Quarter-zip sweaters have been on my mind for awhile, so instead of buying one I decided to make the PetiteKnit version. I decided to use the Hudson and West Forge ( RIP 😦 ) I got at Rhinebeck last year, but it was tricky to find the right mohair. Somehow Fib-r-land had an uncanny match that blends in really well.
I am really tired of twisted rib and I’m ready for a break! What’s wrong with regular ribbing?
The zipper was not too bad to sew in, but the facing keeps getting caught in the zipper, so I am going to need to do some surgery to give the zipper teeth some more breathing room. I couldn’t find a zipper I liked at Pacific Trimmings, but i found the perfect one in my stash. Love when that happens!
Its going to get chilly next week so I’m hoping to take it out for a real spin. I was getting pretty hot wearing it for these photos on a 60 degree rainy day, but I am so excited that its finished!
My 2024 Rhinebeck mission was to find the darkest undyed wool possible. I buzzed through the entire fair to see every booth to assess my options, but only one had the exact yarn I was dreaming of. The answer turned out to be a US-grown Shetland from Fine Purveyors of Yarn. The website is pretty tricky to navigate and they do not have it for sale online. Is it scratchy? Yes, but this does not bother me because its lovely and warm.
The pattern is Corrie by Julie Hoover. The fit is quite slouchy, so the seams are crucial to keeping the structure of the garment–I am glad they are there! Maybe one day seamed sweaters will be popular again. As always, Julie’s patterns provide clear instructions and techniques that make the sweater look very professional.
I finally found the horn buttons section at Pacific Trimmings. These look very RTW, and are perfect!
I love this sweater! It’s quickly become a go-to layer this winter.
I have so many everyday summer dresses, but my winter wardrobe is lacking. When Paper Theory released the Ray pinafore a couple of weeks ago, I decided to go for it. This was not a quick sew, but I am really happy with the results, and its really fun to wear.
I should have lint brushed…..
This was my second experience sewing with corduroy, and this time I took it more seriously. Its not the easiest fabric to work with, I must say. My first go with a pair of pants a few years back was so bad that I had to abandon it–Mind the Nap!
The inside of this looks quite tidy because I bound the exposed seams with bias tape. Looking forward to making another in a lighter weight fabric.
interior shot
short sleeved raglan
I constantly push up the sleeves of sweaters, so I wanted to try out short sleeves to see how I like it. I got this beautiful yarn from Green Mountain Spinnery last Rhinebeck, and found this Thea Colman pattern that uses this exact yarn and colorway for the sample!
felted beret
While at the Met a few weeks ago, I stopped in my tracks to admire an older woman wearing a very dramatic beret. She looked so stylish that I immediately decided to make a beret of my own. A few years ago I made a white and gray beret with some scraps, but I wanted a navy one with a more dramatic profile.
Last year I made Kiyomi Burgin‘s felt tipped toque. Her felting instructions were thorough and I thought I might try felting this beret. I based the beret on James Watts‘ Best Beret, but I made the brim differently because I don’t love the pattern’s icord cast on. I did a live stitch cast on, knitted 8 rows, 1 purl row, and knitted 8 more rows, then knit the live stitches with the next row to make the brim. After that I followed the pattern instructions for the “dramatic” version of the beret.
I used malabrigo Worsted, it was perfect and felted so quickly! I did 1 round of felting for about 10 minutes, then let it dry to try it on. It was a little big, so I felted again for a few minutes. It eventually took 1 more round of felting, and now it fits PERFECTLY!
I watched a video on how to wear a beret, and learned that you are supposed to turn in the brim so its not exposed. FYI!
here’s a bunch of stuff I made over the past couple of months.
Ret nem
What a project. I was in the bay area in Sept last year and made a detour to a verb for keeping warm. I knew I wanted a SQ of something special, so I poured over their wall of samples to choose one for verb to naturally dye for me. I never think I like purples but I am SO drawn to them. I ordered the yarn and impatiently waited, hunting down the perfect pattern for it.
here’s how it looks after a few wears.
I normally pick a pattern before selecting yarn (because THAT is how you acquire a stash), but this was a worthy exception. I have been enamored with garter stitch so I searched for an allover-garter fingering weight sweater and LET ME TELL YOU there is not a lot out there. Patterns that appeared promising did not have many projects to review. After much deliberation, I settled on Ret Nem. I love the quiet details of the seams. It took an INCREDIBLY long time to knit. After a couple of wears, I’m observing felting at the armpits, but maybe thats ok? Despite this, it fits like a dream: extremely lightweight and soft. I am really pleased with it!
see the seams?? aren’t they pretty!?
Radish socks
Lets call these dual purpose: an amuse bouche between sweaters, as well as motivation to finish Ret Nem. These radish socks were love at first sight–it went to the top of my queue (but only to be started AFTER I completed the sweater). The hardest part of this project was finding a good brown tweed yarn. I almost settled for knit picks but in a fit of desperation I googled “brown tweedy sock yarn” and found hue loco. With few comments on Ravelry, it was a risky purchase. After a few more wears I will be certain to leave a review!
Collared shirt for Jacob
I got some shirting weight Pendleton pre-pando that’s been earmarked for Jacob. I decided it was time, and sewed him up a shirt based on the Jcrew shirt I deconstructed and made a pattern from. The Jcrew shirt is short-sleeved, so I blended it with Grainline’s Archer button up sleeve and cuff, and added a couple of inches because Jacob has such long arms. It turned out really well, I am pretty proud of it. French seams throughout, and it fits him perfectly!
More Bailee shorts
I made another pair of bailee shorts using leftover Pendleton from Jacob’s collared shirt. they are SO comfortable ive been wearing them as PJs all winter.
This past Rhinebeck, I was on the hunt for the sheepiest breed-specific wool I could find, and I decided on a sweater quantity of an undyed 2-ply longwool from a Cotswold sheep named Eloise (Ross Farm Fibers). Suffice to say I was alone in seeing the potential for a sweater.
As I was daydreaming about what to do with this haul, I thought about the tank top I made a couple summers ago. I have worn it quite a bit and it’s held up really well. I bet you know what happened next: I decided this Extremely Wooly Wool was to become a summer tank top. Rigby by Julie Hoover was already in my queue so I decided it was time.
I started knitting and quickly became concerned that this was not going to be wearable in summer. Despite this, I persevered and sprinted through the finish line at the beginning of Memorial day weekend. I’ve put it on a few times and it’s actually quite nice. This weekend’s weather was one for the books, so I bet that helped a tiny bit. We shall see how the dead of summer goes. I love the low armhole, which I achieved through careful swatching getting lucky with bigger needles. If I make this again, which is a very real possibility, I will knit the front and back completely flat to give some structure to the sides.
…and I think I’ll use something a bit more structured… and… soft. Maybe!
VKL was back in NYC this year, and even though I hate going through Times Square, I went to check it out. It was much quieter this year than in 2020 (I typed 2019 at first, but it was in fact one of the last large crowd activities I participated in before the Pando descended).
I contemplated my Ravelry queue ahead of time, and was looking for yarn to make a “Half and Half Triangle wrap” because its been in my queue forever. This winter, I noticed that I often reached for my Aestlight shawl I made back in 2012. Made of the Hottest Yarn at the time, Malabrigio, its full of mistakes because I barely knew how to knit. I wanted something to replace it. Triangle wrap sounded like a good fit.
After doing a lap through the show among the other early birds, I realized it felt a little weird to be able to duck into a booth without fighting crowds. I decided go back to Kelborne Woolens to get some Andorra for my project.
When I got home, I started the project immediately–– WIPs be damned. I knit this in a little more than a month during my subway commute and over 2 plane-trips. I am pleased with the icord edging I finagled around the scarf’s perimeter, as well as the squish of overall garter stitch. Nothing super exciting, but bright colors to liven up the last of winter and early spring!
This is Kelbourne Woolens’ Andorra in Dijon, a mustard-y green and Cloud Gray, a very pale lavender.
Progress photos
I snapped some photos along the journey. It was nice to have such a simple, yet engaging pattern to lose myself in.
Top-down seamless sweaters are wildly popular, in part because they require very little seaming. Perhaps because I am a sewer, I do not mind seaming, so this advantage is lost on me. In my opinion, the structure seams add to a knitted garment is well worth the effort. Additionally, a seamless sweater gets SO heavy and bulky to transport, and it really slowed down my momentum that I needed to finish. My last gripe with this project was the collar. I thought I was clever with my foldover collar modification, but it looked very bad. I think my yarn did not help the situation, it is a 85/15 cotton/alpaca blend. Luckily my surgery went very well and I was able to salvage it.
Enough of my complaining, I am glad this sweater is finished and Jacob is enjoying wearing it.
Here’s an itarsia pullover for ya: Judd by Alexis Winslow. This was a test knit that took me much longer than I intended. Today was a balmy 28°, so I utilized this March cold snap to grab photos (thanks Jacob). I used ridiculously soft Flax Down from Purl Soho for this sweater, and the drape is so so nice. I hope it doesn’t pill.
Alexis included a coloring page with her sweater pattern, and I used it to test out many color combinations of Flax Down colors before settling on Grey Fig, Vintage Celadon and Cobalt Blue. I am particularly fond of the solid blue and solid brown sleeve, it gives the sweater a striking look. I ended up swapping the colors on the bottom octagon from sketch to sweater, but you probably already noticed that!
my final sketch
This was my first time with intarsia, and it took a few rows to get the hang of it, but after that it was very straightforward. The Vikkel braid around the neckline and setup rows for tubular bind off turned out beautifully, and make this garment look so professional. Seaming the sides took awhile, but seeing the colors line up perfectly was so satisfying. This was also my first time with a drop-shoulder sweater, and I have to say, its pretty comfy!
Here’s my most recent FO, a second Cline sweater. its pretty rare for me to knit something more than once, but as soon as I finished my first Cline I decided to cast on another. I frogged my Niska sweater because I just didn’t like how it fit, and the Cinnabar Shelter is so so beautiful (and BT RETIRED IT!!!).
i knew i wouldn’t have enough of the Cinnabar to make the whole Cline, so I took a shot in the dark and ordered 2 skeins of BT Shelter in Postcard to make it colorblocked. I am quite happy with how the ratios turned out, it looks exactly as I pictured it in my head. I referenced @beautifulshell‘s lovely version to get a rough idea of where to switch colors.
The NYC Marathon goes right past our apartment, so we used this rare opportunity to take some middle-of-the-street photos before we checked out the race.
I finished one of my most challenging projects (rav link) ever! Its the from PomPom Magazine’s spring 2021 issue, a sweater-vest called Lucky Pieces.
After I decided to knit this, I saw that A Verb for Keeping Warm created a kit for this pattern, utilizing small quantities of their beautiful naturally dyed yarn. How fortuitous!! I had always wanted to try out their yarn, and this seemed like a great pattern for it. I asked if they would be willing to create a “warm colors” version of the kit, and they graciously acquiesced!
This project was my first time doing entrelac. The pattern instructions were rather bare-bones, so it was very challenging to get the hang of how entrelac works. Getting through the initial rows was frustrating, but after checking Ravelry, I discovered other knitters were also having trouble. A few knitters helped me, and I ended up making a diagram to attempt to contribute to the community. PomPom ended up using it in a blog post to augment the pattern’s instructions, so I think it ended up being pretty helpful!
This pattern took me a long time to complete. I had to take a break over the summer because I was so sick of it. The amount of color changes and weaving in ends was frustrating and time-consuming. I want to wear this to Rhinebeck, so I picked it back up last month. I was not sure I would like it, but after completing the edging, I think it looks much better than I was anticipating. I ran out of the yellow-colored yarns at the very end of the back, but I don’t think its noticeable. Instead of creating the ties to finish this, I opted for 2 buttons and i-cord loops. I eye-balled the position of the buttons and the loops, and sewed them on with a backing button for stability.
emilyWools 