Category: Knitting

I ran into a sale of Bamboo Pop and got some colors I wouldn’t normally work with to use as accents. I am firmly of the motto there is no such thing as too many colors and I adore Bamboo Pop. Win win! You never know when odd colors are going to develop into interesting projects.

A while back I made a top down seamless tank for myself with no picked up stitches and I love the fit. Mindy tried it on and wanted it (NOT her colors) so over the last couple weeks I did a repeat of my tank pattern for Mindy in colors that highlight her particular beauty.

I didn’t have quite enough yarn in the necessary colors for the length Mindy likes so I added the dregs of Clover from Amanda’s latest tank and Hot Pink from something I was working on for me, both colors that are in the Happy Birdie variegated.

I’m really pleased with how it came out. I worked the top in Turquoise, started helix knitting adding the Happy Birdie. When the Turquoise ran out I switched to the little bit of clover I had left. When the Clover was done I switched to Hot Pink. I really wish I’d had enough to finish out the tank in Hot Pink. I was out and Mindy was fine with Turquoise. ‘Nough said. I think it gives the tank a layered look which isn’t a bad thing.

I’ve got a lot of different projects in the air. I’m making a cowl necked sweater for MIndy with slip pockets, a summer tunic for me (years long project), a summer tank for the young lady who cleans my house, a gradient sweater (still not sure where this one’s going) and a new project, a long sleeved duster using Louisa Harding’s Girandola (discontinued yarn).

The duster I’m envisioning is a complete “knit from the hip” effort on US7 needles. I’m making the collar and decorative facings/hems in Bamboo Pop Denim, a yarn I normally knit on US4. Denim is a colorway that almost exactly matches the blue in the Louisa Harding. The Bamboo Pop yarn knits up into is a bit heavier/thicker but a test knit resulted in a relatively compatible gauge with the Girandola on the selected needle size. The resulting fabric is very relaxed and flowy, perfect for a long duster.

I have the collar well started. I looked at the size and though it would be just too big . . . but a test fit shows it’s very close to, if not perfectly right on for fit.

This will be an interesting project.

I’m working on a . . . heck, I don’t even know what to call it . . . for my sister (the near one, not the far one). I saw a something I thought would be an interesting base (Sheltered), a kind of poncho thing with a hood. Rather than knit it up in pieces and sew it together (you KNOW I hate that) I thought I’d knit it top down and make the changes I wanted made. So that’s what I’m working on. It’s turning out to be a very interesting project. The big sloppy fit is intentional, I just need Mindy to test fit it to see if it’s going to work. My icord end grafting is getting better!

I got wild and spent $180 on hand dyed bamboo cotton yarn. It came and the colors were truly glorious . . . and the weight was WAY too heavy for me to wear, a dk weight closer to worsted than to sport. Picture me crying. So, I knit a shrug and sent it to my sister. She loves the idea, loves the colors but has trouble with the fit. <sigh>

This project has the distinction of being the most frogged completed project. I’ve made things and gotten right to the end and frogged them (one big frog). Not this project. OMGosh. Frog, knit, frog, knit, frog, knit. I was so glad to get done! It came out fabulous but . . . OMGosh.

I’m going to remake this in Bamboo Pop. Without the cardi bit. I don’t know why I thought doing this as a cardigan/shrug was going to work for me. I *hate* flappy clothing. The idea though . . . that was pretty stupendous. Definitely worthy.

I’m still playing with the “just guessing” design. I like it a lot and there’s lots to play with.

This is my latest effort along those lines. I frogged it a couple times to get the mosaic and armhole/sleeve increases to play nicely together.

The yarn is Bamboo Pop (my favorite for sweaters) in Royal (the solid), Orchid Smash for the wide divider stripe, black and On Parade (discontinued . . . I’m crying over this one) for the mosaic.

I’ve finished playing with my conti-something shoulder. I know, I know, famous last words. This summer I’m going to try to produce a series of videos on how I build the sweater top down to the armholes, all the math, all the sneaky bits, what makes it fit so well . . . all that stuff. We’ll see how I do.

I’ve been making day dresses to wear around the house, loose, sleeveless knitted tops with commercially knitted jersey skirts. On cool mornings I can add a sweater and I’m comfy. To get the skirt for these dresses I’ve been diving into a bin of clothing I couldn’t part with . . . dresses I loved but no longer wear because the tops don’t fit quite right or have sleeves or the wrong cut neck opening or not big enough through the bust . . . ugh. So I cut the top off the dress, add a knitted yoke paired the skirt with a top that’s comfortable. Win win!

I had a crepe dress with glorious colors, pink, orange and blue on a light cream background, really pretty. So I made a day dress and it came out perfect . . . except the skirt was a bit tight over my bottom. Being crepe, I knew that wasn’t going to work. My sister’s a size smaller and she loves flowers and blue and it was a perfect match.

I gave two piles of stuff to Wadly, venerable spouse, one to mail off to Beth and one to drop at the local charity shop. Can you see where this is going? Yup, you guessed it. Beth’s day dress is now someone’s lovely comfortable find. Wadly felt very badly but I’m a huge believer in what will be will be. I still need to make Beth a day dress. I’ll get there. Eventually.

I haven’t been posting when I should be posting . . . apologies. That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to change my ways, just that I acknowledge the lack.

I’ve done a lot of knitting since I posted last and learned lots of new things . . . which is always a good thing.

This is Amanda’s sweater. It was originally intended for someone else but she moved to the other side of the country so fitting wasn’t an option. The sweater is knit in superwash wool using Poem, Glazz, Paintbox and probably one other. Wool of the Andes? Yeah, maybe that.

The helix knitting was a lot of fun. The Truly jogless stripes technique worked brilliantly. This Helix knitting technique is a fabulous thing and works brilliantly. Paired with the jogless stripe technique for starting and finishing a helix section and it’s even better! The location of changes is truly invisible if you’re mindful of your tension. The easy way to keep it invisible is to knit to within two stitches of the change, bring your working yarn to the front, slip the two stitches and knit off with the new yarn. That keeps the tension right and because the changes are staggered by two stitches it’s truly invisible.

I also made Amanda a tank top. It hasn’t been blocked yet in the picture so doesn’t hang properly but I have a photo! Woot! She loves it, it’s her colors and it fits her perfectly. That’s the best tri-fecta!

This tank uses Perfect and Easy Icord Caston to create the neck edge and straps. I’ve used this method many times and it’s always perfect.

I used Kitchener to close the icord into a single loop. I’m not a Kitchener expert. The way Carol Brunette describes it works best for me and that’s the tutorial I used. Even then it took three or four tries to get an acceptable join on the first icord caston (yoke for a day dress for my sister). Good quality yarn and perseverence saved the day!

I’ve got two sweaters in the planning.

The first is a wool sweater for our mail lady. I started it as a vee neck and it wasn’t coming out to gauge. I’m going to frog it back and restart. Instead of a vee neck I’m going to do something different. I saw this sweater on one of my Facebook groups and I think it would be perfect for the yarn and the recipient and I can do it in conti-rag.

The second sweater is a scrappy one I find really appealing. I will use up the Bamboo Pop I have left over from a number of other projects. There are a number of people on the list who are interested in this sweater. I’ll see how much I can share to help their projects.

It’s done! I love it!

I finished my Bamboo Pop Cables today and I love it. I learned new things, did new stuff and the result is lovely. I’m wearing it. I’ll get Wadly to take pics when he’s up (he’s running late today).

So, I’ve been working on plans for my next sweater. I have lots of Bamboo Pop left over from various projects. This lot includes Blueberry Swirl, Orchid Smash, On Parade, Brilliant Blues, Graphite, a small amount of Nightshade and a microscopic amount of Ink Blue. I want to meld all those into a sweater (waste not, want not) so today I’m looking at color blocking.

There was a terrific sale on Bamboo Pop a couple months ago. I bought enough yarn for three sweaters plus balls of variegated accent yarn. I love this yarn for a number of reasons. It has terrific drape, it’s lovely to work up, it comes in 40 colors and it comes in balls that are twice the size, almost 300 yards of yarn. The regular price is somewhere in the $8.50 range. When it’s on sale it’s a huge steal. So . . . yeah, three sweaters worth plus. I’ve got Ink Blue on the needles. Once the cable threads connect I’ll take a pic and post it. I’m only ~25 rows out from that event. And while I’m knitting I’m thinking about the next sweater in Graphite.

I had an “aha” moment for the Graphite Bamboo Pop. Latvian braid has been enticing me for a while. I’m still testing . . . and pondering but this might be just the thing. Here’s my current sampler. It’s going to get bigger as I try different things.

The bottom two tests are the same thing, just different colors. Nope, this method is both overly complicated and messy.

The top right is doubled yarn. It’s too heavy, though it may have been alright if I had matched the colors in the strands . . . uh . . . maybe.

I bought a couple cakes of Lion Brand Ombre Life. It did not go well. While this yarn is a lovely color, it’s made up of four strands of what is basically heavy cotton/acrylic thread. The changes in color are achieved by knotting two colors together with the joins staggered over the four strands to achieve the overall color change. Not a big thing unless . . . yup, you guessed it, multiple breaks in one or more strands. Ugh. If it had been a single break it would have been okay. Multiples? Yeah, not so much. So, I asked for replacement. I was working on something else when it came so I set it aside.

I started the gradient sweater this morning. So far so good! I’ve got the first shoulder done and I’m ready to start the second. I’m pairing the ombre with a 4-ply bamboo navy that matches the dark bits of the gradient. Because of the way the gradient is not spun (yup, a flat ribbon of four strands of heavy thread) I’m having to knit carefully. Missing a strand in the stitch is a thing with this one. This should be a fun knit.

I’ve used up all but a small amount of scrap yarn. I’m really pleased with the result. I learned lots of stuff, I had a good time and I’m glorying in the result. The pockets are fabulous. I love all the colors. I discovered a new way to secure the ends of cotton yarn when working in the tails. I’m really going to enjoy wearing this one. Okay, that’s not fair . . . I enjoy them all!

Mindy’s sweater is done and off to her. I’ll get pictures eventually and I’ll share. I’m really pleased with that sweater. The length is what she wanted, the colors suit her coloring and the design was fun to execute. Plus plus plus! And because it’s off my needles, I’m onto something else.

Have you seen “Milk Money” with Melanie Griffith? She has a quintessential line in that movie . . . “and the rest of it we’ll make up as we go along.”  It’s a cute movie and that line stuck with me. It really defines my approach to sweater design. I really do make it up as I go along. I’ll start with a plan and before I know it, the project has jumped tracks and turned into something entirely different. I live in a world of “what if?”.

It’s fairly inevitable that when knit projects are done there will be scraps left over. Sometimes it’s skeins, sometimes it’s partial skeins and sometimes it’s little balls of yarn just a few yards long. I’m a penny pincher and I can’t throw out left over yarn. I don’t know a knitter who can. The challenge is to use up the disparate lengths of yarn, a far more interesting project than whatever the original yarn supply was used for.

Here’s my current project. I was going to do a reprise of my kangaroo pocket sweatshirt but the train completely jumped the tracks. It’s actually a really neat use of all the disparate lengths of yarn left over from four different sweater projects. Bear in mind, this is *after* I used up a lot of it in my kangaroo pocket sweatshirt. Just to be clear, this is sweater #2 from the same batch of left over yarn.

There’s usually a penalty for haring off in a new direction. The penalty here is the enormous number of ends needing worked in. I think the end result is worth it. It will be interesting to see if I have enough yarn to create sleeves. I’m thinking I won’t and will have to buy more yarn. Oh darn.

I started this sweater over two years ago. I got it to this point and there it sat. I had no plan, just lots of lovely Lang Recycled Denim yarn. Because I couldn’t decide where it was going I put it away and worked on other things.

Then April rolled around and I had something I wanted to try that was going to fit with where I thought this sweater was headed. I got this far and put it back away.

One of the projects I worked on was Bamboo Pop Banner which had lots of lovely color and beads on the front.

I loved the yarn, I loved what I did with it but the addition of the 3.0 glass beads upset the balance and caused the sweater to shift slightly forward on my body causing the back of the neck to come in contact with my neck. Nope, couldn’t do that and there was no way I was frogging all that lovely work so I gifted the sweater to my niece. She loves it and I didn’t have to frog it. Win win!

But that experience got me thinking. I wanted to make a kangaroo pocket sweat shirt with the left over yarn from knitting Swoop but the weight of the pocket would throw off the balance. If I lengthened the back at the hem using the same amount of yarn I used in the pocket, I would get a sweater that stayed in balance and I’d have the benefit of the pocket (which I couldn’t use without upsetting the sweater’s balance but it would look cool. Plus I could try some stuff I’d discovered when I knit the bolero cardi . . . which I frogged to get the yarn to knit the kangaroo pocket sweat shirt . . . yeah, you can see where this is going.

Mindy tried my sweatshirt on and loved the pocket. I now had a plan for her Lang Recycled Denim sweater! Beauty! She came yesterday and tried it on and it’s right on the money! I’ll be squeeking on the yarn to get the body length she wants. I’m almost there! I finished one sleeve last night and got the other started.

This is coming out *so* cool! Once I use up the current skein (about half gone) I’ll do the sleeves. The kangaroo pocket came out fabulous!