I Did It!

The pattern for Seychelles, which intimidated me for four years, turned out to be really easy, especially after two cabled sweaters I made.

State Fair Cardigan

Currant Cardigan

Each of these sweaters has patterning on the wrong sides of the knitting as well as on the right sides. It was a lot to keep track of!

The Seychelles wrong side rows were always just purl stitches. A breeze, and there were only 41 stitches per row, and only 20 rows per repeat section. 19 repeats but still, they were easy, so easy that I could work on them while I watched the new season of Endeavour. Yay! I love Endeavour, the prequel to the dull Inspector Morse series; the main character, the older Morse, was depressed, and I suppose he was such an effective actor that he made the show .... depressing. I never finished watching the series.

Anyway, here is the beaded lace portion of the project.

Now all that remains is to pick up a million zillion! stitches along the non-beaded side of this lace and knit the stockinette part of the wrap. There are (shudder) short rows to keep track of, but I think that is as complicated as the rest of the project gets.

This will be the most delicate thing I've ever had to block, and I think that will be a bit challenging. I'll be afraid I'll break the fine thread-like yarn!

OK and Phew and All Other Such Words

I finally did it!  I finished the State Fair Cardigan, and not a day too soon for Christmas! The thing is, it wasn't even meant for Christmas. It was meant for the fall of 2014, so it's a little late. I used Knit Companion for it, and I love KC!  No magnet boards, no pencil and paper.

 The only thing is that I think Knit Companion lies.

IT says that this sweater took me 75 hours and 19 minutes to make. I started this in August, so what KC says cannot be true. I think it took thousands and millions of hours, but that's just me. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe I forgot to turn KC on all the hundreds of times I had to frog parts of the sweater, and I think frogging time should count. 

Anyway, it's FINISHED!

(And I hope it fits. Please, please, please, sweet Mother of Purl, let it fit!)

Cables! Cables! Cables!

Have I mentioned that I love cables???

I have?

Well, it's true. I LOVE cables!

Aren't they pretty?

This is about halfway up the left front of the sweater, the last bit of cabled knitting. I will miss knitting it, odd as that sounds considering how many problems I have had and how long it has taken me to make this sweater. (I started it on August 17th 2014. Yikes.)

So I think that because I will miss these cables, I should make a cabled sweater for ME next time!

I Am So Disillusioned...

I have always had complete faith in blocking. Blocking fixes EVERYTHING!!!

No. No it doesn't. My faith is shattered.

These are the sleeves for the State Fair cardigan I am making for my daughter. When I was knitting them, the total length measured around 16" more or less. Now that they are blocked, they measure 24". That is seven inches longer than they should be! 

Blocking stretched them to their actual length, I guess.  

I also guess I will be frogging the sleeve cap and seven inches of the sleeve. 

I just finished the right front and have started the left front. I thought that I was nearly finished, but my daughter is a human, not an orangutan.

#$%^&*()_!

Update:  Dumb, dumb, dumb. Put your glasses on, knittergran. The problem just didn't seem logical to me, so I checked again. I had read the measurement chart wrong and had not added the cap measurement to the sleeve-up-to-the-cap measurement. The sleeve is the correct length.  

Whew...

Cables

I LOVE knitting cables. I'm a bit slow to get going on a cabled project because all the twists and turns intimidate me a bit, but once I get going........I'm still slow. I am now knitting the right front of H's sweater and then I'll just have the left front, blocking, sewing the pieces together, picking up stitches for the neck and button bands, knitting them, and voilà, I'll have a sweater.  Or rather, H will.

Maybe even before Christmas!!!

And at the Same Time as

Every knitter's most dreaded words. Well, maybe not every knitter's, but most. Ok, so maybe not most, but MINE for sure.

I have reached the point on the back of State Fair where I begin the decreases for shaping the armholes and neck....and at the same time as...I continue the cables. It could drive me to drink, but then I would be guaranteed to mess it all up, instead of just likely to mess it all up. 

Heeeerrrrre we go.  

Progress and Bad Boy Baxter

I've been knitting and knitting away, and finally, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am almost at the point where the decreases for the sleeves begin and I have knit the sleeves to that point also. Yesterday I got a bit cocky confident and knit so absent-mindedly that I made a mistake and had to take back one of the cables, AGAIN. I really need to pay better attention. 

I apparently do love knitting cables and watching them form; I keep choosing cabled sweater patterns to make and this is my third in the past two years. I have knit some lace and keep buying lace weight yarn and lace patterns, but never seem to get around to making them. I'm beginning to suspect that I don't enjoy lace-knitting. 


Now for Bad Boy Baxter.

Early last summer my husband built a tall gate so that Baxter could spend time on the deck and not escape. A couple of weeks ago, twice we thought he was on the deck, but we couldn't see him and assumed he was in the house. Hours passed and we would walk past the windows that overlook the deck and there he was! How on earth could we have missed him?

Turns out, we hadn't, because we finally saw this:

He climbs the gate! And then climbs down the other side and goes off on an adventure. Bad, bad Baxter! There are coyotes and foxes around here, as well as one orange cat that likes to fight and that had pretty thoroughly beaten Baxter up when he escaped a year or so ago. 

My husband has put a section of lattice, about four inches deep, along the top of the gate, at a 90-degree angle to the gate, and Baxter is so far defeated in his efforts to escape. He meows, rams himself against the gate, puts his head through the holes, but can't get out. 

We win! 

For now.

Do You Know a Knitting Wizard?

I do!  Her name is Anna, and she just saved me from having to rip out many rows of the State Fair Cardigan I have been working on, oh, forever.

After I thought I had repaired the wrong-way cables, I had some long strands of yarn that I couldn't figure out. Where did they come from? Where should they go? Anna poked around, pulled strands here and there, and diagnosed the problem. I had knit the new cables too tightly and the yarn strands really belonged IN the cables. So she ripped the six stitches back, got them started again with the correct tension, and I was able to work up the columns correctly. Whew....  I had even put in a lifeline in case I had to take the whole piece back about three inches. But now, thanks to Anna, I don't!

Do you see loose strands here?

or here?

No, you do not.  And that's because what appeared to be extra yarn is all back in place in the cables.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you Anna!

Last week at knit night a woman wearing a completed State Fair came into the shop. I recognized the sweater right away and it was nice to see it since I had only "seen" it in the Interweave magazine. The knitter said that she had made it in six weeks. 

Sigh.......I wish I were that fast a knitter.

Bonus: 

Did you know that unwaxed dental tape works perfectly for lifelines? It doesn't break or shred as you pull it through the stitches.

Oh, Sweet Mother of Purl

I have gone from this:

To this:

 To this:

It only took three size 1 double pointed needles, a crochet hook, two cable needles, a couple of pins, an OTT light, more time than I wish to think about, and nerves of steel. No wine allowed.    

The stitches are kind of stretched out, but I believe, Ah Believes, in the miracle of blocking.  

When Will I Learn?

From Interweave magazine/Winter 2014

I have started working on this State Fair sweater for my older daughter. (Shh...) I decided to knit a sleeve first so that I could use it as a gauge swatch.  Good plan, right?

Right. Except that I forgot about using it to check my gauge until I measured to begin the bind offs for the armhole portion and then it was TOO LATE.  My gauge is too large, and the sleeve so far is 3" longer than it should be. The cuff is cabled, and gaw-jus, if I say so myself, and I do, so just folding the cuff back is not a good solution to the problem, and really, a bespoke sweater should actually fit!

So now I have to rip back to the cuff and start again, making the increases closer together. It will work out ok (as long as I make both sleeves according to the new rate of increase) so I guess I don't mind.

I just wish I had remembered to measure way sooner....