Cardigan Confessional Redux

I had this plan to make db a blanket; loyal readers will recall that there was a lot of pattern research and swatching and hand wringing and finally a decision to make db a blanket in Blue Sky Alpaca Silky Alpaca (50/50 silk/alpaca) in the most beautiful silver-gray color imaginable.

But then my aunt gave me a hand knit blanket that I had made for her son, and Todd's mother gave me the blanket made by Great Aunt Nettie and Todd's mother's friend gave me a hand crocheted blanket and THEN the mother of one of my oldest and closest friends gave me a jaw-droppingly stunning hand knit blanket.

































The photos are from January, which is a sad meditation on how busy I have been these past few months. Anyway. How many hand knit blankets does one baby need, particularly given the fact that all we ever put her in anyway are those overpriced Halo sleep sacks because we are paranoid about SIDS?

I did make some limited progress on the silk alpaca blanket, but upon realizing that I had made a slight error 20 rows after the fact, I kind of lost interest and drowned my frustrated sorrows in a little worsted-weight instant gratification - so there was the aviator cap phase and also the pink top-down raglan, which is now finished and adorable.


















Cute, eh? Db is currently obsessed with buttons, so I am leaving them off for the time being.

So I decided that there were better uses for my beautiful silk alpaca; currently I'm about 3 rows into this vintage-esque cardigan for me -

http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/en/visoppskrift.php?d_nr=88&d_id=17&lang=us

It's a freebie from Drops. I'm hoping that I finish it by Christmas.

Aviatrix

Posting photos in haste - it's midterm week (and curse email for making students think they can ask me questions 24/7), book deadline looming, not a lot of quality sleeping going on at the moment...but despite the general mayhem involved in living a relatively normal life, I have somehow managed to knit a cute little aviator cap for a friend's incoming baby girl. The almost finished cap is being modeled by db, who was fascinated with the un-sewn-in end:




















Aviatrix, a Ravelry freebie, is truly an amazing pattern. I also think it may be the only reasonably cute baby hat that will actually stay on a baby's head. I knit it in Blue Sky Alpacas worsted weight 50 merino/50 alpaca - an absolutely lovely yarn. To get gauge for the worsted version of the pattern (which is written for three different yarn weights!) I knit the body of the hat on a 10 and the ribbing on an 8.



















All that remains is to sew on buttons so it has a functioning chin strap - let's see if I manage to get a finished object photo posted. I hate to bet against myself, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Swatch isn't just a well-marketed crappy plastic watch

Like parenthood, this freaking baby blanket project offers ample opportunity to learn and grow. Happily, unlike babies, yarn can eventually be bent to my will.

I bought and swatched the Estonian Lace baby blanket pattern, and it just doesn't look all that great:


















It's probably a brilliant pattern, but it needs to be knit with a tightly plied, springy yarn (cotton or wool - I bet Zara merino would look great) - something with a lot of give but also something with a lot of stitch definition. Also, obviously, lighter, unsaturated colors are better for most small lace patterns with surface texture - darker and saturated shades make it hard to see these textures.

With this lace pattern in particular, a springy yarn is essential in order to knit the 3 into 9 portion of the pattern on a small enough needle to ensure crisp definition of the lace pattern as a whole. I am not sure if I am being clear enough, but basically, I can't knit the alpaca on a needle small enough to both keep the knitting tight enough to preserve the crispness of the lace AND successfully execute the 3 to 9 stitches - the alpaca doesn't have enough give.

Alpaca in general has fabulous drape, but by definition this means it's not going to hold most small or tight lace patterns well (in laceweight, alpaca may perform more crisply, but not in worsted or sportweight). So for the past few days I've been scouting for a pattern that will make the most of what is best about alpaca. I actually really liked this pattern on Ravelry:


















But it is only in Danish. No thank you.

Still, the idea of a solid, drapey square center with a slightly more open and angular lace border seemed like a good idea for the alpaca. Coincidentally, Brooklytweed just posted an improvised blanket based on this principle, and while I don't love the bias garter he used for the center or the feather and fan pattern he used for the edge, I like the basic idea.























So I went through my Reader's Digest Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet stitches and, after swatching a bit, decided that perhaps the humble moss stitch was the best choice for the center panel. Moss stitch in alpaca has amazing drape; it looks slightly lacy when blocked, and (bonus for blankets) it's reversible.

The below swatch has moss stitch at the top and bottom; the bottom moss is done on a 5 and has better drape than the top moss, which was done on a 3. From top to bottom, the swatch contains moss on a 3, garter on a 3, stockinette on a 3, Feather Lace (p. 105 of the Digest) on a 5 and then on a 3 (no difference in quality of lace despite change in needle), stockinette on a 5, and then moss on a 5. I like the Feather Lace and I think it works in the Alpaca, but again, I don't want that much openwork in the body of the blanket.























For the border, I think I will choose something from this massive great free online collection of charted Victorian borders:

http://www.knitting-and.com/homework/#EIC

I think the alpaca will look best in something somewhat open and angular - something that will look great as a silhouette and echo the diamond-like angular quality of moss stitch. These are three initial possibilities, but with a knitted on border I have lots of time to decide.
















































This one -



from http://www.yarnover.net/patterns/laces/beyer/b2.html - is also an option (minus crochet loops at bottom edge), but it's not possible to modify it to be a knit-on border like the others, and that makes me less excited about it - it seems I'd have to knit the whole border separately and join it to the square using mattress stitch, and that has a lot of potential to go wrong or to look lumpy. Probably.

The first in a series of posts on knitting the most exquisite pooping surface imaginable

I spent $119 on a special order of Blue Sky Silk Alpaca in an absolutely stunning silver gray (it shines in a way that defies digital imaging) and now I need to find a baby blanket pattern worthy of it.


















Not that this will be the blanket used to take our baby home from the birthing center - that honor goes to some no doubt acrylic heirloom thing my in-laws are insisting upon. I figure choose your battles - Todd and I get to make decisions regarding name and vaccination schedule, so if they want me to wrap the kid in acrylic for cab ride home, well, fine. After that, only silk alpaca for my baby. And yes, I am aware that babies spend half their time leaking out of their diapers and the other half barfing and that maybe something machine washable might have been a better choice, but I hate the way superwash feels and I don't like knitting with cotton and I don't think I even need to say why acrylic is not an option.

Besides, having a kid isn't practical, so why should the yarn for its blanket be?

I was originally thinking about this pattern:


http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/alpaca-baby-shawl/people

But now I don't like it as much.

Then I was thinking about using the Stripes and Torchon Lace shawl pattern and just making it more of a square:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/stripes-and-torchon-lace

but I swatched up the central diamond pattern and worry that the lace is a little too open (dime for sense of scale). I knit this on a 5:


















Then I thought of doing a lattice only portion of the Hanami stole pattern:

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/boojum/hanami-stole

But now I think it may be a little too Eddie Bauer Home for my taste...

Then I found this one on Ravelry and I think I love it:












http://www.ravelry.com/projects/KnitYoga/starflower-estonian-lace-baby-blanket

But isn't Estonian lace supposed to be a nightmare to knit? The Ravelry knit along chat for this pattern involves discussions of the best way to knit 3 into 9 stitches every 8th row - that means a lot of pulling and twisting, for sure. Probably not fun, and the pattern is $5, so I'd have to buy it to see how bad knitting it would actually be. Then again, after $119 it's a little ridiculous to balk at $5.

What should I do?

An extremely beautiful oven mitt

Checking gauge might have been a good idea. I am proceeding with the at this point possibly very delusional hope that the mitten won't be too big for the tiny, thin bones of my should-have-been-a-pianist/osteoporosis-here-I-come hand.






















But the pattern itself is very pretty.












































Maybe felting would shrink it enough? Does alpaca even felt? Or maybe I need to think about who among my friends has big hands.

I have also started one of three baby projects for one of three friends due in May. All three are Canadian - two, however, are living in exile from their homeland, so that kind of blows this theory I was working on where the sex lives of Canadians are largely controlled by the extreme Canadian weather.

Filatura deCrosa has recently come out with a new line of colors for its (machine washable) Zara merino line. It's a bit hard to see from the photo, but there's a lovely heathered twist mixed in with the colors.

















It's quite disheartening to think of them covered in baby puke.

Getting back on the wooly horse

I've got a little therapeutic no-brainer of a project going on right now - something to give me instant knitting pleasure after mitten tragedy - pictures in a day or two, after I dig out from under a mountain of final grading. It is a bad time of year to be a professor.

In other news, I finally got myself back to the yarn store to buy replacement alpaca for my re-knit of the Wintergreen Mittens, but I am finding that I lack the heart to restart them. Instead, I was thinking maybe I'd try my hand at either Eunny Jang's Anemoi mittens:

















Or maybe the Lilyfield Mittens:






















Which do you think would look better in a gray/cream combination? I'm leaning towards Lilyfield at the moment, but I am not sure I love the cuff - solid 1 x 1 ribbing might look better.

Wintergreen Mittens

Why no photos of my progress on the Wintergreen Mittens? Because when I was coming back from the %^$#@&^ AAA conference, I forgot them on the plane. By the time I realized what I had done, it was too late. Apparently a ziplock bag containing two balls of exquisite alpaca yarn and one and a half beautiful mittens (one was completely finished and SO beautiful...) looks like garbage to a plane cleanup crew. So my mittens are gone. I am hoping posting this will help me move from anger to acceptance.

The definition of insanity

I know that I was - er - cranky about the pattern errors in the last Kate Gilbert design I knit, but I decided that as long as I knew that it would probably mean a whole new world of pain, it would be okay to try another one of her patterns. It's a basic seduction - dysfunction - seduction - dysfunction cycle. Currently we're in a seduction phase and all is well.

I've had my eye on the Wintergreen Mittens for a long time - I think they are pretty and I was also curious to learn the color cable technique, this despite the fact that in 16 years of knitting, I have never done colorwork (Sheldon looks like he involved colorwork, but it was really just stripes. Honestly.) So why not learn colorwork the hardest way possible - in the round, with cabling thrown in for good measure?


















So far, so good. The yarn is my favorite: Blue Sky Alpaca sportweight.

Ecce Alpaca (or, if you prefer, yarn porn)

Increasing levels of appreciation for my new alpaca sweater prompted this happy purchase:















Blue Sky Baby Alpaca is my favorite yarn, period.















Being a relatively unprolific knitter has its advantages - I can more or less justify buying obscenely expensive yarn because I go through it so slowly (witness the aforementioned 3-year-old green alpaca sweater).
















It's brilliantly soft and smells like baby alpaca - musty and living, though without all the actual barnyard animal funkiness. Blue Sky baby alpacas must maintain excellent personal hygiene.