KPP Fair Isle Cardigan Knitalong

NEEDLES

Hello ladies!  I am cast on.  My Addi Turbos were too slippery so I ordered Addi Natura's bamboo circulars.  The join is terrible (a problem I do not have with the Turbos).  Any suggestions?

Here's the sweater, stitched and basted, ready to be cut open.

Here she is, all snipped open. The inside really is quite pretty, isn't it?

 

Thse little fellows are inspecting the button holes.

I'm very pleased with this mitered corner in the button band. There is a matching one on the right side, where the button holes begin.

This is something I'm very unhappy with. This corner of sweater bottom and button band edge is very rough. I'm planning on continuing around the sweater as I cast off,and when I get to the other end I'll start doing a 3 stitch I-cord around the bottom of the sweater. I hope it will give everything a finished look.

Here is where I kitchner stitched the underarm seam from live stitches placed on holding yarn. 

This is where I am as of this morning. I'm doing a 2 stitch i-cord bind off around the button band and neck band.

Working on the button band

I've cut those steeks and am knitting on that button band. I don’t have the buttons and am slightly undecided about how big to make the button holes. I’m on the row where the button hole must be made. I think a 4 stitch button hole ought to be big enough for most any button I might buy. I have lots of buttons - thousands of buttons - but I don’t have enough of either brown or red buttons of the correct size for this sweater. I could just make the button holes and buy buttons to fit. I may do that or I may wait till I see what’s for sale in town today. I don’t want anything fancy for buttons, nor anything heavy. The KipFee is fancy enough. I also struggled with how many buttons I’ll want. 7 is the usual in a sweater for an adult female, this pattern calls for 14 little ones. I marked 7 places and it looks okay but I believe I’ll make 9. More buttons means smaller holes. I’ll make a 4 stitch button hole and see what it looks like - if I don’t like it I can rip it out and make a 3 stitch one.

Because darling wise clever generous Meg Swansen made the most wonderful video on Cardigan Details and I have watched it and remembered about that one row button hole. So I can make one and rip it out without having to rip out a whole row of button band stitches. She even shows you how to do the clever knitting math to figure out how to space your button holes. Meg is a counter and I have secret counting tendencies myself. (Yep. I count how many rows I knit in the body of a sock and then knit that same number on the second sock.)

No photos today. I have some "work in progress" photos, but I'm just so close to the end I want to wait to post photos. I think, weather permitting, I'll have pictures on Wednesday.

Almost done!

Well, my dears, here are some more photos with accompanying verbiage. Here is a shot showing the shoulder fit - unblocked, mind you - so pay no attention to the wobbly stitching. Water will smooth this out a lot.

Note that the front neckline looks just perfect for adding a turtle neck. In other words, its way too high and I shall have to put in that collar steek after all. When I was first knitting the shoulder portion I planned to cut out that large chunk of laboriously knit

Fair Isle

work. Then, when I began the triangular shoulder shaping it looked as if I could just knit the shoulder part starting where the front neck opening should begin and skip the cutting.

<em>Wrong.</em> I would have to have begun the neckline shaping at the top of the green band to do that. I would never <strong><em>(EVER!)</em></strong> have knit that much stranded colorwork flat, but I could have done an Elizabeth Zimmermann kangaroo pouch. Only, I didn’t. So I’ll have to cut. I comfort myself with the knowledge that I had less purling back in stranded colorwork and less cutting to do than originally planned. I am extraordinarily pleased with the back.

This is how I handled the color changes.

<em>Ooops – forgot to photograph that. I’ll show you next time.</em>

<em></em>

This is how I wish I’d handled the color changes.

<em>Ooops – forgot to photograph that. I’ll show you next time too.</em>

I’ve done a lot of

Fair Isle

knitting in small things; mittens, hats, pull-over yokes. This is only the second all over the whole durn sweater fair isle I’ve even done and it’s at 8 st. to the inch, not 5. Without thinking I just did what I do when I do what I do: drop one color, pick up another. Weave it in at the end. I wish I’d started wrapping the new colors around the working yarns at the beginning of each steek, swapped colors in mid-steek, and carried the old colors to the end of the steek. Then I could have just snipped off the dangling bits, crocheted my steek and jumped right into button band knitting. Now I have to do something about all those dangling ends and loose stitches and bummer and all.

Eh. So be it. What I will do is:

<strong>1.</strong> tie off each end

<strong>2.</strong> machine stitch the center steek stitch

<strong>3.</strong> snip off all the loose bits close to the machine stitching.

As for the button band, well, hmm. You must know that I am a devoted follower of <strong>EZ</strong>, though I do not think I am a blind one. I can hear her saying in her clipped English accent, "I can’t see why they use ribbing for button bands. Don’t do it! <em>Gaaaaahtah</em> stitch is the thing for button bands."

Since I have done so few cardigans, I have very little experience and even less of an opinion about it. But I am developing opinions swiftly, for I am swatching. Here is a ribbing swatch done on #2 needles.

And #3’s.

I prefer the ribbing done on #2’s but I don’t really like the ribbing, period. I believe, at least in the case of this sweater, <strong>EZ </strong>is correct. Certainly, with neither swatch was I tempted to include the color knitting - neither the one suggested in the pattern nor the one I used in the cuffs.

I really like those cuff colors. So here is a<em> gaaaahtah</em> stitch swatch that includes the cuff colors.

Here it is pinned to the sweater front, right down the center, along with a view of the coordinating cuffs.

Here it is pinned around as a neck band. I had thought it might be too wide for a neck band, but I like the width.

I'm pretty confident about what to do next. The only thing I want to check is the gauge on that garter stitch band. I would like to see how it looks knit on #2 needles. If I didn't <em>have</em> #2 needles, I wouldn't bother to check this, but since I do, I'll knit another button band swatch and make a final decision.

I'm also going to check out Meg Swansen's video <strong>Cardigan details</strong> and watch it tonight. Just to beef up my confidence, you know. I have tomorrow off because I am working on Saturday. Who knows where I shall be on this sweater by Monday?

Goodness! I'm going to need buttons!!

Good knitting to you all.

First Sleeve is Finished!

I've finished the first sleeve, finally!  When I first started it, it seemed like it was taking forever, but the further I got into the decreases, the quicker it seemed to go (duh!).  Now I'm ready to steek the other armhole and pick up stitches for sleeve number two!  I'm thinking about steeking the front and collar once the sleeve is started so I can try it on to check the sleeve length.  I have somewhat long arms, and its so annoying when my sleeves barely cover my wrist.  I started the first sleeve with the green band, which is one band higher than the pattern calls for.  I haven't decided yet, but I will keep you posted on my progress.

 

I have also been thinking about the neckline steek, after reading Kate's worries about the curved collar steek.  I'm thinking about drafting some sort of pattern or template with the neckline shape and then transferring that outline to the knitting, probably with a running stitch of waste yarn.  Then I would have a guideline for the reinforcement and steeking so both sides of the collar / neckline will be uniform.  Any thought?

SLEEVE CAP JOY

On Sunday morning I had a bad reaction to some medicine and was a little wobbly all day. Then, when I finally sat down to work on TheKipFee I discovered

GASP -

Horrors!

A Math error. I knew that I had only 14 sleeve cap stitches left to consume, but I kept figuring the row number as if I had 16 stitches left. I kept thinking of those decrease stitches as sleeve stitches even though I knew they were body stitches. So all the lovely back of the sweater had to be ripped out. I didn't discover this till I'd knit the right front shoulder, when the hole at the top of the sleeve cap popped up and laughed at me.

I took Monday off from all knitting and this morning....

Eureka!

Even for TheQueen of Loquacity, there are times when pictures are worth so much more. Today I give you:



Two shoulder views - the first one is an enhanced photo that has slightly more true colors. The second one shows the little blips where I did short row wrap&turns. They are not wanted, and will not show up when worn and besides, I think they'll also block out completely. I just wanted them visible for the record.


Here you can also see where the short rows occured and the shape a couple of pairs of those magic babies creates. You see how the sweater widens on both sides of the seam. This will make it conform to the slope of the shoulder from neck towards arm. Lawsee I love short rows!


Here you see the last front and back stitch on the body eating up the sleeve. Notice the slope in the lavender and yellow areas. Those end stitches stop angling and lie flat as they consume sleeve stitches when the colorways turn to the plain buff, striped tiger brown and gold and plain buff color again (Twig,Fawn, Yellow and Twig).


Here they are meeting in the middle.

Another shot.

Can you imagine how pleased I am with this? This is the point in my knitting where a sweater often defeats me and retires to triumphant, but wretched misery to become future nourishment for guilt and moths in the UFO bin. I knew the knitting should turn out this way, but after Sunday's mind loss and the subsequent discovery of a Math Error I could feel the insidious creep of doubt and fear pushing up tendrils of defeat into my normal confident frontal lobe.

Happily I was triumphant instead and The KipFee will be all the better for it.

Two tips though, for anyone wanting to try this method.

First off – don’t be lazy and leave any dormant stitches on loose circular needles. The wise thing to do is to thread a long piece of yarn through all those loose stitches and tie it into a circle. I seldom do this because I resent having to pick stitches off of yarn and back onto a needle. It’s a tedious process that you can by-pass if you leave your dormant knitting on needles. The down side is that all those wretched needle tips flop around and catch in your knitting, tangle in the working yarn, tangle in any loose ends that you haven’t woven in. Leaving your dormant stitches on needles is the lazy man’s way and it’s always more work in the end than doing it the wise, but slow, tortoise way.

Second tip – do the 3-needle bind off with a separate fairly short double point needle. 8 inches long would be good. My other bad lazy man’s way is to use the dangling end of one of the circular needles in the stitches being bound off. With worsted weight at 4 or 5 stitches to the inch you probably only have 15 or so stitches to do and the thicker yarn is less prone to slide off a needle when you’re manipulating the other end. At 8 stitches to the inch I had durn near 40 stitches and they were as recalcitrant as naughty 2 year olds. Again, I was too lazy to stop and go hunt down another needle. Especially when I already had a lap full of them!

Left shoulder front to knit and attach to left shoulder back and I am done with all but the bands. This is a happy day.

Yarn weirdnesses

OK, this has happened twice now so I'm curious if it happened to anybody else.

When I was working with the Bark color, I came to a section where the yarn was cleanly broken in two. No knot, just a clean break. So I joined in the yarn where it was broken and then - a few yards later - it wasn't broken but one of the two plies was broken. So I broke it and joined in again. I was annoyed but it seemed like a one-off thing so I let it go. "Bark" has been fine since that stage.

Now I'm working with Blush and exactly the same thing happened, approximately the same number of yards into the ball!!

Has anybody else had this, or have a theory about what might be going on here? I see no evidence of moths - we're not talking about wide scale devastation or a chewed look, but a clean break followed by a half-break several yards later. And that's it. And I don't see any egg casings or other evidence of insect life, the yarn is clean.

Could it be the paper band cut the yarn somehow?

Another possiblity, although I think this is remote, is that my cat got ahold of the balls and bit them. But I don't remember ever seeing her walking around with a ball of Palette. In fact, my current cat isn't all that interested in my knitting, unlike former kitties.

I've had the yarn for ages so there is no point contacting KnitPicks about it. But I just wonder if somebody has a theory about what might cause that kind of defect.