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I told
you I was in Peru, Indiana a couple of weeks ago. Charlene Shafer and her family, the Knit Knack Shop, are the US distributors
for TAMM yarns and Cotton Tale 8. It’s
always so busy for me when at a show like that, I never get a chance to check
out what anyone else is doing or selling. I heard they had revamped Cotton Tale
8 – my only experience with CT8 was like 15 years ago from the old Bonnie
Triola Yarns days – never liked it, harsh feel, too many knots and lots of thick
and thin spots. When I got home I checked the KKS website – wow, nice colour
range and great price, $22 for a one pound cone. I also noted that it is close
to the same yardage as Bonita cotton which I have used extensively and is now
discontinued. I ordered white, black, red, silver and charcoal, thinking I
could make a striped manfriend hoodie (not) or new girlfriend hoodie ;-)!
Got my parcel on Saturday afternoon and whipped
off a couple of swatches before dinner. I made the striped one at T8 (unwashed
gauge, 30 sts and 38 rows to 10 cm/4 in – after machine wash and dry, 30 sts
and 46 rows) and stockinette charcoal at T9 (unwashed, 28 sts and 36 rows –
washed 29 sts and 43 rows). Anxious to give it a good trial, I put both
swatches in a sink of hot water and dish soap and swished them around – definitely
colour safe! Rinsed them and rolled in a towel. Tossed them in the dryer on cotton/hot
setting with a load of tea towels and tablecloths. WOW! I am so impressed. This
is soft, silky, smooth and lovely, no pilling! I may have found my new favourite
cotton! I can hardly wait for you to see what I’m making!
A noodie! LOL! not sure that will catch
on, but I’m loving mine! I wasn’t going to say anything because you already
know I can be a bit obsessive. I was just going to quietly knit this thing and
keep it to myself but I’m also somewhat of a show-off, I’ll admit it! With my Girlfriend Hoodie pattern in mind, I started
off making three pockets - oh, did I say three? Yeah, I was doing that decrease hack and loving it - it's so much faster than that old, outlined full-fashioned decrease and it truly looks nicer and lays flatter - but in my excitement, I must have been operating on auto-pilot and thinking of other things and on the second pocket, I ended at RC078 instead of the 82 rows of the first one - somewhere in there I didn't knit two rows between the battenburg transfers - easy to do when you are shortrowing at the same time and there is something happening on every row instead of just every second, and not concentrating! I made the third pocket (16g each, by the way), paying full attention and got it perfect.
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before washing
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In my
haste for glory, I hadn’t weighed my cone at the beginning, just took the old
information from that old post and acted like I had the same size cone (1.2 lb/520g)
as the plumberry one. In my mind I was making a half-sleeved hoodie (do you
like that ‘half-sleeved’ term – I saw it for the first time on something the
other day and decided to use it a few times just to see if it catches on!),
knitting the half-sleeve in the battenburg lace, the body a little longer than
the original version, with narrower
bands to compensate (those deep stockinette bands do take more yarn so that was
a consideration) and of course a hood, because, after all, this is a hoodie,
right?
After both
sleeves were knit (I did weigh them, 46g each), I jumped right into making the
back, determined to get it made plain before I could reason my way into jazzing
it up unnecessarily. I kept saying to myself that people behind my back would
notice the beautiful half-sleeves without being distracted with random
patterning up the back and though I got it done quite quickly, was rather
dismayed to notice the diminished size of the cone! ouch! The back was 84g so
that meant that much again for the fronts and I still had bands to do – the hood
would take about half the weight/yardage of the Back and I began to readjust my vision. By the time I had the Fronts done I saw this garment as a zip-front, summer cardigan with picot hems and neckband with half sleeves in lace. Final tally, 42g left, good thing nothing was written in stone! Oh, and because of the shrinkage factor, when I first tried it on before laundering, it was like, yuck! this is way too big, but sure enough, the machine wash and dry sorted it out fine!
P.S. The hems were ‘Knitting on the EDGE’ #3 – I
used the neckline technique from Borderline, KW #25 and added 8 shortrows to centre
back and fronts (but not to pockets) to even out the A-line.
MSP here I come! I'm teaching at Founders Fest in Minneapolis, July 28, 29, 2018.
Google Midwest Machine Knitters Collaborative for more information and registration! Hope to see you there!
