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WAYWOooooooo! [1]
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Date: 2022-10-30
image by Clint Patterson, Unsplash
đ Good Day, WAYWO community! Happy Halloweâen Eve! đ
Iâm delighted to be your host this evening. I hope you are interested in sweater knitting because do I have a project for you!
I really liked this pattern, but something was off and it came out the wrong size for my son. Iâll donate it as it will fit someone!
I first wrote about this project in â I think â May of 2021. I posted about my plan to try to knit lopi sweaters for all of my (adult) children and their partners â and maybe a few more sweaters, too (grandchild, friend and maybe...just maybe...one for me, too!)
At the time I posted the initial challenge, I think I had one sweater finished and one almost completed. During the intervening year and a bit, a lot of stuff happened which cut into my knitting time. So, to update you â I managed to complete only three more sweaters (and a couple of hats).
Two of the sweaters I completed turned out to have sizing issues, so they will be donated. While they donât fit my kids, they are in proper proportion and should fit someone a little shorter than my tall offspring just fine. đ
Tonight, I will post some pictures from the last completed sweater.
But first! Some appropriate Seasonal music!
My best used book find ever! âKnitting with Icelandic Woolâ by VĂ©dĂs JĂłnsdĂłttir.
The Background
I did already make a sweater for my third son, using colors he wanted, but unfortunately the new pattern I chose wasnât the best and the sweater turned out enormous, even though I knitted a M and had checked my tension etc. I think the instructions (which werenât very thorough) had lost something in translation. Anyway, thatâs another sweater I will donate. It will fit a big&tall man. (my sons are tall, but not big).
SO! It was back to the drawing board. I chose a different pattern by a lopi designer whose work I have found to be excellent (her pattern was the one I used for the blue/grey and brown sweaters that I made for my other two sons last year â basically the gold standard setter in lopi knitting in my humble opinion), got more of the yarn in my sonâs chosen colors and got back to work!
As I had hoped, the sweater knitted up just as the pattern promised. The arms are a little wider than I would have liked for my son, but it isnât a flaw in the pattern â the pattern is an older one when slimmer sleeves were not quite a thing.
BY THE WAY, I was absolutely thrilled to have found a used book of lopi patterns online and I bought it and to my delight the author is the very designer whose patterns I have come to rely on: VĂ©dĂs JĂłnsdĂłttir. The pattern featured in this diary came from that book.
So, without further ado, here is the story of the third sweater, complete with my BIG MISTAKE đ
The Sweater
I started this sweater last winter, put it down to attend to an elderly family memberâs needs over several months, and just took it up again this month, finishing last week. Itâs still drying on the blocking board, but I should be able to take it with me when I visit my son next month.
Here is the waistband.
(I forgot to take a picture of the cast-on â but I used the tubular cast-on (crochet method) which I learned from watching YouTube videos. My favorite instructional YouTube knitters are Susanne Bryan and Roxanne Richardson).
I discovered the tubular cast-on by accident while looking up something else. I am not an expert knitter and am mostly self-taught, so most good techniques I have learned have been through sheer serenditpity. The tubular cast-on (and cast-off) is one of the best techniques I ever came across. It just finishes a sweater so beautifully.
Here you can see my sonâs color choices. He wanted a dash of blue with the brown shades. His twin brother got the 3 shades of brown sweater that I knitted last winter. I used different patterns for the two sweaters, so they look nothing alike, even though they share 2 of 3 identical colors. Their older brother got the grey/blue/black sweater which was the only one I knit up in actual alaflos lopi wool.
Main color in my right hand, I âthrowâ it with my middle finger. Itâs wrapped loosely around my pinkie for tension.
Holding yarn for colorwork
For stranded color work, knitters use a variety of techniques to handle the two or three color strands (or more, I guess! I have never tried to use more than 3 at once).
The way I do it is to hold my main color (in this case, the beige) in my right hand. I am apparently a âthrowâ knitter, because I use my middle finger to âthrowâ the yarn over the right needle when making stitches.
Next, I hold the contrasting color (or colors) in my left hand. These colors I âpickâ with the right needle or throw onto the right needle, depending on if I have 1 or 2 colors in the left hand. When Iâve got 3 colors going at once I will pick the two contrasting colors alternately according the pattern. If there are only 2 colors going in the row, I will throw both the right and the left strands. I donât know why I switch back and forth between picking and throwing with the left hand, but thatâs what works for me! đ
Something nobody ever mentioned, but which I learned through practice, is that you have to adjust the yarn, the stitches and your hands constantly while working a row. You donât just get the yarn placed in your hands just so and then go go go without ceasing. I think I thought that you could, which caused me a lot of trouble when I was first learning to knit. Trouble with tension.
Contrast color in my left hand, it is kept under proper tension by looping around my pinkie. When I have two contrast colors, itâs harder so I pick them. I hate having two cc and I favor patterns that only have 2 colors in each row.
Mastering tension
When I was a girl learning how to knit from my mother and other women, I struggled a lot. The biggest problem was tension. When first trying to learn how to get even tension, I tried a lot of different ways of holding the yarn. I found if I wrapped it around too many fingers, it got way too tight and tangly. If I didnât wrap it around at least one, it was all loose and loopy and no consistency at all. It was really frustrating and I was pretty sure Iâd never master it.
Then, in my mid teens (long after my female relatives (and I) had nearly given up on me ever becoming a competent knitter), I decided to try again to teach my hands how to keep even knitting tension. I practiced this on a long, long âscarfâ type project (I never actually made it into a scarf â it was just for tension practice) which I would do while watching TV or just sitting and listening to music with friends. I didnât let myself pay attention to it or get frustrated, I just knitted garter stitch on and on and on â if I made a mistake I just kept going (didnât try to fix it). If it got tight, I just kept going, if it got loose, I kept going. I must have practiced on that green âscarfâ for months, not even attempting to make anything else, because all of my previous projects had been abject failures due to the tension issue. I knew there was no point continuing if I couldnât master tension. Luckily, I had the determination (and no deadline!) to keep at it for an entire winter whenever I had a spare few minutes between other activities. And by springtime, I had about 15 feet of âscarfâ, good tension and muscle memory in my hands. Hooray! Then I put the green scarf away and didnât take up knitting needles again for nearly 10 years! HAHA! But when I did start a real project for my first child, the muscle memory held and I never had tension issues again. Weird, but true!
How to organize yarn colors
Speaking of different colors of yarn. How do you keep yours untangled and organized? I use Starbucks bags! Yes, really! I brought home a couple of coffees one day with a sandwich laid on top and the barista gave me a bag with a divider inside because I had the dog with me and could not carry one of those cup trays. It is the perfect thing for holding multiple balls of yarn that Iâm using at the same time in a pattern. Iâll put the main color on my right and the contrast color(s) on my left (using 2 Starbucks bags) and it works like a charm! In the example on the right here, I just put a couple of balls from the next sweater into a bag to show you, but normally I would not have the grey in with the purple, because one is the main color and one is the CC. The excellent tutors on YouTube explain that wherever you place your wool colors will affect the dominance of that color in your finished pattern. So, it is important to plan which colors you want to hold in which hand and stick to that throughout the project. Main color for me goes to the right. Contrast color to the left. With a third color, that goes in the middle (I just angle the Starbucks bag so that the left and middle colors are properly positioned). It works!
The BIG MISTAKE
Ok, so I mentioned at the top that I nearly made a BIG MISTAKE on my sonâs sweater. Truth be told, I make mistakes on every single project I attempt â thatâs because I am learning as I go, and also sometimes mistakes just happen! â and this one was a doozy! Luckily, I caught it fairly quickly and only had to pull out part of a row to repair the mistake. Can you see what I nearly did!
YIKES! Good thing I caught this mistake or the entire pattern would have gone lopsided! (the blue stitches are one stitch off where they should be).
Fixed it!
Phew! Now they are lined up properly!
How did I make this mistake, do you ask? After all, it looks like the pattern says 2 brown 1 blue, 2 brown 1 blue etc and thatâs what I did! So what happened? Yes I DID follow the pattern, but hereâs what I actually did wrong. I put the row marker in the wrong place! It was one stitch off where it belonged. How did I manage to do that, you wonder? Well, it happened because after doing the tubular cast on, when I joined in the round and placed the marker, I accidentally placed it in the wrong place. That didnât matter too much until this point in the sweater, incredibly! If there was another place where it did matter, I apparently adjusted my stitches without even paying attention. Until this row. Knitting and the human brain are sometimes a mystery! Anyway, allâs well that ends well!
Stranding Tension & Catching Floats
Finally, I had made my way up to where the neckband will begin, in the dark brown color.
I took this picture to show the pleasing look of the stranded colorwork on the wrong side.
The method I use to keep the stranding nice and even and pretty like this is twofold.
First, I knit in the round with my right (knitted) side inside and the wrong (purled) side on the outside. This creates a slightly larger circumference on the wrong side of the fabric, which helps keep the stranding from getting too tight. In addition, I keep the stitches already knitted spread evenly on the right needle by adjusting them every 5-6 stitches or so, and that continuously moving spacing (not letting them get bunched up on the right hand needle) helps keep the tension of the stranding the correct looseness. I donât want it too tight OR too loose.
Second, for stretches of colored stitches that exceed 3 stitches in a row, I use the catching floats method to catch the stranding yarn up so that I donât have long long floats of yarn on the back of the fabric, just waiting to get caught on your hand as you try to don the finished garment. For the nicest even appearance of the caught floats, I decide how many stitches Iâm going to go before catching (never more than 3) and then I remember to consistently catch the floats on THAT number of stitches all along the row. So, for example, if I have a run of 1main color, 5 contrasting color, 1 mc 5cc⊠I will catch the MC float on the 3rd stitch of the cc run every single time.
AND, if there is a second row of that same pattern (1mc 5cc) I always change the catching stitch number on the second row to avoid a bump or gap that could happen from catching up the strand in the same place over two rows. So, if I catch the mc on the 3rd stitch of every cc run in the first row, I might catch the mc on the 2nd stitch of every cc run in the second row.
The Tubular Cast-off
Now for that neck band. My pattern did not call for a tubular cast-off, but ever since I discovered that method, I find I want to use it on every sweater, so I had to figure out for myself when to start it. Itâs easy enough to figure out if you measure how many rows you get to a cm or inch. Since a tubular cast-off is 4 rows of double knitting which looks like 2 rows of regular finished rib, I would start the tubular cast off when I figure I am at about the last 2 rows of the collar (which in cm or inches will depend on the weight of the yarn and your own knitting tension).
For this sweater, the neckband/collar is not a really wide one. It is meant to be 3cm to the finished edge. My knitting with this yarn and needle size has been getting about 2 rows to a centimeter, so once my neckband measured 2cm, I knew it was time to start the tubular cast-off. Susanne Bryanâs method is my favorite and she is so clear with her instructions. (She calls it tubular bind-off, fyi â sheâs an expert so thatâs probably the right name for it, but I canât stop saying âcast-offâ, sorry).
I worked the 4 rows of double knitting directly from the regular rib neckband. Just started the new row with the knit/slip method and continued for the four rows. Then, there is a method to close it off, using a darning needle and a finishing technique that is covered very nicely on the video I linked above. Itâs quite easy once you see how itâs done. and the finished neckband is so tidy and stretchy!
Washing & Blocking
I had to use one hand to take the picture, but normally Iâd be using both here.
Before I sew up sleeve seams, I like to block the sweater so that the edges of the sleeves sides will lie flat for a better seam. I forgot to mention that although this style of sweater is knitted in the round, including the sleeves, I am unable to master DPNs, so I knit my sleeves flat. I knit both at the same time on a large circular needle that I treat like straight needles (ie knit rows and purl rows) so that they will be identical. It does add the seam-sewing step to the end, but for me that is worth it to avoid having to use DPNs.
However, before I wash and block the sweater, I DO weave in all the loose yarn ends, except for the ones I plan to use in the sleeve and underarm seams. Since I am using 100% wool yarns, I donât want all those loose ends felting in the washing and blocking process!
The sweater âparcelâ
Before I put the sweater into a bath of very warm water, I fold it up neatly. This is really important, because once that sweater is soaking wet, it will weigh a lot and will stretch out of shape if I try to lift it up. SO, I fold the dry sweater in half and put the sleeves neatly on top and then fold it again lengthwise. The idea is to make it into a compact parcel that I can lift out of the water with two hands and prevent any part of the sweater from hanging down and stretching out of shape.
Unrolling the sweater inside the second towel
Then I lay the sweater parcel into the water bath and gently press down on it with both hands to push the air out of it. I keep doing that over and over until the air bubbles stop rising. Then let the sweater rest in the warm water for at least 20-30 minutes. It takes a while for all of the sweater to get thoroughly soaked.
When ready, drain the water out of the sink without disturbing the sweater. Press down gently but firmly on it to press out as much water as possible. Then gather the garment under your hands and lift it out as a parcel and put it down on a large absorbent towel. Gently unfold the sweater being careful not to stretch it and lay it flat on the towel, and roll it up inside the towel. Press down on the towel to get as much water out as you can. The towel will probably be soaked in no time. Unroll it and fold the sweater up again like a parcel, being careful not to stretch it!
Open another dry towel and put the sweater on it and repeat the process (unfold, roll, press).
Finally, unroll the towel and fold the sweater into a parcel again. Gather it up so that nothing hangs down and carry the sweater parcel to your blocking board or flat surface (covered with a towel) where you will dry the sweater. Unfold it carefully again and use your hands to press it into shape gently. Make sure the edges are straight and flat, the stitch patterns are even and the sizing is correct. If you need to, use blocking pins to hold seams flat.
Thatâs it for several days!
I blocked this sweater on Friday night and it is still not dry.
Heavy wool takes a long time to dry flat. Usually 4 or more days in my apartment. In winter when the air is dryer, it seems to take 3-4 days.
The last step will be to sew the sleeve seams and the underarm joins to the body. I have found a couple of terrific videos on how to do that.
For the sleeve seams, here is Susanne Bryanâs video on mattress seaming, which gives a gorgeous sleeve seam with not too much of a bump on the inside. It turns out nearly invisible â although with the increases a sleeve is not a straight stocking stitch edge, so there is a bit of visibility, I still think itâs an excellent way to finish those sleeves.
Here is the blocked sweater (sorry poor lighting â the only place where I have space to lay out a sweater/blocking board is in a dark corner. Sleeves are slightly wider than I would like, but when I sew the seams that will be a bit better. I think my son will like it!
For the underarms, here is an excellent video showing a method I had never seen before (but which experienced knitters probably use all the time â I am self-taught and kind of just flew by the seat of my pants when I was younger before YouTube. This new availability of teachers is such a game-changer!). Using this method, you can almost totally eliminate any gaps or holes AND the seam is almost invisible because it looks like the continuation of the knitting, similar to the mattress seaming.
After that, I will give the sweater to my son and hope it fits him! đ
This sweater was knitted using Lambâs Pride yarn â bulky weight 100% wool/mohair mix. I intended to knit them all using lopi wool, but I started during the pandemic and getting the Icelandic wool was really difficult. So, after using the blue/grey/black wool I had obtained before the pandemic, I switched to American wool from Nebraska (the Lambâs Pride). The Lambâs Pride is beautiful wool. I am satisfied with it. The two main differences between it and lopi are: 1) Lambâs Pride is uniformly spun, whereas lopi tends to get thinner and thicker and 2) lopi drapes more elegantly. while Lambâs Pride is a bit of a stiffer finished project. I think they both make beautiful sweaters.
I used a capful of Eucalan delicate/handwash fabric washing soap in the water before blocking. It has a nice eucalyptus scent (not strong at all â not even as strong as Iâd like, tbh!). Itâs OK to just use warm water without any cleaning agent. I prefer a light scent on my garments and also after all that knitting and putting it down on the floor etc, I just want to wash it while I am rinsing it. I followed Susanne Bryanâs suggestion and used very warm water for the rinse, not just lukewarm. Not hot! But nice and warm.
The Next Project
So, I mentioned that this sweater is one part of a project. My goal is to try to knit sweaters for all five of my adult children AND their partners â hopefully before this winter is over. I will also probably want to make a sweater for my grandchild in this style, too. Before I started this marathon project, I warmed up by knitting my grandchild a little sweater jacket with a zipper. It was really cute! So that is why he isnât already in this project â he got the first sweater already! đ
Now all my sons have sweaters, so it is time for my daughters! I find it easiest to knit in batches of similar sizing, which is why I did all the boys first. After my daughters, I will knit sweaters for my daughters-in-law and finally my sons-in-law.
First up is a sweater for my daughter who likes purple. Iâm going back to the first pattern that I used for the grey, blue and black sweater for eldest son. I really like that pattern and It never has 3 colors in the same row â YES!
But of course I am not going to leave well enough alone. đ Not only am I changing the yarn weight for this sweater (so I am making the pattern 30% larger to compensate), but I also plan to do some shaping, which the pattern doesnât call for.
Wish me luck! And if anyone would be interested in reading about the progress of the purple sweater, please let me know in the comments!
đ»đ Happy Sunday, WAYWO world! đđ»
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