The Unveil

And here it is: my Pencil Sketch Camisole!

I've had it on several times now and it wears very well. My biggest concern about it being scratchy has not been a problem at all. I'm not overjoyed that the orange stripe landed right on my widest parts (shall we say), but other than that I really can't complain about the striping. I think the width of the stripes worked out great, and I'm really pleased with the balance of the overall piece.

The V neckline includes a "mock" wrap. The neckline and armholes were finished with a few rows of ribbing and a picot cast off.

Project Stats

Started: 20 Apr 09
Finished: 6 Jun 09
Pattern: Pencil Sketch Camisole by Iris G Knits, free
Materials: Evilla Artyarn 8/2 (A-30 Orange, Purple, Green), 1 skein, $34.34

Modifications: Folded picot hem, longer length, steeked arms and neck.

The picot folded hem was a nice finish to the bottom edge. I should have reduced the stitches as EZ suggests, but blocking corrects all.

What a delightful project this was for me. Simple, but with the lace to keep things interesting. And I adored the yarn: how it felt like a good sturdy old fashioned wool, and its pattern of changing colours to always keep me engaged.

I hope you are working on something right now that floats your boat as much!

[ETA: This project won a blue ribbon at the 2009 County Fair (knitted vest or shell).]

Me in 2 D

I am so pleased to be able to say that I am done all the cutting, knitting and finishing on the so-called Pencil Sketch Camisole. I am reasonably certain it will fit because I tried it on before blocking. It was, I could say, a little "snug." It had to be stretched to fit so I took some measurements while I was actually wearing it and blocked it to those numbers.

I will admit it feels almost indecent to post that pic since it is essentially my body in 2 D. (I did say it fit a little snug, right?) But considering it's called a camisole, a snug fit shouldn't be that surprising. It took two tries to get it all blocked out, and it still looks a little asymmetrical to me, but good enough to try. Maybe next time I'll make a paper (or plastic) pattern that I can follow and reuse. I'll have to pin and block every time I wash it so it might be worth it.

And speaking of washing, did this yarn ever make the wash water dirty! Ew! It's possible it was some of the dye rinsing out and blending into a nasty brown colour, but I don't really thing so. I got the water to rinse clear before I was done, so I'm calling it clean.

I got inspired to finish up the armholes this afternoon. I had done the crocheting around the steeks a few days ago so it was ready to go. After cutting, I needed to pick up the stitches to knit the armhole bands.

Here's a pic after I've done about half of the front of one side:
The main body of the shirt is below the needle, and the little bit you see above the needle is the facing which will end up being turned under. You want to pick up the stitches following a single row (or, column, in this case).

With this particular facing, I am picking up stitches between the second and third column from the edge of the facing. But you could also use this method to pick up stitches one row in from a selvage edge, as long as you are travelling perpendicular to the direction of the knitting (like, let's say, for a button band).

Here's how I pick up stitches:

Insert the left needle between the second and third column of stitches 2 or 3 inches ahead of the right needle.
Then bring the left needle up right in front of the last stitch on the right needle. (You'll still be between the second and third column.)
You should have caught no stitches (or anything else) on the back side.

Now when you press the knitting against the needle, and sort of fold it, you can see all the little bars of yarn that connect the second and third columns.
These are what I'm going to knit to pick up the stitches.

So I did just that:
In this method, you can see I work very close to the point of the needles to keep from stretching out the base fabric. (I also use a much smaller size for the left needle.) When you run out of things to knit on the left needle, you just pick up some more in the same manner.

Another thing to keep in mind is to knit only three of every four bars. So I pick up all the bars on the left needle, and then knit, knit, knit, drop a bar. Knit, knit, knit, drop a bar. This gives you three stitches for every four rows which is a good general rule-of-thumb ratio. In most cases, this will yield an even fabric that will not pucker or stretch out.

In the next pic, if you look closely you can see the pattern of three close stitches separated by spaces.
It's very subtle and will even out with your first row. You do not have to worry about gaps.

Here's a shot from the backside with the facing folded down like it will be in the final product.
A close look will reveal the purl bumps right along the needle that come from the stitches being knit up. The green contrasting yarn is the crocheted edge of the steek. (Nice and neat, isn't it?) [Toot! Toot!] (Oh, was that my own horn?)

I am on pins and needles waiting for this to dry so I can wear it!! I'm sure you are too!

More pics to come then, as you can well imagine,

christina

When Cutting Your Knitting is a Good Thing

Yes, those are scissors. Cutting my knitting. Call me crazy, but this is what I had to do for this shirt.

I've been saying all along that I had to work in the round and steek the arms and back neck shaping. What you see here is the back neck. For no particular reason, I decided to do the neck first.

I won't go into a step-by-step tutorial today but I will give you an overview of the process.

Here you have the back of my camisole. The black lines mark the shoulder seams. The stitches sitting on the holder will form the center of the back neckline. (The lowest part of the scoop, if you will.)

And the circled part? That is the steek. I've knit a few extra stitches over the opening which will form a facing when we're all done. By the time I took this pic, I had already crocheted a finishing edge along both sides of the part we're going to cut. (The raised ridges.) Again, this is just an overview, so you don't have to see exactly how it was done, just recognize that they're there and we will move on.

Move on to the actual cutting between the crocheted edges:

Here I've reached the end and am cutting through the final stitch. Can you believe you can do this?!

Now that it's cut apart, the crocheted edge nicely turns toward the opening and gives a very neat edge to the facing.

Of course, besides being neat and trim, it's also holding those last two stitches together so the whole thing won't unravel.

Once I open it up, you can see how the neckline now looks quite normal. The center stitches can spread out a little bit, and the angled part on either side is the steek, now with the facings turned to the inside.

Here's a quick peak at the entire camisole:
I'm very happy with how all the colour changes came out. It's getting very close to done. I have picked up the stitches around the neckline and am working on knitting the trim. I still have to edge and cut the armhole steeks and then knit a trim around them. But it's getting there.

Enough typing, time to get back to knitting!

-christina

Cami Progress

Doesn't that look great? I got to say again, I just love this wool.

So I have the shirt done up to the underarm shaping. Twice. I didn't have to undo anything this time though. I knit up to the length that the pattern called for and then (thankfully) tried it on. It was really short so I added another three inches. I still have to try it on again just to be sure, but it should be just right.

As I watch the colours slowly change I keep changing my mind about how the striping will work out. (You have a lot of time to think about it when you're working with fine gauge wool.) When I went to the original length I was worried the shirt wouldn't be long enough to show enough of the colours. Now that I'm going longer I'm hoping I have enough wool that I don't get into the orange again. (I'd be more comfortable if the orange isn't around my face--much as I love it, I don't think it'll be flattering.)

I finally got smart about tracking which row of the lace pattern I'm on by adding a row counter as a stitch marker:

I was keeping track of it on paper and/or in my head and finally asked myself, "Why do you want to make this so hard on yourself?" So I strung a row counter onto some wire and placed it right before the lace work. Now when I get there, I advance the counter by one row and that tells me which row I'm on in the chart. How easy peasy is that! (And I've finally memorized the chart in case you were wondering about that.)

Now that I'm up to the underarms, I have to take a break from actual knitting and rewrite the pattern for working in the round and steeks. (EEK! No, I'm just kidding--that's just what a lot of knitters say when thinking of steeks.) You see, the pattern is written to work the back and front separately around the armholes. But that certainly won't work with this wool. Not if I want them to match.

So I have to continue working in the round and cut the armholes in later. This would explain why I need to take a moment and plan my next move (and all the ones after that).

Knitting Knitting and Getting Nowhere

This first picture would seem to deny the title of the post, but I have to let you know that after 7 inches of beautiful knitting which took me from green to purple to orange, I had to frog it all. [:hand to throat gasping "No!":] When I got the shaping done to the waist on my Pencil Sketch Camisole, I put all the stitches onto a string and tried it on. You could fit one and a half of me in it. Oh, I hate it when swatches lie...

So while I had it on, I figured out how many stitches to deduct. (Just pinch the extra fabric you don't need and count how many stitches that is.) Well, that brought me pretty much right back to the number the pattern told me to do in the first place. [:double sigh with a big shoulder slump:]

But now I am cast back on, finished the hem, and humming along. One reason this is not as bad as it could be is that the wool is so nice to knit with. Yum, it just makes my fingers and eyes blissful.

Hubby is also partially convinced I took it all out so that I could fix a small mistake I had noticed a number of rows back. (On one stitch I had knit into the stitch of the row below--nothing worth frogging for--but he thinks I take my perfectionism to more extremes than I do.) There was another small mistake in the lace he doesn't know about, but if he did he would count it as additional proof of his theory.

While I'm posting and since I had to do it twice (it came out even nicer the second time), let me share a nice hem for stockingnette garments. I first did it on a baby sweater I made when I was still a young thing (early teens maybe?).

The pattern I'm doing currently actually calls for two rows of ribbing along the bottom but I didn't like how it looked on my swatch. And I didn't think two rows would keep the shirt from curling up. I hate curling. (Not the sport.) This hem will be much better:

Picot Hem Tutorial

Use a loose cast on and knit five or six rows in stocking stitch. Then knit a row of K2tog, YO all the way across. Then knit five or six more rows of stocking stitch:
This will give you a bit of knitting with a row of holes. In the baby sweater I knit as a youngster, the pattern had you fold the piece along the holes and then sew it down like a normal hem after the entire garment was knit. This works, but it's not very satisfying if you don't like sewing seams. And a sewn seam is never as stretchy as the knitting around it.

The alternative is to fold the piece along the holes, putting the cast on edge toward the back of the work and then knitting the cast on edge with the next row. This will "sew" the hem with no sewing at all. (I know, it's like magic!)

So, fold along holes toward the back.

Then use your left needle to pick up the "outside half" of the cast on edge:

(You want to pick up just one strand.)

Then knit the next stitch with this strand like a knit 2 together:

(Right needle is inserted through next stitch and picked-up strand ready to knit them together.)

Here's a pic to show you the back:

(From the back, the "left" needle has picked up the strand.)

And here you can see how the holes have been transformed to "picots." Hence the name, picot hem.

(Again, a view from the back.)

After doing a whole row (or round) of knitting 2 together in this manner, you then just continue to knit. I told you it was like magic.

You can actually use this hem without the YOs so that you get a straight edge along the bottom. In this case, you would usually do a purl row instead which will become your fold line. EZ recommends casting on about 95% of your total stitches (increasing to 100% above the rolled edge) and using a slightly thinner yarn (The Opinionated Knitter p15). I will try this when I get around to knitting hubby the fine gauge sweater I've been thinking about. It will give a flatter and smoother look than the traditional ribbing.

I Got My Pattern!

Remember the pattern I was searching for in this post? I received it from the fellow Raveler I had asked! (She says I'm lucky because she normally doesn't save the patterns she downloads but she still had this one. Phew!) And it looks so worth the extra work it took to get it.

I knit a 40-stitch swatch on Monday to confirm which size needles I wanted to use and what gauge I got with them. I knew the wool I wanted to use was thinner than what the pattern called for. And even though we all know swatches lie, they can help to get you in the ball park.

In addition to making changes to account for the swatch, I also have to make changes for the size. The (free) pattern is only available in the size the designer made for herself: too small for me. So I added a few inches based on the measurements of my Sahara which has a similar fit.

I got it cast on Monday night (all 212 stitches :mops brow:) with the crochet cast on. I didn't like how the ribbing looked on my swatch so I'm planning to change the bottom edge to a folded picot hem. This meant I needed some nice stitches along the cast on edge to knit. If you don't get why, you can be sure I will show you all the details in a future post. I just have to get there first!

I did want to pass on a tip for making a better join. It's so easy when you join in the round for the first stitch to be very loose, sloppy, and dare I say ugly. What I do to try to improve this stitch is to slip it, and then knit it up when I come back around to that spot, like knitting up a dropped stitch. Hmm...words are so inadequate. I will try a few pics to see if that will help.

[You will notice that I did not take pictures of the very first row which is where you would implement this trick, but I think you will get the point nonetheless.]

So you cast on your stitches and are about to knit the very first stitch which will make your work a circle instead of a line. Instead of knitting it, slip it to the right needle (purlwise) and knit the next stitch pulling the yarn firmly.

When you get back to this point after knitting a round, you will come to the slipped stitch (black arrow) and behind it will be an extra loop of yarn (red arrow):

Now you don't want to leave that loop of yarn flapping in the back; you want to knit it up. So, insert the tip of your left needle to pick up the loop:

Then insert the tip of your right needle into the slipped stitch (purlwise):
And pass the slipped stitch over the loop of yarn:
You have just knit up the loop as if you had dropped a stitch. You are now ready to knit away on your project:

So you see that this will tighten the first stitch and hopefully prevent it from stretching out and looking...can't think of a delicate way to say this...just plain ugly. (I will allow no ugliness on my Pencil Sketch Camisole.)

I've Found a Pattern (Maybe)

I do believe I've found a pattern for my gorgeous orange/purple/green wool from Estonia. (This has been weighing quite heavy on my mind!)

Spending hours (ok, really minutes...spread out over hours) poring over patterns in Ravelry led to this beauty,
the Pencil Sketch Camisole, from Iris G Knits. (She designed this after only about a year of knitting--amazing!)

Besides being lovely, it looks like it would only use about half of my yardage so I could have enough left over to make something else. Maybe some matching armwarmers...mmmm...tempting. But then I would have the difficulty of getting them to match. Perhaps some seaming would be in order.

Anyway, for now, I can think about the dreamy possibilities of knitting the lovely Pencil Sketch Camisole. Nothing else will do or even comes close. Even though I can't wait to cast on, something is holding me back...

When I got home and tried to download the pattern, it seems to no longer be available at the hosting site and comments on the pattern in Ravelry indicate that the designer had not updated her blog in months and months. Oh this was very discouraging!

But further research led to evidence that the designer was back on her blog and someone had already left a comment about the failed download link. I had also pursued getting the pattern from someone on Ravelry so I hold some hope that I can still obtain it.

But it is not yet a sure thing. And that would be a shame.