up for grabs

ETA: The sweaters are no longer available!

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Leah has outgrown one sweater and one top that I knit for her. I'd rather they go to knitters (or knitters' daughters) than Goodwill, so here's what I have up for grabs:

First is the Hybrid sweater. Chest 34", length 21", sleeve 17". Knit w/ 2 strands of reclaimed cotton and 1 strand of variegated tencel (see the blog post linked above for better pics of the resulting fabric). The back is stockinette. Has had lots and lots of wear, but is holding up well except for the fact that there are cotton yarn ends that have worked free and are poking out here and there. Easily fixed w/ a tapestry needle and a little time re-tucking the ends. Worth the effort, IMO.

Next is the Josephine top, also knit with reclaimed cotton. Chest 36", length 19", distance from shoulder to tie row 8" (this is the main measurement that doesn't work for Leah anymore -- measure yourself/your intended recipient carefully to see where this horizontal tie will be), armscye 5-1/2" tall. No pokey-outey ends on this one.

Both could stand to be washed, but they're in otherwise good shape.

halterrific

Blocked and ready to rock and roll, just in time for a big day of romping with friends, is a new halter top, designed and knit by Leah. She picked an easy yarnover holey pattern from a stitch dictionary and knit a swatch using cotton yarn (reclaimed from a Goodwill sweater, leftover from her Josephine top) along with a big cone of blue cotton yarn, possibly from the yarn tag sale bonanza or maybe one of the freebie cones from the Webs tent sale last spring.

She used a loose-fitting tank top for measurements and calculated how many stitches to cast on for the body rectangle, w/ some garter stitch rows/stitches around the perimeter. Continued until the skirt was long enough, finishing that portion at Worldwide Knit In Public Day. Bound off 5" of the right and left of the top of the skirt after a few garter rows, then started one of the top triangles in stockinette, having it continue ~2" past mid point for overlap of the triangles. At first, she decreased on every other knit row, w/ a ssk on the right and a k2tog on the left edge of the triangle, just inside a 3-stitch seed stitch border all around. After doing that for 3-4 sets of decreases, she continued decreasing in the same way on every knit row until she was down to 7-8 stitches. Repeat for other top triangle, picking up 2" of stitches behind the first triangle so they overlap in the center.

We then used 3-4 thicknesses of the yarn combo to make twisted cords, first threading the yarn through the stitches through the top of one triangle, then twisting the yarn a lot before doubling it over and letting it twist on itself. Makes a nice effect at the top of the triangles and distributes the weight of the top among those 7-8 stitches, rather than just in one or two spots if the cord had been sewn on afterward. Same sort of deal with the cord to tie it in back, at the top of the skirt.

While this was blocking, she started a b'day gift that will be ready for a friend's party this weekend. She's been working on it like crazy and has already tossed the stash and browsed Ravelry to decide which project will be on the needles next, but today she's thrilled to be wearing her own finished handiwork.

hybrid

This happy girl is wearing a sweater that's a hybrid -- a little of this, a little of that, combined into something new.

The yarn is 2 strands of burgundy cotton reclaimed from a Goodwill sweater, as shown on the Neauveau Fiber Arts tutorial, combined with 1 strand of variegated tencel from Webs. The pattern stitch is the broken lace rib from Paige's Stitchionary, with picot edges learned from Purlwise.
I used Jackie Fee's Sweater Workshop to calculate the important pattern numbers. The sleeves were knit in the round and bound off at the top. The body was worked in the round with steeks for the sleeves and front, as learned from Philosopher's Wool and additional info from See Eunny Knit because I wasn't sure if the slick cotton/tencel would be okay for a steek. It is. :-)

This sweater packs up small, so it came with me as the traveling project in Paris-Belgium-Amsterdam-Luxembourg. The steeks were cut while I was in the middle of a room full of happy knitters and spinners at Spa weekend in Maine.

(As an aside, I was hanging with newbie spinaholic Bart when I cut the steeks and now look...you can find his smiling mug all over the internet. Doug is the guy who is standing in that picture. He is one of Bart's mentors. Doug's friend, Laura, is one of the kind people who helped untangle Jesse's yarn. Each one, teach one...and the beat goes on.)

Edited paragraph above to reflect that Laura and Doug are friends, not a married couple. Oops -- sorry, Laura and Doug!

Anyway, hybrid, yeah. I suppose all handknits and all other handmade projects are hybrids, blends of experience and techniques and resources and references all pulled together to form something new and different, but this one seems even more so for me because I think it's the first sweater I've made up really from scratch. I chose every single element, right down to the yarn combination, and it all came together and it fits (this year only, I think -- the Goob is growing fast!) and looks good and was a really satisfying knit and, best of all, she loves it.

w-w-what's happening to me?

There's sumpin' fishy going on. Lately, I'm drooling over all sorts of crocheted projects.

I crocheted through much of my childhood, making clowns and blankets galore, but I've barely picked up a hook in the past 15 years, except to teach Leah how to crochet.

Then, suddenly, there's this infinity wrap and this star flower mandala (scroll down to the 5th set of pics) and this stained glass window afghan and these magnificent rugs made of reclaimed yarn from old sweaters!

Then and now, if I did pick up a hook, I'd love it to be my favorite one, the Susan Bates H hook that fits my hand just right and was the tool I used for every single clown and blanket I've ever made. The thumb rest is a scootch further up or down on this old hook than on the newer hooks and it makes all the difference in the comfort for my hands. Even my kids know that one is special and they should keep their cotton pickin' hands off of it. If the H size won't cut it for whatever crochet project I do finally settle on, I'll probably try the Clover soft touch crochet hooks for comfort.

Gotta love the multicraftual buzz.

insideoutedness

I have lots of knitting to show you, but haven't taken pics yet. Maybe later today. Meanwhile, I wanted to show you something funky.

First, a little background: I don't shop. Oh, I'll go to Goodwill or a tag sale for the rare thing we need around here, but big retail places give me the willies, from the artificial lighting and smells to the agonizing muzak and endless racks of stuff. I'd rather buy necessary items second-hand, at a fraction of the cost and often of very high quality, or find a way to otherwise make the most of what we already have. When we do need to hit a store for something new, it's with a very definite purpose and a quick in and out.

So, one rainy morning in South Carolina, when Scott wanted to browse a nearby Bass Pro Shop (the catalogs of which he has drooled over for years), the rest of us went along for the heck of it, my thought being that it could be entertaining, since shopping without a purpose is entirely foreign to us. I was right; it was entertaining!

Pardon me if this is old news, but the memo hadn't delivered under my rock yet. Apparently, fair isle sweaters are being marketed this season. Nothing unusual about that, but this year somebody came up with the idea of putting the pieces together inside out!

With all those floats, just waiting to catch on things! Seriously? Dropping $60 on this seems like a good idea to somebody? Unless it's somebody who can re-weave ends and fix a snagged loop of yarn, I bet it's headed for the landfill within one season.

Inside, it is indeed a fair isle sweater of the usual kind. It could almost be worn inside out, which would be the usual right side out, if not for the raggedy sewn seams.

So glad to have the option of making my own, at a fraction of the cost with second-hand/reclaimed yarn, in the styles that I like best, of higher quality materials and many, many more years of expected usefulness.

Okay, enough of the snark. See what retail places do to me? It's not pretty.

Parade of FOs to come!

we love Josephine!

Pattern: Josephine top from Interweave Knits, Summer 2007 issue

Yarn: reclaimed cotton from a new Abercrombie and Fitch sweater, bought at Goodwill for ~$3

Size: smallest, for 10 y.o. daughter

Needles: had to go down to size 1 to get gauge

Mods: Knit in the round to armholes. Did a few knit rounds at the hem at the start, instead of picking those stitches up and adding them at the hem at the end. Started V-neck higher. Twisted cord instead of I-cord.

Verdict: I loved every second of knitting this pattern and think the results are just about perfect. Two enthusiastic thumbs up from the knitter and the recipient! It was still the slightest bit damp this morning, but she loved it enough to put it on anyway to wear to the Memorial Day parade and ceremony in town.