I was going to post some things about the bulky cabled cardigan, but blogger keeps losing my blog and posts! I need to get out of here. Quick.
Any suggestions? Help?

Soooo, what was I going to say about the sweater? Oh yeah, I got a few emails and comments asking about the sizing and yarn.

Yarn and Ease
The yarn is handpaintedyarn's pure merino bulky 6ply, a yarn much thinner than what Stef used in the pattern. The pattern's gauge is 2.5 spi while mine was around 3spi (it changed a bit after washing). I knew I didn't want to double the yarn, but I also knew what fit I wanted. After looking at the number of stitches left for the body (after separating the sleeves), I knew knitting my size would leave me with four inches of ease. If I knit it at my gauge though I would get negative ease, three inches to be exact. Sounds insane, but that was perfect! I'll always tell you to go with negative ease, I'm all about a more fitted look. "But three inches is too much!" you say. The other thing I say is knit a big swatch and wash it! I knew that my sweater would grow width wise and, to a lesser degree, length wise. After all was said and done (and after adjusting for the button bands) I ended up with only one inch of negative ease. After wearing it for a week (yeah, I've been wearing it all week) it's the same size as my chest (uhh, zero ease?). I could have gone with the smaller size and been just as happy with the end result.

Length
It was all me! It was my mistake when the sweater was too short the next time, not the pattern's. I measured it while it was still on the needle and might have, possibly, maybe stretched it while measuring. Blame the knitter. Try it on as you knit! If you use this yarn, then I'll warn you that it's going to grow after washing. My sweater looked HUGE after I took it out of the water. I figured it was the combination of it being merino, garter stitch, and wet. Luckily it springs back into itself, so all was saved (and my swatch had predicted it!). The cables ended up giving me some more length after they were washed. Washed cables = less puffiness.

Buttons
I picked up the buttons at Kraemer's while visiting for Thanksgiving. Their website doesn't have much, but it's an interesting store. It's a mill that sells it's own yarn while also carrying things like Plymouth, Cherry Hill, and some other brands I don't remember at the moment. Anyway, that's where the mystery buttons are from.

I probably made no sense in this post, but that's because I'm trying to write fast so blogger doesn't lose my post (did I mention blogger sucks?). I hope this is helpful to someone out there! Feel free to ask any other questions.

Tomorrow....Hourglass!

Posted by bitter purl at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Pattern: Bulky Cabled Sweaterby Glampyre
Yarn: HPY 6ply Merino in Velvet Grapes (5.5 hanks)
Needles: 8mm, 7mm, and 5.5mm Addi Turbos
Date Started: 1.05.05
Date Finished: 1.26.05

I've been wearing this all weekend and it feels great. It's comfy, warm, and soft; basically everything I wanted out of it. Hell, I even got a few compliments while out, which is always a boost to the old ego (especially when they didn't assume I made it). My new nifty sweater shaver was a must for this yarn and now I've gone a little crazy with it and started shaving every project or swatch I have laying around. Who knew it could be so addicting?

The bulky merino is one of those yarns that scares you after washing. The sweater looked like it grew by six inches while wet and I started to freak out until I remembered my swatch doing the same thing. As it dried, the merino sprung back to the right measurements. I still think I'll reblock it and get a little more length out of the sleeves and maybe the body. Actually, the one thing I want to redo is the buttonhole band. I picked up the same number of stitches and placed the buttonholes as the pattern states, but I'm not feeling that bottom buttonhole. I think I'm going to reknit to space them out differently or at least add another one so I can close up the hem. Well, maybe I'll just sew on another button and just use the stitches as the buttonhole.

Posted by bitter purl at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (46)

This basically decided it for me, but I really did think about adding the length to the body. I wasn't sure if the proportions were right for longer ribbing, but if you look at the top picture you'll see I found a similar sweater with the ribbing you all love. Ok so it works, it helps that this sweater doesn't have any waist shaping to worry about and that it's knit from the top so I can do this sort of thing. I guess I could have left the length alone, but I kept hearing 'fat man in a little coat' in my head. Just because it's short it doesn't mean it's right, it needs to hit at the right spot.

So why am I going on about this? I guess to say that I do think a lot about this stuff, maybe too much, and that I'm very particular about what I like and don't like hence the indecision. The three inches of ribbing was quick enough to add, so I went ahead and knit the button bands. Hell, some could say I'm done, but of course I'm not. I still need to decide what to do with the sleeves; to aggressively block or knit some length into them (and how)? Then we get to do some serious blocking, some possible shaving (target here I come), and then pick some buttons.

Posted by bitter purl at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (25)

I've always been indecisive, I never know what I want to eat or even if I want to eat. Ask me what I want to do if we go out and all you'll get is a blank stare. Some may confuse this with apathy and sure, maybe it has a tinge of it, but really I'm just terrible when it comes to deciding things. It's so bad that I coulnd't even decide what to title this post, see the witty winner I chose. Anyway, when it comes to knitting, where every step of the way is full of decisions, I usually half ass my way through it and see what happens. My latest question: how many unflattering pics can I take of myself?

That was easy, four. But that's not what I really want to know. I finished the sleeves and basically like where they are (I know they will grow when I wash it), but now that I can actually wear the cardigan I notice that the length is all wrong. It's not the fault of the pattern, nope I was just an idiot and measured while I pulled on it... when it was still on the needles. Yep, smart move. I know I need to add at least two inches on this sucker (that's how much extra I thought I had), but the question is where? Do I rip all the ribbing and continue with the body for two inches and then add the waist band? Or do I just tink back three rows to the end of the ribbing and make the waistband extra deep? I think I know what the answer is, but, uhh, I rather hear it from someone else.

I'm so close to finishing, I can taste it. After the length situation, all I have left are the button bands. I just needed to let this sit while I figured out (ie. beg you for advice) what to do next. Well actually there was another reason, a very annoying reason. I couldn't even tell how short it really was till I took these pics. Want to why? No mirrors*! There are no full-length mirrors in my house. I assure you this wasn't my design. In the meantime I picked up my hourglass again and finally casted on for the body.

I was craving some boring stst in the round, especially now that my man Jack is back. I can't afford to look away or not pay attention for a second, so this will be my '24' project. I still havent' finished watching this week's episodes (we decided to split the four hours and just watch one a night, so no spoilers!) so this sweater still has two more hours of growth ahead of it.

To save me some time and aggravation, I decided to cast on using two needles. I'm using the cable of the longer one as a foundation, when I finish the length of the hem I can just fold it and knit the stitches together. No sewing and no provisonal cast on. Genius.

*apparently the boy was traumatized with too many horror movies at a young age, so no mirrors for us except for the bathroom mirror. apparently he thinks one day he'll look and see another face staring back at him. I don't think he understands the whole 'growing old' concept if you ask me.

Posted by bitter purl at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (31)

Dating the son of a dentist doesn't sound exciting or terribly interesting, but somehow I picked the one that keeps supplying me with blog and party stories to no end. Case in point? Before xmas I got a call from the dentist telling me how my tooth was apparently on a tour and everyone was so interested in it (way to make me feel like a freak!). This confused and annoyed me, what the hell was my tooth doing with other people? Hell, why is it even still around? Nevermind that, what really got me was what he said next: "I made you something for xmas!" My response? "It's not a necklace is it?!" I didn't know what to expect. I already hated this tooth for causing me four hours of pain and torture, now I have to wear it like my personal albatross? How do you even match your outfits to a tooth? Maybe it's cool for Angelina to wear a vial of blood around her neck, but I didn't want to go there. (Once you start wearing your teeth as accessories, you need to dress differently, get new friends, get a whole new lifestyle really. That's just too much work for me right now.)

Thankfully, it wasn't a necklace. Instead, I got my tooth back in a weird form of a memento mori (or would it be memento denti?). Maybe he failed to understand that I didn't want my tooth back, I mean if I wanted to keep it then I wouldn't have gone through surgery, right? Anyway, now I have a visual tool for my story of torture, I think it makes it very climatic when I whip this out at the part I say "and after hours of not budging..."

Actually looking at this tooth makes me wonder if it held some sort of magical power that I now lack. I haven't felt like myself since the extraction, my knitting is taking longer, my blogging has taken a nose-dive, and don't even mention housework. Sure, I could blame all of it on work, but no I think it's the tooth. Once it was ripped out of me I lost a little part of myself (har-dee-har-har). I bet this one contained knitting wisdom, which is now stuck in a little clear box. Look at how big that one root is! You can't tell me that wasn't a lot of knowledge in there. I have one more wisdom tooth left, I'm scared to find out what power that one contains.

In the meantime, my knitting continues at a slow pace. I've only had maybe an hour to knit at night, but my progress isn't too shabby. When we last saw the cardigan I had just split the sleeves, I think. It's grown a little since then.

I feel very theo huxtable in this pic, but I do what I have to do. I'm knitting the sleeves flat so that's why the one sleeve looks a little funky. I'm undecided about the length, I'm always undecided about length. I'm going to block it before I pick up the button bands to see if I should add some more or if blocking will add enough. I'm knitting this at a different gauge for my size, making it a few inches smaller than what the pattern calls for. I like my sweaters with little ease, but should bulky sweaters be like that? This is dangerous ground I tell ya. I'll need to think about this over the weekend. I sorely miss that wisdom tooth.

Posted by bitter purl at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

"an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence"

I'm a binger, I'll admit it. Especially when it comes to colors, all of a sudden everything must be the same color. This past summer it was red; everything I bought, be it shoes, makeup, vases, or yarn, had to be red. Lately it has all been about purple. How else would you explain my new shoes?

>

and, umm, these?

My obsession carries over to my yarn stash as well.

I obviously have some sort of problem. To remedy the stash kind, really the only one I can fix, I started knitting the yarn up. After a two week hiatus I finally picked up the needles on Thursday. A sane person would have picked up one of their wip's and gone their merry way. I think we can agree that sane I'm not. Sure I could finish a sweater I already started, but somehow I decided I needed a quick project (shh, don't tell me how if I actually worked on things I started then they would be quick and finished. we don't take kindly to that sort of talk around here). A sweater maybe? How about a cardigan?

I usually wouldn't use a variegated yarn for a project with cables, but I love how this one is working out. This is Glampyre's Bulky Cabled Cardigan that I've been wanting to knit for months now. The yarn is hpy's 6ply bulky merino, which I originally was going to use for one of those UO/Craftster shrugs thing, but my hatred for ribbing kept me from casting on. I'm glad I didn't, this sweater knits up pretty fast (I already have the sleeves on scrap yarn) and is giving me my cable fix. Unfortunately, I won't be able to work on it tomorrow either (I'll explain why tomorrow night) so maybe it won't get done till next weekend or the weekend after that. >

Posted by bitter purl at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)