a Mango with sleeves and sophistication



long sleeved version of Rowan's Mango tank in Rowan all seasons cotton sooty (black) and kiss

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Even surprised myself by getting this one done so quickly. I sat down over the weekend thinking I'll just do what I can on the finishing. No pressure, no goal. I'll seam a little then weave in an end or two and we'll see where I am when the boys wake up from their nap. The boys must have slept pretty well, because before I knew it, I had a sleeve in and most of the ends already woven in. Another evening of finishing and I was finished!

This sweater is a great example of knitting to fit. Like a glove. The high ribbing (which doesn't show up well in a picture) makes me feel skinny. I can't be putting on any holiday pounds this year! It's so comfortable though. Although it's snug and form-fitting it doesn't feel tight at all. Plus, I love those big sleeves. Mmmmm... big sleeves. I gotta jot down the exact measurements of this sweater so I can use them in the future when resizing other patterns. I'm not quite sure how much it resembles the original Mango pattern, but I love it!

Sooty mango with a cherry on top.

So, I whimped out on the crazy big collar for mango. After knitting the back half of it, I decided I didn't love the wrong-side flipped over look or the split collar look as much as I liked the perfectly even ribbing. I did too good a job of picking up stitches to go hiding it all with collar! So I ripped it all out and using the neck from Cherry Picking as my model, knit on. Yes, the infamous "Cherry Boobs" has been a great resource. I borrowed a few of the numbers for armhole/sleeve shaping from that pattern when knitting the sleeves. And now I've swiped the neck. I guess it's only fitting that I've introduced the cherry color.

The yarn gods have come through again. They have saved sooty mango and me from sleeve hell.

So here's the story... I'm adding sleeves to the mango tank pattern. And I just happen to like wide, long sleeves. Since I wasn't really following a pattern here, I decided make the sleeves exactly how I want! I had 10 balls of sooty all seasons cotton - no more than five were needed for the body, so I'm thinking I'm in good shape. To get the annoying ribbing out of the way, I go ahead and knit each sleeve up to the beginning of the sleeve cap shaping. Before I start the sleeve caps I run upstairs to my stash to get another ball of yarn. But there is no more sooty yarn left in my stash. Each sleeve has a meager little rest hanging off of it and then there's some palm sized remainders in the project bag and that's it! Finishing the first sleeve cap takes all the yarn hanging off the sleeve and all the little remainders in the bag. For the last sleeve cap, I've only got the little bit left hanging from the sleeve. Impossible! Of course the yarn is discontinued. There's some available from English Yarns, but I'd only need one skein. What a pain! I decide to just knit that sleeve as far as it will go and then order the extra ball. So I knit, and decrease, and knit, and decrease, and four more rows of shaping like so, and then six more shaping like so, and then three more like so, and then bind off and wait... I'm done. How did that tiny little leftover last that long?? It's like Chanukah!

This sweater brought to you by the generous and merciful yarn gods who watch over my knitting. (Yes, I do still have the collar to do, but I had planned on using other yarn for that anyway. ) Too bad the yarn gods don't do seaming....

Had a great time at Knitsmiths this week, as usual! Lots of really interesting projects: Tanya just finished an amazing afghan and Amber was making a giant bucket-o-chic hat for her rather large-headed dad. It seems that many of the rest of us were working on sleeves. Ingrid had a sleeve for her textured slip stitch cardigan in hand, Kerstin a sleeve for her Femme Fatale, and I a sooty sleeve. After discussing all the sleeves in progress we came to the conclusion that sleeves take forever! They just won't end.

Luckily we had mini mozart balls from Germany so we could nosh our way through sleeve hell.

Since I was already feeling miserable over the weekend, I decided to tackle that rather unsatisfactory ribbing on my sooty mango. If you recall the problem was with my tension while knitting continental and switching between knit and purl stitches. I tried Stacy's suggestion of twisting the first purl stitch after switching from knit to purl and had some definite improvement, but a faint line still developed at the left of each rib. So, it was off with the ribbing! I've done this before and it worked well, so as far as I'm concerned it's ALWAYS and option!

A few pics from the sofa: I threaded the needle through the stitches right above the ribbing, snipped the edge stitch below the row now on the needle, and pulled the yarn through each stitch to unravel. Here's the ribbing completely separated, then a quick check of the pattern (read it backwards!) and begin reknitting the ribbing in the other direction. And with the other hand!! And now I've got some respectable ribbing I'd be happy to wear.

I'm still getting kicked around a little by my cold, but boy do I feel better!

Sure I love lots of color, but a girl can always use a nice black sweater, so despite the new project push, I did a some more work on sooty mango. Here's the finished front.

Did that neckline about four times! Since the Mango pattern doesn't include sleeves, I'm roughly following the shaping from Cherry Picking (in the same book) for the top of the sweater. But the total stitch count is taken from Mango, so I had to fudge and refudge the shoulder and neck parts quite a bit to get the right number of decreases for the correct neck depth and width. Glad that's over! Now on to the sleeves...

But what about the project parade? Right! Well, while I work on the same old, same old, let me direct your attention to some amazing knitalong projects, including Rose's finished poncho, Melinda's beautifully seamed Phildar cardi raye and Kimberly's pink poncho in progress. Wowie - great work, ladies!

Ten hours to take off. Time for a vacation wrap-up.

The vests are finished, although it's unclear whether they're a success or not. As I mentioned in the comments yesterday, a few minutes after snapping the photos, S started tugging at his vest and saying "no, no". I let him take it off (sad mommy moment) but am officially attributing his vest-aversion to a "no"-phase that he seems to be going through right now. B, thankfully, maintained his usual fashion disinterestedness. Although I didn't end up having enough knitting time to get sooty mango finished, it is almost half done now. I set it down the front here, having just finished the armhole decreases.

One last thing to report - my father-in-law got the knitting machine up and running! Now that it's bolted to a table and oiled up, I can move the shuttle back and forth smoothly. My brother-in-law is the only person still living who actually knit something with the machine, so I had him help me knit a few rows while he was here to see the boys. Here we've got actual live stitches in the machine! And here's the knitted piece hanging below. Yes, it's a little hole-y, but it is knitting. As the Germans say, 'aller Anfang ist schwer.' And here's a slightly better piece of knitting that I managed with the help of my father-in-law. I'm still not clear on how to cast off from the machine. Maybe I can find some general info on machine knitting that can give me some clues.

All in all, a pretty cool vacation, knit- and other-wise!

Remember picture day at school? I was always laying my best clothes out the night before and hoping for a good hair day. Well, it's a relatively good light day today here, so I thought what better time to get all the knitting photos taken.

First up, the boys' Phildar vests. I used five skeins of Phildar's oh so fabulous fantasia yarn for these. The pattern called for three skeins for one vest, but a little bird told me that there would be some leftover, so I got five skeins and hoped for the best. Here's what I had left over. Now that's what I call cutting it close! I should have some action shots of the boys in their new vests tomorrow.

Hey, check out what I found in the magazine section of the family stationery store: a german version of Phildar's baby catalog, the one from last year that has both the giranimal pattern and the pattern I used for the new fantasia vests. Yeah, I have it in French, but it was so neat to see it all in German, I got it anyway.

And finally pictures of the back of sooty mango in all its sootiness. I've only taken the back out of the project bag twice to photograph and I'm already picking little light linty bits off of it. Oh boy! Despite the black being a big lint magnet, I think I'm going to like this sweater. I'm making it a snug fit, mostly because my continental gauge tightened up a little. And I'm hoping that with a little tip from ssk, the ribbing on the sleeves will be better than on the body.

Much knitting progress to report. Sooty mango is well underway. Once the silly ribbing was over (of course it's ribbing up to the waist), my tension evened out beautifully (yay!) and I made it all the way up to the armholes on the back. Here the official photo.

And here a few seconds later as B ran across my knitting to get his blankie.

And in the time it took my husband to read the boys their goodnight story (um, well, repeat the goodnight story from memory, since we kinda forgot the books!), I knit up a swatch for their Phildar vests. This is going to be a super easy, quick knit. Bulky yarn... good.

And check out this discovery in the in-laws' attic: an old knitting machine that belonged to my husband's grandparents.

All the parts are there including the old instruction booklet. The machine model is called "Frauenlob" (women's praise). Don't you just love it?! Could it be any more 1950's sounding?! Could it be any more German sounding?! How funny. My father-in-law wants to see if he can get it in working order again so I can try it out. So, more to come!

After spending one evening recovering from jetlag and the next going to the movies (Seabiscuit dubbed in German!), I found some time to start my vacation knitting and cast on for sooty mango. Here's my progress after a day and a half. The ribbing is a little wonky thanks to my not quite so perfected continental technique, but it's black, so the little imperfections really don't show up. I'm hoping that I'll have better control over my tension when it comes time to start the front. More annoying though are the two knots I've already found in the first ball of yarn. See them hanging there taunting me?! Grrrr.

Besides doing practically no knitting, I'm hunting through the yellow pages for a knitting store in the area. I gotta at least look, right?

The blue blog vacation report - first edition. We made it and once I get over this jetlag, I'll hope to have some vacation knitting to share. What will I be knitting, you ask?

Well, I had a real hard time deciding. After toying with fandango and then with the leftovers vest (there's a blast from the past!) and reconsidering all my Phildar projects because of the smaller gauge and my wanting to rest my hand, I decided on sooty mango. Easy knitting at a relaxing gauge. Should knit up quickly without being a strain on my hand. I'm going continental on this one. When in Germany....

And the boys will not be left out during this vacation. Becky made sure there was some yarn waiting for me at my in-laws to make little Phildar vests for the twins. Thanks, Becky!

Psst - the knit-alongs are still on, but please email me if you finish something so I can update the list and check it out! From here, I won't have time to surf all my daily reads and fellow knitalongers' sites. (Sniff, sniff). So, be sure to let me know when anything interesting happens, okay?!

I've been asked this question several times during the frenzied finishing fiesta of the last week (two more projects to go to finish the finishing!). Well, I don't know yet. The next project will have to be a good vacation project, since if I get my finishing all done, I'll have a pretty clean slate (except for the mondo poncho, which is too big and bulky to bring with me).

These are my current faves:

filly cardigan
Man, I want to start this so bad!

sooty mango
That's Mango in black, with sleeves. This would make for easy relax-and-chat-with-family knitting.

the blue sweater
I seem to be on a blue kick. And a three-quarter length sleeve kick. Hmm.... How about a blue three-quarter length sleeve sweater like this?

So what do you all think would make the best vacation project?

And judging from my current fantasies, these could be next up when I return:

leigh's sweater
Took the yarn for this stripey sweater off Leigh's hands when it didn't work out for her. Love the colors and the shaping. Mighty tempting.

snowy
Not sure why, but having just finished knitting the ladybug sweater, I'm really itching to start another fingering weight fair-isle! I'm nutty like that.