I've been cheating on my knitting needles...

...with my sewing machine. I just finished my very first quilt! It seems like every year around this time I get the sewing bug and churn out a few projects before going back to my knitting. This year, I decided to stop drooling over the various quilting blogs I follow and try my hand at it. This is a simple "brick path" quilt, using Michael Miller Dick and Jane fabrics that I have been hoarding for a couple of years now. I bought a set of fat quarters when I saw them in the fabric store, with no idea of what I was going to do with them--I just thought they were adorable. But orange happens to be my son's favorite color and he needed a new blanket for his bed, so I decided to break them out and figure out this quilting thing. The final size is 45" x 60".

I haven't washed it yet. I took pictures before that, so if it all went to hell in a handbasket in the washing machine I would have photographic evidence that it looked nice at one point! 

I enjoyed the whole process so much! I have definitely found a new crafty love.

Long Lost WIP's

I was tinkering around with my Ravelry notebook tonight and was astounded to discover that several of the WIP's I keep in Ziploc bags in various places around the house have been in their current condition for OVER A YEAR. This must be remedied. So, I am resurrecting the following projects...and I hope to finish them before my seasonal editing job cranks up in September. Think I can do it? (I am not so sure, but if I can it will clear my brain circuits a little--WIP's clog my thoughts. Really.) Here are the contenders.


Featherweight Cardigan (designed by Hannah Fettig), cast on July 3, 2009. Plain stockinette got boring, but now I like having a simple knitting project on the go for the TV watching nights. This is Purewool Merino Lace in a semisolid colorway called Grass. I worked on this tonight, and I've already doubled what you see in the picture!




Zick Zack Tunic (designed by Melissa Wehrle), cast on June 5, 2009. See my hot pink lifeline? I am not sure why I became disillusioned with this one. It's really a nice design. Oh...I remember. I think I chose a size that was going to end up being too small for me. Good thing I am done nursing now, and it will fit (better)! I am knitting this in Knit Picks Gloss Lace, a silk/merino blend, in a beautiful purple called Pinot.



Looks like my hands will be busy, because I am also doing a knit-along with the Anthropologie Knits group on Ravelry. I have been looking for an excuse to knit Que Sera (designed by Kirsten Kapur) since I saw the pattern, and the KAL theme is Short Sleeved Summer Cardigans. I'm using Knit Picks Main Line (Pima cotton/wool blend) in Ivory, and I've modified the sleeve length to just past the elbows rather than full length--both to make it a lighter sweater, and avoid running out of yarn (the yarn is discontinued and it would be difficult to get more). I've got both sleeves and about 3 inches of the body done on this one.



Three very different summery projects...my wardrobe will thank me for this burst of knitting responsibility!

Finished and Christened: The Country Club Cardigan!

I stayed up waaaay past my bedtime on Sunday night to finish the last two rows and the i-cord bind-off, and thus finish the knitting part of my drapy cotton cardigan. Then, yesterday during the kids' nap time, I wove in all the ends, crossed my fingers, and threw it in the washing machine. It doesn't matter how many commercial knits I have washed and dried over the years, I still don't trust it completely with my handknits! Washing this one caused special nailbiting since it was too large to fit in any of my mesh bags. It turned out to be fine, though--and the fabric was even improved.

Before I reveal the final product, however, I want to share a few more things I learned from the project.

1. On the edge of a fabric, M1 increases will cause the edge to roll a lot more than kfab increases will. The rolling doesn't really bother me on this sweater, but I am filing that little tidbit away for future use. Exhibit A, showing the wrong side of the front edge of the cardi (the hem is at the foreground of the photo):



2. On a very long edge, a skinny i-cord edging will not stop the stockinette roll around the bottom of a piece--but a nice hot steamy iron will (provided it's a plant fiber, of course)! Exhibit B, the "after ironing" shot of the hem:



3. Knit Picks Simply Cotton Sport yarn shrinks. A lot. I knew it would--my swatch lost between 10 and 12 percent of the length--but it still surprised me. Why, I don't know...I must have been in denial. Haha. The length from underarm to hem, prewashing/drying, was nearly 20 inches. After? Right about 17 inches. But on the plus side, the yarn also becomes incredibly soft after a trip through the washer and dryer, so overall I think I am in love with this yarn.

4. I don't know why my short rows (which I used to add length to the fronts of the cardigan) look so much worse when I close the holes on the right side than when I do it on the wrong side. Can anyone tell me what my problem is? Exhibit C, short rows with holes closed on the knit side--ugh!:



Exhibit D, short rows with holes closed on the purl side--yay!:



Anyway, this has been quite the learning experience and I feel like I need a drumroll here, or something...here it is! My "Country Club Cardigan," so named because it reminds me of something someone much wealthier than I am might wear as a swimsuit coverup while lounging by the pool and wearing a large-brimmed hat, high wedge sandals, and sunglasses. I'll be wearing it to the grocery store, over my jeans, and with a toddler on my hip!

It's all in the details.

I am still going strong on my reverse engineering of the Allegoro Drape Front Cardigan. The miles of stockinette, instead of being boring as I might have feared, are a great canvas for trying out different increases and thinking about how the placement of shaping will effect the finished garment. Since this is my first go at doing a sweater without a written pattern, I have given in to what a favorite professor called "the paralysis of analysis" more than a few times, but overall I am pleased with how it's progressing!

On the raglan increases for a top-down sweater like this, I learned I prefer slower increases, as they are most invisible. (Those increases are shown at the top of the next photo.) I will have to play with the cast on number next time, though, because if I kept going at that rate I would have had armholes halfway down my biceps. My second favorite kind of raglan increases are [M1b, k2, M1f], done every right side row (shown at the bottom of the next photo). I like the way the center stitches raise neatly and the increases recede. I didn't like the middle section of increases I did, which were [M1f, K2, M1b], at all--I thought it looked very messy.


This project has also given me a new obsession: i-cord, both applied i-cord and as a bind off. It looks so nice and neat at the end of a stockinette swath, and as a bonus, it stops the curling that makes my perfectionistic soul cringe. I was also worried that the wide-ish neckline would stretch and refuse to stay on my shoulders if I didn't do something to stabilize it.

The neckline before picking up and knitting a few rows then doing a 2 stitch i-cord bind off:


Neckline after:



It's subtle, I admit, but less so in real life. I will be doing a matching 2 stitch i-cord bind off on the bottom of the sweater as well. I used a 3 stitch i-cord bind off on the sleeve, which is nice, but a little more obvious and I thought it might look a bit too heavy on the drapy parts.


The last few inches of this project will take a long time, I am afraid. The body length is nearing the bottom of my rear end, and the rows are upwards of 300 stitches at this point! I just broke into my seventh skein, and I am estimating that it will take about 8 1/2 total to finish the project--so that gives a rough idea of how close to finishing I am (the next picture was taken about 2 inches ago)! I can't wait to wear this.

Reverse Engineering 101

So. My bag of Knit Picks Simply Cotton Organic (Sport weight) has been a little sad, sitting there all alone in the closet, with no pattern to aspire to...I started a Decimal [Knitty pattern link], but that didn't keep my attention. I thought about a Luminarie Skirt [Interweave gallery photos], but that was a little too "doily" for me and I wasn't sure I'd wear it. I started a Camden [Knitty pattern link], and got as far as a few inches of one sleeve, but realized that it really wasn't suited for cotton yarn. Then, I saw the Allegoro Drape Front Cardigan by Classic Elite. Perfect! My copy of the summer People Style Watch had soft neutral colors and flowing silhouettes everywhere, so if I can finish this thing in a decent amount of time I will be right in style.



But--problem. The pattern isn't available for download online by itself...I can only purchase the pattern book it is in for $14.95 plus about $5 shipping. The whole bag of yarn hardly cost that much! Hmmmm. It looks like a raglan sweater. I've made those before. It looks like similar shaping to the bottom fronts of Whisper Cardigan, just on a larger scale...I've done that before. It's settled! I am going to do this without a pattern. (But click here in case you'd like to get the pattern for yourself. It's in Classic Elite 9096 John's Bay, and all the patterns in that book are so cute! Maybe someday I'll get it and see how close I came to getting this one right.) I've never done this before, but I have been feeling more confident in my skills lately, so I think I am ready to tackle knitting off-roading.

My gauge is 24 stitches to 4 inches with the Simply Cotton Sport, which made me think at first I might possibly be crazy to undertake a project of this size with stitches so small. It's going fairly quickly, though. I'm going to take a lesson from my recently-finished Dramatic Lace Cardi and do the sleeves before I finish the body, so as soon as I finish another skein on the body I'll be doing the sleeves. I have a plan all mapped out; the only dilemma left is whether or not to do short rows at the bottom of the fronts to make them longer than the back. I don't think I'll decide until I get to the point where I like the length of the back--and then see what the fronts look like.

Here is what I have so far (and, um, sorry for the weird headless shot--there was no way I was taking a picture of my face and hair today! Haha.):