couldn't help it...

I was going to take this to MSP, basically in pieces and use it for some of my demos, of seaming and doing that second pocket but as I got closer to the end, I just couldn’t stop. Rationalizing, my thought was that it would look so much nicer finished up, washed and dried and I could model it – you know how I love to show off! And let’s face it, a unshrunk cotton garment can be pretty scary…I’ll just make a couple extra swatches for the demos.

For the hood, I used the method and schematic for KW#40, Lacy in Red because the shape was suitable and I wanted the face to be framed with the rib and not have a seam on the top of the head, so the rib and lace look nice when the hood is down which will be 99.9% of the time.
Dropped by the fabric store the other day  to check out buttons and gosh-darn there was next to nothing. Had decided I wanted a one inch/25 mm button or even 1 1/8 inch/28 mm would do but slim pickings! I did find a card of 28 mm that was almost ok – I figured I could doctor the colour with nail polish or paint – there were 2 per card at $3.80 and I need five or six  buttons – I was about to purchase - did the math and came to my senses - figured I’d better check my at-home button stash! Yup, I actually had better choices already, but only 5 of the one I liked colourwise. Usually I don’t pick shiny buttons but I’ll be ok with these, I’m sure. To make a swatch of the buttonhole prior to the actual band - the rib is a 4-stitch repeat; on the main bed, three needles in work, 1 out all across, with Swing P and on the rib bed, only every fourth needle in work, opposite the needle out of work from the main bed and this stitch is tucking every other row – I did that so the single stitch on the rib bed wouldn’t disappear in the fold and the tuck adds a bit of width to the whole thing.
Back to the buttonhole, my experience tells me that I need to cast off about 5 stitches for the size of the chosen button (25mm) so the big question is where to best position the buttonhole in the rib for it to look and perform the best. Make two and then decide.
Here’s the needle arrangement:
l l . l l l . l l l . l l l . l l
. . l . . . l . . . l . . . l . . .
I made one with the rib stitches at each end and one with the rib stitch in the centre and it looked the best – the one at the top, the first one opened too wide and just looked like a big hole whereas the centred rib stitch seemed to control the depth better so I went with that one – they were both 5 stitches wide.

Got the bands made and attached; put most every thing together and darned in most ends – didn’t attach the hood in case the front bands weren’t right – not that I didn’t have confidence, just that, as you can see, the unshrunk cotton garment can be deceiving – a horizontal band is going to shrink the opposite way to the vertical length of the garment and if necessary, it will be easier to remove and replace the bands without having to take the hood off as well.
Wash and dry and whew! looks great, must have planned that! Final photos later!
Calling this one Milky Way.

multitasking....

 I’m breaking in my new hiking boots, copying all my old cds onto my new-for-Christmas iPod, knitting little/big sister Janet a hoodie and laundering/fixing some knitted things. New hiking boots because Janet and I are heading to New Zealand with a stopover in Australia on a hiking trip from Christchurch to Queensland on the South Island - leaving mid-February, returning mid-March and it's her birthday while we're gone so I figured the hoodie would be an appropriate gift. Wearing the hiking boots around the house for a few days before heading out is a good way to break them in, no matter what you’re doing. I am making my Omega (from Serial Stuff #4) hoodie for Janet instead of the GFH for a couple of reasons - she remembered seeing me wearing my dill/black hoodie when we went to Europe two years ago, and wanted one like it. Omega is quite a bit fancier, not only the yarn being Wool Crepe Deluxe, but it is kind of a cross between a raglan and a saddle-shouldered sleeve, more fitted and dressier than your average cotton hoodie. It is thinner and fits under a coat or jacket nicely. Also for packing, a hoodie out of wool crepe deluxe packs smaller than the same thing out of the thicker cotton that I originally used for the GFH. She really liked the idea of two colours and we settled on swordfish blue and midnight tweed - I know she is going to end up wearing it with her French navy dress at some point and at least it will match colourwise! ;-)
Holey-ness is in the laundry along with my brown linen GFH - I wore it a couple of times and love it but the #3 molded plastic zipper (that I had shortened) started to pouch out at the bottom??? Why? I have no idea but I got my second order of zippers and decided to switch out that one for the thinner # 3 nylon coil one.
I un-picked the zipper and threw the garment in the laundry (along with Holey-ness – no point in washing just one) just because - maybe I had inadvertently stretched it out while installing the zipper (?) and washing it would reset the stitches...I'll post again on how it turns out later but that brings me to the Omega I'm working on right now. I have it almost all knit, just need to finish putting it together and I've decided that I want to sew the zipper in with the sewing machine – I find that so much easier and quicker than hand stitching, so I’m using the stabilizing technique for the front edges from MFH/GFH instead of the stockinette bands from the original Omega which required hand-stitching the zip…
oh, and I threw in the stuff about the ipod just to make it seem like I'm much more tech-savvy than I really am! ;-)

naturally...

well, I got lucky! no, not that way! I found an extra half cone of the Honiburd Mini Cotton Rainbow in the natural colour, so now I have enough to make that hoodie from No 22 (see remake of a remake, Feb 26/14) in a solid colour - the natural will be great for all seasons! I’m so happy I could just knit!

What a good pattern (am I allowed to say that? oh well, I just did and I think it’s true!) – fun to knit, a few extra cool details – the outside seaming is right back in style – I was checking out some things at Anthropologie and was amazed to see all the exterior seaming.

A few extra points:
When you’re finished shortrowing the very shallow sleeve cap (a good one to start with if you’ve never done this technique before), there is an RTR which makes a nice added detail to the seam-on-machine technique of attaching the sleeve – take it off on the garter bar and set aside (so I do have an over-abundance of garter bars!) – before breaking the yarn and taking it off, pull off 4X the width of the needles and then cut – this will be enough to make the final loose row for the seam/cast-off and eliminate a couple of ends to darn in…
After all the pieces are knit – the hood last (took 3oz/80g from the second cone), put everything together, except attaching the hood to the neckline, wash it all and then work on the final zipper deal.
The zipper technique… well, it’s pretty cool – if you don’t like hand sewing and you are fairly proficient with your sewing machine, this may work for you – it looks awesome  and very professional finished – there is no outside stitching of any sort showing. Another advantage, I wanted to use a metal zipper because I think they lay better and don’t buckle out as much as a plastic or coil zipper will but they seem to be only available locally in very basic colours, so I went with the white tape/silver teeth zipper and I think it works fine with this installation because only the teeth show…
Following the instructions in the pattern, you make two opposite front bands with waste yarn separating them, block it out and then pin the zipper in place. Make sure when you’re sewing the zipper with the sewing machine, do both sides in the same direction – don’t sew up one side and down the other – this will stretch them in opposing directions – sew from bottom to top, change your zipper foot to the other side and sew the second side from bottom to top as well.
After you have the zipper sewn on the front bands, it's attached to the garment on the knitting machine - hang the right side of the garment, knit side facing you, hem will be at the right hand side. Now, hang the band with the male side of the zipper, garter row side, with bottom of zipper at bottom of garment, of course – this looks a bit weird but it’s right – make notes of where your hem band and yarn marks are so you can match up the other side.   
The other good thing about this zipper method is that if it's not going well and doesn't look good, you can abandon it at anytime and there is nothing to lose, like open stitches - just pull it off and start over or go with something else that works for you! 
I'm going to love this one, it's so cozy!
 

unravel?

you’re really not going to believe this…I am unraveling a sweater and going to reknit the yarn! Did you hear me? MAO is unraveling…yes, it’s the truth! Why, you ask? Well, it’s not because there is a shortage of yarn at my house, trust me – sure there are the odd Lego starship and princess castle pieces on the yarn shelves, but really, I still have plenty of good, quality yarns. And, I just finished up my KnS project for #187, which is a zippered jacket and wrote an article on zipper installations in knits and it got me wanting to do another zippered project for me – I don’t get to keep the KnS one.  ;-(
Here’s the thing. I’ve been wearing my casual hoodies to death lately and my totally favourite one of all time, ‘Hoods Up’ (photo of KJ wearing) from No 22, Autumn ’02 – that’s 11 years ago and I have really worn that thing – is still okay, made with beautiful red Honiburd Cotton 4 ply, but getting on the shabby side. It has some totally cool techniques, with the seaming on the outside which gives nice detail on the shoulder and top of sleeve and the zipper method is really neat – you actually sew the zipper on a band with the sewing machine and then attach the band to the garment on the knitting machine which makes the machine sewing invisible – I didn’t do that for the KnS one because it doesn’t work well for the heavier gauges.
Then, I have this other sweater in one of my all-time favourite yarns, Yeoman’s Indigo Denim cotton 4 ply in the dark wash – I had remade the man’s vee neck, ‘Faded Favour’ from No 39 ( Winter ’06), rashly thinking I needed one of those for myself (when the yarn was still available and I had a couple of extra cones), but it was a pullover and I had briefly forgotten how very seldom I wear a pullover. I did wear it a few times initially and washed it a couple of times, but it has been languishing in my closet for some time. Boy, I really am going on and on – it’s like I haven’t talked to you in weeks!
Now, unraveling it is one thing - I’m secretly hoping for a distressed look – the original was tuck stitch which simulates a seed stitch, using the knit side as right side and you can see a bit of fading on the top outside part of the stitch. I’m going to knit the new ‘Hood’s Up’ in stockinette, but I can’t really cheat like I have been doing lately on my swatches – sure, I’ve used this same yarn in stockinette – Nate and I had matching ‘In Da Hood’ hoodies back in No 37 and 38, but those swatches were knit in the raw cotton, knit slightly looser to allow for the inevitable shrinkage, washed and then gauged (then the garment is too big when finished, but works out after the laundering to do the shrink – hope you’re getting all that!). This yarn is already preshrunk, so I should make a new swatch but I won’t have to worry about laundering it ahead of measuring. Yeah, you caught that ‘should’! Now I’m really cheating – when I unraveled the sleeve, I left the hem and rehung that. Now, based on my expertise, gathered over years of knitting , instead of knitting at T8 which is my usual stitch size for this yarn, I’m dialing down two dots and using T7. for this which I figure will compensate for the pre-shrunk factor, and again using my vast experience, I figure I can plug 30 sts and 42 rows in as a semi-close gauge.  Now, doing my little ‘cheating at swatches’ thing from back in (see  April 2008)  where I just hang markers on the first 60 rows for a swatch check-up, I get going on the sleeve. After I get so far, I can measure the pretend swatch and re-adjust if necessary!
Heh, heh, haven’t lost my touch!