Sweater Vest continued

Work has kept me incredibly busy over the last couple of weeks. So busy that I did not get too much knitting in. It took me nearly all month to get the two pieces for the sweater vest done, but I completed the knitting tonight and will now bury all the loose ends and block the sweater. My plan is to get it done by next week so that I can wear it the following week to work.

The texture pattern is really lovely and I am happy with the way that it turned out. I did have some trouble working out the way the neckline was done and I ended up using a graph to figure it out. Math is great!

Happy Knitting!

Animal Tracks - A good yarn: Knitters make sweaters for penguins after oil spill

Life sometimes gets in the way of knitting. I didn't even have time to blog last weekend, but a friend passed this story to me (THANKS SCOTT) and I had to share. This is so cute it should be against the law!

Animal Tracks - A good yarn: Knitters make sweaters for penguins after oil spill:

Sweater Vest

Well, I spent the last week working on a new project. Yes, I know I have not finished the mittens, but I have a good excuse. My friend was not able to try them on so that I can check for proper placement of the texting thumb opening. Or at least that is the story to which I am sticking!

But I love my new project. It is a V-necked sweater vest which I found in Vogue Knitting: Very Easy Knits a "best of" book put out by Butterick Patterns in 1999. My pattern, Textured Vest" is just as the book states -- very easy. The 4 row pattern is easy: Knit row, Purl row, K1 P1 row, Purl row. The texture that is created resembles a waffle.

The pattern shows it in a solid color, but I am mixing it up a little. The main color is a lovely charcoal grey heather the stripes in a dark plum heather. There will be 3 plum colored stripes 2 narrow stripes flanking a wider stripe starting below the arm holes and going above half way up the v-neck. I have chosen a beautiful Classic Wool by Patons a 100% hand wash wool. It knits beautifully. The twist is perfect and it has a nice elastic feel to it when stretched.

Convertible Mitten Update -- Thumbs Down

The convertible mitten project is languishing in a bag as other obligations (work) and passions (MHFV) have taken priority over knitting this week. Thankfully, I do have a long train commute out of the city everyday and was able to get a little bit of work done on the mitten thumb. It was, however, all for naught as I soon found out I made a huge miscalculation on the number of stitches that I needed to leave live for the thumb. By the time I had knitted half way up the thumb, I realized that you could have put 3 thumbs in the opening. Of course it looked ridiculous. So much for "winging it."

It is errors in judgement like this that make me appreciate website forums like Knitting Paradise. I was able to quickly get a suggestion from another knitter on how to correct this problem. I am getting lots of practice picking up stitches with dpns. I picked up a row of knitting as close to the original live stitches as possible and frogged down to that point. I then tinked back to the original live stitches.

My next step was to use the kitchener stitch to close up some of the stitches in the palm.  I have never used the kitchener stitch on any project, so I hit YouTube and watched a video by theknitwitch. The video was easy to follow and the repair job turned out better than I expected. I had a rather difficult time because the stitches were a bit stretched and they didn't smooth out really well. The lesson learned here is to use a waste yarn that is not bigger than the yarn in the project. I will obviously have to do the same thing to the second mitten as it has the exact same problem. At least I was not knitting the mitten thumbs two-at-a-time!

Happy Knitting!

Planning the NEXT project.

OK, let's not get into my list of unfinished projects; I am merely doing research at this point. I haven't even purchased the yarn. . . yet.

I decided that I have a hard to fit body. My rear end is too big, I have no waist, and my arms are too short for the standard-sized sweater. I also prefer a neckline that is not too low and a sweater that is long enough to cover the aforementioned over-sized rear end. So I have given up trying to find a sweater pattern that already fits me and I have begun to research how to modify a sweater pattern myself with out botching it up (see previous post).

In my research, I have found a book that I thought I would pass on to others, should you, too, have a hard to fit body. The Twisted Sitters Knit Sweaters, A Knit-to-Fit Workshop by Lynne Vogel, is a sweater making class wrapped up in a paperback book complete with a "hand-out" of a "Fitter List" which you can use to record your knitting journey. For me, this would mean that I could go back and re-write my mistakes and do the pattern again, correctly.

Because the author and her "twisted sisters" dye and spin their own yarn, she advises the reader how to classify yarn using gauge, wraps per inch, and yards per pound etc. This makes it easier to select a substitute yarn for those patterns for which the suggested yarn has been discontinued or is outrageously expensive. On the other hand, you can use the information to rework the pattern to accept another gauge yarn -- something I have not always been too successful with in the past!

All in all, I found the book very useful to my cause and I can't wait to dive in and knit my next sweater to actually fit me. Happy reading! er, um knitting!

Convertible mittens are almost done!

I need a long car ride/vacation so that I can get something done. I was sick last weekend and then all this week, I was so busy at work that I didn't have much time to work on any of the many projects that I have on needles. Neither did I get much work done on the Helping Hands quilt -- but that's for another post! But today I sat down and finished the body of the convertible mittens that I have been making for a friend.

Then as I told you in a previous post, I began using the idea of blogger Rebecca at ChemKnits to create convertible mittens from any pattern. I highly recommend this video if you are interested in trying to make your own convertible mitten. I got the opening made on both mittens and I have knitted the ribbing around the opening on one mitten.

For the ribbing around the opening, I stepped down the needle size from a US 6 to a US 4. I can't imagine getting a size 6 into the stitches. It was really hard to pick them up since I had used such a thick waste yarn.

Winging it has its advantages. I have watched many videos and read a lot of posts on Knitting Paradise.  I have taken a lot of ideas from many places. And  you learn by making mistakes, and I have been learning a lot! It has been fun.

One of the interesting things that I learned concerns picking up stitches. When you pick up the stitches before you open up the mitten, because of the way knitting stitches interlock, there will be one more stitch to pick up on one side then there is on the other. I am glad I saw that somewhere in my "travels" or I might have had an awful mess on my hands.

If I get any further tomorrow, I will post the results. Happy knitting!

Now I am really MAD . . . at myself!

Do you see my mistake? I was just happily knitting along the other night, watching a movie with my BFFs and not paying attention to what I was doing. It wasn't until the next day when I picked up my knitting and found my error. I messed up the braid on the last cross over on the left hand mitten. I was supposed to hold 3stitches in front, but it looks like I held 3 stitches in the back. So now I will have to tink back about 4 rows--on both mittens! Waaaaahhhhhh!