All but buttons! And a bit on blocking

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I finished the Rhinebeck Sans Serif last night!

DONE!

After once again doing two hours of tubular cast off on the button bands, and spending another hour and a half weaving in all the damn ends.

tubular cast off.  Gorgeous, such a great final finish.  So time consuming to execute.  

Blocked and awaiting closures... Which I EVEN HAVE IN HAND.  What what! I have shocked even myself. 

let's talk blocking for a minute shall we? Once you're done knitting something, you're really not done until it's been blocked. Blocking evens out all those little lumps and bumps and helps smooth out the unevenness of your work. Also some yarns tend to grow or shrink, so what comes off the needles isn't indicative of the final fabric. Blocking can help tame wayward edgings, tweak curling (though never completely eradicate it), and help all those places where you wove in ends visually disappear.

pre-sleeves and button bands, and pre blocking.  compare this to the blocked one above.   the final finished fabric on the blocked one is smoother and more even, lies flat (helped along by the button bands, but still)

I like wet blocking for most uses because it's the easiest and can be the most dramatic difference. It's basically just washing whatever you made. I soaked this sweater in warm water with a dash of Soak wool wash for 15 minutes, drained it, then pressed out the water. Because this is madelinetosh superwash yarn, I spun more of the water out in the spin cycle of my washer. Then I laid it out flat, shaped it, and left out to dry.

Because it's superwash (wool yarn that's been treated to be able to be machine dried without felting or shrinking), and superwash has a tendency to grow unless snapped back into shape with a dryer, when it's mostly dry, I'll probably give it a short whirl in the dryer.  I didn't want the bottom ribbing to pull in that much so I took this opportunity to make sure to gently tug it out a bit. I did want the neckline and the sleeve cuffs to nudge in, so I made sure to not pull those out at all.  

Wet blocking is awesome for shawls and lace because you generally want to pull the shit out of the shawl using pins to hold it in place to open up the lace pattern. 

I also sometimes steam block, where you use steam from a steamer or an iron to saturate the fabric with the steam and gently pull and pat into shape. The thing with steam blocking is that if you have a yarn that's acrylic or synthetic, you can "kill" the fabric with too much steam--this means that you lose all the elasticity and bounce permanently. It can be done on purpose of you want a scarf with a ton of drape, but no body or bounce, but it's generally not a great thing for garments.  If the edgings on the sweater look a little pulled out with the wet blocking, even after the dryer, I'll hit them with a shot of steam and see how they react. 

I block everything except mittens, socks, and most hats.  These things generally don't need blocking in my mind because they're formfitting and will essentially be blocked in wear.  Socks especially.  Lace or drapey hats, or anything that needs to be in a specific shape I block.  

beginner knitters always get frustrated because their stuff never looks as smooth and even as they feel it should. It doesn't look like the picture on Ravelry, or like that sweater that grandma made years ago.  Well, the pic on Ravelry was blocked, and those older knitted pieces look more even than everything else because they've been washed a zillion times and the stitches have all evened out. 

 

capping the sleeves

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Titles are hard, man.  I've never been good at them.

Anyhoo. Let's delve a bit deeper into Sans Serif, and look at the magic of top down sleeve caps.  It's a fucking wonder of knitting and I love them so. 

I first encountered the basics of a top-down, set-in sleeve in knitwear in Barbara Walker's badass Knitting from the Top (affiliate link).  The idea is that instead of knitting the sleeve separately and sewing it into the armscye (or armhole), which is fiddly work and requires easing one curve of a slightly different shape and different length into another curve.  It's not the easiest thing to do if you don't have sewing experience, which I do, and even then, it's still not the easiest thing to do.

But knitting a sleeve into the armhole from the top down allows for a firm but flexible seam that won't pop with the movement of the arm, and uses knitting's unique properties beautifully.  

Essentially, you pick up stitches around the armsyce and then use short rows--where you work back and forth on a small amount of the stitches--to create the curve of the sleeve cap that goes over the shoulder and covers the top of the arm.  

Elizabeth Doherty took this and refined it--specifically the proportions of picking up stitches and the short rows--in her book Top Down: Reimagining Set in Sleeve Design.  

I'm very impressed not only with her written instructions on how to create a top down set in sleeve, but also on how to ADJUST and ALTER a top down set in sleeve.  It's very clear, and wonderfully written. 

picking up stitches along the armscye (armhole)

After marking the center of the underarm stitches and the shoulder seam with removable split ring markers (or yarn, when I lost one of the little buggers), I picked up stitches along the armhole, in the ratio directed by the pattern, and put in additional markers to note where the ratios changed (which handily notes where the short rows begin).

short rows beginning to form the wedge at the top of the sleeve cap

See that white marker? This is the first sleeve, and where I was smart enough to realize that leaving the markers in (instead of removing them as noted in the pattern) would be super handy to note where the short rows begin.  I got cocky and took them out on the second sleeve, messed the bugger up and had to rip it out and redo it. 

I love short rows--they make a little wedge of fabric that over this curved armscye turns the corner of your shoulder.  

Beginning the short rows--about 3 or 4 short rows worked. Note the wrapped stitch, 6 stitches in from the tip of the right hand needle 

inside the sleeve cap in progress, working back across the inside short rows.  That length of blue yarn is the marker I used to note where the short rows began on the picked up stitches

working back along the inside, with a nice shot of the yarn marker where I lost the split ring somewhere in the couch. 

nearly completed short rows.  leaving the wraps intact (instead of picking them up as you work across the final rows) leaves a tidy vertical line. 

The thing with short rows is that if you just go back and forth in your knitting, you wind up with holes.  So you need a method to close up those holes--wrapping the next stitch with the working yarn is the most common way to do it, but it's not always the most elegant. My recent discovery is German short rows, which are NOT wrapped, but a different technique.  If I'm doing short rows to shape a shoulder or otherwise shape my knitting, I go with this. 

BUT: Because this is a sleeve, wrapping is better.  It actually serves a decorative function and makes for a cleaner line--so long as you don't work the wraps when you come to them.  See the pic above? Nice and tidy. 

(also, I wonder what I was watching on tv?)

coming to the end of the first complete round, right at the junction of the underarm and the sleeve cap

And this is where I came to the end of the short row section, at the transition from the picked up stitches from the body, to the picked up stitches at the underarms.  At this point, I worked around a few more rounds, then set the stitches aside on a holder to work on the body.  

 

Rhinebeck sweaters, it's a thing

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look, even sleeve caps are done!

Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool is like mecca for east coast knitters.  It's a big festival that features knitting, spinning, weaving, fleeces, animals, herding dogs and all kinds of fiber-related things. Tons of vendors and shopping and lots of folks wearing pretty pretty knitwear that they made!  And for circumstances unrelated to knitting (such as my inability to plan ahead consistently), last year was the first time I'd been able to go. 

Y'all, it was awesome.  I did some advance planning by going through my Ravelry queue and seeing what I wanted to make and what I was missing yarn for, and brought that list of yardage and weights with me.  And I still just bought random gorgeous things that I couldn't walk away from.  And learned to spin, thanks to my awesome partner in crime, my cousin Betsy!

So a #RhinebeckSweater (or, alternately, a #RhinebeckTrousseau).  It's a Thing that knitters attending Rhinebeck do: make a sweater (or in the case of the trousseau, a shawl or accessory) or other garment specifically for Rhinebeck.  Sometimes the goal is to show off the gorgeousness that you can produce or just have something special to make with a specific intent.  

Last year, I was a slacker when it came to timing, plus it was hot out for the end of October, so I grabbed a lace shawlette I'd made the previous year.  It was fine. 

This year, it's going to be Sans Serif.  Which feels like it's a little bit plain, for a Rhinebeck Sweater, but honestly, that's how I dress, and I'd like to wear what I make rather than not.  So I'm ok with that.  I think. 

 And I'm making good progress, which is SHOCKING to me! Look at those sleeve caps done! And the body nearly done!  I even have BUTTONS people.  I am prepared!

Which will probably mean I won't finish, but maybe?

 

let this be a lesson to me

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Sans serif continues...

goddamnit.  Also, inadvertent shoe selfie!

So would it be weird to have a hem at the bottom of a sweater with  ribbed button bands? 

It would, right?  Crap, I need to rip back the last inch and half of the sans serif body and start the damn ribbing, don't I?

Until I busted out the measuring tape the other night, I thought I was way behind on the sans serif if I expected to be done by Rhinebeck.  I'd done the sleeve caps (that's a whole separate post that will be forthcoming) and then put the sleeves on hold to finish up the body, since I knew that would be my time suck of a challenge.  As much as I love stockinette, I get bored of the purl rows--if it were in the round and it was just lovely lovely knit for ages, I'd be happy as a clam.  But switching to purl? UGH whine!

So I powered through, but forgot to check the measurments on the sweater I'm attempting to replace--it's slightly cropped. Which means an underarm to hem length of 13"--FINISHED.  

Guess where I'm at with the sweater?  That's right. 13", with no finished edge.

If I were doing a hem, I'd just do a purl row, switch to smaller needles and knit the hem facing and be done with it.  But that's going to be weird with a ribbed band.  

Goddamnit. Ripping back. UGH. 

(note to future self: 3/4 sleeves! 11"! Don't forget!!)