I'll Call it Morgan

While I was sewing in the zipper and darning in ends last night, I was trying to come up with a name for this cardigan.

As a work in progress, I've called it The Shetland Sweater and The Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan. This is because I found the original inspiration in a sweater worn by a man named Andrew Morrison, photographed on a mink farm in the Shetland Islands in the early 1960s. The photo was in the online archive of the Shetland Museum. It was the first image listed in a search of their archives for my surname.

So, while I sat there sewing and darning, I tried to come up with something that was less of a mouthful than Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan, or even AMHC, which is a bit cryptic. Because, not everyone cares about the story, you know?

And I've been working on the Mead Scarf from the lovely handspun alpaca I received from Sarah aka Teleknitter. And her last name is Morgan.

So, I like that Morgan is one of those names that can be for a boy or a girl or a last name. And there are Morgan horses, too, and maybe someone going riding on a gorgeous fall day will want a zippered cardigan.

Unfortunately, Mr. SABLE left on a business trip this morning, so I had to do my own pics with the self timer. It's always a challenge. And usually I have this funny, half-expectant, half bewildered look on my face, wondering if and when the camera will click. So, I edited off my head.

Details
Harrisville Highland Yarn. This yarn feels like steel wool at first, but softens up considerably when washed. I wanted a yarn with a rustic, hairy quality.

Needles: US size 5 and 7 Options circulars.

Pattern: My own, pending.

Note: separating zippers only come in a limited range of colors (maybe more online, but I was shopping locally), so choose your yarn colors with those limits in mind. I ended up with a black zipper, when I would have preferred very dark brown. Nothing else was remotely right.

Updates

After giving my hands a break and working on fine gauge stuff for a few weeks, I was ready to come back to the Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan, aka Shetland Sweater, yesterday. I need to work a few more inches of garter stitch on the collar, sew up a few things, like the underarms, and give it a wash before I install the zippper. I want to wash it before the zipper because I know from my swatch that this yarn blooms a lot, and I don't want it puckering or pulling when it changes gauge.

I did a quick try-on this morning and I'm excited to see it all come together. No, I didn't get a picture of the try-on because I was still in my dissheveled state: unbrushed, ungroomed, in p.j.s, etc. And I was home alone, so it would have meant setting up the tripod and messing with the auto-timer. (Note to self: buy a remote control for the camera.)

Today's weather is warm and humid. What a pleasant change from a few weeks ago. Bulbs are coming up, the grass is greening up, most of the snow is gone. A few days ago I was trying to get some pics of last year's flowers, but didn't really succeed. This sunflower was the best I got. (Click it for a bigger version.)


On Thursday I got a call from my dad. His mother died that morning. It's not the kind of devastating loss that makes ordinary life grind to a halt. She was very old. She had always been a difficult person. She particularly never liked my mother and never cared for me. Well, eventually I think she liked me some, but only after I produced two adorable baby boy grandchildren. As it turns out, my husband has a very important work trip scheduled for the coming week, so if I tried to go to the funeral, I'd be taking my kids out of school and driving at least 5 hours each way with them. And they're prone to car sickness. And they fight a lot. And, they act out worse than usual when in a situation with a lot of new people when they are expected to behave well. So, my folks and I decided that I'll stay home.

Several years ago I noticed that my grandmother's clothes were all getting really ratty and dingy. She had a lot of money, but was a tightwad and as shopping became too hard for her, she just didn't do it. I had some magenta knit fabric and sewed her a jacket and pants that were cheerful, clean, and easy care. My parents told me that she wanted to be buried in that outfit. She wore it to all her functions (art shows, cocktails with friends, etc.) and bragged to all who would listen that I had made it. So, maybe by the end, she didn't dislike me as much as she had in my youth.

Fritzi Morrison

Road to Recovery

Thanks to all for the well-wishes for my family. Owen ended up only staying home one day. I guess he had flu-lite, too. So far, The Little Emperor is unscathed. I still think I have a low-level sinus thing going on, but nothing too debilitating.

I am only a couple rows away from being done with the body on the Shetland Sweater, aka The Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan. My left hand was threatening mutiny the other night when I thought I could push on through. Having stared in the face the prospect of losing knitting for life, I know that I can't ignore those warning signs. As it is, ibuprofen is practically a food group for me.

So, here it is, just a couple rows shy of being ready to cut the steek.


Here's a detail shot of the neckline area. I've made a shallow v-neck, rather than rounded neckline, where the collar will attach, which makes the whole thing look a little strange right now. Like there's shaping for a single mono-boob up high on the chest. Have no fear, after I cut the steek it will all be fine.

So, I was loafing about getting kind of depressed with the weather and feeling like I should do something productive with all those hours when the kids are at school and not really having a focus. I just felt like napping all day every day this past week.
And while puttering in my lair, stumbled on the Yarn from the Barn I bought last spring at Rainbow Fleece Farm. (They don't seem to have a website, or I'd link it.) I still hadn't done anything with that yarn. I got out Mostly Mittens (I just noticed the shocking price on that book when I looked on Amazon for the link! I think I got mine for about $15 on Overstock.com a couple years ago!)and picked a chart. Then dug out the white sport weight vintage yarn to pair with this dark red Yarn From The Barn.

Although this is coming out a bit large, it'll work for a pair of mittens for Mr. SABLE. These mittens are a perfect little antidote-for-what-ails-you kind of project: detailed, visually grabbing, fun. They're the kind of project that impresses non-knitters and those who don't yet do two-color knitting, but in fact, the pattern is very repetitive and not overly difficult. And the gauge is different enough that it gives my hands a break from the AMHC.

Cindy G over at Baxter Knits has been exploring slip stitches with the intent to make a little tutorial on their wonderous uses. Regular readers have seen this before:

It's a detail shot of my long-standing WIP, Scott's Tweedy Sweater. The magic of slip stitches allowed me to finally use a yarn that defied every other use I tried to find for it. The beigey-brown yarn with dark brown and gold flecks came in a big batch of shetland-style yarns I bought around 1990. It would not settle in to any Fair Isle pattern. It looked ugly on its own. I kept thinking I would find a way to use this yarn (see why I have a stash problem???) and finally, I did.

Finally, here's an image from my porch, looking out toward the backyard:

I bet if I put on my boots and went wading out in the snow, I could find some cool shadows and dead plants to photograph. But somehow, I just can't seem to leave the comfort of my couch these days.

Feeling Better, Thanks.

By last night, the fever had mostly passed, though a lower-grade fever returned today. The muscle aches moved on today and most of my energy returned. I don't know what it was. Flu lite? I'm glad it was only a short little ailment.

Today I managed to stay awake while the kids were at school, pay a few bills, a little laundry, and knit a bit.

Here's the raglan seam line of the Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan. I haven't done much on it for several days. And this will probably be a slow knitting week for me. My book group meets on Sunday afternoon and I have to finish reading The Sparrow before then. I'm not a fast reader, so I need to give enough time to the book at the expense of knitting.

Here's an image from my snowy backyard this afternoon.

It gets bigger if you click on it.

Like I Needed More Yarn...

Last night I got an email from The Sow's Ear that they would be having a big winter clearance sale this weekend. Wasting no time, I went over there this morning to check things out. It was very quiet there, which is probably because most of the yarn addicts were still at work and wouldn't be in until later. I was pleased to see that the remaining Jamieson Spindrift was at 30% off, with further discounts given for cleaning out all of a color. I was happy to oblige! (For those of you who like blue, there were still a bunch of balls of a couple different blues left, plus a bunch of pale yellow.)

The Overview


The Jamieson Spindrift I picked up. These came to $2.98 each!


This yarn is intended to be used as a 4 strands at a time superbulky, but I'm just going to make 4 small balls out of each hank and use it as a worsted. 50% off in the Yarn Dump! (edited to add: the Mar La is actually slightly twisted, so separating the strands is a major pain in the derriere. Not recommended!)


Two lone balls of cotton/angora at 50% off. Maybe a little hat for fashion (but not much for warmth?).

It was damn cold out on the porch while I was setting up these pictures. I didn't want to fuss or arrange artfully or retake. Quick'n'dirty. Turns out, it's about 8 degrees out there, and there's a windchill factor, too. BRRRR.

Finally, you probably want to see the update picture of the Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan, aka Shetland Sweater. It's coming along pretty well. I did make a mistake in getting my sleeves aligned correctly so that the patterning would be completely symmetrical. I decided to live with it, though I'll be careful to write the instructions so that others might avoid that mistake.

Shetland Progress Pic

Here's a progress picture of the Shetland/Faroese Andrew Morrison Honorary Cardigan. One sleeve is done, the other is about 3 inches along. After I finish the second sleeve and join it to the body, I'll work a raglan yoke area, running a pattern motif up the seam lines, much as I'm doing on the underside of the sleeves. I'll be cutting a steek open in the center front (it is a cardigan, after all) and probably installing a zipper, as seen in my original concept sketch.

The light out on the porch was kind of strange: very harsh, low winter sunlight. I was noticing that it felt a little nippy and checked my widget when I got up here to get pics off the camera: officially, it is 1 degree F in Madison right now. Still, we're getting so acclimated to the extremely cold temps that I would have guessed more like 12 than 1. The last couple of afternoons, it's been warm enough that my eyeballs and nostrils don't freeze up walking the block from where I park into the Little Emperor's school in the afternoon. This is something to be grateful for.

Heat Wave!

Hey, we're going to be in double digits above zero this week! Maybe it's time to break out the barbecue and eat on the porch.

I've had a slow week, knitting-wise. My kids, like kids all over the upper midwest, had no school on Monday. It was a very long day for us, holed up in the house with nothing to do but bicker. Mr SABLE went to work. Owen's best buddy couldn't come over. The Little Emperor couldn't go outside to play, and by evening he was bursting. Yesterday, the Madison schools had an in-service day for the teachers, so it was a short day. School ended before lunch. To make matters worse, I had agreed to switch my volunteer stint from Monday a.m. to Tuesday this week only. So I had about a half hour of peace yesterday. To complete the disruption of my knitterly activities, there will be no middle school on Friday.

Last night, I sat on the couch and worked on the Andrew Morrison sleeve.

It's nearly ready to hold while I knit the second one: about 40 more rounds.


While I was taking pictures of the sleeve in progress, Hailey came over to offer a few pointers and try to get me to play string with her. The silver elastic you see on the floor there is her all-time favorite cat toy. She fetches it if we throw it and she carries it to wherever we are to try to get a game going.

Not sick of blogging, exactly...

Sorry, it's been a while since the last post. Too bloody cold to take pics outside and too darn messy to take them inside. And not a whole lot to report. I've been in Sudoku phase lately, so that kind eats into my time for anything else.

The Morrison Cardigan is coming along. I got the body up to the underarm zone about a week ago and did some math for the sleeves and then ground to a halt. Yesterday I started the sleeve, but I think I need to do it over with a wee bit more ease.

I did spend a bunch of time working on the plan for my new website. My son Owen has been building it for me in Flash, though he's come to the conclusion that we will need some html pages in there. I think he thought it would be the fastest money he ever earned (and I am paying him serious money for an almost-12 year old, but I expect a professional result), but he's come to realize that it'll take a bit more time than he first thought. Meanwhile, I've been getting all the original photos for all my patterns recropped and resized (and sometimes balanced and color adjusted) for this.

For those of you who are reading between the lines about TGB, don't worry. Too much. Wendy W has been mostly unavailable by internet for the better part of 4 months. Because of this and because I don't have access to the site files to upload new stuff, I feel I need to develop my own venue for pattern sales. I love being a member at TGB and I hope this all works itself out soon, but at this point, I just need to know that I have a direct and timely way to put my goods out there.

We are absolutely in the deep freeze up here today. Tomorrow will be worse. The boys are driving us nuts. They've just been released from their respective rooms, after a little spitting fight.

What else has been going on?

I got a great couple of boxes to finish up the Cheap A$$ Secret Pal Round 3. She sent a lot of great little things for the kids and a lot of yarn. If it ever seems possible to take a picture again, I'll post one! (Today's high is 4 degrees F; tomorrow's will be -1F, with -30 windchills! Definitely not a good time to go outside.) Thanks Michelle!

Last Saturday, I went to my knitting group. (See sidebar for details: I hope anyone who lives in my orbit will feel welcome to come.) I got to meet Molly Bee, who was delightful. (P.S. to MollyBee, you've set your blog to keep commenters out. In case you didn't intend that.)

This weekend, I have nothing scheduled, but a mountain of laundry. I do laundry all week and still have 4 loads on weekends. I'm trying to decide if we can forage a dinner from stuff lying around. I really don't want to make a trip out to the supermarket if I can help it.

Finally, I spent an afternoon finishing up the sleeve for Jim's sweater. For those who aren't regulars, it's been a thorn-in-my-side knitting machine project for over two years. I was sure it had all gone very well. But I noticed the raglan sleeve cap was rather large. I hoped it would relax, but after a day or two, I took a closer look at the sleeve I made a year ago. It definitely different. When I counted again, I realized I had decreased every 8th row, not every 12. OOPS. So, yet more frogging ahead. The good news is, I now feel confident that I can make two matching sleeves with relatively few difficulties in a reasonable short time.

So, look for pictures soon. I hope. Stay warm everyone!

Updates

Shetland-inspired Faroese-looking cardigan

Here's the progress photo of the Shetland-inspired Faroese cardigan. It's about 10 inches along. When I get to 14 inches, only 24 more rounds, I'll park the body and start the sleeves. This is the easiest colorwork pattern around! It's completely compatible with family life, meaning I don't have to retreat to my lair to work on it. I think I might do another one in lighter weight yarn when this is done.

Jim's Never-ending Sweater

This is a picture of the holey sleeve that frustrated me a few days ago. I used the purple draw cord to encircle the two offending holes. Truth be told, they are barely noticable from the front of the fabric, so I probably could have just caught the loops in with spare yarn and darned in the ends, but I didn't realize that until it was off the machine.

The good news is (and I am definitely knocking on wood!) that I'm am making great strides on the most recent attempt to do this sleeve. I worked about an hour and a half (yes, a sleeve in a couple of hours) and got all the way up to beginning of the raglan shaping when I took a break to write this post and have a little lunch. So far, so good. A few close calls with dropping edge stitches after increases, but I learned to be vigilant and catch them before they become problems. Now, however, I thinking I might need to redo the other sleeve, which I had called "done" because it really wasn't as well-done as the new one is turning out. See? Never ending! I guess I can say it's been a great learning experience. I hope he likes the sweater when it's done.

Edited to add:
Jim's sweater is made from Barlett Yarns Fisherman's Sport Weight yarn. He wanted one with some natural lanolin in it. Jim likes to sail and also builds boats as a hobby. When he gets his next big boat built he's going to sail around the Great Lakes for a while and he wants a sweater to wear then. But mostly he wants it done before his next trip to Alaska in the spring. You can see Jim modeling the Professor Vest at TGB.

Snow Day!

After a very strange December, it's finally looking like winter here in Wiscosin. We had about 5 inches of snow overnight and more is on the way. And it's not too cold out, so playing outside doesn't quickly lead to frostbitten cheeks. Of course, Owen left his winter boots in his locker at school on Friday, because he's a cool middle schooler now, and way too cool to wear his boots home. Now he's regretting it.

I've been puttering away on the Shetland Cardigan. Here's a progress pic, laid out on the hood of my husband's car:

Although I'm loving this sweater, I don't think I'll do really frequent progress pics, because it doesn't photograph well. A lot of sameness, just growing. In this photo, it's about 6.5 inches along.

While I was cropping and choosing a pic for this post, I noticed this:

One of those snowflakes has 5 spokes, not 6. What does it mean?

So about my friend Jim's machine knit sweater... you know, the one I talked myself in to tackling on Friday? Or was that Thursday? I got the machine all limbered up, found my notes which were less than helpful, and spent a while reading the actual knitting to figure out what I had done, which wasn't exactly what my notes said. Then I realized I really was not happy with the appearance of the increases along the selvedges of the sleeve. Since I'm working this in a Fisherman's Rib, it's a bit trickier than a standard fully fashioned increase would be. I spent some time googling for internet tutorials on machine knitting (no luck), ordered a bunch of books from the library, and then decided to try fiddling with my own ideas. Using some cheap acrylic, I was able to figure out a process that keeps the integrity of the pattern, does not lead to dropped edge stitches, and looks pretty good.

Yesterday, with great optimism, I set out to make the final sleeve. It was working really well. Then, I noticed that one strand of the yarn had broken at one point and the strand was not threading through the machine properly, but was instead bunching up in the carriage. Grr. Back up a row. No problem. Move forward. As I was getting up near the area where the raglan shaping starts, I was positivly glowing with anticipation of being done. Then, I looked under the machine at the work in progress and there were two holes in the knitting about halfway up the work. One might have come from the row where I found the broken strand. The other, a few rows below that, might have come from a small knot in the yarn. Back to the drawing board. In stockinette, I could easily fix this with a bit of yarn and a darning needle. In the fisherman's ribbing, it's a bit trickier to repair this invisibly. Still, I had such great luck with the edge stitches and the increases, that I'm optimistic that I reallyl can finish this week. Or I just tell Jim that I can't make the machine work and I hand knit him a bulky sweater in stockinette and call it done.

Trying to get motivated, find direction...

I'm trying to figure out the best thing to focus on today and am feeling a bit aimless and undirected. Here are a bunch of perfectly good choices:

1. Pick some area of the house and do some cleaning and organizing.

2. Work on a sewing project: in particular, some soft flannelly-knit pajamas. (Like knit jersey fabric with a bit of a nap.)

3. Work on any of four different hand-knitting projects
a. Shetland/Faroese cardigan (about 5 inches along.)
b. socks for Owen
c. Longstanding WIP for Mr. SABLE: Scott's Tweedy Pullover
d. mohair scarf
e. Any others that could jump out and bite me.

4. Finally finish a machine knitting project for a friend, that I should have done 2 years ago. What can I say? I had some frustrations and put it on indefinite hold. I might be able to finish in short order and feel very virtuous.

5. Work on my ongoing desire to learn website creation and design.

6. Probably about 10 other things that will just become distracting filler.

I'm leaning toward #4 because it's one that would be a great thing to cross off my list of nagging obligations. I'm putting #5 aside for now because I know I could spend all day on it and yet, have nothing tangible to show for the time. And I think today, I would like to have something tangible for the effort. That's a reason both for and against spending time cleaning and organizing. It seems like it should be a tangible result, but the mess is so great and the slobs are so persistent, that a small dent becomes invisible in 24 hours. (I did clean the downstairs bathroom sink the other day and the kitchen sink the day before that, so I'm on a bit of roll there.)

Before I go down and tackle the knitting machine project (which is on the tempermental machine), I thought I'd say a bit about the Harrisville Highland I'm using for my new cardigan. This yarn doesn't feel very pleasant in the skein or while you're knitting with it. But I compared the swatch which I washed and let dry to the knitting on the needle, and the washed swatch is really nice. I could probably wear a hat from this stuff. (That's my standard test for itchiness. My forehead is my most sensitive spot for itchy yarn.) So, if you had ever considered the Harrisville Shetland or Highland, give them a try. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

More on that project
After I started knitting the Highland cardigan, I had a couple moments of concern. The first was that I bought nearly equal quantities of the rust and the brown. One more brown than rust skein. Then, I actually counted the number of stitches of each color in one full repeat of the pattern. 19 browns:9 rust. Which tells me I need about twice as much brown as rust. Back to the yarn store...

Also, I was a bit haphazard about gauge. I used some size 7 dbl pts for my swatch and a different size 7 circular to knit. And my knitting was looking really big. For a moment I considered taking it off and starting over, which I consider not too big a deal when I'm only one evening into the project. Better to do it early than late. But, I got another long circular and transferred enough stitches to spread it out to full actual size. Yes, it's a bit bigger than I first planned, but not as much as I feared. I think for the kind of garment it is, a warm dense winter cardigan, a little oversize will be ok. My ease is about 15% of my bust measurement.

So, without further stalling, I'm off to the basement to do battle with the machine. And, perhaps, emerge triumphant. (I only have one sleeve left to make, but then sewing up, and neckline trim. The end could be in sight!)

A sketch to go with the swatch

Here's a rough sketch of the basic sweater I'll be using for Shetland stitch pattern. (Or Faroese, but found in the Shetlands.) I did not attempt to paint in all the little repeats of the pattern. I'm not that crazy.

I was able to cast on this evening. I had to leave the room to double check my stitch count, because it's quite annoying to do one of those really big cast-ons and find out you screwed up by 10 stitches because your kid interrupted you around "75, 76, 7, 8, 9, 90, 91..." Don't laugh. I've screwed up some sweaters that way. And since I've always had big hips in relation to my middle, I don't want a smaller number of stitches for the ribbing at the hips. So, it took several tries to accurately count to past 100, but I did put markers at the one- and two-hundred marks. And I'm sure I have the correct number of stitches.

With a little luck, I'll have progress pics to show in the next couple of days. Stay tuned!

Shetland Sweater Swatch

OK, here's my swatch for Andrew Morrison's sweater (see last post for link). I used Harrisville Highland, at about 5 stitches per inch. I'm thinking this will be my sturdy cardigan. I plan to work in the round, making corrugated ribbing on the bottom. I'm going to make raglan sleeves, and run a design detail up the raglan seam lines. I've got the sketch in my mind, but not yet committed to paper. I'm not sure yet about buttons vs. zipper, or exactly what the neckline will look like.

The Square Hat...

Or maybe it should be called Pyramid Power? The top really is more of a pyramid, rather than a flat square.

I got a better picture today. The basic recipe is to cast on a brimful of stitches and work ribbing. Switch to MC and larger needles for stocking st. Work in rounds, increasing 10 stitches evenly around every 3rd round, until crown is desired depth. This was 14 rounds in my case. Use contrast yarn and k 1 round, p 2 rounds. Back to MC and decrease pairs every other round. I worked ssk, k to end of first fourth, leaving 2 st. K2tog. Repeat around. When I got to the top, I made an attached ball. Easy as can be.

While randomly surfing a few weeks back I ended up at the Shetland Museum site. They have an extensive online photo archive, so I searched my last name. The Morrisons came from there originally. This sweater caught my eye. It's in the first picture that comes up from that search. I quickly charted out the colorwork in the sweater. I think it looks more Faroese than Shetland, but there's been a fair amount of communication between the two cultures over the centuries. But I really like it. I'm swatching some colors now, though not sure how successful my first choices will be. Stay tuned. As for the guy in the picture, he's probably some 9th cousin 15 times removed or something.

Funny (well, kind of in a sick way) thing the Little Emperor said yesterday morning. We were getting ready to go out the door to school and he said, "That person made a poor choice, who shot Martin Luther King." I'm thinking, it goes a bit beyond a poor choice! Of course, this is the kind of language that the school uses for disciplining children with behavior issues. It's never about being bad; just about making good choices vs. poor choices. So, in the discussion of MLK the kids all learned that the assassin made a poor choice. My tax dollars at work.

Hey, did you know that it's National Blog De-lurking Week? Or if it isn't now, it will be soon. All you readers who never comment are supposed to pipe up and at least say "Hi" just once. I'll have to think of a great controversy or post an all-out rant. That always seems to stir up comments.

It's possible that we will get a measurable snow fall this weekend. I'd about given up.