Res Completa: Blankie for Baby L

When my friend Kelly announced that she and her husband Joe would be having a baby this spring, the first thing I thought (after the initial excitement) was: "What am I going to knit for the little one?!" I've done baby sweaters, socks, pants, hats, a bathrobe, a toy...what else was there in the baby knit genre that I had yet to explore? The answer was: blankies. So right then and there, I knew a blankie it would be for future Baby L.



Pattern: Tender Blankie, by Knit and Tonic
Needles: US 5 circs
Yarn: Kollage Yarns Corntastic, 2.3 skeins of Topaz (the lighter blue), and Takhi Cotton Classic, 1.5 skeins of the darker blue
Start to Finish: December 26, 2008 - January 2, 2009



Mods: I added stripes (6 rows with each color), but left off the ruffle. To account for my smaller gauge (I got 6 sts per inch rather than 5), I cast on 101 stitches for each square. With all the extra yarn I had left over when I was done, I wish I had cast on even more. The blankie ended up being about l7" on each side, which I think will be good for a newborn, and it can turn into a lap blankie once he's bigger.


Kel opening the blankie at her shower (in which I fail to notice the huge, light-filled window behind her, and mistakenly think this will be a great photo).

Notes: This blankie is made of four squares that are then seamed together when you're done. This made for perfect travel knitting, and in fact I finished the whole thing while traveling to and from Argentina after Christmas. I may have been done even sooner, but the blankie had Twilight to compete with...

One thing I either didn't think about or didn't realize when I decided to go for stripes is that garter stitch seams are not invisible. So my choices were to either use one color to seam up the blocks and have it look really ugly and apparent when I was seaming stripes of the wrong color, or I could use two different strands of yarn to seam, one of each color, and then have a little extra bulk along those seams. I chose the latter. Each stripe was seamed with a strand of its own yarn, and the "nonworking" yarn was held to the back then laced through a few stitches before it was used to seam again. I had to be very, very careful not to pull the seaming strands too tight. In the end, I love how it looks from the front, but the seam lines on the wrong side look a little messy. I'm still kind of mad at myself for not seeing this coming...hindsight, 20/20, and all that.

I should also note that I loved both of these yarns. Loved. And how cool is it that the aptly named Corntastic is made of corn fiber??

In other knitting-related news, today I make the trek to Stitches West!! Yarn will be bought, and fellow bloggers will be met. I can't wait.

Res Completa: Scarf for My Sweetie

Back in December, I won the most amazing blog giveaway from Canary Knits: 6 balls of Rowan Tapestry (a delightful blend of wool and soybean fiber) and a gorgeous original-design sweater handknit from the same by Ms. Canary Knits herself*. It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the loveliness of the yarn with its neutral-but-not-at-all-boring browns and gradual self-stripiness. Then the week before Valentine's Day, I was playing around with stitches and fell in love again: with linen stitch. I started thinking about what would happen to a variegated or self-striping yarn done up in linen stitch, and that Rowan Tapestry practically flung itself at me from across the room. The result? A scarf that I loved every moment of knitting (linen stitch is so soothing!) and that ended up being gender-neutral enough for a man-knit. And because so much love went into knitting it, I thought it only fitting to give it to my own love for Valentine's Day.



Pattern: Improvised - I cast on 355 stitches and worked the scarf vertically in linen stitch. Finished measurements were ~8x45".
Yarn: Rowan Tapestry, a little more than 3 balls of color 170
Needles: US 8 circs
Start to Finish: February 5-12, 2008



Above you can see how the scarf looks on both sides: all smoothly textured on the knit side, and nubbly and cool on the purl side. The photos above were taken on a cloudy day so the colors did not come out true to life. The below photo is slightly more accurate.


(The most pleasant sick day I've had - knitting under a big blanket on the couch, watching Jane Austen-themed episodes of Masterpiece Theatre and kept company by a most cuddly companion).


*The lovely sweater by Canary Knits. I love it! Thank you again!!!

Res Completa: Inga Ski Hat

The onset of wintertime and snow on the mountains means it's time for a new ski hat. Enter Inga:



Pattern: Inga Hat, by Sheila Macdonald
Yarn: Jo Sharp Classic DK Wool, 1 skein of Amethyst and 1.5 of Silk; a little bit of Cascade 220 for the grey stripe
Needles: US 3 and 5 dpns and circs
Start to Finish: January 19-21, 2009

Mods: I made the hat shorter a la Hello Yarn (and lots of others on Ravelry) by starting the colorwork at row 24 instead of row 9. Other than that, everything's as it should be.

Notes: After admiring some gorgeous versions of this hat (these are two of my favorites), I immediately added it to the queue. And after finishing an as-yet-unblogged sweater that required maths and shaping and frogging and reknitting, I was in desperate need of a palate cleanser. This hat fit the bill perfectly. The braid at the bottom was certainly an interesting trick to learn and I love the look of it. The colorwork pattern was challenging in that each row was different and I couldn't just memorize it, but not so difficult that I had to watch what I was doing with each stitch. And as a hat, it was a small project that gave that nice sense of instant gratification. Add to that that it used up some stash yarn...the perfect project at the perfect time!



Inga and I hit the slopes this weekend and had a great time. I think she's a keeper (even though she does make my head look a bit pointy).

Res Completa: Bohus Forest Darkness

From the moment I first read about Bohus Stickning a couple of years ago I made it my knitterly goal to one day knit a Bohus sweater for myself. Both sides of my family are mostly Swedish, and though in the generations since my great-grandparents landed in the US we've lost the language and most of the traditions, I've always felt proud of my heritage and tried to stay connected to it in any way I could. So when I realized there was a way I could express my Swedishness in knitting, I knew I had to do it. It took me awhile to build up the courage needed to tackle a whole sweater knit mostly on size 0 needles with some amazing colorwork I was afraid I would ruin completely....but I finally did, and I am so happy.



Pattern: Bohus Forest Darkness, originally designed by Annika Malmström-Bladini (1953) and updated by Solveig Gustafsson
Yarn: 2-ply angora/merino blend, hand dyed by Solveig Gustafsson
Needles: US 0 (2mm) and 1 (2.25mm) circs and dpns
Gauge:
Start to Finish: November 2 - December 21, 2008



Mods: Firstly, I knit the whole thing in the round rather than splitting for back, front, and sleeves after finishing the yoke. I'm not a big fan of purling (still not sure if this is because I'm a Continental knitter or what) and couldn't imagine doing so with so many stitches on such little tiny needles -- it would have killed me! Anyway, I knit it in the round and also inadvertently skipped the short rows, which I'm a little disappointed about. From there, I made a number of changes to the way the sweater was shaped. I'm almost ashamed to admit this because I feel it was sacrilegious for me to muck around with this amazing pattern rooted in so much tradition, however: a) the smallest size of the original pattern is 38" and I'm a 32, and b) the original had no waist shaping, which I knew I needed if I was ever going to wear the sweater. I also made the sleeves 3/4 length (about 11.25") because I thought it would be cute (more sacrilege). That said, below is my best estimation of what I did. Unfortunately, the notes I thought at the time were detailed and clear I can now make absolutely no sense of, so I'm going mostly off of physical inspection of the finished sweater (which is totally giving me a headache, as teeny tiny stitches in black yarn are really hard to see). So, after the yoke I had 400 stitches and I...

- Marked off the front, back, and sleeves with stitch markers, using the same number of stitches for each section as the pattern called for
- Knit 5 rounds straight
- Increased on either side of each marker, for a total of 8 added stitches
- Increased in same manner every 6 rows 3 more times (32 stitches added total)
- Knit 6 more rounds straight
- Put all sleeve stitches on scrap yarn
- Knit the next round straight and cast on 8 stitches under each set of held sleeve stitches (this joined up the back and front and added more stitches in the armpit area), placing stitch markers in the middle the added underarm stitches. These markers marked the sides of the sweater, and the one on the left marked the beginning of the round

To shape the waist:
- Knit 7 rounds straight
- On 8th round, decreased on either side of the stitch markers like so: k2tog, slip marker, k1, ssk
- Decreased in this manner every 8 rounds 9 more times (total of 40 stitches decreased)
- Knit 16 rounds straight
- On next round, increased on either side of each stitch marker
- Increased in same manner every 4 rounds 6 more times (so...k 16 rounds, increase round, k 3 rounds, inc round, k 3 rounds, inc round, etc.) for a total of 28 stitches increased
- Knit 3 more rounds straight
- Knit 14 rounds of 1x1 rib
- Bound off loosely

For sleeves:
- Transfered all sleeve stitches from scrap yarn to needles, and picked up 8 additional stitches from the 8 cast on in the armpit area while doing the body (7th bullet above)
- Placed marker in between the 8 newly picked up stitches to show beginning of the round
- Knit 7 rounds straight
- On 8th round, decreased on either side of the stitch marker (k2tog, k1, ssk)
- Decreased in same manner every 8 rounds 11 more times for a total of 24 stitches decreased
- Knit 6 rounds straight
- Knit 12 rounds of 1x1 rib
- Bound off loosely

And there you have it.

My lesson learned from all of this is that I have a hard time shaping for my body from the top down. I didn't realize until most of the sweater was done that I had miscalculated where my waist actually is, making it a couple inches too low. What this meant for the fit of the sweater is that it's baggy around my ribcage, then a little too fitted just below my real waist (sort of apparent in the photo below).



It almost makes me want to redo everything, but I don't think that's going to happen. Anyway, were I to do it again, when the body shaping started I would have decreased more frequently (every 5 or 6 rounds), then would have increased less frequently (again, every 5 or 6 rounds). Live and learn, I guess.

All in all, I loved knitting this sweater, and though I wish I had correctly placed my waist, I do love the finished product. I mean, it's a Bohus! Its pattern, yarn, and history come straight from the land of my ancestors and that in itself makes me a little misty eyed every time I look at it.

(P.S. One last thing -- Chris over at Pursuit of Fiber is having a blogiversary contest with some fantastic prizes. Go check it out here!)