Tag Archives: sweaters

Future most-worn handknit

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Greetings from Utah! Awhile back Ashley Yousling, one of my favorite knitterly people, happened to mention that she had never knitted anything for herself — only for other people. I loved what happened next, and am happy to have her here to tell us all about it today. Thanks, Ash!
—kt

Future most-worn handknit

My journey as a dedicated knitter first began much like Karen’s, with the discovery of Joelle Hoverson’s “Last Minute Knitted Gifts” through a friend I worked with. The seed was planted years earlier as a child, when a great aunt taught me the basics of knitting. Renewed interest and patience did not come until adulthood and even then it would take time to foster this fiber relationship. I’d often start projects and never finish them. This was an enduring trait I’d had since childhood. But when my niece was born, I chose small projects and found great satisfaction in finishing them. I completed a variety of knits that year, ending it with an ambitious goal of knitting everyone’s Christmas presents. My interest waned drastically. It wasn’t until I found out I was pregnant with my son that I picked up my needles again. That is when my love affair with knitting and wool truly began.

I again started with small projects, but this time chose increasingly more difficult and time consuming patterns. Much of my renewed dedication to knitting was owed to my growing knowledge of fibers and technique. A few months back I realized I had never actually knit anything for myself. Someone tagged me on Instagram asking, “What is your most-worn hand knit?” I didn’t have one! The next day I started on my first personal knit, a pair of very colorful socks.

Soon thereafter, due to much knitting jealousy (it’s a real thing I swear) I wondered if I had the gumption to knit a sweater for myself. I had never knit anything adult sized for the very reason I mentioned earlier. With much encouragement from knitting friends Karen and Anna, I took the plunge and ordered ten skeins of Brooklyn Tweed Loft for my first sweater, Reine. As soon as the yarn arrived, I got to work, focused on doing everything the “right” way. Swatching, measuring, note taking and so on. Progress was slowed only by my career and motherhood, not by any lack of interest. With every hurdle overcome, I fell more in love with knitting, more infatuated with wool and more confident in my skills as a maker. I suppose I had a very well-written pattern to thank as well.

This past week I knit the final stitches on the sweater, made just for me. I still can’t believe the fit or feel. It’s pretty magical. I discovered the antique buttons at a local haven I’d been hearing about, Exclusive Buttons in El Cerrito, and couldn’t be happier. If you’re ever in the Bay Area, make sure to visit. The sweet little old lady Mary has owned the place for 30 years and has a story or two to go along with your purchase.

If you’ve been holding back, consider this a pep talk. Go knit yourself something amazing.
—Ashley Yousling

Future most-worn handknit

For more from Ashley, check out her blog, Woolful, and follow @woolful on Instagram. And p.s. I can’t believe I never made it to Exclusive Buttons before I left town!

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On this sweater and my sanity

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On this sweater and my sanity

In between work and the neverending packing, I am managing to knit a few rows here and there. My Togue Pond–Saco Stripes hybrid is coming along nicely, I think — to my great relief. It’s gone from testing my sanity to keeping me sane.

There was an evening in the big cabin at Squam, surrounded by professional knitters, where collective concern was expressed for the size of the thing. I had knitted five or six inches, and it did seem enormous. I kept counting my stitches and doing the math, and it seemed like it should be fine, except it didn’t look fine. So I put it away and moped, and nice people gave me yarn to try to keep me occupied. Squam was a major swatch-fest for me: Gudrun Johnston’s excellent short-rows class was a day-long series of tiny swatches, followed by Kate and Courtney’s highly recommended vest class which, of course, began with a swatch. So for my Friday free time between the two, the last thing I wanted to do was stop and swatch this sweater I was already knitting. (Not that there’s anything wrong with swatching! It’s wonderful and important and an awesome learning tool and all of that. But I’d had no time to knit for weeks, and here I was on a knitting break and I wanted to be knitting. On a dock.) In short: I was distressed.

Friday evening, after a mosquito-plagued but head-clearing walk, I sat down with the sweater in the dining hall — by then empty of all but me and Anna — and measured and counted again. I had come to the conclusion that swatching would do me no good in this case anyway. This is aran-weight linen, which is a rather mysterious creature. The finished sweater is going to drape and grow and change in ways that a swatch would not likely predict with any accuracy, no matter how many clotheslines I hung it from. So I decided to just have faith and keep knitting. And by Saturday afternoon I was knitting it on that dock, feet in the water, just as happy as a knitter could be.

I won’t know for certain until the shoulders are seamed together and I can put it on for real, but I think — I hope — it’s just right. So thank god I didn’t frog it in a panic and move on to something else.

If it works out, I promise to share my mods. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. To those of you who came to the sale last Saturday, it was marvelous to meet you and I apologize again for my appearance! I’d love to hear what you’re all working on —

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New Favorites: In my size, please

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New Favorites: In my size, please

Brooklyn Tweed published their first collection of knitting patterns for kidwear this week, BT Kids, and it’s predictably adorable, right down to the sweater-wearing teddy bear. The hats and scarves go up to adult sizes. (I love Spore — predictable me.) The blankets are universally useful. And there’s a somewhat cryptic note in the lookbook on Julie Hoover’s sweet Berenice pullover about how “full-grown girls will triple-flip at the chance to scale this up in Shelter,” which seemed to suggest that such instructions might be included, but apparently they just meant that the dolman construction would be easy to adapt. Regardless, there are four sweaters in there I want in my size:

TOP LEFT: Atlas by Jared Flood, the colorwork chart for which one might be able to impose upon Grettir?

TOP RIGHT: Arlo by Michele Wang, which has me pondering adding some of its cables to Slade

BOTTOM LEFT: Vika by Veronik Avery, which they really should go ahead and grade up!

BOTTOM RIGHT: Sock Monkey Sweater by Jared Flood, which shouldn’t be too hard to adapt from Brownstone

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: Alicia Plummer’s clever summer cowl

First of the best sweaters of Resort 2015: The Row

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First of the best sweaters of Resort 2015: The Row

Of the (not very many) Resort 2015 “shows” I’ve seen so far, my favorite is yesterday’s collection from The Row. Also one of my favorite Row collections to-date, it strikes me as a Diane Keaton–Margot Tenenbaum mashup (as modeled by Patti Smith), which, y’know, swoooon. Beautiful separates and coats — I could live in this outfit right here — but the knits throughout are just impeccable, from little tipped co-ed tees to big ribs and bouclé to a cable turtleneck that looks like meringue, from which I’m somehow not recoiling.

First of the best sweaters of Resort 2015: The Row

New Favorites: Pam Allen’s linen tanks

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New Favorites: Pam Allen's linen tanks

I’m convinced my indifference to all the sweaters on my needles is to do with their being stockinette, but perhaps it’s more the fact that long-sleeved wool sweaters have no actual current relevance? And thus I’m simply unmotivated? I wonder, because I am plagued with the desire to cast on yet another stockinette sweater — but this time a linen tank. Pam Allen has been on a roll lately, and if I had any linen in my stash, I might have already cast on one or the other of these, just to see whether my stockinette apathy would dissipate if the garment were of immediate use — or in fact, necessity. The only problem is: which one? On top is Togue Pond; on bottom is Saco Stripes. I might need to hybridize them …

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: WATG cotton toppers

New Favorites: WATG cotton toppers

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New Favorites: Wool and the Gang cotton toppers

Good stuff coming out of Wool and the Gang for summer, especially the Riviera Sweater up top, which is a really terrific combination of stripes and texture-blocking. Knitted in aran-weight cotton, this would be a great most-of-the-year sweater, most places. I’m also into the big-mesh Ariel Top, made from their Mixtape yarn, which seems to be a jersey ribbon tube sort of thing. Has anyone knitted with this stuff? It intrigues me.

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PREVIOUSLY in New Favorites: the Wool People wraps

(See also: Best spring/summer tees of 2014)

Tag Team Sweater Project: The results are in!

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Tag Team Sweater Project: The results are in!

Anna and I really did finish knitting our Tag Team Sweater Project sweaters — what seems like ages ago — but it took us until we were together in Indianapolis to finally take some finished photos. So a project that started in such a frenzy has come to a rather languid conclusion.

Once again, we found ourselves posing for photos at the end of two very long and tiring days, not exactly looking our freshest. But Bristol Ivy generously and patiently manned the iPhone for us and snapped these photos as we goofed around awkwardly outside the state capitol building (I think?) before collapsing into some chairs in the Hyatt lounge for the evening. Thanks again, Bristol!

Tag Team Sweater Project: The results are in!

I know everyone has been wondering since we first announced this project whether Anna was getting the short end of the stick. As you’ll recall, the arrangement was that I would knit all four sleeves; Anna would knit the two bodies; and then we’d swap parts, join our respective sleeves to bodies, and knit our own yokes. (Through no one’s fault but my own, I wound up knitting five and a half sleeves but let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.) Out of my own curiosity, though, I gathered a little data along the way:

Anna’s Lila was knitted in Swans Island Pure Blends, a worsted-spun alpaca blend (71 yards/oz), while my Trillium is in Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, a loftier woolen-spun wool (79 yards/oz). So even though her sweater is smaller than mine (a smaller size and a more abbreviated shape, plus a looser gauge), the two sweaters wound up being almost identical in finished weight: Lila is 13.6 oz and Trillium is 13.7 oz. I find that poetic. Lila’s sleeves weighed 4.75 oz, so I knitted 338 yards or 34% of Anna’s sweater. Trillium’s body weighed 5.85 oz, so she knitted 462 yards or 43% of mine. So yes, in that sense, she got the short end of the stick.

That said, the idea was never to knit equivalent parts of each other’s sweaters — it was to save each other from bogging down in the parts we each find tedious. And we succeeded! But the thing is, had I followed my own best practices and studied the schematic before we began, I most likely would have decided to make this sweater a couple of inches shorter than it is, which would have meant less knitting for Anna — to the point that it might have been a fairly even trade after all. <insert pained-face emoji> Sorry, Anna!

All that really matters (hopefully!) is this: We had fun; we cemented a beautiful friendship; and we ended up with two great sweaters. Win/win!

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For the complete backstory, see my collected Tag Team posts, Anna’s blog, and/or the #tagteamsweaterproject hashtag in Instagram. Thanks for all the cheering as we knitted our way through!