Colorwork Possibilities.

I am now about 1 ball into my Fair Isle Yoke Sweater. Since the sweater is worked in the round starting from the bottom edge, that means I have completed about an inch and a half of ribbing and a bit of plain knitting. I have something to say later about that ribbing, but today is dedicated to thinking about color patterns.

To order the yarn for the pattern, all I had to do was decide which colors I wanted, since each of the colorwork colors (for the yoke) requires 1 ball. And even though a couple of the colors looked a little different from how I had hoped (the "Rose" a little pinker and the "Seabright" a little more teal), they all go together pretty darn well.

So then the question was: which color goes where in Elizabeth Zimmerman's Fair Isle chart? The design has three tiers (A, B, and C) to account for decreasing stitches). I was having a hard time imagining the different options, so I pulled out the colored pencils and graph paper.

I mocked up two versions. This was the first I did:


Bear in mind that the blue lines of the graph paper add a somewhat confusing element. Also, on this scan (or monitor), the pink is pretty hard to see. Still: perhaps you can tell that there is a lot of blue in that design. And really? It is more blue than I wanted, since I envisioned the blue and pink as little flares of color in a largely grey sweater.

So I mocked up another option:
(Please ignore the crossed-out failed first attempt at Section B.)

I like this one better: the grey (which here looks a bit pinkish), white, and charcoal will dominate the sweater, giving it a "shades of the same color" feel, with little bursts of blue and pink.

Not that I am anywhere near starting this yoke. I still have a lot of body and two sleeves to make. But it is nice to know where I'm headed.

The Opinionated Knitter in 2011.

Over on ravelry, an "Opinionated Knitter KAL" has begun, beginning, well, at the beginning. Elizabeth Zimmerman's The Opinionated Knitter compiles her self-published newsletters from 1958 to 1968, and the pattern from Newsletter #1 (mailed in September 1958) is the Fair Isle Yoke Pullover.

For those of you who are not knitters, Elizabeth Zimmerman is a genius. Unlike many designers of her era (or of the present, for that matter), she aimed to make knitters more capable by asking them to do a little math and think a bit. I read somewhere that while most designers assumed that women can't do math, EZ assumed that they could, which, of course, we can. And we are not talking about quadratic equations, for goodness sakes! (At least not yet.) The challenge and the pleasure of her patterns is that they do not give line-by-line directions, but rather assume that you, being a knitter after all, can figure out what she means. Throughout her many books about knitting and every single pattern is this wonderful sense of her voice--as though you and she are having a little chat about knitting. And what knitter among us does not fantasize about chatting with Elizabeth Zimmerman?

These newsletters were edited by her daughter Meg Swansen, a knitting genius in her own right, and the heir to Elizabeth Zimmerman's Schoolhouse Press business and knitting reputation. Along with facsimiles of the typed (and presumably mimeographed?) newsletters are Meg Swansen's comments and suggestions, making connections between these particular documents and patterns and EZ's wider corpus of patterns, discoveries, and innovations.

I was initially nervous about starting with a Fair Isle sweater. I have done a number of stranded projects, but never anything sweater-sized, and because I do not feel that my two-handed gauge has evened out, I am worried about how the stranded part will look. But hey: there is no time like the present to work things out--I mean, to take a little risk with the knitting.

I ordered some Shetland wool from Schoolhouse Press for the project: this is a smidge tricky, because there is no color card for these yarns, and one is never sure how accurate a reflection of the actual colors the online pictures will be. So my blue and my pink are both a bit different than I expected, but they will work and look good together.



I am not sure whether I will need to order some more of the charcoal. EZ's pattern is for a 36" chest, and I am making mine as a 38" chest. But we'll see.

For the Fair Isle Yoke Sweater, MS suggests adopting some of EZ's later discoveries, and I am planning to incorporate the short-row shaping for the back (in order to make the back of the neck opening taller than the front, and so more comfortable). I am also considering incorporating a bit of waist shaping, but I am not sure yet about that.

Either way, I have swatched and determined my needle size, casted on, and begun the bottom edging. May your 2011 be full of opinions!

Darn it!

I got a mysterious package today. Well, not that mysterious, since it came from my parents, but still: once I removed the brown paper wrapping the box, I found a note in my father's handwriting, reading "O DARN!"

Now, historians of my family know that my parents have a tendency to stow Christmas gifts away during the year and then forget them at Christmastime. I confess--as I grow older, I am finding myself committing this same error, having mailed gifts to my inlaws prior to discovering a secret secret stash of other gifts.

So I assumed that the exclamation on the box's exterior meant that this problem had occurred yet again.

Instead, I found this:

The Patient Partner and I stared at it for a while, wondering if it was a silent maraca, or some kind of massage tool, and then I remembered that over Christmas my father had mentioned that he had, leftover from my grandmother's sewing box, a darning egg.

Having become a rather intense sock knitter in the last year--15 pairs completed in 2009!--I already recognize why darning is valuable. In fact, because I did not know that walking stocking-footed in the house wears socks out faster than anything, I have already worn through the heels on the first pair of socks I knitted.

(The Patient Partner and some of my older pairs of shoes will attest to the fact that I have a very heavy step, all that force occurring on the heel.)

Luckily I have got yarn left over from most of my pairs of socks, so I could even darn them in the yarn in which they were made. And now I even have the proper tool.

In hopes of learning how exactly this device is used, I looked up “darning egg” on the internet, and I learned from Wikipedia that in addition to darning eggs, there are darning mushrooms and darning gourds. But I was hoping for photographs to help me understand better, and I came across “FluffyKnitterDeb,” who posted this great tutorial.

Granted, that is for using the darning egg to finish toe-grafting—and I like what she is suggesting!—but I still wanted to know how to use it for true darning. “Frugal Families” came to the rescue!

It turns out you can still buy darning eggs, but I am glad to have one that has been in use for generations.

Now I have a goal. Stay tuned. . . .

Sting Scarf

A friend asked for a scarf that would “make me look like Sting.” He wanted something reminiscent of fisherman’s sweaters, in wool with lots of texture. He said he wanted a neutral color, like gray or tan.

Later, I asked him if he was sure he didn't want a scarf that would make him look like Prince, and he got all freaked out that I was making him something in bright purple, or that might look like some of the some of the socks I have made for myself.

This pattern is based on the “Jacob’s Ladder” motif in Vogue Knitting: Stitchionary 2, Cables. The pattern is easy to memorize and the scarf works up fast in the bulky yarn.

Materials:
4 balls Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds, in Steel Grey Suffolk (120 yds, 100g)
US 11 needles (gauge is not crucial, because this is a scarf)
cable needle

Abbreviations:
6stLC: slip 3 sts onto cable needle and hold in front, k3, k3 from cable needle
6stRC: slip 3 sts onto cable needle and hold in back, k3, k3 from cable needle

Seed Stitch:
*k1, p1* repeat to end of row.

Cable pattern:
Row 1 (RS): k1, p1, kl, p2, k6, p2, k1, p12, k1, p2, k6, p2, k1, p1, k1
Row 2 (WS): k1, p1, k1, k2, p6, k2, p1, k12, p1, k2, p6, k2, k1, p1, k1
Row 3: k1, p1, kl, p2, 6stLC, p2, k14, p2, 6stRC, p2, k1, p1, k1
Row 4: k1, p1, kl, k2, p6, k2, p14, k2, p6, k2, k1, p1, k1
Row 5: k1, p1, kl, p2, k6, p2, k1, p12, k1, p2, k6, p2, k1, p1, k1
Row 6: k1, p1, kl, k2, p6, k2, p1, k12, p1, k2, p6, k2, k1, p1, k1
Row 7: k1, p1, kl, p2, k6, p2, k14, p2, k6, p2, k1, p1, k1
Row 8: k1, p1, kl, k2, p6, k2, p14, k2, p6, k2, k1, p1, k1

To knit:
CO 40 sts.
Rows 1-4: work in seed stitch
Switch to cable pattern, and repeat 8 rows of cable pattern until scarf is nearing desired length.
Work 4 rows of seed stitch.
Bind off.

Now wrap scarf around neck and PRESTO! You have made a fortress of your heart.

Green secrets.

What readers or followers of this blog remain know that posting has been light. Indeed, rumors of its demise have not been countered. Indeed, I have been more of a reader than a writer of late, for which I apologize.

Still, since the blog still exists, I couldn't resist the chance to change its color in solidarity with the opposition in Iran, whose stories I have been following avidly in the last week. I do not tease myself with the belief that anything I would do here might make a smidge of a difference, but to the students and other protesters I say, I too would like to know where your votes are.

If anyone is reading this, I'm following
The Lede Blog (refresh for updates)
Andrew Sullivan's feed of live tweets (refresh for updates)
The Daily Dish generally
BBC news and
The Guardian
because cable news is infuriating in its lack of information and coverage.

No meet for you.

So I was stoked about the Tiger Master meet this weekend, and I had even submitted my entry, but then this happened:



Kind of puts a crimp in your plans, non?

I should report, though, that apart from the usual soreness and abrasions from the airbag, I was not injured. Neither was the other driver. And it was not my fault. The car is totaled, but we got a higher appraisal than I feared. Thank you, car, for taking the literal brunt of this.

In short, I cannot complain.

But back to swimming. I tried to go to practice on Tuesday, but the combined stress of driving there (holy freakout, Batman!) and then being around a crowd, and then not being sure whether I could swim. . . . . Let's just say I got back in the car and drove home.



I did go to practice this morning (thank you, Patient Partner, for driving), and I managed to swim about 500 yards before the pain and soreness was more than I felt like trying to swim through. I had wonkiness in my lower back (an exacerbation, perhaps, of the soreness I had been feeling before the accident, which is related to my hamstring problem, I think) and in my left shoulder (which SCARED me, but which I am hoping is simply soreness and stiffness from the impact and the way I constricted my left pecs in a reflex protective move for a shoulder I would really like NOT to be hurt again).

And honestly, should I really be diving into a pool right now?

So I am withdrawing from the meet. It is a drag--I was looking forward to this. But given the alternatives, I am not complaining.

Tiger Master 2009.

It is official: I am entering my first swim meet since January 2007. The entry is in the mail. I cannot bring it back.

Granted: I do not expect any "best times."

Granted: I am not even swimming many of what used to be my "best events."

Granted: I will be satisfied with simply finishing the races for which I have signed up and completing the required warm-ups and cool-downs.

Granted: I am trying to do this just for fun, but I am also nervous as hell.

Still: ain't it great?