Fashion: Yarn Style

Adventures in Frogging

 

I think the best way to unravel sweaters is to close my eyes, and pull on the string! When I open my eyes again, it is with the hope that the disaster will have all disappeared! 

If only that were possible! Still, there’s no point in moaning and groaning about what could have been. My aim is to create a tailored sweater that fits me, and I have to keep my eyes on the prize!

 

I’ve decided to think of my efforts over the past two weeks, where I knocked myself out to finish my fabulous Top-Down Unpattern with Set-In Sleeves, as a character-building experience.  And I did certainly learn the importance of continuing to recalculate my gage and measure my sweater flat, with a measuring tape, as I knit through the entirety of a sweater, from the top down. Unfortunately, I relied on the technique of trying the sweater on as I went instead, but mirrors and even my husband didn’t catch the problem which my measuring tape certainly would have revealed!

 

It SEEMED to fit really nicely at the bust and waist. But by the time I got to the bottom and finished it off with a nice technique, I put the finished body of the sweater on and discovered that something had gone terribly wrong. The entire thing was tight, but since I used good bust darting to create a pocket for the girls and my waist and ribcage are very small, I didn’t get the full impact of the problem until I stretched the sleeveless sweater over my hips. In spite of dramatic increases I made from the waist to the hips, the whole thing seemed to be shrink-wrapped on my tummy. How was this possible? When I took the whole thing off, laid it down on the floor, and measured the bust, waist and hips with my tape measure for the first time, I took a strange detour into the alternate sweater reality I had created. At some point at the top of my sweater, my stitch gage had seemed to loosen quite a bit, so I dropped a bunch of stitches to compensate and knitted down from there. Unfortunately, it seems I dropped way too many stitches in my zeal, because my actual finished measurements for this sweater are 30 /21/30. If I were the size of a model on Project Runway, this would be no problem at all. I did create a great hourglass shape with this sweater, it’s just an hour glass small enough for a Barbie doll to wear!

 

The lesson learned for me here is that in spite of a fabulous pattern, great technical execution of my bust darts, waist shaping, and increases for the hips, my starting point was warped, and my periodic try-ons of the garment were insufficient information for me to determine the true size I had created. This calmer/kidsilk haze yarn combination is quite forgiving, and I could have pulled this off with even 3-4 inches of negative ease because of the bust darts I built in, and the need for a great deal of waist definition for tops to look flattering on me. But 7-9 inches of negative ease is insane!!! While my waist does look small, every roll of my tummy is revealed in that same area. Not exactly a flattering look! Next time, I’m not going to rely on trying the garment on, and looking in the mirror or asking for third-party critiques. Instead, I’m going to lay it flat and measure it periodically with a tape measure as well to make sure I’m not getting totally off!!!

 

Wow. Perhaps I should go out and drink some margaritas with my girlfriends this weekend to steel myself for the unraveling ahead!

 

Choose your Own Adventure

 

Do you remember those crazy books that were so popular in the early 80s? They were adventure stories that led you to a decision point—if you opened one door, you had to turn to page 101 and then you fell into a pit of crocodiles. If you opened the other, you sauntered into a haunted wood. The book went on down a series of chains of possibilities, some of them deadly, some of them exhilarating!

 

So far, my experience knitting my Top-Down Unpattern has felt like I am being swept into a choose-your-own adventure pattern. Every time I reach a sweater decision point, I am offered a host of wonderful possibilities. I can open one door and knit the sleeves in the round, from the shoulder down, or I can go to page 13 and knit them flat. There are so many options and explanations provided for sleeves, shaping, and garment trim, that the adventures never seem to end!

 

 

Unfortunately, I have taken a few wrong turns down the sweater path, and had to unravel my work several times. The wisdom I have gleaned from this experience is that my knitting gage really varies enormously between my gage and my execution of a complicated project. When I cast on the back, one shoulder at a time, and then joined the two pieces together, it was a new experience for me, and as a result, my gage was super loose. In the end, I had to redo that section three times to get the right shoulder-to-shoulder measurement. Thank heavens the Unpattern walked me through meticulous measurments at the beginning, so that I could immediately tell that my work was off. Once I finished the back to the underarms, I used this knitted piece to generate a new gage and then calculate my overbust measurement for the front. But by the time I joined the front  and back pieces together at the underarms, I discovered my gage had loosened up again! Aagh!

 

It is irksome to do the same pieces of a sweater over and over again, but practice does make perfect. And the fact that I am knitting this sweater top down in the round means that I can put it on a string, slip it over my head, and measure as I go along. This allows me to stop and redo my work before I go too far off the mark. Sure, it has taken me forever just to knit down to the bust area, including the addition of horizontal bust darts that I had to redo three times, but it’s going to fit me a heck of a lot better than if I were knitting from the top up. By the time I reached the bust line, then, imagine how ill fitting it would be, and how much time I would have wasted!!! I think this experience with the Top-Down Unpattern has been my most efficient knitting experience so far with a sweater, in spite of my many missteps!

 

 

Ever since I interviewed KristenLynne, I’ve been trying to knit my projects in familiar yarns. Kristen had shared her ability to eyeball her projects as she was knitting them to determine their fit because she had so much experience knitting her projects in the same yarns. That inspired me to knit several projects using the same yarn combinations, and so I am knitting my blue sweater in a Calmer, Kidsilk Haze combination that mimics the yarns I used for Pink. As a result, my finished version of Pink has been acting as an invaluable guide for me—I can measure the bust on that sweater, and study the shaping I used, knowing that it was a success, and apply those same rules to my new project. 

    As time goes on and I knit more and more, I am discovering that it’s not the fancy patterns and snazzy new yarns that will make me an accomplished knitter—it’s mastering a small stable of yarns, knitting techniques, and classic patterns. Those will form the building blocks of elegant, wearable sweaters that will make me proud, no matter how much I stumble along the way!

Wine Red

 

I have finished Paisley at last! What a relief! The cowl-necked band seemed to take forever, but I am more than happy with the results. Kim Hargreaves has that unique ability to use tailoring and simple touches to convert a simple sweater into an elegant piece of clothing that would flatter almost any woman.

 

 

This cowl neckline even looks good from the side! Granted, it is a bit low, so when I wear it to work, I put a dark top underneath, and belt it, accessorizing with silver jewelery.

 

 

Apparently, today is heart awareness day, because when I wore Paisley to work, people kept congratulating me on wearing red! I had to ask them what they were talking about, which somewhat destroyed the effect. J

 

            I did have to add some extra waist-shaping to this sweater, and it turned out pretty well. I think it would have been more exact if I had been knitting this in the round, especially if it were possible to convert this to a top-down pattern. I think it looks pretty good, but without the belt, I find myself pulling on the bottom, which makes me wonder if the waistline is just a little too high. You can see the extra waistshaping best from the back view:

 

            It makes me happy, now, when I look at the sweaters on my project page. They are far simpler than the elaborate retro lace tops I was knitting before, but they are far more flattering to my figure, and the colors I am using actually compliment ME! It is odd, how simplifying my knitting by converting mostly to stockinette has allowed me to get clear on my individual sense of style, and choose my projects accordingly. Instead of a mish-mash of patterns, when I study my project page now, I’m starting to see the beginnings of a consistent look.

Fuzzy Blue Template

 

 

I’ve been having a surprising amount of fun with my Top-Down Unpattern! Usually, I find reading a new pattern rather intimidating, but in this case, I get to play a fill-in game. The pattern is filled with blank spaces that allow you to dream up the ideal sweater within the constraints of a top-down, set-in sleeve garment.

    Today, my swatch had dried, so I was able to figure out my stitch and row gage, both circular and flat, which were suprisingly similar. Then the fun began! Following my guide, I selected my template garments from my knitting wardrobe and measured them. Since it is a top-down pattern, I had to start by figuring out all the neck and shoulder measurements that I wanted, and it was a liberating experience!

 

Usually, when I'm knitting with a pattern, I feel I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants—most patterns aren’t written exactly to my measurements, so I have to modify them as I go along. This time, I was prompted to reflect on exactly the look I wanted, which was interesting in itself. I tried on different V-neck sweaters to determine how wide I wanted the back neck opening to be, and I compared my shoulder- to shoulder measurement to the one I had knitted into some favorite sweaters with set-in sleeves. Not surprisingly, the ones that fitted me the best had the same shoulder-to shoulder measurement as my actual body, as in this retro sweater:

 

Usually, it is a huge pain to achieve the correct shoulder measurements, because I am knitting from the bottom up. Most standard sweater patterns, like the one above, aren’t written to sit right on my shoulders, which means that as I go along, following the pattern, I have to make the armholes deeper than written to get a smaller shoulder to shoulder measurement so that it will sit right on my shoulders. Even though I knit this sweater in an extra small, I still had to reduce far more in the armhole than the pattern called for to get my shoulder-to-shoulder measurement of fourteen inches. This modification created more problems for me later on with the fit of the sleeves, which were written for the original armhole dimensions! But this time, I am using a flexible pattern that allows me to program my perfect measurement into the template, and cast on exactly the number of stitches that will get me that. I am so excited, I am off to start the shoulders now!!