the cable lady



Katy from Debbie Bliss' Cotton Angora book in Rowan all seasons cotton

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...and you gotta expect to come home with yarn.

Shireen is to blame. I am totally hooked on Rowan denim! My second denim baby knit (after the pinafore) will be this little Phildar baby sweater (from Phildar #381), which I'm gonna do in dark blue denim with light blue denim stripes. And I couldn't help myself when I saw the Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit buttons. So cute!

Next, I've got Lisa to blame, um, thank for renewing my love affair with Rowan all seasons cotton. Lisa gifted me with this bag of beautiful orange/gold asc. I've got plans to do something cable-y with it (like this maybe), because asc looks so damn good in cables! Afterall, it was Amber's incredible cabled sweater that sparked my last asc crush.

But best of all, waiting for me at the store, was this yarn and these truly beautiful stitchmarkers from Amy C. Amy recognized me and the boys (I think most people actually recognize the boys first) at my local Finagle-a-Bagel and remembered that I had posted about searching the Boston-area yarn stores for more yarn to fix B's blankie. Well, she just happened to have two balls of it that she couldn't really find the perfect project for. She wrote me a sweet email saying that she'd like to donate it to the keeping-the-blankie-alive cause. Isn't that wonderful?! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Amy!

By the way, if you happen to go to the store these days, this is what you're going to see:

nothing but a t-shirt goes big time! (click for a close up)

I found myself at Knitsmiths last week with the wrong needles and unable to work on the denim baby jacket, so I was forced - forced I tell you! - to start Katy with my luscious orange-y all seasons cotton.

S was helping out with the photography again

Oh those cables. Swoon.

Okay so riddle me this: what's up with me and orange? There's the clapotis, then this all seasons cotton that I couldn't wait to get my hands on, and even some Jaeger Trinity that I carried around with me for an hour at the Wild & Wooly clearance sale but eventually put back. I'm beginning to suspect that Claudia slipped me something the last time I saw her!

Well, actually, I blame Harry Potter. It all became clear when I went to the yarn store this week to pick up the extra maroon yarn I need to finish the Prisoner of Azkaban scarf. I came home with that yarn and these.

the Harry Potter effect

That's one more skein of Malabrigo for the clapotis (yes, I will need four skeins), one more ball of asc for katy (the cables are eating up yarn at an alarming rate), and five balls of Calmer in maroon for the nothing but a t-shirt that I'm making with my intermediate knitting class (I liked the maroon trim on the model tee so much I wanted to use it for my next NBaT). The bag of yarn was like an accidental cross-section of all the projects I'm working on now and what do you know, it looked like another Harry Potter scarf. (Mmmm..... a Harry Potter scarf in Malabrigo.... drool... ooops, sorry, drifted off there a bit). It would appear that I officially have Harry Potter on the brain. And the needles.

Not only is katy eating up a ton of yarn, but she's eating up a ton of time! Man, cables are slow, especially when there's 11 cables in a row that turn every 4 rows. I was knitting on this exclusively (while organizing the sock swap) for what seemed like an eternity (but was probably only a few nights) and just finished the back.

I'm so in love with this sweater. Those cables are so beautiful, I honestly cannot believe that I made them.

Have we all admired them now? If not, please go back and gaze again upon their loveliness.

Done? Good. Cause I ripped out half of it last night. It was too short. No doubt about it; no denying it; no way out but to rip. Back to the beginning of the armhole she went. Yes, half of katy is gone. Looks like the back will be eating up a few more of my nights. It's not all bad though: more opportunity for me to knit with that delicious copper all seasons cotton, right?

Back redone. Front begun.

Finally forward progress again on Katy.

I brought katy in to my intermediate knitting class on Tuesday to use her to demonstrate shoulder and side seaming. I wasn't quite far enough along on my NBaT to seam anything, plus I was anxious to sew up the body of katy to see if she fits. Once I'd seamed a few inches, my love of seaming kicked in again, and I couldn't stop until all those crisp, neat seams were finished.

Let me just interject here how incredibly annoying it is that Debbie Bliss hasn't given knitters any help in this pattern regarding how do all the decreases along the armhole or that long v-neck. There's cables and ribs and a lot of seaming and picking up of stitches to be done later and if you simply decrease at the edge, it's gonna be UG-LY! I kept one selvedge stitch in stockinette all the way up, doing all decreases in pattern one stitch in from the edge. This certainly helped, giving me a clean, straight edge for seaming, but something like the clever lines of decreased ribs that you always see in the Rebecca patterns might have been nicer.

I went ahead and added the collar, both to be sure that that single selvedge stitch was going to look acceptable with the picked up collar, and so I'll know how much yarn I've got left over for the sleeves.

For those of you considering katy, the original neckline is VERY open. I believe Amber referred to it as "flashdance". I made a couple of adjustments to the pattern to give my katy a more functional and modest neckline. First I added two extra decreases to the armhole to get rid of that droop shoulder effect you see on the model. Then I changed the width of the shoulders by ADDING five extra stitches to each shoulder, effectively trimming down that mega-wide neck. (By adding, I mean that I pretended the instructions were written for five more stitches on each shoulder. On the back, that meant binding off ten fewer stitches for the neck and on the front, ending the decreases earlier so that the shoulders contained five extra stitches.)

I'm happy to announce that katy fits, the neckline looks great and provides full coverage and I've got a healthy four and a half balls of yarn remaining for the sleeves. Phew! She's been kind of a pain in the tush, but I guess hard work really does pay off. Now to fiddle with those sleeve instructions....

1. The denim pinafore I finished in May was well received. After visiting the little girl it was intended for, I suddenly got nervous about the size and so sent it off a month before her birthday, just in case it was on the small side. It fits!

2. Amy Lu asked to see some close-ups of katy's neckline. Okey dokey.

left side and right side

And look, no droopy shoulders, no flashdance neck!

3. We've had yet another blankie crisis. Last week, S is cuddling with his blankie while watching Miss Spider and then just holds it up a little and quietly states, " I think this has a hole in it." Funny, this announcement has become so commonplace that it no longer results in the same sort of rush of activity and anxiety as it used to, either in them or in me.

before

I did some duplicate stitching that night and brought the blankie to S while he was sleeping.

after

4. I stopped by my LYS yesterday with the boys in tow and S immediately recognized the big long scarf in the new Harry Potter window. "That's the thing you make and you bring it and it hang there." When we got in the store, he went right over to the window to see the things from the inside. I found him stroking the Nimbus 2000 and then suddenly he looked up and said in a voice of slow realization, "hey, that's my...." I'd totally forgotten that he'd recognize his weasley sweater! He was actually very excited to see it there. (So was B: "look, an H sweater!") I explained that once it was done hanging in the window, we'd be bringing it back home. But then he grabbed hold of the bottom of the scarf and said "can we take this?"

Time to take a serious look at the project basket and take care of those neglected half-sweaters! Our annual visit to Germany is coming up in mid-September and I've sworn to do my best to get them all done before we leave! I seem to have abandoned each of them in some stage of sleeve work, so it'll be a long slow trip through sleeve hell for me.

First up is katy, my lovely copper cabled sweater. The body is all done, but both sleeves still remain to be knitted. I cast on for the first sleeve at Knitsmiths on Sunday, but had to rip it about an hour later as it seemed a little snug on the wrist. I'm not a fan of the narrow wrist/wide upper arm sleeve shaping thing. Plus, I'm not convinced that I have enough yarn left to complete two full-length sleeves. After considering my options, I decided to cast on about 85% of the stitches that the pattern calls for at the widest part of the sleeve and knit it straight.

Knitting it this way should result in a wider cuff and a narrower upper arm. And as soon as I get nervous about my remaining yarn, I can start the sleeve cap without worrying where I am in the increases. That's the plan, at least. So far, this sweater has required a good deal of reknitting and reworking, so I can't really expect the sleeves to be any different, can I?

Back to knitting (at least for a day or two - sorry weasleys, I gotta knit sometime!) and back to katy.

I wasn't sure that I could get full-length sleeves out of the yarn that I had left (and it's a discontinued color, so there's no more to get), which is why I went with the straight sleeve style. My plan was to knit straight until I couldn't possibly imagine finishing the sleeve cap with the remaining yarn and then to start the sleeve cap (I've come to learn that I tend to underestimate how much yarn is left). So I knit and knit, cabled and knit, and after about 8 rows of chanting 'oh, I've gone too far - oh, I've gone too far', I worked the sleeve cap and bound off. Took exactly two of my four remaining balls, which means that I should be able to make the second sleeve the same length. Okay, I'm good on yarn, fine. But there was still really no way of knowing just how long that sleeve would look until I set it in the armhole.

And then tried it on. Would it be a good 3/4 length sleeve, as I suspected? Would it be some sort of too-long-for-3/4-length, too-short-for-full-length, did-your-arms-grow-or-something size? Or would it, when set in, magically become much longer and be full length? Suspense, drama, seaming. And....

Must be all the Harry Potter I've been reading. A little knitty felix felicis* maybe?

* (SPOILER ALERT - Don't click these if you don't want to know the end of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince) Felix Felicis defined and for those involved in our HBP discussions from Monday, check out this article at Mugglenet

Either way you look at it, I'm almost done with the last katy sleeve!

Katy.

This sweater was such hard work and yet a real surprise. After working so hard to bring in the neckline, set the sleeves in deeper, and narrow the sleeves, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the sleeves are nice and long and the body neatly cropped. I was also surprised by the chunky feel of the all-over cabling. It'll take a little getting used to, as I feel like I'm about five inches wider, but it's really just a more relaxed sort of fit than I'm used to. Of course the all seasons cotton is a delight to wear: soft, soft, soft. And the color is perfect for fall.

And I do so love those cables!

(Well, folks, I'm outie for now. See ya from the other side of the Atlantic in a few days!)