Then and Now Vintage Striped Blouse, Start and Progress

I'm getting pretty close to finishing a vintage "Then and Now" blouse so I thought I'd give you the full tour.

Gauge swatch. The gauge didn't match the
pattern but it was what worked for this yarn
so I resigned myself to recalculating all the
stitch counts in the pattern.

It started with a Then and Now knit-along suggested in the Vogue Knitting Magazine group on Ravelry in 2018. The idea was to knit something from a current year (2018) issue ("now") and knit something from the selection of Vogue "flashback" patterns where they take a vintage pattern and update it with modern materials and colours ("then").

My "now" pattern was the pink and black cowl from the Winter 2017/18 issue. I started it in January and finished in April.

I knew pretty early that my "then" pattern was going to be a striped blouse from a 1984 issue but I didn't have any idea what yarn to use.

I wanted something drapey, probably silk. And as usual, I was hoping to get the yarn from a second hand sweater. I couldn't find anything. I purchased a couple sweaters from other unravelers online to try, but they weren't well suited either. (Too thin or wrong colour.)

I looked a little further in the stash and decided a white silk I bought from colourmart.com would work with a tan rayon/linen blend from this sweater. Because I had less white than tan, I figured I had to switch the main colour from white to tan. That was probably better for my colouring anyway.

I knit up a swatch at the end of December to technically meet the knit-along requirement to start the project in 2018. The group is pretty relaxed anyway. I mean, it's not like they won't want to see a finished project just because it was late or that we're competing for cash prizes! :)

After all the calculations for gauge and size, it didn't really look like I had enough yarn, but it seemed to me like I should. Normally ignoring the math for a feeling isn't advisable, but yardage numbers aren't always reliable. So, I started anyway. (Spoiler alert - it's going to be fine.)

The blouse has an interesting construction. The front and back panels are knit side to side, and those are the pieces done first. Besides recalculating stitch counts for gauge, the only change I made was to finish the shaping with short rows instead of casting off stitches over a series of rows.

Along the sides, the top and bottom are knit a little wider
to give waist shaping.

The final effect gives a smoother edge that is easier to seam. No one else will ever notice but I like to take care of the little details.

The next piece is a monster. The yoke and sleeves are knit in one piece that stretches from the cuff of one sleeve to the cuff of the other. Over 300 stitches and each row took a while.

With this many stitches, I had to work on
a circular needle. I switched back to my
straight bamboos after I split for the neck.

I only had a couple small misadventures while working on this piece. While doing the neck shaping, I misread the instructions. Probably more accurate to say I assumed the directions. In many, many cases shaping (increases or decreases) is done on every other row. Well, the neck shaping needed to happen a little faster and should have been done on every row. I realized after 18 rows were knit.

Fortunately that was when I was working on just one side of the neck, so the rows were only about 140 stitches, not 300.

As I got close to finishing the second shoulder, I noticed I had dropped a stitch far below.

I was not eager to rip all the way back. I thought about just sewing the stitch in place, but didn't like that idea other. So I dropped the stitch beside it all the way down too, and then "knit" them both back up. Dropping the extra stitch gives you a little more slack in the yarn to even out the tightness over two stitches. With a final blocking I don't think it will ever be noticeable.

I was happy to finish this massive piece:

I think the neck hole is obvious. The slit will go in the back and be closed up with three buttons. (So vintage, right?) The left and right sides, will curl into tubes and form the sleeves.

Here's the front panel in position below the yoke to give you a bit of an idea (and give me a little motivation that this is actually coming together):

The piece I'm working on now is one of the cuffs:

The cuff in progress under the end of the sleeve.

My first effort was far too narrow. I added about 20 stitches and I think I'm in the ball park now. The size is forgiving as long as it's big enough to be loose around my forearm and small enough to have to gather the sleeve to fit. (Again, so vintage, right?) This cuff shouldn't take too much longer and then I have to knit the second one.

After that, I only have to knit two pieces for the collar. It's nice to be knitting these small portable pieces. I'm looking forward to having this together. I should be able to wear it even in warmer weather so I won't have to wait until next winter to wear it! :)

Look Up to the Stars

Look at me....I'm a star. Or rather, I'm wearing stars. The Celestarium shawl I started for the Ravellenic Games in February has been finished!

The basic structure follows the "pi shawl" formula popularized by Elizabeth Zimmermann. Simply put, every time the diameter of the shawl doubles, you double the number of stitches. Since knitting is stretchy and flexible, it works to make a circle.

That is why the shawl looks like it is made of concentric bands. Each time you double the stitches, they are close together and make a dark section. As you knit out to the end of that band, the stitches are more spread out and the shawl looks lighter.

When the knitting was done, I wasn't sure where I was going to have room to layout and block the shawl. I finally moved all the furniture in the living room to the edges and laid the mats in the middle.

Weaving some blocking wires through the eyelets at the edge made it easy to pin the shawl into shape.

I put the wires in and pinned it when it was dry and then drenched it with a spray bottle of water. Apparently you don't want to over-handle silk when it is wet because it is much weaker. But pinning when dry and then soaking it does the trick. The shawl took to the shape beautifully.

As I said previously, I went with a fancier border than the original pattern. Someone had published an alternative edge that they used on their shawl and I went ahead and used her pattern.

I noticed afterward that some people blocked peaks in the edging (giving the shawl a scalloped edge) but I think the round shape works fine. Maybe next time I'll try the scallop edge.

The shawl is knit from the center out, so the rows go around and around the shawl. When the center part is done, you cast on a few stitches for the edge and then work those rows perpendicular to the edge of the shawl. All the shawl stitches are still on the needle and every other row you knit one of those stitches with the last stitch of the edging row. In that way you incorporate all of the live stitches into the edging as you work around the whole edge of the shawl.

In addition to adding interest by changing the direction of the knitting, this also solves the problem of how to bind off the shawl stitches. Most conventional bind offs are not stretchy enough and prevent the shawl from flowing properly.

Here is the star chart from the pattern which marks all the stars included. I have not looked to see how it matches with the picture of  my shawl above so I very much doubt it is in the same orientation.

As you may recall, the shawl was knit in 100% silk. It is very drapey and heavy for how thin it is (compared to wool especially).

It's warm but doesn't have that "cozy" feeling that fuzzy wool gives.

How to wear this thing?

I could fold just a bit of the curve under and then wrap it around my shoulders, securing with a wood shawl pin.

I preferred it worn shifted to one side instead of perfectly centered.

From the back, you can see a good part of the star pattern.

I could also wear it gathered around my neck with the ends wrapped back to the front.

Or gathered around the neck, but with the ends pinned at the back of my neck because the ends are too wide and thick to be able to tie them.

This does run the risk of some discomfort if the pin moves wrong!

A couple places you are unlikely to find this shawl just hanging out:

Project Stats
Started: 10 Feb '18
Finished: 21 Apr '18
Pattern: Celestarium by Audry Nicklin and Stellar Wave Edging by Kimberlee Johnson.
Materials: Dk/worsted weight silk raveled from an Oscar de la Renta sweater, 300 grams. Many size 6 clear silver-lined crystal beads.

Catching Up

Let's catch up on a few projects I've started or finished lately:

1. I started a red better plastic bag yesterday.

I am just loving the solid red colour; it's surprisingly rich and looks like it's just been soaked in dye. It looks like I'll have plenty to make at least one large tote. (Phew!) This bag has a rectangle bottom (about 4" x 12") and I'm not sure yet how tall it will get. I think I will do short "in line" handles (like the black and white book bag) instead of the longer handles I did on the other large totes.

2. I cast on for another Hat Fit for a Boyfriend. This one is for a co-worker's son who was recently deployed to Iraq. It's cold at night so I thought a soft, light-weight, Malabrigo hat would be just the thing. I should have enough of the same brown left over from the two hats I made previously.

3. I finished my Birthday Cowl. I had a few false starts but really like how it turned out. First of all, the Malabrigo colour "Snow Bird" couldn't look better! Second, it fits well and is so warm; it seems to keep a cushion of warm air around my neck--so nice!

I did modify the pattern slightly. It's a biased rib, written to slant from right to left. But doing decreases right to left means you have to do a slip stitch decrease (aka ssk) which is a) time consuming because you have to pause in your forward momentum and "back up" to slip and pass the slip stitch over; and b) not as attractive. No matter how you do it, the ssk is never as smooth or nice as a simple K2tog. But the K2tog leans left to right so you can't use it in this pattern...right?

Nope, you simply need to accept a left to right slanting bias and reverse the instructions. So sl1, k1, psso, k6, yo, k3 becomes k3, yo, K6, K2tog. Simple, right? It was, and is. And then I made one more small change: I didn't like the hole left by the YO so I just picked up the yarn from the previous row. (This is exactly equivalent except the YO makes the yarn a little longer and that's what I didn't want.) So my final pattern was k3, M1, K6, K2tog.

3. This session's Caps for a Cure:

I did the yellow in November and got the red one done during my travels and time off over Christmas. I like the Foliage pattern a lot. They will be sent to a cancer center in LA, CA. (Why do they need hats in such a warm climate?? Mostly because of A/C being set too cold! :pet peeve alert:)

You may notice I tried a little modification on the second cap at the crown. I didn't really like the heavy look of the four two-stitch "ribs" going down from the top so I tried the second cap with a one-stitch rib. Besides not really liking the look, this was also suggested by the pattern which has you decrease the extra rib stitch where they end in the pattern: if you have to take it out later anyway, why put it in in the first place?? So I took it out. I'm not sure it's a big improvement, but it was fun to try and turn my irritation into action! I also fiddled with the decreases: the pattern had a left leaning double decrease which really should have been a center double decrease. That was definitely an improvement, but I'm quite sure you won't be able to see the difference in these pictures.

4. And finally: what happened to my Candle Flame Scarf?

I got it finished in early December and it came out great. The Kitchener stitch to connect the two halves worked great and the seam is nearly invisible. Despite being made from the delectable Malabrigo, it turned out a little itchy on my neck. I have been advised to wash it in vinegar and then treat it with hair conditioner (wool being animal hair after all). I haven't yet tried this, partly because I'm quite enamoured with my cowl.

[ETA: the Candleflame scarf won a 2nd place ribbon at the 2009 County Fair (knitted hat, scarf or mittens set).]

Up next, I bought supplies today for the lovely "Sahara" designed by Wendy Bernard.

I'll be doing it with cap sleeves out of a silk/merino mix and the trim is a silk with sequins. Oh...it's so exciting! I haven't cast on yet because I need to take a breath and some time to get ready to do the necessary swatching and gauge-checking. (So tedious; so essential.)

And I also bought a unbelievably lovely Malabrigo lace weight in "Jewel Blue." At 470 yds I thought it might be enough for a shawl, but now I'm not so sure. Looking through lace shawl patterns has got me all fired up, but first things first. (And first, the Sahara!)

All this makes me wonder, how can I convince my hubby that I really should leave my job and be a stay-at-home wife?

Let me know if you have any great ideas on that!

-christina