Katje

I wanted to have more pictures of this one, but I haven't gotten around to it. If I wait until I remember to get out the camera and take more, and make sure my hair looks good, and make sure the lighting's right, nobody will ever see this cardigan in all of its crimson glory. Phone photography, or what I've started calling "phonetography", is going to have to do.

Notice in this first picture that there is a lighter spot in my hair, just behind and above my ear. This is what happens when you don't make sure that your hair dye has fully saturated every section of your head. I gave myself calico head. I intended to re-dye it a few days later, but then time got away from me, and then the color washed out enough to not make the patches totally noticeable. Again, if I waited until conditions were perfect, nothing would ever get done.



Details
Pattern
Katje by Julie Weisenberger. Ravelry link here.

I bought this pattern a couple of years ago, because I really liked the great big hood. As a person with an unusually long head, normal hooded garments don't do much for me. I can't ever put up the hood without it looking ridiculously undersized. This one looked like it might work, and I loved the way it draped around the neck. I saw the sample at Stitches a couple of weeks later and tried it on, and fell even more in love with it.

Size
Medium

Yarn
Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in Merlot. I have a note that says that I used thirteen balls, and I think I wrote it before I added the rest of the bottom border, but it can't possibly be right. I think there was some confusion when a few of the balls made their break for freedom. I just weighed the finished sweater and came up with 548 grams, which is almost all of eleven balls, which sounds closer to the truth.


Needles/Notions
Addi Clicks, size 6 the whole way through.

Time
I can't remember, to be honest. I know I started it on April 4th, 2009, because I put that in Ravelry and I never enter a date in there if I haven't cast on for the project. I cannot remember when I finished it. I seem to remember trying to get it done for...something...but I can't remember if it was for Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, or...nope, can't remember. I know that it was done before the accident. I want to say that it took about a month.

Taking out the bound-off edge and adding to the border took a little more than a day.

Modifications
I haven't ever used Kathmandu, but I think it's a little less weighty than Silkroad Aran. The sample sweater felt lighter, and had more drape than my version. As a result of mine being heavier, it seemed to lack balance between the big, heavy hood and the cropped silhouette. It hit me at the wrong spot, and I spent a few months wearing it uncomfortably and tugging on the edges, wishing it were longer. I ended up adding an additional four inches to it, and balancing out the weight of the hood with a more proportional seed stitch border at the bottom.

I didn't make the knitted belt, even though I have one more ball of this yarn left. I probably won't belt it anyway, because that's not a good shape for me.


Conclusion
I wear this sweater all the time. All. The. Time. I have to fight the urge to wear it to work every Friday. It's comfortable, not itchy in the slightest and warm without being stifling. I wore it today, and it handled weather from 37 degrees and foggy to 65 degrees and sunny without seeming to be either too little or too much

The short rows at the neck make for a flowing, graceful hood. This is great for me, because, as you might remember, I can't tolerate hats. If I want to keep my ears warm when I'm outside watching the dogs play, this is the way I have to go. I'd probably use the hood construction again on other sweaters.

Actually, I'll probably make this one again in a different yarn. I love the pattern, and I get a lot of compliments on the garment. I feel good when I wear it, which is the ultimate gauge of success.

Too-Little Red Riding Hood

I kept meaning to write this one up as a finished object, but something kept holding me back. It's been done since May, and I have worn it several times, but something just wasn't quite right.


This is Katje, in Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran, a lovely scarlet shade called Merlot. Of course, since I love Silkroad Aran so much, it's been discontinued. I could only get a few balls of the colors I really liked. I have thirty balls in Casket, a lovely pumpkin color, but couldn't get any Venetian and could only get a few balls of this one. I bought as much as I could last year, and didn't properly catalog it before throwing it into the big stash bin.

In the interest of just making something - anything - with this Too Special to Ever Become Anything (TSEBA) favorite, I cast on for Katje and knit like the wind. I don't know how long it took, but I remember it being fast. I know it wasn't more than two months, because I broke my finger on June 5th. I think it was three weeks.

Toward the end, it was a real nail-biter. I had all of the Silkroad Aran that I was ever going to have, and it was barely going to be enough. Because the edges are knitted on, I wouldn't be able to easily add either length or width with a contrasting yarn. I had to bind off the last couple of stitches with spit-spliced ends from farther up in the garment. I was relieved that I'd made it, even with almost no yardage to spare. The few inches I had left are currently being used to hold a darning needle. That's how little there was.

Wearing it for these last few months, I kept getting the feeling that it was too short. I'd tug on the bottom, hoping that it'd magically drop down a couple of inches. If it wwere simply a cropped cardigan, that'd be one thing. The hood, though, gives it so much weight at the top that the cropped lower edge looks disproportionate. It doesn't look all that weird in the photo here, and people tell me it's cute when I wear it, but it's just not comfortable. I can tell that it rides up too much in the back. I meant to wash it and block it this weekend to see if I could fix it, but Silkroad Aran doesn't really do that. If anything my SRA garments shorten up as I wear them. "If only I'd had a couple more balls of it. Dammit. If only!"

And then these turned up while I was digging out the Pure Merino Heathers for Ysolda Teague's Vivian.


Yes, they were there the whole time, pinned under a bunch of Henry's Attic alpaca. They weren't with the rest of the balls because I hadn't bothered to put them into a bigger bag when I got them, and I didn't realize I even had them because that purchase was a "put it in the bin before I have to admit that I bought this much" purchase. This is what comes of lying.

My finding them, then, is what comes of telling the truth. I'm going to take them as a reward for my admitting to Accountant Boy that I bought too much yarn. Thanks, yarn faeries!

I plan to pull back the last couple of rows sometime this week, knit down for another 1 3/4 balls, then bind off again, maybe in seed stitch this time. And then there will be a finished object post, and much rejoicing.

...walk around in circles, walk around in...

So here's what happened. I put Ol' Blue away for a while, because I couldn't face undoing the sleeve and starting over.

I started knitting this great big striped pullover, but then I got worried that the color joins at the end weren't going to stay in place, and I became dispirited. That project got shoved into the knitting box up in the library. Oddly enough, I had a dream about it last night. I was looking at a page of magazine clippings, and there were pictures of me sitting on a boulder on a windy beach, wearing the sweater. It looked horrible on me. I kept thinking, "Where did they get those pictures? When did I finish that sweater? I have got to have something done to my hair. Is that what I look like? Oh, GOD!"

With Big Stripy temporarily shelved, I then dove into the stash and pulled out the big skeins of Interlacements. I swatched with two strands of what is supposed to be sport weight yarn, but which knits up quite a bit larger. Doubled, it produced a fabric so thick and dense that I think it would be able to repel a knife attack. I knit a few rows of it single-skein style on size 6 needles, the size I use for worsted wools, and got a pretty good look. When I showed the smaller swatch to Accountant Boy, he said, "Yeah, honey, that's what it's supposed to look like." Dammit. That means that I have to find a project for it, and it's not going to be a big, quick project because I'm going to be knitting at light worsted gauge. It's up in the box with Big Stripy.


"Maybe a top-down, something simple, then. I know! I'll make that hoodie I like so much, the one that has the big neckline. I'll use the lavendar yarn I got at Stitches a couple of years ago. It'll still be a Stitches 2007 project! I wonder if I have a swatch of that yarn." As it turns out, I did have a swatch and it is the right gauge.

Problem One - the yarn smells, I don't know, sheepy. Let's call it sheepy. The washed swatch is slightly better, and gives me hope that I can dilute the odor enough to wear it. It's not necessarily a bad smell, kind of like hot cardboard in your car on a summer day. It's definitely more ruggedly wooly in texture than I'd prefer in something that will be framing my face. It is a hoodie, after all. This leads us to the next problem.

Problem Two - my great big head. If you saw me, your first thought would not be "wow! That gal's got an enormous head! She's like that little chicken from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. No, not the chicken HAWK. The little chicken. The Widow Hen's little boy? You know what I'm talking about. With the glasses and the slide rule? Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about Larry. You always friggin' do this when I'm explaining something. You always gotta be friggin' Mr. Right all the time. Well how'd you like to be right about my fist in your face, Larry?" Maybe you don't have a belligerent, drunken personality rolling around in your head, poking his imaginary finger at your chest and calling you Larry. Maybe that's just me, and probably that's beside the point. The point is that my head doesn't look all that big until you measure it, because it's not symmetrical. My head happens to be longer front-to-back than most normal heads.

Why is this a problem? Well, because the pattern isn't written for the long-headed among us. If I knit according to the pattern, I'll have the increase seam that's supposed to run down the back of the hood starting right in the middle of the top of my head. Also, the hood will not stay on my head, which I would very much like it to do. I got several inches into the top, wrangling the needles with every row, before I realized that this was going to be a problem. That project hasn't even made it up to the box yet. In fact, there's no more room in the pretty project box.

Finally, with the greatest number of projects either on or near the needles in years, I came back around to Ol' Blue. I tried it on again. The big sleeve didn't bother me so much anymore. I liked it so much that I decided to continue it all the way to the wrist. I'm starting on the second sleeve tonight.


"Wonderful. How many more nights of being slapped in the face by your knitting will I have to endure, The Woman?"

I don't know, Buddy. Every time I give an estimate, I end up being wildy inaccurate. I'd prefer not to say. Hey, by the way, what do you think of the library? Cool, huh?

"I especially like the futon. You might tell the dog to stop urinating on it while you're away at work. Unsightly."

Pretty hard to him to do that from his crate in the other room, so I don't know what you're...ah, Buddy! Dammit, guy!