Hello Knitty

As someone who usually can’t stand having more than one project on the needles at a time, the fact that I have four unfinished knits languishing around the house is practically unheard of.

Adelina was very nearly finished. The collar had been knit and the sleeves were ready to be sewn on when I decided I wasn’t happy with the front – I wanted the v-neck to start further down. So this morning I ripped it out, and hopefully by the end of today it will be reknit and tomorrow I can reknit the collar and attach the sleeves.

My Tea Leaves Cardigan, which needed the buttons bands reknit, was pushed to the side by the Ravelympics, and never got picked back up. Late last week, as I was trying to decide whether I wanted to redo the front of Adelina, I ripped out one band, and to my horror the bottom few rows of the body started coming undone as well. So that needs fixing as well.

Not wanting to deal with the mess Tea Leaves was turning out to be, and feeling the urge to cast on a spring top, I pulled out some Elsbeth Levold Silky Wool in a gorgeous teal color and got to work on Bottoms Up. It’s going to be a time-consuming project – 248 sts knit at 6.5 sts to the inch – with inches upon inches worth of twisted rib.

And then there’s this sad little project – a Thorpe hat. Cast on during the last day or two of 2009, and mostly finished on the first day of 2010. It’s been sitting in dark corner of the dining area, practically forgotten about, despite the fact that it’s knit out of some of the most gorgeous handspun. All it needs is the edging.

This week is more or less my spring break. I have to work on Thursday, but other than that I’m off of work until next Tuesday. I’m determined that this will be the week for my unfinished projects. Two sweaters and a hat will finally make their way to the cedar chest where I keep my finished projects, and Bottoms Up won’t get touched until they do.

A month after teaching myself to knit I decided I was ready to start my first sweater. No matter that I didn’t even know how to purl yet, I went out and bought myself a sweater’s worth of the yarn called for in the pattern I’d chosen, and got to work.

It is a minor miracle that the sweater was wearable when I finished. I figured out purling, increasing, decreasing, and even intarsia as I went along, and ended up with something that very closely resembled the picture in the pattern. I had no idea what gauge meant, so I used the needles the pattern recommended, and somehow the sweater ended up fitting me exactly like I’d hoped.

Another thing I knew nothing about were the different types of fiber. Up to that point I had only knit with the acrylics or acrylic blends carried at the craft store down the block from my apartment. The yarn I used for my sweater was Lamb’s Pride Bulky, a blend of 85% wool and 15% mohair.

A long-sleeved pullover made out of bulky yarn is extremely heavy and way too warm. Add in the mohair, which made me itch like crazy, and you have a sweater I’ve been able to tolerate wearing maybe five times in the past five years. That sweater created a deep hatred of mohair and other “hairy” yarns in me.

Why am I telling you this story? Because I recently learned a tough lesson.

There is such thing as hairy wool.

I chose Blue Moon Fiber Arts BFL Sport to knit my Adelina sweater out of. I had no experience with Blue Faced Leicester, but wanted to try it because I’ve heard so many knitters rave about it. It’s not mohair hairy, and it’s very soft, but still. I’m a little worried.

Adelina is nearing an end. The front and back are blocking as I type this. I have part of one sleeve and the collar to knit, and I’m finished. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to wear it.

Not really an occupational hazard, but close enough. Knitting as much as I did during the Olympics was fun, but when it was over I needed a break.

It’s not like I haven’t been knitting at all. I finished up the back of Adelina, the pullover I’m test knitting for Amy of Stash, Knit, Repeat, and am over halfway done with the front.

I should be done with it already, or at least very nearly so. Between a little bit of burnout, some stress about my husband’s job (or, more specifically, how his job may be non-existent in three months), and my trying to decide whether or not to go back to school, knitting has been on the back burner. But as of today I know three things:

1. No matter what happens with my husband’s job, we still have each other and that’s what matters.

2. I don’t have to go back to work until Tuesday, and I’m planning on doing a lot of knitting this weekend.

3. I’m going back to school, starting in June. I’ll be finishing up my BA in History, then it’s on to grad school and my MA in Library Science.

Although it didn’t quite turn out the way I imagined, I LOVE my Shalom cardigan. I even considered wearing it before taking pictures, something I never do. In the end my practical side won, the side that reminded me I drop food on myself constantly and talks to me like this: you-don’t-want-a-stain-on-your-beautiful-new-sweater-before-you-even-take-pictures-of-it-do-you-young-lady-now-go-take-that-off-this-instant. Yes, ma’am.

I think you could make this sweater out of any solid or semi-solid yarn and have it turn out great, on account of the yoke being so gorgeous. It’s simple but very flattering. The yarn I used is MadelineTosh Rustication worsted, which is a 100% Cormo wool. The wool softens after you block it, but before it definitely feels more rustic, very scratchy, so much so that after one particularly knit-filled day the yarn ended up rubbing one of my fingers raw. The color is Tart, which has been selling out everywhere in a matter of minutes in every MadelineTosh base. To me the craze is worth it, as it’s the most perfect rich, saturated red.

It should come as no surprise that the buttons are from Green Ray Productions. Jodi helped me chose them and, once again, she came up with the perfect buttons. They’re horn; plain enough to let the yoke shine, but with enough detail to still be interesting.

Since the pattern was written for bulky weight yarn and I used worsted, I had to rewrite the pattern so it would work with my yarn. If you’re interested in making a worsted weight Shalom I’m posting my notes on my project page. Some of the details I borrowed from other knitter’s projects, but a lot of it I made up myself. Of course my notes will only work if you want to knit a 36″ chest, but you could easily do a little math and rewrite things for your own size.

HelloKnitty’s Slalom – Ravelry link

Dear Liesl, I hardly know you. From start to finish in 60 hours is not nearly enough time to get acquainted with a sweater.

Before we go any further, I’d like to stop and thank my husband, who took these photos and failed to tell me my glasses were crooked. Thanks babe!

I don’t have much to say about Liesl. It was such a quick, easy knit that I don’t have any notes about it. It doesn’t really fit yet, but hopefully by the time it’s warm enough to wear a lacy little cardigan it will.

It’s quite cute, isn’t it? And what’s not to love about a cardigan that only takes 400 yards of worsted weight yarn? I knit mine out of MadelineTosh Vintage in Kelp, and used size 10.5 needles.

My favorite part are the Bakelite buttons. A good set of buttons really can make a piece – or change it’s look entirely. Most of the buttons I use on my projects come from Green Ray Productions, a fantastic vintage button store on etsy. Imagine the difference it would have made if I’d bought a pair of rhinestone buttons from the 50′s instead . . .

HelloKnitty’s Liesl – Ravelry link