More from the missing month of June. This originally appeared on 23 June 2004.

PROJECT – STRAKER GANSEY IN SHRINKING COTTON

The summer has finally arrived and it’s cotton knitting season, so I thought I’d show off my project from early last winter (I’m seasonally dyslexic). I’ve always had a yen to knit up Penny Straker’s Inverness Gansey, but had never found the right wool to use:

In a fit of serendipity, I ran across one of the naturally dyed, guaranteed to shrink cotton yarns at a recent clearance sale at my local yarn store: Marks & Kattens Indigo Jeansgarn. Although the yarn was cotton and not wool, the two meshed in my mind. So I went about messing with the pattern, taking into consideration:

1. It wasn’t intended for cotton
2. It wasn’t intended for a shrink-to-fit cotton
3. The sizing is for men
4. My gauge both before and after shrinkage wasn’t a match to the pattern

But challenge is the frosting on my cake, and I loved the thought of the indigo yarn slowly fading along the crisp cable and King Charles Brocade pattern edges like jeans seams do. I plunged ahead, knitting up the required swatch.

The length of my test swatch shrank about 5% the first wash, but continued to shrink in each of two successive washes/volcano drys. Total shrinkage after three washes was on the order of 8-9%, so I figured that the 10% shrinkage listed on the label was close enough. Width shrinkage was on the order of 1-2%. Minimal.

I’m a little handicapped in writing this up because my copy of Inverness is tucked away in the storage cubby along with all of my yarn and pattern stash. I recall the pattern was written for worsted weight, with a recommended gauge (in stockinette) of 5 stitches per inch. My yarn was listed as a DK, but it was a rather robust DK, closer to worsted than to sport weight. Also, because I planned for shrinkage, I figured that knitting it a bit loosely wouldn’t matter. My gauge swatch results bore this out.

So I went ahead. I recall that there was quite a bit of ease in the largest size (a men’s 42). I did add a little over an inch of width to the body. That wasn’t hard because the sleeves are dropped sleeves and aren’t set in. I made the seed stitch panels on the side under the arm each 3 stitches wider. No fuss.

Now, the sweater was long to begin with, but I’m tall. I decided I wanted to keep it long, so I added 10% to the length measurements. That means that I knit around 30 inches of body. I also added to the sleeves (more on this below). Having done my adjustments, I cast on and knit away merrily.

This was one of the most enjoyable, fun sweater patterns I’ve done in quite a while. The texture patterns, while visually complex were quick and easy to memorize. The yarn was a dream. Yes, as a naturally dyed guaranteed-to-fade indigo, the dye crocks and comes off on one’s hands, needles, stitch markers, but cleanup was quick. I avoided sitting on the chair with the light upholstery and washed my hands after each session. And yes, it’s a cotton and relatively un-stretchy, and working cables in it is more of a pain than working cables in a nice, elastic wool – but the thing really flew. Here’s the result:

I especially liked the small details that don’t show up in the photo. The ribbing bears a nifty little cable. There’s a row of eyelet welting above it, and just below the seed stitch mock saddle shoulders, and at the top of the sleeves. The sleeves are joined to the body by working a row of picked-up stitches along the shoulder line, then doing three needle bind-off to join those stitches to the live sleeve top stitches. All in all, tons of fun.

Apologies for the color in this detail shot. It’s tough to take a snap of something that’s dark blue without using studio type floodlights, even with a flash. The actual color is closer to the full view, above.

After my knitting was finished I washed my giant sweater as I had my swatch: hot water, cold rinse, followed by volcano heat in the dryer in the company of my navy blue sheets (so I wouldn’t have to worry about the sweater’s blue migrating to other things). Three trips through and I had achieved around the same percentage shrinkage as my test swatch.

I adore my finished sweater. It’s soft and supple, and the comfortable kind of baggy that only the most beloved an worn-out sweatshirts ever achieve. I can wear it indoors without something underneath in spring and summer, and layered over another shirt in the winter. (Were it wool, it would be too warm for all but winter wear indoors.) Even though it’s cotton and weighty compared to wool, the thing isn’t heavy and saggy. The color is fading as I anticipated. The exposed edges of the twist stitch cables and purls in the brocade are becoming lighter than the surrounding background. I’m looking forward to seeing this effect intensify over time. Plus I love being able to fling the thing into the washer and dryer instead of pampering it like I do most of my other sweaters.

I do have one miscalculation to report. Remember I said I added 10% to the sleeve length? That wasn’t a good idea. I had forgotten that I was starting with a man’s pattern. My sleeves are too long, even after shrinking. Eventually I’ll find the strength to pick out the seam, ravel back the excess and re-knit the cuffs. Someday…

[Repost of material originally appearing on 27 July 2006]

After yesterday’s post about the Baby Surprise, Alyse asked if I had any comments or tips on using the pattern as published in Knitters, and whether I’d knit it up before.

I reply that this was my first attempt at a Surprise. I can say that it worked up extremely quickly, and that while how it will all come together was not intuitively obvious at the time of production, once the body was done and I figured out that the single seam on the garment goes across the top of the sleeves and across the back – all doubts were settled.

I think that the proportions of the thing look a little off. If I do another, I’d make it wider across the body. The sleeve width and depth looks o.k., but the body diameter seems a bit skimpy, especially when buttoned. I’d probably do this by adding a few stitches to the center back and to each side prior to starting the sleeve increases.

Uberknits wants to know if I used the white because I ran out of leftover purple and pink, and if the white was Encore, too.

No. I have over 3/4 of a skein of pink left, and about 10% of the purple remaining. I decided to tame the pink/purple with the white and went stash diving to see what I had on hand that was washable and of the same weight. I ended up using some orphaned Canadiana. (There is no such thing as surplus yarn, there is just yarn that is waiting to make it into the next garment). It’s not as soft as the Encore, and it’s just a tiny bit heavier, but not enough to have a major impact on gauge.
As to the proportions of the colors used – since I didn’t have a clear idea of how the thing was going to come together up until after I was half-way through the white, what you see is more serendipity than planning. Still, you can’t go far wrong if you stick to proportions. The pink stripe is half as wide as the buttonhole area of the purple. The mechanics of the pattern itself made the lower purple area come out three times the width of the buttonhole band. The white area to the underarm increases is approximately twice the width of the pink stripe. And when I was nearing the end, I made sure that the final pink and purple stripes (on the cuff) were the same width as the first pink stripe. Overall, in spite of some floppiness of the collar, I’m pleased.

Technorati : knitting

[Repost of material originally appearing on 26 July 2006]

So. Where have I been? Between work deadlines; preparing for a family vacation; coming back and having the smallest one hit by a sticky mystery illness (she’s better now); and getting the kids packed off to summer camp, life has been getting in the way.

I can report that we all had a fabulous time doing absolutely nothing on Cape Cod. We mostly enjoyed the beach right at the hotel, took strolls around Provincetown and Wellfleet, kayaked a bit, golfed, read a lot of beach books, saw an unusual production of As You Like It. ate great food, and some of us knit.

I can report that I finished the two quickie sweaters previously reported – one in the fuschia shown, and one in screaming purple. I also did a couple pairs of socks, and started in again on my perennial summer project – my North Truro Counterpane. I’ve got no pix of the sweaters or socks as they all made their way to the intended recipients before I could find time to take snapshots, but I will show progress on the counterpane later this week.

On the two small kidsweaters from the 1,2, Top Down #609 pattern from Cabin Fever – it knit up quickly with no problems in both sizes, and final finishing was a breeze. My only criticism is that the thing comes in just two sizes – 2/4 and 6/8, with the difference between the 2 and 4, and the 6 and 8 being length, not width (2 and 4 share widths, with the sleeves/body of 4 being slightly longer; 6 and 8 work similarly). I knit a 4 and a 6. The 4 looks about right in terms of size, but the 6 will probably be ragamuffin large on the target kid. That’s not a major problem as kids are not known to shrink, and baggy/huge is a cute look on little ones. I’d also note that in both sizes I had more than ample leftovers from my skeins of Encore. Especially in the 6. I did need to crack into that last skein, but just barely so.

Oh. I’ve got one more knit thing to report. Since the two sister sweaters were for two little girls who are about to become bigger sisters to a third daughter, I took the leftovers from their pullovers and knit up a quick Zimmerman Baby Surprise, as described in Knitter’s Magazine’s Fall 1999 issue (#56). I added my own collar to the thing. Please don’t ask me how I did it. All I can say is that far too much local Chardonnay and beach air intervened, so no notes were taken and memory is hazy.

Technorati : knitting

Some questions fell out of yesterday’s post:

Which dye kit did you buy?
 
This one.  It’s by Jacquard (aka Rupert, Gibbon and Spider).  It retails for around $19.00 and is widely available on the Web and in crafts stores.  There are probably more cost effective ways to get the materials it contained, but I was paying for convenience and (being an idiot working with kids) idiot-proofed directions.  Remember, I bought the thing primarily to dye shirts as a birthday party activity for 8-year olds.  Dyeing my yarn was a lagniappe.

What kind of dyes did you use?

The kit comes stocked with pre-measured Procion MX dyes in squeeze bottles.  They’re cold water dyes, and quite vivid.  I know very little about dyes and dyeing, but it appears from a cursory web search that these are ideal for cotton.

Why did you use cotton and not wool?

See above.  Also, I have to admit that the sacrificial aspect of experimentation played a key part.  The cotton yarn I used was very inexpensive and has been stash-aging long enough to qualifty as being "almost free." 

At present, my stash includes two sweater sized lots of undyed wool.  One is a very special thing – hand-spun Churro wool, a gift from a friend in New Mexico.  It’s waiting for the **perfect** thing to do with it, and is not to be wasted on an experiment that might go wrong.  The other is a more modest yarn, but is a small producer local product, blooming with lanolin.  I was unsure of  whether or not the dyes would be as suitable for a protein fiber as they are for cellulose fiber, and I didn’t know how the presence of lanolin would affect the process.  The kit was designed for cotton garments, so cotton yarn was my chosen target.

Did you measure out your skein diameter for optimal flashing?

No.  I thought about doing that, but doing so would require that I knit up some swatches and do gauge calculations, then do some test-knitting to determine the final flash diameter.  (Yes, I’m still progressing with my flash camo tee).  Instead I decided to wing it.  I extended my swift to its maximum diameter and just used that.  My skein is about 1.5 yards in circumference.  Give or take.

Have you rinsed the yarn yet?

No.  Not yet.  The kit specifies letting the dyes sit for a while, preferably overnight, to make sure they are firmly fixed.  The picture I showed yesterday is of dye-damp unrinsed yarn.

What the heck is soda ash?

I didn’t know, so I looked it up.  Google is my friend.

Yes, I am still swamped at work, by the same project that has eaten my time and sanity since last November.  The end though is in sight.  Thank goodness.  In the mean time everything else suffers.  Especially blogging.

I was able to steal an evening this weekend past because Younger Daughter was celebrating her birthday.  We had a house full of 8-year old girls, lots of cake, giggling, glow in the dark sticks, and other modest entertainments suitable to a sleep-over party.  Along the way we did t-shirt tie dyeing.  I got a bunch of inexpensive plain white t-shirts from Walgrens, and a tie dye kit from the local arts and crafts store (more chaotic but much more fun than those big box crafts palaces).   The kit came with almost everything other than the shirts – instructions, three squeeze bottles pre-loaded with dye powder in screaming primary colors, one empty squeeze bottle with marks on it for using two of the other colors to make a fourth, soda ash, rubber gloves,  and rubber bands.  All I needed to add were the shirts and a bucket.  The kids had lots of fun making their own creations, but when they were finished, I had about half of the dye left. 

What to do with it?  Well – what would you do?

What I did was experiment after the kids had wiggled themselves into their sleeping bags and (mostly) gone to sleep. 

I had some old Southmaid Cotton 8 unmercerized white cotton left over from blankets past.  It was very inexpensive, around $1.75 per skein, and it’s been kicking around my stash forever.   Using my swift, I wound out about six skeins worth (2.5 oz each, no yardage provided), knotting them end to end as I went along.  I secured my mega skein in three places with a loose figure 8 tie, just like all the countless skeins of yarn I’ve bought over the years.  Then following the dye kit directions, I soaked the yarn in the soda ash bath.  It sat there for a couple hours.  Then I squeezed as much of the ash water out as I could and laid my yarn out on plastic.  Then I took my squeeze bottles and had at it. 

This is much harder than it seems.  First, keeping the colors in neat segmets is a challenge that must get easier with practice.  Second, making sure that the full depth of the skein is penetrated by color is also difficult.  Again practice must be key.  Perhaps I was overly ambitious with the amount of yarn I was trying to color, but you can see in the blue that I didn’t get the core of the skein as evenly colored as the outside. 

Still, garish colors and imperfect execution as it is, it was a noble experiment.  Without measuring, my guess is that I have enough yarn here to (eventually)  make a sweater for Younger Daughter.  At worst case, possibly a tee-shirt for her.  Which would be congruent given the origin of my inspiration.

Will I try this again?  Possibly.  Messy is always fun.

This post comes under the heading of "Bragging Parent."

Elder Daughter’s school hosts a math fair every spring.  Much as in a science fair, students are encouraged to create exhibits detailing concepts, or offering up research or practicum results.  The only stipulation is that they have to involve math.  One of the suggested topics this year was "Math in Everyday Life."  Suggestions for this topic included documenting the math inherent in a cooking or hobby project.  Elder Daughter chose to do hers on the math required to create a mini-sweater.  Evil OverMom made sure she got lots of pencil time in doing so. [insert bwaa-haaa-haa sound effect here.]

She decided to take Mr Bunn (her first toy), and outfit him with a pirate motif sweater.  She did some fashion sketches, and searched the web for a pirate motif.  She found one on a wristband offered up by MagKnits. 

To start, I gave her a tangled pile of yarn, of undetermined yardage and gauge.  She rolled it up, weighed it and used a McMorran Balance to figure out her yards per pound.  Lots of conversions between grams and pounds ensued. 

I then had her measure Mr Bunn and draft out a proportionally designed pattern.  There were percentage adjustments for ease, plus determining the length of the T-slit for the neck hole using Pythagorean geometry. 

Then she did a gauge swatch, weighed it and figured out her yarn consumption per unit area, and based on that – whether or not she’d have enough yarn to do her project.  (Obviously I made sure that she would, but let her figure it out on her own).  More ounces, grams, pounds conversions!
After that she used that same swatch to determine row and stitch gauge.  Averaging here, as she took several measurements at different spots on the swatch to get more accurate figures.

She used multiplication and ratios to translate her pattern and her gauges into actual stitch count directions.  Then she drafted up a to-scale final pattern schematic.  Finally, she mathematically determined placement for the motif.

And then she knitted the sweater and did up her poster, documenting all of the equations and methods she used.  (The poster is still at school).  On the day of the fair she manned her mini-booth and explained all of this to the judges.

I regret that in spite of effort and originality, Elder Daughter didn’t win one of the coveted few prizes.  But that’s a mom talking.  She did get an excellent grade on the project from her  teacher.  Also she learned quite a bit about design, data conversion, and drafting, had fun with applied math, and is now talking about designing up a person-sized sweater.  All of which make her a winner in my book.

It’s true I’ve had precious little time for much of anything lately.  Including knitting.  And the last thing I wanted was something challenging.  Since small, soothing, quick to finish, and materials-on-hand were the orders of the day, I did several miniprojects. Most have already ended up as gifts – more booties, a baby hat, and several scarves. 

The scarves were all done from my Kureopatora Snake pattern, some in various variegateds, and one in a solid color.  I even bowed to the begging of Younger Daughter, and finished out the hideous short-repeat white, pink and grey Red Heart scarf for her to wear.  (I may think it’s detestable, but she likes it).

I also went stash diving and came up with the remnant from this vest.

The vest was knit in 1987 or so, and at the time was a Major Investment for which I skimped on lunches, saving up for the purchase.  The yarn is an old Silk City yarn I bought at Washington D.C.’s late, lamented Woolgatherer shop in Dupont Circle.  It is worsted weight, mostly raw silk, with a touch of wool.  The label departed company with the stashed remains years ago so I’m not quite sure which yarn it was.  The stuff itself is soft and spongy, and over time becomes even nicer.  Down sides include an abundance of very sharp chaff – almost thorns; plus the general non-stretchy nature of silk.  The vest was adapted from a commercial pattern, now lost.  I do know that I substituted yarns, messed with a new gauge, introduced the cables and removed some pockets. 

Now for the hat.

 I’ve had a haphazardly wound ball of leftover yarn sitting in my stash, too expensive to fritter away, but not enough with which to do something major.  I grabbed it to work on in my small project frenzy. 

Still riffing on the Snake scarf idea and no particular pattern, I started with a strip of bias-knit ribbing.  I made it large enough to go around my head, earwarmer style and seamed it up.  Then I picked up stitches along one side at a ratio of about three stitches picked up for every four rows of the strip.  I ended up with 84 stitches, divided among four DPNs.  Then I did a couple rows of purl welting and broke back into K1 P1 ribbing.  When the hat was about 5 inches deep, measured from the bottom edge of the earwarmer band, I began my decreases.  Since the thing was on four needles and I was lazy, I settled on four decrease points, and knit the last two stitches on each needle together, doing so every other row.

When I had onl y four stitches left on each needle, I decided to be silly.  I worked about 16 rows of I-Cord using the four stitches on the first needle.  Then I folded it in half, and without breaking the yarn, knit I-Cord from the four stitches on the second needle.  I continued until I’d made four I-Cord loops, then did one row of plain knit to unite them, and one more decrease row.  I drew my end through the remaining 12 stitches to end off the piece.  I also did a little stealth fudging with the dangling end and a tapestry needle to snick up some looseness at the base of the I-Cord loops before darning the remainder in to finish the piece.

The result is a slightly goofy hat, with a finial on the top that looks like a Chuck Jones Instant Martian.  I think I’ll take that tiny bit still left and add a row of knit-on I-Cord around the bottom edge.  That will echo the look of the welts and the deely-bob at the top, plus it will give a nice, strong bit of definition around the bottom.  As usual apologies for the lousy photos.  The tweedy yarn is hard to capture well enough to see details,

One final note – The abalone shell buttons you see here are the third set that’s been on this vest.  Previous sets included embossed black leather, and shiny black plastic.  I’ve updated them several times over the years as styles have changed.  Changing buttons can be an inexpensive way to freshen the look of classic knits, opportunity shop finds, or hand-me-downs.