Pardon me, but I’m a little bleary eyed as I lift my cuppa in your direction this morning. Last night, again, with the raucously huge thunderstorms. Again with the mega-lightening in the face, jolting one from deep sleep.

It’s the kind of big-budget kind of dust-up one usually only sees in the movies (The Boy that LIVED!) and it’s rather startling when the entire room FILLS with light flashes, over and over and over In Real Life.

This is, honestly, not the type of wake-up call we go for around here.

But it’s the kind we’ve been getting for days!

So, in my jet-lagged way, now that I’m dayside, I reach for a pick-me-up of my very own making:

VOILA! Brainiac cobwebs be gone! Can’t fight city hall and mother nature and all that, but bygum, I can give myself a lift of COLOR (and be damned to the mixing of the metaphors!)

We’re continuing the Michigan Sweater Tradition – almost every year about now we (try) to make a new piece to take with us as we venture to Northern Lower Michigan to sit a spell under some pine trees at the end of August.

Sometimes, it comes along as a WIP, and then again sometimes it travels as a win.

This time we’re hoping for a win-win: new sweater, happy color —

The jolly of the color is only matched by the jolly of the design! Tis a happy day that a new design is on the needles – and this is one that is winging its way all over the LYS landscape this week. Some have made a happy landing already —

But what we’re really celebrating this TGIF is the SUN that speaks in this color. We think it works summer/fall and beyond – for those grey days, and for those sunny days. Can you imagine this beside a tidepool of fresh aqua water. Or how about next to a rock face that’s speckled with moss…

I feel it.

Everytime I pick up this piece, I give humble thanks that I’m knitting with cotton!

Lately, even indoors with cool air surrounding, the heat, as many, many of you know, has been truly oppressive. I’d hoped to be finished with this right sleeve by today, but have been just too pitiful to do much more than a few rows here and there.

But I give thanks for what I was able to do, helped along by a cooler fiber. Stitch by stitch, step by step is not a bad way at all, in fact it’s the only way you can go in knitting. ;p

So it’s time for a little portrait – a reality check – to see if I still have confidence in this technique or if it’s time for a trip to the frog pond. (click on pix for larger version).

Up on the mannie, with a picture, there are less ways to “not see” the problem areas of a work-in-progress.

Both the tension and the characteristics of the fiber used come into focus. For instance, I see that my pick up around the armhole edge could’ve been neater. Although the pick up is made in the selvedge stitch area, there’s some uneveness and pulling that is not expected.

Glitch Patrol: once spotted in the wild, uneven stitches can be quickly fixed with the point of the working needle. Inserted into the larger loop, you can pull on one arm of it and re-distribute the bitty extra yarn along the row of stitches by “resizing” them until you’ve eaten up the excess. I got really fast at this the first few times I soared with two circs and there was an area in the middle of the row (where you switch needles) that was sporadically uneven.

I think the every-other-row uneveness is a function of the edge stitch I’m using (St st), my own tension, and using cotton yarn, which is less sproingy on the average, than wool. You can see (click on the pic at left) the variation: every other row begins with a slightly smaller stitch. What is even more interesting, is that where I’ve ended with a knit stitch and start with a purl (on the edge of the Right Front or the Left Back), the overall edge is slightly looser/bigger. I’ve even read that sometimes people get a completely different gauge on the RS & WS of their stockinette. So maybe I’m a lucky dog it’s mostly confined to the edges…

When you’re sewing in a sleeve, you can “ease” the fabric into a well-behaved, balanced shape or area. That is basically the linchpin of tailoring.

But when you’re doing this all-in-one in-the-round knitting technique, a really neat edged, stable armhole is key. Gonna have to work on that.

In the near future, that means that Sweater #2 waiting in the wings for its turn on the needles is going to become a sewn-in sleeve. It has armholes that won’t function the way I’d like them to without a fuss.

Heh. Back to the drawing board anyone?

Monday Morning Mirth

Although some celebrities are sporting something more electronic
around the house, The Row ladies are resurrecting something more traditional, at large: the Ankle Bracelet.

These have been all over the seasonal runways – and we must admit – although we know we’d lose it in a microsecond – that there is something intriguing here…