unfinished business...

I feel bad – just realized I didn’t tell you how I finished Becca or even that I did! I know you weren’t holding your breath but here goes. My original plan was for a shawl collar in a shiny black rayon yarn. I did make several swatches – tried the collar from Uptown in circular even, but the yarn just wasn’t right. Although it was about the same thickness – yards per pound-wise, because it is 100% rayon, in spite of tension adjustments, it knit up thicker and stiffer than the Wool Crepe Deluxe in the garment and looked dark brown against the true jet black. Went back to my closet for further research and was rather surprised to find that I had no short, vee-neck, buttoned cardigans with a vertical knit band! They were all horizontal bands, both single bed and double bed variations that were made the width of the bed and attached on the machine. Here’s a link to one of them, my TLR cardi: http://knitwords.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-plan-worked.html

Tumbleweed, KW#53
 

That realization made it slightly easier to whip up a vertical Full Needle Rib band like on Tumbleweed, with a slightly tighter stitch size – T5/5 (compensating for the thinner yarn) worked great and solved my problem. Got the band nicely done, attached and then got hung up on buttons…but I’ll have them on for my trip to Tennessee in March. Hope to see you there!
https://sites.google.com/a/thabeach.com/tvmk-seminars/

before and after....

before

Last year, I mentioned an old garment several times…Uptown from Knitwords # 24 https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-good-ole-days.html

https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/02/project-fog.html

I had tried it on last February. It inspired me and got me out of my knitting funk but when I put it on again later in the spring, I thought, ‘oh the shoulder pads are too much’, and I put it away again.
Before Christmas, my knitting friend talked about it because her fashion consultant told her that long, floor-length dusters were very much in current fashion and she thought she might give it a try. I coached her on changing the shape slightly, suggesting she maybe take the shoulder/sleeve sizing of Tumbleweed from #53 (2010, fitted, set-in sleeve) to update Uptown.
When I was debating the neckline and collar for Becca (the black lace cardi), I took my Uptown out again to gauge how that collar/front bands might work but decided it would be too heavy and overpower the more delicate lace. I took a really good look at it again and realized the collar/bands were ingeniously knit from the centre back down so to take it apart and shorten the armhole from the shoulder would be entirely doable.

In the ‘before’ photo – notice how the sleeves are too long and sloppy looking and the coat hem is virtually touching the floor, and it looks too big in the shoulders, like I'm wearing someone else's coat. What I did – took off the collar/front bands, removed the sleeves and undid the shoulders. Found my original lace pattern. Took apart the shoulders and unravelled the Back to the back neckline and then removed another 10 rows, to shorten  the armscye, redid the back neck and shaped the shoulder, following the schematic for Tumbleweed. Took me four tries to find the exact row to match up the lace patterning. Removed the same number of rows off each of the Fronts, reshaped the shoulder to same as the Back and rejoined the shoulders.
For the Sleeves, I debated unravelling them right back to the cuff and rehanging. That way I wouldn’t have to find the exact row, but I had trouble finding the ends to undo the cuff so ripped back to about 4 inches up from the cuff so it would open up wide enough and rehung it. Felt like a rockstar when I got the exact row on the first try! Reknit the sleeve using the same yarn of course – I knew the kinks in the cotton would even out with ironing and a laundering would take care of any little extra glitches. I used the same stitch size/tension for the reknit because technically the Bonita cotton is mercerised and does not shrink. Not really true but it worked – even with the first pressing, I could not spot the row where I reknit from. The re-made

after

sleeve is the same length as the old one from the underarm to the cuff, but it is quite a bit narrower at the underarm, taking it in about one inch on each edge, resulting in a more fitted sleeve cap. Got the second sleeve completed with the same ease, reinforcing my legend-in-my-own-mind status!
Got it all put back together without even taking the buttons off! Notice on the 'after' photo, the sleeves are the correct length and the overall length of the whole garment is more to my liking, showing off my new Fluevog saddle shoes perfectly!
After fessing up about my paranoia of over-stocked shelves, I go and take something apart and alter it – what the heck is that all about?
Why did I do it? Because I could!

better off not knowing...

I thought I was doing good lately. With yarn consumption, that is. And then, for some strange reason, I decided it would be a good thing to take an inventory of my yarn stock, so I could have an actual tally of usage. I’ve never done this before. It’s not like it’s hidden away in a closet or anything. It’s in my living room, on shelves that were my store fixtures from when I had a retail store back in the early 90s. You may have noticed them in the background of the occasional photo. There are 3 units, each 4 feet wide, each with 5 shelves. The shelves are deep enough to put two cones deep and nine wide, but I’ve never actually tallied it up. All I need to do is look and I can see at a glance what I have. And over the past few years, I do have three to four full shelves devoted to Legos and grandkid stuff.
And I only counted full, unused cones – didn’t record part cones unless they were the same dyelot as a full cone.
29 Forsell 4 ply pure new wool, 500g each, 15 colours.
5.5 Rutland Tweed, 500g, 4 colours
4 Suva, 500g, 2 colours
10 WCD, 500-750g, 10 colours
2 Silk Bourette, 450g, 1 colour
3 DK Forsell Wool, 500g, 2 colours
10 Cottontale8, 500g, 7 colours
15 Bonita, 500g, 6 colours
4 Yeoman Panama, 450g, 3 colours
2 yeoman Cigno, 300g, 2 colours
3 Silk City Mini Dina, 500g, 3 colours
8 Yeoman Cannele, 4 colours
2 Yeoman Brittany, 350g, 1 colour
1.5 Yeoman Indigo Denim, 1 colour
That’s like a hundred! OMGG! talk about added pressure!

recap of 2018...

Along with a record-breaking 70 blogposts, I machine-knitted innumerable swatches, 10 cardigans, 1 dress, 1 afghan, 4 ponchos, 18 pairs of socks, 3 earflap hats, a crochet-look skullcap and a couple of DNFs that I never mentioned.
The year got off to a rocky start, airing my dirty laundry
http://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/01/dirty-laundry.html
and admitting I was in a knitting funk with no direction and a lack of inspiration. Over the months, I whined quite a bit, threw in some nostalgia here and there for dramatic effect and yes, I probably over-shared!
By March, I hit my stride and began my quest for not only the ultimate long cardigan, but the perfect pocket to go with. I knitted and blogged my way through lace, stripes, striped lace, ribber techniques, and pockets of all sorts.
This past month, I kept off the keyboard, busy with some sewing and making Christmas socks and gifts, without sharing, because I had nothing new to add.




I think my crowning achievement for the year was the shortrowed decrease hack
https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/02/decreasing-hack.html
for the slant edge on patch pockets – used it several times since and I love it – yesterday, finished up another TBHoodie on the LK and an added outside pouch pocket, using the decrease hack – so much faster and proving it works great on mid gauge too!

Wishing you and your family all the best for health, happiness and good fortune for 2019! May all your machine knitting efforts have positive and happy results!

rebound...

The way I see it, there are three options here.
1.  Throw the whole thing out (not likely, too expensive and I do like to prove a point).
2. Unravel the Back and Front and reknit (only if all else fails).
3. Attempt to fix the mistake (here’s what separates the men from the boys -yeah, I know that’s old-fashioned and sexist but look at those swears in the last post!).
Do not unravel the last row and then expect to be able to rehang the stitches. Did I mention this is black, quite fine yarn and very small stitches?

rehang and undo st by st

Here’s what I’d do (this ain’t my first rodeo!). Wait till you are calm, cool and collected, fresh, all alcohol has left your system, with good light. Note, with WCD or any natural fibre yarn, I always steam/press each piece and examine it before getting to this stage, so, the final rows are set and unlikely to unravel quickly unless severely provoked.


separate the 2 pieces

So, sitting at the machine, carefully, one stitch at a time, from the left (because I chained off right to left so the final stitch is at the left) unravel the last row, rehanging the one chained stitch. Pulling the correct yarn tail, unravel that stitch. There are two sts on the needle. Pick up the two sts, move them to the needle at the right which will allow you to grab the front stitch and move it back to the needle at the left. Repeat across the row until you now have the row of where you knit the one set through the other to make the seam.
Now is the tricky part. Pull the needles and the work out slightly. Put your left hand between the two layers from the left, separating them and lifting slightly up on the front piece. With the one-prong tool, from the right, guide that back stitch (it is in front, below the hook of the needle, knitting the two together) up and back into the hook of the needle. Complete across till you have two sts on every needle, separated.

remove front piece on garter bar

This next part should be relatively easy. Bring the needles fully out, both sets behind the latches. Take the small piece of the garter bar and pull off the front piece onto the bar and set aside. You’re left with the Back shoulder, hanging with the knit side facing. Find the other/correct Front and hang it, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you don’t have a garter bar, I suppose you could resort to a fine handknitting needle….
Whadya know? the piece on the garter bar is the correct way to just rehang onto the needles after hanging the other back shoulder, knit side facing! Life is good!

details, details...

The remaining pieces of my black lace project were rather uneventful after the swatch debacle. I just quietly knit each piece between doing other little LK150 things. The shape for the body is that A-line shape that I like but with the back hemline curved down in the back, but straight across in front. I didn’t give you a blow-by-blow  - wouldn’t want to seem like I was bragging to shortrow that hemline. The beauty of plain lace on the Silver Reed is, it’s just like knitting stockinette without holding position, once you have all the kinks worked out! If you need a little refresher on shortrows with the ravel cord and lace carriage, click here: https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2017/01/life-lessons.html
While working on the body pieces, I was tossing around the variables for the shawl collar. Plenty of options – the vertically-knit, ribbed one from Uptown – that’s sort of the look I’m going for but maybe not quite so wide. The vertically knit, single bed, self-facing  one from Gossamer
https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2012/01/lacy-daze.html
but just stockinette, no lace – it will likely boil down to how far my shiny rayon yarn will go – there’s not a lot of it, less than 100g, but I do have a bigger cone of the same thing in an olive green that I can experiment with – I could just go with the same thing as was on GWC/Elvis, but I do prefer a buttoned front to an open front.

Came back from the border – no sock yarn! checked my email and instead of the two day shipping, I got 4 to 7 day shipping. Figured I may as well put some time in on Becca. Did all the little added bands and feeling quite righteous, began the putting together.
Reminder, knitting with black… the first shoulder is joined. Hung the second back shoulder and went to put the front one on. It’s late afternoon and hard to tell the knit side from the purl side. Gosh, darn! I realize that I’ve put the wrong front shoulder on the first back shoulder – the armhole of the front is on the neck side! Fudge, crud, blessed frickin’ bloody hell! It’s wine time!

goin' postal...

It’s getting to be that time of year and I’ve already had a few people ask me if I’m giving socks again this year - they wanted to ensure they were on my gift list! Talk about pressure! I thought I was prepared but, in checking my stockpile of sock yarns, it is almost non-existent! Sure, I have a few balls of that cotton/wool yarn left https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2017/12/sox-talk.html and it makes nice, summer-ish, socks, but they aren’t the ones I pull out to put on for the winter.

You know it! I went on-line to my fav, loveknitting.com of course, looking for deals and nice stuff. Concentrating on 80 wool/20 whatever nylon, 100g balls, before I knew it, my cart said I had enough to qualify for free shipping to Canada! And that was only 10 balls/10 pair minimum! OMG! I live in Thunder Bay and although not a border town, we are only 40 km from the US crossing at Pigeon River. What I usually do is order stuff from America, get it shipped to Rydens in Grand Portage, Minnesota, just on the other side and drive down to pick up, whilst mailing out US and overseas orders because it’s much cheaper from America. Well, when I saw that it said I would get free shipping right to my door here in Canada, it went to my head and I clicked through, placing the order. The next day, on the news it said that Canada Post workers are going on strike! oh, for crying out loud! I thought that was settled and was no longer an issue! Darney, darn, darn! They (the news guys) made it sound like no one was getting any Christmas purchases, so I went back on-line, back to loveknitting, found a bunch more deals, mostly demin-y-looking stuff which is the most popular (though, I’ve never had a recipient go ‘aw, these are sucky!’) to my giftees and had them shipped to Ryden’s. Am I in over my head? I’ve already got 6 pairs done from the bare remains of my stash, not counting the LKsox! I haven’t made my list yet but promised myself to knit at least a pair a day ‘til Christmas – it gets me in the spirit! I have other parcels waiting at Rydens…guess where I’m going tomorrow?