What a way to round out 2003! I have finished my first Fair Isle sweater!

Ain’t she pretty?

It is quite oversized, as I knew it would be. The fabric is heavy, as it is made from stranded worsted weight yarn. It has about 10+ inches of ease. Sometimes I really like wearing large sweaters (I often “borrow” them from 6′ 4″ Matt), I guess they make me feel very tiny and cozy. Ha ha. In any case, wearing this sweater makes me happy. I think it’s a perfect “raking leaves in October” sweater!

Handknit socks, too!

Some technical notes – there was relatively very little finishing to do because I had either carried the yarns up along the side of the sweater and/or woven in ends as I went along. For weaving in new yarns (or weaving out old ones), I would catch the yarn every other stitch for six stitches. I also really like the PW method of weaving in floats as you knit, which means your fingers, jewelry, and shirt buttons will not catch on the inside of the sweater when you get (un-)dressed. It’s so tidy!

Inside view

This was also my first steeked sweater. I machine-stitched twice through using very small stitches. The yellow needle is there to mark the end of the steek, just in case I didn’t see the thread line. I used very sharp Gingher shears that easily sliced through the fabric.

It wasn’t bad at all!

Valerie asked about cutting the neckline. (The sweater body is designed to be knit as a straight tube, and part of the sweater is cut away to form the neck shaping.) Yes, I did make the neck mostly as directed. Before cutting, I made a neckline template from cardstock. The front neckline was a semicircle with a radius of 3 1/2 inches. (This was the first time in a decade where I could have used my grade school compass!) I also cut a back neckline (shallow, a depth of ~1 inch) because I really feel that a sweater sits on the body a little bit better that way. I pinned the template firmly to the sweater, drew a chalk line around it, and then stitched the area. I cut it out before picking up stitches for the neckband. The stitch count was determined by comparing the neckline measurements to the gauge of the body ribbing (110 stitches in total, just as the pattern predicted). I wasn’t crazy about making the doubled neckband, but it does seal off the loose ends in the neck area.

The seams where the sleeves join the body are inherently bulky, and I don’t know how that can be minimized. I pressed the area where the shoulder seam meets the sleeve seam, as it came out slightly pointy. You can probably see that in the photo above. I was impressed with how the pressing really evened out the knitting (weaving the floats makes for slightly textured fabric), and I proceeded to press the rest of the sweater after it was washed and dried.

There you have it! Happy new year!

The major knitting stage of the PW sweater is finished!

James likes to help me with the sweater assembly

Michelle @ “another knitting blog” has archived her finishing of the PW Kilim jacket. I thought that was a very detailed summary of what happened. Hopefully mine will end just as well.

I’m cleaning up a spot in the fiber studio to set up a sewing machine for steeking. I’m not as focused as I’d like to be, my mind is already buzzing about the next project. I’ve started swatching for my knit-while-walking/commuting/reading project. I’ll be using the Rowan Kid Silk Haze that I bought a little while ago. I hit the row gauge but not the stitch gauge with the recommended needle size, I’ll have to try again with a slightly smaller needle.

Near the end of the year, I get a little desperate to finish projects that feel like they've lingered too long in my WIP bag. My ProductiveSpinner's Stashalong project for the past year was a Philosopher's Wool sweater, last featured on the blog on Sept 29th. After finishing my holiday knitting, I turned back to this project and now feel determined to wrap it up. Won't it be nice to have a new sweater for the new year?

Progress as of last Friday

I've actually knit a lot more since I took that picture, there are only about 21 rounds remaining. There's been a lot of knitting time recently, as Matt and I have been reviewing extended versions of the "Lord of the Rings" movies (and I'm unabashedly studying that fine, fine Elf). We may go see the last chapter this weekend.

It's been deadly quiet at work. Everyone has already left for the holidays. Yesterday, I showed up to the office ~8:45 AM, and it was like a graveyard until 10:30 or so (when 3 or 4 other people wandered in). Matt and I aren't traveling over break, but I'm really looking forward to having a nice vacation. I have so many projects that I'd like to cross off my "To Do" list before 2004!

My father's vest is finished! All of the ribbings are done, the ends are woven in, it's washed and mostly dehaired (a lot of cat fuzz gets knitted into all garments here), it's wet-blocked, and it's nearly dry. Huzzah!

Hint: You may need to turn up the brightness on your monitor to see the details in the photos.

It looks right smart!

Mom's socks are also washed and blocking cheerfully on the bathroom door.

Happy feet!

Dad's vest took me two months to complete. Next year, I'll have to give myself a little more time to finish comfortably before the deadline. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, I hope he likes it. I'm also very impressed with the wonderful consistency in yarn color – you can't tell at all that the ribbings come from a different dye lot!

As far as any problems I encountered on the way, my only pre-blocking concern was the final width of the piece. Freshly knit ribbing tends to bunch together, it's blocking that brings out the real knit-by-purl appearance. I put in the shaping and decreases when my unblocked narrow piece reached the correct length, assuming that the pieces would eventually block out to the correct width <em>without</em> sacrificing length. (You can often do minor adjustments to sweater dimensions during blocking: narrow and longer -or- wider and shorter.) I don't know if I guessed correctly or if it was simply good luck, but it came out to the exact dimensions that I wanted.

One more note: I originally attempted a tubular bind off, but it was abandoned in disgust after a few inches. It's awful for a few reasons: 1) it's a sewn bind off, which is fiddly and irritating for me to do 2) you have to wrangle an enormous amount of length to go around an entire opening, 3) it's hard for me to execute this bind off with consistent tension, 4) it's incredibly easy to bind off too tightly, leaving a stiff and relatively too small boundary.

Here's a shot of the tubular attempt. You can clearly see where I switched to a different bind off method! (I used the k2tog, move st back left needle, repeat.)

Unraveling the crappy cast off would have been just as annoying as making it. I left it as is because this part of the sweater is actually on the underarm, towards the back side. Unless someone is closely inspecting my father while his arms are raised, no one will ever see it.

Anyway, I'm so glad to be finished! Mom (and I know you're reading this!), I'm sending it off as soon as it's completely dry!

My friend Claire made gingerbread men and brought several plates of them into work. They all have different royal icing decorations on them. I was astonished to see one was dressed in a bra and socks! She claims they were supposed to be overalls, and we had a good chuckle over it. Our biggest laugh came when we tried to separate them and found that another gingerbread man was in fact "glued" to the bra-and-socks cookie, by virtue of a hand on her breast!

Caught ‘em redhanded!

By the way, if you're wondering why they have holes in their head, it's for threading ribbons to hang them on a Christmas tree. (We speculated that they might have been "whacked" cookies.) And isn't Claire wearing a lovely Fair Isle sweater today?

I've spent the last few days picking up stitches for the arms and neck of Dad's vest. I don't know how everyone else manages to evenly pick up a huge number stitches around an opening, but here's my method. I use safety pins to segment the area – fold in half, fold in quarters, fold in eighths, etc – until I have a safety pin about every inch or so. I then count how many segments there are and compare it to how many stitches need to be picked up. I divide stitches by segments and come up with the nearest whole number. I pick up that many stitches per segment and add or subtract one or two here and there to make the numbers come out correctly. See how nicely the armbands came out?

For example, the neck back called for 69 stitches. I divided it into 7 segments and picked up 10 stitches per segment. For the center segment, I only picked up 9 stitches. Voila!

If you have other tips or tricks, I'd love to hear about it!

I'm almost finished with Dad's vest! I spent many hours seaming it and weaving in all of those loose ends. The last bit of yarn has been washed and is ready to wind into a ball. All I have to do now is knit the ribbings, weave in the ends, and block it. If I can get it into the mail by next Saturday, it may even be delivered in time for Christmas. I love knitting for my father, but egads, do I hate knitting for deadlines.

I switched to a sock for the bus rides, plus I've been doing a lot of reading recently. There's lots of opportunity recently for mindless knitting. This one is in Patons Kroy. Kroy is usually a low quality yarn in terms of breaks and knots, but this batch has been good to me so far.

Matt and I went to the MIT Museum in Central Square this afternoon. It wasn't snowing when when we went in, but >1 inch of snow had accumulated when we came out 2 hours later. The museum is very small, but it's kind of neat if you're into robots and technology.

Matt compares his arm and hand to a robotic version

PS. Gwen asked in the comments if the recently completed Viking hat came from Lavold's book. If you check here, you'll see all the details of where the cable came from.

The first big snowstorm of the year has arrived in the New England area. It's been snowing steadily and heavily since sometime last night and is predicted to continue unabated for many more hours to come. Having grown up in Chicago (and having survived the incredible snow dump in the Northeast last winter!), snow and I are hardly strangers. This is, however, the first time since I was a teenager that I am responsible for shoveling the sidewalks and driveway by my home.

I LOVE IT.

I was out there for an hour this morning, happily creating and moving two small mountains of snow (the taller one is about 4 to 4.5 ft tall. The snow on the ground had already reached about 8 inches, but I figured I'd have a better time shoveling 8 inches twice in two days, rather than 14-16 inches once. With two layers of clothing on every body part, I didn't even feel cold (in fact, I was downright sweaty when I came back indoors). I'm not even remotely distressed that I'll have to go out and do it all over again tomorrow, although I'm not exactly sure where I can put all of the new snow. There was, incidentally, a mad rush for snow shovels at the Home Depot last night. I would say a full third of the mob crowd in the checkout line was there exclusively to buy a shovel.

On the knitting front, Dad's vest is almost finished! I think I definitely am running out of yarn and will have to trip to the LYS for a skein of hopefully very similar dyelot Gems yarn to do the neck and arm facings.

It might even be ready before Christmas!

I also mostly finished the brightly colored cotton/wool/nylon socks. I like to work on socks while I read the Productive Spinners update list of projects. It's a little habit that I've developed. These socks will likely be tucked into the package I send home for Christmas. Hope you can use them, Mom. (My mom reads this blog. How cute!)

They’re not done until the ends are woven in!

I've been spindling more Polwarth singles on my favorite Poppa malachite and maple spindle. The cop (32 g) is large enough to be removed to a storage bobbin.

And lastly, here's a cute picture of James cuddling up on Matt's lap while he does some work from home.

The NRSA grant application is in the mail! I sealed the FedEx package this afternoon and put it in the drop box. I'll find out in March or so if anyone thinks it's worth $100,000. (I won't be too sad if it's not funded, only because I really feel we did the best we could for this grant, given our inexperience.)

Two of my former lab mates in NJ had very thoughtfully purchased a $50 gift certificate to a LYS in Cambridge, as a going away present. The shop is just blocks from where I work. I've been holding onto that for months now, and it seemed like this was the right time to spend it.

The goods!

I bought the Elsebeth lavold book that I have been eyeing online. She has a wonderful style sense, and I love her cable and knot ideas. I also bought enough Rowan KidSilk Haze in a deep burgandy for a sweater. (Yes, it exceeded the gift certificate by quite a margin, lest anyone think I had scored some unbelievable deal. I haven't!) I've never bought Rowan yarn before, it really is expensive. I hope it lives up to its reputation!