NaKniSweMo – Finished!

Hooray! I completed a sweater in the month of November!

Pattern: O W L S by Kate Davies
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 6 skeins
Buttons: An assortment from Colchester Mill Fabrics
Dates: November 2, 2009-November 29, 2009

I am very, very pleased with how this turned out. I love everything about it. The color is perfect for owls. The buttons sort of glow in the light, which reminds me of what animal eyes actually look like. I am especially pleased with how the short rows shaped the neck. You can see below how much higher the back is than the front.

I think this is the closest I’ve ever come to replicating the type of crewneck that you would actually see on a store-bought sweater.

Modifications: Since the pattern is written for bulky yarn and I used worsted, all of the math had to be re-done.  This was a good thing though, since it allowed me to make sure that everything was symmetrical. I also did less-extreme waist shaping and moved it to the sides, since I don’t particularly like calling attention to my waist area.

Hooray!  I love it!

NaKniSweMo – Buttons

The owls have taken shape.  Time to find them some eyes!

I went down to Colchester Mill Fabrics, my favorite source of buttons, zippers and similar items. Look at their button selection!

That’s not even all of it. They also have a ton of zippers.

I had considered doing all of the eyes in white, but I settled on an assortment of colors.

There is white, pink, purple, and three shades of blue. I think the owls deserve their own personalities!

NaKniSweMo – Joining Up

This weekend I finished the sleeves of my OWLS sweater and joined them to the body.

As I’ve discussed, I’m using worsted weight yarn so I’ve have to make some adjustments. Since I have to do my own math anyway, I decided that I might as well correct a couple of things that I don’t like so much about the (otherwise lovely and well-written) pattern. First, I don’t like how the owls start immediately after the join. It sort of looks like the owls are being sucked into the armpits (oh how I wish I could link to examples, but that would be mean, no?). Second, my size was supposed to have 21 owls. I insist upon symmetry in most of my knitting (see rant about Wicked) and there is no way to divide 21 owls in such a way that they are symmetrical and all line up the same way with the armpit joins.

So, here is my solution.  The body of my sweater had 200 stitches, and each sleeve had 64.  I cast off eight stitches for each part of the underarm join, which brought the total number of stitches down to 296.  Then, I joined and worked four sets of raglan decreases at the underarms.

This brought the total number of stitches to 264, and gives the owls a little breathing room so they don’t get sucked into the armpits. The owl motif is 20 rows tall, and in 20 rows a sweater should decrease roughly 80 stitches (four per round, or the more typical eight every other round). I started doing some math, and came upon what I think is a lovely solution. 264 is divisible by six, so I decreased by 44 (264/6) evenly spaced around the yoke.  I can get rid of the extra 36 stitches after the owls, as the pattern was originally written.  Now, I have 220 stitches, 70 each across the front and back areas and 40 across the sleeve areas. Each owl is ten stitches wide, so I can fit exactly seven owls across the front and back and exactly four across each of the sleeve areas, and it will all be symmetrical. Huzzah!

You can all tease me now

NaKniSweMo – Sleeves

I’m about done with the body and chugging along on the sleeves.

I am SO looking forward to getting to the owls chart. I’ve had about enough stockinette!

I’ve had a pleasant little diversion lately, doing some knitting for an auction to benefit the public interest program at my law school

Here is a child size Foliage, knit out of Blue Sky Organic Cotton. This is the softest cotton I’ve ever used! The matching Mom version is coming soon!

NaKniSweMo – Body

As it turns out, a sweater with miles and miles of brown stockinette is not so good for the blog.

It’s coming along though! I have about 13 inches of the body done.

You spin me right round

As you may recall, I bought a giant green ball of fiber at Rhinebeck. I’m pretty sure it was the Hand Dyed Crazy Balls wool blend from Spinners Hill (#2 if you follow the link) but I was so overwhelmed at Rhinebeck I can’t be certain.

I got the whole remaining ball of green, a full pound of it, for two reasons:
- if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing
- the colors varied pretty significantly within the ball, and I wanted all of them

When I unwound the ball, I found that it was a strip of roving about 55 feet long. As you can see, the segments on the bottom (which had been towards the core of the ball) are bluer than the stuff on top.

The first thing I did was break the giant strip in half, so I had a warmer-green rope and a cooler-green rope. Then I split each of those lengthwise into six segments of comperable (though not equal) size.

I don’t like to use flash photos, but you can really see the color difference here between the warmer-green and cooler-green.

I decided to call the warmer stuff type A and the cooler stuff type B, and labeled it and packed it up.

The plan is to spin all the A, then all the B, and ply it together (following the guidance here). It should be enough for a vest, I think.

I’ve been making progress.

I think I’ve spun up about a quarter of it so far. I’m still in the park-and-draft stage so it’s slow-ish going, but I’m finding spinning to be even more relaxing that knitting. Curses. I’ve clearly been bitten by another species of fiber bug.

Inga

Pattern: Inga Hat by Sheila MacDonald. It is true that following the pattern as written produces an awfully long hat, but I like awfully long hats.
Yarn: Cascade 220 in dark purple and light blue, a scrap of Ella Rae Classic in bright purple left over from my first crochet scarf

The top of this pattern is quite pointy, so I decided to celebrate the pointiness with a tassel. I think it pulls it all together.

This was the most complicated colorwork chart I’ve ever followed, and I was proud of myself for doing that. My issue was not with following the chart, it was maintaining even tension while holding the light blue in my left hand.

As you can see in this pre-blocking photo, my tension was somewhat uneven. I definitely think I’m improving though, and I am quite happy with how this turned out. I don’t think people are really going to get close enough to my head to notice the few wonky stitches.

NaKniSweMo – Swatching

As you know, I always fail these knitblogging challenges. No matter. I’ve decided to sign up for NaKniSweMo. I can totally knit a sweater, start to finish, in a month. After all, that’s what I did for DPP and that was done on #4s. This time around will be a bit happier and easier.

I’ve chosen to do the famous-for-a-reason O W L S sweater by Kate Davies. I chose this sweater because it was EVERYWHERE at Rhinebeck, so I got to see how cute it is in person. Second, I have yarn that’s the perfect color for November, and for owls.

Around here, the oranges and scarlets of October fade to the rust and tawny brown of November.

So this Lambs Pride Worsted in my stash, in “wild oak” is the perfect color.

Look, I did a swatch and everything!

In case you missed it – October 2009

I had a really great time doing these round-up posts earlier this year, but got busy and got out of the habit.  Time to start up again!  Here is the October edition of a random assortment of my favorite posts from elsewhere in knitblog land.

Best beach photos

Most magnificent multicolor project

Most helpful technical post

Yummiest natural fiber photo

Best pairing of a knitting photo with a travel photo

Cutest baby item