So I've been sort of obssessing about this one... It's because I have so much of this yarn - 5 cones I think.
On Saturday I spent a couple hours working out the swatches, and building the basic pattern using The Knitting Fiend's generic Sweater Pattern generator. It's a pretty simple shape, just some slight shoulder->waist shaping really. Big crew neck, for those of us with bull-thick necks. No waist welt, but instead a deep rolled hem. I haven't planned out the armhole or neck gussets yet, but it's part of the design I have in my head.
Then I knit the front and back on Sunday, and ran into a few troubles. The back went first, and the hem rolled nicely, but the waste yarn I used refused to neatly unravel, so I can't say whether or no I got every stitch aligned properly. I figured I'd just go on and do the front and worry about the waste yarn later.
For the front I cast the waste yarn on a bit more simply, hoping it would unravel easier. I also decided to try a slight a-shape to the rolled hem, to make it stand out more. But I got so involved in the increases and decreases that I rolled it 10 rows early. And the waste yarn wouldn't come off easily here either.
Even worse, there is a clear color change shortly up the front. No doubt there's a knot I didn't catch as it went by. I figure I could frog the whole thing, start the front over, but that would be a real pain and require a lot of handling of the yarn. And this yarn is intensely surface-dyed, and the dye is coming off on my machine, my clothes, and my hands enough already. I'll live with this one being oddly colored on the front, and maybe it will equalize in the initial wash (it's intensely dyed, if I haven't made that clear yet... The sinkful of water I used to hand wash the swatches could nearly have been used for colorwashing, and was much more than normal blueing for white linens.)
Of course after knitting the two pieces I remembered about using full-fashion increases and decreases to make life easier when I get to the joining part of the sweater-making. I certainly plan on doing so on the sleeves, however.
I'm trying to decide, in the back of my head, the sequence I'm going to use to put the thing together. I think I'll be joining the right shoulders, purl sides together, to create a nice lumpy shoulder seam. Then I'll hang the neck stitches, and knit a simple 2x2 industrial rib neck welt. Off the machine, the hang the left shoulder stitches purl sides together, and pick up the ends of the neck welt, and seam them together as well.
Hang the sleeves and the body, knit sides together, to have a nice smooth seam. Then two long mattress-stitch seams up each side and it should be done. Which is so easy to write in so few words here, and so much more difficult to accomplish in real life. And it's not getting done with me babbling here in a blog, so... Tah!
27 October 2008
Written on the road...
24 October, but w/o internet access...
So I have these cones of indigo cotton yarn...
It's 4-ply, but fairly small diameter despit this. Each of the cones is perhaps as much as 450g, and I have no clue how many metres. I think about 800 or so, maybe as much as 1000.
Just before we got under way this evening (and there's an entire story *there*...) I knit up a quickish swatch at SS 6.5 in plain stockinette... it seems to be a bit more open than it might be for a work jersey. But at the same time it's not a fun material to work with on the machine, dragging through with loads of friction and little hope of getting any easier if I tighten up the tension a wee bit. And there was an odd screw-up... a dropped stitch or three, plus another edge needle which seems to have refused to knit or tuck for a bunch of rows.
If I can work out those problems, I'm thinking of knitting up a cotten version of a Guernsey-style sweater. I'm thinking heartlessly plain, with a 1" bit of 2x2 industrial rib at the top of each sleeve, and the reversed seam on the top of the shoulders, plus a gusset under each arm and smaller ones on each shoulder at the neck.
So I have these cones of indigo cotton yarn...
It's 4-ply, but fairly small diameter despit this. Each of the cones is perhaps as much as 450g, and I have no clue how many metres. I think about 800 or so, maybe as much as 1000.
Just before we got under way this evening (and there's an entire story *there*...) I knit up a quickish swatch at SS 6.5 in plain stockinette... it seems to be a bit more open than it might be for a work jersey. But at the same time it's not a fun material to work with on the machine, dragging through with loads of friction and little hope of getting any easier if I tighten up the tension a wee bit. And there was an odd screw-up... a dropped stitch or three, plus another edge needle which seems to have refused to knit or tuck for a bunch of rows.
If I can work out those problems, I'm thinking of knitting up a cotten version of a Guernsey-style sweater. I'm thinking heartlessly plain, with a 1" bit of 2x2 industrial rib at the top of each sleeve, and the reversed seam on the top of the shoulders, plus a gusset under each arm and smaller ones on each shoulder at the neck.
20 October 2008
Indigo project
So, I'm trying to create a project to use up some Indigo yarn I picked up from Yeoman Yarns. I had this thought to build a series of summer sweaters, but I think for now I'm going to make myself a comfy sweatshirt/guernsey thing for myself.
Not entirely sure what that's going to mean, though. Maybe a tunic-style pullover without any hip ribbing, very little ease at the cuff too, with a rolled hem. Now to figure out how to do that latter, and to make some swatches.
A bit about the yarn first, though. It's a hardish cotton, 4-ply yarn dyed with a natural indigo which will fade over time. So the white stripes I first thought about just won't work. But it could be fun to see what I can get away with... maybe charcoal stripes?
Not entirely sure what that's going to mean, though. Maybe a tunic-style pullover without any hip ribbing, very little ease at the cuff too, with a rolled hem. Now to figure out how to do that latter, and to make some swatches.
A bit about the yarn first, though. It's a hardish cotton, 4-ply yarn dyed with a natural indigo which will fade over time. So the white stripes I first thought about just won't work. But it could be fun to see what I can get away with... maybe charcoal stripes?
18 October 2008
Gravel roads, take me home...
I did not grow up in the land of gravel roads, exactly. I grew up in a place where roads are extremely challenged, and the culture responds to this by building the very best roads they can, to handle high water tables and extreme temperatures, heavy farm equipment and snow plows.
But not, I think, mountains.
So let me set up the scene for you... it's been a not-unusual high-stress September as the grant application due dates all seem to be in September and March, and Elizabeth doesn't have time to write grants during the school year so she seems to always have one or two coming to crunch in the Fall. But this year there were 6. After they were all finished, Elizabeth decided she needed a couple of stress-free days.
In the meantime, I've been sort of invited to help a group of sailboats who want to sail 'round Vancouver Island. I have to admit I'm pretty tempted, since the time I did this before turned into one of the most enjoyable cruises I've ever taken, if also one
of the riskiest. The north end of the island is nothing to sneeze at, being remote and prone to extremes of tide, current, and weather. And the west coast is nearly uninhabited, especially so in the northern half above Clayoquot Sound.
It's also intensely beautiful, with long fjords carving deep into the mountain ridge which make up the backbone of Vancouver Island.
So I'm already thinking about beautiful and remote places in the northern half of the island and Elizabeth needs to take a long weekend and Canada has just voted the conservatives back into power in Parliament (that is only sort of related, but you get the point) and we decided to just go find a hotel somewhere north. Which we did, in Port Hardy. And we decided to make a jaunt over to the west coast, to Winter Harbour, which turned out to be the highlight port of my cruise around the island 3 years ago.
One thing you need to realize is there are three industries on Vancouver Island north of Campbell River - Resources (logging and open-pit mining), Fishing, and tourists. And not much of the latter except in the months of July and August. Furthermore, every human settlement is on the water - either the ocean or an inland waterway - and this has been true for millenia. Many communities do not have road connections to anywhere, except by the crude logging roads the lumber companies build to harvest up the slopes of the mountains and hills.
Which is not quite true for Port Hardy itself. This is the departure point for ferries servicing the northern BC coast and southern Alaska, so trucks of supplies make their way up the only highway on Vancouver Island to this terminus, and those of us in search of quiet remote settings get to trail along with.
And then we strike off on those logging trails that lead to such interesting destinations as Cape Scott, Holberg, and Winter Harbor. Which we did this morning.
I was under the (mistaken) impression that the first leg of this passage was going to be reasonably easy - asphalt county road to Holberg. This is a famous bit of the trail to Cape Scott, which is a major destination for hikers and bicyclists, a national park at the tip of Vancouver Island and well north of 50°. And a half-mile on the asphalt stopped, and the gravel began. The posted speed was also 50kph - about 30mph.
Weeeelllll, I'm a country boy from Minnesota, have driven my fair share of "tinned" roads. That speed limit is just a guideline, isn't it? No, as a matter of fact, it isn't. Not because I got a ticket, no. Because the damn road is a death trap.
First off, in Minnesota gravel is sifted and graded according to size and how much rock - pebbles really - there is to how much sand. The rock is usually limited to, oh, about 1" or 1.5" size, but at least half of it is fine stuff. Not here. I'd say the average rock was less than baseball size. But the average means there was a fair bit over that size as well as under it.
As for how much fine stuff... that seems to be pretty variable. In some stretches it was pack smooth and hard, a great ratio of coarse to fine. In others it seemed they'd completely forgotten the fine stuff, and in the worst spots spring streams had clearly run down or accross the road, stripping away the sand and silt and leaving banked rock with carved ruts.
The noise and tension have blanked out most of my memories of the trip, but it took about two hours to drive the 40 km (25 miles) to Winter Harbour. The village is mostly deserted at this time of year, the post office was open though. We walked the board walk, which is the easiest way to get around in this town, and talked about possibilities of this being a place to get away from it all. Which it certainly was. After a couple hours of walking about we'd exhausted our curiousity, got back in the car and headed back to Port Hardy.
The car was caked with mud, but the drive back was a bit easier and faster now that I was learning how these logging roads worked. After washing down the car and dinner we came to the conclusion that Winter Harbour would be a great place for us, with either a reasonable truck or going there by boat.
But not, I think, mountains.
So let me set up the scene for you... it's been a not-unusual high-stress September as the grant application due dates all seem to be in September and March, and Elizabeth doesn't have time to write grants during the school year so she seems to always have one or two coming to crunch in the Fall. But this year there were 6. After they were all finished, Elizabeth decided she needed a couple of stress-free days.
In the meantime, I've been sort of invited to help a group of sailboats who want to sail 'round Vancouver Island. I have to admit I'm pretty tempted, since the time I did this before turned into one of the most enjoyable cruises I've ever taken, if also one
of the riskiest. The north end of the island is nothing to sneeze at, being remote and prone to extremes of tide, current, and weather. And the west coast is nearly uninhabited, especially so in the northern half above Clayoquot Sound.It's also intensely beautiful, with long fjords carving deep into the mountain ridge which make up the backbone of Vancouver Island.
So I'm already thinking about beautiful and remote places in the northern half of the island and Elizabeth needs to take a long weekend and Canada has just voted the conservatives back into power in Parliament (that is only sort of related, but you get the point) and we decided to just go find a hotel somewhere north. Which we did, in Port Hardy. And we decided to make a jaunt over to the west coast, to Winter Harbour, which turned out to be the highlight port of my cruise around the island 3 years ago.
One thing you need to realize is there are three industries on Vancouver Island north of Campbell River - Resources (logging and open-pit mining), Fishing, and tourists. And not much of the latter except in the months of July and August. Furthermore, every human settlement is on the water - either the ocean or an inland waterway - and this has been true for millenia. Many communities do not have road connections to anywhere, except by the crude logging roads the lumber companies build to harvest up the slopes of the mountains and hills.
Which is not quite true for Port Hardy itself. This is the departure point for ferries servicing the northern BC coast and southern Alaska, so trucks of supplies make their way up the only highway on Vancouver Island to this terminus, and those of us in search of quiet remote settings get to trail along with.
And then we strike off on those logging trails that lead to such interesting destinations as Cape Scott, Holberg, and Winter Harbor. Which we did this morning.
I was under the (mistaken) impression that the first leg of this passage was going to be reasonably easy - asphalt county road to Holberg. This is a famous bit of the trail to Cape Scott, which is a major destination for hikers and bicyclists, a national park at the tip of Vancouver Island and well north of 50°. And a half-mile on the asphalt stopped, and the gravel began. The posted speed was also 50kph - about 30mph.
Weeeelllll, I'm a country boy from Minnesota, have driven my fair share of "tinned" roads. That speed limit is just a guideline, isn't it? No, as a matter of fact, it isn't. Not because I got a ticket, no. Because the damn road is a death trap.
First off, in Minnesota gravel is sifted and graded according to size and how much rock - pebbles really - there is to how much sand. The rock is usually limited to, oh, about 1" or 1.5" size, but at least half of it is fine stuff. Not here. I'd say the average rock was less than baseball size. But the average means there was a fair bit over that size as well as under it.
As for how much fine stuff... that seems to be pretty variable. In some stretches it was pack smooth and hard, a great ratio of coarse to fine. In others it seemed they'd completely forgotten the fine stuff, and in the worst spots spring streams had clearly run down or accross the road, stripping away the sand and silt and leaving banked rock with carved ruts.
The noise and tension have blanked out most of my memories of the trip, but it took about two hours to drive the 40 km (25 miles) to Winter Harbour. The village is mostly deserted at this time of year, the post office was open though. We walked the board walk, which is the easiest way to get around in this town, and talked about possibilities of this being a place to get away from it all. Which it certainly was. After a couple hours of walking about we'd exhausted our curiousity, got back in the car and headed back to Port Hardy.
The car was caked with mud, but the drive back was a bit easier and faster now that I was learning how these logging roads worked. After washing down the car and dinner we came to the conclusion that Winter Harbour would be a great place for us, with either a reasonable truck or going there by boat.
16 October 2008
Knitting
You know, I knit.
Yes, it's not the most manly of hobbies, but I just can't seem to get into scratching my balls, drinking beer, or spending hours of my life watching other men either grab each other or kick ball around on a field of grass. Call it simply yet another of my character flaws and leave it at that.
On a completely different level of things is machine knitting. Knitting machines dates back to the 1600s, and they were invented as a way to make hose - the equivalent of blue jeans in the style of the day for men - more quickly, cheaply, and in wilder fashions than were otherwise possible. The machines can only do one 'type' of stitch. In hand-knitting there are three types of stitch - a knit, a purl, and increases. In machines there are only knits, although complex machine may have needles which can knit from two different directions, and a backward knit stitch looks exactly like a purl stitch. But there are two things you can do to vary the stitches without hand manipulation - slips and tucks. (In hand knitting there are far more options, including slips and tucks, twists, drops, increases, decreases, cabling, etc. Many of these can be done with hand manipulation on the machine as well, but they take more time and effort than doing the same by hand so why would you do that on a machine?)
Which begins to explain how knitting machines are so very different from hand knitting. Everything needs to be carefully plotted out before ever you start a machine knit project. The exact tension or gauge (which is how many stitches or rows per inch) must be known, so you can determine how many needles you'll need to get each garment piece the correct size. Machine knit garments are usually knit flat; that is, you knit properly shaped pieces of flat fabric, which are then sewn or bound together to make the final product. (This is very different from some of my hand-knitting techniques in which I make garment-shaped piece of fabric, with no sewing whatsoever.)
Unfortunately, most things are more involved than just figuring out the basic dimensions. So a garment becomes a sort of programming algorithm. For a sock, say, you need to know what tension should be in the ribbing at the top, so it's stretchy but not stiff. And you need to have a regular density for the leg and the top of the sock, but a tighter and heavier part for the bottom, and maybe denser yet for the heel and toe which are where the sock is most likely to wear through. And each of these will likely have a different tension. The shape of the sock cannot be a straight tube, either, although that might work for a very stretch athletic sock which isn't intended to fit particularly well. If it's an over-the-calf sock it needs to come in sharply above the calf, but not be tight from the widest point to the ankle or it will tend to pull the sock down. The largest measurement is actually from heel around the top of the foot, just forward of the ankle, which is why the heel is "turned" with extra stitches. Then there is the shaping of the foot and toe area - how much, when, and how should the toe be joined to make the least amount of lumpiness. By the time you've calculated everything, adjusting for yarn thickness, stiffness, and characteristics after being washed, you realize that a lot of preparation and investment has been done and you haven't even started knitting!
And the machines are often complex to get ready to start knitting. Stringing up the machine can take 15-20 minutes, more for machines working with multiple colors.
Because knitting machines are very limited in their techniques, but are very good at doing things evenly and quickly, knitting machine people tend to focus on different ways to be complex. Like doing multiple colors. With a two-bed machine it's very easy to make, quite literally, photo-print knitting. Using four colors in a way similar to the way TV screens work, and a fairly modest computer, I can build a pattern to knit a picture into a sweater. And it would knit quickly and fairly simply. It probably wouldn't be the lightest or finest sweater, but it be awfully cool to have a sweater with pictures of my grandbabies, or a sunset photo from one of my cruises up in the fjords of the BC coast.
Anyway, the point of all this was to begin talking about my knitting projects, because even a simple one should be documented in some way. In part because it helps me keep track of what I've done. Now I need to get a digital camera so I can take pics of various projects and progress, and start documenting!
Yes, it's not the most manly of hobbies, but I just can't seem to get into scratching my balls, drinking beer, or spending hours of my life watching other men either grab each other or kick ball around on a field of grass. Call it simply yet another of my character flaws and leave it at that.
One of the most interesting words in Candian English is tuque, which is their special word for a simple stocking cap. It's considered to be the national hat of Canada, something they're a bit smug about because it indicates, somehow, that they're tough and able to deal with their winters.
The reason I'm mentioning this is that there are a huge number of ways to make a tuque, and pretty much any one of them is "right." But a poorly made or worn tuque in Canada is an object of ridicule. Which, it seems, is pretty much every one I've ever made. I'm sort of on a quest for the perfect tuque recipe.
Anyway, knitting is one of those things that you can just *do*; it doesn't require a lot of planning, it doesn't require a lot of thinking while in the midst of it, it doesn't require a huge investment. At least, not when you're doing a new set of dish clothes or a quick stocking cap.The reason I'm mentioning this is that there are a huge number of ways to make a tuque, and pretty much any one of them is "right." But a poorly made or worn tuque in Canada is an object of ridicule. Which, it seems, is pretty much every one I've ever made. I'm sort of on a quest for the perfect tuque recipe.
On a completely different level of things is machine knitting. Knitting machines dates back to the 1600s, and they were invented as a way to make hose - the equivalent of blue jeans in the style of the day for men - more quickly, cheaply, and in wilder fashions than were otherwise possible. The machines can only do one 'type' of stitch. In hand-knitting there are three types of stitch - a knit, a purl, and increases. In machines there are only knits, although complex machine may have needles which can knit from two different directions, and a backward knit stitch looks exactly like a purl stitch. But there are two things you can do to vary the stitches without hand manipulation - slips and tucks. (In hand knitting there are far more options, including slips and tucks, twists, drops, increases, decreases, cabling, etc. Many of these can be done with hand manipulation on the machine as well, but they take more time and effort than doing the same by hand so why would you do that on a machine?)
Which begins to explain how knitting machines are so very different from hand knitting. Everything needs to be carefully plotted out before ever you start a machine knit project. The exact tension or gauge (which is how many stitches or rows per inch) must be known, so you can determine how many needles you'll need to get each garment piece the correct size. Machine knit garments are usually knit flat; that is, you knit properly shaped pieces of flat fabric, which are then sewn or bound together to make the final product. (This is very different from some of my hand-knitting techniques in which I make garment-shaped piece of fabric, with no sewing whatsoever.)
Unfortunately, most things are more involved than just figuring out the basic dimensions. So a garment becomes a sort of programming algorithm. For a sock, say, you need to know what tension should be in the ribbing at the top, so it's stretchy but not stiff. And you need to have a regular density for the leg and the top of the sock, but a tighter and heavier part for the bottom, and maybe denser yet for the heel and toe which are where the sock is most likely to wear through. And each of these will likely have a different tension. The shape of the sock cannot be a straight tube, either, although that might work for a very stretch athletic sock which isn't intended to fit particularly well. If it's an over-the-calf sock it needs to come in sharply above the calf, but not be tight from the widest point to the ankle or it will tend to pull the sock down. The largest measurement is actually from heel around the top of the foot, just forward of the ankle, which is why the heel is "turned" with extra stitches. Then there is the shaping of the foot and toe area - how much, when, and how should the toe be joined to make the least amount of lumpiness. By the time you've calculated everything, adjusting for yarn thickness, stiffness, and characteristics after being washed, you realize that a lot of preparation and investment has been done and you haven't even started knitting!
And the machines are often complex to get ready to start knitting. Stringing up the machine can take 15-20 minutes, more for machines working with multiple colors.
Because knitting machines are very limited in their techniques, but are very good at doing things evenly and quickly, knitting machine people tend to focus on different ways to be complex. Like doing multiple colors. With a two-bed machine it's very easy to make, quite literally, photo-print knitting. Using four colors in a way similar to the way TV screens work, and a fairly modest computer, I can build a pattern to knit a picture into a sweater. And it would knit quickly and fairly simply. It probably wouldn't be the lightest or finest sweater, but it be awfully cool to have a sweater with pictures of my grandbabies, or a sunset photo from one of my cruises up in the fjords of the BC coast.
Anyway, the point of all this was to begin talking about my knitting projects, because even a simple one should be documented in some way. In part because it helps me keep track of what I've done. Now I need to get a digital camera so I can take pics of various projects and progress, and start documenting!
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