jenwren's blog

As you can see in the image above (not the greatest quality, since there's not much daylight to speak of) I have finished the second sleeve, joined the sleeves and body and am half way up the yoke. The second sleeve took two weeks - partly because school was back in and partly because I fell down the stairs here at home on the second day back, landing heavily on my right elbow and bottom. I took quite a chunk of skin off my elbow and it really hurt, so there was no knitting at all for three days but it has been steadily improving since.

The yoke was commenced a week ago and the cable pattern requires care and concentration. I didn't dare attempt to continue it at knitting group yesterday, instead choosing to graft the underarms (since I can practically graft in my sleep having performed the technique frequently in the past.). I'm hoping to be finished in another week - I desperately want to start wearing the finished product! I'm yet to get some buttons and I won't be at SSK next weekend (my grandparents will be visiting) so I don't know when I might get to go to All Buttons Great and Small.

I'm drowning in marking - I finished one lot this morning knowing I'm in for a week of more from the trial HSC and two topic tests. Now I'm off for my Sunday swim.

I finished knitting and weaving in ends on the Tangled Yoke Pullover on Monday night and wet blocked it. On Tuesday evening I finally got to try it on. Because this yarn relaxes so much after washing, I had no real way of knowing if the pullover would fit before then. I really had my doubts on Monday, and even on Tuesday when I first put it on because it seemed a bit tight in places. But I wore it to work on Wednesday, and with a little wear it has relaxed into shape and fits perfectly (and I pretty much haven't taken it off since!). I had some photos taken at knitting group in Gordon today.

The first photo show the fit, but the light wasn't good for showing the detail, especially in the broken rib, which looks good. The second photo shows the cable detail better. I was very happy with the choice of buttons - I ended up buying them at Spotlight.

The details: based on Tangled Yoke Cardigan by Eunny Jang, Interweave Knits Fall 2007
Modifications: I explained the sizing and yarn substitution issues before. I calculated the number of stitched I required for the body from my gauge swatch to knit up to the yoke. The false seams were omitted and I added short rows in the bust (six wraps each side, I think). The sleeves were knit to more fitted measurements since I did not want as much ease in them as there was in the pattern. The yoke was knitted to size 38". I left four stitches on scrap yarn at the centre front about half way between joining the body and sleeves and starting the cable pattern. I did not make it as deep as the pattern specified since I expected the length to grow more with blocking. I think I was wrong on that front since the neckline is wider and lower at the back (yes, I did do the short rows) than I had anticipated (one of the downsides of not being able to try it on before it was finished and blocked). The neckline was knitted all-in-one with the plackets at the front, which is also grafted to the four stitches left at the front. I screwed up on positioning the buttonholes - the middle one is a bit higher than it should be. The plackets were cast off after 8/9 rows and the neckline band continued, folded over and finished with the three-needle cast off as in the pattern.

And a final note on the amount of yarn: I calculated the amount needed based on size 46", since I'm a 44" bust, and added a little more to be safe. That was 15 balls. I used only 9 since ultimately I was knitting closer to the 38". I couldn't know that until I'd bought the yarn and swatched... And now I've learned that Berroco deliberately over-estimate yarn requirements for their projects so this is likely to be a recurring theme with the already purchased yarn for Calvert and Eastlake.

Now that Tangled Yoke is finished I am committed to knitting for the Winterwarm project for the next week. My friend Sally is collecting the knitted items next weekend, so I really need to get a move on!

I dived into the stash to come up with some yarn to make some baby hats. My stash, at least that part that is not already committed to specific projects, is dominated by cream yarns so that I can dye them whatever colour I desire when I do decide what it is to become. While looking in the boxes, I came across the yarn I bought (I don't remember if it was last year or the year before....) for another felted bag (Bendigo Rustic 8 ply in a November sale). Good timing, since I had forgotten I already had yarn for this, and came across the pattern I'd like to use a few weeks ago. The pattern is the Felted Stained Glass Fan Bag, and the variations I had been admiring used Noro Kureyon yarn. The Noro is really too expensive to me for a felting project, so I had put the idea aside before the forgotten yarn in the stash was found. This more-or-less coincided with a photo in last Sunday's Sun Herald that caught my imagination:



Considering the number of cameras pointed at the Water Cube in Beijing at any one moment just now with the Olympics, you'd think I could come up with another shot of it lit up like that on the internet. Er, nope. Hence I had to photograph the newspaper. Those colours have me thinking this:



Which made me think of my Mother's "jelly jumper", made for Charlotte:

As the name may have given away, Mum dyed the yarn for the jelly jumper with packets of jelly crystals. I've just cut to the chase and gone straight to the food colouring - no sugar or gelatin to wash out of the wool. So the yarn I picked out for the Winterwarm baby hats became a dyeing experiment. Two 50g balls of Nundle 8 ply left over from a blanket (pre-blog) and about 75g of Bendigo 8 ply Colonial left over from my original felted bag (also pre-blog) and split into two skeins.



Each dye bath was about 1.5L water in my 2L pyrex dyeing dish, 12 drops Queen food colouring (16 for the red) and a liberal sprinkling of citric acid. From left to right: red, lime green (yellow and green in 3:1 ratio), purple (red and blue in 3:1 ratio) and straight blue. For the felted bag I'll use Landscape "Currrawong" for the black, and I might need to use Gaywool "Indigo" for a proper blue, but the rest will be food colouring dyed.

Must do school work then knit colourful baby hats.