Knitting my bliss

Almost there . . .I think I mentioned earlier that I generally have a plan for the order in which I will make things, and that once something makes it into my queue, it generally gets knit, or if not, it gets ripped and revised. I do a lot of intellectual dreaming when deciding on a project, but once committed to the needles, I am pretty good at sticking to the plan. Lately, that has not been the case. I finally bought Mason Dixon Knitting, and decided I needed a quick washcloth. Then before I could cast on for the washcloth, I found myself knitting a nightie. Thursday night I went to sleep thinking of some silver and navy Filatura di Crosa Brilla that I had in my stash, and by Friday afternoon I was halfway finished with a simple Nautical top that I quickly designed.

Again and again over the last month I have found myself suddenly enchanted with one thing (a little less so with the washcloth - it's no nightie), and just immersing myself in it until it is done. I think in part this is because I try to restrict myself to having three things on the needles, and right now I am bored to death with the other two things I have hanging about.

The picots, a zoom out, and a reverse shot.

Rockin' my 1992 overalls. Good times.I am working on a black cotton stockinette hoodie for M -- the Man Hood -- which I designed and knit the pieces for on the Lil' Knitter over a weekend about two months ago. I've done much of the seaming, but the miles and miles of black cotton are just boring me to death. The Man Hood is such a slog, that I joined the slog blog and found that I still don't have the drive to work on it or write about it. Imagine if I had hand knit the pieces! I'm also working on the Lacey Tuxedo Top from the most recent Rebecca Magazine. The Lacey Tuxedo Top promises to be good once I get it on my needles (I did the bottom portion on the machine - all stockinette, size 2 needles - ugh), but since I haven't bothered to do that yet, it hasn't bothered to become interesting. Go figure.

I should probably take the rest of this week to get the Rebecca top and the Man Hood back on track -- and maybe I will -- but escaping from those two projects seems to have given me a huge burst of creativity. Although it is simple, Nautical is the first design of my own that I have actually executed this year. (I'm not quite finished - it still needs one more picot hem, seaming and some straps, but I'm almost there.) It feels very good to get something from my head into fabric and have it look the way that I want it to. If having two snores on the needles will get me a nightie and an adorable stripey top, perhaps it's alright to allow those two UFO's to marinate for just a bit longer. For right now, I'm knitting my bliss . . . .

Reclaiming Siena

Lacey Tuxedo Top.
Click to zoom out.I have the weekend off (yay!) and the weather is gloriously misty and chilly, so I've been devoting myself to cleaning up the loose ends in my knitting so that I can move on to some fun new spring projects that I've been swatching for. I ripped out the faulty seam in Moxie's Man Hood, and then seamed the modified raglans for one full shoulder last night. M is really pressing for me to finish since his birthday was two weeks ago. My disinterest in seaming, cuffing and hooding black cotton stockinette is apparently palpable, and he takes this as a reflection of my life priorities. Clearly, I do not love him enough! Sigh.

Once those modified raglan seams get going, they are rather fun little things, but getting up the interest takes some work. I should probably be seaming rather than blogging, as we speak.

Unraveling the Prairie Tunic.I could not work exclusively on that black swath of stockinette, however. The other project I got started on yesterday was the "silk top with lacey center panel and frilly edges" from the latest Rebecca Magazine (No. 33). (Where do they come up with these fabulously creative names for their projects, anyway?) In order to do that, though, I had to reclaim the yarn from the prairie tunic, which gave me such a hard time with its lace panel last summer. (I hope there is not a pattern here!)

Curly hanks prior to washing.I often leave a project that I intend to abandon whole until I plan to reclaim the yarn, because I feel that there may be information contained in what I've knit already that I will need again. The prairie tunic was no exception, and retaining it did pay off, because the gauge for the two projects was exactly the same, and with the needles still dangling from the prairie tunic it wasn't hard to remember which size I had used.

A view of the front.
Lovely, no?I purchased 5 skeins of Jaeger Siena for the prairie tunic, and had only knit less than two, so I was able to start the knitting phase without having to reclaim any yarn, but since it was the weekend and I had time, I decided to get ahead of things and do the reclaiming, too. Here, in a nutshell, are the steps for yarn reclamation if a knitted object has been sitting around for a bit or if a yarn has particularly strong memory for curl:

1. Frog all the knitting by skeining directly onto a ballwinder.

2. Hank all the skeins on a niddy-noddy (or, in my case, a niddy-nosty (scroll down) - love it!) (If you don't have a ballwinder or a niddy-noddy you may want to collapse these two steps into one by frogging directly into a hank, wrapping the yarn around your knees or the back of a chair.)

3. Fill sink with water (hot if cotton as here, tepid if wool) and a dash of wool wash.

4. Gently immerse the skeins for at least half an hour, a bit longer if wool, less is okay if cotton.

5. Gently squeeze water out of the hanks and place in the washer on the spin cycle to remove water (cotton or wool).

6. Snap hanks and thwack violently against a pole or other hard surface to spank any remaining curl out of them (cotton or wool - really).

7. Place unweighted hanks over hangers to dry outside in the shade.

Curly hanks taking a soak.After doing all of that, I left the two hanks to dry, and set out to knit my "silk top with lacey center panel and frilly edges" which we will now call my Lacey Tuxedo Top. The top is made in 100% silk in the original version, but since I have met my yarn-purchasing quota for a while and still do not seem to have a 100% silk of that weight, I am using Jaeger Siena, a 100% cotton. Jaeger Siena is a lot like Rowan Cotton Glace, so it works up in a crisp fashion rather than having the drape of a silk. I think the silk version would be insanely soft, drapey and luxurious, but I think that a crisper cotton version should work well, too. It will be less dressy - kind of a "playclothes" version of the top, which is what the lifestyle of the Hoolia requires.

Straight hanks,
post-thwacking.The original pattern calls for US 5 needles, but I made gauge in the cotton on US 2's. The pattern starts with 13 cm of stockinette in the round which is a bit daunting, but I cast on and knit a round. It was a long-ass round. So I had another thought - this is what knitting machines are made for! I knit two pieces flat on the machine and let them sit overnight to settle into their true gauge. This morning I measured gauge again to see if I was on in my guess for the correct machine tension (tension 3, carriage 2) and to seam the pieces together. Looks like it! From here on out, I'll knit everything by hand. Voila! I'm on my way to having a Lacy Tuxedo Top! Oh, little knitter, how I love you...