Ravellenics Sweater SUCCESS, Finishing Other Things, and a Crazy Cat

Great news! I finished my sweater on Friday night (day 15)!!!  By the time it was done Friday, I was too tired to deal with blocking it, but I did that Saturday morning.

In this photo, the ribbed fronts/neck are folded back. Once it was dry, I didn't like the crease that was formed, so I steamed it a bit to remove the crease. I love it so much. It's warm and cozy, but looks really nice too.

Inspired by the fact that I finished a complete sweater in 15 days, I started looking at my other projects to see what else I can finish when I put my mind to it. Saturday, I finished my Dreambird Shawl.

I promise better pictures of both items as soon as I get a chance. My iPhone just doesn't take stellar pics.

So, having completed that, I went for something a little more difficult. Back in July 2012, I started the Evenstar Shawl. The body of the shawl has been done for a long time. Well over a year. I just needs an edging. So, I pulled it out. About 10 repeats of the edging were done. That's when I gave up. I love the way lace edgings look, I just don't enjoy knitting them. It's the same few rows over and over and over again until you feel like poking your eyes out with your knitting needles. Well, guess what! The time has come for me to just suck it up and get it done.

Each repeat of the edging (one of those peaks) takes about 18 minutes. The shawl requires 56 of those buggers. That's 1008 minutes of knitting just those 20 rows over and over and over again. That's almost 17 hours. I have 23 repeats done. It would take a lot longer if I were adding the beads (as called for in the pattern). But I'm not. Thank God.

In other completely unrelated news, one of our cats has taken to keeping me company when I shower in the morning. It's the weirdest thing. He jumps up between the fabric curtain and the plastic curtain liner. Then, he walks to the back of the tub and sticks his head into the shower. He meows at me the entire time I'm showering. It's like he warning me about the evil water I'm standing in. It's hilarious.

Ravellenics Sweater: Day 13

I still don't have anything terribly exciting to report. Knitting 1x1 rib over 371 stitches for 8" of depth is sort of like knitting the Great Wall. It feels like it will never end.

Doesn't look a whole lot different from yesterday. But, trust me, there are a good 2 or 2.5 more inches of ribbing now than there were before.

I don't have anything on my schedule this evening once I pick my daughter up from her flute lesson at 5:30, so maybe (hopefully!) I will get the ribbing done tonight.

When I was laying my sweater out to get the photos above, I was struck again by how much I love the Phoney Seam.

In this picture (more than the ones from the other day), you can really see how the "seam" almost sits on top of the fabric, encouraging it to fold there. I just love it. It looks so nice and finished.

I'm really excited about finishing this and seeing how it looks!!

Ravellenics Sweater: Day 12

I don't have any brilliant advice to share with you today. No pictures of special techniques or information about how to calculate anything. Just a picture of my sweater and a few of inches of ribbing. It's going faster than I thought it would and isn't eating as much yarn as I feared it might. I don't think it will get finished tonight because we have too much going on, but maybe tomorrow....

Ravellenics Sweater: Day 11 and Phoney Seams

Yesterday was wonderful. Due to being able to knit at work for a while AND our evening plans being cancelled due to snow/ice, I had tons of knitting time yesterday. The main body of the sweater is DONE!

First thing this morning, I picked up a gazillion stitches up the right front, around the back of the neck, and down the left front. Now I get to knit 7.5" of 1x1 ribbing all the way around. I have about 288g of yarn left, which should work out really well with a minimum of yarn left over.

Let's talk for a minute about Phoney Seams. These were an "unvention" of Elizabeth Zimmermann (unvention instead of invention because she didn't believe there was anything in knitting that hadn't already been done by someone, even if it hadn't been recorded). Phoney Seams were the result of people complaining that seamless sweaters didn't hang right because they were missing the seams, which gave a certain amount of structure and support to the garment. I like Phoney Seams for that reason, but also because they give a definite fold point to the side "seams" when blocking. To see exactly how to do a Phoney Seam, follow the link above. I just wanted to show you a couple of pics of how mine turned out.

First, dropping that one stitch down always makes me cringe a little. It's not like I'm worried I can't fix it or that I'm stressing about it not being right. I'm not sure why, but cringe I do. Look at that wide gap where just one column of stitches used to be.

But, then, after spending a few minutes picking the stitches up with the right ration (1 bar, 2 bars, 1 bar, 2 bars, and so on), it looks like this:

See that nice line of Vs that stand out from the rest? Lovely and perfect.

Ravellenics Sweater: Days 8, 9, and 10 and More Math and Injuries

Now that I'm working on the body, I probably need to start thinking about how much yarn I will need for the wide ribbing that will go around the fronts and neck of the sweater. I know it will be 1x1 ribbing and will be 7 1/2" deep (at least). How do I make sure I save enough yarn for that?

Well, if I was knitting the sweater on the same size needles with which I swatched, it would be pretty easy. Remember the swatch? Here's what it looked like:

See that bit of 1x1 rib on the left? I could count the number of rows and note how many stitches wide it is, then measure it. Note all those numbers. Then unravel it and see how much yardage was used for that bit.

However, I did not knit the sweater on the same size needles as the swatch. So, I'll have to knit another. This one won't be as involved as the first one! I'll cast on 30 sts and knit 1x1 rib ..... honestly: until I get sick of it. Ideally, I would knit that swatch to 7 1/2" long. This would give me a very good (but probably not exact) idea of how many rows it takes to knit 7 1/2" of 1x1 rib. The weight of the sweater as I'm knitting will affect this a bit. Let's face it: 7 1/2" is a lot, and I will honestly not knit that much for a swatch.

Once the new swatch is complete, I'll do the same counting, measuring and unraveling I would have done with the existing swatch.

Here's where it gets a little tricky. The longer I knit my sweater, the more yarn I'll need for the wide ribbed band. So, it's not like I can say, "Okay, this band will take 200g of yarn. I'll knit until I have that much left over." What if knitting until I have that much left over results in needing 210g of yarn for the band? If I want to use as much of my yarn as possible with a minimum left over at the end, I'm going to have to work some magic. I'll have to go into it with a rough estimate, then measure and work the numbers regularly as I approach desired length.

If I'm willing to fudge a bit and overestimate and end up with some yarn leftover (which I am), that makes it a little easier. I know I want my sweater to be 30" long. So, I just have to figure out how much yarn I'll need to go 30" up each side and 7 1/2" around the back neck. Easy, right?

I knit a swatch of 1x1 ribbing on size US6 needles (which I completely forgot to photograph before I ripped it out to measure the yarn). I will admit to skimping a lot on the swatch. It was only 5" wide by about 1 1/2" deep (I was seriously lazy on this). The swatch used about 6.3 yards of yarn (3g). I need to knit 67 1/2" of ribbing that is 7 1/2" deep. So, if 5"x1 1/2"=6.3 yards, then 5"x7 1/2" =  31.5 yards. So, for every 5" of ribbing, I will use about 31.5 yards of yarn. For 67 1/2" of ribbing, I should use about 425.25 yards of yarn, which works out to almost exactly 200g. That's a really rough estimate. I'm going to make sure I have a bit more than that just to be safe--maybe 250g. And that shouldn't be a problem because I started with ten 100g balls.

OK! So, enough about math. Let's look at how my weekend knitting shaped up. Friday night, even though it was Valentine's Day, my son had two basketball games (he's in a rec league for middle schoolers). That was a lot of knitting time. By the end of the day Friday, my sweater looked like this:

I had made pretty decent progress on the body. At this point, I knew I was increasing at the side seams every 6 rounds because I'm somewhat pear-shaped, and I need more fabric go go around my hips than around my bust. When following a "regular" sweater pattern, I often use one size for the top part of the sweater and a size or two up for the bottom part. So, the rows are getting longer by 4 stitches every 6 rounds. Translation: the knitting is going more slowly.

Saturday morning, I had to clean my house. It was driving me freaking nuts and I just couldn't take it anymore. We also went out for an early dinner Saturday late-afternoon to celebrate the kids' golds at Solo & Ensemble, Tim's 40th birthday (which was Wednesday), and Valentine's Day, so that ate into my knitting time a bit. Even so, by the end of the day Saturday, it looked like this:

Sunday was quiet. Thank heaven! I had my usually early-morning grocery trip, and Sunday is always laundry day. At one point, my husband and kids said, "Let's all go see the Lego Movie." My reply: You go ahead. I'll just stay here and finish the laundry. And knit. And watch the Olympics. They were gone several hours (because they also ran some errands), which was glorious. It was nice and quiet and just about perfect. By the end of the day, my sweater looked like this:

I'm getting there! I honestly believe I'll be able to pick up the stitches for the front/neck ribbing before the end of the day today! I'm really ahead of schedule!

One price we sometimes pay for overzealous anything is injury. Olympians experience it all the time. When I was watching Snowboardcross yesterday afternoon, I saw two women suffer injuries that took them out of the rest of the Games. One blew out her knee. The other...well, I'm not sure specifically what got injured, but watching her crash, I was surprised she didn't break her neck. It was really scary.

While knitting injuries are rare, they usually involve some kind of repetitive stress--carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, etc. Mine is, thankfully, not as severe as either of those. I managed to knit so much that I actually punctured the skin on my index finger where I push to slide the stitches up the left needle. Apparently, I always push in the exact same spot. It's a hard habit to break. Every time the needle tip hits there accidentally, I about go through the roof. I'm making a concerted effort to pinch the tip of the left needle when I have to push the stitches up, but it's just not as fast.

It's not a career-ender, or even a game-ender, so that's good! I'm working around it, and I'm determined to finish! LOL!

Ravellenics Sweater: Day 7

Yesterday was a spectacularly successful day of knitting that put me a day ahead on my goals! I had a 2-hour meeting yesterday with a few of my favorite colleagues who don't mind at all if I knit during meetings. They know I am usually even more attentive if my hands are busy. So that really helped. Here's how far I got yesterday:

It kind of looks like some sort of weird crab, doesn't it? LOL!

Several people have asked me why I knit the sleeves before the body. It's entirely a matter of preference. There's no right or wrong way. I prefer knitting the sleeves first because then I don't have the bulk of the body of the sweater to wrestle with while knitting the comparatively small circumference sleeves. I also mentioned this a few days ago when I discussed hand painted yarns. I also find that if I wait until after the body is done, I'm more likely to get lazy and knit short sleeves instead of long.

I know what you are thinking. OK, so I didn't have to wrestle with the body while knitting the sleeves, but now I have to wrestle with the sleeves flopping around while knitting the body. What's up with that? The solution:

I fold the sleeves over the back of the body and secure the entire thing with this giant safety-pin style stitch holder. Works perfectly for keeping the sleeves out of the way and neatly contained while I knit the body.

Ravellenics Sweater: Days 4, 5, and 6 AND Interchangeable Needles

Have I mentioned yet how much I love the Olympics? I'm not really a sporty kind of girl. At all. I enjoy watching football, and that's about it. I loathe basketball but tolerate it for the sake of my son, who really enjoys playing basketball. And for the sake of my daughter, who is in pep band. (Yes, I realize my hatred for basketball is entirely at odds with the fact that I was born and raised in Indiana.) But the Olympics! It's the international representation and the camaraderie and the fact that we don't get to watch these kinds of sports all the time. I mean, Luge? I watch luge exactly once every four years. And it's amazing! Curling? Please! I love curling! But the only time I get to watch it on TV is during the Olympics. (Also, curling is really fun; if you a have a local curling club, check them out!)

That's me at the club in Indy. Five years ago!

Last night, as soon as I got home, I flipped on the TV to CNBC to watch curling. At 7:30, my son (bless his little 12-year-old heart) said, "When this is over, can we please watch something all of us want to watch?" I said, "Sure!" He said, "When will this be over? " I said, "February 23." He didn't like that too much, and replied, "That's what I was afraid of."

So, it's been a few days since I updated you on my sweater. At the end of Day 4, it looked like this:

You can see that I started one of the sleeves. It's so much easier to knit the sleeves at this point rather than waiting until the body is done and then having to wrestle the entire sweater around to knit the sleeves.

I forgot to take a pic at the end of Day 5. But, at the end of Day 6, it looked like this:

Yes! The first sleeve is complete and the second started!!  Also, it's amazing how different light makes the colors in this yarn look different. The first picture was taken in the back room at work under fluorescent lights. The second was taken on the floor in my living room last night under soft white whatever bulbs my husband put in the lamps. (He firmly hates the compact fluorescents, so I know it's not those.)

I'm hopeful to get a good portion of that second sleeve done today, and the goal is to have both sleeves done by the end of the day Friday. That would give me almost a week to complete the body and a couple of days (weekend days!) to do the bands around the fronts and neck.

One thing I have really come to love with this project is my Knitter's Pride Symfonie Dreamz Interchangeable Circular Needles. Not that I didn't love them before, but with this project in particular, they have been a huge time saver. I use the cables and end caps as stitch holders. So, when I'm ready to knit, all I have to do is attach the needle tips and go. No slipping stitches around, no picking up stitches from a spare thread. It's wonderful.

See the red circles? Those mark where the end caps are. While I was knitting the body, the back neck and sleeve stitches were each held on separate 16" cables. (The cables themselves aren't 16" long; they are used along with short needle tips to create 16" needles.) I should point out that the sets don't come with oodles of cables. However, the cables are super cheap--less than $3 each, and they come with end caps. Totally worth it!