Autumn is for scarves

Here’s a sneak-peak at what I’ve got blocking at the moment:

Another scarf! I hope it dries quickly because it’s getting chilly here…

Clapotis – finished!

Lately I seem to be working on a lot of scarves… maybe it’s because it’s full-on autumn now here in Idaho, and I want something warm to wear when I walk into town. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been working a lot lately, and all I can handle at the end of the day, knitting-wise, is something simple and quick.

Or not so quick; the scarf I finally finished this week had been on my needles for over two years!! (I blogged about it, my never-ending project, here).

This is my version of Kate Gilbert’s Clapotis. Despite what you may think based on how long it took me to finish this project, I really did enjoy working on it! Sometimes I just get distracted, that’s all.

I especially like how the stitch pattern really pops once you block the thing; all those dropped stitches need a stiff stretching to even them out. Compare this pre-blocked photo (squiggly dropped stitches!):

To this post-blocked photo (smooth dropped stitches!):

I’m really pleased with how this scarf turned out. This pattern is extremely popular (16,402 projects listed on ravelry as of today, whoa!), and in my opinion, this popularity is well-earned. Nice pattern, nice scarf. Lucky me!

Knitting a sweater

Knitting a sweater can be hard. By which I mean, knitting a sweater that fits me exactly how I want it to is hard for me. I can whip out a sweater, if it doesn’t matter what size or shape it is, but if I want it to actually look nice while I’m wearing it, well, that takes some effort. Even with careful swatching, things don’t always work out the way I expect them to… a measuring error of a quarter of an inch in a swatch becomes an error of three inches when you size up to a sweater, and that can be the difference between a sweater that I want to wear and one that just sits in the closet.

So you can imagine how happy I was when I finished my Liesl sweater (blogged about here, raveled about here), and it actually fit!

This is the first sweater I’ve knit that actually ended up being the size I intended it to be. I’ve worn it a few times since finishing it, and it really is a good sweater – warm (but not too warm) and soft, a good sweater for autumn.

I had planned to block it, but once I finished knitting it and sewing the buttons on, I just couldn’t wait to wear it. So I did… and I realized that it probably doesn’t need to be blocked. Because the sweater is so fitted, just wearing it really opens up the lace, and I’m happy with how it fits in the un-blocked state, so I’m going to leave it as it is.

(I don’t know what’s going on with my hair in that photo, but this is a blog about knitting, not hair, so just ignore that and look at the sweater. Nice sweater, huh?)

So in my previous post about this sweater, I wrote about how I had to rip it back and start over after getting down to the armpits and realizing that it really was huge. I think that’s one of the keys to knitting a well-fitting sweater; if you try it on part-way through, and avoid deceiving yourself as to whether or not it really is the size you intended, you can start over if necessary. And while that seems a bit counter-productive in the moment, in the long run you’ll get a sweater you actually want to wear rather than a blanket-sized sack that just sits in the closet (there are a few of those hiding in my closet right now, in fact!).

(Thanks to E. for expert photography skills!)

Knitting runs in the family

I’ve recently picked up a project that I started over two years ago (!), in April of 2008. It’s the Sonoma Mountain Wrap, pattern written by Carol Lapin and published in Simply Shetland 2: At Jack London Ranch (here’s mine, on Ravelry). The yarn is what the pattern calls for, Jamieson’s Shetland Double Knitting.

It’s a nice, easy pattern (the whole thing is done in linen stitch, with a crocheted-on border worked at the end), but the frequent and irregular color changes keep it interesting. Perfect movie-watching knitting, in other words. Here you can see what the back-side of linen stitch looks like (it’s got quite a nice texture to it):

Knitting has been one of my favorite hobbies for a while, but I haven’t always been a knitter. I wasn’t born with knitting needles in my hands, I didn’t churn out mittens by the dozen in elementary school, and I wasn’t raised by sheep on a fiber farm somewhere in the mid-west. No, I learned how to knit when my mother taught me how. Many times. It didn’t stick the first few times she gave me needles and yarn, but eventually it did. So I owe most of my knitting skills and a lot of my knitting inspiration to my mom. She is, in fact, a New York State Fair blue-ribbon-winning knitter. A lot to live up to, right??

So this particular project, the Sonoma Mountain Wrap, is one that we’re working on together (or I should say, worked on together…). I don’t mean that we’re mailing it back and forth between her house in New York and mine in Idaho, each of us knitting  a row or two before we send it back (although that would be a fun project); I mean that one time when she and my dad visited me in Fairbanks (where I was living at the time), we went to the local yarn store, and we each left with enough yarn to knit this thing and the idea to each knit it at the same time, like our own personal knit-along.

What I failed to anticipate (though it’s obvious in retrospect, of course!), is that she would finish waaaaaaay before me… first of all, she’s a faster knitter than me (more practice… I’ll catch up eventually, I’m sure), and she has more knitting-project-faithfulness than me, too. In fact, her wrap has been done for over a year now, and, well, mine is still closer in size to a placemat than a wrap. But I’m back on a roll with mine, so I’m sure I’ll finish it… eventually!

Dogwood hat

I’m happy to announce that I’m releasing a new hat pattern, the Dogwood hat! It’s available for free here on this site, and here on ravelry.

After I knit up the prototype hat for this pattern, my friend L. absolutely fell in love with it. I recently left Fairbanks, AK to move to Moscow, ID, because my sweetheart E. is starting a PhD at the University of Idaho in Moscow… so when it was time to leave, it seemed like giving the hat to L. was just the right thing to do. These photos are of me wearing it, but believe me, it looks better on L.!

One of the challenges inherent in designing a hat is what to do with the established pattern at the top of the hat, where everything comes together (or branches out, if you’re knitting a top-down hat). Because the eyelet pattern I used on this hat is made up of a series of yarn-overs accompanied by decreases, it was easy enough to just eliminate successive yarn-overs as I got to the top. Thus, the decreases, left to their own devices, caused the crown of the hat to get smaller, just as I wanted.

If you choose to knit this pattern, let me know how it goes!

Skarland hat

My qiviut hat is complete! I’m still working on writing up the pattern, but the prototype is finished and photographed:

Here’s a close-up of the lace pattern:

And one of the top of the hat:

(Many thanks to my friend H. for being my model/photographer buddy!)

So I thought I would use up a whole 1 oz. skein (~230 yards) to make this hat – but in fact, the whole thing took just over half the skein. I could have kept knitting the ribbing until I used up the yarn, as I had intended to do, but that would have yielded a pretty silly-looking (and not very practical!) hat. So now I have enough qiviut left over to knit another hat, albeit one that’s slightly smaller or uses a more open lace pattern.

I decided to call this pattern the “Skarland hat” because of where we ended up taking pictures of it – on the Skarland ski trail on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, right next to the Large Animal Research Station, which is where I’m working this summer and where I bought the qiviut that became this hat. Seemed like an appropriate name!

I’m still in the process of writing this pattern up, but I intend for it to be a free pattern available here, on ravelry, and hopefully at the Station, too.

One design of mine, and one of someone else’s

I’ve been working on a few new designs lately. For me, the process of designing a knitting pattern is far from a linear one. Sometimes I’ll have an idea of a specific type of object that I’d like to create, sometimes I’ll be captivated by a particular cable or stitch pattern, and sometimes a yarn will intrigue me to the extent that I want to design something that will highlight the positive characteristics of that yarn in particular. My latest, still-in-progress design is an example of the last situation in that list. Because of where I’ve been working this summer, I’ve been able to get up-close-and-personal with some beautiful qiviut yarns. So I wanted to create a pattern designed specifically for lace-weight qiviut yarn. After contemplating the many possibilities, I decided to go with a hat – a hat with a simple lace pattern, both to make the yarn go further and because qiviut is so warm that even a lace hat will keep the wearer warm!

Here’s a photo of the work-in-progress:

As you can see, I’m knitting it from the top down, so that I can use every bit of yarn – at the base of the hat, I’ll do a ribbed brim until I run out of yarn. At the moment, the hat isn’t much more than the very top of a hat, but when it’s a bit bigger the lace pattern will become apparent.

I’ve also been knitting a sweater for myself, from a pattern that I have long admired, Liesl by Ysolda Teague (here’s the link to my project on Ravelry). So far I’m finding it a delight to knit – which is good, because I’ve had to knit a good portion of it twice! I’m using a slightly different weight of yarn than the pattern calls for, so I chose my needles and what size to follow after some careful swatching, but by the time I got to the top of the armpits (it’s a top-down sweater) and tried it on for the first time, it was obvious that something was wrong. The sweater would have fit me, if I was twice as big as I actually am. Whoops! So distressed was I that I even forgot to document the miles of extra sweater in photographs before I ripped it back, so you’ll just have to believe me. The nice thing about starting over again with smaller needles and following a smaller size is that the knitting really flies by – imagine that, knitting less stitches takes less time!

But as it is a lovely, interesting-but-memorizable pattern, even knitting it over has been a pleasure.

Sweaters-in-progress are hard to photograph in such a way that they make sense, but here you can get a general idea of the stitch pattern:

I can’t wait till it’s done and ready to wear! It’s been a bit chilly here in the past few days, so I could use a good cardigan.

Swallowtail

I finally got around to blocking my swallowtail shawl last weekend:

Blocking is my favorite part of knitting lace – well, actually getting down on my hands and knees to pin the darn thing out is not my favorite part, but rather the transformation that occurs as a result of blocking. It really is a crucial step. Blocking opens up the lace, stretches it out, evens out the stitches, and just generally makes it look crisp. And nice.

After it was done drying, I took the shawl outside to try to take some photographs of it. But it turns out it’s difficult to get a photo with some good contrast when what you’re trying to photograph is a green shawl amongst lots of leafy green plants (if you’re me, anyway… I’m sure other people who are better at taking photographs revel in this sort of challenge, and say things like, “challenge? what challenge? this is easy!”). Here’s my best attempt:

Then I hit on the idea of using the truck as a backdrop:

So there you have it! A completed shawl. Also of interest in these photos, note the juxtaposition of the super-feminine knitted lace shawl with the raw power implied by the gun-metal-gray side of the truck bed. You see, I planned that part, as a critique on modern society… I didn’t just use the first convenient background that I saw, nope, not at all.

Ah, knitting! You really can relate it to anything.

Qiviut baby booties

Here are some photos of a recently completed project:

These were knit for a friend, out of qiviut from the Large Animal Research Station gift shop (Mountain Lingonberry is the name of the color). Yes, qiviut booties are a bit extravagant, but they’re a gift from a whole group of people, and I’m sure the baby’s parents will appreciate them – and really, if you can’t spoil a friend’s baby, then who can you spoil?

I posted these pics and a few others here on my ravelry page, and here’s a link to the pattern, which is available for free.

These were quite fun to make, of course baby things always are because of the instant gratification associated with knitting something that’s tiny (but still functional – bonus!). The yarn is lovely, really really lovely. If you ever get a chance to knit with qiviut, do it! Even though it’s a bit pricey, it really is as soft and warm as they say it is. And the pattern is also nice – I modified it a tiny bit, by adding in some extra stitches and rows, because I want these particular to booties to still fit this particular baby by the time it’s cold enough for her to need them. And I also chose to work the cuffs in a 2×2 rib instead of in stockinette stitch. But the pattern is wonderful just as it’s written, too – easy to follow instructions, although they aren’t exactly line-by-line, but interesting enough (or at least small enough!) to keep my attention through two booties.

Defending a thesis and knitting with qiviut

Hello!

There are two big reasons why I haven’t posted lately; here’s the first one:

Whew! Now that I’ve defended my thesis (and passed – woohoo!), I just have to complete the revisions that my advisory committee has recommended, and then turn in the final written draft to the Graduate School. In order for me to graduate this August, I have to turn it in before August 1, but so far it looks like I’m on track for that.

Preparing for the defense (which consists of an hour-long public seminar, followed by an intense two-hour-long questioning session with one’s advisory committee) took up a lot of time, and that didn’t leave me much free-time to knit, much less blog about knitting! But now that it’s over, and I’m well on my way to finishing my revisions, things should be getting back to normal (i.e. I’ll actually have time to knit again!).

The other reason for my absence is quite a bit more interesting:

That’s a muskox right there! I’m working at the UAF Large Animal Research Station (LARS – or just simply, the Station) for the summer as a “tour-facilitator”, which means that I give 45 minute presentations to visitors on the biology and natural history of the animals that we have at the Station (muskox, caribou, and reindeer – although technically, caribou and reindeer are the same species).

Here’s me, doing my job:

So the great thing about working at the Station (there’s a lot of great things about it, actually, it’s a fabulous place to spend the summer) as a person-interested-in-knitting-and-fiber (and by interested in I mean obsessed with) is that muskox produce qiviut. Qiviut is the downy inner-wool that they have in the winter-time, and shed in the spring. It’s kind of like their down jacket – it’s what keeps them really, really warm in the winter, and it allows them to survive and thrive on the Arctic tundra, where they live in the wild. At the Station, we comb the muskox when they’re shedding their qiviut naturally in the spring, and then we sell it in it’s raw form at the gift-shop (to hand-spinners, mostly), and we get some of it spun up into yarn, which we also sell at the shop. And qiviut, it turns out, is one of the most fascinating fibers in the world (in my humble opinion, anyway!). It’s finer and softer than cashmere, and seven times warmer, by weight, than sheep’s wool. So it produces delightfully soft, light, and, above all, warm yarn. Hats or other objects knitted out of it will keep you warm at 40-below, a situation that’s not unusual here in interior Alaska.

Of course, there’s a catch (isn’t there always a catch?). Because qiviut is such an amazing fiber, and because it’s so rare, and because there aren’t any domesticated muskox in the world (several farms are currently working on domesticating them, but that’s a thousands-of-years-long process of selective breeding; at the Station, our animals are considered to be in captivity, but still wild), qiviut is very, very expensive. So I haven’t bought any for myself yet (gotta save up those paychecks first!), but I have been so lucky as to have been asked by my boss to knit up some swatches of our yarns, so visitors can see what they look like when knitted up. And let me tell you, this stuff is nice! Nice to knit with, nice to touch. Our yarns are all lace-weight (most qiviut yarns are – anything thicker would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention way too warm to make wearable garments from), so it can be a bit fiddly working with tiny needles and tiny yarn, but overall it’s a pleasure (photos forthcoming in a future post, I promise!).

So if you happen to be passing through interior Alaska any time soon, stop by the Station! It’s worth a look around, and you’re welcome to touch the yarn.