Wendy Knits

3:00 a.m.

I am slowly regaining consciousness because a small, but substantial, warm, furry, purring being has plopped herself down on my chest and is now repeatedly shoving her head under my hand.

“Pet me! Worship me! Adore me!”

So of course I do. After fifteen minutes, Lucy decides she’s had enough and wanders off. Leaving me in a semi-stupor. That’s when the yarn dreams begin.

As I doze off, swatches invade my mind. Fat plaited cables and diamond patterns elbow gloriously colored snippets of fair isle out of the way. I’m pretty sure I can see a beefy celtic knot punch a fair isle swatch right in the peerie. And the lace! Lots and lots of lace! The lace swatches hang back uncertainly at first, afraid of the macho cables and aggressive brightly colored fair isles. Slowly, though, they approach. Eyelets on a stockinette background, feather and fan, picot edgings. All these swatches are climbing over each other, jockeying for position. Then I hear them.

“Knit me!”

“No, knit me first!”

“You have the perfect yarn for me!”

So I lay awake until the alarm goes off, thinking about swatches and patterns and design possibilities.

It’s not easy having voices in your head. Particularly when you feel compelled to do what they tell you. Fortunately, mine are telling me to knit.

Jaeger Silk

My Jaeger Silk is fingering weight — 7 st/inch. Too fine for the Lucy sweater. But fear not! I have some ideas swimming around in my subconscious. It’s those danged voices again! Telling me what to knit. Stay tuned.

By the way, it was an eBay acquisition.

Fiona, Rest in Peace.

It’s official. I’ve abandoned Fiona. It’s a great pattern for an adorable bag, but every time I look at it in progress, my hands and wrists ache. So Fiona has been frogged and the Mission Falls 1824 Cotton has been returned to the stash.

A moment of silence, please.

Lacy Lucy

But I am happily chugging along on the Lucy sweater. I’m on the second sleeve, as a matter of fact, which means that after that there is just the neckband and finishing work. She is coming down the home stretch, she is.

And that’s a good thing, because I’ve got a new design that’s working its way out of my fevered little brain onto paper.

Lucy sez:

“Pet me! Worship me! Adore me!”

It’s Monday, and I have no FO to report.

In looking over my blog, I realized that I’ve reported at least one FO every Monday since April 12.* And today I have nothing, zilch, zero, nada.

I do have progress, though. I worked on both my current sweater projects.

He-e-e-ere’s Lucy! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.)

Some progress on the front.

I am really chomping at the bit to get this sweater done, because I think I’m going to love wearing it. That’s the reason I designed it — because I wanted a sweater that looks like it, but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted in existing patterns.

And here is Ingeborg.

I’m finding the yarn to be rather splitty. Surprisingly so. I’ve knitted with Daletta a lot, and have never had splitting issues with it in the past. I wonder if Dale has changed the way it’s made? I need to dig out some old Daletta and compare and contrast. Perhaps part of the problem is that knitting black yarn on an ebony needle is not the smartest thing to do. So I swtiched to a bamboo needle.

On Designing mit Software

I do have some knitting design software — I’ve got Sweater Wizard, Stitch Painter, Stitch & Motif Maker, and AranPaint — full versions of all of them. The only one I really use is the Stitche & Motif Maker, for creating charts. I actually prefer to figure out designs and do the math without benefit of software.

In Spring, a Young Woman’s Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of Lace

(Alfred Lord Tennyson, I apologize to you.)

And those of you sniggering behind your hands at my use of “young, ” stop it. I can see you, you know.

Why am I thinking about lace? Why am I dreaming about lace?

I went through a lace period a few years ago, when I made a pile of lace shawls and scarves.

Lately I’ve been having lacy thoughts again. What goes around comes around, I guess.

Kitty Lucy

Getting ready for the new week! Happy Monday!

*April 12 — Colinette poncho
April 19 — Flora
April 26 — Brown poncho, Checkerboard shell, Giotto tank
May 3 — Bucket hat, Haiti
May 10 — Pink/green poncho
May 17 — Audrey

Or at least the start of a sleeve.

Finished the back of Lucy, started on a sleeve. Just for grins. It’s coming along nicely and I’m very happy with the way it’s turning out.

Ingeborg

My slow progress continues.

It’s sort of like when you have a box of Very Nice chocolates. You ration them out, one per day (if you have any self-control, that is). That’s how my Ingeborg knitting is going. I’m rationing it out. I may only knit a little teeny bit each day. But I may reward myself on weekends with more Inge-knitting.

And an interesting comment on my front steek in yesterday’s comments:

Your motivation for your steek technique puzzled me, because I don’t think I strain the cut threads at all when I pick up stitches at a narrow steek. My understanding of the Dale instructions was to use the crochet hook to pick up stitches using a new piece of yarn along the back. When I learned to knit in Norway, I was instructed to pick up stitches by simply twisting a bit of the yarn from each of the existing stitches near the edge. That was difficult and did strain the stitches. The new thread along the back side of the work, on the other hand, makes for a very even flat band, and is a quick process. If the instructions say what the total number to pick up should be, I count the number of rows to calculate the ratio necessary. Eg, instructions say 150 stitches need to be created, and the garment has 200 rows, so I insert my crochet hook to pick up the yarn through 3 out of 4 stitches up along the steek. But I’m tall, so I sometimes make my sweaters longer. In that case, I measure my gauge vertically and horizontally, so I know what percent of rows need to be picked up. If the placket should have 30 stitches in 10 cm, I might have about 40 rows in 10 cm on the body, so I would create a new stitch in 3 out of 4 of the rows as I work my way up. Depending on the project, that ratio might be closer to 4 out of 5 (or some other easily used ratio). When you do it this way with a new piece of yarn on the back, you have a nice even line on the back to sew the folded placket edge to, as well (with exactly the same number of stitches). If you end up with a few too many stitches (compared to your pattern repeat) you can always knit two together a few times evenly spaced up the line on the first row.

Interesting! That certainly sounds like a good way to do it. I looked at the Dale book that Ingeborg is in, along with a few other Dale books, and none of them say anything about using a new piece of yarn at the back while you pick up the stitches. They all simply tell you to use a crochet hook in a size smaller than your working needle, and use it to pick up and knit x number of stitches for every x inches. I’m not saying all Dale patterns have these same brief instructions, but all the ones I looked at last night did.

Generally these instructions are in the front of the pattern book under general instructions. Dale patterns are, I think, notorious, for the sketchiness of their finishing instructions.

Something I always find amusing in Dale finishing instructions is when they tell you to sew something “neatly.” Just once I’d like to see them tell you to sew something sloppily.

Oooh! New Stuff!

Check out yesterday’s entry on the Knit Happens blog — they got in another cool summer yarn: Lana Grossa Elastico, the baby sister of Lana Grossa Point (the yarn I used for my Tina and Kristine is using for her Ta Ta Tank). I’m all excited because Kristine special-ordered the yarn for me to make the tank pictured on the Knit Happens blog, and decided to order some more colors for the shop. I’m gonna make my tank out of the copper color pictured, with the contrast in chocolate brown, which hasn’t come in yet.

My only gripe — couldn’t Lana Grossa come up with a better name for the yarn than Elastico?

Or is it just me?

Lucy in the Kitty Day Spa

Last night she was doing kitty yoga.