Category: Knitting

So, shown here is the project which has been taking any knitting time I’ve had for past several months. It’s the Baby Surprise Sweater (Jacket) by Elizabeth Zimmermann, and it’s been an absolutely maddening project, because it’s completely impossible to visualize while you’re knitting. At one point I had to rip back a good 20 rows, because I’d been doing a single increase when I should have been doing a single increase on each side of the marker. Grrr.

But, it’s nearly finished! Shown here it’s lacking about 10 rows, but since the pictures I’ve knitted a good four of those. I really am intending to finish this up before we leave for Glasgow, so that I can work on something soothingly simple upon the train.

Here you can see some of the strangeness: to the left quarter of the shot is actually the neck-line (you can see where I’ve cast off 5 stitches to accommodate the neck). Strange, strange, because the top left is actually the edge of the sleeve. The whole idea here is to be able to knit the sweater without having to sew any seams, and to only have the one graft (across the sleeves).

I used the Zimmerman “pattern” for this, but also made use of the notes here, as Elizabeth is notoriously vague in her instructions (hence my needing to frog all of those rows).

Finished pics by this weekend, hopefully!

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So, rather than being strictly “good” today, we went out and spent some money. True, it was only a wee little bit of money, and we did kind of earn it … by selling all of those books. And it was on sale. What, you ask? Well:

• Katia – 7 balls (4 “Granada” & 3 “Sevilla”), 140 yards each, 64% Nylon, 36% Polyester
• Reynolds “Mandalay” – 4 skeins, 98 yards each, 100% silk
• Punto Su Punto “Filati” – 2 balls, 137 yards each, 100% vi bamboo
• Louisa Harding “Sari Ribbon” – 2 skeins, 66 yards each, 90% nylon, 10% metallic
• 2 bags of buttons – one wooden, one stone

That’s what. All for $50 USD … and I think .80 cents, but they didn’t have change, and wouldn’t take my $1 bill to make up for the difference. So, for Fifty Bucks, we ended up with 15 balls / skeins of yarn plus two bags of buttons. Not bad at all!

I’m only sad that I didn’t actually get to run into Jackie, who was the one who told me of the Muench / Knitterly sale going on in Petaluma (Sonoma County, California).

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The Alaska Daily News carried a piece on the big public knit thingy this past weekend, and while they were discussing the fact that more and more guys are knitting, they mentioned one Kaffe Fassett, apparently a rather famous male knitter. I hadn’t ever heard of him, but always wanting to keep score with the boys, I looked him up.

Um, okay. Wow.

This sweater is gorgeous. Monsieur Fassett is excellentwhen it comes to textile designing – (Can you imagine doing this by hand? Can you imagine the HOURS!? Why am I assuming he did this by hand, though? I’m sure a knitting machine was involved, or else he did not finish for AGES…) – not to mention his needlework, mosaic, patchwork, and painting designs as well.

For the record, the article also points out “Rick Mondragon, editor of Knitter’s Magazine (can you believe they sponsor a knitter’s SUMMER CAMP!?); Brandon Mabley, author and designer with Rowan Yarns; Jack Lewis, creator of “Real Men Knit”; and Japan’s Knitting Prince, Mitsuharu Hirose,” (The site is all in Japanese, but you had to see the guy – he’s apparently quite the heartthrob in Japan, and partially responsible for this huge knitting renaissance. Hee!) as being among the many modern men who are more than making their mark with the art of knitting.

Though I am always knitting in public, this weekend is probably the one weekend I didn’t, being involved in a 48 Hour Book Challenge contest (which I accidentally won. Still not sure how that happened.), but I hope everyone else had fun. Cheers!

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The Slubby Hat has found its head, and is liked. My dad had been going bareheaded, as all of his own hats are fishing hats, which just don’t accommodate the stitches, and as my little sister had finally managed to wrestle her hats away from him, so I’m told that he’s quite pleased with this one. He’d been known, previously, to sleep in my sister’s hats, to keep his head warm, so this is a suitable alternative.

Mind you, I don’t know what hats my sister had which were so objectionable … but I’m gathering that they didn’t fit the masculine ideal that she and my mom have of him, and they were ashamed to be seen in public with him wearing them. Who knows?

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What do you knit for a man in his 70’s, who’s been in several branches of the military during two wars, who is a libertarian, and who has just undergone brain surgery? Well … let’s just say that it’s going to have to be … “manly.” This hat is an attempt at such a thing. Note the stealth lace yarn-overs? Should be good for a kick, ’cause they only show up if you really look for them.

I do know that the man in question will wear knit things – hideous knit things, with all sorts of patterns on them, even – if they’re soft. He has a particular penchant for cashmere, but is also quite fond of scratchy wool (we think it was military school at age 12 which did that). So, maybe he’ll accept this hat and will wear it. I certainly hope so, because the 7 inch long scar on the top of his newly-bald head is quite a thing to behold. I’d rather not have to look at it again any time soon, but I imagine I’ll get to this weekend, as the man in question is my father, and he’s bringing my little sister up this way to help her find an apartment.

So, this hat is to go to a dubious home, but we’re guessing that he’ll wear it. Given that he’s usually quite cold, he’ll probably love it. Of course, the cynic would point out that all he’d have to do would be to grow his hair a bit longer … but that would be ignoring the 60+ years of military haircuts. That type of thing has a lasting effect, I’m certain. I mean, that’s like 5 times longer than I had to put up with those haircuts, and I know they affected my mind.

I bought two balls of this Lana Grossa yarn, and the hat only took one, so I’m going to knit another up for myself, probably using the same pattern. It’s not all that complex of a pattern, because the built in tufts and the multicolored yarn really distract from any laciness which you might want to add. So, we’ll look at this one as practice.

Note on the brain surgery: he had a tremor which couldn’t be treated with medication any longer, and has since been corrected by the addition of an electrode implanted into his motor cortex, acting like a pace-maker for his motor nerves. Fun. He’s getting an on/off switch implanted into his shoulder tomorrow, so that he can sleep without running down the batteries, which he’s got to have surgically replaced every few years. Yummy, eh?

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Yet another baby hat, but this one done up on size 3 double-pointed bamboo needles the whole way. It seems that everybody’s having babies; I don’t know if it’s the war, or just biological clocks ticking away, or what, but the babies could stop now. They really could. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I like the little things, provided they’ve gotten past the stage where you can see their pulse in the soft spot on the top of their head. Something about there not being any skull to protect their brains just gives me the creeps, which is probably why we feel the need to knit them hats. But really – enough, already.

It is giving me the opportunity to get rid of all of this yarn, though I’d like there to be some girls, at least, if everyone’s going to keep on having all of these kids. It seems that they’ve all been boys lately, and that really puts a strain on my hat-making skills, as I’m having to resist giving scalloped edges, or frills, or laces. I mean, this one’s a bit lacy, and I’m hoping that his mommy will forgive me for it. We’ll see – and I hope they give me some good pictures of it on their site.

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I finally gave in: I frogged my 10 inches worth of Branching Out. I realized, in posting the other day, that I hadn’t been knitting anything, and that I’d been actually dreading working on that particular piece. I know why: it requires slavish attention to a pattern, which is detailed enough not to be able to stick in my mind. So, I couldn’t memorize it (or I was unwilling to put in the hours to do so), and it just wasn’t pretty enough to keep me at it.

So, I ripped it back, I frogged it, I tore it out. And I’m knitting this morning, because I realized that we’ve a friend who’s due this week & I haven’t knit anything for the child (boy), and that I have an orange hat for my sister-in-law’s boy (due in June), but that he probably needs some socks, especially since I have miles of the same orange yarn. So, a blue hat for the boy due this week, and then on to orange socks.

It feels nice, to have gotten rid of a piece which was keeping me from knitting. Silly, I know, but I’d worked myself into a corner: I was going to do that pattern, darn it … but, really, who cares? I know that I can follow a pattern … so who am I proving things to? It’s sad that it’s taken me so long to think through this, but there it is.

Now, on to the blue hat, and all of the possibilities of not following any pattern, but relying on intuition and whim and whimsy.

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This straight needle in the round technique is confusing, so I will explain it.

CO # of sts (It works with any # of sts) using the temporary cast on.
K 1, slip 1 as if to purl wyb, rep across row
Repeat for all rows and you will get a tube on the straight needle. Separate on to two other needles the same size, alternating the sts, and bind off.

You can also P1, slip 1 wyf. It is, as I said, not the best for decreased hats, but good for rectangle hats, as it is joined at the beginning, or for making bags. This is the book I got it from-
Donna Kooler’s Encyclopedia of Knitting

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