And Then There Were Two

Also posted at A Little Loopy.

Well, I committed myself to working solely on the Peanut Dresses, and much as I'm itching to knit something for myself, like a summery cami or tank, it seems that my one (project) track mind is paying off. PD2 is done! Well, mostly done. Both dresses still remain sans straps at the top and embroidery. Knitting PD2 was so much easier, since I already had the pattern instructions written down from the trial and error stages of the PD1 process.

And let me tell you, there were repeated attempts, various trials, and numerous errors. I lost count of how many times I ripped back poor PD1. But, PD2 is all the better for it. Yay for copious note-taking! I must admit-they look pretty cute together!

Next, I need to figure out what I want to do about the spaghetti strap ties for the top. Initially, I thought of attaching crochet chains, but on second thought, I fear those wouldn't be sturdy enough. I'm going to have to sit down and play around, methinks, and see what I can come up with.

My biggest concern at this point, aside from how to handle the ties, oh- and how the embroidered details will turn out (my embroidery skills are rather rusty), is how they will fit on real life Peanut bodies. But, after spending some time with the real life Peanuts at a picnic over the weekend, my estimation is that I think they should fit just fine. *fingers crossed*

Then again, maybe if I just give them enough paper napkins to hold their attention, they won't care how the dresses fit...

Sunflower Cami - back to work!

Hey there, remember me? :) My most recent CAL post was two months ago - I didn't realize it had been so long! But in between, I wrote my Masters thesis, and I hardly knit at all during that time period.

I've picked up the sunflower cami again though, and I'm really excited about it! Before my hiatus, I made a swatch and found that I really liked the fabric created by Calmer knit at 5.5 stitches per inch. (Just a little reminder - always write down what size needle you swatch with! Otherwise you might think you knit your swatch on 8s when you actually used 7s and then you will wonder why the 3" that you've knit so far look gigantic.) I decided to knit the front first and use it as a general template to find the optimal placement of the flower on the back -- which meant that I had to figure out the neckline.

My first thought was to give the sweater a really deep V, where the point would hit around the bra band. This neckline seems trendy right now and I think it would be flattering to a variety of body types. However, such a low V requires a plain camisole underneath, and Calmer is so soft that I wanted to be able to wear it right next to my skin. I considered a higher V but it struck me as a little boring - been there, done that! The back of the shirt will provide a strong visual impact and the front should be just as striking without taking over the spotlight.

After a few more sketches and swatches, I decided on a deep keyhole neckline with a frog closure at the top.



I think that this will work really well with the back - it's clean but it's interesting. (And sexy!) I'm going to finish the neckline and armholes with applied i-cord, and I'll probably reinforce the sides of the keyhole somehow so the fabric doesn't stretch too much at the closure point. I am still up in the air about the bottom edge, so I borrowed Marnie's technique of starting with a provisional cast-on, as you can see here:



I sort of want to put a leafy lace edging along the bottom to go with the flower but I'm worried it might be too busy. When I get to that point, I will probably swatch and see. Otherwise, I could finish the bottom with more applied i-cord or a little ribbing.

As for the back, I think I've finalized my sunflower design! Here is half of it (again with a provisional cast-on):



It's a circle inside, a hexagon outside, and the proportions resemble a sunflower. Perfect!

Mishka Progress

It feels like it's been so long since I spent a morning propped up on my pillows, talking to the blog about knitting. Since the last time, I've been slowly plugging away on Mishka - just a row here and a row there - finally over the weekend, I was able to finish and block the first piece.

I always build my designs around a yarn. When I first see a yarn I usually have a fairly clear conception of what I want it to be, at least in the sense that I know if it will be a tank or a cowl-neck sweater or some knee socks. I usually cannot "see" anything other than the type of piece that I first envision for a yarn until it has been made into that initial vision. Later, I can use that starting concept as a building block and move off into other directions, but at first it just has to be what it is in my head. I buy approximately the amount of yarn that I think I will need to create that vision. If I were smart I would buy that amount plus one skein, but usually I cannot manage to make myself do that. I abhor leftovers, and can go to fairly extreme lengths to make sure that I buy exactly the right amount of yarn and not a bit more.

This was how it went when designing Mishka. I bought the yarn for the piece about two years ago, and envisioned it as a sleeveless shell. As I worked on it, it morphed from sleeveless shell into a draping, flowing top, with shoulder and hem ties woven through casings. The body is worked without shaping, with about four inches of ease built into the width, so that it will blouse and drape. The armscyes are shorter than on a sweater so that undergarments will stay hidden, yet a bit looser than on a fitted tank so that the flow won't be interrupted.

I was very lucky to find that Premiere yarn goes a bit further than expected. I bought exactly what I thought I would need for a fitted shell - five skeins - but with a little ingenuity and advanced planning, I have been able to stretch that amount to work for a blousy top. I worked a slip-stitch edging that I borrowed from one of Annie Modesitt's designs along the armscyes so that they are self-finishing, and also employed a little trick I picked up years ago to avoid the stair-step effect of an armscye bind-off (it also works for necklines and shoulders) to accomplish the same. I worked the reverse side of the shoulder casings in a coordinating yarn that is lighter and of a substantially smaller gauge so as to use less Premiere, but also to make it less obvious that there is a casing present at all. As a consequence, I think I managed to get enough extra fabric in the piece to make it blouse effectively. In addition to giving it four inches of ease, I made it twenty-three and a half inches in length from the shoulder, which should give it a total length of at least twenty-four inches with the ties at the top. Standard length for me on a fitted shell would be somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty inches, twenty-four should provide plenty of blousing space.


I still haven't decided how to handle the hemline of the piece. I could seam the sides all the way down to the hem and just let it as is, swinging free. Or I could leave it unseamed for the last three and a half to four inches and run a casing along the bottom edge where I can weave ties through so that it gathers in and sits gently on the hip. I think I prefer the second option, but it will all depend on the length when worn. I may be just short enough on fabric that the effect wouldn't quite work without an additional half-inch to gather and blouse.

I'll just have to see when I get there. There is always a little interplay of idea and chance, no matter what the initial concept. Even if it turns out very close to the way I envisioned, there will doubtless be some element of surprise. I think this is my favorite part of designing - reaching the point when I feel certain that what I have done so far will work and that I will enjoy it, but still having some improvisation left on the horizon - a little bit of uncertainty that makes it all exciting.

Peanut Dresses - knitting has commenced!

It's hard to believe that I actually wanted to be a fashion designer at one point in time. In no way had (have) I the creativity needed for this profession, but fashion interested me, and I was into it for a while there in my early teens. Judging from my very simple, rudimentary sketch for my Create Along project, it's clear to all why it's just as well I let that dream die. (If I had any sense at all, I would have turned to shoe designing, but that's another lost dream for another day.)

Peanut Dresses on paper

I've improvised, tweaked, and winged several projects before, but this is by far the biggest designing project I've undertaken- on purpose. Somehow, I need to not only come up with an idea (or ideas, as the case may be), find yarn I like, and then turn that into dresses for a certain pair of twin peanuts.

Peanuts, in dresses

What's that, you say? Good luck? Thank you, I will need it! Because although I at least had the foresight to chose a very simple shape and line for the dresses, there's a lot that goes into designing! (Duh) Translating the picture and idea in your head to paper and then to an actual piece, is far more involved and labor intensive than you might think. I've always respected designers for their talent and ability, and this process has only intensified my admiration.

It took a while for me to settle on a design, but I've got it now, and after swatching and profuse mathematical planning (and readjusting), I'm finally on my way! I played around a little and came up with this little design-whatever (highly technical design term) for the non-hemline. I think it adds some visual interest, as well as (hopefully) some stability, so we might avoid the whole rolling up thing. Here's a glimpse of the bottom of PD1.

No, it's not a watermelon dress. You'll see.

"Do you think Aunty knows what the heck she's doing? Hmm..."

Create-Along: Back At It!

Cross-posted from MindofWinter

Mishka (named after Mames' beautiful GSD), lounging next to the meager notes I have taken.

I kicked off the Create-Along with a bang, swatching up a beautiful Barbara Walker lace pattern that I intended to use for a very simple shell. I was going to do a boatneck sheath style and run a single panel of lace down the left side. At the time I was very enthused about it, but the weeks wore on and it just never got knit.

I finally realized that the reason the shell wasn't happening, was that it wasn't happening in my head - I was truly bored with my own conception. I think the original idea was a good one, very classic, and something that I would get a lot of use from. But it just didn't grab me. I had been flipping through fashion magazines and pouring over runway knits, and I wanted something more current. Not trendy, necessarily, as I like clothing to stand the test of time, but more in the moment that what I had originally conceived. (I will probably design the sheath eventually, as well, when it is more what I am looking for.)

Marnie and I talked about my ideas pretty extensively one night, and discussed how we felt obligated to stick with the designs that we presented to the knitters in the CAL. She had been struggling with her design, Lily, as well, yet felt that for some reason she needed to stick with the conception she had started with. I realized about half-way through the conversation how silly we were. Why would we do this for the CALers, of all people? The whole point of the CAL was to show process, and almost nothing is more part of the process than scrapping design ideas, re-working and ripping! If you are afraid to do that, you are often left with a piece that you don't like, and which does not really represent your full creative process and personal perspective.

That is a long way of saying that I decided to scrap the original idea, and instead work out a new plan. Here it is: I am going to make a loosely-fitting hip-length top that will have hemmed casings at the top which I will run corded ties through to close. The motif will repeat with sections of large "rib" in between on both the front and the back. I would also like to do casings about three inches from the bottom edge with corded ties to create a blousing effect, but that is going to depend on whether I have enough yarn to manage it. I may have to re-work a bit to accommodate the minimal yardage I have going on here.

I was going to sketch it out for you, but I didn't do that yet in my *real* design process, so it's kind of silly to pretend that I did it for the CAL or the blog! I will probably sketch it soon, and I'll include the sketch here when I do. The thing that I have done already is a rough yardage estimation. I find that really useful, so I'll try to share a post on it soon. In the meantime, I will back at it and knitting away on Mishka - yay! It's about time.

A series of unfortunate knitting events

When last we left "Dayflower Lace," it had just been ripped back to the top of the lace. My original sketch (see here) had featured a single repeat of the lace up the upper center front, and an interesting cross between a V and a square neck. I had discarded this idea because I wasn't sure how I would finish the edge, wasn't sure how the wavy lace would look in a single repeat with stockinette on each side, etc.

But then I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a shot...but I had already decreased within each lace repeat, so to continue the single lace panel up the front, I didn't see any option but to rip back below the decreases (luckily just a couple of rows) and then redo the decreases, EXCEPT for the one center front panel. I had decided to go back to the eyelet holes and twisted cord belt to create a close underbust fit, but then, as shown above, I thought I would also try some columns of openwork within the underbust band.

Well. I completely forgot about the effect that nearby YOs and decreases have on the accent ridge, and in this case, it's not even a nice regular wave, but a lumpy-bumpy mess. Plus I don't like that additional openwork.

Lest you think I'm the Lemony Snicket of the CAL, I'll leave you with this photo: yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

S-s-something from the comments*

So, longer ago than I'd like to admit, Kristi asked me:

So of course I'm curious why you didn't leave the underarm space -- because it messed with the lace?

I think the space is less imperative on smaller sizes -- if you were doing a conventional shaped sleeve, your initial bind off would be about (chest - crossback)/2 on each side (this is assuming you're in the round) Or even less.

Plus, the lace is going to be more flexible/less bulky than stockinette and stretch or constrict as needed.

If you're thinking of sizing up the pattern though, I think the underarm shaping will begin to make a big difference.

Instead of writing her back (eek, sorry) I thought I'd post my response up here where y'all can see my reply because, man, she is just full of damn fine information.

The original concept of the piece was to work a lace, that had vertical symmetry, up the side of the piece, then split it off for the armsceye. The sleeve would be constructed the same way giving an uninterrupted path for the lace. The idea was that the lace would never appear to break even though it obviously had to split for the sleeves.

If I wanted to do a bind off at the underarms, I would have to gradually migrate the lace inward to be just inside the bind off point. This is possible but I really wanted to avoid disrupting the pattern.

With Kristi's great insight, I see that the combination of the stretchy Calmer and the small size make this possible. It does seem to work great for me so far. I have to seriously think how I'll approach the larger sizes (yes, I'm getting persuaded to actually write the pattern.) though.

If I do decide to write the pattern, I'll probably knit a partial second piece and do a gusset on one side and migration of the lace for a bind off, on the other to see which produces a nicer effect. I won't have to work a full chest circumference, just enough to be able to visualize the end result. Again, as Kristi pointed out, the lace will give some flexibility and the yarn is stretchy so I think I would have to do a relatively small amount of binding off even for a much larger size.

Talking to my dear friend, Julia, yesterday, I feel ready to tackle the neckline, which I've put on hold for a couple days while I contemplate. She suggested just a folded hem and I like that idea very much. I'm also considering something with eyelets that can be cinched in a little, to accommodate various undergarments. Either way, I want it to be relatively unobtrusive since there's already a lot going on with the lace. In the end, I think her hem idea is going to win out.

*Nod to Ze. I miss his show, The Show.

No FOs here!

Well, I like the lace upper back well enough...but not for this particular top. Even though the upper columns of faggoting do line up with the similar columns in the Dayflower Lace pattern, to my eye they appear totally unrelated, and in fact the upper panel achieves a certain dominance--which I had not intended. Maybe I can use that lace panel for something else. I actually don't mind the wavy quality of the accent ridge--or wouldn't mind it, if it continued around the circumference of the garment, but it only waves in the area of the upper lace panel.

As shown in the photo below, I decided to try two different ideas for the upper bodice: on my right, no decreases to compensate for the underbust increases, and plain stockinette except for the faggoting around the neck and armholes. On my left, above the bust decreases and extra decoration. I much prefer the plainer side, although I think it looks a little wide, and might benefit from more decreasing at the armhole edge.

Anything else? Looks a little tent-y, you say? I agree; I think the underbust fit needs to be closer.

And then there is the matter of the faggoted edge treatment I tried: although it looks okay from some angles, I had not anticipated that it would have a larger row gauge than the stockinette fabric, meaning that it flares in a rather unflattering way around the armholes, in particular (with the aid of gravity, the neckline seems to lie flat enough).

Ah, well. Blue ramen noodles, anyone?

(Don't worry, I only frogged back to the lace.)

Several detours

Isn't the difference in color in these photos wild? The middle photo is WAY too blue and the others are too gray. Anyway, first a little background: I did decide to use increases along the front to shape the bust area, rather than short rows or increases along the sides. But what then to do with the extra stitches above the bust? I could just leave them; the front of the top would then be slightly wider than the back. I could take the extra stitches into account when I decreased to shape the armholes and/or neck edge, especially if the neckline was a deep U or V--but I was concerned this might give those edges an odd line. Or, I could place decreases directly above the bust, giving what I felt to be the most, how to put it, anatomical shaping possible. The first photo shows my initial attempt at this; unfortunately, I didn't like the way the decreases looked--to my mind, as if someone had snagged a stitch and then yanked on it. (I noticed that Hattie mentioned a similar problem, but with increases, in this post. I had luckily realized that the corded edge at the top of the Dayflower Lace--visible in the left lower corner of the above photo--hid my bust-shaping increases pretty nicely.)
Then I thought I would try a different way of decreasing, along several rows instead of one, and also try using some columns of faggoting to hide or camouflage the decreases: see the photo at left. This proved to be difficult to place so that the columns didn't look odd next to the faggoting along the neck and armhole; if I tried to center the decreases over the bust, the faggoting was off center, and the angled neckline made centering the faggoting difficult. In the end, I decided that too much going on in the upper front just detracted from the lace...but I still thought that some vertical openwork columns lined up with the Dayflower repeats might dress up the upper top, so I tried putting them on the back instead. Hmmm...that corded edge is looking a little wavy...do I like it? Or not? (Hint: RIBBIT.)

Tonight the Role of the Dress Dummy will be played by....

Please.. talk to me about the dress dummy. As I contemplate making more designs I am being drawn to the idea that I really need one. (especially after seeing Edna's pictures)

Is a dress dummy essential?
What qualities should one look for in a dress dummy?
Is there a way to DIY a Dress Dummy?


I would love to hear your comments on this!!!

Sincerely,
Dress Dumby Deficeint Denise
at KnitChat.com

This is my first post but I've been working on my project while following yours. I wanted to be able to show what I've done and not just tell.

First, I have to admit my lace-envy. I have a difficult time with my technique and it has to be a really important item to force me to take off each loop and twist it back on the needle. So, to compensate, I mastered colorwork. I've chosen to use Tahki Cotton Classic because of its strength and rainbow of options. I chose six pastels, kind of like jelly beans, for spring (not to mention this is what my LYS had in stock).

This was first pattern, done as I was housebound during a nor'easter. It must have been the Kaffee Fassett book I was reading and the snow making me think I could bang this out.

I don't have a problem with bobbins, there were 10 per row. I do have a problem with not making progress. This took a week of free time - for 10 rows?! It would take 100+ hours for this, so I gave up and regrouped.

So I kept the basic design of squares while doing the modular thing. I love this technique. I'd much rather get two completed squares out of 30 minutes than just one row. I think I'll get the same feel of the interlocking squares, especially when there's a lot of stuff in the bag and the weight pulls the squares into diamonds.

I'm not sure how the bottom will work out when all the points are turned inward. I'll deal with that when I get there. I think on the top I'll let the points fall outward for a jester hat effect. Maybe some beadwork on the points........

HI DESIGNERS

I am almost back. My project for KNITSIMPLE is due on Monday and last night I did yet another sketch and even a swatch. I decided I have to use yarn from my HUGE stash. I am going with Rowan Kidsilk Haze #578 Wish or Yellow Ochre because I love this yarn and I have enough to do the pullover I designed which will be placed on my blog http://www.ednahartboutique.blogspot.com/ as a free pattern.
I have been keeping up with you all and I am so inspired and impressed with the creativity going on--this is so exciting.

Dayflower Lace top

Well, I'm still waiting for the Premiere yarn I ordered, but there's been a change of plan: the pictured project, which I was hoping to complete in time to submit to Knitty--by today!-- has given me no end of headaches. It is far from being completed, as ripping is unfortunately required. And what do you know, it's in Premiere, color #5248. In short, the perfect project to post about here. (And hey, if this CAL does indeed go to September, I should have time to do another one--if my other yarn ever arrives.) I hope y'all don't mind that the first few posts about this sleeveless top won't be real-time; I started the actual knitting about the time the CAL started up, in mid-February.

However, the original idea germinated awhile ago, almost a year, in fact. I loved the Dayflower Lace stitch pattern in Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury, and when I decided to design something using it, the first thing I did was Google to see if there were any other patterns out there--first, to see how others might have utilized it, and second, to avoid duplicating someone else's work. I found a scarf, a skirt, and a sweater, and I was interested to note that the latter, a V-neck cardigan with dropped shoulders, avoided any shaping, and thus kept the lace motifs intact (as did the scarf and skirt patterns).

It has been my experience with other curvy lace stitch patterns that mixing them with different stitch patterns must be done judiciously: part of their beauty comes from the undulations caused by the pull of the increase and decreases, and these are affected by adjacent stitches--or by trying to add shaping. So last spring, when I submitted a pattern idea for an empire waist top incorporating Dayflower Lace to Interweave Knits, I limited the lace mostly to the "skirt" portion of the top, thinking to tie the bodice thematically into the skirt by using faggoting--like that within the lace pattern-- to trim the neckline and armholes.

Needless to say, the pattern was not accepted, but I still wanted to pursue the idea, so a little over a month ago, I got out the sketch I had submitted, and started to think about how I might actually execute what I had drawn. By the way, this was one of my earlier sketches using Adobe Illustrator, and while my skills are still fairly rudimentary, one thing this program makes very easy is copying and pasting design motifs--such as if you want to communicate how a lace pattern stitch might appear across an entire garment.

So. Some of the considerations with this top were:
1. How to create the empire waist shaping. Decreases on several rows, like waist shaping but more drastic? Or decreases all at once, creating a gathered effect?
2. What to do for the band under the bust. Simple stockinette or other pattern stitch? Bind off( or not) and attach to band, perhaps knitted horizontally to decrease stretch? I wanted this part of the top to have zero to slightly negative ease, to avoid that tent look! Use a ribbon or twisted cord to make sure the top fits closely here? And if so, incorporate eyelet holes into the band, for threading the ribbon or cord?
3. Bust shaping. If the underbust band was to have no ease, then there would have to be quite sudden increases for the bust, either along the sides, or using short rows, or using increases only in the front, to form a subtle gathered effect (which is pictured in the sketch).
4. Neckline. I wanted to use some sort of self-finishing for the armhole and neck edges, but what then to do about the center neck, which is drawn showing a single lace panel which is bound off horizontally? I didn't think the plain bound-off edge would look finished enough, but if I was going to add an edge finishing, I figured I would probably have to do it to the whole neck edge, and maybe the armhole edges, for design cohesion. Applied I-cord? Crochet? The Dayflower Lace pattern has no purl stitches on the right side, so I was reluctant to introduce ribbing or garter or seed stitch as an edge treatment.

Gah! What to do when faced with so many decisions?! START KNITTING! Luckily the lower part of this top is simply rounds of lace. I made a gauge swatch, calculated 14 repeats for a lower circumference of 40-ish inches, and I was off.

P.S. Um, Julia, why doesn't Team Premiere have a button?

Revenge of the sleeve.

While I have done a fair bit of design, there are still aspects of the processes that I can only perfect through trial and error. All the excel sheets and schematics in the world cannot reproduce the look and feel of knit fabric adhering to all the laws of physics. Julia has a really nice post in which she discusses the process of designing without knitting the piece herself. In her case, her sample knitter helped ease that processes by providing continual feedback, as she was a fine designer in her own right. However, I think this is a valuable lesson to take away. While I consider Julia to be a hugely skilled and technically adept designer, who has years of experience knitting and designing knitwear, even she cannot completely predict the way the finish piece will need to be constructed in order to execute her vision.

As a side note, this is one of the beauties of the web and why I absolutely love being a part of this CAL. I cannot imagine how critical I might be of my own work, if I didn't have the blogs of other designers to show me that all of us face the same challenges and missteps.

Back to the topic at hand, Lily has gone surprisingly easily throughout the body portion of the piece. While I debated on length, a bit, and I may still close the side vents up a little bit, the bulk of the design process went pretty smoothly, once I had my original vision.

From here, I knew I wanted to knit the sleeves up to, but not including, the sleeve cap, so that I could join all the pieces and work them together, to avoid any possible offset of the motifs.

There were no problems with the body, the sleeve, however, has dogged me. This humble elbow length sleeve is the product of, not one, not two, but 4 trips to the frog pond.

It's a testament to the quality of Calmer that I see absolutely no change in the yarn, despite all that ripping and re-knitting.

My first thought was that I'd migrate the motifs from the front of the sleeve, around to the back seam in preparation to run the motifs up the sleeve cap. I felt that just running the motif up the seam would look peculiar and unbalanced. Something really needed to pickup the theme, on the outside of the sleeve.

If you are astute, you've already caught my big mistake here, however, I knit about a quarter of the sleeve and realized I just had too much ease worked in and ripped the sleeve to start again. It was only when version two had hit about the halfway point, that I realized my fatal flaw. If the motifs were correct at the outside of the sleeve,they would be flipped at the back seam as shown in the illustration below.

As the great philosopher, Homer, said, "DOH!" That was a real head slapper moment.

I realized that my new calculations worked out perfectly to fit 2 full motifs across the entire hem of the sleeve (a centered full motif on the outside of the sleeve, with two half motifs inside by the seam). I knew I didn't want to carry the outside motif up the entire length of the sleeve, firstly, because it would be too busy and secondly, because when it came time to decrease for the sleeve cap, I'd be left with a lot of lace to wrangle into submission. I decided to just work the outside motif once. I tried maintaining the purl ribs up the length of the sleeve but found it added a sort of sporty feel that was inconsistent with the vast stockinette of the body.

So I took out the purl ribs, after the first repeat.

I was getting much closer but there were two things that bothered me. First, the outside repeats just seemed to look uncontained. There were still strong lines delineating the edges of the motifs on all sides except the top. Something just seemed off. I also didn't care for the fact that I had begun the sleeve shaping, while working the first repeat. It meant I had to increase in the purl ribs between motifs. Since I was eliminating the extra purl ribs and motif, it just didn't look cohesive.

After all that, 5 times was the charm.

I added a purl ridge to the top of the outside motif, which added the visual container I felt the motifs needed. Additionally, I held off on any sleeve shaping until I had completed the border of repeats, allowing me to increase in the stockinette area, as I had on the body.

I think the final product is consistent with the style of the body and deals with the design concerns I had, in a logical way.

For now, Lily needs to go on temporary hold while I complete a project for a friend. Lucky for me, it's in Calmer too!

I hope to complete that in the next week or two, while I'm traveling and then I'll get back to Lily and all that she entails. I'll try to get a couple tutorials up in the interim, if time permits.

Semi-Complete

I have come along on the tiny tank, it is almost complete, lacking only buttons and button loops. I did experiment a bit with finishing. My initial thought was to try an applied I-cord edging to neck and armholes. First attempt is not pictured, I ripped it finding it too heavy and my tension was uneven, leaving a sloppy impression. The I-cord is a nice look, but not at the armhole area. Next attempt was a crochet edge, half double, I think. It is not pictured, but I was dissatisfied with the appearance of the crochet, too elongated for the edge, detracting from the overall simplicity. I went back to the I-cord neckline with a simple slip stitch to clean up the armholes and feel relatively pleased with the end result. Finishing is an interesting challenge, requiring some patience and experimentation. I did not want to overwhelm the piece, but did not like the uneven edge created by the basket weave stitch pattern. This seems to be a nice compromise.


Overall, I am glad the first piece I designed is so tiny, it came along quickly and. remained manageable. It may be too tiny, but I have very little comprehension of what size the beans will actually be, so I’ll try to get them in the tank(s) ASAP when the time comes. I think initially babies are smaller than anyone realizes, so I will try for a photo or two…I do plan on making another, just to keep things even.

I really have taken to Calmer, I find the feel and resulting fabric lovely. It knits up evenly, shows a nice definition of stitch, seems to have a good bit of play from the synthetic component and is light enough to be worn in my climate. I have to learn to choose yarn for its wearability vs. its luxurity (not a word, I know). Calmer is not a cheap yarn, so I would like any recommendations for substitution. There are so many yarns out there, I usually try new yarn by seeing a project on another blog and using their suggested yarn. I am not the most adventurous when it comes to trying out a yarn, very project driven, am I.

I’ll come back once I finish button work. I plan on using this technique for button loops. I used it once on the Union Square Market Pullover (which resides with my sister in Northern California where she can actually use it. 100% baby alpaca in fingering weight on 3s makes for a really warm sweater. Learned that lesson.) adieu until then, I love reading all the various posts. Really good idea, Julia and Marnie!

On sunflowers, swatching, and sanity (or the loss thereof)

While I wait for my Calmer to arrive (I went with Slosh, a dark slatey blue - at least according to my monitor), I've started to plot out my idea. My inspiration comes from a washcloth that I knit a while back:



That's the pattern picture, not my own version, but mine looked very similar. As I worked on it, I thought, "wouldn't this look great plastered onto the back of a cami?"

And so an idea was born. The washcloth is knit from the inside-out, and I've seen some sweater patterns that start as circles and grow out from there, but most of them are shrugs or cardigans, meant to be loose-fitting. What I want is a close-fitting top, where all the shaping is carefully planned and defined, and I don't think this would be possible if I knit the whole thing starting from a point and working outwards.

My next thought was that I could knit the cami in a standard, bottom-to-top manner, and leave an octagonal hole. Then I could knit the washcloth separately and seam it in. This would probably work, but the seaming could be tricky. I don't like tricky seams. Instead, I thought, I could leave the same octagonal hole, then pick up stitches all around the perimeter, and work the washcloth pattern from the outside-in.



This would require me to invert the pattern. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a piece of cake, but... really, not so much. I started by charting it as written. Then, as a first attempt, I rotated it 180 degrees, replaced all the decreases with yarnovers, and replaced the yarnovers with decreases, using left-slanting or right-slanting ones according to what looked correct on the chart. I resolved a minor issue of having to add additional "no stitch" boxes, and then I knit 2 wedges using some cheap acrylic. (I like to do technique swatches in scrap yarn, and save my good yarn for swatches relating to gauge, stitch definition, drape, etc.)



It's not bad, but there are quite a few things I'm not happy about here. (I added notes through Flickr, so if you click on the swatch picture, it will take you to the Flickr page and you can see my comments in more detail.) That's when the danger started. The more I looked at the original washcloth pattern, the more I realized that I wouldn't be happy merely with working it backwards. I imagined that the double flower resembled a sunflower, and wondered how I could make it more sunflower-esque. The simplest modification was to work the center circle in seed stitch to represent the seeds of the flower. (Seeds in seed stitch! Awesome!) The other modification I wanted to make was to separate the inner flower from the outer flower a little bit more; in the original, the inner flower is exactly the same shape as the outer one, only smaller. I wanted to reverse the swirly curve of the inner flower. Here's a bad sketch:



So I made swatch #2. Looking at it now, I guess I hadn't tried to flip the inner flower around yet. That came later.



At this point, I started to get incredibly frustrated. All my good ideas seemed doomed to failure. Nothing wanted to line up the way I planned. I made one more attempt; I changed the outer triangles from seed stitch to stockinette, and I changed the seeds to reverse stockinette. (It made me very sad to not use seed stitch for the seeds, but it's nearly impossible to hide all those decreases in seed stitch.)



Getting better... but still not great. I didn't like the line running along the left of the outer petal that continued down to the flower's center. Also, I noticed that through all my modifications, I had lost the swirly nature of the original washcloth; all my lines seemed to have straightened out, and it looked more like a bunch of triangles than a flower. I went from frustrated to downright angry. I came close to tearing up my notes, cutting my swatches into shreds (remember, cheap acrylic), and abandoning the idea entirely. In a last-ditch effort, I turned to Google, to see if something similar had been done before. I couldn't find a single flower knit from the outside-in - perhaps that should have been a sign - but I did come across this:



It's a snowflake that's knit from the outside-in, and it uses cables for texture. Cables! Brilliant!

I realized that I had become much more attached to the sunflower concept than I was to the swirly lace washcloth, so I studied some pictures of the flowers, tried to shove the washcloth pattern completely out of my mind, and made this sketch:



Using a combination of cables and decreases for shaping, I made a scaled-down swatch. I was downright sick of swatching (and if I never see turquoise acrylic again, it will be too soon) so not only is this not a full circle, but it also is much shorter than the actual flower on the cami would be.



Ladies and gentlemen... or only ladies, as the case may be... we have a winner!!

I'm not quite done with it yet; given the angular spread of this swatch, I think I might have to turn my octagon into a hexagon and switch from eight large petals to six. Also, each petal here produces its own point, so with 6 of them, I'd have 12 points total, and I don't relish the idea of planning a 12-sided hole. I might be able to block it to a 6-sided shape, or maybe I can slip the small-petal stitches on the first round? I haven't figured that out definitively yet, but I'll keep working on it while I wait for my Calmer.

I'm calling this my Sunflower Cami, for obvious reasons. And please, please, don't ask me what the front is going to look like yet. I will probably break down in tears and throw something at you.

(Kidding! Mostly.)