Flint Knits

… they become children.

And all that baby knitting I did last year, for all those friends’ babies? Outgrown long ago, as those babies become kiddos. And while those kiddos won’t all be getting handknit gifts on a regular basis, I’ve happily discovered that knitting for my toddler niece is a lot like knitting for an adult. BUT FASTER.

pattern: Milan Jacket, by Louisa Harding, from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms
yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease, with Patons Grace for trim
needles: 4.5mm vintage
[raveled]

Once I put the red buttons on, they seemed to come screaming out of nowhere.
So I added the red trim to match –just a single crochet stitch around all the edges.

Thanks for all the links to great patterns! I’ll close comments on that post on Thursday, and pick a random winner.

I’m sorry I haven’t responded to all your contest entries and comments. I spent the weekend recording new songs with this band I’m in, and was rewarded with a wretched cold. The only good part of being this sick is that I have less guilt about shirking all that work I should be doing, and wasting the day on the sofa knitting and watching MSNBC election coverage in hopes that Rachel Maddow will appear and save us all from the Crazy (which she does just often enough to keep me watching).

Before you go, you should check out some of my current favorite things:

• Denyse Schmidt’s Obama quilt fundraiser [via doggedknits]
• the new shop from 100% Philistine-Made — I just bought a bitchin pincushion
• my new camera strap from Split Yarn

I’ve been hard at work on a research/writing project for the last two weeks. After 10-hour days at the library, my brain has been either too fried or too over-stimulated to sleep right away. So each night, I’d spend a couple of hours before bed watching tv-on-dvd and knitting. And before I knew it, I had sweater!

I cast on for this sweater in March, and it started out as my Zombie Knitting. You know, that giant tube of stockinette-in-the-round that you can work on in darkened movie theatres or on bumpy bus rides? The project you don’t actually have to look at while you’re knitting? So I’d pull it out once in a while, work an inch or two of the body, and put it away.

But once I got to the colorwork and the sleeves, I couldn’t set it down.

It’s a classic Norwegian-y sweater, with drop shoulders and steeked armholes.

Here’s a glimpse of the steeking process: sew, cut, seam.

This is the first time I’ve done Norwegian-style machine-sewn steeks, and I have to say I prefer the flexibility and precision of Fair Isle steeks. And no, these particular machine-sewn steeks aren’t the prettiest (I probably shouldn’t have done them at midnight after one of those 10-hour days), but such was the irresistible pull of this project. I was driven to finish.

pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “Norse Sweater” from The Opinionated Knitter
yarn: Ella Rae Classic wool
needles: 4.5mm DPNs, and 24″ and 16″ circulars
[Raveled]

I also discovered that Ella Rae Classic is great for colorwork projects: wooly, affordable, thinner than Patons merino, fuzzier than Cascade 220, and it took spit-splices like a hot, slobbery dream.

Here’s a full-on modeled shot:

And a look at the innards, for those of you who care about that sort of thing:

I’m not sure I like how the drop shoulder works for a sweater this close-fitting. The sleeve facings get a bit cumbersome under the arms, which wouldn’t be an problem in the roomier fit you usually see with this style. If I were to knit another worsted-weight sweater with steeked armholes, I think I’d use a finer yarn for the facings to cut down on bulk.

According to The Opinionated Knitter (probs one of the greatest knitting resources of All Time), EZ named this motif “Siwash” because the swirls seem to spell out that word. But I recognized “siwash” as a racist slur that comes from the French word for “savage.” So of course I immediately went into research mode.

I learned that Native folks in Vancouver have a long tradition of fiber arts, and have been knitting a particular style of big heavy sweater for over a century–they even raised and herded wool dogs before European colonizers brought sheep to North America. Whites started calling these sweaters “siwash sweaters,” and kept calling them that for a long time (i.e. well into Zimmermann’s time). Today we know them as Cowichan sweaters, named for the Cowichan First Nations. Then Michele told me about a great documentary called The Story of the Coast Salish Knitters, which I snagged through interlibrary loan. People of the Coast Salish First Nations of southern Vancouver Island were the original Cowichan sweater knitters, and the film tells the story of three generations of crafters. It’s well worth tracking down.

While EZ’s simple pattern may be inspired by Cowichan sweaters, you should definitely check out what an actual, amazing, authentic Cowichan sweater looks like. They’re pricey, yeah, but as knitters, we know how much labor goes into this kind of artwork. And buying them supports Cowichan First Nations artists and crafters. I wonder what it would take to convince every douchebag who ever bought a sweatshop-made $1000 cashmere sweater from some corporate designer label to buy one of these pretty babies instead … ?

With apologies to my niece Claire, who is all that is perfect and joyful and full of goodness and light. And who, judging by this picture, has a healthy mistrust of acrylic fibers.

Enough! Enough with the babymaking, I say!

It must be a late twenties thing, because I swear to blog that all the straight ladies I know who didn’t get knocked up as teenagers (and even some of them who did) have had babies in the last 3 years. But now, for the first time in what seems like forever, I appear to have a brief and shining window of time where none of my friends is pregnant. And while I love my friends dearly, I will not miss the long conversations about hemorrhoids, or choosing the right doula, or the embarrassment of inconvenient breast leakage.

I have to admit, though, that I will miss knitting teeny tiny gifts for teeny tiny newborns. They’re so cute, and so satisfying, and so fast!

And so I give you the last of them. The last of the wee handmade infant duds.

pattern: Offset Wraplan, by Sara Morris [pdf]
yarn: Knitpicks Shine Sport, in “grass”
needles: US 3 and 5
[raveled]

pattern: none, just a hat and some tube socks with leaves attached.
(If folks want a tutorial, I’ll post one–let me know)
yarn: Knitpicks Shine Sport, in “leaf”
needles: US 4
[raveled]

And that’s it! The end of the teeny tiny knits for the foreseeable future.

But stay tuned for totally adorable toddler clothes, obvs. And I think Claire might need a collection of knitted cephalopods…

If you haven’t entered the contest for the woolgirl.com gift certificate, there’s still time! Go! Go!

Big thanks for all the kind responses to the February Lady Sweater!

If you’re interested in making a version that’s more faithful to Elizabeth Zimmerman’s original, several folks have made larger versions of the original baby sweater, by doing some serious math. I mentioned Jenny’s in my last post (could she be any cuter?), and you should also check out this super-gorgeous version. In fact, I just found out that Ravelry has a whole discussion going on about how to re-work the math for an adult size, with a few pictures of finished ones. (Shoulda known–there’s a Ravelry thread for everything.) And someone even made a grown-up version just by using superbulky yarn and the original pattern.

EZ’s original baby sweater is, of course, fucking brilliant in its construction. It has a lot of increases over a small number of rows, to create a rounded shape that will suit a wee baby’s round body. The pattern I wrote, on the other hand, is just a basic top-down raglan. This construction means that, instead of fitting a baby’s round body, it’s made to be fitted across an adult’s shoulders and upper back, then drape all swingy-like down from the bust (yeah, no, I could not get a job writing for J. Peterman). If you’re familiar with top-down raglan construction, you really don’t even need the pattern, just this one-sentence command: “knit a top-down raglan using EZ’s gull stitch pattern, with a row of 40-45 increases just above the bust.”

Finally, some folks have emailed because they’ve had problems making the raglan increases work. The issue seems to be around the phrase, “mark the next stitch.” This is not the same as “place a marker.” Rather, you mark the next stitch you knit. You can either place a marker on either side of that stitch, or slide a split ring marker through the knitted stitch, so that you know to put a m1 increase on either side of it for the raglan shaping. If you’re good at reading your knitting, you don’t even need a marker–just increase on either side of the same stitch each time. Hope this helps! (I’ll also go clarify in the pattern itself.)

I do actually have other knitting projects, too! I just started a pair of Sandra’s Charade socks in some Wollmeise sockenwolle that Kris sent me a while back.

But I’m not sure I love the striping. Should I embrace the striping? Or frog it and find a better pattern/yarn match? I beg you, be ruthless in your advice

**UPDATE! A LIST OF COMMON MODIFICATIONS TO THE FEBRUARY LADY SWEATER PATTERN IS NOW AVAILABLE HERE.**

As soon as I finished knitting Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Baby Sweater on Two Needles (more commonly known as the “February Baby Sweater”) for my niece, I thought, “I need that sweater.” Not for any other babies I know (and I seem to know an awful lot these days), but for me me me.(If you don’t already own Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac, you should. It’s the best $7 you will ever spend on a knitting book. For reals.)

Jenny was steps ahead of me, and had already made her own “giant” version, in baby pink. But I wondered if there was a way to make it more fitted on top, so the whole thing had a kind of 50s a-line shape to it. Enter the top-down raglan cardigan—the easiest sweater structure known to knitterkind.

I started with basic raglan shaping for the collar and yoke, then stuck in a row of eyelet increases just above the bust to add fullness all the way around. (I may still make an icord with pom-poms on the ends, and thread it through the eyelets, like so.)

And ended up with my new favorite sweater.

yarn: Sundara Worsted Merino in Green Over Ochre
needles: 5mm circular
buttons: 7/8″ wooden

Want to make your own? Sweet! I wrote up a free pattern.

[ravelry link]

YARN: approximately 750 (850, 950, 1050, 1150) yards of worsted weight yarn. This lace pattern is especially lovely in semi-solid yarns—I used Sundara Worsted Merino in “Green Over Ochre.”

NEEDLES:
• US 8 (5mm) 32” circular needle, or size needed to get gauge
• US 8 (5mm) double-pointed needles, or size needed to get gauge

GAUGE: 18 stitches / 4” in garter stitch

FINISHED BUST SIZE: 35 (37.5, 41, 41, 44, 49.5, 52.5) inches (bust is the same for S and M, but sleeves are 1.75” larger on size M)

A note on sizing: You can easily make this cardigan smaller or larger by casting on fewer or more stitches at the beginning, and/or doing fewer or more raglan increases—just be sure that your final stitch counts for the sleeves and body are a multiple of 7 so that the stitch pattern works.

My raglan math (such as it is) owes a great debt to Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top, and to Laura’s fabulous (and free!) “Easy and Top Down” pattern.

All mistakes are, of course, my own—bring them to my attention at flintknits@gmail.com.