Brambleberry Sweater is DONE!

After 3 visits to The Mountain (2009, 2010, and 2011), endless hours at home, three swatches that I blocked (thank you, Brooke), the encouragement of a deadline of the October AKG meeting, and 2 viewings of the last episode of "Lost" before I, too, changed my subscription to Netflix, I can finally say that I have a finished sweater!! It is lovely, it is blocked, it fits, and I have worn it out to the North Georgia mountains where it kept me warm, warm, warm. And best of all (besides the fact that it fits!), it is the perfect orangey-red color that perfectly fits with this time of the year. The yarn is kind of red, but that red that is kind of orange, and there are flecks of yellow in the reddish yarn. So, without further ado, here is my beautiful new sweater in all of its orangey-red cabled glory:

It's almost a work of art, no?

Here's another view, same sweater, from the front, too:

I really can't believe it's done. And I made this!

And really, I must take this opportunity to apologize for the long length of time between posts, from Sept. 11 to now. One of the weekends I spent out of town at my college reunion (25 years!); another visiting an alpaca farm where yes, I did come away with more than just 'paca poo; one Saturday at the Decatur Beer Fest and the next day recovering (no more absinthe. Ever.); and one weekend spent with friends in North Georgia. All these are worthy causes and reasons, and then there's my new day job (part-time, but then my web orders have started to go through the roof which means after-work is spent filling them), so my blogging time has been compromised. Not my project, time, mind you - several pictures will make their ways to this blog very, very soon with accompanying posts. Not this time, though; this time is my long awaited "My Brambleberry Sweater is Done!" post.

So yes, this is the first sweater where I've actually followed all of the experts' advice and BLOCKED my swatch before I selected my needles. Which was an earlier post and has resulted in a class that I'll be teaching in November about gauge. It was a case of using not just the correct needle size (that didn't seem to matter), but using the correct type of needle: the plastic needle made the entire cable just totally collapse and loose its structure, but the wooden needle helped bolster up the cable and keep its "body." Really amazing, that.

And this was the first sweater pattern I've ever come across that has the even-numbered rows as the right rows (knit right to left) as opposed to odd rows being the right rows (wrong side vs. right side of a garment). That called for some interesting verbage from me when I started to knit the sleeves one late-ish night this year at The Mountain and I realized my mistake and had to rip out those eight rows and start again. I mean, it wasn't as though I didn't have notes and arrows to that end! The designer also added selvedge stitches to her pattern, so you cast on 2 extra stitches but the pattern and directions exclude those stitches when telling you what to do. And it's good to have those selvedge stitches because they're needed for the seaming. But more on seaming later.

This pattern was a fairly easy cable sweater to knit: the design remains the same (cable on the 2nd row) for the first 10 or so pattern repeats. A few rows before you begin to decrease for the armholes, you then "walk" the cable over, so that the K4 P2 rib becomes the new cable twist, and continues in this way for 3 or 4 rows until it "walks" back to the original cable pattern. This contributes greatly to the movement and attractiveness of this sweater; some would say rhythm.

Here is the detail from where the cables "walk" and then return to their original journey.
This is a slightly lighter shade than the actual yarn,
but there really are that many colors in this yarn. Amazing.

I did adjust the length of the sweater, as I am a short person and even though I knit the size M (44"), I still needed to shorten the length so that it would not resemble a small dress. This of course caused me some consternation when I began the armhole decreases, but I took copious notes about the adjustments I did to the back that proved handy when I did the front. I also finished knitting the front while listening to the audio version of Watership Down earlier this year in order to keep familiarity with this pattern and also so that I would not be making those crucial armhole-decreases-while-keeping-cable-pattern decisions with adult beverages clouding my judgment.

And as I've posted before, I'm really really really glad that I knit the sleeves at the same time. The slight aggravation of remembering which row I was on and which ball of yarn was minimal compared to the huge aggravation I would have had if I had had to remember which row increase I did when. Oh, and I did not do the cable pattern on the sleeve edges - I learned from my former teacher, Christina, that a cable sweater does not necessarily have to continue its cable pattern under the arm. So I just continued knitting the K4 P2 rib pattern as I increased the sleeves and it made a lot of difference with time, aggravation, and ease of wearing.

Then there was the knitting it together. Before I did so, and starting the day before my birthday and visit to the alpaca farm, I began to weave in the yarn ends. I HATE weaving in yarn ends. It's a pain. It's kind of meticulous, kind of mindless, but you have to pay some attention to what you're doing and it just seems never-ending. *Blech* I wanted to weave in enough so that by the time I had finished sewing up the seams, I wouldn't have that many yarn ends to weave in before I blocked it. *Blech* again. The discipline of martial arts training kicked in here, and I meticulously wove in yarn ends that weren't on the seam line. Some of them, anyway.

Which brings me to seaming. Ah, seaming. There are people who hate to sew up seams. Me, not so much. I don't mind seams - remember, I use to frame needlework and THAT can be meticulous and all-encompassing. But I made the mistake I've made in the past, where I decide what a shame it is to waste all that yarn at the shoulder join, and wouldn't it be better to just knit a portion of the sleeve seam?? Well, no, no it wouldn't. And here's why: it bulks up. No matter how careful you are, no matter how much easing you're doing to the portion closest to where you began to join the sleeve with this method, you're going to wind up with one side flat and one side with 5-10 extra stitches that you need to answer for. So the solution is to take it out and re-try it. And the same thing happens. What is that definition of insanity? I knit one portion of one sleeve during the final episode of "Lost" using this method. The entire 2 hours of the final episode of "Lost." When will I learn??

You guessed it - I put it down, picked it back up, and with that strong martial arts discipline I learned oh-so-many years ago, I started from the edge, made the center of the sleeve ribbing (in between the cables) match with the shoulder seam, for both sleeves, all while re-watching the final episode of "Lost." Inset sleeves are tricky in the best of circumstances, but inset sleeves that include cable/ribbed patterns require meticulous attention to which stitches you are seaming to which. So here is the end result:

Since the seams here are obvious, even to the non-knitter,
I had to be very, very careful with making sure they matched.
Exactly.

And here is a close-up, showing sleeve detail of which I am especially proud:

Sleeve seaming detail

Of course, that meant that I had to weave in and cut off otherwise perfectly good, long yarn ends that all meet at the shoulder join, but I'll just have to get over it.

And another thing of which I am extremely proud are the side seams. They are almost invisible and I really, really have to say I am proud of the extra time I took to make them almost as perfect as any stockinette stitch sweater (I've never seamed on reverse stockinette, a.k.a. purl, stitches before:

Side seam detail. You almost can't see it. Go me!

Then there is the neck. Someday, I may re-knit the neck. The cover picture of this sweater shows a very, very small rolled neck. Not for me. Mine was much longer; almost too long. The neck is knit after the shoulder seams are joined (giving you a vest-like sweater), and this one called for picking up and knitting with smaller needles, starting with a K1P1 rib, then decreasing, then knitting until it reaches where you want it to reach. Which on me, after 6 rounds, was about to the top of my collarbone. Yup, I have a large-ish shoulder-to-neck measurement, and therefore need more neckline than the pattern anticipated. And it's not the pattern's fault, either - it's a by-product of not knitting enough sweaters for myself and knowing how things will finish up. So what this means is, someday I may decide to undo and re-knit the neckline, using the same size needles and continuing with the pattern for at least 2 pattern repeats (2"), then starting on the formal neckline. But not now - now is just for wearing and admiring and receiving (I hope!) complements from those who see me in it. So here's the neckline in question; knitters out there, let me know your thoughts on the necessity of re-knitting this neckline at some point in time:

Longer than I anticipated, this is the rolled-neck ending to this sweater

Oh, and the other amazing thing about this sweater, and another reason I chose to knit the size that was close to my bust size instead of L (48"): it relaxed after I blocked it. I was really beginning to worry that I had knit an M and the sizing gods would punish me by having it be too tight and with too-tight cables. Now that would be embarrassing. But no, it relaxed both out and down, so the sleeves reach a little bit below my wrists, enough for me to pull my hands in when it's cold outside (like in the N. GA mountains), and the horizontal is eased so that it fits comfortably around my 44" (pattern size M) bustline.

Hurrah! It is finished! And just because it's my blog post and I want to, here is the Brambleberry sweater in all of its finished glory (again):

*SIGH*

Ongoing Projects

First, my intricately cabled sweater made from Blackwater Abbey Yarns using the pattern Brambleberry to make a nice, pretty, long-sleeved, warm sweater. I've knitted it for the past 3 Mountain trips, and I'd like to bring a new sweater along in February. Which means I need to finish it and sew the seams together (not necessarily an easy task, as the cables will need to match up, but it will be worth the work), and I'll probably sew the seams while listening to a book on tape to keep my mind focused.

In the meantime, I just have to say . . . I am so tired of these darn sleeves! I mean really! I'm at the point in the pattern, the sleeves, which seem to be the longest part of any project. They just keep going . . . and going . . . and going. And I'm bored with the pattern, and I just have to keep knitting and remembering to decrease on every even row, and I'm so bored!

To give you an idea, here's my previous blog picture of the sleeves from earlier this year:

Brambleberry Sleeves, about half-way finished

And as I said before, I'm knitting the sleeves at the same time so that all the increases are the same, decreases are the same, possible mistakes are the same . . . and that basically the sleeves match. All well and good. And it's not exactly mindless knitting, even though I'm only cabling on R2 since I've decided not to do the cable pattern underneath my arms because really, what would be the point? I know that the pattern has this lovely cable that floats along around the arm, but there's also a lot of bulk that way and this sweater is going to be bulky enough with the yarn being what it is. Plus there's the lack of being able to see the cables when wearing the sweater, and the yarn will be rubbing as I move my arms which will make the cables less pristine.

So, with a spring of knitting and knitting, and seemingly endless more knitting, and working on two socks for a knit-along on Ravelry, I've procrastinated these sleeves till now. They're almost done - I'm on the last decrease row before I bind off. And then my wish will be fulfilled: my sleeves will be done!!

Here they are as of last night (picture taken this morning):

One more row . . . that's all they need . . .

Which I think I can accomplish tonight while I catch up on Season 6 of "Lost" (I watched most of it but not all, and I was driving back from New Orleans during the final episode) tonight. And then there will be much rejoicing!! Hurrah!

Another piece that I'm working on is a companion to my completed Wren in the Furze and the Blue Tit, both Eva Rosenstand kits. I think I started this little bird last year, and it proved to be a great piece to bring while I was relaxing in Asheville a month ago. In fact, I stitched most of the green that is the setting for the wild rose that will be the floral portion of this design.

I haven't quite figured out what kind of bird this is. There's a lot of pink on it, but then again, it may be that the designer wanted to highlight the pink of the wild rose and so invented a bird with pink in it. If anyone knows northern European birds . . .

You know what I find interesting about this design is the amount of yellowish green that the foliage calls for. I'm not a huge fan of yellowish green - I can't wear the color, it makes me look like I'm about to become violently ill.
Regardless, it adds the shading to the foliage that a lighter green just won't capture quite as well. And you can tell the amount of the yellowish green from the colors of thread that come with the design. You can also see the several shades of pink that will become the wild rose. For this piece, I chose to stitch the bird first (cuz he's so much fun and I like to complete one motif before going on to the next), then I'll do some greenery, then finally on to the rose. Kind of brings order to the chaos.

It really was nice this summer to sit in a comfy chair, talk with friends and husband, and just sit and stitch during daylight hours (I somehow didn't need my reading glasses!). We were in the shade, I won't lie about that, but there was no pressure to finish anything, and I was able to listen to the conversation and stitch something just because it was beautiful.

OK, well, have to upload some pictures of some patterns that I forgot to upload when I entered these patterns onto my website last week. *sigh* At least that gives me time to procrastinate my sleeves!

Mountain Projects - Brambleberry Sweater

I've promised and promised to put these projects on my blog, and now here it is - a Friday afternoon in late April (Good Friday, in fact), and the Mountain is now a happy memory.

But not to worry! That's why blogs exist!

This is the first of several posts about projects I work on at the annual Atlanta Knitting Guild retreat at The Mountain in North Carolina. It is a wonderful, calming, peaceful place, way up at the ankle of the Appalachian Mountains (Atlanta being the foothills, North Carolina would be the ankles, no?). Everyone brings projects that they often cannot work on anywhere else, due to the association with The Mountain, the amount of concentration needed to work on a project, or the help they will receive from other knitters over the long weekend. And that's basically what it is: show up after noon-ish on Friday, snack, knit, eat dinner, knit, begin to taste Knitting Water, and continue knitting into the weee hours of the next day.

Sleep.

Repeat.

For an entire long weekend.

Some other projects I've worked on have been a wedding shawl for my friend and former colleague, for whom I cast on 400 stitches! a project that could only have been accomplished with many stitch markers, the complete silence of other understanding knitters, and a few swigs of Knitting Water.

I also knit Webmaster Bill his two cable-knit sweaters, the first out of Chester Farms yarn out of Virginia, a thick, durable, "wears like iron" wool yarn that is 100% machine washable. I found out while knitting that sweater that you can fudge the fact that you didn't count your rows properly, and can crochet an edging to make the arm decreases look like knit decreases instead of purl-on-the-right-side decreases. You can, you really can . . .

The second was a beautiful off-white sweater featuring yarn from Blackwater Abbey Yarns, available only through the distributor in Colorado (or from Abbey Farm in Ireland). I had had a trunk show with Blackwater Abbey Yarns while my friend was still in my employ - she is a huge fan of the designer Beth Brown-Reinsel who has designed a number of Aran and Guernsey-style sweaters out of this yarn. The yarn is also a traditional Irish Aran yarn, and not at all appealing to the soft scarf crowd, but it still proved to be a fruitful trunk show and one which I wish I could have had again. And many of the sales were to staff and owner, but that's just one of the perks of working in the yarn shop!

So, my project for the Mountain (stay on topic!) was my sweater out of this beautiful, handwash only yarn, using a pattern designed for this yarn (not by BB-R) called "Brambleberry." I used a fall-ish orangey rust yarn, and I did my swatches. Oh, boy, did I do my swatches! But more on that later.

The pattern is a little different, in that the chart is read from left to right on the right side of the pattern, and the reverse on the wrong side. Which is opposite all the other charted patterns I've ever used. Another difference is the reversal of odd-is-right, even-is-wrong row counting. Needless to say, Knitting Water has helped make these pattern differences even more clear, and has taken the sting out of ripping back and re-knitting those rows until I began to focus on the pattern's quirks.

I started this pattern 2 Mountain trips ago, in 2009, with a cast-on and knitting of the back. And you know what? After I figured out the pattern changes, it really was an easy pattern to knit. Seriously. It's only on R2 that you have to cable, and you knit the majority of the body repeating the same 8 rows. Very, very simple for late night conversation.

Then you get to do the traveling cables as you decrease for the arms, a factor which adds its very own magic to the design of the sweater. Some concentration, and no Knitting Water was involved (in fact, I think I did these decreases at home, but I wouldn't swear to it), and it makes the sweater design really cool.

Last year's Mountain stay featured knitting the front of this sweater, and one of the things I wanted to make certain of was that I was a) familiar with the pattern by this year's Mountain stay, and b) ready to start on the sleeves by doing a): finishing the front before I got to The Mountain. Which I did with the help of some very brave bunnies, as featured in that marvelous masterpiece, Watership Down, as a book on tape. Meaning I knitting into the evening and heard one of my favorite books read aloud as only a gifted storyteller can.

As promised, here are the pictures:

This is the back of the Brambleberry sweater. I only wish the color was more true - it's an orangy reddish leaf color.








This is much more true to the actual color of the yarn itself. This is a detail of the sweater. What makes the cables stand out so amazingly is the Z-twist of the yarn - it's spun in reverse. Most yarns and threads produced commercially or privately by spinners create an S-twist. But not this yarn.



This is the front of the sweater. Notice the deep neckline, an indication of it being the front, and also the double-decreasing at both sides while knitting the traveling cables.

I now have greater respect for the professional photographers who make the pictures on patterns look just perfect! It's hard to see the detail, but the traveling cables start right at the arm decreases.




Why this picture of a scrap of knitting, you ask? Why, this is no ordinary scrap of knitting: this is my swatch. I knit it with three different needles, then washed the swatch to see how my individual needle choices would come out. After all, I was going to spend at least 3 years of my life on this project, and I wanted it to be perfect.

You know what I found? Not just the needle size but the needle type makes all the difference with this project. My gauge was the same whatever needle size I used, BTW.

My first needle option was a size 6, since I tend to knit loose. Not so much fun knitting with these needles on a 2-ply Worsted Weight yarn. That's the scrunched up bit at the bottom.

My second needle option was a Bryspun plastic size 7 needle. Soft on the hand and easy to manuver the yarn over and around. Great, I thought, but I'll try one more. Plus, the pattern called for a 7 though my gauge didn't change at all.

My third option was size 8 bamboo. And that made all the difference.

Remember when I said that I had washed and blocked my swatch after I knit it? Well, the portion I knit with the size 6 was all hard to pull - no give whatsoever. But the portion I knit with the nice, soft, easy-to-manuver Bryspun? It turned flat. There was no definition in my cables, they relaxed almost to the point of being just an embellishment on the pattern and not the pattern itself. I could not believe my hands, and the more knitters I've shown it to, the more my reality about using these needles has been correct.

So my final option, of the bamboo size 8's, was right on the money. The cables were crisp and at attention, and maybe because the wood offers resistance to the wool it makes the cables stand up the way they do.

That's my lesson for the day - always, always wash your swatch, and keep knitting on the same swatch so that you can see one variation from the other. Very, very, important.

Oh, and before I sign off, here are the promised sleeves, started this year at the Mountain (I had forgotten that the rows are read reversed, so after 7 rows I poured some more Knitting Water to take the sting out of ripping them out and starting again). And one more thing - I'm knitting both sleeves together/at the same time. This way I can keep up with the pattern and its myriad of increases. Like the ones I forgot right at the very beginning, which is fine because I have small wrists, and heavily increased sleeves would just hang on my wrists like flappy bits of knitted fabric. My arms increase after the elbow, and by golly, that's just where these extra increases are going to go!

Here are the pictures:


There is more knit on them now, of course. My goal here is to finish the sleeves by this autumn, to either knit the pieces together and wear this sweater at The Mountain (it gets pretty darn cold up there, let me tell ya!) or sew it together next year while there.

OK, well, that's my first of these posts of Mountain projects. Will put some more up (I've taken tons of pictures), and hopefully all the posts will be current by the time I go on next year's retreat!