"My First Cardigan"

I found a pattern called "my first cardigan" --hah! been there, done that! --but love the pattern anyway, so I've started it in a dusty sage yarn.
It's knitting up so that a basic stockinette stitch looks almost braided; cool. This is the back.
The nice thing about this pattern is that the back, front panels, and sleeves come together in right-angle seams (you'll see what I mean--I'll post as I knit each piece) so raglan or dolman sleeves won't cause me any problems.
Nice, huh?

new scarf yarn

Whilst shopping for the black boucle cuff (now Mrs. Beetons) yarn, I found this Debbie Bliss astrakhan cashmerino yarn. It's wonderful! The shop had it knitted up into a scarf with frilled ends (complimentary pattern; thanks, Stix!) and it only takes two balls of this.

The yarn feels like silk but seems to be grippy on the needles, good for this somewhat inexperienced knitter. The frilled ends read nicely in this yarn, and last night I started the Mrs. Beetons in green, which also use a frilly effect. Cast on 108, end up with 36 over twelve rows. Again, a nice teaching project--Beetons cuffs--before executing the same effect in a larger project with a single yarn, all the easier to see mistakes with--Debbie Bliss blue bubbly scarf.

A note about the start of the Mrs. Beetons: I'm new to a lot of techniques, and had never knitted using double-pointed needles, or knitting-in-the-round, so in preparation for the Beetons project, I bought a size 8, 24" circular needle. That's what I started on last night. First, I cast on my 108 stitches on a long #8 needle, then knitted the first row onto the circular needle. The circular needle worked really well for the rows in which the 108 stitches were worked, but as soon as I started k2tog and ssk, it got harder. That's when I knitted the next decreasing row onto three dpns. (I used four on the next round.)

To make a long story...longer (kee hee), I found stepping down from regular #8 to circular to dpn really worthwhile. It helped a novice get her chops, if you know what I mean, especially since I was self-teaching (ha!). I'd recommend using the circular needle before the dpns. The stitches are nice and even and the transfer is easier once the piece becomes more substantial.

Cuffs vs. Mrs. Beetons

I have a wonderful orange plaid coat from my grandmother. It's absolutely perfect through the shoulders and waist (rare!), comes to a hip mid-thigh length, but...the sleeves are short.

The plaid is a heather gray and black, so I bought a black boucle yarn and planned to knit cuffs for it. It'd make the coat "wintry", when I'd hoped to find a dark heather gray for the cuffs (with no luck), and so even though the black boucle is great, I'm a little reluctant to destine the fate of the coat that way. (I know, too much thought into this already!)

Now, some weeks back, I found Mrs. Beetons on knitty.com and made grand plans to knit some, maybe in the green shown, also some in pink, when all of a sudden last night, it occurred to me that I could knit black boucle Mrs. Beetons for winter wear of the most excellent orange plaid coat, and hold out until I find dark heather gray yarn for a different, spring/fall set of Mrs. Beetons for same coat! Woo hoo!

Once I find the dark heather gray yarn I have pictured in my head, I think I'll knit some sportier, not-so-frilly Mrs. Beetons. The black boucle ones, however, will follow the pattern.

Woo hoo for my crazy brain synapses to have come up with this solution before I had any more boucle cuff knitted or sewn onto the sleeve!

Get the knitty pattern for Mrs. Beeton undercuffs here.

Samus in purple

One of my current projects is Samus, a pattern by Brynne Sutton that I found on knitty.com, one of my favorite sites.

The celtic cable is knitted first, and yay for Brynne for providing both a cable map and a line-by-line stitch instruction. The cable is the bottom of the sweater jacket, and I'll need to knit more of this cable for the bottom of the sleeves; this is the body of the sweater. (You're seeing the cable at the top of the photo because the contrast is better this way.)

Brynne knitted her sweater in orange, which I loved, but this purple called to me, so voila.

This is my first experience with a circular needle, and it's been...okay. The "wow" in the flexible connector made for some weird twists the first several times around, but the connector's relaxing now. I love that the body of the sweater gets stitched as a whole--the fewer seams the better--so the circular needle's the way to go, but it's not my favorite tool thus far.

Updates on purple Samus' progress as it happens.

Link to knitty at right, or right to the pattern here.

Projects One (A and B)

The cabling of my first project, the green alpaca sweater, was involved. And there were other considerations that merited a one-step-back type of action: the alpaca was expensive yarn, I was just learning to knit, I couldn't do cables (fairly big point here), it's winter and I needed new scarves anyway, etc., etc.

So I took myself to a local craft store and bought some practice yarn, nice and soft, synthetic, worsted weight, ideal for the newbie knitter to use to, you know, learn cabling. Here are the results.

The periwinkle scarf is knit in a basketweave cable; it came out beautifully and will serve A) as a scarf and 2) as a swatch/pattern favorite.

The light sage scarf is knit with two triple cables and 5 purl stitches at each edge and centered between the cables. The nice effect of this is that the edges roll in, and that the width of the scarf is adaptable; I can fold it in half or offset one side on the other around my neck or head. A happy coincidence.

The triple cable is the one I used on the green alpaca sweater, to lovely effect with both this cheapy sage and the pricier alpaca yarn.

Project One: green alpaca cabled cardigan sweater

It all began innocently enough, sitting on a sunny, grassy slope at a music festival last summer, flipping through Vogue Knitting (my pal's, Fall 2005). Just minding my own business, flippy, flippy, when all of a sudden, on page 75, I saw the most excellent short green cabled cardigan sweater with wood buttons. The decision to (re)learn to knit came immediately.

I took action. I asked my dear and talented friend for an afternoon of instruction. That turned out to be fairly successful, although you remember, don't you? The my-fingers-won't-do-that moments? Like trying to eat with chopsticks the first time you tried. My hand-eye coordination was not what it ought to have been that day, but Friend was gracious and oh-so-patient, and so began the knitting of my sweater (on Friend's borrowed needles).

But I leapfrogged over the yarn shop experience! Now, I admit to a fair bit of naivete, and it held true while yarn shopping. Apparently, the only yarn satisfactory for my project was $10/ball alpaca wool. Mind you, it has knit up beautifully, I love the sweater, it'll be a favorite for years to come, yada yada yada, but I've since realized/discovered the joys of $3/skein yarn, too. First shopping experience. I was young.

I changed the cables to something chunkier, partly because I liked them, but mostly because, even though I tried valiantly, I just C O U L D N O T figure out the pattern map for the ones shown. I'm pretty experienced with cables now, and if I tried this again I'm confident I could do these cables just following the picture and not the legend, but...lesson learned.

So here it is, for your viewing (and my wearing) pleasure. Hope you enjoy.

Hello, all,

YarnHerder: it ... is ... alive. Welcome to this, the first post of many. Through a newfound interest in blogs, a reconstituted love of knitting, and the requirement for a blog for some fun and interactive knitting events, I offer YarnHerder.

I'm back to knitting after a lapse; like many other knitters, I began knitting in high school, self-taught, dropped for a while, and have now rediscovered the joy of yarn (whose acronym, ironically, is JOY).

Details on current projects in the next post, when I've figured out the photo-posting thing. For now, a fond hello and sincere welcome to all interested knitting parties. Advice, ideas, critique, patterns, yarnsharing, all welcome. You know what to do.

Best,
YarnHerder