sweetgeorgia

Orange you blue?

It’s starting to warm up here in Vancouver and that scratchy, heavy Shetland wool fair isle is sort of the last thing I want to knit right now. I’m itching for some lace. Being without a Zephyr project or shawl project right now makes me antsy. Gah, my hands want lace.

So here is my respite. Orangina. Stephanie Japel’s perfect solution for easy peasy and pretty lace. It’s lovely mindless knitting in quite a nice cotton. Rowan 4-ply Cotton doesn’t split but it does remind me a bit of thin dishcloth cotton. Whatever, my hands are happy now.

The Power of Knitting is Fierce

Thanks so much everybody for your wonderful and mood-lifting comments! You guys made me laugh — especially Gleek who said “we yarn-buying ANIMALS totally hosed your server!! the power of knitting is fierce.” And we all know that with great power comes great responsibility…

So in celebration of the new dedicated server and yarn-buying animals everywhere, 10% of the sales on Monday will go towards the Canadian Cancer Society via my friend, Jazzi, who is participating in the Relay for Life on June 9 in Salt Spring Island.

Michelle was superfriend yesterday and when I said something about “this is the kind of day that needs wine”, she bought me a bottle of Cedar Creek Ehrenfelser — a wine that’s been described as “fruit salad in a glass”. Ah yes, because that’s what friends do. They bring wine on bad days.

But last night, during dinner (much to the amusement of the waiter), I finished my Pomatomus socks and Michelle finished Kate Gilbert’s Anouk — Michelle’s version is knit in denim yarn with the cutest red ladybug buttons. Must get a photo of it! My socks are here:

…and now I can continue to work on Fair Isle Yoke Cardigan (Elizabeth Zimmerman)…

The photo is of the left shoulder… and yes, there are no real sleeves yet. The EZ method is to knit the body in the round, then knit two sleeves separately in the round, then join them all together and start the fair isle yoke bit. Same idea as the Hourglass Sweater except that the Hourglass has raglan shaping and the EZ cardi has round shaping (evenly spaced decreases).

I wanted to break up the long stretches of plain, grey stockinette rounds, so rather than knitting up sleeves, I just did a provisional cast-on for the number of stitches that I want at the top of the sleeve and joined the “sleeves” to the body. Now I can enjoy the fair isle portion of the sweater. When it’s all done, I’ll just pick up the sleeve stitches and knit down to the wrist. Easy and lazy.

Happy weekend!

The Perfect Red

Last April, we were visiting Japan and I felt the need to buy Noro in the “mother country”. The selection of Noro Cash Iroha at Okadaya near Shinjuku station was surprisingly limited — a lot of black and a bit of red. So, I bought the red.

This red was a warmish, rusty red that just wouldn’t wear well on me, so after I finished the sweater, I overdyed the whole thing. I wanted to shift the colour from warm to cool without darkening or muddying the existing colour. Solution? Overdye with just over 1% WashFast Magenta.

Since the yarn has a bit of silk content, I had to soak the sweater at least overnight… I was busy most evenings, so I ended up soaking it for three nights. Then the dyeing happened on Thursday evening with 4 g of dye powder (the sweater weighed 360 g, so this is just over 1% DOS), 36 g of citric acid (to make the dye strike) and 36 g of glaubers salt (to promote even dyeing). I agitated pretty much continuously for the first few minutes and then I’d come back and agitate the sweater lightly during each commercial break of The O.C. The sweater cooked for about an hour in total and I let the whole thing cool down overnight.

Hourglass Sweater

• Pattern: From Joelle Hoverson’s “Last Minute Knitted Gifts”
• Size: I knit the smallest size (33″) but the sweater stretched on its own to about 36″
• Yarn: Noro Cash Iroha, 9 skeins (the ball in the photo is what I have left of the 9th skein)
• Needles: US 7 / 4.5 mm Addi Turbos
• Mods: I shortened the sleeves by about an inch (they were 17.5″ before joining to the body). Oh, and lazy me didn’t kitchener the sleeves and body under the arm. I did — of course — a three-needle bind off.
• Notes: Well, I think everyone who has made this sweater with Cash Iroha has made the same comments before — if in doubt, make a smaller size since the yarn will stretch out. Also, the neckline is very “Flashdance”. I had to string some additional yarn through the neckline in a lame attempt to maintain the neck shaping.

A couple months ago in Seattle, I came upon Cash Iroha in the exact same dyelot as I bought in Japan, so I purchased 2 additional skeins (for a total of 11 skeins) but ended up not needing them at all. I’ll probably use the remainder of the yarn for a little scarf or maybe a hat… and then overdye that too.

This sweater is super easy to make and so so so comfortable to wear. I think I might even make another one… with more mods of course.

The Red Phase

Shopping your own stash is a good thing. There are beautiful yarns that I bought and put in the stash for a reason… specific things I wanted to make but then forgot about. So picking through your stash, re-organizing, poking around… it gets you inspired to make those things again. Here’s what I picked up:

Plain and simple (if you pick up the errata on PURL’s site), I’m knitting the Hourglass Sweater from “Last Minute Knitted Gifts”. I bought the Cash Iroha in Japan for this very purpose. The time has come… for cashmere.

And for the Harlot’s Knitting Olympics, I’ve picked…

This beautiful skein of Zephyr was purchased at the Salt Spring Island Fibre Festival last summer. It’s about 1170 yards but the pattern specifies 1260 yards. I’m hoping I can knit this shawl without running out of yarn… because, well, that would suck.

End of Electra

What can I say? This vest was fun, fast and easy to knit. I’m wearing it today and just love it. Here are my finishing photos:

This is the top edge of the vest — I didn’t bind off just yet. I just strung the stitches onto some waste yarn so that I could sew and cut the steeks first. You can see the stitch markers indicating where the steek stitches start and end.

Yeah, there were a ton of ends to weave in, even with knitting in the round. But maybe a quarter of the number of ends compared to knitting flat and then seaming. Whoohoo.

Just like with the baby norgi, I machine stitched down between steek stitches 1 & 2 and 3 & 4. Then again down the middle of stitch 2 and 3…

Then I cut straight down the middle between stitches 2 and 3… Easy peasy.

I couldn’t resist the lovely window light coming through the sheers in our bedroom. The vest is kind of cropped, so there’s a bit more shirt sticking out than I’m used to. But I love it!

Electra Vest from Rowan 38

• Pattern: Rowan 38
• Yarn: Rowan Kid Silk Haze, Felted Tweed and Yorkshire Tweed in the specified colours
• Needles: US 7 / 4.5mm and US 3 / 3.25mm Addi Turbos
• Changes: Rather than knitting flat pieces, I knit this in the round and steeked the neckline and armholes. I added 4 stitches for each steek. The shoulders were joined with a 3-needle bindoff. Yippee, no sewing!
• Finished Measurements: 34″ size