Learning about fit and ease

Setting out to more or less design my own garment appears to have been a great idea. I still haven't got past making a gauge swatch, but I learnt so much. Particulraly, I learnt why my last three sweaters are the way they are.

Let us take the absolute disaster first: the ribbon xback from knitty. I got the yarn as a gift with this specific pattern in mind. The idea was that given my bosy shape this would look cute on me. I liked the pattern and decided to giv it a go. I measured myself, saw that my bust measurement was about 34 inches, and as a resuly chose to knit it in a medium with finished bust of 35 inches. That is negative ease. With cotton ribbon yarn. When I finished the bloody thing, it was literally falling off me and I didn't know why. Ouch. Of course the darn thing got frogged and there is no way I am re-knitting again. The yarn is pretty and I will use it, but I am not sure what for.

Anyway, now I have learnt about negative and positive ease, wearing ease and design ease and I have learnt that cotton stretches. If I knit that thing again - it would be an XS, maybe a small.

The same goes for my bulky jumper and my leftovers vest. They are just a bit too big. As they are wool rather than cotton, they are a bit more forgiving. Especially the vest. And my bulky jumper is nice to wear around the house on cold days, so I decided that I am not going to frog it.

And hopefully I want be making the same mistake when I knit my next sweater...

I'm so excited...

As I said before, I have gone on a yarn binge. But - I am really excited about what I bought and my urge to shop seems to have lessened.

What I am most excited about is the colourmart superfine merino dk that came in the mail today. I got it at a good price and it feels so soft. It is a lovely colour too. And I bought it with a purpose in mind: to knit a cardigan that caught my eye from the Debbie Bliss cashmerino DK pattern book. I bought the pattern book specifically for this pattern (although there are some other nice ones in it too - like the lovely, lovely Alpine cardigan).

The Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker that I ordered of Amazon US also came in the mail this week. Packages from Amazon US seem to take ages to arrive. I love it already - I want to knit a scarf for my dad's partner for her birthday and I think I am just going to pick one of the lace patterns for it.

So with all the cotton and sock yarn I bought this months, I am more than happy with my stash acquisitions and have lots of lovely projects to look forward to.

Taking stock

I spent this morning taking stock of my stash, the projects I want to knit and my knitting spending. I have acquired most of my stash over the last six months - I actually have a stash now as opposed to a box of leftovers and gifts. I am still trying to make up my mind whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
One thing I noticed is that I seem to buy until I reach a kind of saturation point for whatever type of yarn I am buying. Last autumn that was wool - I bought enough for about three sweaters (number of sweaters knit since then is of course zero). Over the last two weeks I have been buying cotton. My fear is that now I am going to get started on lace-weights...
I was even brave enough to add up my yarn-spending over the last six months and while it is bad it is not as bad as I feared it might be. I spent about twice what I think my budget should be for six months. Not good, but not catastrophic either.
Now I need to get back to my knitting. From now on I will try and only buy yarn for projects that I have set my heart on. Unfortunately there are a couple of projects I really want to knit, but don't have any yarn in my stash for. On the other hand I have lots of yarn in my stash I don't have any projects for. Silly me.

I have blown the budget...

At least my yarn budget. Enough said. But the yarn is soooo lovely. And I still keep wanting to shop for more.

Lace Shawl FO

I thought I would never finish this... I really liked the pattern (it is from Victorian Lace Today), but wasn't so keen on the yarn and as a result I didn't like the overall experience. I read a lot of good things about Handmaiden Seasilk on the internet and I even went to my LYS rather than ordering online. I would have preferred a darker blue, but was happy with the one I got. But, not only was it very tiring to knit with this yarn (something others have mentioned as well), but it also turned out to be slightly fluffy. It appears to be shedding some of the (presumably) seasilk part. At first I considered sending it back, but then I looked it up on the internet / ravelry and this seemed to be a common problem with this yarn. Also, when I asked other family members, they didn't think the fuzziness was really noticeable on the finished product. I guess it just bothered me as I was working with the yarn. You can see the fuzziness a little bit in the picture below:



The finished object is quite lovely and I hope my MIL will like it. I wrapped it up nicely in tissue paper and my BIL is taking it with him on his visit.






Part of the reason this seemed to be a never-ending project is that I had to rip back the garter stitch edging at the top and a pattern repeat, as otherwise I would not have been able to finish the lace edging. Even like this, I wish I had knitted one fewer pattern repeats as I only had enough yarn to single crochet along the top, rather than finishing the edging the pattern recommended.

Spring cotton

Until now I never even thought of buying cotton yarn. But since it is starting to feel like spring (well, not really with the wind and storms earlier this week) I suddenly want to knit cotton summer tops. So I went to John Lewis on Monday and had a look at the different varieties of cotton available. The I ordered some for a top from a really old Hungarian knitting magazine that I would like to knit. The pattern for that is really vague, something along the lines of: cast on 'enough' stitches depending on your size and gauge and knit according to the measurement diagram drawn on the left. Well, to be honest it's a bit less vague - it does say things like decrease for armholes and pick up stitches for collar, while assuming that the reader will know how to actually do these tasks and how many stitches to decrease / pick up. But the top looks nice in the pictures and I think it will look good on me. And as it is a fairly simple knit in the round in ribbing affair it should be ok. It does have a really nice collar though. And as it does not have any set-in sleeves I shouldn't have any real problems.
I am trying to do some reading in preparation for this project such as finding out about positive and negative ease. The scary thing is I am not sure how cotton behaves and whether I will like knitting with it. The pattern specifies 4ply cotton with 2.5mm needles. I ordered some discontinued Jaeger 4ply cotton. I was tempted to order more, but then I don't know yet whether I will absolutely hate knitting with 4-ply cotton. I also ordered some Debbie Bliss Cathay in case I like the pattern better in DK. In any case I have enough yarn for two summer projects as it is, but I just keep thinking of more. (There is another gorgeous old Hungarian pattern I'd like modify - this time a camisole, just the thing for a beach holiday.)