critical....

involving skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc.;
What is it that happens to me? Just because I made it, I no longer have any sense of critique and just because I made it I think it’s beautiful? What’s that all about? Is it the same thing as with your own cooking? You like your dish better the way you make it and you think you’re the great chef! Or is it the same as you know your own grandkids are the cutest, most talented, smartest, most loveable??
I do admit, I had reservations about this olive garden/rosemary/camo hoodie. But as so often happens, I think it turned out awesome, no question! Now, if you don’t agree, please don’t burst my bubble – let me revel in my own illusions!
If I could just get my zipper orders working as well – I’ll soon have enough stock to start my own eBay zipper store with more on the way! LOL! The green zipper (cedar green with brass teeth, 22 inch) that I thought might work is too short, right colour though.
I have five  light blue zippers and not one is the right one. Blue jay and crayon blue are just as far off as the sky blue. I could install the silver-tooth sky blue – it’s a little short and too bright for my swordfish WCD but it’s the best choice colourwise – after all you’ll only really see the silver teeth when it’s zipped but may not look so great if left open. I have two more coming, a ballet blue and a comet blue both in 24 inch which is the correct length. Those tiny little squares of colour on the zipperstop website are not too accurate – the names don’t seem to help either! I’ve taken to cataloguing the orders because they come unmarked as to colour or length and sometimes the only way to figure the colour is to check your order and hope there are clues there. I have received some errors – too long and a white bottom on a crayon blue zipper – what’s that all about? But as each zipper is about two bucks, it’s obviously not worth returning – we’re talking cross-border shipping here and that’s why I have been ordering 4 or 5 when I really only want one – is that how a stash evolves?
You may have noticed that I edged the front of the navy/swordfish hoodie with the pale blue - I could have done it with navy and just used a navy zipper but I like the look of the contrast vertical line - call me crazy, call me vain, call me pathetic, but I think it makes me look taller and thinner!! Besides, that one's for Janet ;-) - remember when we used to say VBEG for very big evil grin - I think I like that better! But I digress. I did the same thing with the camo one - used the contrast for the dividing front line - I promise I'll post live-wearing photos later to prove it!
I mentioned earlier that I was invited to do the 29th  Monroe Area Knitting Seminar at the La-Z-Boy Center in Monroe, Michigan – that’s near Detroit, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio and Ann Arbor, Michigan, all within about 35 miles – be sure to check it out – July 21 and 22, 2017 - should be fun and I’ll be ready for hot, warm or cool weather! I wonder if Brooke Shields will be there? (she does those cute la-z-boy commercials and that was a joke, ok. ;-))

If that wasn’t enough excitement, I just heard from the Carolinas Guild – they are having their seminar May 5 and 6, 2017 in Raleigh, NC and they’ve picked me too! I’m so excited! Hope you can make it!

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!
 

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!

what I learned today...

Well, maybe it wasn’t all just today. I had Nathan over last Saturday - we were supposed to go to a local farm for their pumpkin fest but it was raining, so we spent the day indoors. Anyway, the point is - Nathan had on ‘Nathanware’ from No 39, Winter ‘06. Although it’s close to getting a wee bit short, it still looks nice and what impressed me most was the zipper still looks really good, lays nice and flat and it works fine - he can zip it up and down, and start it, no problem. He’s now 5 1/2 and No 39 was 3 full years ago. Got me thinking! I examined the zipper and saw that it was metal. Strange, mostly I use the plastic ones because somehow I thought they were sturdier and although they always seem to end up with lumps and bulges after the garment has been washed a few times, I took that as just a fact of life - heck, even bought garments are like that! So, when I took him home, I asked to look at the other ones I’ve made him. Sure enough, all the ones with plastic coil zippers had buckled - the only other one with a metal zipper was nice and flat like this one, even though I always wash the garment and the zipper before putting them in. I came home and checked my sweaters with zippers and same thing - only the metal ones stayed flat. I had even taken some out and restitched them in an attempt to make them flat, but it never seems to work after the next washing.
So, guess what I made for Nate for this next issue? Yep, a hoodie, with pockets and a zip front! He loves hoodies and he loves pockets and I thought, okay, I can come up with another one, a bit different from any of the others, can’t I? (I’ve made him 9 different hoodies since No 29.) I did and he likes it - but he’s such a nice little lad that he’d act like he liked it even if he didn’t.
I had just put the zipper in and by co-incidence, the only zipper I could find locally was a metal tooth one that was just a bit too long - well, truth be told, the metal ones are much easier to shorten...
Use a thin, flat blade screwdriver to pry/loosen the top stopper on each side and gently pull it off - be careful not to damage them - use needle nose pliers to pluck off the extra teeth on each side and then replace the stoppers at the new top on each side, using the pliers gently to squeeze them back on. Leave the tape long - I just sew it along inside the neckline - if you cut it, it frays and it’s hard to sew it neatly if folded under.
Pin the zipper in place, making sure to match each side. I always handstitch the zipper (the garment and the zipper have already been washed and dried same way as it will be later on), with a stab stitch and sewing thread - so the stitching is invisible from the outside - close to the zipper teeth and then whip stitch the edges of the tape to the inside of the garment to stop it rolling in.
Final step, with the sewing machine, stitch up and down through the band and the zipper at the bottom of the zipper - it’s usually too heavy or reinforced with something, to be able to hand stitch through. It helps to begin sewing toward the bottom so as not to pull up the knitting from the bottom edge of the zipper.

Here’s Nate in his new hoodie (Little Scrapper) - what was I thinking? It’s too small! oh well, I have plenty of yarn to make another and this one’s sort of unisex, so Rhiana can wear it! They’ll be matching.