Lace Yoke Cardigan

Here's what I'm knitting just now.

It's going to be a cardigan.  The design is by Norah Gaughan, from the Holiday 2016 issue of Vogue Knitting.  (The magazine appears in the U.K. as Designer Knitting, with a different cover, and the equivalent issue was Early Winter 2016.)

From Vogue Knitting, Holiday 2016 issue

It is going to look exactly like this, only denim blue.  

As you can see from my work-in-progress, it's knitted top-down, with no seams.  I have got past the complicated yoke, which took a lot of concentration because almost  every row is different - after the yoke it's very straightforward, and I have nearly finished the body.  

The yarn is Aire Valley Aran, spun by West Yorkshire Spinners ("reared, sheared and spun in Britain").  The pattern calls for an Aran weight yarn, though I think the specified yarn must be relatively lightweight to give the specified gauge (21 stitches and 30 rows to 10 cm in stocking stitch on 4mm needles ).  But Aire Valley Aran is also quite lightweight for an Aran yarn, and my gauge is spot on.

I did have a crisis of confidence part way through, though.  One of the advantages of knitting top-down is that you can try on as you go, and I did that, once I had finished the yoke and reached the point where you divide the sleeves from the body.  At that point the yoke looked extremely bulky and much too large.   It doesn't naturally lie flat - especially the cables at the top.   So at that point I pressed it gently under a damp cloth, which was an improvement.  But it was still too large around the neck edge.  The ribbed neckband is supposed to be added as a finishing step, but I decided to pause knitting the body and add the neckband at that point, and that has improved the fit around the neck a lot.  I now believe that it's going to fit me when it's finished, which is a great relief.

Without the neckband, the neck edge was much looser, and was sitting much lower when I tried on my knitting - it would have been difficult to judge the finished length of the cardigan.  So I'd advise anyone else knitting this pattern to add the neckband early, not at the end.

Vitamin D

I finished knitting a cardigan back in August, and I've been wearing it a lot.  It's one of my favourite things to wear currently - ideal for a summer's day when it's not too hot.   (So ideal for a British summer.  Or especially warm October weather, as we are having just now.)  And I haven't yet written about it - mainly because I haven't had any photos of it until today.   Anyway, here it is.

The design is Vitamin D  by Heidi Kirrmaier  (no idea why it's called that).    I saw a sample knit in a yarn shop in Portland, Oregon, last year,  where I bought the pattern and yarn for my Boardwalk pullover, also by Heidi Kirrmaier and a very successful knit.  The Vitamin D sample caught my eye at the same time, and I remembered the name.

It's an interesting construction, with no seams at all, a great selling point.  You start at the back of the neck, and  knit it all in one piece from there.  I love the drapy fronts -  the fullness is created with short rows.  The eyelets are functional, incidentally, not just decorative - i.e. every eyelet is an increase of one stitch.

   
I like the fact that the fronts are drapy without hanging below the back - they don't get in the way, and are tidier than they look.  Heidi Kirrmaier says that it's important to choose a yarn that drapes well, and I picked DMC Natura 4-ply cotton, which I have knitted with before.  It comes in a lovely range of colours (this one is called Blue Jeans), is good to knit with and I think is just right for a summer cardigan.

The back looks good too, and it's long enough for me - I often have to lengthen tops, but not this one.

  
Altogether a very successful knitting project.

Baby Jacket

I have just finished knitting a jacket for Noah, who is three months old.  The pattern is one I have used  before -   Baby Sophisticate by Linden Down  (free via Ravelry). It is entirely seamless (hurray!) and uses Aran weight yarn (or in this case, DK used double), so is quick to knit. 

The buttons are ladybirds - not very sophisticated, in fact, but cute.  And Noah looks extremely cute wearing it.  (Actually, it's also hard to look sophisticated when you have to wear a bib all the time to catch dribbles, so I don't think I need to apologise for the ladybirds.)  

Sophisticated Baby

Over the holidays I knitted a cardigan for a friend's baby boy, due just before Christmas. Daniel arrived on December 26th and I went to see them today and handed over the cardigan.

I had forgotten how tiny new babies are, and I really cannot remember my daughter being so small.  He is, as his mother says, a poppet.  The cardigan is supposedly the 0-3 months size  and looks much too big at the moment, but he'll grow fast and I expect it will fit him before spring arrives.

The pattern is Baby Sophisticate by Linden Down  (free from her web site or via Ravelry).   It's a quick knit in Aran weight yarn.  It's knitted top down - no seams, which is great.  I found the pattern really well thought out.  For instance, the shawl collar is made by picking up stitches all the way round the edge of the cardigan, and I usually hate picking up stitches.  But that's because usually you are only told how many stitches to pick up on each section, and  you have to work out the spacing for yourself (and often get it wrong first time).   Here, the first stitch of every row in the body of the cardigan is slipped, and then you pick up one stitch in every slipped stitch.  Dead easy.  I like the shaping of the shawl collar using short rows, too - sophisticated but easy to follow. 

This project was also my first serious attempt at Continental knitting (holding the yarn in the left hand). I saw someone knitting that way a few months ago, for the first time, and she was so fast that I was amazed. I decided that I should try it - I'm hoping that if and when I can knit easily in the Continental fashion, I will be able to knit faster than before. It's obviously not sensible to switch knitting styles in the middle of a project, because your tension might change, so a small project seemed like a good one to find out whether I could do it or not. This was also a good choice because it is all in stocking stitch and garter stitch - I haven't attempted rib yet.   It seemed very clumsy and awkward to begin with, but I am getting better at it.  My tension seems to be fairly even, somewhat surprisingly.  I'm not very fast yet, but I'm sure I will get faster with practice.   I'm now working on a bigger project - more on that later.
       

Knitting Scales

I have been musing on what to knit with the 6 balls of  bronze-y coloured Rowan silk-wool yarn I bought  recently.  I have borrowed a copy of Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top, so that will give me the structure of a raglan-sleeved cardigan that I can knit downwards until the yarn runs out, but I still need to choose a stitch pattern.

Because of the slightly metallic sheen, I've been thinking of fish-scales and the sort of armour made of small plates.  So on a bus journey yesterday, I tried some possible stitch pattern that might look vaguely like that.

 
(For anyone who thinks, like my husband, that the photo is upside-down, it's not. I'm going to knit top down, so I want to see how the stitch pattern will look that way up.)

I started (after the moss stitch band) with the Openwork Diamonds pattern from Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  But a lacy stitch doesn't seem appropriate if you are thinking of fish scales or scale armour.  So for the rest of the swatch, I filled in the holes in the lace pattern (on the row after a yarn over, I purled into the back of it, to twist it rather than leaving a hole).   I think either of these stitch patterns would work well with the raglan increases for the sleeves and would look neat. 

But now that I have tried knitting with this yarn, it seems quite thick for double knitting, and it's producing a denser fabric than I expected (on 4mm needles).  So I'm not sure it's going to be suitable for a light evening cardi.   Maybe a more open stitch would be better, maybe some sort of mesh.  That would be kind of chain mail, rather than scale armour or fish scales.  

And since I'm going to unravel my swatch, maybe I could measure the yarn I've used and estimate the required area of a small cardigan and see if I'm going to have enough.  The plan is to stop when the yarn runs out, but I don't want it to look stupidly short.  More investigation needed.        

Huggy Jumper

I have just finished a jumper in chunky yarn that I started two weeks ago.  I saw the pattern on Mooncalf's blog - she had knitted it in a weekend.  Apart from looking good, the attraction was that it is knitted on a circular needle from the top down.  There are lots of evident advantages to knitting that way, but I have not much enjoyed previous experiences of knitting in the round.  This seemed a good opportunity to try again  - it wouldn't take very long and I could see if the advantages make it worthwhile.    


The pattern is the Oatmeal Pullover by Jane Richmond

also viewable on the Etsy website,  where the pattern is for sale.  (Although my finished jumper is recognisably the same pattern, she is obviously a lot slimmer than I am.)

The description there is: "This fitted pullover is knit from the top down and requires very little yarn. The body is generous in length featuring deep ribbing and raglan sleeve shaping. The 3/4 length sleeves require no shaping and are fitted to flatter. The entire garment is knit in the round and requires absolutely no seaming. Perfect for trying on as you go for that perfect fit."  

The pattern says that the pullover is designed with negative ease, for a very close fit, i.e. it is designed to be smaller than you are.  I decided that actually I would rather it was bigger than me.   

 I knit it in Sirdar Hug yarn (from Kemps Wool Shop, only 99p for a 50g ball). The recommended gauge for the yarn (on the ball band) is 13 stitches and 17 rows to 4 inches on 8 mm needles, and that is what I was getting in my test swatch.  The pattern is for a chunky yarn, but the gauge is looser, even though on smaller (6.5 mm) needles.  I was glad that Mooncalf had been there before me, because she said that "even on 8mm needles my gauge was a little tighter than that specified on the pattern", so I felt safer about using 8mm needles myself.

I calculated how many stitches I would need to make the finished jumper the same bust size as me ( to avoid the negative ease thing) and decided that I needed to knit the size 48 - this is at least 10 inches bigger than I would normally choose.   (The 48 in. size is designed to have a finished body circumference of 43 inches - the extra shrinkage down to my proper size is due to my tension being tighter than recommended.)

I also took Mooncalf's advice to add three extra rows to the yoke.  She found that the shallowness of the yoke pulled the neckline out sideways, whereas it is intended to be slightly square, and the 3 extra rows have made that work.  

I was a bit doubtful that it would turn out alright, being on the wrong size needles and in theory 3 sizes too big.  So it was especially useful to be able to try on while knitting.  And it is fine - a close fit, but not too small.

What's the verdict?  I definitely like the jumper - it's warm and soft  (although slightly draughty round the back of the neck - because the back and front are the same, the neckline is quite low at the back).  And there are some things about knitting top-down and in the round that I really like.

• I hate sewing up, so it's wonderful to avoid that.   
• I loved being able to try the jumper on as I was knitting.  (Of course, that's because it was knitted top down, as well as in the round.)   It did make a difference to the finished jumper - I was originally planning for the sleeves to be shorter, but didn't like the result. 
• It's kind of geometrically satisfying to knit the whole garment at once, rather than  separate pieces.  

 On the other hand, I still find knitting on a circular needle unnatural.  My right hand has to hold the right needle as well as moving the yarn - on straight needles, the right needle is held under my arm.  So I feel all the time that there is an extra thing to do.  The fact that it was such a large diameter needle created problems too - the stitches on the wire tended to shrink so that they wouldn't slide easily back onto the needle.  I found that I had to stop frequently to shove the next batch of stitches back onto the needle from the wire.  Does anyone else have that problem, or is it just me?  It seems unavoidable, given the disparity between the diameter of the needle (8 mm) and the diameter of the wire (2mm?).  All the pushing and shoving slowed down the knitting.  It didn't help in keeping the stitches even, either.  On straight needles I can get into a rhythm (at least if it's a plain stitch like stocking stitch or rib) - that never happened.  I suspect that I would knit more evenly on straight needles, as well.

I'm still not sold on knitting in the round, so the experiment wasn't altogether a success.  But at least I have a nice jumper out of it.