Tag: knit your own size

knitting

A Bralette by any other name . . .

LindeyLeave a comment

About four years ago I made a Ripple Bralette by Jessie Maed Designs, who might just be my favorite designer. Okay, one of them. One can never discount Joji Locatelli, and I like them for similar reasons: they design relatively simple sweaters with clever construction, that are thoroughly wearable garments. None of that stuff your great grandmother made with extra bobbles and chevrons and 576 colors.

The initial bralette was a single skein of green yarn, and it made a nice layering piece for the dead of frozen winter in Iowa, but it also got me thinking: wouldn’t this make a great tank top, if I just made it long?

So I grabbed two hanks of Ella Rae lace merino (which is, ironically, actually a light fingering weight yarn) both in the same lovely blue-green colorway—the brand unfortunately doesn’t give them fun names, but numbers, and I don’t remember this boring number. I wound them both and stuck them in a project bag in my car. At the time, because of an issue with the car, I was spending a lot of time sitting in the car doing nothing, so I figured I could instead spend that time working 3×3 ribbing on tiny needles forever.

The problem was that when we moved to North Carolina, I wasn’t doing that anymore, so what had been a project moving slowly but steadily forward became entirely stagnant. When I took it out of my car and brought it in to work on last week, I thought I’d continue to take forever to finish it, but it turns out I didn’t have that much left. I finished it, one of the few patterns I knit precisely to pattern, no major changes to what the designer wrote, other than knitting the body for about 14″ instead of 4″.

Since I started it years ago, that also meant it was made two or three sizes larger than necessary, but in the end, I think that doesn’t show at all, since it’s knit in ribbing, and is still 100% fitted.

I’ll definitely, always, be making more of Jessie’s patterns. Fabulous construction and easy to wear, love it.

knitting

Minerva 2: Escape from sleeve island

LindeyLeave a comment

So here’s where we left off:

And so far, the cardigan had taken me four days: two for the main body, and two for these little sleeve nubbins. The remainder of the sleeves took me another day and a half of steady knitting, and then I connected them to the body.

If you haven’t knit a bottom-up sweater, be forewarned, the five or ten rows after you connect sleeves to a body are a pain in the butt. You have to keep the sleeves very bunched up and all on the needles at once, because you’re essentially asking what was flat to become round. Technically, the sleeves being knit in the round, this isn’t actually what you’re doing, but the spots where body meets sleeve are very stubborn and don’t like their new place in life, so they take it out on you for a while.

Here we are, some measure into the rest. With three balls wound, I used one to do the body, and one for each sleeve. Then when I connected the body, I went back to the one I’d been using there. It ran out right about the time of this picture, so I attached one of the sleeve balls and continued on. That second ball was enough to finish the sweater, so I used a total of 2.5 balls, meaning the whole sweater cost under $50, including enough extra yarn to make a pair of short socks or a hat or something.

I’ll note here that the sweater was written by someone whose first language isn’t English, so there was one point in the pattern I was concerned people might be confused by: Once she says to start the raglan increases, you continue them for the rest of the sweater until you get to the neck. When she goes to the explanation of how to increase for the sleeve puffs, you continue the raglan decreases as you have been every other row, even though the pattern is a little vague about that part.

The sleeve puffs? Are fabulous. Honestly, they make me want to knit another one, because I just love the construction of them, I’ll definitely be knitting more patterns by the designer, because this one is lovely and elegant in its finished version.

Oh, you actually wanted to see the whole sweater?

I guess. Well, fair warning, I haven’t sewn the buttons on yet, because like every knitter, finishing eludes me sometimes. I did the knitting, why is there more work? But yeah, here’s Minerva:

It’s a little tight, but that’s probably back to my slightly-small gauge rather than the pattern. It’s also not too tight, I’m mostly worried about the buttons pulling a little when I finish and put it on. Maybe in another five pounds or so.

All together, Minerva took me about six or seven days of knitting, and a lot of them were just the sleeves. Those sleeves’ll get you every time. But don’t get trapped on sleeve island. The sweater’s worth finishing. It totaled about 1200 yards of yarn for my size 2x behind, so it’s a tiny amount of yarn, for a full sleeve sweater.

knitting

Knitting the Minerva Cardigan

LindeyLeave a comment

So last week, I finished a sweater. This week, I’m going to talk about it. Here’s the pattern’s sample picture, for reference:

It’s the Minerva Cardigan, by Fabel Knitwear, and while it was initially inspired by the well known series about a boy wizard, the pattern writer has also said they stand with the trans community against the author’s sadly well-known vitriol against trans people. I appreciated the statement, so decided to go with the sweater in spite of the name.

First course of action, then, was to choose the yarn. Something about the look of the sweater screams red to me, so while I didn’t have a rich burgundy like the sample in the pattern pictures, I did have a tonal cherry red, which seemed perfect to me. It was even a Knit Picks yarn, one of their Stroll tonal line, in a color called Heartfelt. It’s even still available for $14.99 a hank, if you want to make a sweater with it, and it’s kind of a steal, like most KP yarn. In case you’re not aware of them, Knit Picks is generally a good step between big box store acrylics and super expensive wools, so if you’re in that stage where you want to try something better than Red Heart but you’re not sure about spending that much money, they’re a pretty good bet.

Warning: This yarn comes in hanks. It’s not prewound into balls. This means to use it, you’ll either need help from a friend with tools or local yarn store, or you’ll need to own tools for winding yarn. This can be as simple as a chair and a nostepinne, if you’re willing to spend hours winding yarn, or as complex and expensive as a swift and ball winder, if you want it done fast and are willing and able to spend more. Having been doing this for many years, and in large amounts, I have the tools in question, and can talk further about them if anyone wants to hear it.

I had four hanks, so that was certainly enough to make any size I needed. Measurements said I should have made the XL, which would have been the first time I made an XL instead of a 2X in many years, but ironically, my gauge swatch said I was a little off, so I sized up to make sure it would fit.

Finally, with three of my four hanks wound into balls, I was ready to get started. The pattern starts with the body, which took the better part of one hank, and then when you’re ready to attach the sleeves, well . . . you have to make the sleeves. Which I must say, for this sweater, was painful. They’re full length sleeves, which I rarely knit since I run hot, and they seemed to go on forever. This is a thing knitters call “sleeve island,” which I think has something to do with the feeling of being trapped and unable to escape that knitting sleeves gives one. Fortunately, I suspected I was going to end up there, so I knit them both at the same time, magic loop, so I wouldn’t have to do one, then the other, which might have led to a single finished sleeve and abandoned project.

Sleeves at about 5″, after the first two days of work on them.

Since this is already running ridiculously long, I’ll come back Friday with more on Minerva. Till then, happy knitting!

knitting

The Rainbow Connection

LindeyLeave a comment

The Rainbow Connection V-neck Boxy sweater, that is. This:

Once again bathroom mirror pic, but it’s not the worst picture. Partially because of the happenings of the previous post and my rift sweater, I decided to knit it in a size that wasn’t overly large on me. In this case, since the sweater is supposed to be quite large, that meant knitting it about 4 sizes too small. I knit the body in the smallest size available, the neck in my own size, and then, because bringing the body in that drastically meant the sweater hit my upper arms, not my elbow or so, I made the arms deeper, just by knitting the top of the sweater to 8-9″ before joining under the arms.

The yarn I have left:

Between the size change and the 3″ sleeves, since I don’t especially like sleeves that come past my elbow, I used all but a few yards of every color, for something like 1500 yards of Miss Babs fingering weight yarn. I’d been planning on making the Muppet shawl by Lyrical Knits with this, and even bought it as a kit, but when I started to see the spoiler pictures of it, I realized it was in a shape I don’t really wear much. Plus I just forced my poor co-writer and PA to take a whole bunch of knitted shawls earlier this month. Knitting a bunch more isn’t the answer, even if I do love a good lace knit.

Now I guess I should go work on finishing that Tiong Bahru that’s been on my needles for . . . (checks notes) almost eleven years. Oops.

knitting

Flashdance!

LindeyLeave a comment

Okay, I’m trying not to flash anyone, but at the moment, it’s a bit of a struggle.

I was listening to a years-old episode of the Yarniacs, and one of them said that she thought women tended to knit maybe a little bigger than their size, which feels true to me as well. I’ve always knit garments a little big, because I like a loose fit, and also, I know myself. I know my love for bread. I never expect to lose weight.

The problem with that is that in the last year and a half, I’ve lost about fifty pounds, for various reasons. I’m not especially trying to, but it’s fine, and I won’t complain . . . except that I just put on a rift sweater that I knit two years ago. I knit it about a size too big at the time, and well, now I look like I’m auditioning for an 80s music video, because the neckline is so wide it won’t stay up on my shoulders.

Sorry for the dirty bathroom mirror picture, but here’s the effect:

It’s kind of okay, since I’m just wearing it with my pajamas to keep warm on a cool morning, but it’s no longer a sweater I can wear out. I know losing fifty pounds isn’t exactly a normal thing, and it’s not going to happen to anyone under normal circumstances—though there’s a decent chance I’m going to keep going a while, hopefully not too long—but it’s something I think I need to start keeping in mind. If I’d knit my proper size before, it would still be too big now, but maybe not quite as comically large.

So from now on, knit your own size, Isolinde!

What about you? Knit too big? Your own size? Thoughts on why we tend to knit the wrong size?