Studio Marlowe

I’ve been kind of avoiding posting frequent progress pictures of the matchmaker sweater this week because I wanted to have one big ta-da! post. So, here’s the latest:

Not bad, eh? A few more rows and I’ll be halfway to the armholes. The pre-armhole part of the body is definitely going to be the longest and most time consuming part, so getting so far on it really feels like a milestone.  I strung some of the stitches onto other needles last night so I could try it on, and I’m pleased to report that it looks like it’s actually going to fit.  So ripping and restarting was definitely a smart move.  Although, if it hadn’t been fitting this time (I was a little concerned it might be too small), I think I would have looked into getting a rib removed before ripping again!

While I may not be buying much in the way of yarn at the moment, there’s no restriction on accessories. Especially when it’s an awesome accessory like this one:

I found this scale while out at the thrift store this weekend (along with a springform cake pan and a new mug for the office, to replace the one that shattered when I dropped it in the sink last week). It’s intended to be a postage scale, but of course, you know what I’m planning on using it for. Weighing yarn so I know how much I’ve used. I’m thinking this’ll be especially useful for something like Anne, where I’ve used a couple of partial balls and I’m not sure how partial they were. I imagine it’ll also be useful for the various recipes I have kicking around with the ingredients in metric.

Plus, it was only $3.93 (yes, that’s right…the thrift store has a really *odd* pricing scheme on some items).

Well, it was a kind of busy weekend. Knitting-wise, I mainly made a fair bit of progress on the afghan:

Non-knitting wise, I made some small improvements to the apartment, like hanging these pictures:

They’re a set of photos I took this summer in Utah. I made them black and white, and had 8×10 prints made (which is surprisingly not too expensive). I’m not wild about the frames, but they look better with the black and white shots than I was expecting (when I got them they had some Georgia O’Keeffe pieces from a calendar; it was NOT a good match), and they have the nice additional bonus of having been free. I’m keeping an eye out for some more free/thriftable frames so I can put some stuff up on the other walls as well.

That pretty much sums up how progress on the matchmaker sweater feels sometimes:

It is actually getting longer, but it takes a while to do each row.  And then of course the length added by each row is so small…but it’ll be worth it in the end, right?

I thought I’d put this photo up to show how I’ve decided to deal with the waist decreases on this piece.  I was originally trying to work out a way of working the decreases into the main motifs, but I didn’t particularly like any of the options I was coming up with.  So instead I came up with a completely separate decrease motif.  I think the effect is pretty good–definitely better than anything else I was considering.

As I posted the other day, I’m going for a tetris-y look with my scrap afghan. Today I’m going to start posting some tutorials for some of the pieces that are not just your basic square. Today’s piece is going to be pretty basic, a small square “L”, worked from the outside edge in (you can also work this piece from the inside out, which will be the subject of a later tutorial):

The entire afghan is worked using the mitered square technique. In the case of garter stitch (which I am using), you work a mitered square by casting on an even number of stitches, knitting half the stitches minus two, working two decreases, and knitting to the end of the row. Knit back and repeat again. So if you were to cast on 10 20 stitches (thanks Sarah!), your first row would be: k8, ssk, k2tog, k8. Then your next RS row would be K7, ssk, k2tog, k7. And so on.

My afghan is worked on multiples of 15. So for a small square, I cast on 30 stitches, and for a large square, 60. All the numbers I’ll be providing from here on out are assuming that you are also working in multiples of 15, but these could be easily altered to accommodate a different multiple if your gauge is especially larger/small, or you just want a different look.

For this piece, you will need to pick up/cast on a total of 90 stitches:

The diagram above shows where the cast on edges of each square are placed (thick white lines, 15 stitches each), and the eventual shape of the squares, plus the diagonal that the decreases are centered on. Remember if you are picking up from an already knit piece, to consider how your finished piece will be shaped. For example, I am going to need to cast on 15 stitches on the lower right hand side (which I’ll do with a backwards loop cast-on when I knit the first row and get to that end of the piece), rather than picking them up from that adjacent square, because they will need to be at a right angle to the other 15 stitches I have already picked up from the square.

So, once you’ve cast-on, it’s time to start knitting. These instructions are assuming you already have all 90 stitches on the needle. If you have to cast on stitches at the end of the row, my approach is to cast on all the stitches using backwards loop and count the cast on as row 1, then to work the row 1 decreases on row 2 (then work all the following decreases as usual, on the odd numbered rows).

So:

Row 1: k13, ssk, k2tog, k26, ssk, k2tog, k26, ssk, k2tog, k13

Row 2 (and all even rows): k all stitches.

Row 3: k12, ssk, k2tog, k24, ssk, k2tog, k24, ssk, k2tog, k12

Row 5: k11, ssk, k2tog, k22, ssk, k2tog, k22, ssk, k2tog, k11

Row 7: k10, ssk, k2tog, k20, ssk, k2tog, k20, ssk, k2tog, k10

Row 9: k9, ssk, k2tog, k18, ssk, k2tog, k18, ssk, k2tog, k9

Row 11: k8, ssk, k2tog, k16, ssk, k2tog, k16, ssk, k2tog, k8

Row 13: k7, ssk, k2tog, k14, ssk, k2tog, k14, ssk, k2tog, k7

Row 15: k6, ssk, k2tog, k12, ssk, k2tog, k12, ssk, k2tog, k6

Row 17: k5, ssk, k2tog, k10, ssk, k2tog, k10, ssk, k2tog, k5

Row 19: k4, ssk, k2tog, k8, ssk, k2tog, k8, ssk, k2tog, k4

Row 21: k3, ssk, k2tog, k6, ssk, k2tog, k6, ssk, k2tog, k3

Row 23: k2, ssk, k2tog, k4, ssk, k2tog, k4, ssk, k2tog, k2

Row 25: k1, ssk, k2tog, k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, ssk, k2tog, k1

Row 27: *ssk, k2tog, repeat from * 2 times

Row 29: sl 1, k2tog, psso

Cut yarn and thread through remaining stitch.

We’re having cold, wet, miserable weather here right now. And I *love* it. It’s perfect for knitting and wearing knit sweaters. Right now I’m especially loving this one:

that I knit last year. I brought it back out after my visit to NC in December and I admit, I was really uncertain whether or not it would get any wear. It is, after all, 100% wool, in a worsted weight, with the colorwork making some parts doubly thick. But it’s really been a lifesaver the past few days, keeping me warm in the rain and the wind. In case anyone is wondering, this is a Vogue pattern (from 2004), and I used Elann’s Peruvian Highland Wool to knit it. I know I always want to know how sweaters/yarns hold up after the initial “YAY! I’M DONE!” euphoria, so…

1. The sweater is great. I get lots of compliments (from non-knitters). I left off the sequins/beads the pattern calls for, which I think was a good idea. I did, however, add the buckle on the neckline and I’m glad I did as it adds a cute and unusual feature to the sweater without going overboard. If I were making this sweater over again, the main thing I would change would be to lengthen the body. I was forced to make it to exactly the length called for in the pattern because I was afraid I was running out of brown yarn (I had to make an extra wide lime green stripe up at the top to squeak out the length). And while it’s an okay length right now, it would be perfect with another inch or maybe even two.

2. Yarn. As everyone who’s been knitting for any length of time knows, Elann’s ‘house brand’ yarns are probably some of the cheapest natural fiber yarns out there (along with Knitpicks). And this yarn was no exception–shipping included, the sweater cost around $35 to make. For the price, I think this yarn is pretty high quality. I have had some pilling around the underarms, but it’s not too out of hand, and there is very little pilling anywhere else on the piece. And I’ve worn the sweater a LOT. I’ve definitely knit stuff with more expensive yarn that had worse pilling problems. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m not buying yarn online anymore, I would probably order this stuff again.

So that’s the deal with THAT sweater. I’ll have to take some “now” pictures of this and some of my other well-worn pieces and post them along with reviews of durability and whatnot.

Well, with my knitting at least….

I finally hit the point on the matchmaker sweater that I had to rip out at last time:

Yay!  I’m hoping I can finish up to the end of the waist decreases soon.  I’ve been trying to come up with a name for this piece as “matchmaker fair isle” is a bit of a mouthful (also, I suppose, not technically correct, but “stranded matchmaker pullover” is even more of a mouthful).

In other news, the afghan is coming along also, but no pictures today.  I’m working on putting together some tutorials for the tetris-y pieces though, so stay tuned!

I did a little more work on the scrap afghan over the weekend:

Orata commented that it reminds her of Tetris, and I definitely agree (although actually, I was more of a Welltris girl—anyone else?). I’m have a lot of fun thinking up different shapes from the Tetris game that I can actually knit as one piece, using the mitered square technique. Is there any interest in a tutorial/informal pattern on some of the more “unusual” shapes?

I know I’ve been posting infrequently these days, but it seems a bit pointless to make posts like “2 more rows of ribbing!!”. Stranded colourwork is slow going, especially when you’re doing it in a 4-ply yarn. And extra especially when you have to rip a lot of it out! Anyway, I’ve restarted the sweater, and I’m almost halfway through the first pattern repeat:

By my calculation, the body up to the armholes should be a little over 3 repeats, which means I’m approximately 1/3 into the pre-armhole portion of things. Then of course at the armholes there will be all sorts of decreasing so I expect things will speed up a bit. And then there are the solid colored sleeves, which I imagine will practically fly off the needles in comparison. All that will be followed by the finishing, where I’ll be slicing into my very first steeks. That’s right, I’ve had it with this back and forth colorwork madness. This project is going to be 100% in the round.

I think I wrote something last week about not starting new projects until I finished something. Ummmmmm:

In my defense, I needed something *really* mindless that I could do in the dark and didn’t involve the possibility of double pointed needles, as my schedule for this quarter involves a half-hour (each way) carpool to one of my classes.

In case you’re wondering or it isn’t clear….it’s eventually going to be a blanket. Like pretty much anyone who’s been knitting for any length of time, I have all sorts of oddballs kicking around: project leftovers, that one ball of something I *had* to get, that one ball of something else somebody gave me, etc. None of it really enough for a project in it’s own right. A while back I took a lot of my leftovers in blue/gray/brown sort of shades and made a log cabin afghan, which turned out pretty well. HOWEVER, I made the mistake of doing it on size 6 needles, and doing very narrow stripes, which made it take forever (and technically, I still haven’t sewn in all the ends). This time, I am learning from my mistakes a bit (and the color them is also different, obviously). I’ve bumped up to size 8 needles, which definitely speeds things along (and are still a suitable size for the vast majority of the yarn I’m planning to use). And there’s much more flexibility in terms of square sizes–I can do a small one if I only have a little bit of a particular one, or a large one if I want to use up a lot of yarn. And there should be minimal sewing as I’m simply picking up for new squares off the edges of old ones in most instances.

The last scrap afghan took me three years–I hope this one moves a little faster!