Author: Lorette

My name is Lorette. I learned to knit in 1999, and took up spinning in 2009. I'm a physician specializing in internal medicine, and live in the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy my blog!

Getting closer, and a public service announcement

My Dockside cardigan is all seamed! And it fits! Imagine that, I used a pattern generator that works off my actual measurements, and it worked. What a concept.

I now have the wide collar and the button bands to do, and it will be done. I received some buttons that I ordered on Etsy, and have a couple more sets on the way, so stay tuned for a button-choosing post. I’m really pleased with how this one is turning out. It may well be the best-fitting sweater I’ve ever made.

And now for your public service announcement.

I posted about this on FB, but this has been one hell of a 10 days or so around here. A member of our extended family was killed in a motor vehicle accident a little over a week ago. The family was still reeling from that one, when my husband woke me up a week ago Sunday night, having a stroke in progress. It looked pretty dire initially, although his symptoms were already dramatically improved by the time the EMTs arrived. He spent a couple nights in the hospital getting some tests done, but is now home and doing well. If you weren’t married to him, you wouldn’t be able to tell at this point that anything happened. So we feel very fortunate all in all.

Since many of our friends and family are in our age group, we’ve gotten asked the question, “What do you look for? How do you know you are having a stroke?”

Stroke.org has lots of good information, but just remember F.A.S.T.

F: Face drooping

A: Arm weakness

S: Speech-any changes in speech or comprehension

T: Time to call 911

Time really is of the essence here. If you have a typical ischemic stroke (due to blockage in a blood vessel), the administration of “clot-busting” drugs can be life saving, but this is a time-critical intervention that may not be beneficial if you wait too long.

If you or anyone you know has any of these symptoms, call 911. Don’t just wait it out, don’t drive yourself to urgent care, don’t sit on hold with your doctor’s office. Call 911 and let the professionals sort it out. Time is brain, and you don’t get it back once it’s gone.

New Socks!

Finished just this morning!

The yarn is Retrosaria Mondim, which is a lovely Portuguese wool. It isn’t superwash, in case you are running off to buy some. The pattern is my same old jerry-rigged vanilla sock pattern. 72 stitches, 2.00 mm needles, flap heel and gusset construction. These are for me, though John looked at them and said “I’d wear a pair of those”.

Fortunately I have more colors of this in the stash. I have more colors of damned near everything in the stash.

Antarktis

A finished project!

Project Notes:

  • Pattern: Antarktis, by Janina Kallio
  • Yarn: Cascade Heritage Silk, 437 yard. 85% Merino, 15% Silk
  • Needle: Oh for Pete’s sake. I didn’t write it down. I’m pretty sure it was a 3.5 mm, since there is one sitting on my desk that hasn’t been put away.
  • Started/Finished: 3/6/21-4/17/21.
  • For: ??
  • Modifications: None, though this is one of those great little shawl patterns that you can adjust to use up whatever yarn you have. It also would work well in different weights of yarn
  • Project/yarn rating: ****/*****. The pattern itself is well written and dead easy. There are charts for the lacy bits which are totally confusing, and I’ve been knitting from charts forever. The yarn is divine.
  • What I learned: Again, not having a job that requires me to get my butt out of bed and go to work is great for finishing knitting projects.

One more photo:

Progress

I didn’t mean to just disappear again. I am finding that the list of things to do isn’t any shorter when you are retired, in fact that list just gets longer. And the list of course includes the occasional nap on the couch, and getting lost in a book for an entire afternoon, so sometimes the list doesn’t get done at all. And that is OK with me.

I’m making good progress on my Dockside Cardigan. I blocked the finished pieces this morning, I just have the sleeves left to knit, and then put it all together and put on the collar and bands.

Oh right, I’ll need buttons. Where do you all buy buttons? I haven’t finished a sweater with buttons in quite some time so have no idea where to shop.

Anyway, here are the pieces.

The pieces do match in size, it just doesn’t look like it from the angle that I took that photo.

I like how the ribbing on the front transitions into the decorative bands. It’s a bit hard to see since the fabric is dark due to being wet. And I see that I need to straighten out that ribbing edge.

I have a good bit of the first sleeve done. I discovered the utility of the “smart counters” in KnitCompanion while doing this. I knew they were there, but had never used them before. They are perfect for those “at the same time” shaping directions. Once you set up the individual directions, as you knit through each row, it pops up when you are supposed to start a shaping direction. And it doesn’t let you advance to the next row unless you’ve “cleared” the shaping counter by tapping it. It is ingenious.

The sleeves have the same shaping of the ribbing, every 4 rows you take out one of the rib repeats. I think I am going to love this sweater.

That’s all for now. I might have a finished project for you next time!

One Third

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.

Feather Duster

Project Notes:

  • Pattern: Feather Duster Shawl, by Susan Lawrence
  • 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.

Thursday?

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.

Fluff!

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.

100

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.

Retirement, Month 2

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!

Socks for John

A finished pair!

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.

These are a win!

Yippee!

I finally got photos taken for my Hudson Valley Cardi. It was pouring rain most of today, but the sun popped out a bit ago, so here you go!

Project Notes:

  • Project: Hudson Valley Cardi, pattern by Patty Lyons
  • 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.

Sigh

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?

Stay tuned.