Knitting Fearlessly

Rhubarb: A Fearless Sweater

For some knitters, the idea of making a garment is scary. They might not be the ones you would expect: I’m talking about knitters who have already made lots (and lots) of other things. They have earned their chops. They have made bobbles, booties, and blankets. They have cabled, and laced, and intarsia-ed their way all around the block.

But they’ve never made sweaters.

This isn’t a judgement - heavens no. There are lots of you out there who are perfectly happy not to make clothes at all. There are even designers (famous ones!) who never make garments. Everything they publish falls firmly in the accessory category. They wouldn’t know an armscye from an armadillo, and they are perfectly happy with their work, thank you very much.

So today’s message is not for them. Instead, I’m reaching out to those who just need a gentle nudge out of their own way. I’m calling to you, Gentle Knitters, who have never made a sweater because it just seemed, well, hard. What if it doesn’t fit? What if I pick the wrong pattern for my first try? What if I don’t like it when it’s finished ? And what’s the deal with “wearing ease”, anyway?

Lots of us have been stopped by those very questions on the path to sweater smugness. But I’m here to tell you that you can do it, because I believe in you.

I believe in you so much that I’ve created a very special class for you with its own pattern. The experience has four sessions, spaced far enough apart for you to make lots of progress in between. There’s no pressure to finish your sweater within the prescribed workshop time, but every support in place if you want to. I’ll be your personal guide, yarn whisperer and pattern sherpa. Together we’ll work on how to measure our bodies, select personal design elements, and yes, demystify wearing ease. Because I think that every knitter deserves to wear their own work, and to feel beautiful and accomplished when they do.

Our class project is the Rhubarb sweater, shown above. I created it especially for knitters making their very first sweater: It’s elegant but wearable, stylish without being trendy, and flattering on all kinds of different bodies. I wanted to make a pattern for you that is challenging without being complicated, and simple without being boring.

Won’t you join me for a little adventure? I promise to show you how brave and beautiful you are.

CLICK HERE for more information and to register.

Shapely, Sexy Steeks

You may have heard that is possible to grow a human ear on the back of a mouse. So obviously, in my head, this translates directly to knitting. What if I grew a sleeve on the side of a body tube?

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not

When we knit with steeks, an enormous world opens up with regard to how we create the parts of garments. For example: What if my new Fana sweater were equal parts green with white, and white with green, in a color blocked arrangement? Something like this:

Cardigan by Gudrun Sjoden

I need some sweater parts in both color arrangements, notably left body tube, right body tube, left sleeve and right sleeve. The reversed charts are like this:

And here’s a little sketch for how the color placement might look:

Stay with me now; it’s about to get thinky. Let’s say I want to knit a round where the chart colors reverse in the middle of the round. Each time there’s a single-color round (lots of times in a striped Fana), I’d have to physically switch yarn sources in order to have the proper strand in place when I come back to it in the round. That’s intarsia, which we all know is a Dark Art.

Nope.

Instead, I can make two tubes of knitting; one in each of the color configurations. Each of my tubes will become one half of the body, and one sleeve, once I cut them apart.

The sleeve needs to be longer than the body, so I started it first. Then I cast on more stitches for 1/2 of the body tube with some waste yarn, and joined the round with steek stitches on either side of the sleeve. As I work away, I can decide on the exact sleeve shaping. Since I’m just knitting sweater pieces, which happen to be conjoined, I can make specific decisions about the way each piece is shaped as I go.

About halfway along the first sleeve, I’ve decided I want gathers up at its cap. For that I’ll need more sleeve width, so I’ll start increasing at shorter intervals now. All the while, I’m also making half of the body tube with every round. The body tube halves don’t need any shaping in this case, so they’re just straight-sided cylinders. If the finished garment needed bust darts or waist shaping, though, I could easily also work them on that half of the piece.

For more ideas about sexy knitting engineered by adding steeks, join me online for a thought exercise/adventure! We’ll explore knitted construction that is shaped with the strategic placement of cuts, and I’ll help you understand how to plan them. Oh, and you get to make this super cute thing:

Sign up HERE, and imagine your knitting in a completely new way.

Unbubblegumming

So there I was, Gentle Readers, with an armload of beautiful “New Old Stock” Plymouth Galway yarn. And by armload, I mean “Gimme-All-Ya-Got”, via a very nice seller on E Bay. I always was a girl with an eye for a bargain, and this one would have been wrong to leave behind. As you know, not every project has to begin with thousand-dollar-yarn. In fact, there’s a certain freedom in grabbing a pile of the budget-friendly variety because there’s less at stake, financially to experiment with.

6 of the 12 skeins I scored for $30

But it wasn’t exactly my dream color. It was full-on Bubblegum pink. Meh.

Not to worry. It was nothing a few packets of Kool-Aid couldn’t fix. 48 packets, as it turned out, in a combination of Black Cherry and Blue Raspberry, at a ratio of 3 to 1.

After soaking a sweater’s worth of my skeins in warm water, I popped them into this semi-transparent bin with some water I microwaved until just boiling. The amount of water used with Koolaid doesn’t matter; you just need enough to cover the yarn. Then I put the lid on the bin and let the hot sun do its magic for a couple of hours.

I used to dye yarn this way with my kids when they were little, so the process brought back lots of fond memories. The intoxicating scent of powdered drink mix always brings on a fit of Mommy Nostalgia.

This dye technique couldn’t be easier: Benign neglect is all you need. I wandered off to eat popsicles in front of a fan, confident in the yarn’s ability to absorb the pigment and leave nothing but colorless water behind. You can tell all the dye has been taken up when the water is just a bit cloudy, with no dye remaining in it.

You can gently stir the yarn around a bit during the process if you want the color to be more even, or you can leave it alone like I did for more of a kettle-dyed effect.

Another fun effect can be achieved by putting either end of the wet skein into different colored dye containers. The skein will wick dye from either container toward the center for a multicolor wave.

You can also get ombre by suspending one end of a skein into the dye, then gradually lowering it into the bath more and more at intervals. Super fun, whether you do it with smallies, or on your own.

I let it dry, happy with the Rhubarb color it turned. Witchcraft, I tell ya.

And here’s a peek at it, once knit. Tangy!

I’m now inspired to make a new class for you; on something I’ve never done before: Your First Sweater. Maybe you’re a newer knitter who’s made a few accessories and is ready to try a sweater? Or perhaps an experienced stitcher who has been around the world and back in shawls but never tackled a garment? I’ll show you how to measure and fit a real live body, with shaping and openings and everything! I’ll be teaching this in November, so stay tuned for more details.

Meanwhile, please join me for 2 Strings = Not Scary next Friday HERE. No homework, no stress, just a fun introduction to stranded colorwork with me.

Or how about dipping a toe into Entrelac? Sign up HERE to make a fun little project that magically changes colors.

Ready to tackle the most feared act in knitting? There’s safety in numbers when you join me and other thrill-seeking knitters HERE for Eeek! Steeks!

And there are still a few spots available HERE in my first-ever Stars and Stripes workshop. I’ll actually be knitting along with you for this one, which will be a hoot! I can’t wait to show you my zany idea for a modern take on the classic Fana cardigan.

Welcome, Knitting Weather. It’s gonna get colorful in here.