Mama Stop Knitting!

The procrastiknitter...

... should be the name of this blog. I saved a draft of this post two months ago but only got to rewriting it properly now. What have I been up to? Overcome by the mundane realities of making a living is probably a good summary. There has been a little bit of knitting, which I will show you presently, but first things first.  

There's always interesting stuff going on at Anna's blog, especially when it comes to books. When she posted about this interview meme, I thought it'd be fun to join in. Anna very gamely sent me some book-related questions, while I, quite lamely, took 3 months to answer them. Anyway, here we go:

Q1: Out of all the books you've read, which one affected you the most and why?

A1: A tough one! Scores of books with heavy, depressing content come to mind, but I'm going to go with something a little more upbeat here: Possession by A S Byatt. The sheer talent and heart that went into this book is so vast, I feel walloped every single time I read it. Which is many, many times.  

Q2. Everyone always asks for book recommendations, but what is one book you think people should avoid at all costs?

A2: To many good folks, including at least one member of my immediate family, this answer is going to be mortally offensive. Or immortally offensive, come to think of it. My vote goes to Breaking Dawn, Book 4 of the Twilight saga. I enjoyed the first 3 greatly, but book 4 just felt like tawdry fan fiction. My apologies to the millions who feel otherwise.

Q3. What is the first book you remember reading?

A3: Pictures book don't count, right? English was my second language, and the first "real" book I read was probably a Nancy Drew mystery when I was eight or nine, loaned to me by a classmate who was way more advanced in the language than I was. I remember being baffled by words like "attorney" (Nancy's dad's job), "meringue" (Nancy ate that a lot for dessert) and yes, "sleuth". But I loved the books anyway. I should also add that for first-time readers, it helped greatly that almost every pseudo-scary plot twist was printed in italics, as in "Nancy raced into the room and saw that the trapdoor was open!" 

Q4. When I'm browsing books, sometimes I come across a title that hits me. I don't always read the book, but the title amuses me or gets to me in some way. What's your favorite book title? Have you read the book? (Ex.: "The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things" I probably won't ever read this book, but I chuckle every time I see the title.)

A4. Try this: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Field Identification Guide. I must read it one day.

Q5. What's the one book you love and wish you'd written?

A5: Everything by Stieg Larsson. I love dark, brooding Scandinavian thrillers but his books are truly exceptional.

And now, for the miniscule bit of knitting I've done. Here's is the Eh's birthday vest, adapted from the Skipper pullover from Louisa Harding's The Magical World According to Miss Millie. Since my little guy doesn't approve of cables, I went for this zigzag pattern made from reverse st st and seed stitch. It's quite simple, but effective; and it's fun to knit. All I did was leave out the sleeves, and size down a little to make the fit more snug. The yarn, once again, is Laines du Nord Royal Cashmere - the last of my stash in off-white. The Eh was most pleased and wore it to school a lot.  

And since it has been two and a half months since I completed the FO, I can report that it wears well, with a tolerable amount of pilling. I've just hand-washed and re-blocked it, and I'm happy to say that the fabric is easily de-pilled by hand when damp, while various preschooler garment stains (watercolour paints, I think) came out quite easily in the wash. Now the little vest is pristine again. A definite thumbs-up for the yarn.

Next post: a recent stash-enhancement!    

Meow!

The weather turned just a few degrees warmer a couple of days ago and I took the kids out to play. On our way to the playground we found this cat perched picturesquely in a tree. The kids were charmed and I got out the camera, only to discover through the viewfinder that the critter has one green eye and one blue.

I'm not much of an animal photographer and even less of a cat person, so I'm sure you'll excuse me for being so delighted that the pix turned out at all. Please bear with me while I post another. Hey Katong Gal, this one's for you!  

Since the day when we met the odd-eyed cat, it's turned cold again. Of course, this being Shanghai, the temperature doesn't drop quite as low during winter as many other places. But by a quirk of geography and policy, buildings in Shanghai (like other cities south of the Yangtze) are generally not equipped with central heating. Plus, it's humid and wet. Which leads to the bizarre phenomenon of it often being colder indoors than out.

All of which means the making of toasty accessories must continue apace. Over here on the right is yet another Urchin, also made in the same yarn as the Ringlets Scarf from my last post. (Thank you for the encouragement, folks! Must. Get. Pattern. Out.) I felt the inexplicable need to have both a white hat and scarf to wear this winter, and so strong was this fixation that I actually made two of the hats because the first attempt wound up too small. The successful second attempt was made on 9mm needles with yarn doubled. See that squishy goodness? I'm going to have to write a whole other post on the virtues of this yarn, but for the moment I have to finish a birthday gift for the Eh, knit in yet more of the same. More later!

Happy Niu Year

Blog-wise, I've been hibernating through the festive season. I've only now restarted my sluggish engine, just in time to wish everyone a good year of the Ox. For those who deplore puns (even cross-cultural ones), I do apologise for the title.

There's been knitting, but I've been somewhat distracted by a family project (and no, it's not a third baby) so garment projects for myself have been taking a backseat. Whatever I've managed to churn out have been gifts for friends and practical accessories for the cold weather. From left: a version of This Way Up in Louisa Harding's Grace, for a friend. The silk content in the yarn made it a little heavier and it took 5 balls (held double) to make a scarf that was about 60" long. Next is a little beret I made for Meimei using the Posy pattern in Louisa Harding's The Magical World According to Miss Millie. I love the book and have always wanted to make something from it. The yarn is a sample skein of variegated merino that I got free with purchase from the ever-fantastic Jannette's Rare Yarns - the hat is now Meimei's favourite winter accessory. And on the right is an Urchin beret that I knit to replace one that I idiotically lost. How much of an idiot, you might ask. Well, I think I left the hat at the bank. Which I visited because I needed to replace a bank card that I had idiotically lost. Somewhere in my home. See a trend? Anyway, I didn't have any left of the chunky Yorkshire Tweed that the original was made from, and improvised with a strand of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Astrakhan in grey, held with a strand of RYC Cashsoft DK in black. The hat ended up very boucle-y, which proved impossible for grafting but disguised my hasty seaming perfectly. By the way, that is a rare glimpse of blue sky in wintertime Shanghai. Hurrah!

I was also struck by the need to equip myself with a warm, fun scarf. I had some Laines du Nord Royal Cashmere that was on special offer from Jannette's - check it out folks, the price is seriously fantastic - and decided to make up my own pattern. 

The scarf is all garter stitch, with some unconventional action at both ends to liven things up a little. What do you think? I thought of writing out the pattern, but have yet to figure out an elegant way to describe what I did with the twisty bits. Meanwhile, other distractions beckon. I'll get my act together and write it out if enough folks think I should. Let me know! 

        

What I've not been up to

In an ideal universe I'd be beavering away on the amazingly beautiful Sylvi sweater coat, but the sad truth is, the day job has kind of taken over my life for the moment and all I have of Sylvi is half a sleeve. I've been sneaking peeks at other knitters' progress and oh, the envy.

Thank you, though, for the nice comments on my almost-Turpan! I'm getting zero knitting done right now, but it's a bit of a consolation to be able to wear it to work!

Not quite Turpan

Loads have been going on in the world at large, some of it good, some of it less so, and most of it just downright fascinating. So much so that I wonder how I got any knitting done at all. But knit I did, and ta-da! My almost-Turpan is done.

This knit was very nearly derailed by the fact that I ran out of yarn. Despite all my finger-crossing, and a number of yarn-saving mods, 10 balls of RYC Cashsoft DK turned out completely inadequate for finishing the cardi. That's 10 balls of yarn, in a discontinued colour. I started trawling the internet, and was lucky enough to secure what could possibly be the last 2 balls in the Opulence shade to be found anywhere in the world. Or at least I'm pretty sure it's the last 2 balls to be found in online yarn stores that ship worldwide! Good ol' Jannette's Rare Yarns saves the day again. I couldn't have cut it any closer, because I ended up with very little yarn left. Here's the report:

Pattern: Turpan by Deborah Newton, available from the Naturally Caron website.

Yarn: Pattern calls for about 850g of NaturallyCaron.com Country, held double for size S (finished size 39"). I used 12 balls or 600g of RYC Cashsoft DK in Opulence, held double for an improvised smaller size (finished size 36").

Needles: 5.7mm (Japanese size 12) for the edgings, 5.0mm for the sections in double seed stitch. Japanese 7.5 crochet hook for the button bands.

Notions: 7 x small pearl shank buttons

Mods: Apart from the yarn and needle subs, I modified quite a lot, to save yarn and to size the garment down. Here's what I can remember doing:

a) I subbed the trinity stitch with double seed stitch, because it looked like trinity stitch would consume way too much yarn and create a super heavy garment. Double seed stitch creates a similar effect, and I'm in love with it anyway for the sort of woven effect it creates.

b) I cast on 63 sts (or 15 stitches less than called for) for each sleeve. In other words, I did one less pattern repeat for the sleeve edging. When the edging was complete I decreased 9 sts across evenly to get 54 sts. When I was nearing the armhole, I increased over a few rows to get 60 sts as stated in the pattern, before doing the armhole shaping as written, so as make sure my raglan seams line up properly with the fronts and back of the cardigan.

c) I left out the cabled button bands as that would eat up more yarn than I had. Instead, I did 2 rows of single crochet for the button band and 3 rows of single crochet for the buttonhole band. I had to experiment a bit to get the right tension for the crochet, but I found that with Japanese size 7.5 crochet hook and doubled yarn, I basically needed to do 2 SCs for every 3 knitted rows along the edgings, and 1 SC for every 2 knitted rows along the double seed stitch sections. 

d) I used more, and smaller, buttons than what the patterns suggested.

Overall experience: I have probably said this before, but I adore knitting with Cashsoft DK, doubled. It just forms an amazingly squishy and comfortable fabric. I'm very happy with the finished garment - it's one of those versatile designs that's good for both casual wear and work wear, especially with the pearl buttons. It's already being road-tested for our family weekend in Suzhou, and I foresee it being in heavy rotation for the coming weeks. And, don't judge me folks, but I do feel a sense of excitement to log this as the first finished Turpan on Ravelry. Yay for little thrills!

Another experiment

Dear friends, I am super-buzzed to see the Ravelry queue numbers grow for Lyceum! Can't wait to see someone knit one up.

In the meantime, I've embarked on a new experiment. The heavily textured Turpan cardigan from the Naturally Caron website (yay for more free patterns!) has been rapidly gaining those little hearts on Ravelry. And I love it too. I like it for the looks, but also for the name - Turpan, or Turfan, is a Uighur region in the far west of China that I've always wanted to visit. 

Wanderlust aside, another reason for casting on is that this pattern calls for doubled yarn. And you know how I feel about that!

The only snag is this. Check out the yarn consumption on this pattern. Even a dedicated stashbuster like me is taken aback. The small size (39") weighs in at 850g and 1850 yards. 850g is really a lot more fibre than I want to wear! The only non-outerwear garment I can think of that can justifiably be so heavy is a bullet-proof vest. In any case, I don't have 1850 yards of anything. I do have 1420 yards of Rowan Cashsoft DK, and that will have to do. The original yarn called for is a worsted weight, and using Cashsoft will downsize things a Iittle, which suits me fine. I'm also using smaller needles to make the finished size closer to 34". To further save on yarn I am replacing the yarn-consuming trinity stitch with double seed stitch. So, to borrow something I learned in school ages ago, this is a constrained optimisation problem. Can I finish Turpan using just 10 balls of Rowan Cashsoft DK? Wish me luck.

Pattern for you: Lyceum Vest

OK folks, here it is! I've written out the pattern for what I'm calling the Lyceum vest and posted it here. I'm not enough of a pattern whiz to do multiple sizes, but you probably are :) The information and schematic included would, I hope, be enough to help you size it up or down, but do let me know if you have any questions. I'm not at all sure this is error free, not having had the opportunity to test-knit it a few times like I did with This Way Up, so again, let me know if something is wonky and I'll fix it. Hope you like this!

PS - the pattern is also a free Ravelry download here.

Stashbuster

Thank you for the comments on my chunky vest! I've also received a couple of inquiries on it from Ravelry, so I'm definitely working on a pattern and posting it. I'll write out what I did for the 34" size for a start, but I'll try to be as comprehensive as possible so that it will be easy to size up or down. In the meantime, I whipped up one of those Ribbed Lace Boleros in Karabella Aurora 8, as a gift for a friend. What a fantastic stashbusting pattern. I've also updated my Ravelry projects page with modelled photos of some older knits. Enjoy!

 

Random knit

Sideways cabling + chunky yarn + vest = a random little something that I whipped up for fun. So random that I ended up using three different stash yarns as I ran out of the main yarn (Sirdar Click). It was a fast project on 6.5 needles and took just 4 days of intermittent knitting.

I'll post a pattern for it if you want!

(Pls excuse the lousy bathroom self portraits, complete with water stains and blurry 4-year-old lurking in the background.) 

The best policy

Thank you for the compliments on the Stripey Cardigan!

I've got another FO to show you - and it's a little girl's tunic from booklet #611 by Sublime Yarns, written for their Organic Cotton DK yarn. If you like clean lines with simple but effective design details, and if you've got to knit for the whole family, this booklet is for you. It contains 9 designs with many permutations in terms of size, sleeve/collar details, etc; and they are all very wearable. There are quite a few kids' designs that I want to knit from the booklet, and I decided to start with Honesty, for Meimei.  

There's not a lot to say about the pattern as it pretty much speaks for itself (don't you love that squishy button-cute ribbon bow?). The real story here is about yarn choice. Now I've petted the Sublime Organic Cotton DK in a Singapore LYS before, and it is criminally soft. But because I had stoically refrained from buying any, Honesty would have to be knit from stash yarn.

I thought I had the perfect fit - but I had no clue exactly how perfect it would turn out to be. There's a bunch of Filatura di Crosa's Elen Cashmere in different colours lying around in my stash that I scored from an eBay auction, and I've been waiting to use it. This yarn is usually represented as a DK weight, and according to the ball band it runs to 148.5 yards per 50g, with 25% cashmere, 35% extrafine wool, 5%  silk and 35% viscose. When knitting up, I have to confess it feels a little meh for a luxury yarn. The feel is reasonably soft, but also kind of dry and papery. It doesn't split, or misbehave in other ways, so the knitting is easy enough. The big surprise, however, comes when you wet-block it - the yarn fluffs and settles into a worsted weight and the fabric becomes amazingly soft, light and snuggly, with a slight sheen from the silk and a pearly halo from the cashmere. Magic, I tell you. I usually knit pretty much to whatever gauge is stated on the ball band, so I was astonished to realise that on 3.9mm needles I could get a very cohesive fabric at 18 sts/4 inches after blocking. Combine that with the long yardage and the fibre content, and you have got yourself a great quality yarn at pretty decent value. Here are the details:

Pattern: Honesty from Sublime Yarns' pattern booklet #611 (Organic Cotton DK yarn)

Size: 2-3 years

Yarn: Filatura di Crosa's Elen Cashmere; 1.6 skeins or 234 yards of shade 22 (purple) and 0.6 skeins or 88 yards of shade 17 (pink)

Needles: 3.9mm or Japanese size 6

Mods: Modified to knit in the round and lengthened it slightly. The original was knit in a single colour, but I used a contrast colour for the garter stitch trims. Of course, with the yarn turning out to be an aran weight rather than DK, the FO was also a bit larger than specified in the pattern.

Overall experience: An easy and fast knit. All done in 2 days; took another 1 day to block and dry.

Now that I know what this yarn is capable of, I'm making new plans for the (almost) 5 balls of off-white Elen Cashmere I've got left. And guess what? It's on closeout here. I've already bought myself another sweater's worth!