My Swatch Doesn't Tell Time

I have been known to make a bad knitting decision or two in my time.  Some might even call some of the things I make ugly.

I am sooooo determined not to let that happen to my first sweater.  So I am doing what I NEVER do, and I am swatching.

For those of you non-knitters out there, a swatch is not a plastic watch from the late 80s (or not JUST a plastic watch from the 80s).  It is the way you make sure the sweater you spend 300 hours on doesn't turn out ten times bigger or smaller than you want it to be.  Here's how it works.

Your pattern has a gauge that it says you should get.  For example, the sweater I want to make has a gauge of 16.5 stitches and 20.5 rows per four inches.  I tried knitting a square on the suggested needle size and got 20 stitches in three inches.  My sweater has about 250 stitches I have to cast on.  If I went ahead and knit a sweater with that gauge my sweater would be 18% or 6.5 inches smaller than I would want it to be.  PROBLEM!

I knit a second swatch with a needle size bigger.  It was still too small.  The first one had grown a bit when I gave it a bath, but even water didn't make this one right. 

I knit a third one on even bigger needles.  It is still too small....even after a bath.  I will have to knit a straight stockinette stitch swatch to see if it is just my cables doing this to me or if I really do need to go up ANOTHER needle size.

All of this is to say that I knit at least two, if not more, needles sizes tighter than this particular designer.  When I was in my (short-lived) weaving class, my instructor said I was a tight warp-er as well.  She implied this made me high strung (as in, I literally strung my warps too tightly).

I told her that I just wanted it to be perfect, and that I didn't know why people thought that made me high-strung, and that I was just taking pictures for my blog, not because I had to visually document everything to make sure that it was perfectly right or anything, and that did she think that being high-strung was why my knitting was so tight, too, did she, did she, huh?!?!?!?! 

Squishy

Squishy is a word one might use to describe the way walking in your shoes feels after you have been pushed into a lake with all your clothes on (oh, that hasn't happened to you?).  Or the way the banana feels when you mash it between your fingers to make banana bread (you don't make yours that way?).  Or it could describe this piece of awesome:

117 yards of bulky weight.  100% Merino in colorway dryer lint (actually, I have no idea what it is called, but even after is was spun, it continued to look like dryer lint....)

I had originally spun one of two singles.

What it looked like on the spindle

What it looked like skeined.

I thought I would have to make another one before I could ply them.  Then, in a fit of wanted to have a finished project NOW, I changed my mind.

 I wound it into a cake and then proceeded to ply it from the inside and the outside of the cake at the same time, essentially working from either end.  For those of you who don't spin, I have no idea how to explain this.  Just know that it ended up like this:

I know I said before that I was aiming for worsted. It fluffed up A LOT after the bath I gave it and I ended up with something bulkier.  No matter...

Squishy, yummy, awesomeness:

 I think I feel yet another hat coming on....

Weekend Update: Randomness

My weekend was random, and so random this post will be.  I gardened (just turned the cover crop over so the soil will be ready when we plant in a few weeks), watched West Wing/Glee/Private Practice/Grey's Anatomy/Baby Mama/O (what?!  I have to do SOMETHING while I knit), and baked cookies.

I also BBQed under a Cherry Tree.

The Cherry Blossoms are in full force, but that doesn't mean that it is actually warm out.  It was supposed to snow on Sunday so we barbecued under a friend's tree so as to not miss out on its awesomeness.  It was cold but pretty.

I also made about a hundred million of these.  

Actually I made three....but it felt like a hundred million. 

My friend is getting married and needs to make 80+ of these garland thingies by June.  I do not envy her.

You take 75 little rectangles of fabric and string them on some ribbon that really doesn't want to cooperate with you.

 Rachel, if you are reading this, you owe me new fingers.

And just to continue the randomness, look at this cool cowl Ebeth made me when I visited her in Michigan!

I am usually the giver and not the getter of hand-made things.  Thrilled!  Although sad that it is still cold enough to wear it....

Have a good week, folks!

Ask and You Shall Receive

Johanna commented on yesterday's post, "Thoughts for what you'll do with the finished products?"

Answer: YES!  Look what I made!

You may remember this pattern from my slipper knitting frenzy before the holidays.  I seem to get hung up on certain patterns and re-knit them over and over again.  My Ravelry project page is a very boring place.

I like these slippers...I like them because they are REALLY fast to knit (I am a slow knitter, so when I say fast, I mean maybe four hours tops).  I like them because they are cozy and, in this case, made of an extremely soft, smooth merino wool which makes my feet smile.  I only used half of the fat/bulky version of the yarn I showed you yesterday (yea, these use, like, no yarn at all), so be aware that more of these are coming.

I had to do some very tight crochet around the edging to get them to stay on my feet.  Crochet doesn't stretch the same was that knitting does so it helps hold the shape.  Now they stay on.

You can see that some parts the slippers are kind of hole-y.  This would be a result of my spinning, not the knitting (not saying my knitting never has holes in it, just saying that this time, the knitting is not the problem).  In fact, the whole right slipper is kind of hole-y because I apparently spun the first half of my yarn WAY thinner than the second half.

Right foot....holes everywhere.

Only a couple of holes on the strap, but a much thicker fabric in general.

The thin yarn meant that the gauge (how tight my stitches are) is way off in the right one.  All this means is that I will have to wear them myself instead of giving them away. 

They will be my Sunday slippers (because they are hole-y...holy...on Sunday...get it?  get it?  no?  sigh....)

Different Strokes

Let me be clear: I am really not good at this whole spinning wool into yarn thing yet.  And since I only have a drop spindle (i.e. no spinning wheel), I am excessively slow at the whole process.

But this, of course, does not stop me from feeling immensely clever every time I make something.  Take this for example:

Close-up. Single ply, fat/bulky 100% Merino from Abstract Fiber of Portland, OR in colorway "Snapdragon"

This past weekend, I took some roving of the same color way...

This is roving....essentially a long, dense, prepared strand of fiber that you use to spin with.

and spun it slightly differently.

First ply done and waiting on a paper towel tube.  Second ply being spun on my crappy, crappy, needs-to-be-replaced-with-this spindle.

Look what happened!!!

I'm a friggin' genius!  Or at least as smart as a gifted seven-year-old.

See how even though I started with the same raw material, it came out utterly different. 

This is not something new to spinners.  Had I plied it differently (perhaps a chain ply, that I am going to pretend I already know how to do for the sake of argument), it would have looked even different still....actually I am tempted to go back for a third round of this fiber to do exactly that. 

Thrilled, I tell you!  Thrilled!

Knitting in Advertising

Knitting/wool/sheep advertising makes me giggle.  For each of the following, put your hand over the logo and try to tell me what the ad is for:

Fabric softener, I think....  This is apparently a whole series.  See the others here and here.

Yup, strange.

Manhattan storage company via Yarny Days.  This link leads to a really inappropriate ad.  Funny, but inappropriate.

How about this one?

This one isn't actually an ad, but more propoganda encouraging people to knit items for service members during World War II (via LIFE Magazine)  If you can't tell, these are show girls.  Sexy, sexy knitting

Or this one?

Knitting is the Most. Fun. Ever.  For those of you who don't knit: I do, and I still have NO IDEA what this product is.  Via Craftzine

And finally

The Carly Fiorina Demon Sheep Attack Ad from 2010.  Watch the whole terrifying video here.  Demon sheep at minute 2:27.

Yea, no wonder my politically minded friends don't seem very into knitting....you have to get your wool from the demon sheep...

The Best Hat Ever

This winter, I knit my first hat ever. 

And it was awesome (pattern here)

 Then I knit my second hat.  The request was from the lovely Lisa who requested one EXACTLY like the one I was wearing (down to the color)*. 

And now we looks like twins (or would if I didn't look completely stoned...isn't Lisa pretty?).

 *Note that will only make sense to knitters:  You can't tell in this pic, but hers isn't actually the same....I missed a row in each of the repeats and had to do an extra repeat to make it long enough before I did the decreases for the top.  Only the designer and I know that I did it wrong...well, now I guess you do, too.