ultra-smart

'Ten ultra-smart garments' - oh how I love these old knitting pattern books, if only for the wonderful presentation. I recently received a whole package of them to add to my collection of, hmm, many many dozens.

I'm not sure where to start, with the fetching Maberley there on the left (although I may give the pom-poms a miss) or the very glamorous Judith on the right. Actually, I wouldn't know where to start because so many of these old patterns seem to be written exclusively for a 34 inch bust. I don't need to even convert that to centimetres to know that there's not a chance in Holofernes that this would fit me.

What were you supposed to do back in 1936 if you were in a similar situation? Were all knitters simply expected (required) to know how to size something up or down? I suppose that these days something like Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns would indeed come in handy for working out how many stitches to cast on or increase for larger sizes and I guess that you would just follow some of the design elements or stitch patterns along the way.

Maybe this is why books like Rowan's Vintage Knits are so appealing - half a dozen sizes, contemporary yarns and ssk instead of slkpsso (even if you don't speak knitting, you can see that the former is simpler than the latter). Now that is smart. Which brings me around to Jarrett, Tim's great garment of 2011 (TGG11): it is almost finished, although I have taken no photographs to prove this. I have one elbow patch, button and buttonhole bands and collar to go. Oh, and all the seaming but never mind that.

swatch and learn

This was actually supposed to be a number of swatches, testing out every possible combination of the red, burgundy and assorted brights that I have in my stash but once I got knitting it all sort of morphed into the one swatch. So, with respect to my Kashmir-shawl inspired Nine Lives, the above swatch contains (from the bottom up):
- a band of burgundy
- a band of burgundy and red vertical stripes (very difficult to distinguish)
- another band of burgundy
- burgundy and yellow vertical stripes, followed by red and yellow vertical stripes
- burgundy
- a band of red with a stranded colourwork zig-zag in eau de nil
- a band of burgundy with the matte silver beads placed on it
- red and light grey vertical stripes
- pink and red vertical stripes
- purple and red vertical stripes

I have learned a lot from this exercise: I don't like the yellow at all, the purple is too harsh and there is not enough contrast, I love the red and pale blue together, the light grey is too cold, the red and burgundy look best against each other in blocks of colour.

Right now I'm liking the pale pink as the second contrast colour. And I'm really liking the whole effect achieved by placing different colours against each other. Oh dear, Fair Isle here I come ...

And here on the right we have another swatch, this time for Jarrett. Yes, it may look like the greater part of a sleeve, replete with tubular cast-on and increases but it's not, it's a swatch because the gauge is wrong. ::sigh::

i learned a new cast-on for you

I wonder if Sinéad O'Connor knits?

For Tim's Great Garment of 2011, I have mastered the long-tail tubular cast-on. I love this cast on and expect to use it again and again in the future. I do recommend using a smaller needle size; I used 3.75mm for the cast-on and first two rows and then knit the rib on 4.5mm needles.