“Lucky” is “finished”

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… and I am, shall we say, “dissatisfied” with the results*.

Figure 152: Believe it or not, I have photos where I look worse.

I’d planned this to have zero ease, but that didn’t happen very much. Except in the sleeves.

Finished Lucky v1.0 had an extended side tie. Pardon the flamenco-poses here, but I am trying to show the amount of RAW UNADULTERATED CINCH required to tie this sweater on. Also, I’ve always found surplice-style garments a bit touchy, because you have to hit the waist just right to avoid the bottom hems diagonalizing themselves weirdly; just right did not happen here.

Figure 153: There are letters here

To correct this, I ditched the tie, added buttonholes, overlapped the two fronts more to narrow the sweater. It looked really acceptable! for three hours. Then it grew.

Figure 154: Why yes, I am strong to the finish.The problem, incidentally, was not really with the pattern drafting. There are a number of predictable-in-hindsight factors contributing to the big fat ‘meh’ that is this sweater:

1) Yarn sprawl. Heck, I’m not totally sure that I even knit this quite to gauge.
2) In the year it took me to knit this, I changed shape.
3) I have a longstanding suspicion that most knitters design for a person with vastly different proportions than I have (ref. fig 154).

I’m sort of kicking myself, because if I’d just converted the pattern to top-down raglan, knitted the sleeves simultaneously at the right proportions, and tried on as I went, I’d probably have a sweater that was only slightly too large and was the same nice proportionate too-large all around. It would fit my shoulders better, too. Kids, if you do not live in a pineapple under the sea, learn to make a top-down raglan in your size and shape. You can fake pretty much anything you want as a top-down raglan.

I don’t know whether to unravel this and fix it, or just cry into it.

Anyway, here is the Ravelry link to the project, but I’m not yet updating the entry until I get a decent photo showing that this sweater looks nearly acceptable if left unbuttoned.

*I need to clarify that my hair looks that way because it is wet. I did not dunk it in olive oil before posing for this picture.

Summer Rerun

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Figure 150: Me on the wrong side of the HISTORY FENCE. Greetings! You probably heard that the online knitting magazine formerly residing at magknits.com recently disappeared in a cloud of controversy. All of the not-lazy creators immediately posted their designs as free Ravelry downloads. Me? I had to take a month or two to mull it over. Here’s A PDF version of Judith, and an additional copy should be available as a free download on The Rav as soon as I can get my storefront to work.

I’d like to (belatedly) say something nice about Ravelry’s role in this whole mess. Before knitters had a central online social location, there wasn’t much accountability for shady business practices. YES, the threads about Magknits/Hipknits were lengthy and venty and gossipy and snipy, but they did wonders for the knitting community’s general attitude toward transparency, intellectual property respect, and business-related incompetence.

As some really, really tenacious people were pretty quick to point out repeatedly, Kerrie Allman has had a really tough year and we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves for speaking ill of her. But I do believe that there is a graceful and considerate way to exit from the internet. Gutting a site’s content and running off without paying patrons and contributors? Not such a graceful and considerate way to exit from the internet. Not at all.

Right under the wire, it is my monthly “I’M NOT DEAD” CHECK-IN

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Hello, internet! I’m not dead! I’m just busy. My knitting has been very existent and very rad this May, with a heavy dose of math that was fun to do but not so much fun to write about. Wouldn’t be fun to read about, either. That particular SWEATERVENTURE will be finished enough to post about soon.

File under NOT going to be finished pretty soon: Grey crochet project. Speaking of mathiness, after you’ve calculated a few top-down sweaters you think you’ve got the whole “geometry of fit” thing under control in a very numerical way. I had no idea just how much I was relying on a certain knitting intuition that doesn’t translate 100% perfectly to other needlecrafts:

figure 148: MULLIGAN
I’m trying to say that it’s not supposed to look that way. It should lay flat, with an approximate increase slope of (1 radial):(5 circumferential). It’s not supposed to be ruffly.

Gah, I hate ruffles SO HARD. It’s do-over time.
Figure 149: Also, I look like the Wicked Witch of the West here.

I spend a lot of time obsessing over a certain hat belonging to Queen Elizabeth, but these photos clearly suggest that I ought to be more wary of her ruff.

Swatching is Serious Business

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Let’s get to the punch line first: If you’re hitting about 4-4.5 sts per inch on a swatch of the SUGGESTED YARN on the Hacky Sack Hoodie, you will most likely be able to make the pattern’s gauge after washing and blocking your sweater.

Figure 146: Yes, I still own this sleeve-sized swatch.

The gauge for both the Hacky Sack Hoodie and Judith are an unthinkable 14 stitches per four inches on worsted yarn. I get a lot of questions about this, because 3.5 stitches per inch is not the gauge on the ballband and it’s not the gauge most people get when they pick up their needles and cast on. My sprawling gauge isn’t a mistake– though I knitted to a standard tension, I reported my sweater’s final post-block gauge so that you’d know the exact gauge of the sweater you see in the pattern photos.

Good people of the internet, I am here to tell you that your yarn’s ballband does not know best and even your own prewashed knitting may possibly lying to you. I play fast and loose with a lot of knitting techniques, but I take swatching pretty seriously. It’s been awesome to hear from so many people who are tackling the Hacky Sack Hoodie as their first sweater– to help you guys through what might be your first experience with swatching, here are a few tips that might help you to resolve lingering gauge issues.

1. Match the designer’s gauge, not the ballband’s. If you want what the designer knit up, then knit like the designer. Additionally, many designers agree that ballbands tend to list too-large needles for the yarn. In general, it’s best to live by this mnemonic: Ballband = Ballpark.

2. Wash your swatch. Take note of your pre-wash gauge, and then wash and block it just like you intend to wash the sweater. Yarn often changes character drastically after its first encounter with water. Not only does it change gauge, not only does it sometimes widen and shorten weirdly, it often softens and “blooms” to fill in the gaps between stitches. This will help you decide before knitting whether you will like the texture and shape of your finished sweater. Note that the post-wash stretched-to-block gauge is what needs to match the pattern’s gauge– your pre-washed swatch isn’t as good.

3. Unless you felt it or throw it in the dryer, your finished sweater will always be the same size or LARGER than your swatch. Sweaters, especially large heavy sweaters, loosely knit stuff, and garter and seed stitch, relax under their own weight. Some yarns, like Rowan Summer Tweed, just inexplicably expand after a little wear. Blocking crisply generally makes a sweater a bit larger. Though you should shoot to match the gauge, err on the side of small because you can always block a sweater a tiny bit larger.

4. Wet-Block your sweater. Totally immerse it in water. No spray-blocking. I am so, so serious. Not only will this provide final assurance that you get the gauge you bargained for, it will make your sweater look neat and professional. Think of spray-blocking as a last chance to influence the fit of the sweater.

Two great sources on blocking: Debbie Stoller’s awesome blocking discussion in the early chapters of Stitch ‘N Bitch should be required reading, and the slightly fussier method espoused by Eunny Jang will make your lace knits shine.

If you’d like your finished sweater to match the sizing diagram, if you’re considering substituting yarns, if you want to make sure that you like the way the knitted fabrics look, you should lavish your attention on your preliminary swatch. It’s your best early indicator of success or failure.

Management will not be held responsible for reiterating this somewhat unscientific tip: If you’re hitting about 4st/in on the Hacky Sack Hoodie, you’ll be able to get 14 st/4in when you block it. But swatch and wash anyway to make sure you like the way the fabric looks. If you don’t, go ahead and substitute a bulkier yarn, or change the sweater’s size.

I’ll discuss substitution/resizing in an upcoming post.

Vintage summer knitting pattern links

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Figure 144: What the caption says.Wow, thanks for all the support regarding the Rumplestiltskin Incident. I really appreciate your thoughts and/or indignation on the matter, not to mention suggestions for other places to shop in the Sacramento area. ^__^ I’ll finish replying to the comments really soon. Until then, please enjoy some vintage pattern links:

Via Dress A Day‘s Friday links, two cute patterns for warm-weather cardigans provided by Little Grey Bungalow. I think both cardigans would be perfectly at home on the Ravelry Anthropologie Group‘s Cardigan Knitalong.

Courtesy of KnitWiki, which I just discovered today: “Vest And Panties”, which in modern American English translates to “Long Camisole with Weird-Looking Shorts”. Ravelry link here. As you can see here, the “vest” is pretty cool looking when finished. Ravelry, I hope there are five more completed “vests” for me to look at by the end of summer. Get working on it.

Figure 145: Raquel Welch, you rock so inexplicably.Then, the Three Hour Sweater, here. The illustration doesn’t look too promising, but several Ravelers have made pretty cute versions: here, and a less fitted but equally cute one accessible without a Ravelry profile here. If you read the pattern, though, it calls for worsted weight on size 10 needles and gets a gauge of 4st/in. I\’m not really sure how that works.

And finally, slightly less-vintage vintage patterns (from the mid-70′s). When you’re quite finished snickering over the prospect of crocheting yourself a Myra Breckenridge bathing suit, you’ll notice that there are quite a few designs on this page that have more-or-less come back in style, albeit in different colors and lengths.
ETA: WHAT THE HECK, JERK SPAMBOTS. NOBODY WHO CAME HERE FOR VINTAGE PATTERN LINKS WANTS TO GAMBLE ONLINE. I HATE YOU SO MUCH.

Rumplestiltskin in Sacramento: See you later, forever

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Rumplestiltskin is one of the few local yarn stores left in my area, and I went there a couple of Saturdays ago for a crochet hook. The yarn in my recent crochet project is recycled, and I was unsure of the correct size to use with it. Big mistake– I took a size F out of its plastic envelope to test it out. You know that kind of envelope: the one with a convenient slit so that you can remove and replace the hook without damaging its packaging? Whoops. The yarn attendant stopped giving bad advice to an affluent-looking couple to look at me in horror and gasp, “ARE YOU TRYING OUT THOSE HOOKS??”

Not yet aware that I was committing a knitting crime, I replied, “Yes, I’m trying to figure out which one goes with this yarn.” Rumplestiltslady continued to freak out, “YOU CAN ONLY DO THAT IF YOU’RE GOING TO BUY IT!”

At this point I was under the impression that she thought I was attempting to shoplift the hooks or something, so I tried to reassure her, “Oh, I do intend to buy one. I’m just trying to figure out which one. I’m not trying to steal your hook.”

Figure 143: Susan Bates by any other name It was then that she intoned the immortal words: “WOULD YOU PAY FULL PRICE FOR A USED HOOK?!?!” 1

She continued to harangue me for a few minutes about how THERE IS A MANUFACTURER’S POLICY and NOW THAT HOOK IS PROBABLY FOREVER TAINTED. I’ve never been yelled at in a yarn store before, and by the end of her diatribe my hands were shaking. I politely explained to her that I’d worked in a yarn store that carried those hooks and we’d never been informed of the manufacturer’s policy, but she insisted in less-than-civil tones that I was wrong, and now the hook was impure and would thus never command a respectable bridewealth. My sister ended the philippic by announcing that we would not be buying a crochet hook, nor anything else, at Rumplestiltskin ever again.

I feel like I ought to qualify this story by saying that I think most people, myself included, are more than happy to observe a store’s rules and policies, even when we don’t agree with them; yelling at me rather than simply asking me not to test the hooks was unacceptable. I got my crochet needs met elsewhere [ref Figure 143].

The remainder of the rant is for my fellow West-of-Sacramento knitters. After the mass exodus of Davis (and Woodland) yarn stores last year, Rumplestiltskin is one of our few remaining options. Most online reviews suggest that Rumplestiltskin’s employees are rude or dismissive to younger knitters, and in my experience that has been true. But for the benefit of Rumplestiltskin’s novice clientele, I’d like to note that they give extremely bad and erroneous advice to knitters about their projects. Many of the employees have a very poor sense of yarn substitution and combination, often combined with unwarranted overconfidence– for example, I’m amazed at how frequently my posse has been authoritatively directed to do stranded work incorporating both Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted (single-ply, thick, huge mohair halo) and Misti Alpaca (thin, three-or-four-plies, negligible halo). Additionally, their special order system hasn’t been great– my sister ordered and prepaid a staple yarn in a staple color in October or early November for Christmas, and we recieved it in late February. It seems to me (as both a consumer and former yarn store employee) that there’s a huge movement to differentiate the service and expertise at a bricks-and-mortar store over the discounts offered by online suppliers. Clearly, Rumplestiltskin doesn’t need to do this, so I imagine they don’t need our business that badly.

1. I have since spent hours of my life trying to figure out when a hook is “used”… my best guess is still that like a car, it becomes used when it’s paid for and taken off the lot. Please feel free to weigh in with differing opinions– I consider the matter open for discussion.

KNIT THE HELL UP RECEIVES “YOU MAKE MY DAY AWARD”, PROCEEDS TO MAKE NOBODY’S DAY FOR WELL OVER A MONTH

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Looks like February went the way of October around here. The time away was used wisely, I promise. I passed my grad prelims and leveled up in crochet.

Figure 141: Crochet: Fuck Yeah

If that looks like Chanson en Crochet to you, you’re on the right track.

But, the awards! Carrie, Connie, and Claire all gave me the You Make My Day award1.
Claire’s blog, New York Minknit, is a new favorite of mine– elegantly realized knits and breathtaking photography. Connie is, in my opinion, the best new knit designer of 2007 (Ravelers, look here!), and I love reading about her designs and knitlife at Physics Knits. Carrie’s blog, ..And Another Thing! is my favorite kind of knitblog: good knitting process information nestled within fun writing. (and HELLO, hers is the best knitted octopus on the internet.) Anyway, I hear there’s some kind of implied “no givebacks” rule, but each of their blogs also makes my day, frequently on days that my day really needs some making.

I know it’s a bit late and the meme has quieted a bit, but I’d still like to pass the award on to a few people (especially since the links bar on the side of my page is so horrifically out of date).

Figure 142: You make my day, baby.

Alligator of Knitosaurus. All of her finished knits are gold… I don’t know how she does it, but I always look forward to seeing the next one. Or a previous one, thanks to Time Machine Tuesday.2

Lisa of Steal This Sweater. Lisa is one of the few people on the internet who is successful in using knitting as a meaningful art form to express an ideology. I realize that sounds like dry praise3, but the blog isn’t at all boring like my description, haha.

Drew of drew-o-rama. I love Drew’s style, and I’m really interested in his recent campaign to try new construction methods for sweaters.

Kessa of Kessa In Stitches is amazingly prolific, and I really enjoy reading posts that relate to her design process. Extra thumbs up for excellent documentation: there are many fine “just incase you want to knit this” posts.

Erin of Dress A Day. If you have any interest whatsoever in the making or wearing of things by nonknitted methods, you should probably have this in your bloglines. Put it in your RSS reader now. I’ll wait.

Jessica of Rose-Kim Knits. The internet needs Thursdays Are For What The Hell Is This.4

Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution. this is my blog and I can give an award to an economics blog if I want to dammit

And though she’s gotten about a bazillion of these already, Kim of Yarn Abuse deserves another nod more than any site I can think of. Hilarious posts, and solid knitting construction information too. If you enjoy my humble blog in any way, you should definitely be reading Yarn Abuse.

These are just a few of the blogs that I’m always happy to see all boldface in my Bloglines feed page, though I’d happily give the award to everyone in my RSS list, everyone in the online knitting and crochet community, and everyone on Ravelry except for anyone who posts dishcloths to the Anthropologie group. Consider my day made.

1.This leads me to believe that my blog has found some kind of niche audience among people whose name begins with C.
1. Bonus: Green sweaters! Lots of ‘em!
2. For Sacramento-area KWOD 106.1 listeners: “Lisa’s blog is as compelling to me as my fine art collection. It is decaffeinated black coffee for my soul.”
3. I’m alarmed that What the hell is this looks exactly like my minisweater, except with spikes. What the hell, indeed.