Queue Check — January 2017

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Queue Check — January 2017

So where am I on that Channel Cardigan I want to take to Paris? Well, the sleeves are still done! And I’ve added a whopping inch or two to the body.

All my late-night nervous knitting energy has been poured into the second coming of my St. Brendan sweater. It’s been two weeks since I ripped it back to its yoke, and it already has two full sleeves (knitted flat) and about half of the body. That cake of black yarn you see in the pic is my last skein before I have to get into the kinky frog pile, so I’m considering it a good stopping point. When this skein runs out, I plan to knit the neckband from the frog pile, then block the whole thing (also soaking the rewound skeins) and seam the sleeves. I haven’t decided exactly how long I want it to be yet — I want to see how it looks with the upper half and sleeves all done and blocked, which will tell me what the rest wants to be. And I also have the cuffs on waste yarn — thinking about knitting them long enough to fold up.

You may notice there’s no colorwork on those sleeves. I’ve decided the way it is now, with just the yoke, it really is exactly the sweater I’ve been wanting. I expect to be done with it in another week or so — hopefully there will be at least a few days in February cold enough to wear it! (She says from balmy Nashville.)

Then it’s full speed ahead on Channel. The anticipation of that camel yarn and melodious stitch pattern is what’s getting me through all this stockinette …

• Channel Cardigan pattern by Jared Flood in Clever Camel | all Channel posts
• St. Brendan pattern by Courtney Kelley in Arranmore | all St. Brendan posts

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PREVIOUSLY in Queue Check: Year-end 2016

24 thoughts on “Queue Check — January 2017”

    • I’m not sure yet! I’m planning to be extremely strict about packing light/small, but I’ll also have an awful lot of plane time to fill, which I’m nervous about. I have no fear of flying whatsoever, but I am not wild about being confined for that many hours, so needs to be something engaging and time-passing. Thinking I might take a sock project on the plane (and a one-skein hat for back-up), and can always stock up at Aimee’s shop while I’m there if I need something else!

  2. I love Queue Check. I think you’ll be so happy you ended up doing all that ripping and modifying on your St. Brendan. Are you making any modifications to Channel? It’s all looking so good!

    • Oh, I’m entirely thrilled about the ripping and adjusting, no question. The only changes I’m making to Channel are to add pockets and skip the belt. I love the look of it, but I never ever belt a sweater or jacket, so there’s no point in knitting it.

  3. re the kinky frog pile…reskein it and soak. hang to dry.
    re the colorwork NOT on the sleeves…good call. I think it makes the neckline the draw and your beautiful face….
    re Balmy Nashville….good luck with that…weather’s changing again…

    • We did have one good cold week — a dusting of snow, a few nights of frozen pipes. But other than that it’s been upper 60s for days on end. I’m really not complaining! And I can wear this in my studio even on 68-degree days, but I do hope we’ll have another cold spell once this is done.

  6. Soak the frogged yarn and lay flat to dry before you rewind the yarn. It takes days to dry, but soaking it will take out all the kinks and keep your gauge consistent.

      • I don’t think it matters. If you’re worried about the “fold” from hanging damaging the yarn, you could drape a towel over a hanger and then put the yarn on that, or hang the yarn across several bars on a drying rack. Some people weight their soaked skeins to get the kinks out! I do find that there are usually kinks remaining after re-soaking but that by the time you wind them into a ball there are much fewer.

  7. It seems reasonable that the soaked yarn should match a blocked sweater in gauge. I have yarn that I want to reuse along with unknit yarn. I hadn’t thought about blocking the virgin yarn before continuing with the soaked yarn. Thanks for that valuable tip. It might save my new sweater. I think this sweater will become another favorite for you.

  8. both sweaters are so lovely – the St B has benefitted from all that ripping. When I recently repurposed yarn from an almost finished sweater from years ago (like 15 or 20!), I soaked the yarn well – over night – then hung it to dry, weighted with about a pound (a water bottle or can of soup works) – fold skein over a hanger, put the weight in the cradle that forms, and let it sit. Didn’t hurt the wool at all, and got rid of all signs of kinks. I used a fairly large round wooden hanger, not a wire one.

  9. Since the yarn only spent a short time knitted up, it won’t have set into the kinks as much as a long-neglected WiP or charity shop find. I’ve had good success with a steam iron – wind into a skein, put the skein around the end of the ironing board, and hold the steam iron just above the yarn – don’t press down, and don’t hold it for too long, you can always go over it again if you need to. After you’ve done a pass over one section, pull it around to the next still-crinkled section and keep going until you’re happy with it. The friction as you pull it around is enough to gently straighten the crinkles without overstretching the yarn, and a few loose crinkles won’t affect how it knits up.

    It’s going to be beautiful, enough decoration to be interesting but stay very wearable as a wardrobe staple.

    • I agree, it’s definitely worth trying steam before soaking (it’s so quick, I don’t think you lose anything by giving it a shot). I just love watching this video of kinked yarn de-kinking: http://techknitting.blogspot.com/2012/12/dekink-yarn-with-steam-instant-results.html

      Soaking of course will work, but personally I get impatient waiting for the skeins to dry! I think soak vs steam and weighted vs unweighted really depends on your preferences as far as how unkinked you want it to be… I’m a bit cavalier on this front and am often content with steaming (or soaking-plus-gentle-finger-combing). I’ve done swatch experiments and have found that my gauge is still spot-on with mildly kinked yarn (I certainly don’t bother unkinking when the frogged work was never blocked), but we all knit differently.

  10. I second the nervous knitting, but I’ve been suffering fro. Sore wrists, so my only solace is chocolate.

  11. Re length, it looks really cute cropped in the photo!
    Also, wondering if you’re familiar w Sally Melvill’s formula for the ideal sweater length for your body depending on your height and back waist length. I’ll see if I can find a link.

  13. I wish I were a sweater knitter, but the closest I´ve been was a white sweater with your top-down pattern-not pattern (I left it after the arms separation because it didn´t fit as I wanted). That was my first and for now last attempt to knit something “big”. I want to make it though, but the problem is
    time, I´d like to knit at the end of the day but back pain and tired eyes (I have had ocular surgery twice) prevent me from doing so. I knitted a couple of shawls instead, now my rate is a project a year (insert crying emoji here).

    As why so many sweater patterns lately, I think there are more experienced and skilled knitters willing to try more significative projects, and a sweater is a key piece of wardrobe. I want to believe it is also related to the movement towards more concious ways of wearing clothes (hope it makes sense, english is not my first language and cannot put the idea in words as it is in my mind !)

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