I finished the back piece of my new cardigan sweater this morning. That means the whole thing is about a third done. Fronts and sleeves left to knit, then the sewing up.
This is the pattern I’m using. I can’t say enough good things about the CustomFit patterns. It’s “easier” to just buy a pattern and start knitting, but this has you do your body measurements first, then customizes the pattern to your measurements, using your exact stitch and row gauge. I’ve always found it sort of a crap shoot whether sweaters are going to fit or not. With this method, I suspect I have a fighting chance. Her designs are all fairly classic shapes, nothing really very trendy, and I think they are all knit bottom up and in pieces. Check it out if you’re looking for something similar.
Yarn: Biches et Bûches Le Petit Silk & Mohair, Very Light Blue
Needle: 3.5 mm
Started/Finished: 10/5/2019-3/17/2021
For: Me
Modifications: None, other than the occasional chart misreading
Project/Yarn rating: *****/***** This is a pretty easy pattern, though it is charted only, if that bothers you. I love this yarn, I have another batch of it in a pale pink.
What I learned: Lace doesn’t have to take forever once one decides to sit down and work on it. Retiring from my job also has helped in Finished Project output.
It is Thursday, right? I’m a bit discombobulated this week. First there was the damned time change. I don’t care which “they” pick, I just wish “they” would pick one and stick with it.
Then I had my colonoscopy on Tuesday. Which meant both Monday and Tuesday were shot, and yesterday I was a bit befuddled as well. My sleep schedule had been a mess the past year with all the pandemic/work related anxiety, and it had just started to get back to normal before the time change.
I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done today, but I did start some sourdough bread.
It’s just plain old white bread, with flour, sourdough starter, water, and salt.
And I started a pot of black beans for tonight’s supper.
Isn’t that a pretty bean pot? It’s a Colombian-made Chamba pot, and it makes terrific beans and stews. Here’s another photo.
Now that the Blue Cloud Shawl is done, I’m on to the next lace thing. I have two lace shawls still in progress, both ancient. I picked the one that has been on the needles the longest, my Cathedral Stole.
According to Ravelry, I started that in 2016, so it is just freaking time to finish it. As usual, that color is way off. It is more of a deep scarlet red. Once we get some sunshine around here I might get a decent photo.
And the Blue Cloud is almost ready to come off the blocking mats. I may have a Finished Project for Friday.
This one is getting close to being done. The pattern is Feather Duster, the yarn is Biches et Bûches Le Petit Silk & Mohair. I’m in love with this yarn, it is just a big cloud of baby blue fluff. I got mine at Tolt Yarn & Wool, which is my nearly local yarn shop.
This is a pretty dead-easy pattern, though knitting it in this yarn means you have to be very careful to not make errors. Ripping this stuff out is nearly impossible. It’s one of those shawl patterns that you can adjust to fit the yarn you have, I had three skeins of this yarn, and just kept knitting repeats. I have 5 rows left in my current repeat, and about 8 grams of yarn left, so will bind off at that point. Each row is taking at least half an hour though, and I have close to 400 stitches on the needles. I keep thinking “I can finish this today”, but see above about not being able to undo mistakes, so I’m just taking it a row at a time.
My mom’s birthday is today. She would be 100 years old. That’s tough for me to wrap my head around.
She grew up in the depression years, and during the war. She married, not particularly successfully, but made the best of it, since that’s what women did then. She raised four kids mostly on her own, though she had an army of other women to help her: my grandmother, her sisters, and many neighbors and friends. Other than the few years when my siblings and I were babies, she worked as a teacher.
Though she lived in very conservative times, and in a conservative small farm town, her world-view was not one of restriction. She was funny, generous, and interested in the world around her. She graduated from “normal” school as a teacher at age 18, but then went back to college when I was in my early teens, and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. I remember one of those years when she was studying John Donne in her spare time, whilst running a small farm household and trying to keep all of us clothed and fed.
She taught me that I can do almost anything I set my mind to, she never doubted that I could go to college, then medical school. She was a teacher her entire life, and instilled in me a love of reading and learning that I will be forever grateful for.
Happy heavenly birthday, momma. I think of you every day.
If there was ever any concern that I would be bored in retirement, stop worrying. I am having a blast, with no regrets, and no thoughts of “oh, maybe I’ll keep my work privileges and work a few days here and there”.
Nope. Just nope. I’m already running into the problem of too many fun things to do and not enough days in the week. And we’re in a pandemic in crappy weather, so I’m stuck at home, indoors. Once the weather gets nice and we’re all given the green light to get out in public, I may have to give up sleeping.
Of course I’ve been knitting. I’m trying to pare down my WIPs (works in progress, for the uninitiated). My ideal number of on-the-go projects is five or six: a sweater, a sock, a lace thing, a simple mindless shawl for knitting when I’m doing something else, and perhaps one or two small things (think hat or mittens). I’m getting there. I still have 3 complicated lace shawls in progress, but my goal is to get that down to ONE complex lace shawl at a time, in the hopes of actually finishing things.
The sweater project that I mentioned a few posts back has been started. After a lot of dithering around, I found a CustomFit sweater pattern by Amy Herzog that is just what I was looking for. It is her Dockside Cardigan. If you aren’t familiar with her patterns, she sells pattern templates that you can personalize with your measurements and gauge.
That’s a photo from the pattern page on Ravelry. Isn’t that pretty? Here is where I am now:
I think this will be perfect for this yarn.
I have bunches of other non-knitting projects in the works, but I’ll save that for later. Happy Monday!
The yarn is Regia 4 ply, the color is one of their Nation colors. This was from deep stash, I bought it for John since he is all about the blue. It’s the same old jerry-rigged vanilla sock pattern I always use. He has weird feet, so I modify the foot shaping to fit him better.
72 stitches, knit on 2.00 mm double pointed needles. I do the heel flap a little longer, and do the gusset decreases a little slower to make it wider around his instep.
That’s my sock cheat sheet.
I really like the Regia sock yarn. It is sturdy, and wears well. This was put up in two separate 50 gram skeins. Each one had one knot, so the stripe sequence was off. This would bug the shit out of me if I bothered to match stripes in socks, but I don’t, so it doesn’t.
Yarn: Rowan Cotton Cashmere, I used 11 skeins, or 1507 yards
Needles: 3.5 mm for the lace edging, 3.25 mm for the body
Started/Finished: 7/11/19-2/19/21
For: Me
Modifications: I added about 2 inches to the body length, since I’m tall.
Project/Yarn Rating: Definitely ***** for the pattern. Patty writes extremely clear, no-nonsense patterns. This is one of her video sweater class patterns, so has a ton of linked instructional videos included. The yarn is also *****. Being a cotton/cashmere blend, it doesn’t have a lot of spring, but knits up very nicely. It is a tiny bit splitty, and I ran into a few knots, but nothing I’d complain about. It’s a perfect weight for spring and summer. I had my doubts about the color, since it borders on “blah”, but I like it, and it will go with anything.
What I learned: Where to start? I learned to do cables without a cable needle. I learned how to do a sloped shoulder bind off to avoid that stair step look. The videos had a lot of great suggestions to improve seaming and sizing. This one really took my sweater knitting up a notch.
I predict that this one will get a lot of use!
And one more photo, since it isn’t every day you see a new sweater at Chez Knitting Doctor.
As it turns out, this yarn does not want to be knit at 20 stitches per 4 inches. I sort of expected this, which is why I did a swatch. It also doesn’t like being knit into cables. The heathery alpaca/wool blend just really wants to be stocking stitch. Fortunately I’m not bored at all by miles of stocking stitch.
So here’s the deal. What I want is a plain long cardigan, knit in pieces, seamed, and with a wide shawl collar. I don’t want to do a top down cardigan. My ideal gauge for this yarn is at 17.5 stitches per 4 inches. You wouldn’t think this would be a tough pattern to find, but there you have it.
You do know where this is going, right?
It looks like I’m cobbling together my ideal sweater on my own.
This is either a brilliant idea, or quite insane. But how hard can it be?
No, not that Hudson cardigan sweater. That is finished as of this morning. The bit of collar that was finished last is drying, and then I’ll do a “finished” post.
It’s this*:
I started this one forever ago. 2018, according to Ravelry. The pattern is Shinsetsu, which is quite pretty. That is nearly the whole back, about a few inches short of shoulder shaping.
Here is what it looks like now.
I have gotten at least marginally smarter about choosing flattering patterns as I’ve had more experience in sweater knitting. This pattern is gorgeous, but it is intended to be worn with quite a bit of positive ease, and has a drop shoulder type of construction. This is actually very similar to the one I just finished. However, that one is in a lighter yarn, and the fabric has a lot of drape. In this yarn it will just be a big bulky sweater with a lot of baggy bulk under the arms.
I sort of knew this. I kept knitting along until I got to the part at the underarm where you add even MORE stitches to make it wider. Then it went into time out when I got distracted by a new, shiny pattern. There probably was a reason why it went into time out.
Also, if you click on that pattern link, and look at the photos, you’ll see one of my knitwear designer pet peeves. The model is crouching down, or standing with her arm out, holding the sweater out. No straight-on shots to show what it really looks like.
Anyway, I adore this yarn, and want a wearable sweater out of it, so out it came. John was a bit horrified. “All that WORK!”
I’m swatching again to make sure, but I think this will be the new sweater. It has a much more fitted profile, and I like the cables a lot more.
Stay tuned.
*Cat included for scale. I put that sweater down, and picked up my phone to take a photo. That’s how long it took Ripley to make herself at home.
Whew. This is a LOT of seaming. I have the shoulders joined, the sleeves in, and one side seam done. I’ve been mostly estimating the fit until I got to this point, but I’m quite relieved to be able to try it on. I think this will be a wardrobe keeper once done.
It should hang better once the lace collar is knitted and sewn down, that will stabilize the shoulders better. And those clips holding one side together make it heavy on that side so it looks lopsided.
That is one big pile of sweater pieces right there. This is my Hudson Bay cardigan, which I started knitting about a billion days ago (pre-pandemic!). I’m finally on the second sleeve, then it will be time to finish the neck band and call it a summer sweater.
This is knit in pieces, which is hands down my favorite way to make sweaters. The front lace bands are knit along with the fronts. After the pieces are seamed, the live stitches at the top of the band are picked back up and the lace continues around to meet at the center back.
I think I’ll take a break from knitting to block the other pieces. That way once I finish this sleeve, I can do the seaming and get the rest of the knitting done while the second sleeve is drying. I’m ready for this one to be done, even if it is only February and I won’t wear it for a few months.
The first is a huge one. After nearly 40 years of doctoring, I’m hanging up the stethoscope and retiring. My last day was one week ago, and I’m just now settling in and figuring out what the new life will look like. For now, it will be hanging out, reading, knitting, spinning, and catching up on house projects. And spending time with John, which is the best thing about retiring. If I’ve learned anything from my patients over the years, it is that nobody gets to their deathbed and wishes they’d spent more time at their job. They all wish they’d had more time with their loved ones.
And I won’t lie, this last year at work has been a little soul-sucking. Being a doctor in the midst of a pandemic can offer some challenges in a good way, but mostly it’s been a slog. So I’m not sorry at all that I’m out of it.
The second finished project is socks!
The yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners sock yarn, which is lovely. The color is named Hope, which is only available currently from Yarndale in England, with somewhat exorbitant shipping costs. (Though that didn’t stop me!)
The pattern is my same old vanilla sock pattern.
My next sock is already started.
The yarn is Regia sock yarn, I bought this eons ago to make socks for John. The blue is a little darker than true Tarheel Blue, but close enough.
I’m not sure what this blog will morph into now that I have more time to both knit and write. Stay tuned!
