Project MIL: Pattern Notes

Me and my fabulous MIL reunited with her favorite sweater.

Project MIL
MindofWinter Reconstruction,
Knit with (barely) eight skeins (98 yards/skein) of Rowan All Season's Cotton (60% Cotton/40% Acrylic) in color 178 "Organic", on Marnie's "Little Knitter" and by hand on size US7 Addi Turbo Circulars.
Gauge: 16 sts and 24 rows per 4 inches.
Size: 41" chest and 20.5" length in final finished garnment.

The Pattern
This sweater is a reconstruction that I worked up the pattern for over Christmas, based on my MIL's favorite sweater. I lucked out, because the sweater was in a large gauge for a machine knit, in a fabric that had the same fiber content and characteristics as Rowan All Season's Cotton. There are many commercial sweaters out there that are beautiful but hard to reproduce. This isn't one of them. It has some very pretty details and some clever shaping, but all of these features are readily apparent, so re-creating them wasn't difficult. I could have very easily knit the entire piece by hand (it probably would have been faster in this case!), but I planned to make it for my MIL many times, and I also wanted a fairly straight-forward pattern to use to try out Marnie's knitting machine, so instead I did about 50% of the work by hand and the other 50% by machine.

The original sweater, laid out for planning at Christmas.

The reconstruction, slightly different, but the fit is true.

This was my very first machine-knitting project, and it went really, really well until I decided that the short rows the machine created looked like poo and ripped out the front and back pieces. In itself, this would not have been such an ordeal, but because I only came to my decision after binding off, seaming and crocheting the edges, it was a bit of work. I reworked the pieces with decreases instead of short rows, but my machine tension still wasn't great from about the neckline up, so ultimately I decided to handknit the tops of both pieces.

When we left for Hawaii, I had all of the pieces in a bag with the sleeves bound off, and the partial front and partial back secured with waste yarn. I was somewhat nervous about finishing, because I wasn't absolutely sure I could match the machine's gauge, and I was afraid that the handknit section would look wonky. It is one thing to do a ribbing edge by hand and a stockinette body by machine, and it is another entirely to switch between the two in the middle of a long plane of stockinette. Blessedly, it all worked out, most likely due to my inexperience on the machine and my experience with handknitting. I am still shocked that this little manuever worked.

The original sleeve with full fashioning.I was able to finish the body pieces, bind off, seam, crochet the edges and steam the piece in time to present it to my MIL on our last day in Hawaii. She was thrilled and showed the sweater to anyone and everyone who might be remotely interested, and insisted on wearing it to dinner with her new necklace - also a beloved possession. If she had been a knitter herself she could not have done a better job of making me feel appreciated and making every single bit of the effort that I put into that sweater worthwhile, and I love her for that. So much so, in fact, that I would still be willing to make five more of these sweaters (as promised) if that was what she most wanted. I think she would still like to have a few more and I am sure that I will produce a few in varying colors here and there for birthdays, but what she really wants next is a River Stole. I think you know what I'll be knitting for Christmas.

Techniques:
This sweater incorporated many interesting shaping and full-fashioning details. I used the shaping for the shoulders, which included increases to broaden them for a swimmer's form. I intended to use the full-fashioning as well, but because you see the wrong side on the knitting machine, I kinda goofed up, so the fashioning is not as exciting as in the original. The big technique that I used was a single crochet border (something I've done often), done in a 2:3 ratio (two crochet loops for every three knit stitches) (something I've never done before). It was pretty cool to have it work out, and the result is nice. It pulls the knit in a little to give a bit of puff to the edges.

The reconstructed sleeve
with a little less fashioning.Finishing:
I would have loved to have had the luxury (time) to wet-block this piece, but with the constraints I was working under, I had to resort to steaming it. I had the foresight to bring along a little $15 hand-held steamer that I got at walgreens years ago, and it did the trick. I hung Project MIL on a hanger on the door of the closet in our cabin and let the steamer get to the point where it was really bubbling along, and then I steamed the sweater very meticulously and slowly, letting the steam seep into every inch of the fabric before moving on. It definitely removed any wrinkles and evened out the stitching, although a wet-blocking would have given a more professional result. If you need to resort to steaming, even with a cheapy steamer, know that it can be done.

Impressions of Rowan's All Season's Cotton:
Rowan All Season's Cotton is a yarn that I return to again and again and again. It's not a yarn that makes me go crazy with need when I see it on the shelf - it's more of a standard, like Karabella Aurora 8 or Rowan Wool Cotton. This isn't the prized yarn that sits in my stash unused because it's beautiful but doesn't go with anything. It's the yarn that goes with everything that I purchase in bulk when I have a design idea. Two of the four things I made with it are original designs, and a third is a reconstruction which required designing. It's a perfect blank canvas that will wear well, drape well, and give great stitch definition.

Possible substitute yarns:
There isn't an adequate substitute for All Season's Cotton in my book. This is one of my favorite yarns. You could use GGH Samoa, but it just isn't quite as nice.

Read all entries on Project MIL

State of the MIL

I know you're wondering if Project MIL has gotten swept to the sidelines while I selfishly bask in the company of the River stole. Have I abandoned my sweet MIL to pursue my own kidsilken pleasures?

You can't see the short rows. I've already decimated them.

I have not. I've been working diligently, but there is less of project MIL this week than there was last week, despite my efforts.

It's not good, people, but it will get better.

The MIL was going along swimmingly. I knit the front, back, and sleeves in the course of about three to four hours on Little Knitter,* got everything nicely seamed and bound off, and then proceeded to play around with some crochet edgings on one of the sleeves. Still, as nice as all of this was, I had some nagging doubts involving the neckline, which I had done with short rows.

I am not the strongest swimmer when it comes to short row wraps. I've been known to somehow miscombobulate the wraps as I hide them and end up with ugly, elongated stitches. In my heart of hearts I know that I need to go back to my Vogues and IKs and re-read the short-row tutorials, or head on over to Nona's and see what she has to say. (If Nona can short row, I can too? As an aside, Nona shows us many methods of short-rowing in her tips and techniques - I'm thinking wraps may be a thing of the past!) I know that it is simply a matter of habitually going into the stitches in the wrong manner and that if I commit myself to understanding how the hiding of the wrap works, I will have lovely, hidden short row wraps and never have to worry about this again. I just haven't done it. Yet. (Don't worry, I really will do it this time, I just have to get through some other stuff -see below- first.) The thing is, in this case it wouldn't matter if I were an olympic short rower, because short-rowing doesn't appear to be Little Knitter's strong suit, either.

Moxie: "Even I wouldn't do that much work for my mother." How soon he forgets that he is speaking to a woman who spent five months of her life designing and knitting a sweater for him. Twenty hours on Project MIL? Nuthin'.

I hadn't loved the appearance of the neckline from the start, but for some reason I ignored its ugly presence - most likely believing that I could either do some fancy footwork to correct it, or hide it under the crochet edging in some fit of genius. Let's just say that the genius didn't arrive. It wasn't for lack of trying.

Isn't this a lovely seam? Sob.So, in a fit of something quite other than genius, I tore the neckline apart. And when I say tore, I do not mean carefully unravelled with forethought and planning. I attacked that neckline and got out all of the negative feelings that I had toward it.

You may be wondering why I was so annoyed. It was, after all, only the neckline, which would seem relatively easy to access and re-knit. It wasn't. I had to get through shoulder seams, armscye seams, and even side seams. Have I mentioned that these seams were perfect? Beautiful? Flawless? I love a good seam, and these were seams, in cotton, which I had meticulously, painstakingly completed.

They are gone.

Even worse, I had decided that it was a good idea to bind off the neckline, cuffs, and body in the round after seaming, for a more perfect edge. So all of the bind-offs had to be taken out and re-bound-off as well. (By the way - if you are thinking of doing this, it's not worth it. It's a lot of trouble if you do need to take a seam out, and it doesn't add much.)

The only thing that I did which saved me some time was leaving the ends loose. I never, I repeat never, weave in the ends of my seaming yarn until a piece is entirely seamed and I have tried it on and am certain that I am happy with it. This is such a great practice and saves me so much grief - 'cause who wants to find an end that they have so carefully hidden? - that it deserves blockquote status.

Initially I put lifelines in below the neckline and those clever shoulder increases and above the armscye decreases, but I'm thinking that those will go and I will instead rework both the front and back in their entirety. Although I can usually count on All Season's Cotton to be free of "issues," this batch had a few tiny areas where some strands of another, darker yarn got incorporated, and they are noticable to the discerning (read: MIL's) eye. We can't have that. Previous to the neckline debacle I was considering grafting. Now I will simply cut out the offending areas and re-knit. Stay tuned.

*Marnie's term of endearment for her lovely knitting machine.

Return of the MIL (Sweater)

I didn't plan to blog again until I was ready to unveil the new digs, but I have gotten so into this little renovation that it has become, well, big. I am obsessed with optimizing, automating, adding little bells and whistles. In order to accomplish what I envision I've been teaching myself about things like css, javascript and dhtml. The techies out there will probably have a good giggle when I'm finally done, because I'm quite sure this isn't rocket science. Still, for me, it's an accomplishment. Anyway, that's a long-winded way of letting you know that I'm posting now - something you've probably already caught on to.

Moxie: "It's kind of ugly. I don't like the blue frillies."As part of the house-cleaning jag that I've been on, I've been clearing my slate of projects that have been hanging on a little too long. Some of you may remember that way back in December I told my sweet mother-in-law that I would replicate her favorite sweater for her. She's had this sweater for some time, and says that it fits her swimmer's body in a way that no other sweater she has found can. If she could, she would own six of these sweaters in different colors and wear them all the time.

With testimonials like that, how could I resist offering to duplicate this sweater six times?* (Yes, I know, someone obviously is desperate for love and approval. It's an illness.) Luckily, I'm a smart girl. I told her that I would do it by Christmas 2006. I also planned to make all of them using a knitting machine that I just knew a certain generous someone would lend me. Since I knew that certain generous someone would be going out of town soon, I took the opportunity to find the necessary yarn for the job and arrange to handle the care and feeding of said machine while she is away.

Swatching for gauge.
The "frillies" are waste yarn.Let me just say that I have taken to this machine like a fish takes to water. Marnie brought it over after our SnB on Sunday, and I swatched three different yarns that night. Monday night, convinced that I was sufficiently acquainted with the machine, I swatched for Project MIL. Tuesday night, with my swatches sufficiently blocked and dried, I completed the front of the sweater. This was a little more complicated than I envisioned, and I hit a minor snag when I got to the armhole decreases, which require that you do two consecutive decreases. After a few false starts I realized that you have to make the decreases closer to the midline of the sweater before the decreases that lie closer to the edges. The one thing that I didn't get right was the full-fashioning. The decreases on this sweater are designed to stand out - the equivalent of a k2tog on the right and a SSK on the left. To do this, you have to reverse the order of the decreased stitches on the needle, but since the purl side faces out on a knitting machine, I didn't realize that I had goofed on it until I was done with the piece, and I didn't feel like ripping, since I had a perfectly lovely sweater front, sans the fancy detailing. I'll go all out with the decreases on the next five!

Weaving a smaller needle through the stitches 2 rows down.
This will give me sufficient yarn to bind off.This was a totally fun experience. In retrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to practice more than straight knitting before diving into the sweater front and having to do increases, decreases, and short-rowing (Which is shockingly easy! The decreases are the hardest maneuver.) Having made it through on a wing and a prayer, however, I am emboldened to persevere. Last night I finished the back. Tonight, the sleeves!

I don't know how other people do this, but my plan is to leave all the waste yarn on the body in place until I get around to seaming and finishing. That way I can bind off all the edges in the round. Stay tuned!

Rip, bind off on a larger needle, and voila!

*For those of you concerned about copyright (hopefully everyone), it is fine to copy a sweater that you own for yourself, and it is also fine to copy a sweater and give it to a friend. These things fall under the category of "personal use" and are perfectly legal uses of intellectual property under copyright law. Likewise, if you see something you like on the fashion runway that you do not own and have the skills to reverse-engineer it without directly referring to the original, you may do so for personal use. It is not okay to pass the sweater off as your own, to distribute the pattern for free or sell it, or to make the sweater for sale. This is true even if the sweater you are copying is from a free pattern. Sound complicated? It is! Learn more about copyright for knitters. One of my patterns was recently infringed, so I'm particularly sensitive to the issue.

Calling All Crocheters: Project MIL

It's vacation time and I have an unprecedented amount of free time on my hands, so the task of the day has been deconstructing my MIL's favorite (and sadly well-worn) sweater:

We here at MindofWinter take our sweater construction seriously.

Since I know you guys are likely to be skimmers like me, I'll present you with the single outstanding issue first, and then give you a tour of the fun aspects of this sweater later in the post. The issue is this lovely edging along the hem, sleeves and neckline:

Elegant, no? It prevents the stockinette from curling and leaves a smooth edge. Need another view?

My best guess is that this is a single row of a very simple crochet followed by a bind off, worked on live knit stitches. Upon close inspection, the ratio of crochet sts to knit looks to be about 2:3, but I could be wrong about that. I'm hoping that my closest knitting buds who are also excellent crocheters, Marnie and Mary Heather, are out there poised to solve this great mystery. However, I am of the opinion that it's never a bad thing to have many expert opinions, so this is an open call to all the crocheters out there. If you think you can identify the technique, please speak up in the comments. Single crochet? Double crochet? Crab stitch? As one who crochets on an as-needed basis, and sometimes not even then, I just can't tell.

Now, on for a fun tour of the sweater. Here's the whole shebang unfurled for you:

I got pretty lucky. MIL's favorite sweater is stockinette, short-sleeved, and waist-length.

My MIL likes this sweater so much that she says she would be really happy to have just this sweater in six different colors and no others. Since I'm pretty sure that was meant as a hint, I decided to get started on the prototype. My plan is to knit the "original" by hand, and then impose upon my friends with knitting machines to let me borrow equipment to whip out several more over the year. I think that large enough segments of this sweater can be machine made that the finishing won't make me batty. I figure if I pound one out every few months, she'll have a full set by next year. I'm not usually one to take knitting requests (as all who know me know!), but in this case the pattern was both interesting enough to spend time deciphering and straightforward enough to spend time producing. Challange! (Imagine that in a Frenchy accent.) There you have it.

The fun features of this sweater (aside from the clever edging), reside mostly in the sleeve area, where the designer made use of fully fashioned single and double decreases. The decreases on the back body do not match those on the front exactly (there are fewer back decreases, for the broad of shoulder gal), and there is increasing on both the front and back shoulders at the armhole edge (also for the broad of back). This was a really interesting sweater for me to deconstruct, as it was created for someone of a very different body type than myself. My MIL is tall, short-waisted (but thin-waisted), buxom, and has strong swimmer's shoulders. We have identical ideal length measurements for armholes and body, but we vary widely in our width measurements. I've never owned or seen a sweater with increases at the shoulder, but for her body type, they work perfectly. I've made schematics and written out all the instructions for her perfect sweater (sans crochet edging) and found it really instructional. I feel I'm one step closer to getting the sizing on other body types, which is a great thing for someone who likes to design. Now all I need is some yarn....