In a finishing mood

Camel cardigan, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

I'm in a finishing mood, to the extent that I've even sewn seven buttons. (I appreciate Gwen Raverat's words "sewing was downright wicked slavery" in her adorable book Period Piece. A Cambridge Childhood.) The brioche cardigan had actually been finished for more than a week before I got around to it, even though I'd already found the perfect buttons... They're made of marble and I think they look fabulous with the wool. Their size was exactly right for the buttonholes too!

Some time ago I wrote a post about the shoulder straps: here's how they turned out:

I've finished the Monk no 2 sweater as well. Not that Marianne Isager's name "Monk" is very suitable anymore as I didn't keep the hood.

Also, I've made up my mind about the collar for my double-knitted jacket/cardigan. I've tried various ideas: I wanted something different from the main pattern and tried both triangles and stripes but wasn't satisfied. Then I suddenly thought I'd keep the small squares but use them into lego-like brick shapes. Of all the things I love about knitting, I think I like solving difficulties best.

A rose is a rose...

Alice Starmore's "Mary Tudor " in progress, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

Fortunately, possibly not by pure accident, I had already bought the yarn to knit Alice Starmore's "Mary Tudor" when I decided to at least try not to add to my stash for a while. Still haven't bought any yarn this year!

Thanks for your comments on "Henry VIII"! His sister Mary is just as delightful to knit: the astonighingly beautiful pattern is slightly trickier, but still easier as there is only one chart to follow instead of three and fewer colours. But what colours! I've said it before and I'll say it again: Alice Starmore for president!

My other main project right now is completely different, a single-colour brioche cardigan with hardly any patterns, but then I'm a polygamous knitter - there's nothing like a pile of different kinds of project to be able to choose what I feel like, or start something new with treasures from my stash. (My relationship to books is similar: facts, fiction, classics, modern etc in tempting piles.)

brioche cardigan: raglan sleeve

The only thing you could call a pattern is a double-knitted column in the middle of the sleeves. The increases are on each side of the column instead of near the edges, which I think looks nice. I've been struggling with the shoulder straps, testing different versions.

testing shoulder straps

My first attempt was the strap to the right. I didn't like it, but didn't rip it out at once. Instead I knitted the one to the left first to be able to compare them. An improvement I thought would do - but then I saw the wrong side. That's what I wanted! So, I'll rip them both and reknit them inside out, so to speak. All's well that ends well.

wrong side soon to be right side

Life at its worst...

On holiday, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

...should be like this: visiting dear friends, lovely weather and a bag full of knitting projects. Not to mention - but not in the photo - a lake nearby, delicious food and a bottle of champagne. (But this being life at its best is certainly good enough!)

It took some time to decide what kind of neckband to make for the "Mystic" sweater. The original has a cabled one; you knit it separately and sew it into place, which makes it similar to St. Brigid. However, I thought a turtleneck would look nice, and something simple would let the anchors be in focus. The ribbing is the same as for the cuffs (3 knit, 2 purl) to make it blend with the cable patterns.

"Så här ska det vara när det är som sämst," som en god vän brukar säga när vi har det som trevligast!

A helping paw

A helping paw, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

Last weekend I was cat-sitting and made quite a lot of progress supervised by Puma.

I've kept the basic construction of Alice Starmore's design Mystic, but in a slightly different way. Instead of kniting the sleeves separately starting with the cuffs and ending with the shoulder straps, I started with the straps; when they were the right length I picked up stitches along the front and back and added the strap in the middle.

A pattern change is that I've added a net pattern to the sleeves. I think it works well with the anchors, and it is fairly easy to make it follow the shape of the sleeves.

Aranish sweater: shoulder straps

Aranish sweater, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

After trying a couple of different ideas I've decided to combine raglan decreases and shoulder straps. If I had gone on with the raglan decreases they would have spoiled the honecomb pattern (unlike the way they blend with the decreases of the fishing net pattern). On the other hand, I didn't want the neck opening to be too wide, but this will be a happy compromise, I think.

I haven't grafted the straps yet as I wanted to knit the collar first to see if I could get it over my head. (My nose being a major obstacle in sweater matters.)

Christine asked about the pattern. My inspiration is a design in "Fiskartröjor" (fishermen's sweaters) by Uuve Snidare, but this is a heavily modified version of it with cables added and changed - not to mention the construction. The original design is made up of four separate pieces, and it doesn't have gussets.

Yesterday I went to Nordiska museet in Stockholm to check out a 1940s style apartment they've built for a fictional family.

Actually, I've made three of the garments in one of the closets! I've written posts about a green cardigan and a blue jumper before, but decided not to write about the project until the exhibition opened. It was a challenge I really enjoyed, trying to create convincing garments.

There is also a slipover (improvised) for the boy in the family. I like keeping people warm, even if they're fictional!

Shoulder joins - montering vid axlarna

shoulder straps, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

It has taken me quite a few weeks to figure how to knit the shoulder straps to achieve what I have in mind: a strap that has the right width and length with a pattern that looks nice and will blend nicely with the sleeve pattern.

The cast-on is provisional: I will unpick it and use the live stitches to knit the neckband. I caught the live stitches of the last row when picking up stitches around the armhole to make the shoulder strap continue seamlessly into the sleeve.

My intention is to pick up stitches along the strap sides, knit a row and then do a three-needle bind-off to join strap and body. (Mainly to avoid sewing, but I think it will look and feel nice too.)

Natasha's cardigan is finished! In this case I used the three-needle bind-off method for a shoulder join and added a neck gusset - I learnt how to make such gussets from Alice Starmore's book Fishermen's Sweaters.

Three-needle bind-off and neck gusset; fram- och bakstycke avmaskade tillsammans och halskil.

If I may say so myself and I may, since this is my blog ;-) I think Natasha's cardigan is one of my best efforts! She won't receive it just yet, though. I will be talking about how I modify patterns at my LYS Litet nystan on 31 January, and this is a good example of it. Here's what the original design looks like. Nothing wrong with it - I just can't help changing a few things here and there.

This is possibly related to jazz being my favourite kind of music - I think it's so exciting hearing how the same composition can sound completely different (but still familiar) when different artists put their personal stamp on it. Or how the same artist can interprete the same composition in different ways.

"Thorsten fiskares tröja" (bygger på ett mönster av Celia B. Dackenberg) har legat i träda ett par månader medan jag har funderat på hur jag skulle få till axlar och ärmar; jag visst hur jag ville att det skulle se ut, men det är ju inte alltid samma sak som att veta hur man ska bära sig åt. Å andra sidan är det sådant som jag tycker är roligt med stickning - när jag lyckas lösa problem känner jag att jag utvecklas. 

Jag tycker att sadelärmar är snyggt och bekvämt, och jag tyckte att det skulle passa på den här tröjan. Tricket var att få till rätt storlek med ett snyggt mönster som dessutom övergår på ett fint sätt i mönstret på ärmarna. Först gjorde jag en provisorisk uppläggning: den kommer jag att peta bort när det är dags att sticka halskanten, så att det inte blir någon skarv i övergången. När jag plockade upp maskor runt ärmhålet för att sticka ärmarna fångade jag upp sadeln på halva vägen, så att det inte blir någon skarv på den sidan heller.


För att fästa sadeln vid fram- och bakstyckena tänker jag plocka upp maskor längs kanten, sticka ett varv och sedan maska av dem tillsammans med maskorna på fram- respektive bakstyckena. 


Natasha's kofta blev klar nyligen och jag måste säga att jag är väldigt nöjd. Fotot ovan visar axeln: jag maskade av fram- och bakstycke tillsammans och kombinerade detta med en liten halskil. Detta är en finess jag lärde mig - som så mycket annat - i boken "Fiskartröjor" av Alice Starmore. 


Det dröjer ett par veckor innan Natasha får sin kofta. Den 31 januari kommer jag nämligen att prata om hur jag ändrar i beskrivningar när det är stickkafé på Litet nystan, och det här projektet är ett bra exempel att ha med. Inte för att det är något fel på originalet, tvärtom - jag kan bara inte låta bli!

Natasha's cardigan; unfortunately, the bad light doesn't do the colours justice.