Talking about Taikatalvi

I'm working on another design.

I've named it Kaikatalvi, "Magical Winter" and it's a top down funnel neck contiguous tunic knitted in the round, and I'm very, very excited about this project. I bought 20 balls of Elann Peruvian Highland Wool, which is about my favorite yarn for designing it seems. I have no idea how many of those 20 balls this project will take.

I don't try to design with current fashion in mind. I design to please my inner fantasies about clothes, and this design touches on so many different dreams, and for so long. I have to design because I rarely find things in the store that match my mind's eye. This is filling the need for a sweater dress that I can wear with knitted tights and boots (or ice skates) so I can stay warm in a hard winter beautifully. It needs to have ease so I can layer beneath it, and it needs to have flare so I can move in it (in winter I continue to walk for transportation, as well as ride my bicycle and ice skate outdoors. maybe one winter I'll add cross country skiing or snowshoeing.)

The visual interest is the cable running down the center front. No one is surprised, as cabling is probably my favorite knitting fabric texture. The cable makes me think of ornamental braidwork on coats and scrolling flourishes of script calligraphy and wrought iron - if I wanted to push the art nouveau feel I would do the cable in black - and I'm mighty tempted to do a swatch just to see what it would be like.

I'm not very good at writing my designs out. I'm much more prone to swatching it out. I'm actually working on a mockup in leftover yarn balls, just going on the fly to see how my guesses work out, and then I plan on binding the edge, washing it, and blocking it to see how the needle size works with the yarn and the technique, and get a nice accurate gauge.

I'm also going to do a shoulder sloper, to work out any of the faults I find in the first sketch. The problem is that I don't generally do this stuff on paper. I just knit. I don't write stuff down. I need to find a way to record what I'm doing, because what is natural and unthinking to me has been examined by other knitters as extremely difficult and complex, and when I try to explain what I did, I lose people in the bushes.

But I'd really like to have a detailed series as I go through this design, to help me articulate what I'm doing, so maybe I could write a pattern that someone else could follow. Maybe not for this pattern - I still feel like I'm learning my craft when it comes to designs like this, but in the future.

High learning curve, little time

One of my other interests is cycling, and luckily my city has a pretty good social bike scene. we've started a semi-annual event called the Tweed Ride. This isn't original to us here in Calgary by any means.

I didn't go to the spring Tweed Ride because... well I didn't have any tweed. I did want to change that in time for Fall Tweed, which is the last Friday of the month. And I still didn't have any tweed!

Well, I've changed that a bit. I now have a nice tweed blazer, and it's something that i will wear all the time, rather than relegate it to costume status. I also picked up a pair of tweed pants that I'm going to cut to calf length to wear as cycling knickers. I already have a couple pairs of knee high cuffed socks that would work well.

And i'm knitting a waistcoat of my own design.

i swatched for it eight times before I settled on the cable pattern I wanted. I took my measurements and drew a quick schematic and I just started knitting it today.

I have...twelve days to complete the knitting, so time for blocking, and putting on the buttons and such.

I haven't found the blouse I'm going to wear under it. I might just wear my merino base layer and call it good. But the designing was an interesting experience. I'll keep track of it.

So how did I do on that Queue?

July

[x] Finish Giulietta socks - b project
[ ] Finish the pink dress
[ ] Weeping angels socks
[ ] Finishing Sylvi
[ ] Finish Circles of Noro cardigan
[ ] Elysium cardigan

 August

[ ] Elysium shawl August c project
[ ] Brown brocade texture vest
[ ] Celtic knit cabled capelet
[ ] Colour work capelet
[X] Better bucket hat 

Lots of revisions to this. I wound up getting into an accident that meant i couldn't knit for a couple of weeks, and frustration with gauge on weeping angels made me frog them and use a different pair of socks for my august project. They were Cubist socks by Cookie A and I got them finished before the August 31 deadline.

the Better Buck Hat was a three day long knit, and I'm calling it a success.

So, September.

[] Weeping Angels Socks
[] Dido Scarf
[] Cabled Vest

five projects in a month, HA! I have Weeping Angels back on the needles and I've got until tomorrow to get to the first heel turn.  I haven't cast on Dido yet.

I'm swatching like mad for a cable knit waistcoat, and I keep frogging back and rejecting my swatches. I'm on attempt four right now, and the cable is complex enough that I'm giving it a bit before I decide that I hate it. It is a very complex cable and I have my doubts about using it, but I'll give it a chance for a few more rows before frogging and going with attempt 5, which will simply be Saxon Braid.

Adventures in Bargain Yarn - Sean Sheep Armytage

I usually style myself as a fiber snob on a budget. I usually buy yarn from local, independently owned yarn stores, and while I don't generally have the money to blithely grab whatever without a good hard look at the price tag and the yardage, I want to spend what money I have on the best I can get.

But I was in Wal-Mart. and I wandered into the crafting section. And found this 100% wool yarn by Sean Sheep for two dollars and seventy five cents per 75 gram ball.

so I bought ten of them in colorway "Alabaster." *shrug* It's wool. How bad can it be?

But I'm suspicious. Highly suspicious. So the first thing I did was knit up a proper gauge swatch, hand washed it with mild soap, and laid it out flat to dry. Knitted on 5 mm needles back and forth, I got four stitches to the inch, and 5.667 rows to the inch.

With that much yarn, I think I'll do a sweater. Calgary being what it is, I'll get plenty of opportunity to wear it throughout the year... I'm envisioning cables, even though it is a self striping yarn. A pullover. I'll have to work out which cable motifs I want...