Tempting, my sleeves, and Interweave Knits

I’ve been feeling under the weather since last weekend. On Thursday, I finally took a sick day, watched disk one of the first season of Desperate Housewives, and knitted a sleeve. Despite all of the fanfare surrounding the show, I’d never actually seen a single episode; I was in the library the other day, saw it on DVD, and decided to give it a try. In episode 4, Eva Longoria is wearing a top similar to Knitty’s Tempting. I got kind of excited since this is one of the things I’d like to make. By the time I get to it, it’ll definitely be out of style ;)

On the knitting front, it looks like knitting from the sleeve cap down allows me to match up the stripes. On my sick day, I was able to finish the first one off and it looks pretty good. I started the second sleeve the other day and by the end of the weekend, I'd like to attach both sleeves to the body of the cardigan and maybe even knit up the button band. Ambitious, I know.

I got the new issue of Interweave Knits today. What a great issue!! I found about five patterns I’d like to knit and a useful article about lace.

Help!

Help! I’m still working on the Sesame cardigan. I’ve finished both front pieces and the back piece. I’m about 2/3 of the way done with the sleeve and I’ve noticed a problem: when I sew the pieces together, the stripes aren’t going to match up with the stripes on the body. I didn’t take into account that the body is 22” long and the sleeves are 24” long and knitting from the cuff up is not going to work too well. I’m a perfectionist and am not happy with this at all.

I’ve been working with Denise needles so I just took out a new cord and am about to attempt to knit from the sleeve cap down. Will this solve the problem? I was originally confident that it would but now I’m having second thoughts. I’ve never attached a sleeve under these circumstances (okay, I’ve only ever attached a sleeve two other times) and am not positive how to judge these things.

The body is, from the top down: 3” light brown, 3” dark brown, 3” light brown (with the sleeve shaping exactly in the middle…or 7 ½” from the top of the sleeve cap), etc. In my knitting class, the instructor took my measurements and told me the sleeve cap should be 5” for me and the sleeve itself should be 19”. Does that mean that the shaping won’t match up with what I have for the body?

Connemara and Pharao

I’m not having much luck with these random balls of yarn. I played with the Connemara first. It’s a lovely yarn, but it’s kind of slippery and my needle kept poking through the center of it. It would look fabulous if I could get my tension consistent.

Pharao was up next. I decided to try lace knitting so I got The lacy knitting of Mary Schiffmann by Nancy Nehring out of the library, flipped through, found a fairly open pattern that didn’t seem to have too many instructions and went to work. Last night involved me being terribly frustrated, perfecting the set-up rows and totally screwing up the actual pattern part.

I ripped everything out a few times before I remembered reading about the lifeline. Aha! I went off to get yarn to use for this, came back, and then kept making so many mistakes that I never got to actually use it. Every time I counted my work, my stitch count was off so I gave up. I decided that lace knitting was beyond my reach. And then...I was looked at the book today after a good night’s rest. It seems there’s another page of instructions! You think maybe that was my problem? I’ll try again and post my progress if it works out. Wish me luck.

new yarns

In my last post, I said I was going to buy some single balls of yarn from Elann and play around with different weights and fibers. They arrived today! Look how beautiful they are; I can't wait to start using them.

My husband even liked them, and only partly because they didn't cost a small fortune. We've never actually seen a ball of 100% Linen before and my urge to attempt lace is very recent.

I got one ball of Peruvian Collection Uros Aran in Antique Blue, Peruvian Collection Baby Silk in Seashell Pink, Peruvian Collection Highland Wool in Orange Brandy, Austermann Pharao in Purple Pansy, Endless Summer Collection Connemara in Aspen Frost, and elann.com Collection Linus in Aurora Red.

A friend is trying to get pregnant and I thought it would be fabulous to make her a green baby blanket in some sort of Celtic-inspired pattern (she's Irish). I was looking around on Elann and saw the Endless Summer Collection Connemara in Aspen Frost and thought it would be perfect. I bought one ball to make sure. Now that I see it in person, I really want it. And it's sold out! No more pretty green yarn. Too bad since Dennis and I were both ooh-ing and ahh-ing over it.

Yesterday was a knitting day

It was humid and disgusting outside yesterday so I avoided my usual break time strolls in favor of air conditioning. I did venture outside briefly, but nearly my entire lunch hour consisted of me knitting My Sesame's first sleeve. I'm really kind of sick of working on this cardigan and the not-so-soft, 100% acrylic is starting to get to me.

After thinking negative thoughts about Red Heart's standard yarn, I went home and worked on something a little different: the second apple hat. (I finished it and will mail it off today or tomorrow!) The thing is, the apple hats are made of Red Heart acrylic yarn, too. But it's much softer. I still plan on using a natural fiber or some sort of blend for the next project but it's good to remind myself to that similar fibers knit up very differently; all acrylics (all wools, etc.) are not the same and I'll just need to keep experimenting with more and more yarns. In fact, I think I may buy a few single balls of yarn from Elann just to play around. ;)

An apple for someone in need

Someone who works with WIC asked for help knitting fruit or vegetable hats to give out at her program on nutrition. I saw the request and decided to give it a whirl. I don't know anyone with babies and have been looking for an excuse to try one of these cute fruit hats...

It went pretty quickly and I'll be knitting at least one more before I drive to the post office. They look pretty cute on the teddy bear; I hope they fit the babies!

Started & Completed: July 9, 2006
Pattern can be found here.
I used Red Heart Soft yarn in red, Wool-Ease worsted in green, and Red Heart worsted in brown.

first Sesame picture

After almost a week without knitting, I've finally finished the second sweater front. I was hoping to say that I'd finished the entire cardigan by today because tonight is my last knitting class at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I hope we're learning finishing techniques...

Last week we learned how to connect two pieces without *any* seam. Seriously, you can't even see where the two swatches meet. It's amazing. She had us knit two identical pieces, 4 inches of one color, 1 inch of another. When we got to class, she yanked them off the needles, put the right sides together, and used a tapestry needle to connect the pieces based on that little line that shows up on the wrong side when you change colors.

The Diophantine Equation a.k.a. “The Magic Formula”

Someone asked me how I got such an even neckline and I’m finally getting around to answering it. It uses the Diophantine Equation for increases and decreases and keeps you from getting the ugly stair step look. My instructor's tip: Gradual increases and decreases look best so always do one per row.

You divide the number of rows you have to work with by the number of increases/decreases you need to make and plug it into this basic statement: Inc 1 st every __th row, __ times Row info is on top and number of times is on the bottom.

Example #1
You have 95 rows to work with and 19 sts to add.
It’s simple math at this point. You say: 95/19=5
It comes out even so you just plug it in the sentence from above and get:
Inc 1 st every 5th row, 19 times

If the numbers don't divide evenly, it’s a little more complicated because you have to add a second line to the directions.

Example #2
You have 95 rows to work with and 20 sts to add. When there's a remainder, always add 1. Pair the numbers up as shown to plug into the statements.

You get:
Inc 1 st every 5th row, 15 times.
Inc 1 st every 4th row, 5 times.




Double-check your work by multiplying and adding to see how many rows each line of directions will cover. It'll save you finding out too late that you did the math wrong.

In class we shaped a rounded neckline, but it also works for sleeves. I’m starting the first sleeve on my Sesame cardigan and that’s what reminded me to respond to the comment in my other post.

For more info, look at The Knitting Fiend’s explanation of the Magic Formula here and use her increasing/decreasing calculator here .