Done!

All done!
13th June to 13th August,
410g, 4 ply Quality yarns 4 ply (Sportweight), 2x250g cones.
Colour Marine,
2.5mm needles, with 2mm and 2.25mm used for cuffs and neckline garter bands.


Knit in the round with some flat bits, but seamless.
Pattern of my own devising, with guidance from Beth Brown-Reinsel's book Knitting Ganseys book, and experience from Lorna's gansey workshop as part of the local Knitters Study Group Program.
Body - hem up
Sleeves - top down to allow additions as he grows :-)

Its not perfect, there are some little things that I wish I'd noticed in time to fix ... but this was a learning curve .. and I love the shoulder fit, the way the garter welts pull the armscye into shape around the shoulder and chest. Very very clever.
take care ... I'm off to work, it is Friday I'll read research updates, and spend the afternoon in a formal checkpoint crit of the students projects, and then end with a meeting. Then home to knit on the next outstanding WIP.

Take care
Stella

so close he can almost wear it

TJB's gansey is so close he could almost wear it. Well he could wear it but soon won't be able to, Over the weekend and the first few days of this week I completed both sleeves, ripped back the edging on the first sleeve to match the second ... and worked the neck, that means we have a frog report today. I've even woven in the ends ... but Toby can't wear it ... for obvious reasons that will become clear in this post. Knitting camp was good, real good, 12 of us knitted away, threading and dropping beads and making progress on a variety of beaded knitted projects. There was even a night of show and tell and knitting activities planned. I'm keen to go again next year.


I finished the sleeves soon after returning from camp, the first one I had worked with a 2.2 garter rib and an edge of 4 rounds of garter stitch with a sewn off binding. The second I worked the same only switching to 2mm knitting pins for the garter to stop the slight flare. It worked .. so well I frogged the bind off and garter on the first sleeve back and reworked it on 2mm knitting pins. The rest of the gansey is worked on 2.5mm knitting pins. I think you can see the difference, the sleeve on the left is the firmer edge, the one of the right is looser but is now frogged and reworked.

Then I moved onto the neck, I picked up the live stitches and gartered 4 rounds. My stitch count was 153 stitches ..which was about 58% of my total. I knit Poppy's sweaters with a neckline of 60-65% .. so that seemed a good fit. I don't really like EZ'ds high close necklines, the ones you get when you knit a neckline with a stitch count of 40% of the chest measurement. But this is the opposite and this isn't going to work, its loose and floppy ....and it has a sewn bind off which makes frogging more difficult. I'll frog tomorrow night, probably by snipping and pulling a thread and reknit it with fewer stitches ... and maybe shorter? Toby wanted it tall so he could tuck his chin into it .. but we will see.

And Camp Knitting, where I was knitting Rani ... this is my progress. 2 stands of mohair laceweight and size 11 beads on 2mm needles ... sublte. I love the shine and the fuzz and the colour and the softness, but I will rework it with larger needles as it is a bit firm. Its also long, to long for a cuff for a 7 year old so I'll knit it shorter. I think the beads are to small to show up in pattern, so I might just work random amounts of beads on the right side rows. Gansey first.

And last a knitted star, Sunday was Elizabeth Zimmermans birthday, or it would have been if she was still knitting. I didn't discover her until after her death in 1999 ... but she has influenced my knitting and living a lot. Lorna, camp organiser and knit guru found little things to make in the August section of EZ's Almanac ... christmas decorations. This little star is five rows of garter and a tiny seam. And I'm still floored by the knowledge the lady was thinking of and designing and making Christmas decorations in August!

We had good news tonight, N (C on ravelry) is to quit her more than full time stressful day job and resume a more civilized life, working only a few days of the work week, we celebrated her birthday with a dinner out, and she promised to become once again a regular at our spinning and knitting nights.

ok - take care I'm off to the frog pond .. or the spinning wheel, I'll decide when I get to the lounge :-)
stella

Quickly

is how this post will go, I'm packing two bags, one to take away at 5:20 am tomorrow morning , Yup -I'm as shocked as you are but that really is the pick up time to get to the airport and catch the plane. the other bag is for Saturday, I return Friday night, and Saturday I leave for a 2 day knitting retreat. I am terrified I'll forget something in the rush, like oh ... you know undies or Pj's or real my stove top espresso.
I've been knitting the second sleeve on Toby's gansey, and I've added a bit, there is still a bit to go. I hope there will be progress by the next post, next week. Because of knitting camp I'll not get a chance to post Sunday.



I've also been practicing my Tambour work, and look I can Tambour fabric that isn't see thru! I'm amazed. Two ladies came to to work this week to sell on a departed friends stash .. and in the mix of things I got some scraps of this blue wool. Its a little like a blanket, with a slight open weave and the colour was enough to prompt me to go off to a local embroidery shop and find a skein of hand dyed to suit. I needed to order tambour hooks in the two larger sizes to work with this weight of cotton .. but so I'm managing with the largest hook I have. I'm really pleased with this, and feel a little more practice and I'll be able to work a scarf in squiggles. The blue wool fabric is very soft .. and while there isn't much, there possibly is enough for a short scarf. Who knows a few more weeks or months and I might even be at a stage that I feel ready to attempt bead-work and sequins.

Thursday and Friday I'm off to our annual professional educators conference, and then camp .. For which I've done a little prepareation. I've fond a beaded wrister, Rani, in the latest knitty that could be a cuff for Poppy's ballet cardigan. I'll have to work it smaller, as seven year olds have skinny wrists .. but if I knit two and then pick up on one edge .. it would work as the cuff of a sleeve won't it? I also put together a little tutorial for Puncetto braid .. as there is a show and tell session. I'll try and make a video for the next post or two just in case others want to know how, a quick google showed very little on Puncetto lace, and nothing on Puncetto braid and yet it is a simple rhythmic system of making quite pretty braid.

ok .. off to pack and check that I have everything I need, and to bed early
na Stella

Yes, no - maybe?

Today, Sunday in our part of the world, and its a post with something new, something nearly there, and something that isn't as I would have it in a perfect world. Its a cool winter day, clear, and fine with no hint of rain, but - no sun. The warm yellow spot is hidden behind light grey clouds, so its cold, with no hint of light brightness to warm the house. A good day to knit.

The second sleeve on Toby's gansey grows, it grows more slowly than it should, for I frogged all the patterned section back to the pick up edge last night and began it all again. I made an error, one of those that experienced knitters shouldn't make but probably do more than they will admit. I knit the pattern as I thought it was, with two knit stitches and one purl stitch between the ladder pattern and the basket weave pattern. Unfortunately there was one knit stitch and 2 purl stitches between those patterns on the first sleeve ... so they did not match. At all - I tried to convince myself that it did not matter, that 43 rounds was to many to frog for a simple reversal of a purl and a knit stitch, I told myself that 10 year olds don't need perfect ganseys (even if their mothers liked to make them), I even tried to drop the wrong stitches down and hook them back up in sequence ...but really it is better to re-knit and make it right.

This is my new project, brand new, planned, and anticipated and ready to go. I bought some of Marnie Kelly's mohair lace-weight, two skeins, to knit as one and ....

beads! Look pretty, pretty sparkly beads in just the right shade to hide amongst the mohair fuzz and just enough shine to catch the light and sparkle. This is to be two things, first it is my project at the Annual Knitters Retreat workshop, its beaded knitting this year. And second this should be Poppy's ballet wrap. For my littlest is now a ballet girl, something I never really pushed for, a tad to girlie for me. But she has turned in toes, tight hips apparently and ballet is a good solution. Now the ballet gear available is ok, leotards (are they called that?), little floaty skirts, tights and shoes, they are all fine. But the wraps and cardigans are all shamelessly cheap, acrylic or cotton lycra, without an ounce of real natural fiber to keep little dancers in dance studios warm. I'm hoping to knit this in the round but I've yet to find a pattern for one knit that way. It may involve steeking ... I'll start the sleeves at camp .. and work up to the body. My time at camp will be working out the details of how and where the beads can be. Hannah Fettig's Whisper cardigan is a little bit of an inspiration, as is strangly Tubey and even perhaps GFS (I've knit two of those and they are sort of related to Tubey).

And the last project report is my single thumb-less Signe mitten. One is done, sans thumb but ...

you see there is a little problem, for Signe is too small for me. I'm taller than the average knitter, and I have long fingers (ok and feet), and Signe is just over an inch to small. Highly disappointing ... but there you go. Signe was written for Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn, and instead I avoided superwash sock yarns and went for Bendigo Mills 3 ply. I wanted the floats to felt a little, not snag. For now I'm just looking at it and wondering what to do, do I knit the other and find some one with smaller paws, or abandon this and learn from my mistake and knit a pair in sock yarn from my stash (or source more sock yarn), or both. What I do know is that I ended up with 3 projects that needed graphs to track the pattern as I knit, Signe, Bayerische, and TJB's Gansey. That made social knitting more challenging and I'm not in a rush to take on more projects with charts, in fact I feel a need for chart free knit-space. Signe can wait, for now. The need to be chart free probably means that the ballet wrap will have freeform beading rather than precisely planned bead placement .. unless I decide to chart it. I'm weird like that, knowingly planning things that are not the easy route.

Enjoy your sunday .. take care, relax
na Stella
(Oh, and the nearly there was the gansey, the new is the beaded lace mohair ballet wrap, which means the not-quite-as-I-would-want-it is Signe mitten)