A weft yarn

Knitting through the Australian Open

Alice Starmore's Oregon Vest kept me company through the final week of the Australian Open (tennis, Australian summer, family habit, two weeks in January, usually hot, hot, hot, but this year not, not, not). You know I am in blog posting catch-up mode. I'm hoping that it wont seem so strange referring to an event long since gone. How was that open though? That men's final. I was in favour of Nadal but really this year's tennis was designed for obsessive people who enjoy sitting still and doing things with their hands - me. I got lots of knitting done while those mad men tried to beat each other, their own demons, win the crowd, grab our attention, impress us with feats of endurance and courage, keep us from our beds - all achieved.

I did discover while I was knitting that (one) I'd been joining in my yarn at the steeks incorrectly and (two) I needed to improve my tension. On the first point, in my defence, I had started off correctly. You are meant to get half way across the steek and then start the new colour. For the first few rows I did this. Then I lost the plot and started joining in the new yarn at the beginning of the steek. I'm not sure how I detected this error, but I've read the instructions again and now I'm back on track. Yarn joined in middle of steek - don't forget.

On the second point, these photos aren't really giving up any secrets but I can point out to you, my reader, that I was carrying the wool at the back a bit tightly. I've made a conscious effort to loosen up. I'm a reasonably tight knitter, which doesn't usually cause me any trouble but with fair isle it seems the key is to be even and loose. I'm working on it. Even and loose. Not odd and tight. Who would like that - odd and tight? Sounds awful.

Strange to knit in summer but I found it easier to knit than to embroider. I can knit without watching my hands and there's a rhythmic nature to knitting that lends itself to long stints and for keeping your eye on the tennis ball (and the crazy young men battling it out until way past midnight).

 

Previous posts

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore (October 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - a start (September 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch

Fair Isle cowl progress

My next project - Alice Starmore

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore

I have been working on the Alice Starmore, Oregon Vest.

There are 17 colours in total in this pattern. So far, I have used 14 of them. The pattern of changing colour has been interesting. As you know, you work with two colours at a time. One in the right hand, one in the left. The most amount of rows that a colour has been used for is: 7 rows and the shortest is: 2 rows. This results in a lot of colour changes. And interestingly, very rarely do you change both colours at once. What usually happens is that first you swap the pale one and then in the next row you change the brighter one. Also, I'd say that of the 17 colours of wool only about 4 balls of wool would be a single colour. The rest are a mix of colours. So while it is predominantly a beige colour say, it is also flecked with green and red and blue and orange to give it a muted and mottled look. Amazing.

Mostly, I do my knitting at night. At the end of a long day of garden, work, after school activities, dinner, homework, blah de blah, I can sit down with the colours and the sticks and loose myself in the soothing clicky click. But on the weekend, I broke with tradition and sat down for an hour in the afternoon and did some Oregon Vest. I was stunned at how rich the colours were in the natural light. In the spirit of trying to communicate this, I've photographed the vest outside on our new deck. Some photos are probably a bit too bright, but you get the sense of the true daylight colours of the vest.

I was worried last time I worked on this, that it would not be big enough. I feel much more reassured this time around. It should be fine. In both tape measuring it and just holding it up to my waist, it seems fine.

Just so you know where we're going with all this....here's the pattern photo. I'm nearly up to pattern B, which is the pine cone, spiky leaf, stylised pine tree symbol that makes up the main part of the vest.

I'm also pleased that this is progressing a bit more smoothly than that other chap....GAAA.

 

Previous posts

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - a start (September 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch

Fair Isle cowl progress

My next project - Alice Starmore

GAAA - Jay Campbell block

In October 2010, I managed to knit two blocks of the Great American Aran Afghan in a week of holidaying around Northern NSW and QLD: the Ann Strong block and the Hanna Burns block. In October 2011, in about the same amount of time, I managed to mangle, rip out, and knit one block; the Jay Campbell block. I have to tell you, this is really testing my abilities and my confidence and while I deeply love knitting, I'm having my doubts folks. I'm actually getting worse at this instead of better. And according to the manual - I haven't even hit the hard blocks yet.

Here sits Jay Campbell with one corner ripped back. Then after I examined it carefully, I realised I couldn't fix it without starting over as I am knitting in the round and so the mistake is carried all through the round. Sigh.

So, I cut it off and started again. This was the third time I started again. It was that bloody notation on the decrease. It said S2KP2O - which means, slip two stitches without knitting them, then knit the next stitch, then pass 2 stitches over. This results in a single decrease. And then the next notation is to K1. It wasn't until the fourth time through that I worked out that by doing the K1, I was repeating the Knit in the middle of the S2KP2O. What the hell? Why do they write it like that? OK. Breathe. I've spent hours and hours of knitting and have nothing to show for it. It's meant to challenge. It's complex. I wanted a challenge. Remember, this is a voluntary activity. And other mantras encouraging me to cope.

Then, about 20 hours later of knitting in the round; round and round we go, cable this, slip that, decrease here, blah blah, I think its looking pretty good.

 

 

And then check it out. I cast off last night and lo and behold IT IS TOO BLOODY BIG. (Sorry about the caps lock). Each block is meant to be 12 inches by 12 inches. Ann Strong is. Hanna Burns is. But not Jay-knit-in-the-round-weird-notation-for-S2KP20-Campbell. Oh no, not you, you had to be 14 inches by 14 inches. Well, you are going in the bottom of the knitting bag. I'm putting you back in the cupboard and I wont talk about it any more. Moving along folks. There are other things I can do.

Previous posts

Great American Aran Afghan (September 2011)

Knitting toys

A few years ago I joined a lovely group of crafty Brown Owls here in Canberra and I used to attend fantastic monthly meetings where a range of fun and crafty things were trialled. They are still going strong but I ended up dropping out this year as the groups' move to a Saturday was a bit harder for me to manage with kids' sporting commitments and other family and life commitments. And being able to breathe is important.

At one of the meetings in 2010, I sat next to someone who was knitting a little dog and I was very enamoured of the dog, the book she was using and the purpose of her knitting - she was making things for the school fete. She wrote about it here. It is a lovely post and I felt quite inspired to take up the challenge. I decided to start with something easy and so started a curly snake.

I'm pretty sure I had in mind that I would pass these snakes on to her for use at her school fete stall. However, I moved a bit too slowly. By the time I'd ordered the book, bought the sock wool online, started knitting and made anything significant, the day of the fete had long come and gone. I kind of came to a bit of a halt on this project but will breathe some life into it over the next few months because I think there are a couple of little boys who might like these. They need to have their tongues fixed, tails woven in and eyes embroidered on - moments of time needed not hours.

Though Mr Garden slug may need a bit more attention. He has only one eyeball at the moment. That's gotta hurt.

 Garden slug pattern from Ravelry

Great American Aran Afghan

I'm not sure how I came across the Great American Aran Afghan, or indeed its compatriots: The Great American Afghan , The Great North American Afghan and, The Great American Kid's Afghan. I'm pretty sure I bought the pattern booklets from The Wool Shack, although I know they don't currently stock them. I'm also sure I bought them years ago and have been dreaming of this project for a long time.

In preparation for this Aran blanket, I did a practice run - the mohair shawl I knitted for my mum. I started the shawl in April 2009 and finished it in August 2010. It was a reasonably easy project to start learning to knit cables; just a rectangle with lots of repeating cable patterns.

Once that was done, I was free to purchase the wool for the Great American Aran Afghan, which I did, in September 2010. After hours of reading on the Ravelry site,  I chose Cascade 220 Superwash. It has a pop star status on Ravelry (75,000+ projects list it as the yarn of choice). Boy, it would be good to have shares in that one! During my research, I was very tempted by a Blue-Faced Leicester wool from England but the postage was nearly as much as the wool!

After the wool arrived we took off for a trip during the school holidays of October 2010. We rented a campervan from near Sydney airport and drove up the north coast of NSW, visiting my sister and her family in Byron Bay, and eventually dropping the van off in Brisbane before flying back to Sydney and driving back to cosy Canberra. It was over a week of travel and we had a really interesting trip and it was fun to catch up with family and we saw some beautiful countryside shrouded in rain. It rained nearly every single day of the trip, until we got back to Canberra, where it was drizabone. Luckily the days we spent in Byron, which included a walk to the lighthouse and a trip to Wet and Wild theme park on the Gold Coast, were sunny days. All the other days were wet and reasonably cold. At one stage, the Pacific Highway was closed due to rain and of course, later in the year, Brisbane was under water. It was a pretty wet 2010. Looking back, or maybe looking forward, we really should do that trip again, but maybe in the more typical Il Nino.

 

One of the outcomes was that I did a lot of knitting. We had been upgraded in the choice of campervan and the one we got was just way too big for me to drive. I admire my husband and any other person who drives those things, but to me, it was just a great, big, huge truck. It was comfortable inside and we all had a really good time and often I was grateful for the coziness of the campervan while the wind and rain was beating on the windows and roof. But I don't think we'd take a beast like that on a holiday again. It was hard to manoeuvre, park and turn. It was expensive in caravan parks and you couldn't take it to out-of-the way spots because it couldn't travel on anything except a very good quality road. I'd go for something smaller, more nimble next time.

The knitting though...the knitting...well in the week away I managed two squares from the Great American Aran Afghan.

Ann Strong and Hanna Burns. Both are quite pictorial patterns. Ann's is reminiscent of pomegranates and Hanna's is of DNA.

I took notes as I went and the Ann Strong block went like this:

1. ripped out at row 5
2. ripped out at row 6
3. ripped out at row 7

"Wow! going to take me a really long time at that rate!. Didn't follow the pattern carefully enough".

Once I started paying attention to the pattern (ie reading it properly) I was fine and it was done in a day.

The Hanna Burns one though - My notes record that -

OK. Officially humbled by this block. I've made mistakes in the DNA, the trinity stitch (the bobbles), and the single column cables. So ripping out over and over again has been for different problems. [emphasis in the original]. I remember sitting on my sister's couch and ripping out a whole column of stitches back to the beginning, re-knitting those stitches until I rejoined at the top again and pressing on. As my notes indicate, I did this more than once! To make matters worse, both blocks are rated as "EASY". In total, I spent 29 hours on that block alone! I also remember while Tim and Nick climbed around the Adventure Parc at Mount Tambourine in the rain, Tess and I sat at the wood-fired pizza cafe and ate pizza, drank warm drinks and she drew pictures while I knitted and ripped and knitted this block. It was a great holiday. True. I remember the trip very fondly and though daunted by my rocky start to the project, I'm keen to press on. The next block is Jay Campbell.

Alice Starmore - Oregon Vest - a start

About a month ago, I spent a week knitting my Oregon vest in earnest. I've put the practice run behind me, and the swatch and now it was time to move onto the main event. I have finished the ribbing and have moved on to the underlying pattern.

I have marked off the repeating pattern with stitch markers which helps with all the counting I need to do. In some of these photos you can see the stranding at the back of the work and I can report that my tension seems to be doing fine.

In the final photo below, you can see the markings of the steeking. You abandon the pattern and just alternate colours for about 10 stitches. Eventually this will be cut and trimmed and sewn into an edge. You'll note that I have quite a ways to go before I have to face cutting into my knitting. The only anxiety I am carrying about this project, now that I've done a test run, and a swatch, is whether this vest will be big enough. I followed the measurements on the Virtual Yarns website but it seems to be a bit snug looking. Oh well, time will tell, press on, the knitting itself is therapeutic and the colours are so wonderful that I can't help but enjoy the process.

 

Previous posts

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch

Fair Isle cowl progress

My next project - Alice Starmore

Alice Starmore - Oregon Vest - swatch

As you know, I've been knitting a test run fair isle project to prepare for the main event, which is to be an Alice Starmore Oregon vest. Well, I finished the fair isle cowl, knitted with a cotton/acrylic blend from Lion brands. As it was being knitted, we all felt it was very long, and I did struggle a bit with the tension and the carrying of the wool at the back - sometimes too loose, sometimes too tight - so, I was pleased to finish it and move on. Cotton as a fibre doesn't have much elasticity and while this is cozy soft, I do feel it shows every imperfection in the knitting. But more importantly, I don't know that I particularly like the feeling of having my entire neck swathed in volumes of stuff. I love wearing scarfs but not so sure of this thing. Perhaps I'll wear it to the garden in these freezing mornings.

As a finishing technique, you hem the top and bottom of the cowl.

Perhaps it would help if I wore it with some coordinating effort. I was always impressed with the ladies in Me-Made-March that they went to such effort to coordinate their outfits and accessories. I'm a bit slapdash in that department. Anyway, perhaps a nice coordinating blouse would help with the look of this thing (or not).

Anyway, moving onto the main event. I'm really excited to actually start work on the Oregon vest. Typically, I found it easier to work with the wool instead of the cotton. My tension is quite even, the stranding at the back of the work isn't that difficult because through most of the pattern in the swatch you aren't actually carrying the wool very far - a few stitches at most.

As mentioned previously, I'm a fairly tight knitter so my quick estimation of the stitches in the swatch tell me I'll need to go up a needle size from the 3.25 to probably a 3.5. I didn't like having to cut the wool at the beginning and the end of the swatch because I felt it was so wasteful and being the nervous nelly that I am, I wasn't confident that I'd have enough wool. So I kind of did the bare minimum of a swatch. Usually, it should be a complete square but mine is more of a rectangle.

I love the colours and the constant but subtle changes.

It really doesn't look like much wool when it's sitting here on my sewing table, waiting to form up into patterns. Beautiful though.

Previous posts

Fair Isle cowl progress

My next project - Alice Starmore

Loot, treasure, promises as yet unfulfilled, gratitude expressed late

In this photo: Mother's day flowers, Autumn wool and sack club, and the generosity of fellow bloggers.

In this photo: May 2011, April 2011, August 2009.

In this photo: Fibrewebs Autumn club 2011. Merino silk. 50/50 superwash merino and silk, 100g, 393m (430yds), Mulled wine. AND 4ply sock, 420m, 105g, 60% superwash wool, 20% cashmere, 20% nylon, handyed by knittingsprouts.

So, I have love, promises of future projects, beauty, and gratitude in this photo. As well as tardiness and regret at taking so long to post a great big "thank you" to knitting sprouts, for the hand dyed wool sent to me in 2009! I'd like to think, it's never too late to say sorry and never too late to say "thank you".

When my daughter finishes her weaving, I might request the loom for a short period of scarf making.

Fair Isle Cowl progress

 

So I am doing my practice run in preparation for the grand adventure. A practice at two handed fair isle knitting....is it hard...is it easy? Knitting in the round is certainly easy and nice, just knitting, knitting, round and round we go. But two hands? I certainly don't feel very coordinated with that left hand and getting the tension right...hmm..

At first, I had Elizabeth Zimmerman's voice in my head where she said knitting loosely was all the go. Personally, that's not my style. I'm actually more of a tight knitter and whenever I knit a swatch I'm always needing to up a size or two in the needle department. Anyway, I hated knitting loosely it felt too weird and the results were disappointing, lots of gaps, and stretchy looking bits...bleh. So I tightened up and then all of sudden I had Alice Starmore's voice in my head...don't knit too tightly or it will buckle the pattern. Sure enough the stranding at the back was too tight and the pattern wouldn't sit nicely. Oh sigh. It was a trial garment anyway. So third time around and by now I'm up to colour change three (green Cactus) and I've got my tension to an acceptable level and sometimes I'm not thinking about knitting while I'm knitting. Ah, I'm entering the zone of knitting where thoughts and dreams float around while your hands do the work. I'm still too new at the whole fair isle lark to be in the zone for very long, but still the zone is the zone.

I am nearly finished. According to the pattern, I've just got to do a few more "V" like shapes in the brown and then I knit a few plain centimetres of the green cactus and then it is cast off, hemmed and I guess you go straight into wearing do you? How do you block a tube? I may have to cast my question into the interwebs. As I've been knitting this, my family and I have been fascinated by how long it is. They think I'm knitting it for my Giraffe. Very funny. It is rather long though. The cotton/acrylic blend yarn is very cozy and soft but I think it will be voluminous.

Ten project rotation system

Sometime last year, I came across a post on a stitching website that helped me rethink the way I was working with my hand sewing projects. Unfortunately, I can't now find the reference on the interwebs to link to, so you'll just have to trust me that this is an idea I picked up from CameoRoze's Stitcher's Studio. She said we should banish the idea of UFOs and instead set up a rotation system. She keeps ten projects in her rotation system and after she spends 10 hours on a project she moves on. This really appeals. I think it helps me because I don't feel bogged down with any one particular project, and I also have the pleasure of putting something away while I'm enjoying it and then rediscovering some new joy. Over the 2010 year, I worked out what I wanted in my 10 project rotation system: 3 tapestries, 3 embroidery projects, 3 knitting projects and my tapestry class. So I keep a record of how many hours I've spent on something and when I get to 10 I try and move on to something new. I'm not super dooper fixated on this (both the recording of hours and the moving on bit) but I am cycling through my projects and feeling comfortable with my progress. It has also had the benefit of stopping me from buying lots of new projects because I have this sense that I've got a lot on the go at the moment.

Top Ten projects

1. Monthly Creative Tapestry Class - 200 stitch guide (half way through)
2. Cat tapestry
3. Ferry tapestry
4. Tim's Christmas stocking
5. Brown Owls embroidery - Cross stitch scissors keeper
6. Felt ornaments - Christmas santas
7. Thread painting - Giraffes (was Bingo Blue Blotch Pansy)
8. Knitting for children - toys
9. Knitting for me - Alice Starmore's Oregon vest
10. Knitting for others - Great American Aran Afghan