panda-monium....

My nine-year-old granddaughter Rhiana was here on the weekend and we planned out her panda sweater. Turns out she's still enamoured with turquoise - she would like it to be turquoise and white even though I tried to explain that I was just experimenting and didn't mean to make them purple. We played with the overall bear design to make them more panda-like and we're happy with the results. When I gave her the choice of a zip-front hoodie or a pullover (I had to explain what a pullover was) she wants a pullover/tunic (yes!), we both thought the sleeves should be the overall print and she wants just one big panda face on the front. So the plan is there!
I got out my yarn changer (after searching high and low for the auto-tension - it was in plain sight, hanging on the wall, where it's been since the last time I used it - not sure how long ago that was!) because I had already decided, on my own, that I was going to knit the pandas as 'semi-jacquard' to control the float issue - Rhiana didn't like the little 'dots' in my original swatch anyway and we got rid of them! I was sorely tempted to jump right into a sleeve and call it my tension swatch, guessing at the gauge ahead of time but decided there were too many things going on to waste the time, like what kind of band? how to cast-on? how many needles out of work between the ribbed lines on the back side? yada-yada...so I opted for a proper swatch! I did have to get the yarn changer manual to be sure of the proper threading and I checked every thing I ever wrote on using the yarn changer and semi-jacquard...
the following excerpt from KW#44, Making a Theme Sweater by MAO:
SEMI JACQUARD: Knit carriage set to slip/jacquard. Ribber carriage set to slip one way & knit the other way:
Silver Reed:  left set lever to 0, Right set lever to 1
Brother:  rib carriage left cam lever to pr, Right cam lever to n
Semi jacquard can be introduced anywhere in the garment without too much trouble. Bring up the rib bed and use only every 5th or 6th needle on the rib bed, set to knit on every other row only, providing a good method of tying up the floats. The knit carriage is set to slip/jacquard and the rib bed is set to knit only every other row, therefore a vertical line is not made on the front of the fabric which an every row rib stitch would make.
Tension: experiment a bit - I found that having the rib tension set quite tight and the main bed set about what you would use to fairisle same yarn usually works good - I have 4ply acrylic (Yeoman cashmillon/Tamm Trenzi) at T8/3, got 29 sts and 68 rows to 10 cm/4 in - same stitch gauge as fairisle would be but the row gauge is about double because you are actually knitting 4 rows of slip to get the 2 rows of fairisle... 

numbers and letters...

My not-so-little-anymore grandson, Nathan, had his eighth birthday a few weeks ago - he’s figured out that N and the number 8 make his name - the kids at school and his Dad call him Nate, so he’s cool with that. He even made a new label for his lunch box.

I wanted to make him a hoodie with the N8 thing on it and as usual, I got carried away...my first idea was just going to be an intarsia logo either on the chest or a sleeve, then I got the bright idea of doing his name like in a crossword or word search grid and I’d put that on the hood, with maybe the logo on the front...of course, I could put the name grid on the pockets too...

I’d been checking out the hoodies he currently owns and they are mostly all black or grey, quite dark, the odd bit of red and maybe a bit of graffiti or something to make them cool - not just plain. The designs are kind of random, not symmetrical. I’ve been working on the stitch pattern, off and on for a while, revising and whatever - so, let’s get down to the reality of knitting.

The word grid is a huge file - I was kind of going for 200 sts X 200 rows and it’s close to that, based on my calculations for the size of the hood. I knit a swatch in fairisle just to see and it’s okay for the hood like that because I could line the hood with a layer of plain stockinette to hide/protect the floats - on the bought hoodies, mostly the hood is heavier or thicker or doubled anyway.

When I decided to have the pockets with the word grid, I swatched again using semi-jacquard (see KW#44, Making a Theme Sweater) - I had every 4th (because every 12th stitch was the vertical line in the grid, every 4th needle seemed a good option) needle working on the rib bed, knitting only every other row - it was a bit more work even though the yarn changer was doing most of it, but the result was stiff and disappointing - while I was doing it, thoughts of making the hood in this manner went out the window! Back to plan B and knit it in fairisle. For the pockets, I latched up the long floats as I was knitting - the blank squares have 11 stitches of background (grey) between the red grid lines so that whole square gets latched. The squares with letters are mostly okay, with two to 3 rows above and below that needed latching - not a big deal and it went pretty quick and is quite suitable for the inside of the pockets. OH, BTW, I’m using the pattern, ‘little scrapper’ from KW#51, making the largest size, using same yarn, Yeoman’s Panama, so the other pieces of the hoodie, I’m working on auto-pilot. On the sleeve, the intarsia logo turned into a band of N8 fairisle - there are no long floats and it was easier than worrying about tension changes for the intarsia. Just have the hood to do now, and of course, find a zipper...

I'm pretty sure N8 will model the finished thing for us, later in the week!

window shopping...

Went out for a quick look on Granville Street and saw what looked liked a fairisle machine knit sweater from the early ‘80's - back then, someone had given Princess Diana a red sweater with white sheep marching back and forth and there was one black sheep. It became all the rage and duplicate sweaters showed up all over England, both hand-knit and machine-knit. I did see some of these machine-knit in fairisle with huge, long floats all over the inside. I knew an English lady, Muriel, who used to custom knit for a ‘bloke’. She lived on a farm in England and, to earn some extra money, she did sewing, alterations and machine knitting for the man who owned the local sewing shop. He would provide her with the yarn, the punchcards and the pattern written out in whatever sizes he wanted and she’d knit up the blanks or pieces and deliver them on her next trip to town. He had someone else to do ‘the making up’ or finishing work of seaming and cut’n’sew neckline. Although she made many of these sheep pieces, she never learned to properly make a complete sweater and was afraid of necklines! He only taught her what she needed to know to do his jobs.

Anyway, back to the sweater here, it had rows of white foxes (I think) going back and forth and then, at the bustline, there was a full row of black sheep going across...it was enough to catch my attention and make me go in to investigate. Don't get me wrong - it was pretty yuccky! It was a fine to standard gauge weight made with a harsh scratchy wool and had a cut'n sew neck with a button placket on one shoulder (making me think they didn't know how to do necklines either!) but, I was surprised to see that on  the inside, it was made like I did with Marnie’s ‘DogON’ cardigan from KNITWORDS No 44.

Marnie's had some lettering, some plain stockinette rows and some rows of fairisle with furry yarn that caused some trouble. I used a variety of tricks to deal with the long floats and particularly, I found that switching to a method I call semi-jacquard did the job for the fairisle rows - most importantly, did not alter the gauge or the thickness of the fabric.

Semi-jacquard can be introduced anywhere in the garment without too much trouble. Bring up the rib bed and use only every 5th or 6th needle on the rib bed, set to knit on every other row only, providing a good method of tying up the floats. The knit carriage is set to slip/jacquard and the rib bed is set to knit only every other row, therefore a vertical line is not made on the front of the fabric which an every row rib stitch would make. I manually changed the yarn which I felt was quicker and simpler than setting up the yarn changer. For more on this, look in No 44, ‘making a theme sweater’...

I forgot to look at the tag and see where that fox and sheep thing was made...
Anyway, if you google ‘Princess Diana’s sheep sweater’, you’ll get lots of variations...that's were I scooped the princess sweater photo...

PS. My LK made it safely, everything’s intact. The girls at Westjet in Thunder Bay got a big kick out of my gun case and they loved the ‘I (heart) Machine Knitting’ sticker. Coming soon, an LK version of socks!