Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Epic Sweater visits the Frog Pond

Weeeellll Sheeeit.

Epic sweater take 5. Or is it 6?

So I was whizzing along ( as much as an epic sweater can really whiz...) and arrived at the correct number of stitches to have a 40" around sweater. Good, right? Wrong. What should have been 9 or 10 inches of length to achieve that width turned out to be more like 6 inches. Lets look...


That is the sweater I'm basing this whole affair on. Note the length of the raglan lines. Mine is the same (or nearly) width. Shit.






Lets take a closer look...















And now the reasons why this whole thing will be redone... again...
  1. Raglans are not supposed to have sleeves at 90 degree angles.
  2. K does not have arms at 90 degree angles.
  3. K is not built like a football player
  4. K is not planning on taking massive amounts of steroids which would cause him to look like a football player.
As a bit of a pain reliever I have been knitting a little baby hat. Its going to be a veggie hat. It now has a stem! :)












This yarn is just basic Sidar acrylic in a color I like to refer to as "Don't lose the Baby!" If you can't find your child in this then you shouldn't breed.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Epic Sweater

Epic, very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); "an epic voyage"; "of heroic proportions"; "heroic sculpture"

This is an undertaking. Its a commitment to excellence that I rarely even aim for. But when its for K I go all out... I'm knitting him an epic sweater. It is in Fisherman's Rib. It is in nearly natural wool (very little dye, not superwash.) . The wool took me 4 months to procure. I bought sample skiens. I did test knits for ribs, cables, needle sizes, and color. I examined and repaired the old sweater ( a welsh import) for gauge, structure, and stitch.

I began knitting from the top down, and cut it loose.
















And cast on to smaller needles, and knit 1 inch... and ripped back.

And tried again with less stitches... and messed up the ribbing and ripped it back.

And tried again with different markers and was doing okay until until I realized I didn't have the right number of stitches for the rib, and cut it loose.


















Finally... Cast on 96 stitches. 5-m-5-27-m-5-11-m-5-27-m-5-6-m (m=Marker)

Joined around, and began to knit. Fisherman's rib is tricky. I need an extra marker for the round as well as for each raglan miter because you have to switch from knit to purl every round. It goes slow, what looks like a row is actually more like 4 rows. I'm on size 4 needles and getting something like 4 stitches per inch. The increases are tricky too, they have to be done in pairs to maintain the rib but not in the same round, so I actually am knitting a 6 row pattern.


1: Knits and increase
2: Purls
3: Knits and increase
4: Purls
5: Knits
6: Purls










SO Each of those added ribs along the miter is 6 rows of work!

I am up to a 24" needle now but only 1/3 of the way down to the sleeves. I'm going to do the whole thing seamless to avoid having my nice work botched up by seams. But I am going to add plain 1x1 ribbing at the neckline, hem, and cuffs.


So Epic. So worth it. So handsome.*

















*Him and the sweater! I can't wait to put them together!

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Spring Rush

AH.... back to knitting and blogging. I've been a lazy ass on both accounts for some time now and I mean to rectify! Here's the lowdown on the spring knitting crazy:
  • the county fair is only 2 months away
  • I need 'thank you socks' for my TAs (oh, and another pair of socks for last years rock'in TA, she wants a pair for graduation, she loved the last pair so much!)
  • I finally have yarn to knit K's sweater
  • There are 2 teachers having babies at school, so they need baby blankets, 1 down 1 started
  • I have my sweater to finish
That's still lots of knitting. I'm not sure what I'm entering in the fair yet, we'll see what's finished! I really want to enter one of my baby blankets. The only one I've ever entered was a half finished piece of crap that got a 3rd place.

Here's my most recent start on a baby blanket, my mitered blanket pattern (I just love it!) in vaguely girlish Easter egg colors....














I've also started K's sweater, for the 4th time, this time on smaller needles and with the correct # of stitches.















I also need to go to Trader Joes ( a good place to knit socks in line)
because my last batch of daffodils never opened! How sad! nothing worse than springtime without pretty daffodils!