Random Geekery

If you are a fellow geek, you're gonna love this...

The Garter Stitch Cardigan

So I finally managed to snag my photographer for a few minutes, tonight, and get a few shots of the completed garter stitch cardigan.

This cardigan was a really simple knit -- not much for shaping or anything -- but is pretty satisfying once it's finished. The whole thing is garter stitch, so I didn't have to purl once the whole time: great tv and pub knitting. And it's a nice light weight, since it is made of sock yarn.


When I decided to make this cardigan, I went to my LYS and poked through their sock yarns for a while, trying to find the perfect one. They had the yarn called for in the pattern (Garnstudio Fabel) but not in a colour scheme that appealed to me. I found another one that I liked, but alas, not enough in stock. Then I fell in love with the colours in this Supersocke. The combo of greens with pinks has always been a favourite of mine, and these ones really pop. The repeat is nice and long, so I knew I would get beautiful stripes.


Turns out that the length of the repeat was a blessing and a curse. While it looks great on one half of the cardigan, and on the opposite sleeve, the body of the right side got a little funky. The repeat wasn't long enough to stripe there (since every row goes all the way from the front hem up over the shoulder and down to the back hem) so it started to pool. As I mentioned in a previous post, I started to alternate two balls at that point, to try to minimize the pooling. It worked well, but the stripes along that side still were very thin and random, rather than nicely defined like the rest of the sweater. I could obsess about this, but I'm choosing to look at it as a design element, instead.


The one alteration I made with this cardigan was to narrow the sleeves a bit. I mentioned somewhere along the way that they were way too wide and baggy, so I narrowed them by a bit on the first side I knit (right side.) Then I just revamped everything a bit to account for that, and measured twice (or three times) as I replicated my changes on the left side. Frankly, I made it a bit harder than it needed to be, but I like the sleeve as it is now: a bit loose but not hanging in my soup.

The sweater is finished off with a cute little crochet edging out of a double strand of bright pink alpaca. I am not much of a crocheter, but it still went fast, and I am really proud of how it turned out. I think it makes a nice finish (and of course is silky soft.)


Lastly, I thought of some sweet buttons I had in my sewing box, for a sewing project that I gave up on long ago. They were the perfect shade of green and really look fantastic on this. Blissful.

the Aftermath

I managed to leave the fiber festival with only a few things: a knitting pattern book, a weaving pattern book, a couple of sets of buttons, and a lovely cake of laceweight alpaca. I have a plan for this little bit of yarn, and it will be lovely.

Last night, after a Herculean session of sweater finishing, I managed to complete the garter stitch cardigan. I have to admit that I usually choose projects that don't require much finishing, so sitting for hours sewing pieces together isn't something I'm used to. I don't have photos of it yet, but it turned out pretty awesome.

All I can leave you with today is a photo of the gauge swatches for my next two cottony summer tops.

Onward.

Teal Stripe Socks

Has it been a week already? The socks are hot off the needles, and the cardigan is following closely behind...


These are pretty basic toe-up socks, using the Universal Toe-Up sock pattern, which I have used many times before. I did the short row toe and heel that is described in the pattern, with a basic stripe in the rest of the sock, using a one-row teal stripe on a three-row grey background. I was trying to find a ratio that would use the two colours equally, when the teal was also used for the toe, heel, and ribbing accents. I came pretty close to evenly using both of them.


Although there are a million sock patterns out there -- lacy or cabley or ribby -- I keep coming back to this very basic pattern in a simple stockingette. It makes a snug and comfortable sock, and is such simple quick knitting. The thin little stripe adds some interest, and also makes it easy to knit them to match, since you can count the repeats on the first sock, to make the second one identical. I've had this yarn for ages, with precisely this design in mind, and chose to do it now as just a fast, easy knit to take a little bite out of my yarn stash -- a good thing, since I am spending the afternoon at a fiber festival tomorrow, and who knows what I may return with from there...

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

The weather was beautiful today, warm and breezy, the scent of petrichor is lingering in the night air, and I have some satisfying knitting in my lap.

There is a beauty, isn't there, in the simplicity of a thinly knitted stripe: the dainty little zig zag of a single row of stockingette, tiptoeing across the background.

Fraggle Socks

This morning I put the final touches to the Fraggle Squiggle socks. Turns out they took me just two weeks to make, which I think is pretty good, considering I've also been working pretty steadily on both the garter stitch cardigan and my Fresh Squeezed Quilt.

The Handmaiden Casbah was a fantastic yarn to use -- that 9% cashmere makes it decadently soft and the colours are breathtakingly vibrant (much better than I can make them look, here.) Love.


Of course the stitch pattern is almost totally obscured by the colour changes in the yarn, but I don't really mind, since the colours are so gorgeous. Maybe someday I'll take another crack at this pattern, with a yarn that is more solid. That way you'll be able to see the stitch pattern, all the yarnovers and the bubbles and the little squiggly rows of decreases...

So cozy and soft...

Diversions

One of my work friends is having a birthday party on the weekend, at a Roller Derby match. It reminded me that I had a metre of super cool Roller Derby girl fabric stored away in the stash bins, so I pulled it out and made a little purse, today. I didn't use a pattern, just made it up as I went. If I redid it, I would change some things, like the angle of the folds in the fabric, and the width and circumference of the top band... but it's still pretty cute as it is.


Sewing was an adventure, by the way. I was cutting and piecing fabric on my coffee table, for pete's sake. And if that isn't bad enough, I had to set up the sewing machine on our little rolling butcher block. I really need to find a studio space somewhere or something.