Ending

Tonight is New Year's Eve, Wednesday the 31st of December 2014, and there is not much knitting to show, a ittle weaving prep, and lots of excitement with knitting plans for tomorrow. The sweater for bear is done, and was done Christmas Day, my dad came and so did my brother, so there were six of us, and with the meals being summery (cause it's Summer where we live in December) and four of the six being adults - there was lots of talking and knitting time.

 

Given the summer weather, hot days, it was not appropriate for me to ask bear to model the sweater, so I thought a few photos will have to do, and then I remembered it was a plain grey weather in stocking stitch - so no much to show.

 

 

The sleeves worked well, and we're done quickly, much as I love dpns and Magic loop - I don't enjoy knitting sleeves in the round. All that twisting and turning, with the body of the garment flopping around in my lap - not fun. I know I can do the sleeves first - perhaps I should?

Meanwhile I've been warping my loom, after a small delay when I had to add heddles to some shafts to accommodate my plans. I found answers of a sort on Ravelry, and my dad the visiting mechanic was observant. He didn't do any loom work but did point out a possible method which proved fruitful.

 

 

 

 

After working out how to add extra heddles (hint you have to undo some of the countermarch tie up and remove the shafts from the loom), I was able to finish warping up. Having to remove the shafts made me much mor confident about working with th loom. This time I was inspired by books and blogs where weavers sley the reed While it is out of the beater. I undid the nuts and bolts and removed the reed and sat it along two support rods. This was fantastic, I didn't have to reach behind the beater to find the next threads and I was able to see what I was doing. With the reed in the beater - the hanging beater and reed assembly blocks the view and creates all sorts of access problems. This was so much easier and neater.

 

For now it's all tied off and I've checked the threading, only two errors - and not so much threading errors as places where the threading was correct but the warp yarn was wrapped around a adjacent heddles so its path was disturbed. All sorted now and ready to weave eight dish towels. As a bonus today we took a trailer load of green waste to the 'til' and scored a wooden Venetian blind in perfect condition. I've been informed the wooden Venetian blinds make great warp sticks - and this provided 42 sticks for $3! Even better the sticks are twice as long as they need to be, so once cut in half to fit my loom will provide 84 warp sticks. And they seem to be mahogany - which is reddish so match the red jarah of the loom beautifully.

And tomorrow, I cast on for Enchanted Mesa, (EM) quite frankly it's a sweater that intrigues and scares me a little. It's not fitted, beyond not fitted, pushing not fitted to the limits. Now most sweaters and cardigans skim the body they are knit for, sometimes the designer adds flare, or ease so the garment is larger than the body, like a swing skirt or a draped nck cowl, And there are sweaters that bend body proportions, batwing springs to mind where the sleeves blend with the body. Enchantd Mesa takes sweater fitting further, and presents a design that no only messes with the propitious and shape of the human body then deliberately exaggerates asymmetry of the underarm placement. I love it, I'm not sure it will flatter - but I'm knitting it to see how far I can be pushed in the body distortion scheme of things. I'm not the slim bodies thing of my youth - and I'm planning to work this as a a loosely fitted sweater, oversized. I have to add lots of people knit it with the sleeves and underarm in the right places, or should I say conventional places.

I'm casting on tomorrow, and surprisingly I've convinced a few local knitters to join me, some in a KAL of enchanted Mesa, some in another sweater or cardigan of their choosing,

 

In preparation I've switched, on 2.75, 3, 3.25, & 3.75 mm needles, in the round. I've drawn up a schematic showing the stitch counts of EM for you see - I'm wanting to knit this in finer yarn, and the pattern is written so that changing the gauge changes the finished size (as opposed to the more conventional changing the stitch count changing the size). Which means regauging - which I've also planned. But I'm out on a limb here, I hope I've thought it through in a way that works when knit.

And I'm not knitkng it in blue, the yarn I've chosen is actually grey - I just have some of the same in blue that I swatched in.

I have this grey gradient, in merino silk, from Spinning a Yarn, designed to be knit into a shawl that transitions from pale grey to dark grey so there are varying amonts of each grey, some less to more - and I have a dark grey BFL sock yarn from Veranda yarns that is perfect to work the sweater body in.

 

 

Like this, so that's my 2015 off to a knitting start - what about yours?

Hope your year both ends and begins well, and the bits in between match

Na Stella.

 

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