Jess II: The Re-Jessening

Pattern: Jess, from My Fashionable Life/Needle and Hook, by Anna Bell/Amelia Raitte

Size: Small (32-34)

Yarn used: 13 skeins of Queensland Collection Uruguay DK, 0.5 skeins of Peru Luxury DK, color 03 Burgundy, both bought for $2.50 a skein from Littleknits. Double-stranded. I knit this jacket earlier this year for my stepmother and used up 11.5 skeins of yarn, so I thought I was being clever by buying 13 skeins this time. I ran out of the 13th skein while finishing the second sleeve cap, and had to use the Peru Luxury DK to finish up–fortunately, the two yarns look exactly the same to me. This yarn, a many-plied merino/alpaca/silk blend, is absolutely dreamy to work with, all bouncy and squishy and shiny and and soft. I highly recommend it. It did bleed a ton when it hit water, and it turned out heavier and drapier than I would have ideally liked, but at $2.50 a skein, I’m not complaining!

Needles used: Size 11 Boye Needlemaster.

Started: 9/26/07

Finished: Let’s call it 10/14/07 (the date I finished seaming and weaving in ends). Still not quite complete because she’s missing two buttons–I bought all 4 they had at Jo-Ann and they’re still not back in stock yet.

Mods: The biggest mod was that I lengthened the sleeves to full length rather than 3/4 length. I used short row shoulder shaping with a three-needle bindoff on the shoulders and still am not convinced of its benefits. Added buttonholes every 14 rows (the pattern doesn’t specify) to end up with 6 buttonholes total. I also corrected the shoulder shaping–it seems to be reversed as written–and the basketweave stitch pattern, as noted in my initial post on this project/wrap-up post on Jess I.

Notes: This is the second time I’ve knit this jacket–I made one for my stepmom this spring, in a sage green color of the same yarn, and liked it so much I decided to make one for myself. The jacket fits really well despite the lack of shaping–I think because it’s pretty form-fitting and the simple knit/purl basketweave stitch stretches to accommodate. The full-length sleeves are kind of bell-shaped because I didn’t make them any narrower around the wrists when I lengthened them, but I think it looks nice enough. It doesn’t look that great unbuttoned, because the fabric is kind of floppy drapey; it’s really cozy and warm, but doesn’t offer much protection against cold wind if you are, say, riding your bike down a hill in November. I might knit with a slightly tighter gauge if I made this again in this yarn. It seems prone to stretching at this gauge; there were unseemly holes around the base of the neck where I picked up the collar, but I think I’ve mostly disguised them. See my other notes from Jess I and the project in progress here.

Verdict: I still love this jacket–what a great little pattern this is. I’m glad I made one for myself. It goes very quickly and makes excellent mindless knitting because of the size 11 needles, the knitting in pieces (each front was only 28 sts!), the lack of shaping, and the easy but interesting basketweave stitch pattern. It has so many pleasing little details–the turned hems, the slipped stitch edging, the buttonholes. You can see the slipped stitch edging, basketweave pattern, and seed stitch collar texture on this close-up.

Look at the cute buttons I found at Jo-Ann: they’re La Mode vintage triple flower buttons, circa 1941, model 1711, $2.99 per two.

Thanks for a great pattern, Anna, and thanks for a great deal on the yarn, Fulay!

Heartfelt, and screw piping

Kim Hargreaves has a new pattern book out, called Heartfelt! It’s lovely, like pretty much all her patterns. I might even buy it one of these days, but it would cost about $44 once you figure in the shipping, so I’m not going to spring for it until I’m 100% ready to cast on.

I think pretty much all the shapes are rehashes of things she’s done before (probably not this one, though!), but that’s fine by me, since the predecessor patterns are only available as part of fearsomely expensive kits. My favorites:

• Faith, which has a lovely garter lace insert in the front. I think this might not be the most flattering garment for me, though… I suspect it loses its gamine charm when worn outside this English countryside photoshoot
• Emily, so elegant with the gently puffed bishop sleeves. I love this look, even though not everyone does… Jerry Seinfeld famously complained about the puffy shirt, and someone on some message board uncharitably described the sleeves on the Luna Dress as “pollen sacs”
• Cherish, a classic bolero done in Rowan Big Wool. I was looking for the other bolero she had that looks just like this in a smaller gauge… I’d been eyeing it for a while. It might be this one, Splendour, but I seem to remember it being done in red Summer Tweed and photographed with the model leaning against a window on the left side of the frame. (Ravelry reveals that this was published as a kit in the Evergreen collection, no longer available through Kim Hargreaves’s site)
• Darcy, a fitted seed stitch cardigan–almost a blazer, really–with pleated peplum.
• Dusk, a kimono-esque wrap cardigan that reminds me a lot of the Catherine Lowe pattern from Knitknit (which I had to return to the library before getting a chance to scan some pictures for a review)

I don’t have much else to report. The piping for the Burda Style dress is kicking my ass… the bias binding I bought was too narrow, so I had to re-fold it in half instead of thirds, I had some trouble figuring out the zipper foot on the machine, the machine kept getting stuck on the multiple layers of fabric when I was trying to baste the piping on… then, after a couple of frustrating hours, I had it all put together and sat there trying to fold it in such a way that the piping would stick out of the front instead of out of the inside seam. Yup, I spent a couple of hours sewing it on upside down. Aside from my own stupidity, and the instructions to “baste the right side of the piping strap onto the neckline,” I blame the Burda tutorial that used stealthy black piping for the photos, with just a red dotted line drawn on in MS Paint to show where the piping cord should be. I, of course, thought I had figured out which way the piping was oriented and got it completely wrong. I also sewed it way too close to the edge so that it would have been sewn into the seam allowance, but fortunately figured this out before re-basting it (hand-basted the second time, thank God, I don’t know why I thought it would be faster to do it with the machine the first time around). Thank you, Sandra Betzina! (I bought this Power Sewing book for a few bucks at a local bookstore’s closing sale and should have consulted it before trying to use the internet tutorials. It finally made the piping stuff pretty clear.)

Bottom line, I didn’t knit a single stitch this weekend. I did sew on 4 out of the 6 buttons for Jess–I have to make another trip to Jo-Ann to buy the other two buttons. These are the ones I picked–La Mode vintage reproduction buttons, model 1711, circa 1941.

I also spent some crafty energy making some Fandango masks out of paper bags and junk mail for a costume party Friday night. I made one for my boyfriend, he kept balking at wearing it, and eventually I discovered that he had no idea what the Fandango paper bag ads were and thought I’d just made him a shoddy, crazy-looking paper bag mask to wear over his head for no apparent reason.  We did some other Halloween-type stuff, like watching a series of short and extremely gory plays called “Shocktoberfest” and visiting the cider mill. Hurray for autumn!

all quiet on the knitting front

Argh, I’ve been feeling so busy, I have been wanting to take lots of pictures of stuff and knit and blog but I haven’t had a chance. A few of the things that have been occupying my time–pictureless, because I’m just taking a break from work:

Non-yarny stuff:

- Work and class (The Anthropology of Tourism. Lots of readings.). Not much to say about that, except that our last reading was about Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi as a postmodern, hyperreal tourist destination/Baudrillard simulacra. I was simultaneously interested in the ideas and annoyed with the ivory tower uselessness of critical theory. I bet this comes from being the daughter of an engineer and a literature professor–I swing between attraction to the useless-but-fascinating and the practical-but-uncreative. Also, I’m doing an extra job this month for the business school, so I spent last Friday night from 8:30 to midnight grilling undergrad business students about the idea they were trying to sell me.

- Biking in the midst of blazing fall colors and hunting for mushrooms in the Brown County woods. The trees are all kinds of orange and yellow and red right now–much better than last year, when they had just started to turn and then a big storm blew all the half-turned leaves off the trees. It rained last week but was dry last weekend, so we thought it would be a good time to go mushroom-hunting. We were looking for chicken of the woods mushrooms and found two huge yellow shelf mushrooms–one of them weighed probably 20 pounds!–but decided we didn’t have a positive ID on either one, and threw them away. At least we got some nice bike rides and hiking in.

- Making vodka apple pie. I found information about a new pie crust recipe from Cook’s Illustrated from one of my regular blog reads (but now I can’t remember who! sorry). It uses vodka instead of water to moisten the pie crust, under the theory that gluten doesn’t form in alcohol, only in water, so you create much less gluten in the crust by moistening with vodka. The crust came out pretty well–very buttery, no taste of alcohol. However, the dough was super-soft and friable, and fell apart when I tried to weave the lattice top like I usually do. I used dark red Winesap apples and the “Apple Pie I” and “Flaky Pie Crust” recipes from The Joy of Cooking, substituting vodka for the ice water in the pie crust. Jeanne brought over some Musgrave cider she had fermented and we had an appleicious evening.

- Sewing. I’m trying to follow a sewing pattern for the first time: I fell in love with this dress called Shari from Burda Style, and armed with some cheap fabric remnants, I’ve been diligently working my way through the pattern and its puzzling assembly instructions. I also learned how to use the bobbin winder on the sewing machine Rahul’s mom gave me. Yay! Figuring out the zipper foot is going to be a whole new world of frustration, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. The main body of the dress is red cotton with white polka dots. The lining and yoke insert are a white cotton with tiny white circles printed on it. (The print reminds me a lot of quinoa.) In theory, if the piping doesn’t defeat me, it will be trimmed in turquoise–turquoise bias binding piping and some turquoise ribbon with red flowers for the edge of the skirt. I find sewing a very tedious process, even though it takes much less time than knitting. All that cutting out of pieces and ironing and sewing and threading and rethreading the machine… it may produce nice finished objects, but the process is not nearly as soothing as sitting down with needles and yarn.

- Buttons. I experimented with polymer clay picture transfers the other night (another good use for vodka) and made the most fabulous dodo buttons. I am going to find something small and round to use to cut them out, and make a whole set. I think I might use the two buttons I made for another Giftblitz Basketweave Neckwarmer.

- Tonight I’m going to canoe on Griffey Lake in the moonlight, tomorrow I’m going to a Halloween party, and on Saturday I’m going to see the Dalai Lama give a talk.

- I finally got the new Terry Pratchett book, Making Money, from the library! I was like 10th in line on the holds list. I can’t wait to quietly hole up somewhere and read this.

Yarny stuff:

- I finished my Ming cowl and I’m wearing it now, unblocked. It’s lovely!

- I got some buttons for my Jess jacket. I dragged Rahul to Jo-Ann and he helped me pick them out–silvery/pewter reproduction antique buttons molded with a posy of daisies. They only had 4, so I’m going to have to go back for a 5th one in about a week. When we were at Jo-Ann buying the buttons, we saw a saffron-robed Tibetan monk carrying a big roll of red fabric to the cutting table for replacement robes. I love Bloomington.

- I have been swatching and adjusting charts, and I think I’ve sorted out the lace charts I’ve been working on and will hopefully have produced a finished object from them soon. Why is “no stitch” such a bitch to figure out? I guess technically I could just put them anywhere I want on the chart, but I feel like that’s bad form. Still not sure I’ve placed the “no stitch” symbols optimally, but you live and you learn.

- Robynn sent me the most beautiful shawl pin as a Storytellers spot prize. Thank you so much, Robynn–it’s perfect, I love it! I need to take some pictures of it with my Lara sweater and/or my Sea Silk Swallowtail shawl. (The shawl really deserves a better photoshoot than what I’ve given it so far.)

- I signed up for a Knit Picks sampler a while back on Ravelry. The idea was that you would send in a skein of yarn to the organizer and she would make a little card with snips of each contributor’s yarn so you could see samples of all the different types without paying for all the color cards or sample skeins. Then you would get your leftovers back at the end. The cranberry Decadence on the sample card is especially lovely, but I think they discontinued it–I don’t see it on the site anymore. Anyway, I started laughing when I opened the package because it contained a note attached to a mangled Gordian knot of alpaca laceweight: “Sorry, my cat got into your yarn. Here is $5 so you can buy some more.”

Ming Cowl in progress

I am about halfway through my second Luxe Neck Warmer from Knit 2 Together. (I’m taking it slow this time.) This knit is pure sensory pleasure–the silvery variegated silk/wool gleams in subtle, semi-solid grays, like a South Seas black pearl, and the silk gives it a slight fuzzy haze that softens the stitch definition; it’s an incredibly soft and evenly spun singles yarn without a hint of over- or underspinning; and after lots of thrifty knitting with snaggy, sticky rubber band stitch markers, it feels like such a luxury using the pearl stitch markers I got from KnittyK8′s Etsy shop.

I also made a trip out to Hobby Lobby to shop for buttons for Jess and I can’t decide what kind to get–I’ll have to go out to Jo-Ann, because I had no luck at Hobby Lobby. I want one of the following:

- Smooth plastic buttons in a matching burgundy

- Plastic buttons in black or dark brown

- Fabric-covered buttons–maybe with a tapestry-like home decor fabric?  I think this might make the jacket look too dowdy.

- Crocheted button covers, like in the original pattern

It’s hard to decide what will make the jacket look chic and retro rather than old ladyish.

Shocked by the BBC! Your knitting looks like WHAT?

I downloaded a couple of podcasts to listen to today:

The new Stash and Burn podcast (mp3 here), discussing Single Skein September. (The cabled Zara hat the ladies mention is a pattern of my own design knit with two skeins of Filatura di Crosa Zara, color 1503–sorry for not tagging my Flickr photo with this, but the details are all on my Ravelry page–I’ve had a couple of inquiries about it, so I should get around to figuring out how to represent cable crossings across pattern repeats so I can write up the pattern and put it up)

Here’s the hat. It looks screwy around the ribbing because instead of doing a gauge swatch, I knit the hat from the bottom up, then picked up stitches around the bottom and knit the ribbing downwards. If I write up the pattern, it will not use that ultra-ghetto technique.

And the new BBC Women’s Hour podcast where they interview Jane Brocket/yarnstorm about her new book. I was sitting here doing my work and half-listening, and heard Kate Saunders‘s dry, proper British voice say, at minute 2:08:

“I’m overjoyed that I don’t live in these times. I’m thrilled that I don’t have to knit and bake, because I don’t do it very well. My knitting always looks like an old scrotum, no matter how hard I try, and I don’t find it relaxing.”

It startled me like anything! I had to go back and listen again because I was sure it must have been a mondegreen.

The rest of the interview was kind of interesting, too. Basically more of the same yarntempest in a teacup I wrote a bit about earlier. I liked the phrase “pinny porn.” I love that word. Pinny! It always makes me think of The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, where I first encountered it.

Today I also found this Finnish web magazine named Ulla. Look at all those beautiful knitting patterns. (Link from Talvi) I especially like these leafy Bombadil socks and this insanely gorgeous white cabled jacket.

And in my personal knitting news, I am about 1/3 of the way done with the first sleeve on Jess. I’ve finished the fronts, back, and collar already. Nearly there! Plus, I’m proud to say that I achieved my goal and am currently the #1 Google hit for “starfish pig.”

Jess, short row shoulders, Silk Garden, tomatoes

Some bullet points today, because I feel like listing things:

• Jess II: The Re-Jessening continues apace. I finished the back during my lunch break today. I tried short-row shoulder shaping for the first time and it seemed pretty good, except I had some issues with the short rows worked on the wrong side, and got all confused, and had to redo that side. It looks mostly OK now. For future reference (i.e. in a day or two, when I end up doing the the matching short row shoulder shaping for the front), I went and read nona’s short row tutorial again, and looked again at the lovely explanations on let me explaiKnit and knitty. And I looked, but to my surprise, there’s nothing about short rows on TECHknitting yet.
• I wasn’t entirely sure if I should be trying to knit in pattern when I did the last row to knit up all the wraps. Perfectionists, avert your eyes–I think I ended up doing one side plain and the other side in pattern.
• I am now 8.5″ into the left front. Hurray for size 11 needles!
• I used a backwards loop cast-on for the back, and knitted on the cast on for the front. The back looks tidier from the inside, but I think I’ll use the knitted cast-on for the rest of the hems. It’s much less of a pain in the ass to knit into the cast-on row, and it’s harder to pick up and match the stitches to the live stitches when you’re knitting the hem up.

• I love my ball winder. I’ve been winding all my skeins into double-stranded centerpull balls to avoid having to knit from two skeins (the first pair flopped around and got all tangled). And then, after I finished the back, I rewound my loose little heap of leftover yarn into a nice firm ball of merino/alpaca/silk goodness again.

• I re-seamed the collar on Lara. It’s still not perfect, but the little blip of excess neckband is at least at the back of my neck now instead of hanging out at the side.

• My current yarn obsession is Color 269 of Noro Silk Garden, that creamy natural ivory color, as seen on Cosmicpluto’s blog. I want some! But really, I think what it is is that it makes me itch to start knitting my skein of Ivory Sea Silk, in the same color scheme.

• I received Knitty K8′s stitch markers in the mail–forgot if I mentioned that already. They’re pretty! I haven’t had a chance to use them yet.

• I’m baking a dish from I’m baking a dish from Lindsay Bareham’s Supper Won’t Take Long right now, called “Brown Tom.” More here. It’s a lovely feeling to have a casserole baking in the oven, and know you’ll have a hot, savory dinner soon.

There. Done with listing off all kinds of boring stuff for my own benefit.

Starfish Pig: fini. Commence Jess II: The Re-Jessening.

I’ve been a sweater powerhouse lately! I finished the Tilted Duster in two weeks, Lara in two weeks, and I just cast on for Anna Bell/Amelia Raitte/My Fashionable Life’s Jess, which I hope to finish in two weeks as well. It’s become a routine, with all the reading I’ve been doing: cast on at knit night, knit for two weeks, finish by the next one. I might run out of steam soon, though. I guess I should have plenty of one-skein leftovers by that point, perfect for Christmas gift knitting.

Lara

Lara origamied up into a passable cardigan (phew!) She looked like poo when I tried her on pre-blocking. Lots of wrinkly excess cloth in the armpit area, and she made me look decidedly pudgy. I’m hoping blocking will help the fabric drape better. It might also help to not wear a second sweater underneath.

I clipped Lara together with binder clips to keep her in place while seaming, and it worked pretty well, except at the collar, where I had to kind of squish the last little bit in. I’ll see tomorrow if blocking helped that part lie flat, or if I should rip out and re-seam.

Pictures soon, hopefully.

Jess II: The Re-Jessening

…is what I’ve decided to christen my jacket project. I knit Jess in this same yarn (Queensland Uruguay DK, double-stranded, $25 a bag at Littleknits) on these same needles (Boye Needlemaster size 11) for my stepmom this spring. Hers was a sage green color, mine will be a rich burgundy. I loved working with the yarn and I loved everything about the pattern. So despite my general aversion to making the same pattern twice, I decided to go ahead and make the exact same jacket in a different color, and it’s rather liberating–I know the number of skeins I’ll use (I bought one extra just in case), the proper needle size, the mistakes in the pattern, the things to tweak this time around (fewer buttons, longer sleeves, different bindoff for the collar). I knitted on the cast-on stitches and this left nice big loops for picking up and knitting in the hem.

Instead of repeating my thoughts on the pattern, here are the notes I posted on the Craftster knitalong about the original Jess:

“Well, I finished Jess last week, but forgot to take a picture before sending her off to my stepmom!

I used 11.5 skeins of Peru Luxury DK/Queensland Uruguay DK, a wonderful, shiny, bouncy merino/alpaca/silk blend in sage green, double-stranded, and I sewed on wooden buttons instead of doing the crocheted button covers.

My stepmom says it’s too narrow around the chest, but it seemed to fit me fine when I tried it on first, and I think I’m about the same size as her–she probably just likes more ease in her sweaters. The basketweave fabric with the Peru Luxury DK is surprisingly heavy and stretchy and REALLY warm. The sleeves require much more knitting than you would think to get to the proper length–I think they have a tendency to ride up because of the basketweave. I lengthened them to wrist-length instead of having 3/4 length sleeves.

I realized after knitting this that although it’s a jacket, I think it’s a good idea to use something like merino as she suggests, because the basketweave makes the jacket really cling to your arms and I think it could easily get very itchy and uncomfortable if you used a less-than-luscious yarn.

If this makes a difference in your decision to buy or not buy her patterns, they are mostly very clearly written, but I’d say they’re not for beginners (based on looking over Flicca and knitting from Jess)–they’re very concise, and there are some things taken for granted, like that you will know what decreases to use in which situations (I used paired k2tog/ssk decreases worked a stitch in from the edge, and knit a one-stitch garter selvage on the edges to be seamed), or that you will know how to maintain the stitch pattern when increasing or decreasing. Clearly, since I’ve bought two of them already, I think they’re worth the money, but your mileage may vary

Jess is a really nice pattern overall–it does go so quickly on the size 11 needles (the fronts are only 28 sts each in the smallest size!), the basketweave pattern is easy to memorize, and I love the details–the slipped-stitch edge, the buttonholes, the knitted-up hems. If you’re wondering, the collar is knit in seed stitch with a slipped-stitch edging, which wasn’t entirely clear to me from the pattern pictures. I would totally knit this jacket again.

I found a couple of possible errata in the pattern on the smallest size, but I could have just made mistakes myself, since I was usually doing something else while knitting.
- I think the instructions for the setup rows on the basketweave pattern for the back are incorrect–the structure of the pattern should be pretty obvious after you’ve swatched, so no big deal, but I believe the (WS) instructions should read P1, (K2, P2) to last stitch, P1.
- I think the shoulder shaping is reversed–when I started on WS or RS as instructed, I ended up with shoulders slanting upwards away from my neck instead of slanting downwards away from my neck. I had to rip and reknit a few times because I kept following along with the pattern and then realizing after binding off that I had done it backwards.”

Selbuvotter

I also cast on for a pair of Selbuvotter mittens, NHM #7. Terri Shea’s Selbuvotter book is phenomenal–the author reverse-engineered mitten patterns from samples found in various Nordic museums, and has reprinted them, in all their intricate, monochromatic glory.

The charts require all my concentration, which is why I needed to cast on for Jess–the mittens will decidedly not be my brainless pattern, but will be one step below.

I’m knitting them in Knitpicks Telemark in black and cream, on a US 1.5/2.5mm 24″ circ, magic-loop (I can knit only one at a time magic loop with this length needle, unfortunately). I don’t have appropriately sized DPNs (though I didn’t take a gauge swatch, so these may be wrong anyway) and two circs seemed way too fiddly this time around.

Stashing and Destashing

I’ll have to count using up yarn as “destashing.” I used up 11 or 12 skeins in the past two weeks on Lara. Yay!

Then I went and bought more stuff. Argh!

I tested some stitch markers for a woman on Ravelry a month or two back, and now she’s opened up her own store–Knitty K8′s Stitch Markers. I wanted to support her (and I got a discount) so I picked up a set of gray freshwater pearl stitch markers.

Jannette’s Rare Yarns was having a limited-time sale on Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky at a price I couldn’t refuse: $50 for 10 100g skeins. She usually sells them for $70. MSRP for a bag is $159.50. This yarn is discontinued, and I loved working with the DK version so much, I decided I’d try the Chunky. I happened upon the sale when there were only 4 days left (3, now), and decided, after some deliberation, on Damp, which looks to be a slate gray flecked with blue and green. I was thinking of getting Coast, a mid-blue color flecked with brighter blue, but I think the gray will be more versatile. (What does the Chicago Manual of Style say about how to treat yarn color names? I went for italics this time.)

And my mom brought me 6 skeins of Patons SWS and 2 skeins of Patons Nuance when she came to visit last weekend–she wants a cardigan or a vest of some kind. My plan is to exchange the Nuance for more SWS so I’ll (probably) have enough for a garment.

In other news, I saw Stardust last night and I want to move to Stormhold. Or maybe Wall.