whitknits

I figure today’s as good a day as any to debut my newest sweater:

I’ve tentatively named this design “Haapsalu Autumn”, Haapsalu being the town in Estonia from which the nupp/lace motifs that inspired the maple leaf design came. Here are the details:

Ravelry Project Page
Pattern: My own, inspired by the Haapsalu style lace described in Nancy Bush’s “Knitted Lace of Estonia”.
Yarn: Beaverslide Dry Goods Worsted Weight, in “Clearwater”.
Gauge: 4 sts and 6 rows to the inch.
Needles: size 8 Denise Interchangeables and Knitpicks Harmony dpns
Time to knit: August 19th-September 19th. Exactly one month!

Y’all, the Beaverslide. It is amazing stuff. Delightfully wooly to knit with, complete with little bits of vegetable matter (which may bother some people, but not me!). But the knitting isn’t even the best part. The best part is what happens after it gets a bath. This yarn blooms like you would not believe. The knit stitches turn into this soft, cohesive fabric, and the nupps just pop. It’s amazing. I can’t recommend this yarn highly enough.

I ended up finding a set of relatively light weight pewter buttons, with actual holes in them, rather than a shank. I really like the look of the silver against the dark teal, so I’m quite happy with my choice, although I’m sure it would have looked lovely with any of the buttons you lovely readers suggested on my last post, too. For those who have asked, I do intend to write this up as a pattern for sale, in multiple sizes. It may take me awhile, though, since the size of the leaf motif is so large that it makes resizing and shaping a bit difficult to think through.

Today was not the best day for a photoshoot (it was raining on me the entire time), but I just couldn’t resist showing this sweater off on the first day of Autumn. Happy Equinox, everybody! (And especially to my husband, since today marks the start of our 19th season together as a married couple!)

I don’t have a whole lot to say, but since Thursdays are my “work at home” day, I actually have a chance to write on the blog, so I figured I’d take advantage of it. The semester is moving along at a steady clip, and I’m pretty much constantly on the edge (well, over the edge would be more accurate) of exhaustion. This is nothing unusual; it’s just par for the course when it comes to trying to maintain a more-than-full-time schedule with a chronic illness. C’est la vie. Things are going fairly well, at least! I just end up having no time after I get home for anything but dinner before I fall asleep, so my non-worky life is pretty boring at the moment.

But! I do have a small update for y’all on the knitting front. My Rhinebeck cardigan is inching ever closer to completion, and today I had the brilliant idea of trying to photograph it in front of our upstairs window, to let the light shine through the maple leaf lace motif. Alas, my first attempt was a bit of a failure, but I still like how it turned out, so I’ll share it with y’all:

(Why yes, I’m in my pajamas. Why change into real clothes, when working from home?) Eventually I was able to rig things up, threading the ends of my needle through the loops of the curtain, so that I could get a photo in which the maple leaves actually show up:

I am absurdly, inordinately delighted with how the maple leaves turned out. All that’s left to do is finish the neckline, and then pick up stitches for the buttonbands. Oh, and then…buttons. I am so terribly, horribly indecisive about buttons. I just don’t know what would look best. Wood? Pewter? Something plainer, like matching plastic buttons? I’m currently leaning towards these buttons, because I like how the motif almost looks a bit maple-leaf-ish, and the little nupp-like details, but if any of you lovely readers have a button suggestion for me, feel free to speak up, because I am pretty darn clueless about buttons.

Why hello there, blog! I just cannot seem to find the time to update this thing more often than about once every 1-2 weeks. Oh well. In the time since I last wrote, I’ve survived a couple of symphony rehearsals and a variety of scheduling nightmares, answered endless emails from students in the class I’m co-teaching, and hosted my brother and his wife for a wonderful visit here over Labor Day weekend. We ate good food, watched some movies and TV, and played a lot of Rock Band (which they kindly brought along with them). I really enjoyed getting to have them here!

On the knitting front, I’ve joined the sleeves to the body of my Rhinebeck cardigan, knit half a yoke, ripped out a yoke, and started over again, with reworked chart. It’s going better this second time around, so I figured I’d share some photos with y’all. Here’s the back of the sweater, partway through the yoke:

(I’m showing you the back, since it’s easier to spread that part out on the needles…we’re still in “too many stitches for the needle” territory until some more serious decreasing happens). The bit of lace you can see is the central point of the maple leaf nupp/lace motif I doodled out. I’m so excited to see more of it knit up, and to see whether it looks as much like a maple leaf when knit up as it does in chart form!

The nupps make for rather slow going (although I’ve got a nice routine now, using a much smaller dpn to do the p5tog on the wrong side after the nupp rows, which helps). I don’t mind, though, because the texture they create is wonderful. Here’s a closeup of the nupps and lace:

And here’s an even-closer-up:

We’ll see how long it takes me to finish this up given how busy I am this semester, but I’m about 99% sure I can have an awesome new cardigan to wear at Rhinebeck, assuming it’s cool enough by then. Here’s hoping!

I finished comps on Thursday at 5pm, but took several days to recover to even marginally normal status. I’m still feeling terribly wiped out and exhausted, and a little bit under the weather, and I have no idea what to think about what I wrote for my exam. I suppose it’s better to just not think about it at all, until I get feedback. Which could be awhile, given how these things tend to go here. I’ve got plenty of other things to be thinking about, anyway, what with classes starting today! I’m co-teaching a class this semester, which I’m very excited about. Our first meeting is tomorrow, but I think we’re ready. Tonight is my first symphony rehearsal since last Spring, and I’m looking forward to seeing all of my orchestra friends again. But given that I barely practiced at all this summer (comps reading tends to swamp out everything else), I’m a little worried that I’m not going to be able to play well enough!

The day I finished comps, a box arrived from Webs, containing some yarn I’d ordered for swatching purposes. Remember how I told y’all that I had a bunch of ideas involving roositud and vikkel braids, and that I wanted to try out the new St-Denis Nordique yarn? Well, here’s both:

The blue-green yarn is St-Denis Nordique, in “Blue Eggshell”, and the white yarn is Classic Elite Fresco, a lovely blend containing some angora, in White. The Blue Eggshell color is pretty much my favorite color ever in the whole wide world of colors. I was interested in seeing how the halo of the Fresco looked in a roositud motif, against the nice clean stitch definition of the Nordique. It turns out, the look is pretty lovely:

That’s just a little roositud motif I doodled up, hoping to evoke both flowers and snowflakes, if such a thing is possible. I held the Fresco doubled, both because that’s a good idea when you’re doing roositud (which is basically just weaving yarn back and forth in your knitting to create designs as you knit), and also because the Fresco is a finer yarn (at least in my hands) than the Nordique, which is called a sportweight, but knits up pretty happily at DK weight, as well. I decided to teach myself how to do vikkel braids, as well, still with the Fresco doubled:

I love it! I probably should have tried to follow the directions for the “3 color” braid (which allows for the row above the braid to be entirely one color, instead of alternating as in the braid) instead of the “2 color” braid, but in any case, it’s a neat little detail, and one that I look forward to using. I’m envisioning something like that roositud motif, circling the yoke of a sweater, with a line of vikkel braiding where the hem/cuff/neckline ribbing joins the body of the sweater.

I’m still debating what I want to do with all of the design ideas that are in my head (and in Stickies on the desktop of my Mac, since I don’t trust my head all that much these days!). I’m tempted to put some stuff together to submit to various places that publish patterns, but at the same time, I’m perfectly happy to just keep pretty much knitting “for myself”, and writing things up if people are interested. I like being able to do things on whatever schedule I can handle. But it’s awfully tempting to try to get a pattern published somewhere, just because I know more people would see it that way, and that’s kind of an exciting thought. But the other problem is that most of the ideas I have are for things that are more appropriate for fall or winter, and I know that’s not how things work when it comes to pattern publishing…right now I’m pretty sure everyone is looking for spring and summer designs. So maybe that will have to wait, anyway. We’ll just see.

I’ll leave you with a photo of my progress on the cardigan I’m knitting for Rhinebeck. It’s actually slightly further along than this, since I took this picture on Sunday and knit a bit on it yesterday evening. I’m hoping to be ready to join at the yoke this weekend, and start knitting the awesome maple-leaf nupp/lace motif that I’ve sketched out.

Happy September, everyone!