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!

Sometimes the Best Solutions are the Easiest

I’m a bit of a hopeful, but lost cause when it comes to decorating. Most of those close to me can attest to my passion for all things decorating – I consume design magazines all the time, I’m a dedicated reader of some of the popular design blogs (mainly Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy) and it’s hard for me to walk by a furniture store without going in.

The break down is that I have a hard time taking what I love, and bringing it into my home. There is some wiring missing. I am a right brain woman. I love math, I love analysis, and I love talking about strategy. I embrace this and it has done me well so far, but I also love design, creativity. But I am an onlooker – I know what I love and I know why I love it but creating it myself is less than intuitive.

Hart and I have lived in this apartment for the past 3 years and the spot above our couch has remained empty. It has been a source of angst for me. About 6 or 7 years ago I fell in love with a painting at a friend’s house and spent the last 3 years, off and on, trying to get one. Fortunately the artist is a friend of my friends, but unfortunately he is taking a “break” from painting. Up until about a month ago, this gaping hole was without a solution.

I’m not sure how or why it took us so long – but we finally decided to fill it ourselves. I am not a modernist, by any means, but if I look hard and what I like, a lot of it is color. So finally, we took action.

With all of the pain and suffering I went through with this empty piece of wall real estate, I can’t overstate how easy this was – once the ball was in motion. We measured, went to the art supply store and ordered a canvas. We had an idea in our head of what we wanted it to look like, which you now see on the wall, but to make sure, we bought a couple of red paints (@$2.00 a tube), a stack of mini canvases (@$5 for 5), a paint brush, and practiced. Once we were satisfied, from white canvas to mounting on the wall took about 24 hours.

getting ready to paint

And hence, sometimes the best solutions are the easiest ones.

Last 2007 FO: Noro Iro Scarf

Last FO of 2007, at least officially. I am so close to finishing Dollar and a Half that I can taste it but unless I abandon all plans to get my house in gear and the food in the oven for the New Years party we're throwing tonight, it's not going to happen.

I fell in love with this scarf the first time I saw it, when Jared Brooklyntweed introduced it to the world, aptly naming it “You’re My Iro”, based on the material and presumably his reverence for what it turned into. It’s little more than 1 part common stitch and 1 part perfect yarn but mix it together and it delivers a beautiful scarf that to me, looked perfect.

I was, at the time, paralyzed by the sweater myth, but I wanted to knit Hart something and a scarf seemed low risk but meaningful. When we first started dating over 5 years ago, one of my first gifts to him was a beautiful deep orange scarf. He fell in love with it when he saw it at the store, thought about it often and once he owned it he has been wearing ever since. I knew that the scarf I would make him had to compete, almost trump his beloved orange faithful. I showed him Jared’s scarf to make sure he would be on board and he was.

For both men and women, I see this as the perfect neutral yet colorful, warm colorway, largely driven by it being contained to a scarf. It is rich and unique, yet classic and timeless – something that looked finished but also home made.

In terms of recipe, here it is:

Pattern: garter stitch - 19 stitches (jared did 17 stitches wide, I opted for 19 to make it wider)
Hardware: US 10 (jared used 11 but after swatching, I opted for size 10)
Software: Noro Iro in shade #47. I used about 1 and 3/4 hanks and it got me to
Time lapse: Finished in October and this took about 2 weeks –could have been done in a couple of days but I was switching back and forth between projects

In terms of how it looks, I personally love it. My photography doesn’t do it nearly as much justice as Jared’s, so if you’re considering knitting something similar, look to his for potential greatness.

In terms of the finished product, I finally blocked this about a month ago and Hart has been wearing it since. He thinks it’s a bit scratchy – and I can understand. Most scarfs, or ones you love to wear, if not made from cashmere are made from a beautiful soft wool that is so soft that you love to pull it around your cold neck.

I also perhaps would have considered reducing the needle size a bit for a tighter stitch. It’s not as warm as his faithful orange, and I wonder if doing a tighter stitch (and compensating by adding a few more stitches per row, to maintain the width) would have done the trick.

Finally, at least so far in its wearing history, the scarf isn’t as pliable/flexible as I would have wished. When you fold it, and then release the fold, there is a fold mark.

At this point I’m just nitpicking. Net net, I give this a thumbs up and I think Hart does too.

Happy New Year!

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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Status

I got nothing major to say except for:

Michigan’s doing much better than they were 2 months ago and it makes Saturdays a bit more enjoyable now.

Friday Nights Lights is getting better (if you haven’t seen it, you’re wasting your life away)

I’m cooking more – thanks to Real Simple's Five Easy Dinners (in every issue) and their accommodation of at least 1 out of 5 recipes being vegetarian. That’s 20%!, which is high given that only 1-2.8% of those in the US are veg (thanks Wikipedia). Here are two (one, two) of my favorites.

I’m thinking a lot about running but not actually doing it. And Hart would agree, as he has to deal with the 6am “faux” wake up call that I subject us both to every morning. Why do I think he’ll believe me when I say “oh- I made a mistake when setting my alarm” as I fall back asleep. Especially as I do it every day. More importantly, when am I going to learn that my positive thinking at 11pm does not overpower my laziness the next morning? If you live in NYC, esp in my hood, you know that running outside at night is not an option as it’s too crowded. So mornings it is! (or in my case, isn’t right now)

There are crazy re-orgs going on in my dept and I took the plunge and moved into a new job – I’m still not sure if I’m 100% excited about it even though it is technically a bigger job.

I haven’t blocked Dollar and a Half and I don’t care. Thanks so much for the comments of encouragement – it reinvigorated my excitement. I think it’s time for me to invest in a blocking board and well, that’s another excuse for procrastination.

But I have been working on my new BFF Minimalist Cardigan – I call her Mini and here she is:

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!