Mortaine’s Blog

Y’all are so great.

I swatched for the hooded sweater last night. This yarn is a single, which means it does something different when I knit with it– one side of the stitches is tighter than the other (I assume because of the way the yarn twists when making the stitches). The result is that I will have vertical texture on my hoodie. Making it the best sweater ever…..

I’m still working on some gauge issues, so still swatching. I may end up doing this one a bit out of gauge. No problem–I consider “within 1/2 a stitch” to be close enough gauge. Gauge and swatches are guidelines, not rules. Gauge changes during the making of a thing, so I try not to be enslaved by it.

Anyway, there you are. My wonderful friends. Building up my confidence and shit. I love you all. (Even if this sweater turns to hell.)

I have a project in my queue. It has, in fact, recently come to the top of the queue. It’s a sweater. For me.

It’s not just any sweater, though. It’s loverly, with cables on the edgings and cuffs, and it’s shaped to fit a plus-sized goddess like me. It has a hood. It will be knit of wool, making it the first wool sweater I will have owned since I was 15. It will replace my aging beige cotton cardigan, my go-to sweater when there’s a nip in the air, but it’s not cold enough for a fleece jacket.

Susie Hoodie from More Big Girl Knits

I have the yarn, a soft wool-silk-alpaca blend in a rich royal blue, all skeined up in a bag. (I suppose Step 1 is to wind the yarn into balls.)

Organik from The Fibre Company

I certainly have the needles.

But I also have…. fear.

I am afraid of starting this project. Since bringing the yarn out and mentally preparing myself for it, I have knit (from start to finish):

A pair of socks:

A cabled hat:

And a cute pink cardigan for my niece:

I knit the socks because, well, socks! I knit the hat to practice some cables before embarking on a complicated cabled project. I knit the child’s sweater to practice sweater-making, since this is, after all, my second sweater (and also because the yarn is as scratchy as butter and my hands longed for it….)

The same day I bought the yarn for this sweater (and the pink sweater, incidentally…. and some laceweight alpaca), I bought some roving to spin into yarn for another sweater. I think this would be a good exercise for me, and I would enjoy making a significant thing from start to finish like that.

It’s a sign of my disturbed mind that I look at the roving and at the sweater yarn and I think I should spin that roving first, make that sweater before I make the Sweater That Calls to Me. I can see in my mind what that sweater will look like– a bit bumpy, perhaps, but the kind of sweater that you pull over and instantly start sweating, even if it’s 10 degrees below zero.

Is it that I’m not ready to make that sweater yet? Am I second-guessing my talents as a knitter? I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s a limited amount of space in my home, and I have an oft-broken rule that yarn should be able to be put away. Right now, there are two bags of unstored yarn in the house. One bag is going to charity, hopefully today. The other bag… is the sweater.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s geography. We’re summering in the north this year. Perhaps I will find the Adirondacks are the perfect sweater-knitting location.

Weather hindered our plans in D.C., but we did get out and do stuff a few days. We went to the Navy Memorial (in the rain) and museum. On a sunnier day, we did the mall and monument walk:

We visited the WWII memorial, which was pretty cool, but John felt it lacked sufficient recognition of the rest of the Allies:

We went to my favorite place:

As it turns out, my uncle lives across the street from the National Zoo. On another rainy day, we visited the animals:

And then, a few days later, I went to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, which was awesome and had lots of spinners. And I got to meet in person the founders of Ravelry

Casey and Jess, founders of Ravelry…. and me!

And at night, after I was exhausted and overstimulated from a day of petting wool and gawping at handknits, I went to their awesome party, and ran into friends I’ve made as far away as Kansas City. A couple days later, we were back on the road:

We did a 2-day sprint from Washington to Boston:

Spent the night in New York, just north of the border. Then it was back on the road through Albany and across to:

(Notice how there are progressively more bugs on the windshield as we go from Penn to NY to Mass…. we had the RV washed the day before we left.)

Since arriving on Wednesday, we’ve seen my grandmother, uncle, aunt, and our friends Ken and Jill. We haven’t done much sight-seeing yet, but that’s largely because we’ve been working and visiting and now getting ready for John’s trip back to California. He flies out tomorrow, leaving me with no TV (too much tree cover), a lot of yarn, and the Internet.

I swear, I will try not to get into too much trouble. Really!

I’ve been told this process is easier if I blog about it on the way. One of my friends once said that I was the kind of person who, when doing something for the first time, I invite an audience along for the ride, even though what I do might be utter crap. This is completely true– I believe in the process of learning and try/fail so much, that I’m willing to fall flat on my nose in front of a crowd (and I have!)

Anyway, here’s the progress so far:

I knitted Swatch #1 and 2. Swatches 1,2,3, and 14 are supposed to be knit with the same yarn and needles. The only difference is in the stitches, so you can compare them and see “why is stockinette different from garter?” Swatches 1 and 2 are garter and stockinette, respectively.

Swatch #1: Garter Stitch

Swatch #2: Stockinette Stitch

[Please ignore how crappy Swatch #2 looks-- neither one has been blocked yet.]

Now, allow me to ramble about what has been going on with these two swatches.

First, I started Swatch 1 and knit the ribbing. I noticed something that I had noticed on the sweater I made, the sweater I failed to make, the socks I was knitting at the moment– in fact, everything I make that isn’t in lace gauge. I have “bumps” or ridges in the back of my stockinette. In other words, when I try to knit a flat piece of knitting, there are ridges in the back:

Rrrruffles have rrrridges!

I learned, from reading about tension problems in the many useful resources on the TKGA web site, that knitting is not supposed to have those ridges. I was shocked. I thought they were decorative. I thought they were why people complain about purls. I thought…

Well, anyway. Never mind what I thought. Knitterly denial is a powerful thing.

The problem was, the TKGA web site discussed lots of ways to fix your stockinette, assuming your purls were looser than your knits. Looser? I looked at my stitches. Only if being looser meant they were smaller, tighter and more cramped looking. In some places, my purl stitches disappear they’re so much tighter than the knits.

I knew I was in trouble.

I turned to Ravelry. And here, let me state, again, that there’s no resource in the world that’s been as helpful to me as Ravelry. I’m going to have to figure out how to cite Rox on Ravelry in my references when I do them, because she’s the one who led me to this information:

Until a week ago, I was a Combination knitter. This means, in essence, that although I knit normally for an English-style knitter, I wrap my purls around the needle backwards, and this means that not only don’t they have enough yarn to form an even tension with the knits, but they’re also a bit twisted from the knits.

Who knew?

Well, probably people in my knitting group, but when you crank out projects anyway, nobody cares about how you did it. The truth is, in knitting, this little difference doesn’t mean all that much (if you swatch correctly, you will adjust for tension problems as you knit your garment to fit– this is why my sweater fits even though it has uneven tension). Except in two places: the depth of my heart, and the TKGA Master Knitting program.

So for the last week or so, I’ve been wrapping the purls the other way. Two things happened when I did this. First, I found it very hard to switch. I mean, you try doing something so much it becomes muscle memory, and then change it!

Second, magically, my purls had the same tension as my knits.

Glory hallelujah!

Anyway, I’m going to re-do my Swatch 1, because I also went back and re-read the directions. As it turns out, I didn’t weave the ends in correctly, so I want to re-do the swatch with the correct weaving-in.

I’ve been working on knitting this pair of socks. It’s a pattern called Jaywalker, really popular free pattern that a lot of people have made. Usually when I make socks, I embrace their fraternalness at the outset. Even when I make socks out of monochromatic yarns, the two socks don’t match perfectly or completely. The gauge changes or I screw up (*ahem* “add a design feature”) or whatever. Even if I knit them both at the same time on 2 needles, they are never the same.

So, naturally, I used self-striping sock yarn for these Jaywalkers, because the Jaywalker pattern is a zig-zag, and that looks just too darn spiffy in striping yarn. Usually, striping yarn is a guarantee that my socks will look similar, but will not match. The stripes are never in the exact same places. The makers of these yarns deliberately change the repeats so your feet don’t look like candy canes, so even if you start a sock with “pink,” it’s likely that one sock will have “orange” as the next color, and the other will have “blue” instead.

No problem– I don’t mind at all. My feet aren’t identical, after all.

I usually start the second sock within minutes of finishing the first, when doing 2 socks separately. That reduces the amount of difference between them, and it helps combat Second Sock Syndrome. I was really impressed with myself for starting the second sock, even though it had been overnight between grafting the toe of the first sock and casting on the second.

What did these socks do? Oh, yes. You guessed it. I’ve knitted one complete sock. I started the second. Things looked… eerily familiar. I have knit all the way to the heel on sock #2.

The stripes matched up. Perfectly.

I won’t say “these socks are identical,” because I have already made enough mistakes in them that that is an impossibility. What I will say is that, when they are on my feet, they will *look* identical, due to the stripes matching up.

I’m flabbergasted. I don’t actually know what to do with matching sock. I’m guessing that somewhere right in the middle of sock #2’s instep, I’m going to discover some enormous glaring problem that will fudge up the whole stripe pattern. But if not… just wow.

Later…..

I visited with an old friend in Wellesley today– someone I’ve known since college. He had us over for dinner to meet the new baby and catch up. I brought the Amazing Striping Socks with me.

Sure enough. After I’d picked up the stitches on the heel and was working the first rows of gusset decreases. There it was. The thing I KNEW would be there.

A KNOT.

Oh, yes, indeed. A knot, tying two different colors of the striping pattern together. And, naturally, changing the stripes so the socks will. No. Longer. Match.

Sock #1 heel gusset: Notice purple-pink-orange-blue sequence.

Sock #2 gusset: Purple-orange-black-and-white stripe sequence.

Muahahahhah…. I feel some kind of perverse joy in this. Like, I could not have fully enjoyed these socks if they hadn’t found a way to screw up that perfectly amazing surprise delight.

I feel vindicated. Also: pleased to be already on the decreases, having turned the heel before dinner. The gusset decreases are the part where your sock forms a kind of triangle below the ankle. It’s after the bend for the heel, and before it turns back into a tube (for the long narrow part of your foot). I am about 12 rows away from the home stretch– the foot tube, from which there is nothing left but stockinette until long enough, then decrease to the toe and bind off. Of course, this sock will have 2 extra ends to weave in, where I had to overlap the yarn. But otherwise… really, it’s almost like being perfect!

PS: I don’t really want perfect socks. Why should anything I knit be perfect? It’s all made by me! I want it to look like it was made by me. Wonderful, creative, silly, IMPERFECT me!