Category Archives: sweater

Making it up – part 2

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It’s been dark and dreary all week with clouds and rain so I wasn’t able to take pictures of my top-down-circular-yoke sweater.  At least all the snow has melted from last week!

The colors are so close in tone that they almost blend together. 

It’s very difficult to tell them apart while knitting particularly under incandescent lights.

I decided to go with a two-row stripe and since I have one more ball of the mallard (green) color, I began with it and will use it as the button band color. 

The increase rows are distracting to me but that’s the nature of this beast.  Hopefully blocking will even out those stitches so they are less noticeable.The wrong side.The neck edge is just four rows of garter stitch.  I was thinking of making a picot hem for the sweater but keep the garter stitch at the sleeve hem.  Just not sure.  Would two different hem edges look dumb?

Kindness

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I haven’t abandoned the socks but I took your advice and decided to step back (haha) from that project for now.  And I’m still debating about what to do with the Which Way Now shawl.

The Bacardi Cardi is ripped back part way and on my radar.  That sweater will be finished this spring (or summer), however, I need something different on my needles. Right.  Now.

Enter Kindness.

The garter tab start is new for me and I really liked how the beginning few rows look.  No bump.  Trust me, there is no bump.  All the stitches just blend right in.  

The yarn is Knit Picks Chroma Fingering in the beautiful Galápagos colorway (which is not available anymore). Soft blues morph into greens and cream and back out again.

I would be farther along with this but I decided to convert the directions into a table with row-by-row stitch counts included in the far right column.  It was a bit tedious and I don’t have all the stitch counts at the end of the rows as I am new to reading and deciphering lace charts to see how the count changes.  This concept is used by Helen Stewart and the Spindrift Shawl pattern and it really helped me especially when the stitch counts changes every row.

I think this lovely little shawlette will be just the thing to get my confidence back.

 

 

 

I remember now

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The Bacardi Cardigan sweater is knit on circular needles though knit flat.  The reason is so the color changes don’t have to start and end on the same edge.  If the color you need is on the other side, just turn the work over and start knitting/purling from that edge. It can get tricky but it saves from weaving in hundreds of ends when finished.  And weaving in cotton yarn has challenges quite different from wool.  It’s slippery, doesn’t like to stay put and has a mind of its own.

I remember now why I put my Bacardi Cardi in hibernation.  Besides having six balls of yarn attached to the needles…

…the edges are wonky.

Some areas are nubby and the yarn doesn’t want to lay flat.

And the tension is too tight or too loose in places.

I think I must…

…rip it

and start over.

One plus is that I do have the correct gauge with US #5 needles even though I did knit a swatch earlier, it was good to know that the swatch didn’t lie.

I found a few videos on making a better selvage edge while carrying several colors of yarn that might be helpful.  I would need to add another stitch to each side but if it helps with that unevenness and bulk, it will be worth it:

  • This one is a great technique and is right to the point of what I was looking for.
  • Way #5 in this video.  This is the same technique as above and begins at 8:51 but watch the entire video if you want other to see other methods.

I also asked the designer, Barbara Gregory, for suggestions.  Her reply:

One suggestion for the edges is to occasionally work the first stitch of a row (preferably a row of a single color) with one of the yarns that is being carried up the edge. This stitch will not show once seaming and bands are completed, but it will anchor the carried yarn and help you to maintain the desired tension along that vertical edge.

 

My other thought regarding the edges is to do seaming and picking up of stitches for the band more than a single stitch in from the edge if necessary to get a clean edge.

So I’m ready to try this again!

Digging into my stash

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After my SSSK socks, I needed something else fun and colorful to knit.  So I dug into my stash and came up with this fun yarn by Berroco.

This cotton/acrylic/nylon blend yarn, an Aran weight, is Calico in color 1829. Unfortunately it’s discontinued now but I checked on Ravelry and several people still have some in their stash, too.  I know I bought it on sale years ago with no idea of a project what-so-ever.  I just liked it.  Eight balls of 90 yards isn’t enough to make much but that’s all that was available.  The matte red and coral colors are on one side of the strand and the shiny blue, green, gold and orange colors run down the other side so when it’s knitted up, the yarn twists and makes an interesting fabric.

I searched through Ravelry for patterns as well as magazines, old books and booklets and found nothing I loved in that yarn weight and yardage.  So after swatching, I took elements from two patterns to make my own.  Lace Hem Topping and Drops 90-18.

The back is finished.    No color pooling, just fun.

Above is one side using the stockinette stitch and below is the reverse.