Third time lucky?

Well, this is the third time I've done the ribbing and the fourth time I've done the first few rows of stocking stitch on Dad's alpaca vest. It looks okay but I'm trying hard not to get excited about it until I've done enough stocking stitch to really know that I'm still getting something close to the right tension.

I ended up having to go down to 3mm needles for the ribbing and 3.25mm needles for the stocking stitch. It feels really weird to be knitting with needles that size on an adult garment. I don't usually knit with anything finer than 8ply/DK and until now that's always been on 4mm or 4.5mm needles. I tend to mentally associate 3.25mm needles with baby clothes and with knitting that takes forever to get anywhere. But I figure that since I'm getting the same gauge that I would normally get on the larger needles, then it will go at the same pace. I could be wrong there, I often am!

The Queensland Youth Choir concert on Sunday night was great. The choirs and various ensembles were really talented and the show was put together really well. Voice Works performance of Billy Joel's "And So it Goes" was my favourite of the night, but there were a lot of other great performances. I've sent away an enquiry for more info on Vox Populus (the community choir for the over 26's) and may even join up if the planets are in alignment. I haven't really sung outside of the house or the car for a long time!

Seeing The Idea of North live was a highlight too. They were amazing, even giving the audience the chance to sing along with them on the end of "Isn't She Lovely"so now I can say that I've sung with The Idea of North at QPAC. They were signing CD's after the concert as well, so I bought some of their CD's and had a brief chat while they were signing. They were all really friendly and I got the distinct impression that they would have been more comfy in jeans at a BBQ than in their fancy performance clothes. I haven't met many Australian performers but I'm glad that the few I have met seemed to be friendly, down to earth people. Of course, I'm passing judgement on talking to these people for all of 10 seconds!

It's only a little thing, but I love that I can now get in Lulu and drive to things like the concert. I know it's completely environmentally unfriendly of me and I should be catching buses and walking but the independence my ability to drive now affords me is special. And I suppose that you could argue that I wasn't polluting for all those years that I wasn't driving between the ages of 18 and 34....

I've got a bit of a cold and a sore throat at the moment and I'm feeling kind of miserable. I don't even feel that much like knitting, which is not like me at all. I guess it's a good thing that I have a basic project like Dad's vest on the go so that I can just pick it up and knit for a bit without having to think about it. I just hope that the gauge is really right this time though, because if it isn't, I think I'm just going to cast off on the 10cm band of ribbing and find an elephant that needs a head-band.

Dr Strangegauge: or How I learned to stop worrying and love the swatch.

Yesterday I finished the ribbing on Dad's Alpaca vest. Or, rather, it finished me, and I decided that 20 rows (out of a recommended 24) was quite enough and started on the plain stocking stitch of the body.

I used the 4mm needles called for in the pattern and had about 15 rows done before it started to dawn on me that it didn't look or feel quite right. It was gathering up quite a lot on the 60cm needles, so it was obviously quite large. And the stitches looked...well, ... big. I was on the bus without all of my supplies, so I tried to stretch it out as much as I could on the needles and measure it. 5 stitches to the inch...(there was no way I could get a flat 10cm to count the stitches in that distance)......that makes 20 stitches to 10cm, and the pattern calls for 22. It's okay, maybe I'd stretched it out a little bit when I was trying to get a flat bit. I decided to keep knitting and measure again when I got home and could stretch it out on a longer cable.

When I got home I used my new Knit Pro cable connectors (love them!) to join on a longer cable and pulled it through, then smoothed a section out flat to measure. Ouch. 18 stitches to 10cm. The vest was going to fit your average elephant. (Just in case you were wondering, my Dad is not an elephant).

You may ask why I managed to get so far off track. Didn't my gauge swatch tell me which needles to use?...Um, well, no, because I didn't swatch.  You see, I swatch so rarely it might as well be never. If I measure my gauge at all, I do it partway into the project, which usually works out okay. I knit with 8ply yarn about 80-90% of the time, and I almost always get gauge (or close enough that it doesn't matter) with 4mm needles for all of the 8ply wool or acrylic I've ever used. I think i can count on the fingers of one hand the times when I've been off slightly, and was lucky that always happened on projects where gauge wasn't important.


So I'd obviously been lulled into a false sense of security. I should have known. Not only have I never knit with this yarn before, but I've never knit with this fibre, not even in a blend. In the end, when I did swatch, I had to go down to 3.5mm needles. I suspect I should have redone the ribbing with 3mm needles but I'm not going there again. It's probably not perfect but it looks okay, and Dad's supposed to love it regardless, right?

I ripped back to the end of the ribbing and started the stocking stitch anew with my 3.5mm needles. This is what it looks like now.




I'm not sure how likely this experience is to influence my future swatching behaviour. Despite the title of this post, I don't think it's looking good for future swatches, especially seeing as though the swatch that identified the need for 3.5mm needles was only about 15 rows deep, although it was about 15cm worth of stitches across. Hmmmm. I suppose we'll see what happens next time.

I also got another square finished and sewn onto my Wrap With Love blanket this afternoon. I now have 7 out of 28 squares done. It gives me something to do with the acrylic which has been slinking around in the stash.

Edited about one hour later to add:
And yet still somehow I got it wrong. I've now knitted enough with the 3.5mm needles to work out that I'm getting 21 stitches to 10cm instead of the desired 22.5. (Am I knitting a bit looser due to the weight of the whole piece? Don't think I've done that before.) That's going to result in the vest being 8.5 cm larger around the chest than it should be. Since I had to go up 2cm from Dad's chest measurement to fit one of the pattern sizes, an extra 8.5cm doesn't sound like something we can accommodate. So I'm off to swatch again, and maybe go down a size on the pattern. And this time I'm not going to get away with keeping the existing ribbing. That's going to have to be done on 3mm needles, which had better be good enough, as it's the smallest I've got in a circular needle! Aaaargh. Oh well, at least I'm getting lots of practice at the tubular cast on.

Sometimes it's a good idea to read the pattern......

I started a plain v-neck vest for Dad on Sunday night, in some Bendigo 8ply Alpaca that I had originally purchased for another project, then changed my mind. I did my usual trick of using the needle size recommended for the body of the garment rather than the needle size stated for the ribbing (I don't like my ribbing to pull in too much), but after 17.5 rows of k1p1 ribbing I realised that it was looking a little bit flabby and stretched already. I don't know if it would pull out of shape badly in the finished vest but I've read that Alpaca can stretch and sag a bit. This is the first time I've worked with alpaca so I don't know from experience. I wasn't prepared to risk it so I ripped it all last night and started again with the 3.25mm needles called for in the pattern. Now it looks like this.

Not much to show for all that work, but I think it has a better chance of being good in the end. At least I hope so.

A colleague at work visited my desk today and gave me a flyer for a concert this weekend. His family are involved with the Qld Youth Choir, who are having a concert on Sunday night to celebrate their 25th Anniversary. I love choral music so I was interested anyway, but they have a stellar lineup of other singers performing as well, including The Idea Of North, who I've wanted to see live since I first heard of them. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll leave you with this link to The Idea Of North's gorgeous rendition of Isn't She Lovely, which I just love.

Let's Twist Again

When I started my cabled cardigan with my newly delivered Bendigo Classic 8ply, I realised very quickly that knitting with this yarn was going to be a challenge. I noticed in passing while I was casting on (using the long-tail method) that the yarn wasn't untwisting as much as I normally notice with cast-ons but that was a bonus so it didn't really warrant further attention. It wasn't until I began the first knit row that I started to have problems. The yarn was untwisting badly with each stitch I made, so much so that if I didn't watch closely, I was splitting quite a lot of my stitches.

To start off with, I thought it was something new that I was doing, some bad habit l had picked up along the way, as l couldn't find any evidence online of anyone else having a problem with this yarn - in fact it seemed to be well-loved. The knitter l am now would have stopped right there, put it aside and found some other nice yarn for this project and saved my sanity a bit. Unfortunately, the knitter I was then decided to persevere - after all, I didn't want to waste all that yarn. So l kept on persevering along, which became a bit of a nightmare when I reached the cables. This was my first cable project, and the combined difficulty of not only learning how to make a cable but also dealing with all those split stitches and (horrors) split stitches in the cables! made me want to discard the project more than once.

Then, courtesy of a couple of other projects I worked on while the poor cardy languished in a pile in the corner, I realised that the other yarns I was using weren't untwisting. So it wasn't me, wasn't something strange with the way I was forming the stitches.

I looked closer at the yarns and worked out that the culprit was the direction of twist of the yarns. The other yarns I was using, which untwisted when l was casting on, but not when I knitted, were twisted in a different direction to the Bendigo Classic, which untwisted when I knitted but was fine when I cast on. A little bit of internet research made it clearer. The Bendigo Classic is a cabled yarn made from three (four? I haven't got any in front of me so I'm not sure) S-twisted plies plied together, resulting in an overall Z-twist to the yarn. The other yarns I was used to were all S-twist, so the twist of the yarn is in the opposite direction. There is a good explanation of twist and how it relates to yarn construction in the fall 05 issue of Knitty.

Since I couldn't find anyone else online commenting on how they can’t knit with Bendigo Classic, I assume that my action when I knit serves to put more of a clockwise twist to the yarn than most people, thus increasing the twist of the S-twist yarns and decreasing the twist or the Z-twist yarns, or untwisting them. So I’ve decided that it’s a good idea for me to avoid Z-twist yarns.
If only I'd remembered that the other day when snapped up 10 balls of Moda Vera Mousse on special at Spotlight. It’s a beautiful yarn – soft and smooshy with a slight sheen, but it’s a single. And like most singles, it’s a Z-twist. I swatched, and it is untwisting really really badly. The extra problem with an untwisted single is not only split stitches but the risk that it will pull apart.

Anyone want some yarn?

And in other news that is only related to yarn if you're interested in continuing to be able to afford to buy it, our Reserve Bank put up interest Rates today. Only by 25 basis points, or 0.25% but the cynic In me expects that my Mortgage company will use it as an excuse to put rates up by more than that - I would expect 0.4 to 0.5%

Monday, I've got Friday on my mind

Monday again. The weekend always flies by so quickly!

The Boy is back from school holidays with his grandparents and School went back today. I asked him how his day went and got the standard response..."Bad". No elaboration, so I don't know what in particular was bad about today, but I guess I'd better get used to being told only what he chooses to tell me....Some days I wish I was six years old again, but I'm glad I don't have to go through those teenage years again.

I got my copy of The Knitter number 8 at the newsagent today. I notice we're two issues behind here but that may be to try and be a bit closer to our seasons. I like the Lacy Blouse and the Caper cotton jumper. Some of the other patterns are nice to look at but I can't see myself knitting them.

Unusually, on the way to the bus this afternoon I saw another woman reading the same magazine. Part of me wanted to catch her attention and show my copy in some strange act of solidarity but I just smiled and walked past.

I've finished off a number of little baby tops for a plethora of new little people - three Felix's Cardigans and a Tie-front Bolero. They've all had a soak in some Soak and are drying after their wet-blocking. They should be ready for packaging up for the new Mummies and Daddies tomorrow.

I've also started a plain v-neck vest for my Dad in some Bendigo 8ply Alpaca I purchased for a jacket for Mum (and decided not to use as I thought the jacket would be too heavy for the alpaca and would pull out of shape). I did a tubular cast on and so far I've done 7 out of 24 rows of k1 p1 rib. I'm doing it in the round so there's 4 stitches less to get all the way round but each 246 stitch round still takes a long time. It should be a bit quicker once I get to the miles and miles of plain stocking stitch. :)

Congratulations, Neil.

Over on his journal, Neil Gaiman is discussing the fact that The Graveyard Book has made it to 52 weeks on the New York Times Children's Bestseller list. I got The Graveyard Book (audiobook) as my first download on my Audible.com membership and I'm loving it. I'm not to the end of it yet, so I suppose it's theoretically possible that it all goes to pot in the last chapter, but knowing Neil's previous work and suspecting how good a book would have to be to even get into the 10-place-long Children's bestseller list, I think that's highly unlikely.

This is an amazing achievement.  Congratulations, Neil.

Tell me something I don't know

I wrote this some time ago, starting it before my move to Brisbane three and a half years ago, and finishing it afterwards. It came to me in bits and pieces, words and ideas here and there, and totally out of order. After it had settled itself into its final form, I entered it in a poetry competition. It didn't win anything (but then, I didn't like any of the poems that did win). I haven't really written any poetry since, except for the occasional orphaned line, so I think it must have been something about that time.

If, at the time that I wrote it, you had asked me what it was about, I wouldn't have been able to tell you, part because I've always believed that to a significant extent, the reader chooses the meaning of a poem, part because I just didn't know. Over time I've come to feel that for me, it's about a journey being made by two people who know each other well, but are no longer travelling on the same path. I hope that maybe it might mean something to you, too.


Tell me something I don't know

Tell me something I don't know,
I'll hide my fears and let them grow,
For Thursday's child has far to go,
There's no time to delay

And while I choose the path to take,
You'll shake the dreamers wide awake,
There's never been so much at stake,
So much to hold at bay

So I'll stand by while you romance
The idiots and sycophants
Until there's nothing left to chance
And even less to say

And I'll remember, you'll forget,
The epitaphs and epithets.
There's no time left to feel regret,
We did that yesterday

Recall a Sunday afternoon,
Another year, a different June,
We knew the night would come too soon,
I knew you wouldn't stay

But while that endless fire burned
I found what you'd already learned
And looked to see your face, which turned
A paler shade of grey

I heard you'd found a place to dream,
Here, underneath the evergreens
But nothing's ever as it seems
With other things at play

With memory in close pursuit,
You'd got there by a different route,
For dreams are never absolute
They always fade away.


© 2006.