The Sweater from Hell

I've been calling it the Sweater from Hell because that's certainly what it felt like more than a few times over the past 33 months or so. That frustration is fading with time, though, and I expect to end up liking this sweater as much as any other I've made for myself. I first saw the book, Knit Swirl, at the 2011 Fall Fiber Festival. A woman was looking for mink yarn (yes, this really exists, though no minks are killed in the making of it) with which to make one of the sweaters in the book. Intrigued, by the sweaters not the minks, I put it on my Christmas list. The husband came through with it and I read through it with excitement followed by sadness. The instructions might have made sense if I was a more expert knitter, but I shelved the book thinking there was no way I would ever make what has come to be called "a swirl."

The book has a companion website that might help you understand why these seem so complicated. The sweaters are essentially cardigans in that they have an open front. They are knit in one piece ending with one seam to sew to produce the sweater. They can be made as circles or ovals, with the neck opening either centered or off-centered.

Fast forward 11 months or so from Christmas 2011, and the Needle Lady, one of our local yarn shops announced a Knit Swirl class to be held one weekend in January 2013. We would pick out yarn and check our knitting gauges on Friday night, then knit all day Saturday and Sunday. The Sunday class was held at a local country club and included their Sunday buffet. Once I learned that I knew why the class was a bit more pricey than I thought it should be. One of the instructors has a yarn-dyeing business, and we were somewhat steered toward her yarns as the best for our swirls (many of the sample ones had been made from her yarns), making the cost a bit more pricey. Nonetheless, I was all in because I was finally going to get the help I needed to understand the instructions.

The sweater I picked to make was called Depth of Field, a centered circle. I chose to make it using two different yarns held together for a nice mix of colors. People who knit will understand what it means when I say the the first step was to cast on over 500 stitches onto a very long circular needle. After knitting three or so rows, I connected the oh-so-long strip into a circle. I was very careful to make sure that I did not twist it (knitters will understand). I counted the stitches several times, each time orienting the stitches to all face in the same direction. There were a couple of women in the class who weren't as compulsive as I; they discovered after knitting about six inches that there was a turn in their work. I felt for them as they realized they would be un-knitting and re-knitting many thousands of stitches.

The sweater is knitted in welts--five rows of stockinette stitch, four rows of reverse stockinette stitch, repeat. The sweater from hell ended up having fifty welts. I think I may have finished about ten welts by the end of the class on Sunday, and that didn't even begin any of the "fun" part separating the circle to work in sleeves of the correct length. I can't remember if we were told in class to check the tutorials on the website or if I discovered that myself. There were various formulas for figuring out the number of stitches to add or drop to shape the sleeves, get the torso a certain length, etc. I extend my thanks to all my math teachers, even the one who kicked me out of his class.

But first, the rest of the story. I made good progress on knitting the giant circle, regularly decreasing the right number of stitches in the right places and possibly even starting the sleeves until February 17, 2013, the start of an adventure I can't believe I did not blog about at the time. The quick and dirty, highlight version is that younger son was driving back from Seattle to start a new job in Northern Virginia. On February 17, he got stopped for speeding just outside Rawlins, Wyoming. Running younger son's license showed that it had been suspended by Virginia in December, a paperwork glitch that did eventually get resolved a month or two later. In the meantime, I had to quickly fly to Denver, where younger son's college roommate picked me up at the airport and drove me the four hours it took to get to Rawlins, Wyoming. Roommate got his gas tank filled courtesy of younger son and headed back to Denver. I got into what was once my dad's car, a Pontiac Firebird with various markings removed and new ones added so that it looked like a Ferrari. This was also a car that my dad never let a woman drive. Drive, I did, to Denver, and then eastward right into what the Weather Channel named Winter Storm Q. Along the way I managed to spin out on the interstate, ending up facing the proper direction but in the shallow ditch along the side of the road. Fortunately, I was able to drive back up onto the road. We made it just into Kansas the first day before playing it safe and stopping at the last town for 100 miles. The next day, we made it those 100 miles in four or five hours only to encounter "Interstate Closed" signs. We did finally make it back, but by that time I was behind on work and other things, and the sweater from Hell got pushed aside.

I eventually did pick it up again, but it took some reacquainting myself with the specifics of sleeves, increases, decreases, special knitting on the arm cuffs, and so on. Life intervened in not too short a time, and I put it away yet again. I picked it up again maybe about a year ago; I've repressed even the approximate when. I made progress until ... I should know better than to knit at night without several Ott lights (one was not enough) ... I dropped some stitches. I took a deep breath and tried to pick them up. I dropped more stitches. To make this all the more difficult, I was at that point knitting two separate sides of the sweater, each using two strands of yarn. I dislike both of those types of knitting, which may be why the dropping of additional stitches resulted in my sobbing hysterically, carefully putting the sweater and all the accessories and pattern book into a cardboard box that I shut and put out of sight.

Not too many days later, I emailed a friend who at one point had working in a knitting store. She said she would rescue me. Several attempts at setting up a time fell through; she was working through some family difficulties. At one point, I got an email newsletter from the Needle Lady owner. What the heck! I replied explaining about the sweater and could someone at the shop help me. She replied immediately saying to bring it in right then and there. I replied truthfully that that day was not a good one and could she suggest another time in the coming week. Never heard from her.

While working the polls last November, the sweater came up in conversation with the other assistant precinct chief who, it turns out, is an expert knitter. She said to give her a call, she'd be glad to help me. After the election, one thing and then another got in the way and I never called her. By then, I was feeling more than a little sheepish. I kept thinking that I should start another knitting project but every attempt to pick something out fell flat. I finally decided that I had a mental block against starting another project before I had finished this one.

As it turned out, my friend picked up the extra stitches and got me back on track in less than thirty minutes. When I came home and gathered my wits, I was embarrassed to realize that I only had about ten or twelve rows to knit to finish the knitting. After working all the loose yarn ends in, I had to tackle blocking the sweater. More experienced knitters will shake their heads when they hear me say that I had only ever blocked one sweater before, and that was a special case of needing to put a zipper in where I had cut a steek. The shape of the sweater from Hell was going to make blocking a bitch, so I sought more help from my friend the expert knitter. She loaned me something called blocking wires and explained how to use them.

To show you some of the frustration of the knitting, blocking, and seam-sewing to come, here is what the sweater looked like after knitting and right before I blocked it.

The two parts folded over in the center are the sleeves. I had to pin each side if the shape to be the same length and line up various points. All that was easy compared with the next step, figuring out where to put the seam. I read what the book said. I read the tutorial from the website. After much profanity and some tears, I said, "Screw this I am just going to start pinning and be done with it!" And pin I did which was okay until I realized the next day--as I was about to start on the sewing-- that what I had pinned was not one continuous seam. It was two short ones off each end of a long one. Fortunately, it was easy to see what I had done wrong, so re-pin I did and commenced sewing. I normally hate sewing knitted things together (one reason I absolutely love Icelandic knitting), but I really wanted to see the end of the sweater from Hell. And here it is...

It came out a bit smaller than I thought it would, possibly due to a gauge issue I shall discuss with my friend the expert knitter. I still like it, though, and will wear it when the weather turns cold. I just need to find a nice shawl pin to hold the two sides of the front together.

I was adamant while finishing this that I would never make another. Now that it's done, and I can see what it looks like, I think I may make another one. That one would be done with one strand of yarn only, and I might try an oval to get a longer back. That will be in a while, though. I'm meeting with my friend the expert knitter next week about a multiple cable sweater I've been wanting to make for longer than the sweater from Hell took me. 

Creativity Ketchup

It's been a while since I posted about any creative undertakings, so get ready for a deluge. I didn't want to post about the quilts until they had been given to the intended recipients, and that made it all the easier to put off writing about any of this. So, without further adieu, let's plunge in.

Readers of this blog for several years know that I often make quilts for the instructors in our Myo Sim Karate and Kendo program. The year that older son tested for his first degree black belt in Myo Sim kendo, I made our master kendo instructor an indigo quilt centered around a print of Mount Fuji. You can see it in this post; it's the third quilt shown. Two years later, older son tested for his first degree black belt in Myo Sim karate, and I made similar indigo quilts for two karate master instructors as well as another instructor who was promoted to the rank of master in the same test. You can see those three in this post. Our principal local kendo instructor was also promoted to master rank during that test, but I did not have time to make him a similar quilt. Nor did I have time to make one for him last year, due to my own testing for black belt. He got his indigo quilt this year; I fortuitously finished it the night before I was invited to test for my second degree black belt, just three weeks before the test date. Because the recipient was the final local master instructor to receive an indigo quilt, "The Last Master" seemed an appropriate title. I had and used the time to quilt this a bit more closely than I have some of my other "master quilts." You can see some of the detail here. Had I not been invited to test for my second degree black belt, I would have had another quilt ready to present after the black belt test; instead, I presented it a couple of months late. That one was first shown in this post celebrating my new studio space. Another photo of this quilt top got posted to my Facebook profile. I think I said in commenting on the photo that the recipient had yet to be determined, in response to which one of our karate instructors posted a series of "please be mes" that won my heart and earned him the quilt. Here's the quilt in its finished form, spread out on my bed. Next up on the quilting front is to quilt the top shown here as a slightly-more-than-one-year-late wedding present for a friend's daughter. First, though, I need to finish the quilted sword bag I promised younger son as a Christmas present. No photos of it in progress, but I'm at the stage of putting on straps and buckles after which I need to sew the pockets. I was actually going to do all that yesterday and today, but the noise from a basement remodel was a bit more than I wanted to deal with in the studio.

The state of having a sewing machine and knowing how to use it is similar to that of having a pickup truck and knowing how to drive it. It's always handy to know someone with a pickup if you need to move furniture or other large items, and it's always handy to know someone with a sewing machine if you need something made or mended. I traded altering two long, wide drapes into two narrower, shorter ones for a bottle of wine better than that which I typically purchase. I also made the largest things I've ever made in my life, two sets of (two each) drapes to separate a large, open space, into three smaller spaces. I started with four lengths of 108-inch-wide black flannel, the shortest of which was five yards long. After pre-washing and shrinking said pieces (Did you know that there's a Mega-Load washer that can wash 75 pounds of fabric things at once?), I made four drapes, the smallest two of which were 132 inches long and 79 inches tall. Here's what that looked like. This is the shorter of the two sets; the longer ones, 163 inches long each, did not fit, lengthwise, into the empty room I was using as workspace. While my four cutting boards taped together worked in terms of cutting the short dimension, they had to be oh so very carefully re-positioned in order to cut along the longer dimension. Fortunately, I had to do these curtains last weekend, because here's what the room in which I worked looked like last night. This is the basement remodel I mentioned above. The floor seen here was today leveled a bit. Next week, a floating bamboo floor will be installed to turn a former sunroom into a miniature dojo and exercise room, the christening of which will likely merit its own post here.

When not fondling, folding, or otherwise having fun with fabric, I've been yarning. Here's the busband and his brother; the husband is the one in the Icelandic sweater knitted by his loving wife. When people compliment him on the sweater, I tell them that I will gladly make them the Icelandic sweater of their choosing as long as they pay for the yarn and for me to travel to Iceland to purchase it at the Alafoss outlet store outside Reykjavik. I'm serious, just in case there's any question about that. I'm now working on my own Icelandic sweater in zippered cardigan form after finishing another cardigan from yarn I got for Christmas 2009. I still need to block that one, after which I will post photos and possibly run a poll as to whether the frilly style suits me.

In moving into my studio last summer, I discovered a box of wool yarn that I'd forgotten I had, left over from when younger son was in high school and I was holding an after-school group for some academic team members who wanted to learn how to knit. I've so far made three felted bags, large enough to be nice weekend bags, I think, once I add zippers and straps. Here they are, with a sample strap pinned on the first one I finished. I took this photo with my pocket digital point-and-shoot, and the accuracy of the colors leaves something to be desired. The bottom and top bags are actually more purple than the blue that appears here. I also found nine skeins of mauve wool yarn that I bought at an online sale when the mauve looked a lot more pleasant on the screen than it turned out to look in reality. Since I wasn't working on younger son's sword bag yesterday, I used grape, tropical punch, and black cherry off-brand Kool-Aid drink mix to dye those nine skeins of mauve somewhat more pleasing shades of red and maroon. Here they are hanging on the front porch to dry. These will be made into one or more felted bags, though probably not as big as the weekend bags shown above.

And what will I do with all these bags? I occasionally toy with the idea of opening an Etsy shop, but it's actually somewhat hard for me to post my works here for simple public viewing let alone post them somewhere with the intent that people give me money for them. Maybe I need to expand my Christmas and birthday lists since the people on those now may not need or want any more bags. I'll think about that later, possibly while working on one of the works-in-progress mentioned here.

Iceland as Viewed from a Large Chair

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are yesterday and today mostly in pictures. During that time we have seen some truly amazing icicles right outside our room ... decided that troll marshmallows are too big to eat in one bite or even one hundred (these are called "tractor eggs" in Norway) ... continued to marvel at Mt.Hverfjall ... hiked among snow-covered pseudocraters formed when steam caused by lava running into the lake "erupted" through the earth ... ... seen the first geothermal power plant in Iceland (it generates now, as it did when it was built, a whopping 2.6 megawatts) ... seen a hot rock you wouldn't want used in a massage, discovering in the process that it really isn't the heat but the humidity else why would we feel colder next to this than far, far away from it ... eaten some quite tasty rye bread cooked in a metal container within a geothermal hot spring such as that shown here ... done a bit of birdwatching thanks to these gyrfalcons (Iceland is home to two types of falcon--gyrfalcons, the largest falcons, as well as merlins, the smallest falcons) ... stood with one foot in Europe and the other in North America as they separate--the pipes shown here touched in 1977 but are now several inches apart ... seen the Northern Lights
... seen Icelandic horses similar to the ones we should be riding tomorrow ... and driven by houses in snowy Akureyri that have corrugated metal siding ... all but the Northern Lights viewing in the company of our wonderful guide Jimmy. Since returning to Reykjavik this afternoon, we have fortuitously found ourselves staying in a room once used by the world's tallest man who fit in a chair that we can only marvel at and get lost in. We have also trekked some 18 kilometers out of the city to an outlet store (the yellow building with the red roof in the center of the photo) to obtain two knitting pattern books, yarn for two sweaters, a CD of Icelandic music, and assorted small souvenirs for less than the yarn for one of the sweaters would have cost at home. Still to come ... riding, the Blue Lagoon, and a day unplanned save for dinner. Oh, yeah, I guess we'll need to come home after that.

Iceland Day One

I’m writing from Reykjavik’s Hotel Loftleidir where, as I noted on Facebook, the interweb comes at a price. If it is free or substantially less costly from the north, where we go tomorrow, I shall post these notes and possibly more from there.

Aside from very little sleep (for me, anyway; Blaine slept like a baby just as he is right now) on the flight from JFK, it hasn’t been a bad trip at all, 24 hours in. We got a pleasant surprise when the Delta agent in Richmond told us that they could, in fact, check our luggage all the way through to Reykjavik. We had thought that we would have to get it from Delta then carry it across terminals at JFK to re-check it with Icelandair. Both bags arrived with us in Reykjavik, even sitting next to each other on the baggage claim carousel.

We did score a window and middle seat on the north side of the plane for the flight to Reykjavik; unfortunately, there were no Northern Lights to be seen. I did play around a bit with handheld photography from the plane as we taxied out and after we took off. The flight itself was uneventful except for some almost wicked turbulence over Newfoundland. Icelandair offers dinner for a charge; we declined, figuring sleep was more important than food. In between trying to sleep and looking out the window for any glint of the aurora, I followed our progress on the seat-back screen.
Speaking of the seats, they were decorated with gems about the Icelandic language, such as this one for the row in which we were sitting. We landed only a bit late, around 7:10 a.m. instead of 6:45 a.m. The disconcerting thing was that it was still pitch-black. I tried another handheld shot or two as we were taxiing to the terminal; this will show you just how dark it was at 7:20 or so. Even passengers arriving to stay in Iceland rather than transfer to a flight to a mainland European city have to clear security upon arrival in Iceland, something I’ve never encountered before. Perhaps because our flight arrived a bit late, the process went quite smoothly, without any delays. We hit the ATM and then, because Keflavik Airport is actually some distance from Reykjavik, hopped a bus into the city. By this time, between 8:00 and 8:30, there was a line of white on the horizon signaling the coming sunrise. Even after our arrival at the hotel a bit after 9:00, the sun wasn’t really what you might call “up.” It will be interesting to see when it starts to set this evening or afternoon. I’m now updating this and can report that it didn’t start to get dark until around 6:00. I was surprised by this until I remembered that the fact that Iceland adheres to Greenwich Mean Time essentially puts it on a permanent two-hour daylight savings time basis. This means more dark in the morning but more light later in the day, after work or school.

In the meantime, we are about to get ready to be picked up to go whale watching. Because of winds off Reykjavik, we will be leaving instead from Grindavik on the south coast, near the Blue Lagoon we will visit later in the week. When we confirmed the pickup time, we learned that there has been a pod of orcas in the area lately, so we might cheat the “whale sightings are not guaranteed” clause in the booking documents. We shall see.

And we did, indeed, see, not orcas but two humpback whales. First, though, obligatory photos of the two of us in the sea suits provided for our comfort.
The other thing provided for comfort, mine anyway, was seasick pills. I took one as we set out and managed to get through the rather rough voyage in much better shape than some people did. I was actually fine as long as I was shooting photos. It was only when I stood around doing nothing that I started to feel disconcerted by the motion. Needless to say, I took a lot of photos. Here are two of my best
and two from Blaine.

A few more random notes. Someone on the plane from New York was somewhat dismissive about our Reykavik Hotel. I, on the other hand, think it’s delightful (except for the interweb tariff). Here’s a shot down the spiral staircase that we take up to our room. And each room is dedicated to a different local artist, as shown by the room number plate on the door of our room. There are also various works of art in the common areas. This photo is outside the lift on our floor while this one is on the floor below.
Before we came, I read four mysteries by Arnaldur Indridason that are set in Reykjavik. I mention this because I had the chance to investigate an explanatory detail given at the start of the first book. Here’s a clip from the local phone book. Yes, the listing is by first name rather than last. Iceland still uses the traditional “son” and “dottir” surname convention, which means that it’s easier to find someone by their first name than last.

Finally, I have to give a shout out to the reason I’m here on this trip as well as throw out a shot I snapped quickly at breakfast. Not bad, if I do say so myself … the photo and the subject thereof.

P.S. on Sunday, from Lake Myvatn. The interweb is free here, so I shall try to post again tomorrow. First attempt at seeing the aurora is in a few hours. Know, though, that our landing at the airport an hour away was delayed due to snow and that the first half of our drive to the hotel was in white-out conditions. That said, it then turned sunny and we toured the lake under a true-blue sky. I also broke my promise not to get a sweater when we happened on a shop in which a local woman was selling sweaters to the shopkeeper. Blaine knows my fiber obsession well enough to know that I was telling the truth when I told him that the yarn in the sweater would cost me more at home than the sweater itself would. Photo to come. First, though, I need to take today's shots off the camera and get ready for later. Fingers crossed for clear skies!

Lots of Little Things and Snow

Snowpocalypse. SnowMG. Snowmageddon. We've heard them all this winter. The latest "significant snow event" wasn't quite as significant as it could have been, but it was still a doozy. The University of Virginia canceled classes yesterday; the last time they did that was in 2003. What was different this time was that they made the announcement the day before, telling all non-essential employees just to stay home the next day. I've been here 31 years, and I can't remember their ever doing that before. It was a good decision. We didn't get the three feet of snow that some of the forecasts said was possible, but we got enough. It started snowing in the 6:00 to 7:00 range yesterday morning, and it's still coming down, though barely, 34 hours later. Here's the view up our driveway this morning. And here's a shot I took of our deck railing through the window on the back door. We've been luckier than some folks in that our power has stayed on despite blinking off and on several times. As you can see here, the trees have a lot of snow on them, and that snow is wet and heavy. We've heard numerous cracks from the woods around the house, and we actually cut back a tree that had fallen across our road while we were walking. We'll be cleaning up quite a few branches from the yard when the snow finally melts, but so far no trees are down in the area around the house.

I've been taking advantage of the snow days (it's not clear if tomorrow will be a third one, since if the gym is open, we'll be there to do kendo and/or karate) to play with something from a great new book I got. I refuse to buy a knitting or other craft book just for one pattern or the instructions to make one item. Skimming through a book called AwareKnits at the local Barnes & Noble, I found eight things I wanted to try, the first of which is crocheting a lunch bag out of plarn. Plarn = Plastic + Yarn, or "yarn" made by cutting up plastic shopping bags. On the left is the strip made by cutting up a plastic grocery bag. After cutting the handles off, I cut the bottom of the bag off then cut the body of the bag into a spiral. On the right is a ball of plarn. In the center, in front of the book, is the bottom of the lunch bag. You can see some of the different color bags in there; you may recognize the green ones as being from Barnes & Noble. I don't think I have enough plarn to finish the bag, but at least won't feel guilty for a while if I stop into a store without one of the canvas bags I carry in the car for my weekly grocery shopping.

From crocheting to knitting, I finished a felted mohair bag to donate to an auction being held to help send a group of high school students to the Galapagos. Felted things are so much fun! For example, here's the bag before it was felted. Here's the bag after I felted it. It's a bit frightening to put something I made out there and up for sale. I once gave two small quilts to a school's silent auction and was downright depressed by how little they went for, well under the cost of the materials in them. I tried not to take the low prices as a comment on the workmanship, but it was kind of hard. This bag actually cost me nothing but the time it took to make it; I used yarn that I accepted in payment for working at a fiber festival. So we'll see how much it goes for; at least I know that whatever amount it generates will go to a good cause.

Continuing with the theme of lots of little things I haven't written about, I bought myself a new little toy back before Christmas, a lomographic fisheye camera. Lomography is not about high-end photographs; it's more about point-and-shoot snapshots. And yes, it's film, which means you can't correct on the spot but have to wait to see the results. The fisheye just adds to the fun, as in this shot of the husband or this one of older son's feet. And sometimes you can even end up with some nice photographs.

Finally, two weeks from today the husband and I will be in Reykjavik, Iceland, and possibly have seen whales and puffins. At least we're scheduled to go on a whale watching cruise our first afternoon there. I've been reading various resources on photographing the Northern Lights as well as a series of mysteries set in Reykjavik. I've been breaking in the hiking boots I bought for the trip, and I tried out a friend's snow pants on today's walk. It's becoming very real that we're actually going. I can't promise to put up long posts daily, but I'll try to get the highlights up while we're still there as opposed to several weeks after we get back. That's the plan at least.