Green Stornaway Sweater

Recipient: DH
Designer: Alice Starmore
Pattern: Stornaway
Source: Fisherman's Sweaters
Completed: December 21, 2006
Colours: "Madder Green"
Yarn: Yarnsmiths 65% lambswool, 35% camel down, lace or fingering weight
Completed status: Given for Christmas 2006 Pictures:

Completed


Detail of patterns


Detail of shoulder strap extending into the sleeve (I love that)

2006-Dec-26

All the sewing-in of ends was completed at the SnB on Wednesday night. On Thursday night I went over to my parents' place, and washed and blocked it. I was going to pick it up on Saturday, but my mom was doing errands in my part of town that afternoon and dropped it off for me, bless her heart. DH LOVED it. It makes him very, very happy. :) I haven't had a chance yet to take a picture of him actually wearing the sweater, but stay tuned. In the meantime, I do have some completed pictures. Unfortunately, the darkness of the green means that it's really, really tough to get a decent shot of the sweater with my camcorder's rather pathetic still-picture quality, so please bear with me.

2006-Dec-20

Knitting is complete! I finished the casting off on sleeve #2 on my morning commute, right about when I needed to start packing up so I could get off the train for work. PERFECT. At lunch I will be sewing in ends, and tomorrow night I plan to go over to my parents' place to block it.

2006-Dec-17

This is now the only uncomplete piece of Christmas knitting, and it's forging ahead surprisingly well, considering that DH has been in the house with me almost all weekend.

2006-Dec-16

This is coming along very well indeed. I have passed the halfway point of sleeve #2:


However, as you can see, I still have a ways to go:


Shouldn't be a problem, though. My speed on the sleeve continues to be good.

2006-Dec-13

Just five more stitches left on the underarm gussets! The halfway point of the second sleeve is definitely approaching.

2006-Dec-8

All the stitches for sleeve #2 have been picked up and it's underway. Two weeks to go. Well, technically 17 days, but I also have to sneak off to my parents' place to wash and block this, then somehow go back a day or two later when it's dry, AND wrap it. But still - I'm confident that I can finish in time as long as I work on it every workday at lunch and on my commutes. Stay tuned.

2006-Dec-3

After two days of 'winging it', I finally remembered to take the pattern with me Wednesday morning, and discovered...that I'd overshot the point where I was supposed to start the cuff by about two inches.

Damn.

Ripping out your work on public transit is just not fun. For one thing, there's not a lot of elbow room, and for another, it's so humiliating. Also, I barely had enough time to get all the live stitches back on the needles before my train stop.

However, that's the only bad news. The good news is that sleeve #1 is dunzo. And only by Wednesday! I'm so proud of me!



See, some time ago, I was inspired by the incredible speed of Laura's knitting to finally learn continental. And it's been going very well indeed. I'm still astonished at how fast I can plow through a sock, for example. But more interestingly, I've started using it on bigger projects, like this sweater. And I am absolutely convinced that it's making a serious difference. This is, after all, the third time I have knitted this sweater pattern, so I have a pretty good idea of how long things take with it. And this time around, it really seems like I zipped through the sleeve like nobody's business, particularly since I'm not knitting as much each day as I used to. This is huge. I actually would have stood a chance of getting through two weeks' worth of knitting (according to the Schedule) in half the time! (But then on Wednesday afternoon I was hit with Yet Another Headache that wiped me out for several days. It's still there, but at least it's now mild enough that I can function.)

Oh, wait...there is one more piece of bad news for this project. My mom asked me this week where I was planning to block it.

Again, damn. I never thought of that.

I think I might take her up on her offer to do it at her place.

2006-Nov-19

(This is for Carrie K ;)

Neck ribbing is complete!


Sleeve #1 has begun!


Why, if only I wanted a turtle-necked vest, I could stop right now:


In my current state of knitting apathy, d'you think I can do two sleeves in five weeks?

Yes, I'm freaking out a little, too.

2006-Aug-8

Shoulder strap #2 is complete and the neck has been started! The neck is a bit rough going because there are barely enough stitches to fit around the circular. Combine that with the fact that it's a neckline and I therefore have to lift the sweater off my lap quite frequently to untwist things, and you have a knitter who is not totally feeling the love. But it's coming along.

2006-Jul-31

One thing my blog stats don't tell me is that Carrie K is stalking this sweater. Wannietta also sent along a lovely compliment about it, but Carrie says that she covets it and wants me to give it to her.

She does have a point, though: I don't think he'd notice if I sent it to her (aside from the minor point of then having nothing under the Christmas tree for him from his own wife). I think I have thus far been successful in concealing it from him. But I had a narrow escape on Saturday morning. As usual, I was up before anyone else, and decided to pass the time by starting in on shoulder strap #2. I was EXTREMELY paranoid and kept leaning forward to look down the hall about every thirty seconds to make sure that he was not coming. However, the #$*&@-er managed to surprise me ANYWAY. I did the only thing I could think of - threw the sweater aside desperately into a corner of the room he couldn't see from his vantage point (I don't think I dropped any stitches in the process...I haven't had the courage to check yet), and tried to cover with my A Very Harlot Poncho project (a pathetic ruse, given the obvious throwing of knitting and the panicked expression on my face).

And do you know, the dear man apologized for walking in on me! He assures me that he saw nothing. (I hope this is not just an attempt to make me feel better.) Yes indeed, he deserves the sweater. Sorry, Carrie. :)

2006-Jul-28

Wednesday evening I went to the Lettuce Knit SnB, and I accomplished this:



Shoulder strap #1!

2006-Jul-26

Today on my lunch break, I cast on with some scrap yarn and started up the shoulder strap. I have done a pathetically small amount of work on it so far, but at least it is started.

2006-Jul-18

I've isolated the two left shoulders (front and back) and put all other stitches on spare yarn. I'm ready to go for the left shoulder strap. One of these days I will remember to bring some spare cotton yarn to work with which to do the provisional cast-on.

2006-Jul-14

I took a picture of this - but sadly, when I downloaded it onto my computer I realised that the camera had gone all weird and completely missed capturing the stitch definition. Since a picture of a mottled dark green blob is not very interesting, I scrapped it. Hopefully when I take pictures for my next entry the light will be sufficient enough that the camera will take a half-decent shot which will cause Carrie K to covet the sweater even more strongly. :)

In the meantime, I am extremely pleased to announce that the back of the sweater is FINISHED. A major milestone. Next up: shoulder straps. I love shoulder straps! True, they are fiddly but they are also way cool.

2006-Jul-7

Thank you so much for your compliments on this, Carrie K. I'm very pleased myself with how it's all going - I whipped it out on my lunchbreak today and hit the halfway point of the back.

2006-Jul-6

When I got sick of endless lace edging last night, I switched to this. The night was turning a tad chilly, so this had the added advantage of keeping me warm (lambswool/camel kicks lacy cotton/silk's ass when it comes to warmth). I'd say I'm about a third done the back:

2006-Jun-22

The front is finished! The back has begun.

2006-Jun-15

The gussets on this project (of which Carrie K is a fan, and which is probably one of the few things about all this gobbledegook knittingspeak that Tanya understands) will have to wait for the moment, because I have placed them on scrap yarn, divided for the armscyes, and am working me way up the front of the sweater, baybee. This is fantastic, not merely because it is a major milestone in the project, but also because it allows me to finally spread out the work and see the pattern in all its glory:


I am pleased.

2006-Jun-12

I'm approaching the end of ball #2, which means once again I will somehow have to break out the cone of wool and my ballwinder, and create a new skein without DH noticing.

I'm also fast approaching the division for the armscyes. Very exciting stuff.

2006-Jun-9

Gussets are in full swing!



Right now I'm at eleven stitches on each gusset. Dividing for the armscyes occurs once the gussets are nineteen stitches wide. So I'm definitely getting there.

And after doing almost ten inches (on small needles with thin yarn) of the same motifs over and over again on small needles with thin yarn, it's really nice to be able to do something a little different now. It's sad to say that a gusset increase every four rows is saving my sanity, but I think it's true.

2006-Jun-5

What you are looking at is the first increase for the underarm gussets. Yes, I'm at the gussets! Whoopee!

2006-May-29

Got a wee bit done on the shuttle ride to the GO station this morning and on the train home this evening.

2006-May-26

Work has kind of stalled on this as the panic to get DH's birthday socks done rose. But I've still managed to move forward a teeny bit.

2006-May-20

This is going so smoothly and I am loving it the more I knit on it. The lovely feel of the lambswool on the cone is nothing compared to how nice the actual knitted-up fabric feels. And the texture and cable patterns are popping gorgeously with this yarn.

2006-May-12

Ball #1 is now toast. I'll have to wind myself up another one before I can keep going, because there's no freakin' way I'm carrying a two-pound cone of yarn around with me.

2006-May-11

A few more inches have been done on the main pattern. It's starting to shape up into something pretty substantial-looking, and I'm also going to have to wind myself up a new ball soon.

2006-May-3

This is what it looked like last night:


However, I worked on it on the subway today and all through my lunch, and now I have about two and a half inches done on the main pattern. It's looking lovely, and the lambswool feels fantastic all knitted up. (I may have mentioned that already in a previous blog entry, but I don't care. It bears repeating because it really does feel nice. I'm so excited about the prospect of giving DH this sweater!)

2006-Apr-30

Came downstairs this morning and took a photo of this before DH woke up. It looked like this:


I then sat down to knit a little bit on it, figuring I probably had, oh, a good fifteen minutes before DD woke up and I had to quit knitting. But hell, no. She stayed asleep for almost two more hours. I didn't work on this that whole time (not hardly). About an hour or so into it, the guilt of not doing chores got to me and I started some laundry. But I still managed to get a fair bit more done than you see above. The pattern above the ribbing is at least an inch long now, and I'm working on the second batch of cabling. It looks terrific.

2006-Apr-26

It's ribbing. Endless, boring, mind-numbing, 2x2 ribbing. At least I have a picture:


That's about two inches. It may be boring, but I'm making progress. 3/4 of an inch left to go before things get interesting.

2006-Apr-25

This weekend I thought I'd test the theory that my continental knitting gauge has tightened up to be on par with my English knitting gauge - I swatched the forest green lambswool intended for this project, knitting continentally. Yes, I do actually plan to knit this whole sweater using my new-found continental skills. I figure, with all the ribbing and texture patterns used in this sweater, the whole thing will likely go way faster with the continental technique. (This is the theory. I am really hoping I'm right. We'll see.)

To my absolute joy, I got gauge. I mean, I really got gauge. Precisely. No futzing with the swatch; squooshing it up or spreading it wide; no, "Oh, I'll just block out the difference" rationalization...NOTHING. Stitch gauge is 15 stitches per two inches in stocking stitch, just like the pattern asks for, no word of a lie. Okay, row gauge is off, but I can live with that. (My row gauge is always off. I am weird.)

So, Sunday and yesterday I cast on, and now I'm into the ribbing.

I'm finding the lambswool a bit stiff to work with. Stiff as in, the yarn doesn't slide through my fingers very easily as I'm knitting. It's probably the lanolin. It sure feels really nice when it's all knit up, though. I've, uh, felt up the swatch probably more times than is strictly necessary. Ahem.

2005-Jul-26

Ah, the age-old cry of the online-shopping knitter: "The yarn is here! The yarn is here!"

Yep...this came in the mail today:

That, my friends, is four (count 'em, 4) pounds of 65% lambs wool and 35% camel down in a gorgeous dark green which I will be using for, among other things, my husband's sweater at some point in the distant future. At 2,400 yards per pound, it's a lightweight gauge yarn. But I don't really care, because I can double/triple/quadruple/whatever it for whatever I want to use it for, because there are four freakin' pounds of it. Maybe after I'm done DH's sweater I'll make a lace shawl. And maybe after that, another sweater! I'll say it yet again - four pounds of yarn!!! (9,600 yards!)

And did I mention that I paid $47.18 for it? Including shipping and currency exchange? That is $11.80 a pound, and it feels great and I love it. Ah, there's nothing like a good deal on yarn to get me in a good mood. Yes, I know we're on a tight budget. I don't care - it's for a sweater for DH so I paid for it out of the clothing budget instead of my fun money. :) Hee!

2004-Nov-23

I have decided to ax this project, or, rather, replace it with something else. I have come to the conclusion that by the time I finish the two Stornaway sweaters for both BILs, I will never want to look at the pattern again! So although I do want to make something in forest green for DH, I will use another pattern. Maybe from Alice Starmore's Sweaters for Men book? I have a copy on the way to me right now from an eBay seller. Very exiting!