September 25, 2011
Last May, 2011, I spent a week in Charlottesville, Virginia, with my niece Deborah and her family on their 5-acre farm. I don’t remember anything special going on that week. She was in between other company, and I had a few days off from my volunteer work in literacy at PS 75 because of standardized testing. Of course, nothing special has to happen at Little Fox Farm for it to be a special time, and it was.
At some point we talked about knitting – I don’t remember what prompted the conversation – and Deborah asked if I could duplicate one of her favorite cardigans that was falling apart about an inch above each cuff . Ah now I remember. I had started a sweater project, and when I finished it, I didn’t like the way it turned out. The front was more of a jacket than a sweater, and the collar never did look right. The yarn was also a bit heavy. It’s a cotton yarn that comes in lovely colors, but other than a biscuit blanket, I haven’t found a project where I can use it. As a result, I undid the entire sweater.
Okay, that may not have been the prompt for our conversation, but the sweater I knitted and took out was full of cables, so I learned a lot about cables doing that pattern. And the cardigan Deb wanted me to replicate also had cables, so I figured that the dumped sweater, which was also a cardigan, must have been a prelude for the new project.
It sounded like an interesting project. All my previous knitting was from patterns, except for a little vest I had knitted for Drongo, the stuffed animal Deb’s son had made for a school project and had sent to me in NYC on vacation for a month. I took on the design challenge and brought the sweater home.
I should mention here that I wish I had started journaling my progress when I began the sweater. Because of where I am now in the process, I thought it would be valuable to record the steps I have taken to duplicate/replicate above mentioned sweater. So this will be from memory, up to this point in time.
September 27, 2011
I thought I’d have a separate page for knitting in this blog, but it looks like you can only add posts to the main page, and I know I will be writing about other knitting projects, so they will all be on the main page. I’m not really a blogger, so I’m still learning.
Getting back to Maggie the sweater – which was named at the point in this project when Deborah and her family named their adopted baby goat just after the earthquake that hit Virginia – to quote Deborah: “Short for magnitude … the way she staggers around, it’s like little earthquakes every day.” Maggie had an infection in her leg. She probably couldn’t stand up to nurse and was abandoned by her mother. After drug therapy and Deborah’s motherly nursing, Maggie seems to be adjusting well to farm life.
Okay, back to the sweater. Let’s see – where was I? Oh, yes. After experimenting with various yarns to match the gauge of the original sweater, I chose Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Bulky, which is 100% Superwash Merino Wool. I’m mentioning that for reasons that will become apparent later. And I chose a new color, Kerfuffle. Lorna’s Laces describes the color as “a deep, rich grey with a little purpley/blue/stormy skies thing going on in the background.”
I figured out the basic pattern, which included 2 different cables. Starting on the back, I got as far as the armhole shaping, and signed up for a one-hour session with a designer at my lys (local yarn store) Knitty City. Susan helped me calculate the numbers for armhole and neck shaping, front and back. Although the button band and collar were in seed stitch, she recommended I use a K1P1 ribbing pattern. I took my sweater home, finished it, and found lovely buttons to match at Tender Buttons.
Whenever I make something that can be thrown in the washing machine, I wash it before sending it off in the mail. So I did. Then I made the mistake of not reading drying instructions, so of course it shrunk in the dryer. But not only did it shrink, the yarn started to look like it wanted to felt. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
But remember, I don’t have a problem undoing a whole sweater. Like the daughter in the film Dolores Caliborne said, “She’s done it before.” Reordered the yarn. A little darker, but that can happen with a different dye lot. Began again.
You remember I said the original sweater was coming apart at the cuffs. I decided to ask Deb why, and she said the sleeves had been a little too long, so she’s rolled them up. So – shorter sleeves in the design. All the while I’ve been updating my written pattern – at least I thought to do that in an organized manner.
So when it was time to block the pieces, why was the back, up to the armholes, 2 inches longer than the sides? I undid the back, without thinking it through. Had I used the wrong size needle? Well, the sides were the same size and the sleeves were fine. Maybe I shouldn’t have destroyed the back after all. Kept the sleeves. Began again.
Sure enough, the sides needed to be a little longer, so I recalculated the math. The front collar also could have started a little lower, so I recalculated that as well. I then decided to go back to seed stitch for the button band and collar, which changed my pick-up ratio from picking up 3 stitches out of 4, to skipping a stitch after 10 stitches.
Oh, I forgot to mention that somewhere in this process, I took an all-day design workshop with Vogue designer Shirley Paden. I thought it might give me a better understanding of how to calculate all the shaping in a sweater, which it certainly did. A few years ago I took a finishing workshop with Shirley, and my sweater seams look pretty good – actually, they look great.
Back to Maggie the sweater. I changed the buttonhole design as well. I went from a one-row vertical hole to an eyelet hole, which was much easier to knit and to see. I’m sewing it all together now. Oh, did I mention that yesterday, I accidentally sewed one sleeve to the collar. As you may have guessed, I’m impulsive and quick to jump in when I should slow down and figure it all out. Easy mistake to immediately rectify though. I’ve just started sewing on the second sleeve. I’ll post a photo once it’s done.
Joanpone the Ice Cream Cone 