licorice twist sweater - a seamless shrug

I finished the shrug! (click on the link for some of the background of the yarn and how I got started with the pattern.) It's more like a sweater now because it is actually long enough to reach my waist and I love it! I can't believe how closely the finished product matches my sketches and imaginings of how I wanted it to end up. The first two drawings are ones I made during a meeting at work, the 3rd is the schematic I used to design the pattern and make the sweater.

I actually finished the sweater nearly two weeks ago, uploaded the pictures last week, and found my sketches tonight....yay for being organized - they were unexpectedly in the very bag I'd used for this project and right where I'd left them under a gigantic pile of laundry.

yarn: 1) I started with 497 grams of the licorice twist (I made up this name - I have no idea what the original colorway was called) from Briggs and Little Woolen Mills and have 192 grams left. 2) I used an entire skein of Lamb's Pride Worsted which is 113 grams and 173 meters for the black border. Funnily enough, while I have quite a bit of the licorice twist left, I had about a yard of the black left when I cast of the ~450 stitch main border....I was weighing the skein every row to figure out how wide I'd be able to make the border.

needles: Addi Turbo size 10 (6mm) 32" and some size 10 (6mm) 8" dpns. It was quite interesting to make the approximately 60" border on 32" needles. I scrunched all the stitches together and did some cursing as I lifted the entire sweater around and around and slid the stitches down the right side and up the left side. I did acquire some cheap size 10 plastic needles about halfway through but they were also 32" so each row, I alternated which needles I was using to make at least half the stitches easier to knit.

button: I got the button at the Fingerlakes fiber festival and it is perfect for the sweater. I made the button hole in the border by casting off 2 stitches and casting them on the next row. It stretched out a lot until I whip stitched around the hole with the same yarn to strengthen it.

Things I learned making this sweater:

1) the raglan construction doesn't look so nice with a different color border knitted on - maybe I can make a yoke next time so it doesn't look so square where the black border is knitted into the raglans.

2) When I think I'm going to run out of yarn and buy more, I will not actually run out of yarn.

3) The power of the scale is awesome - for the border I was using about 6 grams of yarn per plain round about about 7 per cabled round. When I had 45 grams left, I figured I could knit 6 more rows and still have enough for the bind off. It actually worked. The bind off used almost two rows worth of yarn which I will certainly keep in mind next time.

4) I never used to understand why anyone would make pieces of a garment flat, then sew them together - it seemed like an extra step and kinda confused me. When I look at a sleeve knitted flat, it doesn't look like it will go on my arm - when I'm knitting a sleeve in the round, I can try it on as I go. When I'm knitting seamless, I have almost no ends to weave in, and fewer stitches to pick up since I also used figure 8 cast-ons everywhere. Somehow, I derive extra pleasure from not having any seams in the garment. I began to understand why someone might knit a garment flat when I was working on the sleeves - every 3 or 4 rounds, I'd have to pick the whole sweater up and untwist it. It was still nice not having to pin the sleeve in place and sew it to the shoulder wondering if I was doing it right or if I'd have to try again and again...

5) this is the worst - I'm ALLERGIC to mohair. I had no idea. It didn't bother me when I swatched, it didn't bother me when I was carrying the mohair around to look at it, it didn't bother me when I knit the cuffs. It began to bother me about halfway through the border (the same time I was panicking about running out of yarn and obsessively weighing the remaining skein). I actually had to stop knitting, wash my hands, wash my face, take out my contacts, and swallow some claritin. Then I finished knitting after I took a walk. I wore it to work the next day because it was almost cold and I was excited about my new sweater. I had to take it off on 3 or 4 separate occasions because my eyes were too itchy. I've washed it, but I think I'm still allergic - either my eyes are itching thinking about it, or they're itching because I moved it to make room for clean laundry a little bit ago.

I can't quite face re-knitting the border just yet, I like it too much to give it away to someone my size with no mohair allergy, and I don't really see the point of owning a sweater that lives unworn in my attic.

I want to destroy the 15% mohair in the border. I love the border. It's perfect. I can't believe I figured out the right number of stitches to pick up for each separate section of the sweater, I can't believe I counted to 450, and I can't believe my border lies flat on the first try. Maybe when it gets really cold, I can take a lot of claritin, avoid touching my eyes, and wear it anyway.

The shrug that morphed into a sweater was in fact a success. I'm planning to make one for my sister - she's smaller than me so I think I can get the entire sweater and border from her 4 skeins of Briggs and Little wool.

I've never really written a pattern before - I take notes for myself to make something again later but that's about it. I'm pretty sure my notes wouldn't make sense to anyone but me and of course, they're only in my size. However, if enough (more than 10) people are interested in a seamless sweater/shrug and leave a comment telling me so, I'd consider doing some math and writing it up for a few sizes.

happy knitting!

I originally posted this on my other blog stringtheories.wordpress.com

Skeins aren't scary - how I handwind a ball

I first encountered skeined yarn when I was about 6 and I was helping my mom wind it up so she could make me a sweater. Let's just say I still have that yarn - probably in the original balls and it is finally becoming a shrug of sorts. I used to succumb to temptation and unwind the entire skein at once into a tidy pile on the floor or couch - then without pausing I could wind the entire ball. Except, the tidy pile on the floor never remains tidy! Either the dog walks in, a child walks in, my husband moves the yarn to sit on the couch, or the yarn is just so happy to be free that it tangles itself when I take my eyes off it for an instant to work on the ball.

I don't have a swift or a ballwinder. They would certainly make winding balls faster but whenever I see the price of a swift or ballwinder, I think about how much yarn I could get instead. Once I spent an hour winding 50 grams (440 yards) of laceweight into a ball but I was watching tv in the dark so I couldn't have been knitting anyway. 50 grams of worsted weight usually takes me about 15-20 minutes to ball up. Normally I watch tv or chat when I'm winding balls and think about the project I'm going to make with the yarn.

To wind a skein into a ball, find a comfortable place to sit with knees up (couch or bed for me) and settle down for a few minutes. (Some people use the back of a chair but I like adjusting my knees to the perfect size for the skein - I also find it tricky to keep the strands from either sliding down on the chair or slipping off the top). Once I've started unwinding the skein and wrapping the free yarn into a ball, I don't like to move until all the yarn is secured in the ball.

1) Take the skein out of the package and unroll it without tangling the strands - it should resemble a large donut. Place the skein over the knees - adjust knees so the skein isn't stretched and isn't loose. The skein will be tied in at least two places. Untie the scrap yarn holding the skein together. One of the ties should also be attached to the two ends of the skein. Pick the end that is on the 'outside' of the skein so that the yarn unwraps easily from the skein.



2) Carefully disentangle 2-5 wraps of yarn from the skein - it is okay to pile these in your lap or nearby because this is a short enough piece of yarn that it doesn't usually tangle. If it does tangle, it's maybe 3 yards of yarn so it's easy to disentangle. Find the end and start the ball.


3) Holding the ball in one hand, use the other hand to pull 2-5 more wraps off the skein and lay the yarn down next to you. Wrap the loose yarn onto the ball. Repeat 3 until there is no more yarn on the skein.


I have wrapped a lot of badly behaved balls of yarn. I've learned a few things since I was 6.

1) Don't yank on the yarn when wrapping the ball - loose is better. I gently lay each strand of yarn on the ball as I'm wrapping.

2) Only wrap 6-10 strands in the same place - make sure it is the 'equator' of the ball so it stays on well. Turn the ball as necessary so the 'equator' moves around and the ball grows evenly. I tried to make an illustration showing the order of wrapping and illustrating the directional changes. First I wrapped the red section, then the blue section, then the peach, then the green. I generally try and wrap in 6 different directions before 'repeating' - the repeating though is always shifted slightly so that the new yarn is wrapping in the 'valleys' left by the old yarn.



3) when changing directions, I place my thumb on the yarn and make sure I wrap over any places the yarn loosens so the ball can't fall apart from the inside. The arrow is pointing to my thumb where I'm holding the yarn in place. I start wrapping with 2 and then 3 and 4 are supposed to wrap over the loose yarn where my thumb was and make everything snug.



How do you wind yarn? I can't be the only person without a swift and ballwinder can I?

28 Aug 07 edit: And the very same week that I wrote about ball-winding, Kelley Petkun of Knitpicks talked about ballwinding (including swifts and winders) in her podcast!

Grassy snow brioche - 2 color brioche

I enjoyed making Mr. T's brioche scarf so much that I decided to make another - this time with 2 colors. I'd remembered seeing a red and black striped brioche scarf on the internet somewhere so I sat down with some scrap yarn and promptly started cursing (do you see that weird looking stripe about a 1/3 of the way from the bottom? I was being stubborn and insisting on figuring the pattern out myself instead of simply looking on the internet.
I remembered the tubular cast-on without looking it up but I had a hard time figuring out how to alternate colors on the brioche columns (are they ribs?). Fortunately I was using double pointed needles because it involved acrobatics such as knitting then purling the same side before turning the work. Finally I figured out a rule: 1) switch colors every row (to figure out which color is next if I walk away, whichever column/rib has a knit stitch is the color I used last) 2) slide the knitting to whichever side has the proper color working yarn (why double points or short circulars are excellent needle choices) 3) when necessary (on half the rows) purl the columns so they stay the right color and right stitch I got going on the 'real' yarn which is Knitpicks Andean Silk I picked up a little while ago during their sale.

Then I realized that I wanted the white stripes to start at the beginning, I needed smaller needles to get a tighter gauge, and I wanted to make a wider scarf. So I started over

I might finally be happy with it - sadly this probably won't be 24 knitting because I have to pay attention. The yarnover loops don't always seem lined up right so I have to perform needle acrobatics to make sure the different color yarnover ends up behind the knit column. This scarf is destined as a Christmas present - maybe I won't be stressed out in December this year ;-)

edited: of course I was still stressed out over Christmas - it's January 20th and I still owe two largish presents....(at least I finished all the smaller presents I guess)