All Sewn Up

I have finally finished the Martha cardigan that I started back in March.  I actually finished the knitting weeks ago, but it was hanging around for a long time waiting for me to sew it up.  It does seem such an effort to sew the seams, weave in the ends, sew on the buttons, when you could be getting on with the next piece of knitting instead.  It's entirely illogical, I know.

Anyway, it's finished and looks good, though the weather was much too warm yesterday to want to wear it when I modelled it for the photo.  (That won't last, of course - in fact, it is much cooler today).

The colour is quite hard to capture in a photo - it is quite a gray blue, as in the first photo. I have made the sleeves longer than in the pattern, as I said I would back in March.  I have also changed the placement of the buttons a little bit, so that the bottom button coincides with the textured band around the bottom of the cable section - I think that the design is more coherent that way.  I do like the cables a lot and it's good that Sarah Hatton has used them on the back as well as the fronts. The back of a cardigan or jumper is sometimes left plain, which is a pity - the cables make the back more interesting to knit than an expanse of plain stocking stitch, and it looks much nicer, too.  

The neck line has turned out much less scoopy than in the pattern - not sure why.  It wasn't deliberate. Maybe I misread the instructions?  I definitely did misread the instructions at the very beginning, which is why the textured band around the bottom is not quite as deep as it should be.  Altogether, it's surprising that it has turned out so well.

I am now knitting Kate Davies' Deco cardigan. I took the yarn and needles on holiday to Oregon in May, but didn't actually get any knitting done - I didn't even cast on until we got back home again.  The pattern largely avoids the sewing-up problem, because the cardigan is knitted in one piece - there is only a little bit of sewing required, backing the button-band with a strip of ribbon, as far as I can see.  I am up to the armholes, so far.  More later.

Knitting for Reading

I am in two reading groups and they both meet this week. By the middle of last week I had not finished either of the books for this week's meetings, so I needed some knitting to read by.  The Kid Silk Haze scarf needs too much attention to read at the same time, so I looked for a simpler pattern.  I have chosen Martha by Sarah Hatton, from the Rowan Studio Knits book I bought in Sheffield last autumn.    The yarn is Felted Tweed DK, again, this time in a dark indigo with white flecks, that Rowan calls Seasalter. 

I have so far knitted half the back and finished one of the books - March by Geraldine Brooks, which I enjoyed.  It parallels Little Women by Louisa M Alcott, telling the story of Mr March, who is away being a chaplain in the Civil War during most of Little Women.

 

I read an interview with Sarah Hatton in The Knitter  (issue 21) in which she was asked which was her favourite of the designs she had done for Rowan, and Martha was one that she picked. She said "I think most people could wear it, and it has just the right amount of detail to be interesting without being overly complicated. "   Sounds promising, doesn't it?  I'm planning to make the sleeves quite a bit longer, though. 

Keeping Pattern Correct

I wrote last month about my cardigan in Rowan Cocoon, to Sarah Hatton's Elise pattern. I should write about a modification that I made, that I didn't mention in my earlier post, because it is a change that I would suggest to anyone knitting this pattern.

 

Clearly, the cables are the main feature and because it is a V-neck cardigan with set-in sleeves, there have to be decreases at the armhole and neck edges that might overlap the cables. The narrower cables, over six stitches, are fairly easy to deal with. The cable at the armhole edge (in my size anyway) becomes a strip of stocking stitch alongside the sleeve seam, and the other one disappears fairly neatly and quickly into the neck decreases.

I assumed that the widest cable, over 14 stitches, would continue up to the shoulder seam, although you can't tell from the illustration in the Cocoon Collection book, because the model has long hair that hides the shoulders of the cardigan. So I was dismayed to discover on working through the pattern that in fact the decreases at the neck edge reduce the width of this cable by 2 stitches, several inches below the shoulder seam, and from then on the neck edge continues straight.  I don't know how you are supposed to adapt a cable that is designed for 14 stitches to look right over 12.  The pattern gives no help - it just says "keeping pattern correct"  (or actually "keeping patt correct"), and then tells  you how often to decrease at the armhole and neck edges. (That's not a peculiarity of this particular design, of course - it is usual for pattern writers to leave it up to the knitter to work out how to incorporate decreases or increases into the stitch pattern.)

The knitters that have posted photos of their finished Elise cardigans in Ravelry have all managed to reduce the width of the cable panel quite neatly, I must say.  But I couldn't see how it could be done well enough to look good and I didn't want the headache of trying.  What's more it seemed completely unnecessary.  Why not just make the shoulders three stitches wider, so that the 14-stitch cable panel is kept intact as far as the shoulder seam?   (The third stitch is for the selvage, or in my case to separate the cable from the button band, because I made a built-in button band.)   That works perfectly well - the shoulders are not too wide, and of course, the cable panel looks right throughout.

So my recommendation to anyone knitting this cardigan would be to do the same thing:  make the shoulders 3 stitches wider, so that you can stop decreasing at the neck edge on the fronts when you reach the widest cable panel. It will look much better for a minimal change.

Purple Cocoon

I finished knitting a cardigan for myself two or three weeks ago and I have been wearing it a lot because of the cold weather  - and I haven't yet written a word about it.  Very slack of me.  Anyway here it is - it is knitted in Rowan Cocoon, which is a thick, warm, soft yarn in merino wool and mohair. 

I have a long-standing prejudice that mohair is scratchy, but this is definitely not.  It does shed a little bit, though actually I only noticed when I wore a black t-shirt underneath.  

 The pattern is Elise, by Sarah Hatton, from the Rowan Cocoon Collection book.

I have made some changes - I made the body longer and the sleeves a lot shorter.  (I do not have ridiculously short arms, really and truly - the jumpers I buy generally have sleeves that are about the right length for me, I don't find my coat sleeves hanging below my fingertips - but I usually find the sleeves on Rowan patterns are several inches too long.)

The main modification was that I knitted the button bands at the same time as the fronts.  The pattern specified that the button band should be knitted sideways, picking up stitches all round the edge.  I hate picking up stitches anyway and in this case,  I thought that it would be especially hard to do it neatly, because the fabric is knitted on 7mm needles and so is quite loose.   Instead I adopted a rib pattern that is used for the button bands in an old (machine-knitted) cardigan of mine.  Normally you can't use single rib for an integral button band, because it is too stretchy, but if you slip all the knit stitches on one side, it becomes much tighter, both widthways and lengthways.  In my old cardigan, the side with the slipped stitches was used as the 'public' side, but here I have used it the other way round.  I haven't yet found this stitch pattern in stitch dictionaries, but it is like a rib version of heel stitch, I suppose.  It makes a firm and substantial button band.

Following my own advice, I used short rows to slope the shoulders and then Russian grafting for the shoulder seams.  The result is very neat -  I think a conventional seam, being more bulky, might flatten out the cables.  And so far the shoulder seams have not shown any sign of stretching under the weight of the sleeves. 

There is another important modification that I made to the pattern, that I will write about in another post.

It is a really comfortable warm cardigan - just what I need for the weather we have had this month.  It's cosy without being heavy.  I love the cables too - though I found that it was quite easy to make a mistake, especially in the very wide cable pattern, and not notice for several rows.  Someone said somewhere that Cocoon is impossible to unravel, so you should never make a mistake.   Fortunately for me, that's not true.  I love the colour, too.  Altogether a successful project. 

Slow train to Sheffield

On Monday, I went to Sheffield - I had some errands to do in the John Lewis store.  We usually go by car, and  it takes about an hour.  There is a railway line from Huddersfield to Sheffield, and a train about once an hour, so as I was going by myself, I decided to go by train.  You would not go from Huddersfield to Sheffield by train if you were in a hurry - it takes an hour and a quarter, although it's only about 30 miles.   But the train journey allowed me to get lots of knitting done. (I can't write about the knitting yet, because it's for a Christmas present).  It was a brilliantly sunny day, and the line goes through very pretty countryside of woods and fields (and over two viaducts that give you spectacular views).  It's not a bad way to spend an hour or so, as the train trundles slowly along.

Sheffield is my home town, and so I feel that I know it very well, but I haven't been through the station for a long time.  The area in front of it used to be dingy and unattractive, so I was astonished to see a magnificent water feature there.    

It's a clever design - behind the long silvery wall of water on the right is a busy road, which you are hardly aware of as you walk up to the city centre.

I spent some time browsing in the yarn department in John Lewis, which has an extensive range of Rowan and other yarns.  Lots of very enticing things.  But I am practising going into yarn shops and not buying any yarn.  (Unless I really need some, or it's a terrific bargain, of course.)   I ought to start practising not buying patterns as well, to be honest - I bought the book of Rowan Studio Knits by Sarah Hatton, which has several really nice, wearable, attractive designs. But do I need more patterns?  No. I already have quite enough plans for things that I want to knit to keep me busy for a long, long time....