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!

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!

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

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.

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!

Last night I mentioned that my first trip to Rhinebeck is coming up.  As I was writing that I realized that, indeed, Rhinebeck is only two weeks away!  What should I wear?  It seems that everyone who’s anyone is making a Rhinebeck sweater (as those in the know have for years, of course).

I haven’t started (or finished) any new sweaters recently, so I was thinking hard about what I could whip up in two weeks. Then I remembered this:

It’s my Pinstripe Pullover that I put in storage back in March.

I have about two inches left of the body to do before I start the sleeves. Think I can finish it in time?

Have you ever seen a pattern and said “what a preposterous garment.  I would never wear it in public, non-knitters wouldn’t get it” . . . and knit it anyway?

Meet Cathode. It’s completely preposterous and non-knitters don’t get it. Heck, even knitters don’t get it. Just ask the new SnB I’ve been going to (God bless them for humoring me so ).

I don’t hate it. I actually kind of like it. The superdeep ribbing with extreme negative ease makes it about as flattering as any sweater with bulky boucle could be.

Look at that negative ease! It doesn’t even look like a sweater when not being worn, it looks more like a washed-up sea creature.

The thing that makes it cross the line from simply odd to utterly bizarre is that collar. It looks particularly weird from the back.

The real reason I knit this, I guess, is that Artful Yarns Circus was on sale at Woolcott about three years ago when I was living in Cambridge. I completely fell in love with the colors, and Cathode was the most obvious use for it. I found this yarn to be a real bear to work with – it was so fluffy that it was much easier to pierce the stitch than to knit it properly.  The finished product is very warm though, even with the short sleeves.

Oh, who am I kidding? It doesn’t make any sense (at all!) but I like it anyway.

Exams are approaching fast, so I’ve felt very scattered and unsettled lately.  I’m very close to finishing both Serrano and Cathode, and despite my best efforts to finish projects I found the lure of new projects to be irresistible.  I couldn’t help but notice that they share a common color scheme with Cathode. 

While my love of the color green is well-documented in these pages, blue is my real favorite and I really appreciate a good purple.  I’m not sure I’ll wear Cathode much (more on that in the upcoming FO post) but the colors have worked their way into my brain, and I just want to look at blue and purple all day.

That and my anniversary is coming up, so maybe I’m just especially drawn to blue because of the time of year.

I started Ishbel in that wonderful tosh sock I mentioned the other day.  This is perfect project for soothing myself with mindless knitting.  I’ll run out of the stockinette portion soon enough though.

I also started Wisteria in Cascade Sierra. I wasn’t sure what I would do with this yarn, but it’s such a nice Wisteria-like color! I’m also pleased with the definition of the cables so far. This is the perfect project for when I want to focus on something other than law. Soon enough I’ll be done with the cabled yoke, and it will be zombie knitting, so it can take Ishbel’s place in that regard once I get to the lace portion of Ishbel.

I also have some dark blue cotton fine for Orangina, but I haven’t cast on for that yet. I probably won’t be able to help myself though.

The blog may be be rather quiet for the next month or so, but I have the feeling I’ll have plenty to show for it on the other side of all this.

Wicked is finally finished, after two years of hibernation! Hooray! Thank you Finish or Frog KAL!

Also, thank you to my law school knitting buddy Diane for providing some inspiration.  Did I ever tell you that I admired your Wicked in Federal Income Tax last semester?

I like the way it turned out. I think I was unhappy with it before because I (sound familiar?) wasn’t happy with the way I looked in general. To be honest, another reason I let it sit for so long was that I wasn’t thrilled with the pattern itself. I find Zephyr Style patterns to be so simple (which is a good thing) that sometimes make silly design choices (which is not such a good thing). For example, the instructions for my size call for 33 cable motifs around the neck. I hate the way it looks when prominent seams fail to align with prominent design elements. Why not 32 cables, so it DOES align?  So anyway, I did 32 cables, and aligned the raglan increases with the cable motif. It only added like a centimeter in length.

I knit the cuffs two years after the bottom hem, so they don’t match exactly. But who cares? Close enough, right?

I decided to do 3/4 length sleeves because it’s such a great color for spring that I didn’t want it to be excessively warm. I used Knitpicks Andean Silk, which is quite cozy. I’m happy with how it turned out, and happy that it’s the perfect weather this week to wear it!

First of all, I’m delighted to report that I’m very close to finishing Wicked.

I’ve re-blocked Serrano, and the shoulders are working out much better. Now the only question is what I ought to do for a closure, which is a topic complicated enough to deserve its own post.

Cathode is also coming along nicely.

I’m about 2/3 of the way done with the bottom ribbing, so I can probably finish in a few weeks. I’m trying to finish Cathode before Serrano, because Serrano is lacy and light enough to wear well into spring. I know the bottom part looks preposterously small, but it’s very stretchy. I also think that negative ease is important with something like this, since it has the potential to really swallow me up if it’s too big. I had considered lengthening the sleeves, but I think I’ll stick with the short sleeves. I had also considered doing a smaller collar (which is why I did a provisional cast on at the neck) but I might as well do the big goofy one. It’s never going to be a “normal” sweater, I might as well follow the spirit of the pattern and make it totally nutso!

And now for the bad news. DPP had been relegated to a space bag to wait out the summer.

(There it is, hanging out with Tailored Scallops)

This project had really become a slog, which is heartbreaking considering that it’s my own pattern.  But it was a slog the first time too, and as I’ve discussed, it put me off knitting for a few months.  This project embodies knitting angst for some reason.  Part of it is just the way things have worked out – as of this writing, Foliage is still on the Ravelry Top 20.  I’m a little bummed that after my initial success DPP has been, shall we say, noticeably less popular.  But again, as we’ve discussed, knitting is my HOBBY.  The fact that DPP has become a slog, for any reason, justifies a time-out.

But the good news is, I’m almost done with the body and I like how it’s turning out. Some time this fall I’ll pick it up with renewed energy, and it will be finished in no time.