FO: Issaquah Vest

Ohhhh, this vest.



I started it way back in October (or maybe November?) for my private reading in traditional knitted colorwork. I got a lot of help from Priscilla Gibson-Roberts's wonderful book, Knitting in the Old Way. I wanted a few key things from this project:

1. A fitted shape in a chunky yarn. My widest point is at the chest, and without shaping at the waist, anything chunky makes me look like a refrigerator.

2. Traditional shawl collar and motifs. I chose garter snakes and flying geese - the first for the little garter snakes my brother and I used to find in our front yard (and, okay, also for the not-so-subtle knitting reference), and the second for the Canada geese that hang out on Issaquah's Lake Sammamish, another favorite childhood destination.


I'm kicking myself for not writing up what I did. I do know that little to no intarsia was used in the making of it (because I find intarsia way too fiddly) and I learned quickly that yes, colorwork really does need to be on bigger needles than plain stockinette. The vest was languishing on my to-finish pile - with the zipper pinned on and everything! - because... well. Because I thought that sewing a zipper to a knit was rocket science.

And one of the many things I have learned from my internship at the Cleveland Museum of Art this summer is that hand-sewing is definitely not rocket science. It's difficult to execute perfectly since we are human beans and not machines, but the fundamental execution of it is pretty straightforward. Also, knitting totally taught me how to do ladder stitch: it's mattress stitch, only on woven fabric. Crazy, right?

Anyhoo, the moral of the story is that you don't actually get funny looks at Slow Train (plugplugplug) like you would expect when you're stabbing yourself with a needle, stabbing yourself with pins on the way to remove them, and slowly but surely, setting in the zipper of a truly badass knit vest.

transformation: Issaquah vest

So I put it on to help it dry, and wow. What a difference a good wetblocking makes. All of that intarsia that was so messy is flat and beautiful. It still needs a zipper and a proper photoshoot... but holy crap, I didn't think I'd make it.

Finish line in sight!

anticipation

There's something magical in the act of taking an idea from sketch, to swatch, to reality. Something promising latent in the uncertainty and excitement of learning a new cast-off, or in using an old method in a new way, or in watching what blooms after a good soak in Eucalan and cold water.

Today I did all of the finishing on the Issaquah vest. It's blocking downstairs as we speak. There's waist shaping, two colorwork motifs, applied i-cord edging, a traditional Cowichan bind-off at the shoulder, and a gorgeous, horribly time-consuming garter-stitch shawl collar. I puzzled over PGR's instructions while watching a samurai flick for history class. There's a little pile of yarn bits sitting on my bedside table from the weaving in of ends. My room is a disaster. My last cup of coffee was at 8 pm. I wish the damn vest would dry already so that I could put it on over my Smart-Wool turtleneck and go to chem class and show that while I struggle with crystal structures, I am quite aware of perfect and imperfect symmetry.

In other words, I really can't wait to share this one.

FO: Egyptian Sash

Aren't I smug.

And deep in thought about something over there.

Naturally, these things make me a Serious Artiste.

Finished object, at long last.

Project: Egyptian Sash
Pattern: My own, cobbled together from Richard Rutt's A History of Handknitting
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend, one hank gold, two hanks burgundy (probably could have done it with one hank, but wanted to be safe)
Needles: Size 7 US

Notes: Okay, so I'm really, really proud of this. The edging turned out exactly the way I wanted; it allowed me to beautifully finish the back by tucking the cut steek into the hem, and the sewing made it look really polished. I'm sort of tempted to go buy more yarn and make another one, perhaps in violet and gold, or teal and copper. It's the first thing I've ever made from scratch (save the chart) that I have been really, truly, completely happy with.

Hooray!

In progress: Egyptian Sash

On the home stretch! I finally ripped and re-knit the hem, after deciding that the decreases were too sudden on the mitered edges. They're still a little rounder than I would have liked, but there's a much lovelier mixture of curve and angle now. And actually, the wrong side looks sort of beautiful. I'm really hoping to make this piece finished-looking on both sides, and so far it's working out pretty slick.

vest approaching realization

It's a crappy picture, but you get the idea.

I ended up using some intarsia and some stranding on the colorwork portions of this vest. The little brown triangles were easier to do using intarsia; they didn't ever get wider than 9 stitches, and each skein of Sulka is only 55 yards, so I skipped winding bobbins and just used two separate balls of brown and stranded the white across. The colorwork was inspired by a "flying geese" motif that I saw in a book about Salish weaving. I decided to let the v of the geese fall on the two fronts and let it be a plain brown stripe in the back. However, because of the white buttonband and the white interruption in the brown stripe, I had to do a little fudging and carry the white all across the back of the brown, as you saw yesterday in my (even crappier) iPhoto picture. I'm not super happy about my tension in the intarsia and I should have gone up a needle size for the stripe, but I have gotten a lot of questions and compliments on it so far, many from non-knitters.

As far as shaping... I decided to do some waist shaping, since this is such a bulky yarn and my body type really needs a little waist shaping for a flattering fit. I did it by doing a double decrease at the sides every 3 rows until the piece measured 9", then increased two stitches at each side (again, every 3 rows). With a gauge of 4 st/inch, that turned into a lovely nip at the waist, since I decreased from 40" down to 32". I'm on my second to last increase for a final circumference of 37", for just about zero ease.

I haven't decided yet how I'm going to close it. I'm thinking either toggle-and-loop (since I'm not knitting in any buttonholes) or zipper. Any thoughts?

Work in progress: Cowichan-inspired vest

Not bad for the back, huh? Maybe it's silly, but I sort of like the effect of the stranding... if I learn to do it more regularly I'd think about using it as an accent on the right side of a garment. Hmmmm.

Work in progress: Egyptian sash

How terrifying - exhilarating, even - to have nothing but some zig-zags between you and cold, hard, silky death.

I knit the first part of this project over fall break. It's part of my private reading in historically inspired knitted design, and although I haven't hit any serious roadblocks so far, at this point I'm holding my breath with every stitch I knit.

Chart? Hand-copied on borrowed graph paper. Math? Totally fudged and yet somehow perfect. Mitered corners? Improvised. Sewn steek? Improvised, with the help of a terrific quilter and knitter from the Ginko Gallery. Knitting mojo? Please, gods of silk, Addi turbos, and insanity: let me have a full tank of the stuff.