CMS/Colloquium knitting

I started a new project in CMS on Thursday: a Trellis Cardigan in Lindy Chain yarn.  It is not the same Trellis cardigan that I recently knit for my nephew!

I want a new dressy-ish lightweight cardigan.  For years, I wore plain cotton cardigans from Land's End.  I had a navy blue one and a magenta one and loved them both, but eventually they wore out.  I currently have a yellow cable cardigan from Eddie Bauer, but I don't love it.  It doesn't seem to have enough body, so it just droops in front, and I can never seem to get the shoulders to sit right.  Since I can knit more sweaters than I need, I decided to try to knit the sweater I really want to wear.

I'm not sure that this yarn is the best choice for this sweater, but I'm going to give it a try.  I didn't knit a swatch, but I'm thinking of doing that before I get too much farther, just to make sure I'm knitting the right size (although the projects I found on Ravelry noted that gauge didn't change much after washing).

Interview socks

I'm graduating this year and on the job market, so I'm traveling a lot for interviews this spring. First there was a trip for conference interviews, now multiple trips for campus interviews. Before my conference trip, I decided I needed a new project, and here it is: Skew socks from Knitty.  They have an unusual geometry, which is interesting for a mathematician knitter. Also, there is a right and left foot, which is cool.

The yarn is a sock yarn I got from my mom and have had in my stash for a while. The color changes in the yarn are perfect for highlighting the unusual shaking in the pattern!

CMS/Colloquium knitting: Stripey Socks!

I don't have any CMS knitting to report on from this week, since I finished my self-striping socks in Colloquium the week before.  I'm thrilled with how they look and how they fit!

I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of heel I wanted to knit - I didn't want to interrupt the striping pattern, so a traditional heel flap and gusset was out.  I tried a fleegle heel on the first sock, and that made the stripes very narrow in a way I didn't like, so that was out, too.  I thought I didn't want an afterthought/forethought heel because those tend to be way too tight around the arch of my foot.  I ended up doing a lot of internet research on sock patterns for self-striping yarns and ways to make short-row heels fit better.  I settled on a mini-gusset for a forethought heel, from a fantastic sock article by Kate Atherley in Knitty (link below).  Then I knitted a round heel.  I was a bit amused to see that the round heel put a green dot on the underside of my heel - it's visible in the picture above.

The round heels pucker when the socks are flat, but they fit really well on my feet.

Here's how much yarn I have left over.  I used almost all of it!

Pattern: My own toe-up, forethought heel sock pattern, using the toe from Fleegle's basic recipe, the section of Knitty's Socks 102 article on "Adding Gussets to a Short Row Heel for Better Fit," and for the heel, the round toe/heel instructions from More Sensational Knitted Socks
Size: 64 sts for foot and leg
Yarn: KnitPicks Felici self-striping sock yarn in "Wizard"
Needles: 2.5mm sock DPNs
Started/Completed: July 2015/January 2016
Modifications: I added an additional 6 stitches on each side of the top of the foot for the gusset.  Then I started the ribbing on the "back" half of the leg (the half without the extra gusset stitches) immediately after knitting in the waste yarn for the heel, while keeping the front half stockinette until I had decreased away all of the gusset stitches, then switched to 1x1 ribbing for the front as well.  This helped eliminate a bit of bagging at the back ankle, without drawing attention to the fact that gusset decreases were happening.

Handmade Christmas Part 2

I made Christmas sweaters for my niece, who is 2, and my nephew, who is now 7 months old.  The one for my nephew is the 12-month size of Trellis, heavily modified for symmetry and to reduce seaming.  The yarn is Berroco Vintage, which I didn't really love knitting with.  I chose it because it's the right weight, it's machine washable, and it's only 40% wool (which means it's 60% synthetic, hence the not loving it) and for a while it looked like my nephew was going to have really sensitive skin, so I didn't want to knit him something 100% wool that he might be allergic to. Also, I really, really do love this color green.  Robert really liked the finished sweater, and tried to request one in his size.  He might eventually get one, but probably not any time soon.

For my niece, I used the kids raglan recipe from The Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters.  I knit the smallest size.  I was inspired by this sweater (knit by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee several years ago).  The colored yarn is Liberty Wool color #7864.  I loved knitting with this yarn.  The grey yarn is Valley Yarns Charlemont, held double.  I found these cute little star buttons that I think are perfect for this sweater.

I really kind of want a sweater exactly like this.  Too bad I already have a lot of sweaters (and plans for more sweaters that aren't this one).

Here's a picture of the back of my nephew's sweater.  It's symmetric, which makes me happy!  The one thing I'm not in love with about this sweater is the seam at the back of the collar, which is visible in this photo if you look closely.  The instructions said to graft it, which I did in stockinette after spending over an hour researching grafting in seed stitch.  Turns out a true seed stitch graft isn't possible.  This was highly disappointing to me, but I can't think of any solution.

We also received a few handmade gifts, including this succulent sitting in a knitted felted succulent sweater.  Isn't it adorable?

Handmade Christmas Part 1

I made two little bear carriers from the Oliver + S Little Things to Sew book.  One for my niece (whose back you see in the top photo) and one for my cousin's daughter.  Both girls are two, and even though the book says the carrier will fit children 3 though 8, it fit both of them just fine.

I left the soft part of the velcro off the straps until Christmas day, because without trying it on one of the girls, I had no sense of where I should put it.  I bought one yard of velcro tape total, and ended up cutting the soft side into 16 equal pieces.  I sewed the first one on each strap about 15" from the end, and then spaced three more evenly between the first one and the end of the strap.  (Hopefully this information will be helpful for someone else sewing this as a gift for a toddler!)

The bear carriers went over well!  I didn't get any good photos, because I was using my phone camera and two-year-olds move fast, so all of my pictures ended up pretty blurry.  This was a pretty easy and satisfying project.  I'll definitely make it again if I need a gift for a young child!

Star baby quilt top - with a slight problem

A few weeks ago (actually, a few weeks before Thanksgiving) I was feeling like I had done a lot of apparel sewing this year and not enough quilting.  I have fabric and pattern all ready to go for two or three lap to bed size quilts, but I was also feeling kind of overwhelmed with work and job-searching (I'm expecting to graduate in May), so I pulled out a Simply Color charm pack I've had sitting around for a while and the leftover grey background fabric from my Half Moon Modern Half-Square Triangle quilt and went to town with this free Moda pattern.

It took two evenings to piece the top.  I didn't trim my HST units or pin any seams until I had all of the rows sewn together.  It was quick and easy and fun, and really satisfying to get it done quickly, and I think it looks great - but it is decidedly not flat, which I'm feeling pretty okay about.  I think it will quilt out just fine.  I am not stressing out about this little baby quilt.

The problem came at the end of the second night of piecing, when I pulled out the fabric I had bought for backing and binding when I bought the charm pack.  I only have one yard of the backing fabric.  Lately I've been in a groove of making baby quilts about 40" by 50" and so I assumed that I would have 1.5 yards for the backing, but I don't.  I don't have enough binding fabric to do anything but bind it (only 1/3 yard!) and I don't have any of the grey fabric left over.  I think what I'm going to do is trim 4" of of the two wider borders on the top and then piece that fabric into the back along with a few leftover charm squares that didn't get used in the top.

I'm not really feeling inspired to finish this quilt right now, but at least I have a plan for how to finish it.  I don't like to have long-term hibernating UFOs, but I also don't know of any babies who will be needing a quilt from me any time soon, so I think I'm going to piece the back and then fold it all up until I feel like finishing it.

Being a mathematician improves my knitting

I am a mathematician.  The fact that I am a mathematician shapes the way I think, and slips out when I tell my mom that she doesn't need to worry about my apartment flooding because it's at a local maximum, or how I have a special appreciation for the non-simply-connected geological features at Arches National Park, or in my knitting.  Lately I've been noticing how my mathematical ways of thinking are helping me knit this little cable cardigan (Trellis from Knitty) for my nephew.

Modular Arithmetic: This particular cardigan has an 18-row cable pattern that repeats several times beginning with row 9 of the sweater body, while at the same time you knit a buttonhole every tenth row beginning in row 5.  So I know that I need to put a buttonhole in row 5, 15, 25, 35, and 45.  I want to start counting my rows with row 1 of the CABLE PATTERN, so using the new numbering system for rows, I'll be putting buttonholes in row 7 (this is the second buttonhole), 17, 27, and 37.  Then using modular arithmetic (also known as clock arithmetic) I reduce those modulo 18 and work buttonholes in rows 7, 17, 9, and 1 of the CABLE PATTERN. For me, this is much easier than trying to keep track of one count for the cable pattern and another for the buttonholes - instead, I just track everything in terms of the cable pattern.

Symmetry:  If you look closely at my photos in this post and compare them to the photos in the pattern, you'll notice that I changed some of the cable crossings.  Many mathematicians care a lot about symmetry (non-mathematicians care about this too, of course, but we're trained to notice it wherever we can).  This is a case where I think the pattern-writer was wrong.  If you imagine a vertical line going down the middle of the back of the sweater, in the center seed stitch column, and think of reflecting one side of the sweater across that line, you would get the other side of the sweater.  This is called a reflectional symmetry, and it makes for a much more pleasing image than what is written in the original pattern, with all of the large fancy cables twisting to the "right" and all of the little cables twisting "left."  I fixed this so that the two large fancy cables on each of the front and back twist toward the center, and each of the little cables twists toward the large fancy cable it frames.  

Braids:   This one doesn't really improve my knitting as much as add to my enjoyment.  My research is in knot theory, which is closely related to the study of mathematical braids. Every knitted cable is a braid; in this sweater, each of the fancy cables is a two-strand braid, and each of the little cables is a four-strand braid.  Referring back to symmetry for a moment, the mirror image of a braid is its inverse, so in this sweater we see braids paired with their inverses.  It makes me so happy when my work shows up in other areas of my life!  I'm so glad I'm a mathematician - if I wasn't, I wouldn't be able to properly appreciate this little sweater!