Category: Knitting

Color Affection is becoming the bane of my existence. Don’t get me wrong, this is going to be a shawl I will love once it is done. But I’ve been plotting ever more interesting ways to destroy it for the past few weeks. I was even a teeny bit joyful when Will the cat tried to make a bed out of it earlier today.

Here’s where I am.

I’m finally on the border. At least while I was doing those three-color stripes I had the fleeting second of “interesting” when I did the short row turning bit on every row.

“Oh, look! The short row sections are getting longer!”

Now I’m just knitting the red border, in boring red garter stitch. It’s a very pretty red. But I currently have 528 stitches on the needles, and a couple of repeats of the four row pattern to go. And every repeat adds another 10 stitches to that total. I thought seriously about stopping and just binding off now, but this is going to be huge, and that puny one inch border stripe will look stupid.

I just checked. As of right now, there are 12,600 Color Affections listed on Ravelry. Only 9345 of those have been finished. The rest are “in progress” (a euphemism for “I’m bored out of my mind here”), “hibernating” (a euphemism for “I hate this but can’t bring myself to frog it”), or “frogged”. Those last brave souls were at least honest in their boredom.

I have a couple other three-color combos in my stash that would make nice Color Affections. If any of you see any hint that I am rummaging through the yarn boxes to put together another one, please come over here and give me a nice head slap.

I’m thinking a TV marathon. Anybody have any good suggestions for mindless TV shows? If so, let me know.

And no, I haven’t forgotten that after I knit another eleventy billion stitches, I’ll have to bind the whole thing off.

Please send whisky.

* In case you are wondering about France, and don’t follow me on Facebook, we had a terrific time. John is blogging it so I’ll let him do that. Here is his first post.

We've been on vacation this week! We rented a house in Seabrook on the Washington coast, and the kids and grandkids joined us here for a week of last-of-the-summer fun. They're all here till Saturday, though I have to work this weekend so I'm headed home tomorrow.

We've had good food, lots of fun and games, and beach fun. Lewey just loves beach fun. He also loves sleeping.

And of course there has been knitting.

Everything I brought with me seems to be red.

What all is in that pile?

There is a pair of socks.

That is the sweater I started a few weeks ago. I'd be farther along if I hadn't screwed up and had to rip back about 3 inches.

There is Color Affection!

Last but not least, some spinning. This is a wool-silk blend that I have been working on forever. I think there were about 8 ounces of this in batt form, I have a few ounces left to spin.

I head home tomorrow, then “get” to spend the weekend working in the hospital. But it's my last few hospital shifts for the near future, I'll be 100% clinic based from now on, which is a good change for me.

I'm off to do some of that knitting!

 

This new sweater has a very interesting construction. So far it doesn’t look much like a sweater.

Here’s a photo:

It’s just a big rectangle so far. Here’s another photo to show you how it’s put together.

That faint line down the middle shows where the original cast on starts. The stitches on the needles are the back and sleeves, just started. The top of the photo is the ribbing at the back and sides of the neck.

So you cast on along that line using a provisional cast on, then knit the right neckband and upper yoke, then put those stitches on a holder. Then you undo the provisional cast on and knit the other half of the neckband in the other direction. At some point you get to add in the front sections, though I can’t see it just yet. This is one of those patterns where you just have to have faith that it’s going to turn into a sweater someday.

I’m also doing some dyeing this weekend for the first time in a long time. No photos yet, but yesterday I prepped some yarn with an alum mordant. The dye pot is full of onion skins that I have saved up for months. The yarn is about to go in. I’ll show photos when it’s out and dry!

Honest, I have been working on that big heavy wooly square sweater. But there is only so much heavy wool knitting I can handle in July. What's a knitter to do?

Of course, cast on something new! OK, I didn't really cast on, that's just the beginnings of a gauge swatch, but it counts.

It will be this eventually:

 

Doesn't that look like a wardrobe essential? The yarn is some ancient Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool from deep stash, in a lovely claret color.

In other news, I passed another Cold Sheep landmark on Monday.

120 days without buying ANY yarn!

I'm off to knit a few rows before my lunch break is over!

 

Next modification to the pattern. For some reason, the sleeves on this sweater use a rolled stockinette edging, which doesn’t make sense, since the body edging is ribbed. I hate rolled edges anyway, so I dragged out this old post with my mini-tutorial for a tubular cast on.

Please send me a rum drink. I have at least a gazillion miles of plain stocking stitch left. Cocktail umbrella optional.

Isn’t this what everybody does when the outside temperature threatens to hit the low 90’s? Whatever, it’s only 68 here so far this morning, so if I want to knit a heavy wool sweater, that’s what I’ll do.

I finished the front piece this morning. (The back is under the front in that photo.) I’m sure you’ve all forgotten what this is, but it’s Peace Fleece wool, pattern is Old Friend, which is basically a boxy shapeless square sweater. My modifications so far have been to use a tubular cast on for the ribbing, and I did short row shaping for the shoulders.

On to the sleeves. We’ll see how far I get today before I pass out from wool fumes and the heat.

And yes, this is yet another project that will be for John. If it seems like he’s getting a lot of knitting love lately, he deserves it. This is also on the agenda today.

*And no, I have no idea why there are boxes of nuts and bolts on my dining room table. Who knows.

 

Time for the toe grafting, with a bit of yarn to spare.

5.5 grams, to be exact. Nearly done!

AKA,

Dog Mittens!

And here they are!

Project Details:

Pattern: Dog Mittens by Jorid Linvik
Yarn: Rauma Finullgarn, 1 skein dark navy, and 1 skein cream. Very nice yarn for stranded knitting. It’s not the smoothest shiniest stuff on the block, but it sticks together nicely, colors don’t bleed, and it blocks beautifully. This is where I got it, I think. There are many fine colors to choose from. It’s not the least expensive yarn of this type you can buy, but it’s great quality. The yarn was consistent, there wasn’t a single knot or thin spot. It’s firmly enough spun that I don’t think pilling will be much of a problem.
Needles: 2.75 mm KnitPicks double points
Started: December 5, 2008
Finished: July 4th, 2014
For: John!

What I Learned: It really shouldn’t take so long to knit a pair of mittens. These were a heap of fun to knit, and once I loaded the charts into Knit Companion, it was a lot easier to keep track of where I was. I learned that it makes a difference which hand you hold which color in two color knitting. I also learned gradually to keep my “floats” in the back looser so things don’t get bunched up. I also found out that if it takes you nearly six years to knit a stinking pair of mittens, your gauge is likely going to change from one mitten to the next one. Blocking fixed that just fine.

Verdict: I love them, John loves them. They are already stashed in his drawer, ready for the next cold spell.*

*Winter is Coming–

Here’s the sock in progress. I’ve been a bit worried that I’m going to run out of yarn on the second toe.

I weighed the yarn an inch ago.

21.8 grams left.

I knit another inch.

That one’s tough to see. 18.9 grams left. So roughly 3 grams of sock yarn per inch.

4 inches of sock left. So I should need 12 grams of yarn at most, but definitely less taking toe decreases into account. Unless my measurements are off, which certainly happens with sock feet. You measure it, you have 4 inches left to knit. Knit, knit, knit. Inches of knitting later, you measure it, and you have 4 inches left to knit.

I do have a back up plan involving a deep deep green and 1 or 2 row stripes to eke out the yarn if need be. We’ll see. My current plan involves knitting like a maniac because we all know that makes the yarn go farther.

I ran across this post yesterday. It’s a blog post by Jared Flood talking about color choices. This made me think a bit about my Color Affection shawl.

Jared talks in his blog about hue, or color, and value as the two important concepts to look at when choosing several colors that will go together in a project. Obviously the colors that you choose are important, they need to “go” together in some fashion that is pleasing.

The value concept was newer to me. If your colors are all great choices, but their values are too similar, your finished piece might be a muddy mess instead of having the colors pop out individually. Jared recommends using your digital photo application to convert a color photo to greyscale to illustrate this and to test your choices.

Here are my colors for my current Color Affection.

And what that looks like knitted up so far.

Here are the same photos adjusted in Lightroom to black and white.

Not bad, but there could have been a little more difference between the two lighter values. With stripes, I think it’s OK, but with a complex stitch pattern, those two light colors would just blur together.

Here’s the other color scheme I had contemplated for this shawl.

I don’t think that would work as well. And it definitely wouldn’t work in something like the yoke of an Icelandic sweater.

What do you all think? Is this something you’ve run into in your knitting? And do go read Jared’s post, and the follow up post that goes into much more detail.

Or,

Will she finish them today?

Stay tuned!