarn: Classic Elite Two.Two. from Webs. The very first time I ever went there. It's discontinued, and this is it's second life as a sweater. One horribly bad crocheted nightmare was frogged before the move and this is a much better use of this very bulky yarn.



This is the hat I knit a few weekends ago. I am so in love with it, I can't explain it. The yarn is divine. Also from Webs, maybe summer sale of 2007? I'm doing a little stash-busting in light of the failing economy and that (still unsold) second house.

Patttern: Lace Grace Beret from Loop.
Yarn: Grace from Louisa Harding in dark teal. 1 ball and little bit of a second one.

I used different needle sizes because I couldn't locate a size 9 16" circular anywhere, so I used size 8 for the body, I stuck with size 6 or the ribbing. It seemed to work out fine. The pattern is easy to follow and quick to knit. The yarn is lucious and a joy to work with. I'm making some fingerless mitts to complement the hat. This was the first time I've ever done a tubular cast on and it was a neat trick with a pleasing result.

Since I don't think I have any knitting lovelies to show off anytime soon, and I want to make the pretty photographs last as long as possible, I just give you a tease of the other project. Remember that last pair of socks I promised. Well I'm still writing up the pattern, but this should give you something to think about:

Fall Begins

Ugh, why does the camera cord go missing everytime you want to upload pictures?

Anyways, I managed a crazy workaround so that I can show you what I was up to all of October. Knitting a sweater faster than I ever have before. I skipped NaNoSweMo this year because I did it a month early. It was one of those things that just consumed me and I did not knit anything else. I'm blaming the yarn, and the need to feel like fall was upon us even though the weather and the calendar were at odds with one another for this displaced New Englander. I'm calling is my Fall Begins sweater for a couple of reasons. First I cast on on October 10th, which is (in my old world) the beginning of fall, which I completely missed this year. Fall really invoked the homesick chez Science and Craft. Second, I finished on Halloween, which was very weird around here, since kids didn't have to wear jackets over their costumes, but there was a little chill in the air that made me feel like it might eventaully get below 70 here.

Here's the deal:
Pattern: Summer's End free on Ravelry from Overbrewed.
Yarn: Classic Elite Skye Tweed (Rav). color Dungeon (1275), just under 9 balls. Sadly this is the last of my stash of this discontinued yarn. I bought it at Webs 2 years ago with the intention of making a scarf. Why I bought a sweater's worth I don't know, but it was a happy accident in this case.
Needles: US size 7 and 5. I went down a size from the pattern based on my cobblestone swatches, it worked out ok.
Size: Small. This was not the size I initially choose based on my measurements, but when I thought about the number of stitches that I had just used for hub's sweater, and considering the ratio of him to me I went with the small. I compenstated in the chest area with some short rows.
Mods:

• The short rows obviously.
• I lengthed the sleeves to be full length (16" instead of the pattern designated 12").
• I added two rows of garter stitch more than the hems called for, same at the waistband. At the hems because I wanted them to match the button bands. At the waist because I thought it might provide a little more shaping, it didn't.
• 3 button holes instead of four. This was dictated by the buttons I had on hand. 4 would have been overkill.

Thoughts: Overall I'm pretty happy with it. In retrospect I would have added about another inch between the short rows and underarm. But it works ok on.

And here's one more thing, I had another ball of the yarn leftover and I just wasn't done working with it: So I made a little hat. Following this pattern, minus the pom poms and ribbing. I'll never wear the two together, that violates all kinds of fashion and knitting rules, but we did combine the photo shoots :)

Fortunately, it did get a little chilly here over the weekend and I got to wear the hat for all of 10 minutes at a shuttle stop. The sweater made the trip to Utah with me a couple of weeks ago and it saw snow, so I don't yet feel that I have to completely abandon my love for wool!

Cobblestone

A finished knit!

And a perfect fit! The whole time I was knitting I was so worried it would be too small, but I trusted my gauge swatch and it was all good.

When I updated my ravelry project page on this one it came to my attention that it took me a VERY long time to knit it. I'm blaming it on the travel. This sweater was knit in at least 4 different states and I recall at least three airplanes. Geez it's been a long year!

Here's the stats:

Pattern: Cobblestone by Jared Flood from Interweave Knits, Fall 07 (issue is sold out, but you can buy the pattern on it's own)
Yarn: Classic Elite Skye Tweed, color 1243, purchased when it was on closeout at webs shortly after the issue came out. I used just over 11 balls. The pattern calls for exactly 11 for the size I knit. I did also knit 3 swatches, so that ate up a little yarn, but in my opinion, 11 won't make it.
Needles: US Size 5. This is two sizes smaller than the pattern calls for. I consistently need to do this with patterns from interweave. I don't know why.

Notes: This is a really great pattern, which is obvious by the number of people who have knit it. I did make one mistake, after it was sitting for a long time I confused myself with my weird knitting technique (sometimes I knit regular, sometimes it knit like this...sometime I'll tell you why), and I did a single round of the underarm garter band as stockinette. It's barely noticeable and hub said not to pull it out, so I didn't.



This is my first yoked sweater, it is was fun to do a new construction, and hurray for no seams! Also, once I got to the yoke, it occured to me that this yarn was a perfect candidate for spit splicing, and that greatly reduced my ends to weave in. I think spit splicing is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Which, by the way is one of the books I read last month, I'll have to tell you about that sometime too.

It's a block party!

I know, I have been AWAL for a little while. I have not be delingintly posting progress on my November goals like some people. I'm going to blame it on the interview. It sucked up 3 days last week, plus the time to prepare and then the time to recover. I had planned to catch up on my internet life in the evenings while I was there. In my past experience interviews of this nature are an exhausting experience and planning to do brain work in the evenings is a bad bad bad idea. It is, however, the perfect time to sit in front of a TV and catch up on blogging, blog reading and emails to all the friends that you want to write real emails to (not the "hey how are you I'm great life's busy hope to see you soon" kind). A grand master plan foiled by staying in a 1960's era home with GASP! NO INTERNET!

The interview:

I think it went well. My talk seemed to be well received and the people were nice. I don't think that it's the job for me though. I'm not ready to activate plan B quite yet. The house was the highlight. This was the first time I have seen teal and avocado paisley print wallpaper complete with matching curtains. The place was a hoot.

The paper:

I am half way through the data analysis. This is a bit behind where I wanted to be. I have been slowed by a couple of factors. First, the interview. Second, %#&@ing Windows. I had a very bad day yesterday. It seems that an 80 gig hard-drive shouldn't really ever hold 80 gigs unless they are stored under multiple windows profiles or some other BS like that. I came into the office yesterday morning all prepared to be in an environment where I could get a lot of work done. Total paper focus. Turns out I had a corrupt windows profile, which took ~5 hours for the IT guy to kindof fix. None of the data is lost, it's just in the wrong place. I'm an anal backup person, so I'm not worried about anything that might be lost. It's just that I really need the damn computer to function. Multiple phone calls and 2 hours or so with the IT guy did not jive well with total paper focus, so very little got done.

Random rant:

Am I getting old, or are those IT guys getting young? I mean seriously, when this kid, who looked like he was about 12 and had some kind of metal bar sticking out through his eyebrow, started telling me that I shouldn't have 30 gigs of data stored on this computer because blah blah blah, I almost blew a gasket. Where exactly would you like me to store the data? This is the computer it's analyzed on, therefore it needs to be on this computer, would you like to come rewrite the 70,000 or so lines of Pascal code that collects this data to see if you can compress it in some way the 4 or 5 other computer experts that wrote the code were somehow unable to figure out. Don't tell me that my desktop shouldn't have any files on it, "it's just like a messy desk you can't get any work done". Here's a hint, you don't like messy, comb your hair! Man it's a good thing I keep that internal monologue internal I might have made this kid cry. I'm getting old. No doubt about it.

The knitting:

The sweater is done and blocking. I pretty much had the exact same experience as the yarn harlot last night. Lot's of seaming, but I was too lazy to rip back the inch I should have on the arms so it's just going to stay that way. I even watched last weeks bionic women on the web, it's weird to read an almost exact count of your own evening written by a famous person. (I didn't have wine and had some dinner with friends)

The fit is good, and the moving mud closure Mom bought for me at Rhinebeck is the perfect color. I'll try to post pictures from Thanksgiving so you can get the full effect. This sweater is a brilliant pattern to knit. Kate Gilbert is truly genius. Many have said this before so I won't expound further than that. The yarn is Primo by Filatura Di Crosa. I bought it at Webs summer sale in June. I have 6 balls leftover, I don't know what to do with it. It's nice to work with, except it's one of those yarns that the ends don't really stay under after they are woven in. It comes in small balls so there are alot of ends. I LOVE the color. This is my best "for me" knit yet.

Since I had to drag the blocking board out, I finally got around to blocking the pea pod sweater that I knit over the summer as well. It's a Kate Gilbert Block party right here in my living room: