Boatneck Pullover

Top Down Raglan Sweater

I cast on the border and knit it on a size 8 needle; I felt it was too loosy-goosy so I ripped it and recast on with a 7. I think I could really go down to a 6 but I will roll with the texture it is now. It may bloom a little with blocking and I am sure there will be some dye run-off. It has that crunchy feeling. I don’t know what the manufacturers are thinking when they write their band info. 4.5 st/inch would be too slack.

The color name is Candombe and it is dark blue, dark green with some brown/tan highlights. I am not using two balls, alternatively because I think with the small size, pooling won’t be a serious problem.

Top Down Raglan Sweater

Today, Village Wool is having their bag sale and I think I am going. Although I have more than enough wool I want more of the Malabrigo superwash and also some Madelinetosh. It will be 50% off and I have been really looking for some interesting superwash for baby stuff. I don’t think there will anything else I want. Cascade and Debbie Bliss make some nice wool superwash but there are no tonals, heathers, or hand-dyed and they can be a little blah. I liked Mission Falls but they are gone. Many of other yarns I would like to use like Quince and CO or Swann Island or Kristin Nicholas’ resurrected Julia are not superwash and I hate to do that to new parents. As the kid get bigger, I think you can get away with natural wool provided it is not too light.

Stash Enhancement

Later….. I went to Village Wool. I bought some more Malagrigo in different colorways. (Turns out the only Madelinetosh was some beige sport weight: a little meh and pricey compared to the Malabrigo) I didn’t find any bulky superwash wool so I bought some Araucania Panguipulli, which is a marled, hand-dyed bulky yarn but not superwash because I had to fill the bag. I didn’t see anything else I really wanted. Still, I got about $200 worth of wool for half price. I also got some nice ceramic buttons, card of 5 for $2. If I had know they were so cheap, I would have bought more but by that time I was really done shopping. I cleaned out my superwash/baby stuff and found some cotton and some Cashmerino baby, too as well as some Dale Ull. Maybe, I can get rid of it on Ravelry.

ETA: Grammar

I hope my kids are not looking for pastel sayelle-looking little lacy, grandma garments for their babies; not going to happen although I may rethink some of those colors for older ones. Don’t want anyone to say who are these zombie babies??

Lamb All-in-One Progress

This current project, Lamb All-In-One, comes from an older book, New Baby Knits, and has no knitting instructions in it but lots of cute patterns with texture and stranded knitting. I am plugging away at it and am almost ready to start the bodice section of the one-peice coverall. I can’t say the Debbie Bliss Rialto yarn is a joy to knit with but I think that sums up superwash wool. There are no little scales on the yarn fiber to grab and felt the garment but they also make the yarn slippery.

Lamb All-In-One Bottoms

Last Sunday, I visited Creative Yarns in Windsor CT and bought some Madelinetosh and another pvc project bag along with a pair of birch needles I didn’t need 8~(. They are a nice store and have good supply of quality yarns, especially if you have a project in mind. I have looked at the superwash dk that Knitpicks and Webs produce and it looks nice but the colors are rather harsh and primary. I have grown to prefer subtle tonals and heathers for texture. I didn’t see any patterns I liked but I did see this new baby yarn that is a sport weight called Millamia with nice pattern support.
ETA: ripstop fabric project bag: large, purple to go with large orange, green, small pink.

I would have made more progress on the above but I got distracted after a trip to Rings End Lumber and the Yarn Basket in Branford. There I bought 2 new books, 60 Quick Baby Knits and More 60 Quick Baby Knits. The patterns are created by a number of familar designer using Cascade 220 and Sport Superwash wool. There are a lot of accessories that I will never make like toys, blankets, booties and caps but there were a number of nice sweaters and some Rhumba pants for a girl and basic leggings for either sex.

Boatneck Pullover: sweater front

This pattern is in the More book called Boatneck Pullover by Ann McCauley. I am making it out of Debbie Bliss Rialto in a mustard yellow. I found it hard capturing a good, unblurred picture of the whole sweater made in the 0-3 mos size. You knit from the border up the front, cast on for the sleeves, cast off for the neckhole, cast on again for the body, and decrease to finish sleeves and knit the back. Fun to make and very cute. You could vary it by making the neck hole bigger and put in some buttons with crocheted loop buttonholes but I don’t think I will.

Pattern Stitch Closeup

The border is an interesting rib and the body has a pattern stitch that’s name escapes me but is not hard to follow. I was thinking of making a couple of sewn pairs of long rompers with some embroidery to go with it with a couple of T-shirts. It should fit a newborn through the winter, especially winter in Norfolk VA.

Broken Twisted Rib Border

Finally, I went to A Stitch in Time in Bethel and bought a really nice addition to my pattern library, Need A Baby Cardigan by Cabin Fever. It feature a nice template with all weights of yarn and sizes 0-18 mos top-down raglan cardigans. It is brilliant for design and augmenting. I noticed on their website they have a few other books with templates and variations for babies and toddlers but I think I am good for now.

I have some smocking patterns with duplicate stitch diagrams that would work perfectly for a little set. I saw the Millamia yarn there, and some Cascade SW but the Mission Falls is all gone. I looked through my smocking plates at home and found so many cute ones; If made on cotton/poly fabric, they don’t require ironing. I made a lot of these when I had my own young ones and they look so cute made out of micro checked fabric with pique collars trimmed with piping and lace. I don’t care for the French sewing that seems to encorporate tons of lace, exquisite fabrics, and old fashioned styles. I don’t think it looks cool and I am sure neither do the kids but some classic styles with minimal trim will work. Think Saks or Ralph Lauren baby!!!

Garter Wrap Cardi

Baby Mulla is coming in January so I found this blanket sleeper that will look like a little sheep in my Debbie Bliss book
New Baby Knits. It is off-white with black hands and feet, lined ears to look like a little lamb. It is knit from Debbie Bliss superwash Rialto. Knitting with superwash, while important for new babies, is kind of funky. It is sproingy and slippery to work with. Also, I am not a great fan of Debbie Bliss for many reasons. This pattern comes from an older, out-of-print book with a lot of different kinds of garments in it. Now, her current books fill half the book with basic knitting instructions and the patterns are basic. Her book about designing for babies has some common sense directives with no real info and about half a dozen patterns. She also rationalizes her narrow size range by saying people can learn to expand the sizes by reading tutorials. Lazy. Contrast this with Ann Budd’s books on building basic sweaters from her charts of measures and gauges.
I wish I had kept better records when I knit the stuff I saved. I know many of the sweaters came from Pinguoin, Phildar, and Dale Baby pattern books, but I got rid of them in the 90s and I didn’t keep any yarn notes.
More to come when I find the next box of garments. I shutter to think what they will look like; bigger sweaters with bigger holes. 8~(

Lopi 29 Booklet

I recently bought a new Lopi pattern book because there were a number of Lopi-style garments that I really liked and seemed a little updated/more current. I thought that they would be especially suited to handspun and I could use different fleeces for the different colors. The sizes were all metric and last night while I was trying to figure out which size to make, I discovered something. This book follows the European sizing tradition, the XXL is 42 in inches. Nothing in the book will fit me or the men in my family; Upsizing the yoke patterned sweaters seems like a daunting task.

Satt

When you upsize, you need to enlarge the torse, the armholes, the sleeves but you also need to make sure the neck won’t accomodate the Incredible Hulk and the arms won’t work for an orangutan. It is not a totally proportional change and I think you need to understand sizing as well as to accomodate the patterns and decreases.
I never suspected this when I looked at the numbers in CMs or I would have never bought it. For similar reasons, I avoid Debbie Bliss and Rowan patterns. Very disappointing but lesson learned.

Clean locks: 8 oz

I teased open both ends of the locks using the teasing board that came with my Strauch’s Finest Drum Carder. It was much easier than using a flick carder because the butt and tip open so readily. The tips are not fragile or tender but they are sunburned.

Clean locks on left; Teased locks on right.

Then, I tried a supported long draw for spinning. I filled two bobbins, some spun on my Ladybug and some on the Sidekick. I attached my bulky flyer to my LB and plied the two bobbins from my lazy kate. I soaked it in hot water and let the skein dry.

Plied Romney on Niddy-noddy

Plied Yarn and Swatch

Swatch

Here are the stats: 260 yds of plied wool weighing 4.4 oz. I knit a swatch using a 5.5mm/US 9 needle and got a gauge about what I was looking for: 14 x 19. It is not dry yet but it is blocked out on the board where I measured and counted.
This is the exact result that I intend to acheive for the sweater from Lopi 29, SATT. This is a raglan sleeved sweater with 3 colors; it will be perfect for 3 colors of homespun with a top, a bottom, and a dividing motif.
Still, I need to work on my plying.

I had a great time but had some problems getting around with my stiff, sore joints despite ibuprophen. The terrain is hilly and sometimes uneven. We set up camp near the middle in the clearing near the pavillion and that worked for resting, eating and drinking, dropping off packages, and meeting up.
The food was typical carny fare: sandwiches, cold drinks, deep fried everything including what people called heart attack on a plate!

We walked around the barns for shopping but we also visited the animals. There were quite q few rare breeds there, Hog Island, Manx Lougtham, St Kilda to name a few. There were sales, shearing, and competitions but there was just too much to see and do it all. This year we missed the auction because we were looking at the fleece sale and tracking down fleece. I didn’t buy any fiber because I bought a fleece the week before at Connecticut. There was a prize winning cormo that I really liked but it was 7 lbs and just too much to deal with right now.

I got some replacement shearling bedroom slippers and some maple cream for topping oatmeal and toast but I didn’t get anything else. You must pace yourself and it was strenous just seeing all the booths. I could have gone back to next day to shop but I was too sore. In fact, we should have gone back because my BIL left his power cord to his laptop plugged in by the Pavillion. He is the celebrity of the group because he is pictured in the slide show that Clara Parkes of Knitter’s Review did of the festival.

There is a little rivelry between MSWF and Rhinebeck over who is bigger, better, more vendors, more folksy, more for spinners, etc etc etc. My take is that they are very similar with many of the same vendors. I think there more country in MD and it is geared toward the shepherds as well as the fiber fans while Rhinebeck has something of the state fair about it. There is a NY pavillion with food stuffs from all over the state: wine, cheese, spices, breads and baked goods, pastries, honey, maple syrup, hot sauce, cheese, pickles. MD has farm equipment and country music (better than the pan flutes at Rhinebeck, what’s up with that?) MD is free while Rhinebeck charges admission. The NY venue is a little nicer with more paving, atms, and more and better bathrooms. But they are both lots of fun.

The rest of the weekend we did our usual Wash DC rituals: eating. We go for Pho and then to the chinese market across the street.
My SIL bought a variety of vegetables and sauces, but we just bought baos and some pigs’ trotters (feet) for DH’s mother to cook up Indian style. The butchering in the market is different than western style and there are many things you would never see at Stop and Shop, like pig intestines, snouts, lambs’ tongues, live fish being butchered, conch, live eels and bullfrogs (in a net so they don’t jump away) and millions of varieties of sauces, pickles, and condiments.

On the way home, we stopped at Indiantown A.K.A. Iselin NJ and picked up some Indian food for dinner and the freezer as well as a tasty lunch of masala dosa, a huge crisp fried pancake made of fermented rice flour.

I did not do any fiber damage, but I got a new baby: a Schacht Sidekick wheel which I have already spun a bobbin of yarn on.

I should mention the weather was ideal: sunny and in the 50s so we could layer but we didn’t need to remove any. I wore Wisteria by Kate Gilbert in Twist Collective and DH wore some Dale sweater (oh hell, I should look it up), Thunder Bay. Smart man wears his handknits to knitting events: we both got compliments.

There was fleece sale and egged on by DH, I bought an 8 lb hoggett Romney (although I don’t care for the name) in natural greys. It has great lock structure, nice crimp, it is soft. I spun a little in the grease and it made my typical hairy singles. I wonder how these people spin, who generate this thread that they show off with pennies under a strand. I couldn’t get there in a million years. But I like this fleece and I have hopes of a very soft bouncy yarn for a sweater for DH and maybe second son (DH says his and hers sweaters).

The other handspun sweater I am making for DH is out of Leicester Longwool; now that I know more about sheep and fleece, I think this sweater would sub for chain mail in medievil times. It is not soft. More wiry but it has a beautiful luster.

I also bought a mini niddy-noddy and some soap. We were looking at alpaca socks but they were rather bulky and I wanted DH to get something he could wear now. I got the niddy-noddy from a local vendor and it was cheaper than the Kromski.

Next week is Maryland and that should be fun. I will be looking to replace my bedroom slippers, some colored mohair (natural brown), some buttons, and maybe a portable spinning wheel (LOL). DH found plans online for wool combs which I want and for a picker which I don’t. I don’t want too many dangerous tools lying about. I cleared up the study on my week off but I had hoped to store the damn piano in the closet and I couldn’t move it in there. I need more shelves for my growing fiber stash. Still need to get to the post office to send off the California Red.
I am not going to take a photo of my improperly plied yarn, was it Gotland in the grease? In fact, by the time you read this it will probably be in the garbage. Live and learn!

We had good lamb burgers and DH also had some lamb stew so tonight is hors d’oervres and drinks for dinner. Time to get some more cheese, crackers, and stuffed clams. 8~)