Then and Now

The last vintage pattern I knit:

Forgive the over-exposed, washed-out photos...

The next vintage pattern I'll knit:

Late Day Abbreviated Coat - you can purchase the pattern here...

 By the look on her face, wearing that coat will be very satisfying.

My Sweater Is Blocking Is Blocking*

There are red-letter days: When, as an adolescent, you go out shopping and for lunch with friends for the first time. When you kick ass in an interview and they offer you the job on the spot. When you make a fancy meal for your new boyfriend and it's totally awesome (and then, 5 years later, you get married).

Today is a red-letter day.

Today is the day that I can finally say I have made myself a "vintage", slim-knit, 100% pure cashmere sweater. For some, that might be simply an interesting occurrence. But for me it is a culmination of so many loves: knitting, fitting, cashmere, ultra-soft textiles, an era gone by.

In truth, I finished it yesterday and it's still blocking (drying in shape). Apologies for a horrid blocking photo, but one that shows you that a) I really do wear shearling slippers all the time and b) I seem to be getting a lot of use out of those much-maligned, handmade socks.

What are my final thoughts about the Princess Jumper?

• It's a very nice sweater that shouldn't be too onerous if you don't decide to fuck with the armsyce length.
• I made the 34, though that was designed with the appropriate ease (so says the designer) for a slim-fit on a 36 bust.
• It would have been way too big in the bust if I'd made the 36 - probably the more "accurate" size for my 37.5 inch full bust circumference.
• Once again, if you're narrow, I have to recommend that you go for a minimum of 4 inches of negative ease in the bust.
• The shape of this sweater is beautiful and the sleeves are surprisingly easy to insert (once their length is determined).

About the seaming?

• I recommend that you find some Knit Klips (which are no longer manufactured, but still able to be found on sites like eBay) to facilitate set in sleeve sewing. Apparently they keep everything together with precision and easing is much easier. Can't confirm that yet, but I have bought a packet for the next time.
• I know that many knitters back stitch when they do their final seaming. Gotta say - and it took me 7 hours to finish this thing, so maybe you want to reconsider my advice - but mattress stitching the seams together (vertical i.e. side seams, horizonal i.e. shoulder seams and combination i.e. sleeve curves) creates a beautiful finished product that, due to the thread weaving, has a maximal amount of structural integrity.
• I'm always amazed to read about the unwillingness of knitters to mattress stitch at the end of a project on the basis that it's too fussy or scary or hard. I can assure you that it is fussy - but in a fun way that will appeal to your OCD, it isn't scary - once you make your peace with it and you set up the seams carefully before beginning and it's sure as hell is not hard. If you can knit a freakin' sweater, you are more than up to seaming it well.
• Seriously peeps, there are SO many free online resources to get you through the finishing phase that you will be amazed. If you've been a back-stitcher to date (and I do know there are times when that stitch is the most appropriate one), make this the year that you switch it up.

About the yarn?

• Oh, cashmere, it is a wonder to touch. Alas, 2-ply yarn, knit on US size 1.5 or 2 needles is a challenge. I'm not going to lie.
• Fingering weight projects take too fucking long, IMO. I can assure you, after the 6 weeks I toiled away on this, I'm going for something worsted next :-) Or at least DK.
• The Jade Sapphire 100% cashmere is delicate. It does develop integrity via knitting, but it's very easy to break it with a wan tug. If you are a tight knitter, I don't think this is your best choice.
• Happily, there were no knots in the yarn so I didn't have any mid-knit joins for that reason.
• However, somehow there were so many loose ends, it took me an hour to weave them in. And that was not easy given I was working with soot-coloured yarn having teeny-tiny stitches.
• I recommend this yarn and I think the finished garment will be greatly enhanced for it, but I don't think it's necessarily worth the expense if you knit tightly or don't adore cashmere.

This marks the end of the Gauge the Situation knitting series, in which I discussed the merits and detractors of knitting 5 sweaters in 4 gauges (fingering, sport, DK and worsted).

I do intend to summarize my findings of this experiment - which weight was my fave, which sweater I like most, which I wear most, what I learned etc. But for now, let's just be grateful that I have finally completed a daunting - if utterly educational - task, with some fabulous wearable garments. Is is scary that I can't remember, off hand, what they are??

Here's hoping you can :-)

Today's questions: What was the subject of your last, crafting "red-letter day"? Which weight of yarn do you prefer to work in? Do you always knit sweaters in the same weight?

I'm so hoping that this will dry by tomorrow - it takes a while in the cold - so that I can wear it in the world for the first time. No doubt, photos are to follow. I'm psyched about this one.

*Props to those of you who know this reference on another red-letter day - that in which 30 Rock's last episode will air.

Strong Arming

Lord. This weekend will, no doubt, go down as a cross between Survivor and Project Runway and, seriously, my brain hurts.

Of its 48 hours, I spent a full 24, not crafting (as such), but working out the math that underpins the complicated garments I'm constructing. It was Kristin and geometry and crazy-ass angles from dawn till night.

In truth, it was Kristin and knitters from around the world and S from around the block. Did I mention that I could barely move my head this morning when I awoke to go to work? That I went for an emergency massage?

I wish I could immerse you in my consciousness for a few minutes - like those scenes in creepy sci-fi movies - so that you could feel the jolt of all the things I've learned (or been massively overwhelmed by). I can't begin to tell you all the tales, though I imagine they'll come out as they take word-form.

Briefly, I believe I figured out the sweater sleeve. It looks barely like a sleeve but it basted into the sweater armsyce's very nicely.

Have you ever seen a set in sleeve that looks like this??

I'm working on the second sleeve now. I've sewn the sweater shoulders and will insert the sleeves before sewing up the side seams - after ribbing the neck.

Ah, and then there is the tailored jacket muslin. I wouldn't have imagined that anything could test me more than that freakin' knit sleeve. But that's the beauty of complicated garment-making. There's always something exponentially harder around the corner.

All I can say is, thank the universe for S. Perhaps now is a good time to remind you - though I'm quite sure most PhDs out there couldn't begin to fit a tailored jacket - that she's so freakin' smart, she has a PhD. Honestly, I spent half of the 4 hours that it took to mark the 80 trillion muslin changes onto the paper pattern, simply trying to keep it together. I think it's safe to say that I am a fine fitting apprentice. When I'm not hysterical.

I came up against so many of my challenging qualities this weekend: impatience, hyperness, ignorance, the inability to stop thinking long enough to assimilate new learning. I really must step back before I write more about the jacket muslin experience. It was seminal.

I will tell you that it blew my mind. My shape is SO fascinating :-) and so unique. S has convinced me that next time I will need to make the size 10 (not the 14). I don't think I can wrap my head around anything smaller than the 12, but she's got a point: You can resize a waist and a bust in a snap. Reworking the armscye and sleeve is a fucking production. Really, arms and armsyces - for S and me - are like the leg and hip complexities that torment certain pants-makers. It's all "one tube, fitting into another", requiring maximal range of movement.

I wonder how I will possibly help S to the degree that she's helped me. I mean, I am learning a lot, but I'm learning about managing curves, not angles.

Last night I had a nightmare about how to reflect the jacket muslin changes on the paper pattern to the NUMEROUS underlining, interfacing and lining pieces (that we haven't even touched). Really, it's hard to grasp the wonder and novelty of draping. I'm always worried about the next thing.

Today's question: What's the coolest or hardest or most meaningful craft thing you've learned about recently? You can keep it high-level or dig in. I want to know!

(Almost) Wordless...

...and how often does that happen?

I'm getting somewhere, slowly. At least I think I am. But I cannot write about it because it's too nascent and my brain needs to process the meaning of things. I'm not sure if you get headaches when you think too hard? I actually sense the gears of my neurotransmitters grinding. It's bizarre.

Anyway, here's the (quickly) basted sweater. I'm using it to compare to the altered sleeve as I knit it.

The Net Effect of Changing Length Above The Armscye (When You're Knitting Flat a Bottom-Up Sweater) with Set In Sleeves

You know I'm all about the fit and the fittedness. You may also know I'm making a retro-sweater that's supposed to fit slimly. And you can't help but to know how I'm really short in the waist and particularly from above my breasts/armsyce to the shoulder. 

Princess Jumper and Photo by Susan Crawford

Perhaps, from the pic above, you will agree that the fussy stitch pattern (let me assure you, it's fussy), which starts above the breasts, must be the perfect length or the sweater's gonna look all kinds of amateur. (One risk is that the stitch pattern could encroach towards the full bust in a kind of visual reverse of an empire seam that doesn't actually fit under the bust at the rib cage).

Which leads me to the part of this post wherein I tell you how I - when first I began knitting this - deliberately altered the length above the armsyce on the front and back pieces of this sweater without adequately considering (until I started knitting a sleeve) the shaping alterations it would require in the sleeve cap. Oh my.

Quick info: The sweater calls for an armscye depth of 8.25 inches to the shoulder. My dimensions require 6.75 inches (at the large end). 

Let's start by thanking Gail, the knitter who is metaphorically holding my hand while I figure this out and who also happened to be able to direct me to this shockingly fantastic post, even though I searched via 63 different terms to locate something that might have been half as useful, only to come up with zilch. I warn you. It's a pretty scary article. (Note: You have to understand the Pythagorean Theorum which, let's face it, I can barely spell.)

Very, very briefly, the concept is that:

• The required size and shape of a sleeve cap is entirely - and utterly irritatingly - contingent on the length of the armhole. (Sewists, you know that.) 

• Furthermore, the width of the sleeve (specifically its angle), just below the start of the sleeve cap, is mysteriously related to the shape and depth of the armscye and this is one of the many factors that determines how you shape said sleeve cap. 

• Pivotally, one must determine the angles, altitudes and lengths of the front and back armscye curves and then mathematically reflect them in the shaping of the sleeve cap. The cap is made of concave, moving into convex, curves on either side of a bisecting line (which we can view and calculate as straight edges of triangles, hence Mr. Pythagoras). Until you've calculated one element, you can't determine the other. And till you've determined the other, you can't exactly knit it.

Are you feeling a little overwhelmed? Take a moment to absorb that info, assuming it's never occurred to you either. Then be very glad you're not 3/4 of the way through this sweater having just come to the realization.

This, my friends, is the reason that picking up stitches at the armhole and knitting sleeves in the round (with sleeve cap short rows!) was invented. But it's not the best method when you're working with a vintage design because it doesn't look particularly vintage. Note that the article I've linked to above gives you all kinds of mathy tips to short row when a pattern calls for the flat, sleeve cap method (but you've got to be careful or you'll get a dreaded short-row poof - like you find in a heel or a bust curve).

In truth, aside from my utter confusion, I'm in just about the best position I could be in. Why?

• I've knitted the body in 2 separate pieces (as the pattern calls for) and all of the stitches on the front and back pieces, at the shoulder (this is bottom up, flat knitting) are on stitch holders. (Side note: Due to other math glitches, I appear to have too little length at either side of the back at each shoulder. But I can adjust this easily before moving forward with the sleeve.)

• Mercifully, I figured out I was going to have an issue before I started knitting the sleeve cap on the first sleeve so it's likely that I won't have to rip anything back.

I'm  having difficulty absorbing the complexity of the trigonometry and calculus involved in adjusting the shape and height of my sleeve cap to suit the changes I so innocently made on the front and back pieces. Note: Yeah, I was cavalier, but I did measure the bodice pieces to fit my body. And, after that, I did undertake the significant work to reorg the crazy stitch pattern to reflect the changes I needed to make. Point is, cavalier does not equal lazy (just stupid, in light of the fact that I've already dealt with this situation on a tailored jacket or two).

I'm sorting this out, she says like a deer caught in the headlights, and I will post on the details of my corrective alteration, as soon as I come up with it. (That statement fills me with hope.)

In the meanwhile, have a look at the pretty bodice pieces, such as they are at the moment:

 

Today's questions: Have you ever knit flat sleeves in a bottom up, flat pattern, and determined that you needed to change the length of the sweater above the armscye? How did you deal with the resulting change in sleeve cap shaping i.e. scary math or winging it? How did that work out for you, either way? If you've got any words of encouragement, I'm happy to take them.