a shining example of conquering procrastination

What do you remember from November 2018? Personally, I don’t remember much, except that I commuted between forty and ninety minutes each way to and from work most days, and sat in a cubicle trying to get things done while I was there.

And also, I was not having very much luck figuring out Yule gifts for my friend Cheshin. We have this rule: no buying or making gifts unless you actually think they are cool and would be something the other person would like. Some years, this is easy, and the challenge is to decide how many gifts are too many.

Some years, the world is very uncool and boring and I wonder if a gift certificate would really be that terrible of a cop-out.

November is late for me to be gift-hunting for Yule at all. I usually have it all sewn up by then, and it was really bugging me I was coming up empty-handed.

On that day in November 2018, though, inspiration was sitting in my personal email. I’d signed up to get the newsletter for this American rockabilly clothing store (they carried plus size, and any variety in plus-sized clothing is to be celebrated). And this time, they had an entire newsletter devoted to their clothing line patterned same as the carpeting from Kubrick’s film adaption of The Shining.

And it occurred to me that this was one thing Cheshin might like. I know she likes The Shining, and she also likes midcentury modern geometric patterns. She also likes the colour orange.

I checked Ravelry: someone had already charted out the carpet pattern for knitting (thanks Amy Schilling!) With the chart in hand and Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns along for the math, I worked out a jacket that was somewhere between a bomber jacket and a classic Chanel. There are some projects on Ravelry that use the Schilling chart to make more conventional knits, cardigans and hats, and while it seemed like those knitters had rendered exactly what they were aiming for, I wanted something that said, “this is knitting!” a bit more quietly.

So hems for the lower body and cuffs, and an i-cord button band instead of the original rib (I nearly did a zipper but lost my nerve). The buttons are plastic versions of the leather-knot buttons which were so popular in the late 70s/early 80s.

The chart itself could have been worked with stranded colourwork, but that would have meant some rows had three colours per row while others had two. Even at two, I was using 100% wool. That’s a warm jacket, both too warm for spring and fall or indoors, and not warm enough for an actual Canadian winter day. Intarsia seemed the best bet, and I have lots of experience working intarsia, so “all those ends” didn’t bother me.

And yet… the thing took four years to finish.

Partly that was because I kept working on other projects: knits for the nieces and nephews, birthday presents for various relatives, “quick” items that turned out to be not so quick. Cheshin knew I had something “big” I was making her, and no doubt guessed it was something wearable, but not exactly what.

She even asked me at one point if I thought the carpet from The Shining would make a good knitting pattern, and I just kind of blathered.

Joining a new knitting group online helped the work continue, as did pulling it out of UFO storage and realizing I had more done than I thought.

Yes, there were a lot of ends, but I switched between darning in ends and knitting sleeves, and that worked out well. I also did the I-cord edging before I sewed the sleeves on, so there would be less fabric to wrestle with as I went around the neck. The I-cord edging was done twice (the first time it turned out too tight), and it still didn’t feel like that much work.

At the same time, am I happy it’s done? Oh yeah. Also guilty. But happy.

pow! almost ready for yule

After getting stuck for a while with a double case of Second Sleeve Syndrome, I finally finished the nieces' superhero sweaters. Niece the Younger wanted a Superman sweater, while Niece the Elder wanted Wonder Woman. 

Both the sweaters were made from free patterns. The Wonder Woman sweater comes from a full sweater pattern sized for adults, while the Superman one is a free colour chart knitted into a standard plain raglan pattern. 

The Wonder Woman pattern calls for chunky yarn. I made it in DK and followed the instructions for a size large to get a sweater sized for a seven-year-old. 

Both sweaters are made out of the same yarn (Mary Maxim's Ultra Mellowspun). I thought it was interesting how the yellow and red looks softer against the steel blue of the Superman sweater, as opposed to the royal blue of the Wonder Woman. 

Speaking of colourwork: for the record, these were all done in intarsia, using full balls for main colours (the blue on the sleeves, for instance), and lengths a metre or two for details (like the stars). So yes, there were a lot of ends, but I never find darning in ends that onerous. For one thing, I started darning in as soon as a piece was done, instead of leaving it until the bitter end. For another, ends has the fun of strategy to it. For example. a lot of the ends on the Wonder Woman sweater were left until after the seaming was done, so that they could be buried inside the seams instead of in the main fabric itself. Maybe it's just because it's something I learned how to do when I was about seven, but doing ends on colourwork always feels like a game.

The yarn is a nice, soft synthetic, and remarkably cheap, which is just as well, because I still have this much yarn left:

That is easily enough for another child's sweater. I have looked around my patterns library, and have a few candidates for a multicoloured sweater. Something to do when I take time off at the end of the year, I think.