FO: Summertime tunic

OK, it's time to get some of these FOs blogged before the new year. First up is my modified version of the Summertime Tunic.

Hideous picture, but you get the idea

Pattern: Summertime tunic from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 (Rav link)
Yarn: Classic Elite Premiere, colorway 5295, 50/50 cotton/Tencel, 108 yds/50 gr, every single inch of 5 skeins were used (size 37.5 with modifications)
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 3/2/08-9/22/08 How embarrassing is that? 6+ months! Phbbbt.
Comments/modifications: The first thing to say is that I absolutely love this yarn. I don't usually really like knitting with cotton, but the 50% Tencel in there makes all the difference in the world. It knits up fluid and drapey, and in the wearing doesn't stretch out quite as quickly as 100% cotton would. Gorgeous stuff.

I did a few mods on this pattern. To wit: 1) I only had about 500 yds of the yarn, so I started at the top and knit down. Then 2) instead of doing the ribbing and continuing down past that as in the magazine photos, I pulled a lacey ribbing pattern out of BW Vol 2 and used that as edging.3) I bought some ribbon to use for the straps and then when I got to that point, couldn't find it, so I worked a 3 st I-cord with the last remaining scraps of yarn and used that instead. That's it. I lucked out on the fit, and after a couple of wearings, most of the stretching was width-wise not length-wise, so all's well.

Thankfully I finally got all the finishing done before "winter" arrived. I've worn this a couple of times and gotten compliments on it, which definitely qualifies as a success.

The dreaded "S" word

Last week at WHMU(WHSKAL), I swatched. Which is something that happens pretty rarely around here, so I thought I'd babble about it a little bit.


Usually I don't swatch. My gauge is usually pretty close to the recommended gauge on ball bands, so for things like socks I don't swatch. I don't swatch lace. I don't swatch for scarves or mittens or hats. In fact the only thing I do swatch for occasionally is a sweater.


Typically I'll start with a sleeve if I'm worried about the gauge and check that after a few inches. But if it's something that for which gauge is really important, I'll do a swatch. Or a yarn that I have no information on for appropriate gauge. Or if I'm not sure how the yarn and the pattern will work together, I'll do a swatch.

I've been wanting to do Manon for a while now (Rav link). And since it's another Norah Gaughan funky construction type of thing, I figured swatching would be in my best interests. So I threw the newly dyed Italian yarn into a bag along with three needle sizes and headed for Whole Foods.


Three needles sizes you ask? Yup, three sizes. Because nothing pisses me off more then knitting a gauge swatch with a particular size and then finding out that it's wrong. So I use multiple sizes on the same swatch and then pick the one that works best after washing/drying.

For this sweater the pattern calls for US size 9 needles. Usually I would try to bookmark the needle size (i.e. use one size smaller and one size larger), but I couldn't imagine that I would need a US 10 for this, so I took US 7/8/9 as my needle range.
Recommended gauge for this project is 18 st/24 rows for 4 inches. I cast on 26 stitches with the 7s, knit about 4 rows in garter stitch and then started working in stockinette stitch, keeping 3 stitches on each edge in garter. After a while, on a wrong side row, I knit 7 stitches. After a while more, I figured I had enough to be able to check the gauge, so I knit one entire wrong side row, and then switched to the 8s.

click for notes

The process proceeded as above except that instead of knitting 7 stitches in the middle of that stretch, I knit 8, and so on (9 stitches with the size 9s). This makes it very easy later on to figure out what needle size I used for which section of the swatch, without having to rely on an easily lost piece of paper. The swatch is finished with several more rows of garter stitch. I finished this one easily that night, and tossed it into a cold bath when I got home (although I did start the sweater before measuring the blocked swatch - thankfully the gauge didn't change!).

click for more notes

I'm happy to say that, not only was my gauge spot on with the US 9s, but the swatch didn't bleed at all, proving that my improvised solar dyeing/steam setting of the dye worked pretty well. It is slightly variegated, which looks just gorgeous when knitted up. And I've got a gauge swatch that tells me how the yarn works on 7s and 8s too, just for future reference.

Old friends

My parents are embarking on a major construction project at their place in Maine, so my mother has been going to town on the piles of Extremely Important Crap that my brother and I have been storing under their roof. She came across an old trunk of mine with a lock on it. Once we had determined that I had no clue as to the whereabouts of the key to said lock, we decided she had free rein to cut off the lock and see what was inside. Of course she promptly went back to Boston and found the key, so hacksaws were not called in to salvage the situation.

Inside the trunk she found these:

I knit these two sweaters almost twenty years ago when I was in college (and the fact that parts of college were almost twenty years ago totally gives me the heebie jeebies). The one on the top is a guernsey (I'm 95% sure it's Penny Straker's Staithes Gansey - Rav link). The yarn is some gorgeous tweedy teal worsted weight that we bought at the Blue Hill Fair one summer when I was in college and I went back to school and knit it up.

The bottom sweater is my first Aran, from a Candide pattern that I bought in 1991, if I remember correctly. Anyway, a long time ago. It's huge - probable 50 inches across in the chest, and I wore it as a winter jacket through most of college. Which, given that I went to college in western MA, belies the intelligence that presumably got me in to said school, but what can you do.

I have been wondering where these two sweaters were hiding for quite a while now. I don't think I've seen them since I finished grad school in 2000, and they are in remarkably good condition for having been stuffed in a trunk and stuck in a barn for 8 years. I certainly don't have any reason to wear them right now, but I'm glad I have them back. In fact, they've inspired me to start a new cable project.

I can't justify wool sweaters for Houston "winters", but a wool vest? That I can definitely get behind.

Packing list

We head off for Boston at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow morning, just the girls and me (pray for us! Or for me at least - they'll be fine). Since I haven't even begun to pack yet, I spent some time on the bus this morning making lists of what we need to bring. Here's the first few items I wrote down:

GP (Rav link)

Noro sock yarn for Koi

Brambler

I got tired of spindling at about 10 pm last night and decided to start plying. 80 min and two episodes of Buffy later, I have ~200 yds of gorgeous fingering weight two ply. The pattern calls for ~200 yds fingering weight yarn. I'm golden, and I still have some roving left if needed.

Project Spectrum Air project

Boarding passes/FF#s

Do you think there's something wrong with my priorities?

Ouch

That is what your wrist says after spending most of an entire day in front of the spinning wheel. I did stop while the AC guys was here (you would not believe what was growing in our drain line!), and to go for a run and to the store, but other then that, I was glued to the Lendrum. I managed to spin up a little more then half of the 5 oz of fiber I had by early evening, and plied while watching the Celtics-Lakers game (grumble, grumble). Tonight I'll finish (hot/cold/hot/cold/thwack, thwack, thwack) and maybe be able to start some mittens by Friday. And there's still a couple of ounces left to spin...

But, given that my right wrist is somewhat unhappy with me, yet again, I think tonight is for some swatching. For some reason, June in Houston is making me think I need to knit a sweater. A nice wooly sweater. It must be the heat index driving me nuts, because this is totally stupid. Given the insanity of the idea, I have fixated on the Gathered Pullover (Rav link) from Interweave Knits Winter 2007. The question now is: which yarn?

Some lovely, bluey-purple Silky Wool,

Oh how blurry. And not really accurate as to color...

Or some nice red stuff recycled from a Goodwill find?

Color accurate. Mostly.

Any thoughts? I just did bluey-purple, so I'm leaning towards the red, but I have no idea if the recycled stuff will work well (and there are plenty of examples of Silky Wool Gathered Pullovers on Ravelry). Hmmm...