Christmas Sweater WIP

About a month ago I mentioned that I was swatching for a sweater that I was hoping to make my husband for Christmas this year. I can't believe it's been a whole month since then, but I thought I'd check in and show you how it's going.

I've got the back just about done, which I'm really excited about as it's nice to see it taking shape. I'm a little nervous, however, because it's taken me just about a month to knit this since I can only knit when my husband isn't home, and I only have a month left to knit the front and both sleeves... But I'm really hoping to take things up a notch and just try knitting a little faster and to make sure I'm really utilizing all of the time that I have. (aka don't stop knitting for any reason). Hopefully in one month today this sweater will be wrapped and under the tree.

The pattern that I ended up using is called Squall and it's by Michelle Wang for Brooklyn Tweed. The pattern is really clearly written out and the cable pattern was really easy to memorize which makes it a joy to knit. I also love that she gives you instructions on how to work the cable without a cable needle because that really helps to speed things along (which I so desperately need at this point!!!)

Anyway, I just wanted to show you how the sweater was looking so far. I hope if any of you are partaking in some festive knitting that it's going well for you! 

How to do a Gauge Swatch

A gauge swatch is something you should really do before you knit anything that you want to make sure will be the size that the pattern says it is. Because of this, when I first started knitting, I was determined never to make anything other than scarves and mittens that you could sort of check and make adjustments to as you went. I was really intimidated by the idea of a gauge swatch because I didn't know how to do one properly and I didn't want to waste my time and materials on knitting a square that would take all day.

Eventually I broke and figured I understood the basic idea, and would do gauge swatches. Unfortunately I was doing them completely wrong. I would knit the number of stitches and rows that the pattern suggested, and hope that it would come out to be 4 inches. I've since learned how to do a gauge swatch in a craftsy class that I took a couple of years ago by Faina Goberstein called "Sizing Knitwear Patterns"  I know that I'm probably not the only one who didn't know how to do a gauge swatch or who might be intimidated by them and I just wanted to make a post sort of explaining how to make a reliable gauge swatch that will help you make sure your finished garments will fit you once you're done knitting them.

Firstly, cast on enough stitches so that you will for sure have between 4 to 6 inches of knitting, and then cast on an additional few stitches for an outer boarder. I will usually do between 4 and 8 stitches on each side. 

Next you want to knit the bottom border for your swatch in something like garter stitch or ribbing so your swatch doesn't curl at the bottom. When your border is about 4 rows long you can start working in the pattern that you are swatching for. For this example I'm swatching in stockinette stitch. The first and last 2-4 stitches are going to be your side boarders, so you wanna work your first and last 2-4 stitches in something that doesn't curl like garter stitch, or seed stitch in the case of this example.

Once you have about 4 rows of your stitch pattern work you want to start sewing in guide lines to make measuring at the end easier. Take a waste yarn in a contrasting color that is about 5 or 6 times the width of your swatch and using a yarn needle and thread half of the waste yarn into a stitch that is 4 or 5 stitches from the border and leave the other half of the waste yarn as a tail. The waste yarn isn't going to be knit, it's just going to be woven into the knitting and will be able to move freely. 

You now want to thread the waste yarn along the other stitches on the left hand needle to mark off the total number of stitches you'l be counting. You want to consistently leave the same number of stitches between the marked stitches to make counting easier in the end. I like to mark every 5th stitch.

You want to stop marking off stitches about 4 or 5 stitches before the border stitches start.

Next knit across the row, careful not to knit the waste yarn into the stitches, and then because I marked off every 5th stitch, I also want to mark every 5th row, so I'm going to knit 3 more rows.

My next row to work is now the 5th row. Because I want to mark this row I'm going to take that long tail we left at the start to mark of the stitch on the left hand needle that's in line with the first stitch we marked off.  Then I'm going to take the end of the yarn that's where we stopped marking off stitches at the end of the work and I'm going to use that to make the stitch on the left hand needle that is directly above the last stitch we marked off.

Keep marking off every 5th row as you knit your gauge swatch so that you are marking off a square in the middle of your swatch.

Once you have knit between 4-6 inches of rows, and you want to finish your square, work to the next '5th' row and mark it off as you have been. Now before you work that row, take the waist yarn from the beginning of the work and mark off every 5th stitch the way that you did at the start of the swatch. Both ends of the waist yarn should now be coming out the same stitch and should form the corner of your marked off square.  

Now you want to wash and block your swatch the way that you will be washing and blocking your finished piece. I let mine soak in lukewarm water for half on hour, and then laid in on a towel to dry.

Your Gauge Swatch is Now Complete!! 

On to the Measuring.

Instead of counting your stitches within a 4 inch section on your knitting, you just have to measure from one guide line to the other. You can count your marked stitches to see how many stitches are in that section. I have 5 marked stitches, 5x5=25, so there are 25 stitches in that section. I measured across at a few different places to make sure it was accurate and got 5.5 inches. If I have 25 stitches, divided by 5.5 inches, then I have 4.55 stitches per inch which I can now use to see if my gauge is correct for the pattern I wanted to use with these needles and this yarn.

 Likewise I can see that I have 5 marked rows, so I have 25 rows in 4 inches. 25 divided by 4 is 6.25 rows per inch.

I know that was a pretty wordy and picture heavy post but I hope that it was helpful to any of you who may have been having trouble with gauge swatches. Thanks for reading! 

First Attempts at Sewing

Lately I've been doing something a little different, and have been trying my hand at sewing. I have always wanted to sew, and can even envision maybe sewing halloween costumes for if I have kids one day, but I started to think that it was never going to happen because all of my past attempts have been really unsuccessful. Really, I had given up on sewing, and if it wasn't for my sister who can both knit and sew incredibly well, I don't think I would have tried sewing again. 

My sister is both incredibly supportive, and persuasive, she mentioned that if I knew how to sew I would be able to make cozy wool skirts that really wouldn't look the same at all if they were knit, and that was enough for me. We went to the fabric store and picked up some wool fabric, and then she helped me with every step of making this skirt, and now it's done! I'm so incredibly excited that I actually sewed a garment, and it worked out.

The finished skirt!! While I was making the skirt I figured that it would look like a learning project and that I would never wear it, but it turned out so well that I actually think I will wear it quite often!

While sewing this skirt my sister and I also realized that my aging, very basic sewing machine was probably reaching the end of it's life. At least the end of it's life with me. The fabric just wasn't feeding very nicely, and certain things were just not possible to do with that machine, so we did a little research and I ended up getting a new machine! 

This is the Singer Fashion Mate 7256, and I absolutely love it. It is much quieter and smoother than my last machine an it has a ton of fun stitches to choose from as an added bonus. I think I'll be using this machine for a really long time.

Playing around, trying out some of the decorative stitches.

It's actually been really nice to kind of have a second hobby so that I can walk away from knitting for a few hours, and then come back to it refreshed. Not that I can take too many breaks though as Christmas is fast approaching. I'm hoping though to have enough time to make a cute Christmas-y skirt soon so I can wear it when the Christmas season really kicks off. 

Gauge Swatches and Secret Christmas Knitting

I wanted to do something a little bit different this year for Christmas, and with how happy my husband was with his hand knit hat, I figured I'd knit him a whole sweater. Thankfully I decided this in September, and would have tons of time to complete it, even though I can only knit it when he is not home.

I remembered that there was a pattern that he mentioned liking when I was scrolling through Ravelry one day so I figured that would be a good one to make, cause I already knew that he would like it! I ordered the yarn straight away and was so excited to get my gauge swatch finished up so I could start the sweater. Problem was, after I blocked the gauge swatch it had WAY too many stitches per inch. Like, it was shockingly far off. I'd never had that happen before. I tried making a second swatch with bigger needles and it was still way too far off to make the sweater. It seemed like by the time I got the gauge swatch right I'd be knitting with huge needles, and this would be a see through sweater. 

I decided to abandon the sweater, which was a really tough call because I was really excited to make him the one he wanted as a surprise. I searched Ravelry and found another sweater pattern that I think looks really nice, and seems like it's sort of his style.

The swatches for this one worked out much better. I still had to make a second swatch because the first one was a tiny bit off, but I'm completely certain that when the second swatch is done blocking it will be spot on, and I'll finally get to cast on. (A month later!!) 

I guess the moral of this story is to always knit your gauge swatches, because if I hadn't, I'd be half way to making a sweater that would have been even too small for me and wouldn't have made for a very Merry Christmas. 

I've also decided to finally take my family members' advice and start saving my swatches to eventually be used in a blanket! I thought it would take basically my lifetime to save up that many, but I already have a nice little pile going. I'm excited to see how the blanket will eventually look and I like that each swatch is a little piece of a larger project that I made or - in the case of the tree motif up top - didn't make. I think it would be cool to have a big blanket with a little piece of all of those projects in it. 

I ended up making a pile for worsted weight or heavier type yarns, and a little pile for fingering weight swatches. I'll probably make two blankets eventually so they will be somewhat consistent throughout, even if just in yarn thickness. 

What do you do with your gauge swatches? Keep them forever for reference? Rip them out and reclaim the yarn?

A Day at a Corn Maze

On the weekend I spent the day with my sister at a corn maze to take engagement photos for her with all the pretty fall colours. It was a super chilly day, but it was so worth it to get the photos, and to get to play around in the corn maze.

The view standing on tower at the start of the maze to help you get your bearings.

The corn maze was actually a lot of fun and it was just challenging enough to keep us guessing. It was fun to take turns guessing which path to take and to joke with other people in the maze that, going through beaten down paths in the corn was in fact "utilizing a resource", and certainly not "cheating". 

I was also way too excited for the petting zoo. I really do think in another life I must have had a whole farm or something cause I absolutely love to go and visit farm animals any chance I get. I'm actually not even totally certain I won't have farm animals in this life time.

Firstly we got to visit a pure white Llama who was quite a joker and would turn and face his butt to anyone who was standing by his pen for long enough in his opinion.

Next we saw some adorable and very friendly baby goats who let us pet them and hang out with them for a while. They were amazingly soft and this one had the most incredible bright blue eyes!

Next we finally got to visit with the sheep! Which are probably my favourite animal in the entire world, and not just because they keep me warm with soft fuzzy wools. They had about five baby sheep in the pen and they were all really friendly and sweet. It was nice to get to sit with them and pet them. It was surprisingly difficult to leave the little sheep and I only half jokingly told my sister we were going to have to pull around the car 'cause I was taking one home.

Lastly we went through their massive steel building that was entirely filled with pumpkins on bails of hay and lit with all kinds of pretty white lights. We managed to leave with only a few pumpkins each which I think was an exercise in restraint for us as they had so many different ones! It was nice to pick out pumpkins that were grown and picked right there as well. It was also really nice to get to pick something out and take it home, even if it couldn't have been a sheep.

Different ways to De-Pill a Sweater

Now that it's Fall I've started making soups, and lighting candles, and pulling out my sweaters. I basically lived in one cardigan that I made last year and I didn't realize how rough it looked when I put it away. I used a yarn that was a little bit delicate so it pills fairly easily and I guess I must have got used to it or something cause I really didn't realize that it was totally covered in little fuzz balls when I put it away.

Now that I'm actually seeing how bad it really is I wanted to de-pill the sweater before I started wearing it. I brought out a little machine that says "Dritz" on it that my Mom gave me and, even though I only used it once last year, it was totally dead when I tried to turn it on. I was a little hesitant to shell out and buy two new C batteries to bring it back to life and ended up finding a little pumice stone that was advertised to remove pills from sweaters which I thought would be nice because then it wouldn't take batteries and it couldn't die at inopportune times.

I must say I was a little disappointed because the pumice stone really grabbed and pulled the whole sweater, not just the little pills. I ended up holding the sweater with one hand while gently swiping the stone just above the sweater to catch the pills, which seemed to work okay, but I wasn't as impressed as I guess I was hoping to be.

I gave in and paid the $5 for the batteries (not as bad as I thought it would be) and tried using the little de-fuzzing machine. Just wow, I think when my Mom gave me the little machine it must have had mostly dead batteries because it was for sure working better than it did before. I was just gliding it over the sweater, kind of like a tiny iron, and it would quickly whisk away the little fuzz balls collecting them in a tiny lint trap like a dryer (which the pumice stone also had no way of doing). So, while I wanted to like the natural one-time-expense option, I guess I'm going to be using the little "Dritz" machine from now on, and I'll pretty happily buy batteries for it.

Anyway, that was just my experience with a couple different ways to de-pill sweaters that I just wanted to share. Hopefully it was somewhat interesting or a tiny bit helpful for someone who might be considering picking up something to de-fuzz their own sweaters for Fall.

Fall Time Hat Knitting

Yesterday was actually the first day of Fall, which is absolutely my favourite season. I do really love summer because it's the only time that we get reasonably warm weather but watching all of the leaves changing, getting to light fall candles, wear cozy wooly layers, and make fall type foods is totally worth the brisk mornings. 

To be fair, so far this has been the warmest fall I can remember. Yesterday we actually got to 26 degrees celsius which is like a hot summer day and, while I really hope that this lovely warm first week of fall is the foreshadowing of an uncharacteristically mild winter, I also do realize that the weather is going to cool off a little bit in the near future so I've decided to knit a quick wooly project for my husband to enjoy.

He's recently mentioned that he really doesn't have a winter hat for this year, and I figured that rather than buying one, I would make him one. I went through my yarn stash and found some "Briggs and Little" worsted weight yarn to make a striped winter hat for him and I've been following Jared Flood's "Turn a Square" pattern that is actually free on Ravelry, and it's turning out really well so far! I think I'm at least as excited as he is to see how the hat turns out, but it's kind of a nice feeling that he's also excited to be getting the handmade hat once it's finished.

Broken Needle Dilemma

The weather has (sadly) been cooling off very quickly these past couple of weeks so I've been working full steam ahead on getting my Braid Hills cardigan done. Yesterday I ran into an unfortunate problem when, while working on the first shoulder, the part of the interchangeable needle that screws on the the cable needle broke off.

When it broke I just sat there staring at it, not even really sure how the cable had come away from the needle that I had in my hand. It was kind of a tricky spot for the needle to break, because I really didn't want to leave the shoulders on waste yarn until I could get a replacement needle in. So I decided to press on, seeing as these are fairly short rows anyway, so I've now finished all but the last shoulder that I'm knitting now with one needle being no longer than a cable needle.

After I finish these shoulders, however, I'm for sure going to have to wait on my new needles to start the sleeves, but at least I've got them ordered and on there way. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm working away on it again.

Working with Cables

I definitely go through phases when it comes to the different kinds of knitting that I love, for instance I went through a really long lace phase where for months I would knit nothing unless it was in a lace pattern, and made a crazy long worsted weight lace scarf. Then I went through a colorwork phase where I was literally not interested in texture at all and could only be happy if I was using two or more colours at a time.

The phase I'm currently in has probably been the longest yet, with no real foreseeable end in sight. For the past six months I have been entirely caught up in cables. I've been making cabled socks, working on my braid hills cardigan, and have been staring shamelessly at all kinds of lovely cables on pinterest. I've even been going through stitch dictionaries to pick out different cables that I really like to swatch up just to see how they look.

These were both done up in Louet 'gems' which I loved using and was really happy with the stitch definition. I loved the middle panel on the first one so much I used it again in the second swatch to see how it looked with different stitches. Playing around with these cables has got me really inspired and I'm even considering the idea of trying to make my very own cabled pullover design. Hopefully that will be in the works over the next little while.

Thanks for reading!

Starting My Braid Hills Cardigan

This summer has absolutely been flying by! I'm shocked at how quickly both July and August have gone, and can't believe we're staring down September and the start of Autumn. Lately I've been trying to get out as much as possible to go camping or to the beach to enjoy the warm weather while we have it. I recently finished spinning that yarn I was talking about a couple posts ago and so I got to start my new cardigan while we were camping recently. I'm so excited with how my handspun yarn is knitting up, and I'm in love with this "Braid Hills" cardigan by Kate Davies. I can't wait to see how the finished sweater looks.

I'm so loving the cables beside the button band! Although summer is coming to an end faster than I'd like, hopefully I'll have this new cardigan done by the time it starts cooling off.

Icelandic Fest 2014

Over the weekend we took a bit of a trip and went to Gimli where they were having there annual Icelandic Fest. Now, I'm not really sure why, but I am entirely too taken with Iceland. Over the past few years I've learned a bit about it here and there and I'm just in love with their culture and their heritage. It helps as well that I love Icelandic knitting and Icelandic sheep are certainly the prettiest and cutest looking sheep I've ever seen and would love to have a whole flock of them if I only had a good sized plot of land.

When we got there in the morning the "Village" that they set up was still closed, so we went to the coffee shop in town to kill some time and get some much needed caffeination.

It was getting close to 30 degrees celsius  outside, so we all opted for Iced drinks, but I'm curious what an "Icelandic Fog" is and think I will have to give it a try the next time we are visiting that town. 

After getting some coffee we went one of their larger shops that has really nice clothes and books and gift type things and I discovered they also have a whole wall of Icelandic Yarn! 

I've never tried Istex's Einband yarn, which is there light fingering weight yarn, so I decided to grab a couple natural looking colours to try out. 

I'm thinking this will be my new winter hat for this year. I'm really excited to work with their Einband yarn as I love the Alafoss and Lett Lopi already. 

Finally the Village was open and we got to go in and look around! They have many different tents that are set up to look like what a house would have looked like back in the Viking days.

I am so in love with the blanket on this bed! It really makes me want to get into embroidery.

Next we saw some chairs covered in furs and some wooden shields.

Some women in costume who were cooking some traditional looking food.

More women in costume who were cooking fish on one side of the fire, and naturally dying Icelandic yarn on the other side! 

Some beautiful Icelandic Yarn. I didn't get a chance to ask, but I'm thinking that they maybe spun and dyed this themselves.

We also saw a woman doing a type of weaving I'd never seen before. This is called Tablet Weaving, and instead of using the kind of loom I'm used to seeing, they have yarn threaded through holes in the corners of square tablets that they can flip and change which yarn is on top to create a pattern in their weaving. Because the projects on this type of weaving can only be an inch or two across it seems, they use it to make beautiful wool woven ribbons that are used to decorate tunics. I was quite excited about this and while I was hoping to try weaving one day, this makes me want to get a loom as soon as possible.

 It was just a really incredible day, and we had such a fun time getting to look around and see all of the traditional looking displays. And now I have a new project in my line up, so hopefully I'll have a new hat to show you soon.

Spinning Yarn for a Sweater

I am not what you would call an expert spinner as I've really only been spinning for a year and a half and my yarn tends to have a "handmade" look to it. Because of this, I usually just spin 100 grams at a time for the fun of it, and usually make a pair of socks or a hat out of the yarn that I get. I decided to challenge myself this time, however, to actually make a sweaters worth of yarn in a specific weight for a pattern I want to make. I'm really excited because the singles are looking really even, and I'm almost done!

I'm pretty excited to get this yarn spun up and dyed, and to get to start knitting this new sweater!