Letters
Eight Yarns, One Sweater: Westward Ho!
Begin this Eight Yarns, One Sweater odyssey here.
Dear Kay,
Figuring out a strategy for this eight yarns/one sweater project has cost me a surprising amount of time. I lost a crop of rutabagas in the time it took me to decide what to do with this yarn.
When I laid out all the skeins to decide how to use them in this Spinnaker sweater, it all became very clear: this group of yarns had absolutely nothing in common except a vague similarity in color.
You got your fingering weight Black Water Abbey all the way up to Clara Parkes’s mulespun merino. (“Mulespun” is defined as “flurf attached to other flurf, sort of in a line but not really.” It has the heft and sturdiness of . . . air.) There’s every other weight in between. Mercifully no laceweight, but it was a pretty rugged mix. All are wool except for the pure alpaca, cool to the touch and obviously up to a different game entirely.
I decided that I had to treat this project as if I were out on the great prairie, Willa Cather style, with winter coming and my resources thin. This sweater needs to come from these yarns, as fast as possible. To anybody thinking I was going to work stripes or (SU1282, I’m looking at you) intarsia, I realize is a disappointment. But the simplicity of the Spinnaker pattern (two stitch patterns) left me not wanting to muck around with it very much. There’s enough trouble brewing with all these yarns, so my thought is to blast away at the pattern and just let the colorblocks fall where they may. The biggest priority is ending up with four pieces of knitting that match the measurements in the pattern, so that they can be sewn together into one sweater that might even fit me. Everything else is gravy.
The weight is the thing. How to use bulky worsted in the same sweater as sport weight and fingering weight?
Swatching told me that a size 8 was giving me gauge when using a normal yarn. So that’s the needle to use, hell or high water. Not going to fool around with switching needle sizes midstream: Ma Ingalls would not give a rat’s ass about that. Too busy counting the seed corn.
I sorted the skeins into piles, then other piles, then back to the first piles. Color is just not something I’m going to worry about—the deep yellow of the Martha’s Vineyard yarn is an outlier amid the creamier shades. What. Ever.
I decided to put the heaviest yarns on the back of the sweater. Better to have the weight on my back, I figured, than the front. And scratchier yarns should go where they’re least likely to touch skin.
I took a deep breath, reached for the supersheepy Allen Farm corriedale, and embarked on a tubular cast on.
Kay, I know you have recently done this tubular cast-on magic trick. Isn’t it amazing? In looking at tubular cast-on instructions online (and in The Principles of Knitting), there are a number of ways to get at this gorgeous edge. The method in Veronik Avery‘s Spinnaker pattern worked beautifully for me, though it was not by any means a quick edge. It is apparently a method cooked up by designer/teacher Catherine Lowe (a juicy site, by the way), who developed it as a modified version of the traditional Italian Tubular Cast On.
(Can’t believe I just typed that sentence. Isn’t knitting great?)
If you’ve never tried a tubular cast on, you’ll feel like a genius. Eventually.
Once you remove the provisional cast on, you’re left with a tube that inexplicably curves under the edge.
An auspicious start. I guess. It only took me four tries to get it right.
Love,
Ann
Wowza! Look at all the knitting already! It’s like this sweater is, I dunno, Manifest Destiny or something!
Seriously impressed 🙂
Splendid isolation is what this thing is causing. Trying to remember to feed cats; am forgetting children’s feedings in regular basis.
It’s a SAMPLER. Love it. Don’t get cold feet when you switch yarns, you hear?
LOL at the thought of Ma Ingalls and the phrase giving a rat’s ass. Ma didn’t talk like that, Ann. She didn’t even THINK like that.
xoxoxoxo HAPPY MONDAY IT’S SO AWESOME THAT IT’S MONDAY
Cold feet?!?! [runs off to start procrastination sock knitting project] only sort of nerve wracking, thus thing.
Comment
Wowser, that will be such fun, and nice and warm, and unique! Do you have multiple balls of any of that yarn? I’m looking forward to seeing this baby progress!
Gotta try that cast-on one of these days.
Three skeins of the alpaca, two of the Irish wool, but otherwise it’s all one skein… No way to fake my way out of this…
I read ahead in everything – I want to know how it turns out since there is so much uncertainty in life – but I read this post in sequence and want to tell you the absolute joy I felt when I saw that little bit if knitting at the end. Beautiful! Looking forward to the rest.
That’s so funny! Need to start adding cliffhangers!
Oooh, that is looking sooo pretty already–so pretty that I would be tempted to cave and buy some more of that yarn to finish it up. But you are a braver and more creative knitter than I, which is the edge of our seat, nail-biting excitement that keeps us coming back to see what’s going to happen. Sounds like you have a good plan (how much do you really like rutabagas anyway?). Looking forward to seeing this as it progresses.
PS. I just realized that this is a (much slower) version of what my husband and sons feel when they’re watching football : )
Kay has often pointed out that knitting stash yarn inevitably leads to more yarn buying. No way out!!!
I’m with Ma Ingalls and “afeared” of the tubular cast on, but I like it so far. Cheering you on…..
It’s darnright skeerie, I guarantee. At one point you turn a 1 x 1 ribbing into 2 x 2 ribbing for no apparent reason.
The whole thing looks just yummy.
The sweater is lovely, and …OMG … the cast-on.
It’s BEAUTIFUL and reading this is like reading a juicy novel, waiting to see what happens NEXT. And I agree with Kay, it would have had to be a very bad day indeed for Ma to think in such terms. 😉
Wow, you’ve taken up a challenge! I am looking forward to seeing the results. Good luck!
Hi Ann, I happen to have a pile of natural yarn from various farms as well as Clara’s yarn. I am anxiously watching your sweater of many yarns. Love your sense of adventure.
Ah, you see, my symmetry obsession would have had me knitting stripes for back and front (half of each skein, obvs, wouldn’t have gone for in-the-round) and with matching stripes but different skeins on the sleeves. Heavier yarns at the bottom, lighter, softer ones towards the top of the pieces with the neck in the alpaca. Cannot WAIT to see it.
I don’t think I’ve ever bothered with a tubular cast on. In fact I know I haven’t. I might try one, just because. Or not!
Westward Ho, indeed! I’ll bet that even Ma Ingalls was never so, ahem, “enterprizing” as to go “where no man has gone before”. Although this is no small step for a knitter, it is definitely one giant leap for knitters everywhere. You take that step into the unknown, and it’s like we’re all going there too. If it gets scary, remember the process, and just concentrate on the sound of those size eights a crankin’.
LoveDiane
P.S.– Sorry about the rutabagas. They probably would have been various shades of creamy white, too. Would’ve made an interesting mash…
Looking good! I’m eagerly anticipating further progress reports on this sweater, but meanwhile I have to ask: where did you find the illustration that you put in the header? Hilarious – herding sheep from horseback? Has anyone ever really done that?
This blog is better than any mini-series or drama on television…hands down…and I’m looking forward to the next episode and check daily to see your grand adventure! I think I would be tempted to randomly pull the next skein out of a bag and go for it…I love the randomness of it all! Having said that, it does make sense to use the heavier yarns along the bottom and on the back.
I love the tubular cast-on and will try to muck through that on my next project – thanks for the lesson! Your sweater is coming along beautifully – I can’t seem to get out of my own way to get a hat and mittens done for two young children! There never seems to be enough hours in the day for any of us!
Intarsia – what kind of crazy would that be!?!? No, but I meant like this: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/collette
Just enough to make the stripes vertical, not enough for crazy making. Not that I’ve actually done it, but I keep meaning to.
My husband probably would be willing to send you a SQ of the yarn of your choice in exchange for the trick you used to lose a crop of rutabagas … . In an effort to avoid having to eat them, some folks around here claim rutabagas are sports equipment rather than a food stuff: http://www.rutabagacurl.com/
Sadly the rutabaga curl started after I left the frozen tundra (okay, long after), will have to plan a visit to see that live!!!
gotta ask – the painting at the beginning of your (most excellent) post – is it Catlin? (i’m always trying to mimic his greens in knitting…). and so thrilling to see you use so many yarn weights in this exciting project – I think it will hang beautifully.
I’ve been trying to figure out where that BT tubular cast-on comes from! There are tutorials online for every other kind of tubular, but I haven’t been able to find one for that version anywhere (I keep wanting something to link to, of course) and started wondering whether it’s BT’s own cast-on. I like it so much, and even enjoy doing it, although it does make for a slow start. Slow but so very satisfying.