Bubble Pullover: Pattern Notes

We finally got one of those SoCal mornings that was truly chilly - well, as chilly as a Los Angeles summer morning can be - so I decided that it was a good time to pull out the Bubble Pullover and write up some pattern notes. It's a great knit, and it would be a shame if it got lost in the shuffle of pregnancy and life in general. Plus, I find that once again several weeks have rolled by without a post, and considering how upside down things are about to become, it's now or in many months hence for the blog. Have you looked over at that baby counter? I have seven weeks to go. And that's if he stays in until 40 weeks (please kid, stay in there 40 weeks!) God, it feels like I have been pregnant forever and yet simultaneously time has flown. Completely amazing.

Enjoying a tender moment with my basketball.

Anyhoo, back to the Bubble Pullover. At the moment I look somewhere between totally ridiculous and kind of cute wearing it - it basically creates a nice clear target on my baby belly and boobs. But I made my friend Laura try it on when she was out here last weekend and on a body that is similar to mine normally it works really well. By the time that I'm wearing it I think that enough of the tummy will be gone that it will be a favorite on colder days. It's wonderfully comfy and cozy when worn.

Bubble Pullover
Knitting Nature
designed by Norah Gaughan
Knit with 5.75 skeins (1254 yards total) of Misty International Hand Dyed Worsted (100% alpaca) in colorway EZ14 "Spring Touch"
on size US6 (4.0 mm) and US7 (4.5 mm) Addi Turbo circulars.
Gauge: ? sts and ? rows per inch over stockinette stitch. (I'll fill this in later if I remember!)
Size: 38" at bust when blocked.

From the back -- closer to
how it will look when I am
flat-chested and flat-bellied again.The Pattern: I've been following Norah Gaughan's work for over a decade now - she's one of my all-time favorite designers - yet somehow I have never gotten around to making one of her patterns until now. There was a time when I thought I would systematically go through some of my favorite people and do a few designs from each of their collections, but now I know better. Nothing systematic is ever going to happen in that department - I'm just too fickle to impose that kind of structure on my fun time. I've made one design by Veronik Avery (three times), one by Teva Durham, one by Sarah Hatton, one by Annie Modesitt, and I'm working on an EZ pattern. So really, if I just get around to a Marie Wallin design someday I will have at least one of each - that's something, right?

I've always thought that completing a few things by those women would be a sort of Tour of the Masters, and it really has been. Norah Gaughan, as most know, is a master of unique construction, and as an on again off again designer myself, I've found it very interesting to follow her footsteps through a pattern - either by just reading through the instructions or by actually knitting in this case. She has a real talent for doing something in a unique way and yet simplifying and streamlining at the same time, so that you can do something new and wonderful without it being a huge pain in the ass. It makes her edgy designs accessible to knitters from a wide range of skill levels, which is a very nice plus. Except for a few different techniques (like picking up stitches using the working yarn and the tail end of your cast-on alternately - so clever) most of what goes on in the Bubble Pullover is pretty straightforward and should be familiar to an advanced beginner.

Dude. If you can't hit this you couldn't
hit the broad side of a barn!You basically start with a single pentagon and build from there, connecting pentagon after pentagon until you have eight pentagons total which are connected into a tube. From there you simply pick up and knit the bottom ribbing down from one side of the pentagon tube and the collar from the other end of the tube. Add fabulous buttons (I got mine at Imagiknit when hanging out and podcasting with Nicole of Stash and Burn), and voila, you have a great sweater. I thought that I would be bored by the repetition of the pentagons, but watching them come together is pretty addictive, so it wasn't a problem. I knit the bulk of this sweater in Italy, so it is infused with our wonderfully romantic honeymoon (babymoon?) as well, which makes it extra-special.

Modifications: I re-gauged this baby to work with the wonderful Misti Alpaca yarn that I bought for it, but other than that I didn't make any modifications that spring to mind. Re-gauging is much easier than you would imagine if you understand the construction. I actually found it easier to deal with than most patterns for re-gauging. (Don't ask me what I did, though - I didn't write down the numbers and I don't remember! There was a lot of winging it involved.)

Showing is no longer a concern.Techniques: This list is going to sound more difficult to a beginner than it is. If you don't know how to do everything already, don't let that stop you - just get a book or look on-line and teach yourself the things you don't know yet. They should come to you and be a good foundation for any sweater: knitting in the round, picking up stitches, working on double-pointed needles, making button holes with yarnovers (explained in pattern) and my new favorite picking up stitches alternating the tail from a cast-on edge and the working yarn. This last technique is one that I haven't seen before, but it is really useful and pleasing. It won't be hard to get down once you have yarn in hand and just try it. This is one of those techniques like Annie Modesitt's slipped stitch edging that I will definitely file away for future use.

Impressions of Misti International's Hand Dyed Worsted:
I know that you must think that I haven't met a yarn I didn't like ever because I am always raving about my project yarns. The reason is that for the most part I know how to pick a yarn that I like without actually knitting it first. I've met many yarns that I loathed, but most of those were encountered early on in my knitting life, well before I worked at a yarn shop or cranked out the volume of knitting that I have in the last few years. Rest assured that when I go on and on about a yarn it is genuine and not without discernment. Not all of the yarns I love are easy yarns - I adore linen, which is hard on the hands in its pure form, and I have happily knit with yarns that others would find splitty, slippery, or difficult. If that is the case, I will tell you the whole story here.

Folded to show off the gorgeous buttons; Bubblicious laid flat.

With that introduction, Hand Dyed Worsted is not only a wonderful yarn, it is an easy yarn. Personally, the alpaca is up there with the merino sheep for beautiful fiber. The two are tied for my favorite. I know that not all knitters feel this way about alpaca, but if you aren't allergic to it and want to go out on a limb and give it a try, this is a good yarn to choose. Hand Dyed Worsted is one if the softest Alpaca yarns I've used yet. Touch it to your cheek (your hands aren't as sensitive and won't pick up any underlying itchiness) and see if it passes the comfort test. You may be surprised. The colors of this yarn are beautiful, and come in semi-solid varieagateds - I could own several colorways if I weren't already over-run with stash. It is a pricey yarn, but not as pricey as it seems at first glance, because it is sold in 100 gram skeins, so you get twice as much yarn as you would in an average skein of yarn. The sad news is that it is discontinued, so like a fine wine it will be hard to find in the future. It is recently discontinued, however, so your chances of picking some up are still pretty good. It's well worth a little hunt, and maybe if enough of us hunt Misti will consider bringing it back. If not, check out their offerings. Misti is a great company and I really enjoy all of their alpacas.

Possible substitute yarns:
A ton. See what other people have used - Ravel it! Some of my favorites: Olga's in Malabrigo, Jatta's in Araucania (with handmade buttons) and Knittingdropout's in Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran.

[Read all entries on the Bubble Pullover.]

Salve Bellas! Photos from Italia

Clockwise from top left: Us on the terrace in Vernazza; Horse by the Spanish Steps with a crocheted head dress; M basking in the sun in Vernazza harbor; Vernazza from above; Me & Mishka at Trevi Fountain; Me in Venice; the Colosseum; Us in the Bardini Gardens of Florence; M at Trevi Fountain; Florence's Duomo; My baby belly at Trasimeno lake in Umbria; Vernazza Harbor; Stoic Cats in the Bardini Gardens.
Most photos are clickable, but the ones of Moxie aren't.

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We're back! Both tired and happy. It was a wonderful romantic trip and a great way to steal some time for ourselves before the little bundle of joy hijacks our lives. Many knits were worn, and some were photographed. The little snippet of pink in the first photo is the River Stole, Mishka made it to the Trevi Fountain and Rome, the Daktari Skirt strolled through Florence, and several sweaters kept me warm in chilly Venice.

I had originally hoped to finish the Bubble Pullover prior to our trip, thinking that at least Venice would be sweater-worthy. When that didn't happen, I realized knitting memories are created on trips even more than before, and that I would probably enjoy making the Bubble Pullover in Italy more than I would enjoy rushing through it to wear it there. I'm still not quite done. I have about five and a half inches of collar left to knit, two sleeves to seam together and buttons to sew on. I'm going to savor the process and finish when I do. I won't be able to actually wear this big alpaca sweater until late fall, regardless. It has been a lovely journey as well - my first Norah Gaughan pattern after years of admiring her work. And the Misty Alpaca yarn is heaven. I'll try to get some decent progress shots so that you can enjoy it, too.

The Bubble Pullover may well be the only knit just for me this year (gasp!). I have several projects for publication that I'm working on this summer and I'm going to sneak in some baby knits where I can before D-day. I have a feeling that the end of the year will get swallowed up by a screaming, pooping, boob-wrecking baby who has already stolen my heart.

Take Me To Your Leader

All inferior non-alpaca life forms should surrender now....

This is really the beginning of Norah Gaughan's lovely Bubble Pullover, which I have no doubt will be awesome, but at the moment it looks for all the world like a big green alien to me. Well, at least when it doesn't look like an extremely ample (yet green) bosom. You'll have to forgive me on that one, but once you finally have boobies, they get in your head. (One of the great joys of pregnancy - breasts! - who knew these things were so great?)

Seriously, though, back to the knitting. One of my favorite things about ravelry, and flickr, too, is that you can scope out a project ahead of time to see which colorways appeal the most to you. When I made the endpaper mitts I scrolled through tons of ravelry FO's to decide how I wanted to handle the colorway I had chosen. It may not sound complex, but with two colors, there are at least four different variations, and the way that you choose a dominant color really affects the final look of your fingerless gloves. Similarly, with the Bubble Pullover, there were certain FO's that really stood out for me, and invariably those were the ones which employed either heathered or mono-variegated yarn. I ended up not having anything in the stash that really did it for me for this project, so I put the design aside for a while, but then I stumbled on some lovely hand-painted Misty Alpaca (sadly, I believe it is discontinued) and voila! started anew.

A pretty, less extraterrestrial photo of the bubble.

I was a little afraid that the pentagons might bore me to tears, but so far, so good. I'm now on my fourth and still interested. My other fear about this pattern is that it would be difficult to re-gauge (and if you know me, you know that I end up re-gauging everything I knit - this is no exception). In fact, this is probably one of the easier re-gauging jobs I've done. As everyone says, the construction of this sweater is unique. It is not, however, complicated. I don't have any trouble envisioning how it will fit or if it will work. In fact, there is a little part of me that wonders if this will not become the third major route to constructing a sweater - top-down, bottom-up, and pentagonal! No wonder Ms. Norah is so entranced by these shapes - they really can go the distance.

I'm going to stop here, lest I write the pattern notes before completing the pattern. But I do highly recommend this sweater (or one of Norah's other many pentagonal creations) as a good time. I'm making my way slowly through this one (there are baby things to be made as well), but I know I will be so happy to wear it when it is done (well, in LA, several months after it is done). It should serve my not-quite-back-to itself belly quite well next winter. A bubble for a bubble.

A knit with a view

The second (and final!) piece of Mishka lies blocking on the kitchen table. I usually block my knits on the side porch, but today it's chilly and blustery (50's!), so I had to move Mishka inside to dry. I'm spoiled, because in the summer even a wool sweater will dry in a day. Now the situation has changed, and I may be looking at two days. The sooner the better!

This is one spoiled knit, perched in the window enjoying the scenery.

All I have left is a simple neck treatment, side seams and ties for the shoulders. Thank goodness! This is a really pretty knit, I'm happy with my design concept, and I know that I will get a lot of wear out of it, but sheesh have I been dragging my feet on this one. This is the kind of top that I would whip through in a week and a half if the pattern were written, but having to write instructions as I go really breaks my stride for some reason. Happily, that portion of the designing is done. I've finished the whole pattern in my size, so all that remains is re-sizing.

It's almost as good as watching paint dry.

My reward for finishing Mishka is that I get to cast on for a whole bunch of new knits. Many of them are my own designs that I've been swatching for a while, and one is this fun pattern from Knitting Nature, which my best friend and I are knitting together. (Last year we both made the Marseilles Pullover.) We planned cast on day for December first - and so it is.