Dollar and a Half Cardigan - Finished!

She’s finally done! This was the hardest project I’ve ever taken on but after pulling on the sleeves and buttoning up the front, it was 100% worth it.

This is the first sweater that I know I’m going to put into a frequent rotation.

I give you, Dollar and a Half Cardigan, by Veronik Avery for Interweave Knits, Spring 2007

Recipe:
Pattern: Dollar and a Half Cardigan by Veronik Avery – Interweave Knits – Spring 2007
Duration:
Started: July 2007
Break: September – November
Finished: Knitting was finished October 17- all blocked and sewn up – Jan 1st 2007
Yarn: Misti Alpaca Misti International Alpaca Worsted in 4388 – about 9 skeins. I love this yarn – it is incredibly soft yet incredibly warm. The drape is amazing.
Needles: Used US 5 for the stockinette and size 7 for the lace pattern.
Size: I knitted the smallest size and blocked to a 36 – I wanted this to be tight fitting and after reading so much about how this ran slightly big and knowing I could block it slightly larger – it was the best bet.
Modifications: Not much. The only major change I made was to make the arm length shorter. To do so, I knit 1 ½” of rib (vs 2”) – and started decreasing after a total of 4” (vs 6 ½”)

Tips:

First, this is definitely a project you want to swatch for. Trust me.
Second, one of the things I covet about knitting blogs and Ravelry – is that you get blow by blow details – telling you what to watch out for, how to approach a stitch or row that only when you get to it do you realize how unbelievable helpful those notes were. This has always been incredibly helpful to me, and I always try and return the favor.To this end, check out my checklist for a lot of details I have since blocked out. Also, click here if you want the blow by blow on my progress.

This project took its toll on me – no matter how much I love the end product. I will say that without a doubt, the part that threw me over the edge was decreasing in the lace pattern. I invested hours upon hours in trying to get it to work for me but after getting nowhere, I actually had to take a 2 month break from the sweater all together. When I came back, I didn’t nail it the first time – but it started falling into place after about the 5th try. I would recommend checking out details in Ravelry, and there were some helpful tips on the Knit Along.

I will also say that that thing that helped me the most is my notebook. Here is a picture of the two things that I found comfort in, throughout the process:

Every time I start a project I take copious notes – whether it’s the needle size, when I switch balls (so that on the second sleeve, I know how much I’ll need after writing it down through the first). I never remember any of these details so I write it down. With this project I literally wrote down almost every row and what to expect. This is particularly important when doing the lace decreases. Forgetting about decreases, in the lace pattern each row you do ends up with a different number of stitches. When decreasing comes into play – it was CRITICAL for me to know how many stitches I should end up with. Again, there are a lot of tips on how to deal with the decreases in patterns but frankly none of them gave me what I needed. I think I just needed to try, walk away, and come back. Finally it worked.

Finally, I love my mom to death for getting me a blocking board for Christmas. If you don’t have one – I highly recommend it.

Viva La Veronik!

Alton Realized

Our Alton Brown fantasy is about to begin….for Chistmas my BF Hart gave me a beautiful shiny Kitchen Aid stand mixer along with a shopping spree on Bowery, a street/mecca, steps from our apartment.

Apparently this plan has been in the making since May, when the New York Times printed this article on outfitting your entire kitchen for under $300 at one of the many professional kitchen/restaurant supply stores on Bowery. We found that we could do it in much less – so after buying tons of pots, pans, baking accessories, and such, we headed to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked up some W favorites – including a mandolin, a food scale and a probe thermometer.

I am very much looking forward to upping the amateur anti of our kitchen in 2008 and to kick it all off, I just cracked open the spine of my new Barefoot Contessa cookbook, another Christmas gift, this time from my Mom, and started making a heart clogging masterpiece. I should count, but it appears as though most of her recipes call for 1 lb of butter.

As my poor Hart is stuck in Detroit after his flight was cancelled and could be reading this on his blackberry, I’ll keep mum for now on what I made. In the meantime, here are some updated blocking pictures. As soon as I got home today, I blocked the front panels of Dollar and a Half. Just seaming (groan) and knitting up the neck band, and this will be a FO!

Feliz Navidad!

That sure was a long nap!

No better time to get back to this than when you’re stuck in the Massachusetts suburbs, bored out of your mind, watching a marathon of Everest on the Discovery Channel while breaking every 30 minutes for yet another slice of banana bread.

Knitting spirit still under repair, yet I do have some progress. I have been slowwwwwly working away at Minimalist Cardigan – one more sleeve to go. As promised, I would not finish Dollar and a Half Cardigan until I had a blocking board – and now I do! Christmas came early – my mom felt it was best to have the blocking board sent direct instead of forcing me to lug it home after opening it on Christmas morning.

And I also leave you with this link to Finnyknits. This lady is a freaking riot.

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Hibernation

It’s been another long hiatus here at Katyaflutes - there’s been work, weddings, travel, a really miserable start to the Michigan football season, but none of these things would matter if I was actually inspired.

I’ll cut to the chase. The Dollar and a Half Cardigan has nearly killed me. Okay that may be a bit dramatic but it nearly killed my knitting spirit, which I think is much worse.

Here’s a picture of the seductiveness.

No matter how much I tried, how seriously I took it, and how focused I remained, I could not get past the front decreases. This is meaningless to most of you, but for those who knit this sweater, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

I spent every day and night on that decreasing business for 2 weeks straight and it just wasn't working. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. And so I walked away.

Knitting is supposed to be relaxing, exciting and fun. And this wasn't any of those things. And to add insult to injury I am a monogamous knitter – I can’t start projects until I finish the last one so I was being punished even more because I had to stick it out. PLUS my previous project was the Twinkle Sausage Shopping Tunic. It was easy but it early threw me over the edge when I actually tried it on at the end (and looked like, well, a sausage). I know there is a lot of love out there for Miss Wenlan Chia, and I agree- the designs are amazing. But like I know very well that I have no business wearing hot pants, I need to face the fact that I have no business wearing Twinkle designs either.

Back to the story... So I don’t know what happened but I guess about 3 weeks ago, after month break, I decided to give it a go again. And while it wasn’t easy – it sort of fell together much more easily this time and now I’m almost done with the sweater. And I honestly have blocked out all the badness of those weeks of pain. Probably like Lindsay Lohan wants to forget that she binged on alcohol and cocaine while wearing an alcohol ankle monitor and basically became a total disaster, I just want to forget those painful nights of frogging and trying again. And kind of like how she’s not 100% past it because she had to go to rehab for 6 months – I’m not entirely over it as I still need to block and seam it.

Here she is almost done (mind you, after all this angst, I refuse for this to end badly, and hence I loosely seamed this up in advance such that I know exactly how much I need to blocking)


But, to me “seaming” is like slow motion falling over the finish line. To me it’s practically a FO.

Which brings me to this:

Above is the greatness that is the Minimalist Cardigan from Interweave Knits Fall 2007. I found this on Ravelry as pretty much 50% of knitters are either knitting it or have it in their queue. It’s fairly clear why – it’s cute, it’s simple, it’s classic and it’s a plain cardigan with a little bit of style.

This belongs on the back of my chair at work. My office goes from hot to cold and back all the time and this is perfect for that.

I will be knitting it in Rowan Cashsoft Aran in black. It’s kind of weird to knit a black cardigan (isn’t that a “staple”?) but shut up – I want to do it. I found this yarn at Purl (where I also finally saw Joelle!) and what’s great about Purl is that they swatch every yarn they sell so you can actually feel and see what you’re buying. I fell in love immediately. Similar to the Misti Alpaca it’s warm but totally flexible (hangs well vs being stiff) and is super soft. Plus – er, it’s machine washable. Craziness. I bought it at Jimmy Beans Wool (sorry purl but with a $3 savings per ball, how can you blame me?) and got it today after ordering on Sunday night. Heart that.

Enough already! Am I trying to make up for lost time? I have knitting to do!

Iced Tea

I have just finished the back and I love this sweater. I had a healthy start last weekend when I was on a gorgeous lake at my friend’s house in CT. It was me, Hart and 2 of our other friends visiting and it was a weekend of relaxation. It was gorgeous out and we usually spend all day swimming and tubing on his boat, drinking and eating – yet with all the Harry Potter mania (we actually seriously could not find our host nor his parents as they were in hiding with their books), it was a full day of knitting – plus a great run.

Here is the back of my Dollar and a Half Cardigan.

Other than that there has been a whole lot of busyness – not much of which is worth blogging about but is unbearably time consuming. Work, for one, which I’m starting to hate. Actually that’s kind of it outside of admin stuff of buying plane tickets and making hotel reservations for the FIVE weddings we have in the next couple of months.

I am excited for all equally but am super psyched for the two Indian weddings (I’ve never been to one! I need *outfits*) and sigh in bliss- the one in Ibiza that Hart and I (and 3 other couples) have turned into a villa rental for one week. The only, but pretty severe, downside is that many of these weddings fall on weekends of Michigan football games. I wasn’t a heavy blogger during last season but may want to prepare yourself as this may be discussed heavily starting September. Hart and I plan around these games and with Ibiza, we are leaving way later (and perhaps paying more for airfare) so we can see the Penn State game. We have scoured websites for bars at JFK and may literally check in and drive to a close by sportsbar in Queens. Of all things, I can’t imagine anyone would have a recommendation, but if you do, I need it.

One of the cooler things I have seen, and was gifted just today is this:

My friend Elf-friend (her name is almost that phonetically – and was created by her dad using a random letter program – how cool) has the angel one and I cried in jealousy when I saw it but she got it in Japan. She just went again last week and I got both the devil and the angel! Love!

Regarding the sweater, I’m glad I did my homework in advance but of course there were some hiccups – nothing major thank god. The lace pattern, while easy once you’ve got the rhythm, is not something htat can be worked on mindlessly while having deep conversations with your friends. Therefore, there was a bit of minor ripping – but minor.

My only mistake that I discovered only just a bit ago, when shaping for the arm holes, is that selvedge stiches are maintained in the reverse stockinette. So when you start a row of purls, you need to start and end with a knit. While it would probably be easier on me had I done that when seaming time occurs, it’s not worth ripping out for. Finally, one thing that keeps happening is that when I start the lace pattern, I have 87 stiches, yet I end with 86. I have been diligently following the work to see if I missed something but it keeps happening. Fortunately it has no impact on my lace work so I end up adding a stich during stockinette. God, I hope that doesn’t come back to bit me.

One final thing. My very VERY best friend BP is having a baby. Holy cripes I can’t believe it – it makes me want to cry every time I think about it. I made a Big Bad Baby Blanket (my 4th, actually) and I have been just saving it. It’s been so long that I actually considered just holding onto it for whenever it is I have a kid. It’s hers now and I am so happy about that. BUT – that was created awhile ago and I am so into finding new little things I can knit for him/her. I just need to find things suitable for a hot baby with hot hipster parents who live in LA.

Turning Lemons into Lemonade.

It's been a slightly rough past few days. Have you heard about this thing that happened in New York on Wednesday? It happened at 41st and Lexington. Guess where my office is – 41st and Lexington. I wasn’t there when it happened fortunately. Why? Because I woke up that morning to the sound of water gushing, through my AC and into my apartment. The wonderful news is that all of my colleagues are totally fine (yet shaken up) and while the building is a mess, our office is okay. Our office is closed indefinitely.

When I learned on Wed night that the office would be closed on Thursday, I decided that the following day would be all about Dollar and A Half Cardigan from Interweave Spring. I have been staring at this pattern since it hit the stands, but searching for the called for yarn exhausted me so I shelved it. Until now.



What you see above is a swatch. A really big swatch, that is sectioned into groups of lace by the needle size I used while trying to get the right gauge.

The immediate roadblock of this pattern (and there appear to be many) is that you need to swatch in the lace pattern. This is a bit annoying. The other thing that happened to me, and sounds like has happened to almost everyone else, is that while it lists a size 5 needle, you really needed a larger one. I swatched on a 5, a 6, a 7 and finally an 8. Even with an 8 I’m not making 4” but the lace pattern is starting to look a little too loose for me. I am going to knit with an 8.

Under normal circumstances I am never afforded the time to spend so much time on swatching but the reality is that it took only 1 day. I will spend many days and perhaps months knitting this sweater and I would rather deal with this up front. I’ve seen a lot of frogging out there. Seeing that I ended up several needles up, it was clearly a good idea.

The yarn I’m using is Misti International Alpaca Worsted in 4388. When I was at Downtown Yarns last weekend to get help on my Shopping Tunic, we spent a lot of time finding some substitutes for the Reynolds Soft Linen, called for in the pattern, and I fell in love with the feel (soft) and color (super deep brown/purple).

Getting Started:
This pattern has received a lot of bad press, yet there are so many wonderful examples of FOs that I know it’s going to be great. While there are a lot of problems, there are also some great solutions out there. For you and me, as a reference point and a time saver, here is what I have learned so far.

Doing the gauge. As you’ll see, the lace pattern has 7 rows. If you look in the directions for the body there are two call outs that you must include in your swatch: 1 selvege stitches, and 2) the order of doing the lace pattern. Make sure when you are swatching to knit the first and last stitch.. The swatch requires 21 stitches and this incorporates the selvege stitches. The pattern itself. When I first did the swatch I knitted 1-7, which is the pattern for lace. Row 7 is the tricky row and doing it after row 6 was confusing. When you actually do the pattern for real, you will do row 7 after row 3, not 6. Basically when you swatch, follow what you’ll do in the body. I did the pattern twice plus 2 rows of stockinette in between, and got 26 rows.

Michelin Arms. If you're starting this pattern, you MUST check out the Knit-Along. You will see very quickly that when you switch from the reverse stockinette stitch to the lace pattern, the stockinette buckles and looks, well, terrible. A solution that is getting a lot of converts, and which seems to be working, is knitting the lace in one size needle, and doing the stockinette in a needle 2 sizes smaller. I just went back to buy the rest of my yarn (I wanted to swatch first) and was advised to do everything but the lace pattern in the smaller needle (doesn’t include cable). So for me, I’m going to pretty much knit everything using an 6 except for the lace pattern, which I’ll do in an 8

Row 7 of the pattern. Not easy, but once you see this, it’ll all make sense.

Decreases. I haven’t really looked at this closely but have heard it’s a nightmare. Veronik Avery has a tutorial and the knitalong has plenty of posts

Size/length. At this point all I know is that the sleeves are long.

I am really still excited about Magic Shawl, yet I simply can’t handle bulky wool with huge needles. I’ve been itching all week to knit but I need something slightly more mindless than Clementine, which is literally all lace. So now I’m happy. Heading to a friend’s lake house this weekend and will hopefully get some knitting in while I wait in line for the new Harry Potter book. That’s the price I pay for staying at said friends house – must accompany him on line.