Marnie, speak! Good girl.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

I love Calmer to pieces. It is the same yarn I used for my Deciduous pattern, so swatching would not be so much about determining gauge and best needle choice (though it never hurts to double check.) Instead, this would be a matter of deciding how different stitches would look in the yarn.

Like Julia, the process of coming to a design is fluid for me. I may start with a stitch I like, or a yarn, or even a color. The process of starting is usually a mix of sketching, looking through "inspiration" images I have around, and swatching. In this case, I decided I wanted to do something with a stitch pattern that could easily be split in two, to diverge around the armsceye. The pattern would run up the sides of the garment and would pick up again along with the sleeve cap, so that it would look, basically, continuous.

I finally decided that the Lily of the Valley stitch pattern, in one of my Barbara Walker books would work just fine.

I charted three different versions of the lace. It's a simple enough pattern that, at this stage, a chart is sufficient to see how the lace will be effected by the changes. I've highlighted the stitches that changed from iteration to iteration. I first split the double decrease into paired decreases, but I didn't want to have to seam the sleeve into the armsceye, through the double decrease. Since there is already a column of purl stitches on the outside, I thought that maybe two purls in the center would look nice. Finally, I removed the extra knit stitches on either side of the center decreases, because I didn't want the motif to get too wide.

The results is that up the sides of the garment, where the motif is intact, the purl stitches would close up, leaving what looked like a seam, along the armsceye, it would leave me a place to seam.

On to the swatching.

First I decided to knit the newly charted lace. Then I split the lace, knit that for a couple repeats and played around with the swatch to see how the lace would look as it curved around an edge. I was happy with the results, bound them off, but did not cut the yarn.

I cast on a new swatch, keeping the original swatch attached, with a locking stitch marker in the last stitch, to keep the piece from unraveling.

This second swatch was specifically to determine gauge and to play around with the decreases. I had to decide if my full fashioned decreases would happen by working the outermost purl stitch with one adjacent knit stitch or whether I'd work the decreases right after the purl columns, utilizing two knit stitches. I decided that I didn't want any glaring indicating that I had worked a decrease so I chose the former option. When stretched out, the knit decreases looked better, but I wanted this piece to have a slim fit but not so tight that the purl stitches would actually show, so the stealth decrease won out.

After knitting everything, I washed and blocked my swatches, still keeping them attached to the ball and to each other.

I have more than enough yarn to complete the project, but I still never like to cut yarn just for a swatch. Sometimes, you just have to cut. For instance, if you are going to work in Rowan Denim, you will really need to send your yarn through the wash to check the gauge and you can't do that if it's attached to 30 grams of unknit yarn. However, if you are just going to hand wash your piece and you don't expect the yarn to change drastically in the process, leaving it attached should not be a problem, and if you find yourself a little short for yarn near the end of the project, you can cannibalized your swatch for the extra needed yardage.

All while I'm swatching, I'm thinking about how I want to knit the piece. In fact, there's really no point during the designing and knitting of a piece that I won't diverge down another path if the mood suits me. However, in the interest of trying to document the whole process, this is the current state of my grand scheme.

This is how I envision the final piece. It'll be a pull over with a boat neck and shaping at the waist. The sleeves will be raglan style to allow the lace to angle gently. I figured a set in sleeve would require the lace to diverge too severely and wouldn't look good. And of course, the piece will be named, "Lily."

Now that I have my gauge and my vision, I can begin to plot out the actual pattern.

I like to set up a grid to the same scale as my gauge in Adobe Illustrator, and graph out every stitch. This, obviously, is the body. The piece will be identical in back and in front. I'll start plotting the sleeves later, but for now, this gives me enough info to start knitting.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

I've cast on and begun knitting Lily. As with almost everything I design, I start off with a provisional cast-on.

Working the waistband last gives me a chance to see how the proportions of the piece really fit me and find the best way to accent the look. The only time this can be a poor choice for me is when I want to work a knitted hem. In this case, with the lace, a knitted hem is probably not going to work, since it will show through the holes in the design, so I can feel comfortable proceeding with the provisional cast on.

I worked the bottom of the piece separately until I had worked enough rows to complete 2 repeats. Then I joined the two and am working them in the round. This will create little vents at the base of the piece.

While I originally planned to knit the sleeves separately and sew them in, I'm considering doing the garment entirely seamlessly so that I can be sure the motifs will align perfectly at the raglan. I've also decided that 3/4 length sleeves may suit the length of the garment better. While my sketch was originally for a tunic length piece, I really don't ever wear tunics, so I've shortened it to be about 5" below the waist. I should point out that I'm VERY long waisted so this may actually look a little more cropped on me than it would on other people of the same height.

This entry also posted at the Create Along.

Because I don't have a definite plan mapped out for Lily, the time I've spent knitting the body, so far, has been a nice time to contemplate how I'll handle the arms and upper body of the piece.

Progress has been largely smooth, though I've had to tink and rip out some mistakes in the lace a few times. It's not a hard lace pattern but I've found I've repeated the same mistake with the nupps a few times.

I took a class on Estonian Lace, with Nancy Bush, about a year ago. In it, she demoed nupps as a detail worked over 2 rows. On row one, at the point that the nupp is to be performed, one works a series of alternating knits and YOs into the same stitch, always starting and ending with a knit. On the following row, all the nupp stitches are purled together. Shown by an expert, they seem deceptively easy. In the hands of a novice, they can be the instrument of torture. An even and exceedingly loose tension is required.

Barbara Walker prescribes a slightly different method. At the point of the nupp, 5 stitches are worked into one by alternating knit and purl stitches into a single stitch. The stitch count is reduced back to the original number, immediately, by passing the 4th, 3rd, 2nd then 1st stitch over the 5th one worked. I speed this up, ever so slightly, by grabbing all 4 stitches at once and passing them over the 5th stitch, in one step. However, I've been known to grab one too many or too few stitches, in the process, and throwing my stitch count off, unbeknownst until two rows later. The only fix is to rip back, though I usually do so over only the 11 stitches of that half of the stitch repeat.

Regardless, progress continues, as you can well see.

This shows the start of the 6th repeat of the 7.5 that I'll need before the armsceye begins.

You may be able to tell that there is a fairly long vent up each side of the piece.

I may seam up a little of it if I decide to put an additional hem on the piece. However, if I end up working just a crochet edge, the vent will stay, as is.

I've added the vents to improve the drape of the piece. I have a 10" difference between my waist and hips and when I shape at the side seams only, it tends to cause the fabric to buckle in odd ways, even when the measurements are perfect for my size. The fit is far better when I use waist darts, but they would have distracted from the lines of the piece, so the vents seemed the best alternative.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

While I have done a fair bit of design, there are still aspects of the processes that I can only perfect through trial and error. All the excel sheets and schematics in the world cannot reproduce the look and feel of knit fabric adhering to all the laws of physics. Julia has a really nice post in which she discusses the process of designing without knitting the piece herself. In her case, her sample knitter helped ease that processes by providing continual feedback, as she was a fine designer in her own right. However, I think this is a valuable lesson to take away. While I consider Julia to be a hugely skilled and technically adept designer, who has years of experience knitting and designing knitwear, even she cannot completely predict the way the finish piece will need to be constructed in order to execute her vision.

As a side note, this is one of the beauties of the web and why I absolutely love being a part of this CAL. I cannot imagine how critical I might be of my own work, if I didn't have the blogs of other designers to show me that all of us face the same challenges and missteps.

Back to the topic at hand, Lily has gone surprisingly easily throughout the body portion of the piece. While I debated on length, a bit, and I may still close the side vents up a little bit, the bulk of the design process went pretty smoothly, once I had my original vision.

From here, I knew I wanted to knit the sleeves up to, but not including, the sleeve cap, so that I could join all the pieces and work them together, to avoid any possible offset of the motifs.

There were no problems with the body, the sleeve, however, has dogged me. This humble elbow length sleeve is the product of, not one, not two, but 4 trips to the frog pond.

It's a testament to the quality of Calmer that I see absolutely no change in the yarn, despite all that ripping and re-knitting.

My first thought was that I'd migrate the motifs from the front of the sleeve, around to the back seam in preparation to run the motifs up the sleeve cap. I felt that just running the motif up the seam would look peculiar and unbalanced. Something really needed to pickup the theme, on the outside of the sleeve.

If you are astute, you've already caught my big mistake here, however, I knit about a quarter of the sleeve and realized I just had too much ease worked in and ripped the sleeve to start again. It was only when version two had hit about the halfway point, that I realized my fatal flaw. If the motifs were correct at the outside of the sleeve, they would be flipped at the back seam as shown in the illustration below.

As the great philosopher, Homer, said, "DOH!" That was a real head slapper moment.

I realized that my new calculations worked out perfectly to fit 2 full motifs across the entire hem of the sleeve (a centered full motif on the outside of the sleeve, with two half motifs inside by the seam). I knew I didn't want to carry the outside motif up the entire length of the sleeve, firstly, because it would be too busy and secondly, because when it came time to decrease for the sleeve cap, I'd be left with a lot of lace to wrangle into submission. I decided to just work the outside motif once. I tried maintaining the purl ribs up the length of the sleeve but found it added a sort of sporty feel that was inconsistent with the vast stockinette of the body.

So I took out the purl ribs, after the first repeat.

I was getting much closer but there were two things that bothered me. First, the outside repeats just seemed to look uncontained. There were still strong lines delineating the edges of the motifs on all sides except the top. Something just seemed off. I also didn't care for the fact that I had begun the sleeve shaping, while working the first repeat. It meant I had to increase in the purl ribs between motifs. Since I was eliminating the extra purl ribs and motif, it just didn't look cohesive.

After all that, 5 times was the charm.

I added a purl ridge to the top of the outside motif, which added the visual container I felt the motifs needed. Additionally, I held off on any sleeve shaping until I had completed the border of repeats, allowing me to increase in the stockinette area, as I had on the body.

I think the final product is consistent with the style of the body and deals with the design concerns I had, in a logical way.

For now, Lily needs to go on temporary hold while I complete a project for a friend. Lucky for me, it's in Calmer too!

I hope to complete that in the next week or two, while I'm traveling and then I'll get back to Lily and all that she entails. I'll try to get a couple tutorials up in the interim, if time permits.

Well, I just mailed off my top secret project, with all its fixin's to it's rightful owner. I'll miss that beautiful plum color Calmer but not as much as I've missed being able to talk crafty on my blog. While stories of Panda and hikes and tea and eating are all fun, it's yarny goodness upon which this blog is built.

So adios pretty plum calmer and, long time no see, Lily!

I've only had time to cast on and work a few rows of the second sleeve and it's amazing how hard it's been to get back into the swing of it.

Truth be told, I'm the sort of person who would likely have abandoned this with such a long hiatus. I know that's crazy, but when I lose momentum on something, it's almost never that I pick it back up again. It's good for me to push myself to finish these projects so they don't languish and end up ripped, or worse, donated to charity in their half knit form.

I have a couple other projects I'll probably be working on this year; projects that cannot be blogged right away but which I'm pretty excited about. But I also have big plans (bigger than any warping of the space time continuum can accommodate) that should all be bloggable.

This entry also posted at the Create Along.

Hey, it's a Lily update.

The second sleeve knit up in a jiffy, even with my lack of free time, and then it came time to join all the pieces into a single unit. While the sleeves were knit flat (more a product of my lack of US #7 DPNs than anything,) everything else is knit in the round. The process is largely like that of the relatively ubiquitous top down raglans (Good ol' Barbara Walker!) only this one is bottom up.

The pieces and I had a bit of a kerfuffle at the time of joining. The body was knit to a slightly different point in the lace repeat than the sleeves and I did not realize this until the second round of attachment. I had to decide whether to rip out the extra rows in the sleeve or attach another ball and knit up the body further. There may have been some language unbecoming a lady. Panda offered to jump on my lap and help, but we both ended up showing much restraint.

I decided on the former option, ripping down, as I can use the tails to seam the sleeves, later.

I don't feel like the rest of the piece should pose any real problems, it's not brain science, after all. I'm keeping the formula fairly simple; decreasing every other round, yet, I have this foreboding feeling that when its all done, I'm going to need to rip back. I'm not sure why. I think some of it stems from the fact that I'm not doing any sort of bind off under the arms. Will it be all bunchy and uncomfortable? I am waiting to try the piece on until I've worked a few more rounds and if I do have to work back, I have a few ideas for remedies, but I'm really hoping I don't need to go that route. Because the body is knit in the round, even a gusset would pose a lot of work. Don't you even think about using the "s" word with me. Some of us learn from our friend's blog posts.

I think I always have this sort of anxiety when I'm knitting my own designs. No matter how much I do this, there's always some portion of the process that seems more dictated by the little knitting fairies and gremlins than by math. Hopefully when I'm all done, I'll love it and wear it with pride, but for now, it's too soon to tell.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

Knitting has nearly slowed to a screeching halt now that there's a new pup in the house, but what knitting there has been has been good.

I've worked up to where I'm starting some neckline shaping on Lily

The fit seems fine, though it's always hard to tell before the neckline is done.

I will probably work a simple 2 or 3 stitch i-cord edging for the hem and sleeves. I think that will be the least disruptive treatment and will be OK both on the busy sleeve and the simpler hem.

As for the new member of the family, I think we finally have a name that everyone can agree on. The name is now, Theano Purl, Thea for short.
Theano was believed to be the wife of Pythagoras, (he who brought us the calculation for determining the hypotenuse of a right triangle,) and likely continued his work and ran his school after his death. We wanted a name that gave a nod to the sciences but which was also a cute doggy name. We considered "Evo" short for "Evolution" and "Jane" for the one and only Ms. Goodall. Neither name really stood out as exceptional names for a dog. Theano, though, very cute. I got to keep Purl as her middle name too so she can be little Thea-Purl, if the mood strikes.

See a bunch of pictures of the two girls by clicking the photo above, or clicking here.

This entry also posted at the Create Along.

So, longer ago than I'd like to admit, Kristi asked me:

So of course I'm curious why you didn't leave the underarm space -- because it messed with the lace?

I think the space is less imperative on smaller sizes -- if you were doing a conventional shaped sleeve, your initial bind off would be about (chest - crossback)/2 on each side (this is assuming you're in the round) Or even less.

Plus, the lace is going to be more flexible/less bulky than stockinette and stretch or constrict as needed.

If you're thinking of sizing up the pattern though, I think the underarm shaping will begin to make a big difference.

Instead of writing her back (eek, sorry) I thought I'd post my response up here where y'all can see my reply because, man, she is just full of damn fine information.

The original concept of the piece was to work a lace, that had vertical symmetry, up the side of the piece, then split it off for the armsceye. The sleeve would be constructed the same way giving an uninterrupted path for the lace. The idea was that the lace would never appear to break even though it obviously had to split for the sleeves.

If I wanted to do a bind off at the underarms, I would have to gradually migrate the lace inward to be just inside the bind off point. This is possible but I really wanted to avoid disrupting the pattern.

With Kristi's great insight, I see that the combination of the stretchy Calmer and the small size make this possible. It does seem to work great for me so far. I have to seriously think how I'll approach the larger sizes (yes, I'm getting persuaded to actually write the pattern.) though.

If I do decide to write the pattern, I'll probably knit a partial second piece and do a gusset on one side and migration of the lace for a bind off, on the other to see which produces a nicer effect. I won't have to work a full chest circumference, just enough to be able to visualize the end result. Again, as Kristi pointed out, the lace will give some flexibility and the yarn is stretchy so I think I would have to do a relatively small amount of binding off even for a much larger size.

Talking to my dear friend, Julia, yesterday, I feel ready to tackle the neckline, which I've put on hold for a couple days while I contemplate. She suggested just a folded hem and I like that idea very much. I'm also considering something with eyelets that can be cinched in a little, to accommodate various undergarments. Either way, I want it to be relatively unobtrusive since there's already a lot going on with the lace. In the end, I think her hem idea is going to win out.

*Nod to Ze. I miss his show, The Show.

Do you remember Lily? Well, I sure do. I have kept the bag she's been in, in plain site, since I last worked on her in May. Oy vey. I put Lily into time out after trying her on, and feeling the design had gone astray. The motifs, running along the raglan, were coming so close together that they appeared to draw an (unattractive) arrow to my face. When I tried her on, I knew I was not happy with the look.

I put Lily aside and I wasn't sure that I'd come back. I usually have a very hard time revisiting sleeping projects.

But, something about the soft olive colored calmer and the lily of the valley motif, drew me back.

So I pulled out Lily and simply started ripping. I figured I'd have to rip back to the armscye, or further. But something stopped me, after only a dozen rows. I decided I should put all my stitches onto waste yarn and throw Lily on the mannequin.

The piece was rumpled but the little bit of ripping proved to be a good starting point.

I realized, I had it all wrong. I was going for a boat neck, but I was trying to make the neck too high. I think this piece is salvageable with minimal modifications.

I gave Lily a bit of a steam, and I'm back in the race.

I'll tackle the neckline first, resolving that issue, before dealing with anything else. After that, I'll probably close up the vents at the hem and work a bottom edge that matches the neckline.
Finally, after all that is done, I'll assess the sleeves.

Let's see if I can take the U out of this UFO.

For those of you who like looking under the hood, I've uploaded some detail shots of the Linen Top, including the final ribbon I've chosen.

I don't have any immediate plans to write a pattern, but I think some people might be interested in a look at how the garment was constructed.

It's a relief to have this finished. UFOs really irk me, I think because I'm so bad about revisiting them if I've lost my momentum. I seem to be getting better at it, with age, but I still think I do best with a big burst of inspiration.

You know what's funny? This might be one of the few garments that looks a little better on me than the mannequin. The very narrow hips and shoulders of my stand-in, make the piece look unbalanced (top heavy?), to my eye. Still, she holds still which is useful on these overcast days.

When I first started designing this, I felt sure that I did not want ribbing at the neck and hem. I can't remember why, because I actually really like it, now. At the sleeve hem, I just used a simple i-cord bind-off to maintain the rather pronounced scallop that the lace produces. But, at the neck and hem, I think the ribbing does a nice job of producing a clean finished edge.

Speaking of the neckline, I used a few decreases to keep that boat neck from falling off the shoulders. It juuuust covers my bra straps. I could probably have done a little more ribbing if it bothered me, but right now, I like it.

I really don't think I need to say much about my love for Calmer. I've used it quite a few times before and love it to pieces. It's soft, soft, soft, soft, soft, and for those of you who can't stomach the price, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the yardage and how far it goes, when knit at the recommended gauge.

All in all, I think it's another piece I'll actually wear. I'll try to get a shot of me in it, eventually, but it's a bit too rainy and cold right now.

The first edition of Twist Collective is LIVE.

I'm so excited to be a part of this project. My pattern, Lily is available for sale if you are interested. It's a variant on the piece I knit for myself, a while ago.

I can't tell you how much I love the philosophy behind Twist Collective. Even if Lily doesn't appeal to you, I feel positive you'll find something to love in this magazine.

Please consider supporting your favorite designers and the brilliant people behind the scenes at Twist Collective by visiting the site, purchasing patterns and clicking on the ads. And also, YAY!

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

I've cast on and begun knitting Lily. As with almost everything I design, I start off with a provisional cast-on.

Working the waistband last gives me a chance to see how the proportions of the piece really fit me and find the best way to accent the look. The only time this can be a poor choice for me is when I want to work a knitted hem. In this case, with the lace, a knitted hem is probably not going to work, since it will show through the holes in the design, so I can feel comfortable proceeding with the provisional cast on.

I worked the bottom of the piece separately until I had worked enough rows to complete 2 repeats. Then I joined the two and am working them in the round. This will create little vents at the base of the piece.

While I originally planned to knit the sleeves separately and sew them in, I'm considering doing the garment entirely seamlessly so that I can be sure the motifs will align perfectly at the raglan. I've also decided that 3/4 length sleeves may suit the length of the garment better. While my sketch was originally for a tunic length piece, I really don't ever wear tunics, so I've shortened it to be about 5" below the waist. I should point out that I'm VERY long waisted so this may actually look a little more cropped on me than it would on other people of the same height.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

I love Calmer to pieces. It is the same yarn I used for my Deciduous pattern, so swatching would not be so much about determining gauge and best needle choice (though it never hurts to double check.) Instead, this would be a matter of deciding how different stitches would look in the yarn.

Like Julia, the process of coming to a design is fluid for me. I may start with a stitch I like, or a yarn, or even a color. The process of starting is usually a mix of sketching, looking through "inspiration" images I have around, and swatching. In this case, I decided I wanted to do something with a stitch pattern that could easily be split in two, to diverge around the armsceye. The pattern would run up the sides of the garment and would pick up again along with the sleeve cap, so that it would look, basically, continuous.

I finally decided that the Lily of the Valley stitch pattern, in one of my Barbara Walker books would work just fine.

I charted three different versions of the lace. It's a simple enough pattern that, at this stage, a chart is sufficient to see how the lace will be effected by the changes. I've highlighted the stitches that changed from iteration to iteration. I first split the double decrease into paired decreases, but I didn't want to have to seam the sleeve into the armsceye, through the double decrease. Since there is already a column of purl stitches on the outside, I thought that maybe two purls in the center would look nice. Finally, I removed the extra knit stitches on either side of the center decreases, because I didn't want the motif to get too wide.

The results is that up the sides of the garment, where the motif is intact, the purl stitches would close up, leaving what looked like a seam, along the armsceye, it would leave me a place to seam.

On to the swatching.

First I decided to knit the newly charted lace. Then I split the lace, knit that for a couple repeats and played around with the swatch to see how the lace would look as it curved around an edge. I was happy with the results, bound them off, but did not cut the yarn.

I cast on a new swatch, keeping the original swatch attached, with a locking stitch marker in the last stitch, to keep the piece from unraveling.

This second swatch was specifically to determine gauge and to play around with the decreases. I had to decide if my full fashioned decreases would happen by working the outermost purl stitch with one adjacent knit stitch or whether I'd work the decreases right after the purl columns, utilizing two knit stitches. I decided that I didn't want any glaring indicating that I had worked a decrease so I chose the former option. When stretched out, the knit decreases looked better, but I wanted this piece to have a slim fit but not so tight that the purl stitches would actually show, so the stealth decrease won out.

After knitting everything, I washed and blocked my swatches, still keeping them attached to the ball and to each other.

I have more than enough yarn to complete the project, but I still never like to cut yarn just for a swatch. Sometimes, you just have to cut. For instance, if you are going to work in Rowan Denim, you will really need to send your yarn through the wash to check the gauge and you can't do that if it's attached to 30 grams of unknit yarn. However, if you are just going to hand wash your piece and you don't expect the yarn to change drastically in the process, leaving it attached should not be a problem, and if you find yourself a little short for yarn near the end of the project, you can cannibalized your swatch for the extra needed yardage.

All while I'm swatching, I'm thinking about how I want to knit the piece. In fact, there's really no point during the designing and knitting of a piece that I won't diverge down another path if the mood suits me. However, in the interest of trying to document the whole process, this is the current state of my grand scheme.

This is how I envision the final piece. It'll be a pull over with a boat neck and shaping at the waist. The sleeves will be raglan style to allow the lace to angle gently. I figured a set in sleeve would require the lace to diverge too severely and wouldn't look good. And of course, the piece will be named, "Lily."

Now that I have my gauge and my vision, I can begin to plot out the actual pattern.

I like to set up a grid to the same scale as my gauge in Adobe Illustrator, and graph out every stitch. This, obviously, is the body. The piece will be identical in back and in front. I'll start plotting the sleeves later, but for now, this gives me enough info to start knitting.

This entry also posted at the Create Along.

Because I don't have a definite plan mapped out for Lily, the time I've spent knitting the body, so far, has been a nice time to contemplate how I'll handle the arms and upper body of the piece.

Progress has been largely smooth, though I've had to tink and rip out some mistakes in the lace a few times. It's not a hard lace pattern but I've found I've repeated the same mistake with the nupps a few times.

I took a class on Estonian Lace, with Nancy Bush, about a year ago. In it, she demoed nupps as a detail worked over 2 rows. On row one, at the point that the nupp is to be performed, one works a series of alternating knits and YOs into the same stitch, always starting and ending with a knit. On the following row, all the nupp stitches are purled together. Shown by an expert, they seem deceptively easy. In the hands of a novice, they can be the instrument of torture. An even and exceedingly loose tension is required.

Barbara Walker prescribes a slightly different method. At the point of the nupp, 5 stitches are worked into one by alternating knit and purl stitches into a single stitch. The stitch count is reduced back to the original number, immediately, by passing the 4th, 3rd, 2nd then 1st stitch over the 5th one worked. I speed this up, ever so slightly, by grabbing all 4 stitches at once and passing them over the 5th stitch, in one step. However, I've been known to grab one too many or too few stitches, in the process, and throwing my stitch count off, unbeknownst until two rows later. The only fix is to rip back, though I usually do so over only the 11 stitches of that half of the stitch repeat.

Regardless, progress continues, as you can well see.

This shows the start of the 6th repeat of the 7.5 that I'll need before the armsceye begins.

You may be able to tell that there is a fairly long vent up each side of the piece.

I may seam up a little of it if I decide to put an additional hem on the piece. However, if I end up working just a crochet edge, the vent will stay, as is.

I've added the vents to improve the drape of the piece. I have a 10" difference between my waist and hips and when I shape at the side seams only, it tends to cause the fabric to buckle in odd ways, even when the measurements are perfect for my size. The fit is far better when I use waist darts, but they would have distracted from the lines of the piece, so the vents seemed the best alternative.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

While I have done a fair bit of design, there are still aspects of the processes that I can only perfect through trial and error. All the excel sheets and schematics in the world cannot reproduce the look and feel of knit fabric adhering to all the laws of physics. Julia has a really nice post in which she discusses the process of designing without knitting the piece herself. In her case, her sample knitter helped ease that processes by providing continual feedback, as she was a fine designer in her own right. However, I think this is a valuable lesson to take away. While I consider Julia to be a hugely skilled and technically adept designer, who has years of experience knitting and designing knitwear, even she cannot completely predict the way the finish piece will need to be constructed in order to execute her vision.

As a side note, this is one of the beauties of the web and why I absolutely love being a part of this CAL. I cannot imagine how critical I might be of my own work, if I didn't have the blogs of other designers to show me that all of us face the same challenges and missteps.

Back to the topic at hand, Lily has gone surprisingly easily throughout the body portion of the piece. While I debated on length, a bit, and I may still close the side vents up a little bit, the bulk of the design process went pretty smoothly, once I had my original vision.

From here, I knew I wanted to knit the sleeves up to, but not including, the sleeve cap, so that I could join all the pieces and work them together, to avoid any possible offset of the motifs.

There were no problems with the body, the sleeve, however, has dogged me. This humble elbow length sleeve is the product of, not one, not two, but 4 trips to the frog pond.

It's a testament to the quality of Calmer that I see absolutely no change in the yarn, despite all that ripping and re-knitting.

My first thought was that I'd migrate the motifs from the front of the sleeve, around to the back seam in preparation to run the motifs up the sleeve cap. I felt that just running the motif up the seam would look peculiar and unbalanced. Something really needed to pickup the theme, on the outside of the sleeve.

If you are astute, you've already caught my big mistake here, however, I knit about a quarter of the sleeve and realized I just had too much ease worked in and ripped the sleeve to start again. It was only when version two had hit about the halfway point, that I realized my fatal flaw. If the motifs were correct at the outside of the sleeve, they would be flipped at the back seam as shown in the illustration below.

As the great philosopher, Homer, said, "DOH!" That was a real head slapper moment.

I realized that my new calculations worked out perfectly to fit 2 full motifs across the entire hem of the sleeve (a centered full motif on the outside of the sleeve, with two half motifs inside by the seam). I knew I didn't want to carry the outside motif up the entire length of the sleeve, firstly, because it would be too busy and secondly, because when it came time to decrease for the sleeve cap, I'd be left with a lot of lace to wrangle into submission. I decided to just work the outside motif once. I tried maintaining the purl ribs up the length of the sleeve but found it added a sort of sporty feel that was inconsistent with the vast stockinette of the body.

So I took out the purl ribs, after the first repeat.

I was getting much closer but there were two things that bothered me. First, the outside repeats just seemed to look uncontained. There were still strong lines delineating the edges of the motifs on all sides except the top. Something just seemed off. I also didn't care for the fact that I had begun the sleeve shaping, while working the first repeat. It meant I had to increase in the purl ribs between motifs. Since I was eliminating the extra purl ribs and motif, it just didn't look cohesive.

After all that, 5 times was the charm.

I added a purl ridge to the top of the outside motif, which added the visual container I felt the motifs needed. Additionally, I held off on any sleeve shaping until I had completed the border of repeats, allowing me to increase in the stockinette area, as I had on the body.

I think the final product is consistent with the style of the body and deals with the design concerns I had, in a logical way.

For now, Lily needs to go on temporary hold while I complete a project for a friend. Lucky for me, it's in Calmer too!

I hope to complete that in the next week or two, while I'm traveling and then I'll get back to Lily and all that she entails. I'll try to get a couple tutorials up in the interim, if time permits.

This entry also posted at the Create Along.

Hey, it's a Lily update.

The second sleeve knit up in a jiffy, even with my lack of free time, and then it came time to join all the pieces into a single unit. While the sleeves were knit flat (more a product of my lack of US #7 DPNs than anything,) everything else is knit in the round. The process is largely like that of the relatively ubiquitous top down raglans (Good ol' Barbara Walker!) only this one is bottom up.

The pieces and I had a bit of a kerfuffle at the time of joining. The body was knit to a slightly different point in the lace repeat than the sleeves and I did not realize this until the second round of attachment. I had to decide whether to rip out the extra rows in the sleeve or attach another ball and knit up the body further. There may have been some language unbecoming a lady. Panda offered to jump on my lap and help, but we both ended up showing much restraint.

I decided on the former option, ripping down, as I can use the tails to seam the sleeves, later.

I don't feel like the rest of the piece should pose any real problems, it's not brain science, after all. I'm keeping the formula fairly simple; decreasing every other round, yet, I have this foreboding feeling that when its all done, I'm going to need to rip back. I'm not sure why. I think some of it stems from the fact that I'm not doing any sort of bind off under the arms. Will it be all bunchy and uncomfortable? I am waiting to try the piece on until I've worked a few more rounds and if I do have to work back, I have a few ideas for remedies, but I'm really hoping I don't need to go that route. Because the body is knit in the round, even a gusset would pose a lot of work. Don't you even think about using the "s" word with me. Some of us learn from our friend's blog posts.

I think I always have this sort of anxiety when I'm knitting my own designs. No matter how much I do this, there's always some portion of the process that seems more dictated by the little knitting fairies and gremlins than by math. Hopefully when I'm all done, I'll love it and wear it with pride, but for now, it's too soon to tell.

Well, I just mailed off my top secret project, with all its fixin's to it's rightful owner. I'll miss that beautiful plum color Calmer but not as much as I've missed being able to talk crafty on my blog. While stories of Panda and hikes and tea and eating are all fun, it's yarny goodness upon which this blog is built.

So adios pretty plum calmer and, long time no see, Lily!

I've only had time to cast on and work a few rows of the second sleeve and it's amazing how hard it's been to get back into the swing of it.

Truth be told, I'm the sort of person who would likely have abandoned this with such a long hiatus. I know that's crazy, but when I lose momentum on something, it's almost never that I pick it back up again. It's good for me to push myself to finish these projects so they don't languish and end up ripped, or worse, donated to charity in their half knit form.

I have a couple other projects I'll probably be working on this year; projects that cannot be blogged right away but which I'm pretty excited about. But I also have big plans (bigger than any warping of the space time continuum can accommodate) that should all be bloggable.

This entry also posted at the Create Along.

So, longer ago than I'd like to admit, Kristi asked me:

So of course I'm curious why you didn't leave the underarm space -- because it messed with the lace?

I think the space is less imperative on smaller sizes -- if you were doing a conventional shaped sleeve, your initial bind off would be about (chest - crossback)/2 on each side (this is assuming you're in the round) Or even less.

Plus, the lace is going to be more flexible/less bulky than stockinette and stretch or constrict as needed.

If you're thinking of sizing up the pattern though, I think the underarm shaping will begin to make a big difference.

Instead of writing her back (eek, sorry) I thought I'd post my response up here where y'all can see my reply because, man, she is just full of damn fine information.

The original concept of the piece was to work a lace, that had vertical symmetry, up the side of the piece, then split it off for the armsceye. The sleeve would be constructed the same way giving an uninterrupted path for the lace. The idea was that the lace would never appear to break even though it obviously had to split for the sleeves.

If I wanted to do a bind off at the underarms, I would have to gradually migrate the lace inward to be just inside the bind off point. This is possible but I really wanted to avoid disrupting the pattern.

With Kristi's great insight, I see that the combination of the stretchy Calmer and the small size make this possible. It does seem to work great for me so far. I have to seriously think how I'll approach the larger sizes (yes, I'm getting persuaded to actually write the pattern.) though.

If I do decide to write the pattern, I'll probably knit a partial second piece and do a gusset on one side and migration of the lace for a bind off, on the other to see which produces a nicer effect. I won't have to work a full chest circumference, just enough to be able to visualize the end result. Again, as Kristi pointed out, the lace will give some flexibility and the yarn is stretchy so I think I would have to do a relatively small amount of binding off even for a much larger size.

Talking to my dear friend, Julia, yesterday, I feel ready to tackle the neckline, which I've put on hold for a couple days while I contemplate. She suggested just a folded hem and I like that idea very much. I'm also considering something with eyelets that can be cinched in a little, to accommodate various undergarments. Either way, I want it to be relatively unobtrusive since there's already a lot going on with the lace. In the end, I think her hem idea is going to win out.

*Nod to Ze. I miss his show, The Show.

This entry has also been posted at the Create Along.

Knitting has nearly slowed to a screeching halt now that there's a new pup in the house, but what knitting there has been has been good.

I've worked up to where I'm starting some neckline shaping on Lily

The fit seems fine, though it's always hard to tell before the neckline is done.

I will probably work a simple 2 or 3 stitch i-cord edging for the hem and sleeves. I think that will be the least disruptive treatment and will be OK both on the busy sleeve and the simpler hem.

As for the new member of the family, I think we finally have a name that everyone can agree on. The name is now, Theano Purl, Thea for short.
Theano was believed to be the wife of Pythagoras, (he who brought us the calculation for determining the hypotenuse of a right triangle,) and likely continued his work and ran his school after his death. We wanted a name that gave a nod to the sciences but which was also a cute doggy name. We considered "Evo" short for "Evolution" and "Jane" for the one and only Ms. Goodall. Neither name really stood out as exceptional names for a dog. Theano, though, very cute. I got to keep Purl as her middle name too so she can be little Thea-Purl, if the mood strikes.

See a bunch of pictures of the two girls by clicking the photo above, or clicking here.

Do you remember Lily? Well, I sure do. I have kept the bag she's been in, in plain site, since I last worked on her in May. Oy vey. I put Lily into time out after trying her on, and feeling the design had gone astray. The motifs, running along the raglan, were coming so close together that they appeared to draw an (unattractive) arrow to my face. When I tried her on, I knew I was not happy with the look.

I put Lily aside and I wasn't sure that I'd come back. I usually have a very hard time revisiting sleeping projects.

But, something about the soft olive colored calmer and the lily of the valley motif, drew me back.

So I pulled out Lily and simply started ripping. I figured I'd have to rip back to the armscye, or further. But something stopped me, after only a dozen rows. I decided I should put all my stitches onto waste yarn and throw Lily on the mannequin.

The piece was rumpled but the little bit of ripping proved to be a good starting point.

I realized, I had it all wrong. I was going for a boat neck, but I was trying to make the neck too high. I think this piece is salvageable with minimal modifications.

I gave Lily a bit of a steam, and I'm back in the race.

I'll tackle the neckline first, resolving that issue, before dealing with anything else. After that, I'll probably close up the vents at the hem and work a bottom edge that matches the neckline.
Finally, after all that is done, I'll assess the sleeves.

Let's see if I can take the U out of this UFO.

For those of you who like looking under the hood, I've uploaded some detail shots of the Linen Top, including the final ribbon I've chosen.

I don't have any immediate plans to write a pattern, but I think some people might be interested in a look at how the garment was constructed.

It's a relief to have this finished. UFOs really irk me, I think because I'm so bad about revisiting them if I've lost my momentum. I seem to be getting better at it, with age, but I still think I do best with a big burst of inspiration.

You know what's funny? This might be one of the few garments that looks a little better on me than the mannequin. The very narrow hips and shoulders of my stand-in, make the piece look unbalanced (top heavy?), to my eye. Still, she holds still which is useful on these overcast days.

When I first started designing this, I felt sure that I did not want ribbing at the neck and hem. I can't remember why, because I actually really like it, now. At the sleeve hem, I just used a simple i-cord bind-off to maintain the rather pronounced scallop that the lace produces. But, at the neck and hem, I think the ribbing does a nice job of producing a clean finished edge.

Speaking of the neckline, I used a few decreases to keep that boat neck from falling off the shoulders. It juuuust covers my bra straps. I could probably have done a little more ribbing if it bothered me, but right now, I like it.

I really don't think I need to say much about my love for Calmer. I've used it quite a few times before and love it to pieces. It's soft, soft, soft, soft, soft, and for those of you who can't stomach the price, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the yardage and how far it goes, when knit at the recommended gauge.

All in all, I think it's another piece I'll actually wear. I'll try to get a shot of me in it, eventually, but it's a bit too rainy and cold right now.

The first edition of Twist Collective is LIVE.

I'm so excited to be a part of this project. My pattern, Lily is available for sale if you are interested. It's a variant on the piece I knit for myself, a while ago.

I can't tell you how much I love the philosophy behind Twist Collective. Even if Lily doesn't appeal to you, I feel positive you'll find something to love in this magazine.

Please consider supporting your favorite designers and the brilliant people behind the scenes at Twist Collective by visiting the site, purchasing patterns and clicking on the ads. And also, YAY!