Slow Fashion October – Week 3

Week three’s theme is loved. As I pared down my wardrobe earlier this year, I kept only things that I loved. It’s so nice to open my dresser and see things that I’ve had for years and remember things about them. My freshman year in college I lived in one small room with three other girls (one of whom I’m still really good friends with – hi Amy), and one of the moms sent us all socks when it got cold; I still have my pair. I have a ton of old t-shirts I’ll never wear again so they’re all in a hamper in the linen closet and when I finally learn how to use a sewing machine, I’ll make a quilt. I rarely have occasion to wear it, but I love the dress I bought on super sale from Eileen Fisher to wear for our wedding rehearsal. Here I am wearing the same outfit, including the shrug I finished knitting mere days before the rehearsal, a few days later on our honeymoon:

One of my proudest knitting accomplishments was sewing in this zipper for this sweater for my husband. This sweater, which is a simple bottom-up raglan pullover, was to replace one from LL Bean. The pattern had a button band, but he wanted a half zip instead. It took all evening to attach and I sewed it a little uneven so the zipper catches in one spot if you zip it too quickly. But now I can say I’ve sewn in a zipper, although I think in the future I’d just take such a thing to a tailor.

Of course now I’m working on a sweater with set in sleeves, so if I manage to do that correctly the first time I’ll be quite pleased.

This is probably the oldest hand-knit I still wear, and I wear it a lot. My aunt knitted it for me ages ago and the sleeves are too long so I always cuff them. When my sister and I were growing up, sweaters from Aunti were often a bit long so we’d grow into them. This one is tunic-length now and I love that. It’s denim so it’s very durable and even machine washable, which is a nice touch. It’s sitting on my sheep blanket, which I got in Reykjavik on our Iceland stopover on the way home from Norway last year. The blanket is great – warm but breathable and it has that comforting wool smell. AND it’s reversible, with the inverse shades on the other side. It’s usually draped over my office chair, until our cat inevitably pulls it down to sit on.

And here is my favorite dress, a gift from my aunt and uncle when I was in college, which I wear as often as I can get away with. It came from a second hand shop in Floyd, VA, where the woman buys used clothing and stamps on it. This dress has lovely faded red stamps on the front and back. In the summer I wear it with leggings and Toms or sandals, and in the winter with boots and a sweater. I bought these boots (on sale!) last winter to replace a pair I’d had since high school and worn through both the soles and lining. I’ve learned my lesson – buy leather-lined boots. The vest I’m wearing is my newly finished Sycamore, which I’ll talk more about in week five. Here’s Ajax going in for a kiss, as today I spent the afternoon planting daffodils, my favorite flower, around our property, and he missed me.

Slow Fashion October – Week 2

Week Two’s theme is small/sustainability and I’m a big fan of living with less. When my husband and I decided to buy a house we also vowed to get rid of a lot our stuff. After we closed on our house, we went through six large boxes, mostly untouched since our move from Boston three years ago, and only kept about one box worth. As we packed, we really thought about each thing we boxed up.

To facilitate this process, I got Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The basic principle of the book is, “does this item spark joy?,” which is a different mindset from “do I want this?” or “might I need this in the future?” Having recently helped my sister pare down her clothing for a move, I was ruthless in my closet and dresser. I kept only items that I love and wear frequently, with a few exceptions made for fancy clothes, things with sentimental value, and of course handmade items. I wear basically the same thing every day anyway (jeans, plain v-neck t-shirt, sneakers) so getting rid of more than half my clothing wasn’t very difficult. I wear things until they wear out (and then I wear them as pajamas) and then I try to re-purpose. I have a collection of t-shirts I’ll never wear again that I plan to (someday) sew into a blanket. I still feel like we could get rid of some of our things around the house, but we’re working on it.

I’ve become increasingly conscious of clothing’s origins over the last few years. Partly this rose from the fast fashion movement and my frustration at low quality clothing. Being six feet tall, I’ve always had trouble finding pants. Patagonia makes jeans from organic cotton and uses dyes that require less water and harmful chemicals, plus they use fair trade sewing practices. And they’re long enough! My favorite t-shirts are from Everlane, an online-only retailer that discloses all costs in making their garments, plus frequently visits their factories to ensure fair practices.

I’m also trying to be more conscious about my fiber purchases, considering origin and environmental costs. It’s a process. I’m learning more all the time and I encourage you to consider these things as well. The environmental impact alone of shipping to scour, dye, and spin in various countries is staggering. A shout out here to my aunt, who knits, spins, and dyes, often with plants from her garden. Here is alpaca dyed with woad:

Finally, I took “small” literally this week and knitted something small! This hat (my sister is getting an identical one) is made from Manos del Uruguay roving and a mohair/wool/alpaca blend handspun by my aunt. It’s a slouchy version of the Simple Hat from Hannah Fettig’s Home and Away. The yarn is amazingly soft and I’ll probably wear it every day this winter.

Slow Fashion October – Week 1

Ok, sliding in here under the wire for week 1. I’ve been reading Karen Templer’s excellent blog for a while now and she posted weekly topics for Slow Fashion October.

So, week one’s topic is me. I knit, I spin, I can sew enough to fix things, and I can crochet a chain to do a provisional cast-on. I once assisted in teaching a crochet class last minute and I told the teacher I didn’t know how to crochet and she laughed and said, “all you have to do is stay a step ahead of a group of ten-year-olds.” I’m not sure why but that little pep talk has always stuck with me.

As the weather has gotten chilly and rainy here the last week or so (thanks, Joaquin!), it’ll be pretty easy to wear something handmade every day this month. I always look forward to pulling my scarves and mitts and sweaters out of storage when fall arrives.

The big goal is the two sweaters I’m working on. One is Brooklyn Tweed’s Stonecutter for my friend Lily, and the other is Hannah Fettig’s Sycamore vest for me. Stonecutter takes a lot of time so I don’t know how realistic it is to knit the front and back panels AND block all the pieces AND sew everything together AND knit on the neckband, so I’m setting a more realistic goal of finishing the front panel. Maybe I’ll surpass this and surprise myself. The real goal is to finish the sweater by Thanksgiving.

I have finished Stonecutter’s sleeves and look, here they are on Lily!

Sycamore is a stashbuster project and I happen to know the names of all three of the animals its fiber comes from. To make gauge I’m holding two fingering weight yarns together. The darker grey is a sheep from Pennsylvania named Luck of the Irish and I believe she is a Leicester Longwool. I got it at Carolina Fiber Fest last year. The lighter grey is two alpacas from Florida named Roxie and Charm. My grandparents visited Florida this summer and brought me three skeins.

I’d also like to knit an accessory out of some of my own handspun and spin more. For over a year now I’ve been working on two pounds of brown and white wool and every once in a while I throw in some green top roving. Here’s how that comes out:

Finally, I want to build our dining room table. Home decor sort of counts as fashion, right? We are hosting Thanksgiving this year and I want to give myself plenty of time to build the table and go thrift shopping for chairs to go with it.

FO – Sky Scarf

Well, Sky Cowl, but that doesn’t have quite as a nice a ring to it.

This was a fun knit. The yarn is a skein each of laceweight alpaca in dark blue, light blue, white, light grey, and dark grey. Each day for a year I knitted two rows (one garter stitch ridge) with two of the five strands to match the weather for that day. The Sky Scarf kit came from Leafcutter Designs (it appears to be merino yarn now). The first row is our first wedding anniversary and the last row is our second anniversary. If not for this scarf I wouldn’t have remembered that they were both overcast and drizzly, a far cry from the warm sun on our wedding day.

The instructions say to carry the strands you’re not using up the side by twisting the two working strands around the other three at the beginning of each ridge; however, I didn’t love the way that looked and wanted a stretchier edge. Three or four months in I started knitting the first stitch of each day with all five strands for a clean, stretchy edge. I admit I didn’t keep to knitting a row every day and had to catch up every once in a while, so I marked the first of each month with removable stitch markers. I seamed the ends together with a half twist to make a faux moebius cowl.

Here it is on Ajax, who is a much better model than me.

Fixing Gappy Stitches

In knitting my modified version of Chelsea Morning and beginning Stonecutter for Lily (see previous post), I noticed that I get a large/gappy purl stitch when switching from knit to purl. Here you can see it in the cable background of Chelsea Morning; happily, aggressive blocking mostly evened out the stitches and you can only see the issue if you’re looking for it. The gray arrows indicate the gappy stitch and the blue arrows indicate a purl stitch with normal tension:

There’s a good reason that this happens. When switching from knit to purl, you bring the working yarn to the front to begin to purl. This adds a little extra yarn to the first purl stitch. But how to fix it? Google brought me to this wonderful TECHknitting post and I tried all of the methods on Chelsea Morning, finally settling on simply knitting tighter over those few stitches.

But none of those methods would really work for Stonecutter’s all over motif, particularly the bias cables along the sides. Michele, owner of DownTown Knits, suggested pulling the second purl really tight, rather than the first, to get rid of the extra yarn.  This improved things, but it didn’t seem like something I wanted to do on an entire sweater.

I dove really deep into Googling how yarn is used in stitches and played around with how I was wrapping that first purl stitch and realized that if I wrapped it the opposite way from normal, the transition didn’t use so much extra yarn. Stonecutter is worked back and forth in pieces, so the below pictures reflect that; however, this method would probably work in the round as well. Do this every time you switch from knit to purl, regardless of which side you’re working. Here’s how:

1. Wrap the first purl stitch clockwise (bottom to top).
   
2. Wrap the second purl stitch, and all subsequent purl stitches, counter-clockwise (top to bottom) as normal.
   
3. When working those stitches on the other side, your first purl stitch is now your last knit stitch. You’ll notice that last knit stitch is twisted on the needle.
   
4. No problem! Just knit into the back of the stitch to fix the twist. If you don’t like that, you can twist the stitch back the way it’s supposed to go before knitting it.
   

And there you have it – a nice cable column without gappy purl stitches!

Is this a problem you’ve encountered? If so, how did you solve it?

Current Project – Stonecutter

Last spring I made a deal with my friend Lily: pay for all materials and I’ll knit you a sweater. We spent an evening perusing ravelry and in the end, she picked a challenge: Brooklyn Tweed’s Stonecutter.

Stonecutter is challenging for a few reasons. Cables aren’t difficult but I’ve never done an all-over motif.  This is also my first sweater knitted in pieces and then sewn together, and I’m a little intimidated by set-in sleeves.

Anyway, when Lily was in New York visiting her boyfriend, I sent her to Purl Soho with detailed instructions on what yarn to buy and how much. It arrived at my door a few days later, wrapped in bright pink tissue paper with a note that now lives on my fridge.

I got to swatching immediately – always swatch, even when using the recommended yarn!

Next came the issue of the tubular cast-on. I understood the concept but the pattern’s instructions didn’t make sense to me, so I just used the long-tail method. I have also recently noticed that when switching from p to k, the first knit stitch is big and gappy (more tomorrow on how I solved this!). I trusted that the magic of blocking would fix it and pressed on. However, I messed up a couple yarn-overs in between k and p stitches and decided to frog the whole thing and start over. My husband walked in while I was frogging and saw the look on my face and walked right back out of the room.

With perfect timing, my aunt sent me Twist Collective’s article, Taming the Tubular Cast-on. It took three tries to get it right, using a combination of the first method from Twist Collective and the row count from the Stonecutter pattern. The tubular cast-on is an amazing little thing that creates a rolled up edge.

I also decided to start with a sleeve, rather than going full-force into the front panel. This gave me a shorter cast-on edge to play with and some time to get into the rhythm of the pattern. Plus I’m not big on knitting two identical things in a row, so this way I can alternate sleeves and panels. Cat for scale (note the use of yarn ball as pillow):

I just finished the increases on that first sleeve and have just a little ways to go before starting cap shaping. I’m looking forward to starting the front panel now that I’m feeling more confident in the pattern.

Current Project – Ito Tetsu Scarf

Ito Tetsu, a very fine yarn made of silk wrapped around stainless steel, is unlike anything I’ve worked with before. Silk has its own sheen but the steel glints through and sparkles. The steel means it has absolutely no give or stretch, but you can manipulate the finished stitches by crumpling or stretching.  It took a few inches of knitting to get used to working with it

It weighs basically nothing (a 269 yd cone weighs 15 grams) and I’m knitting in garter stitch on size 8 needles to show the yarn’s character. It would look amazing held together with another yarn. Maybe use it to give alpaca some structure and memory.

This is a shop sample for DownTown Knits in Apex, NC. Once I finish it (hopefully very soon!), it’ll be on display there.