[Music] Welcome to November.
This is just a quick update, hence standing up, Halloween costume is still here, but I
wanted to update you because look what's here!
In case you missed my last instalment I have been working on this crochet ripple blanket
and I've bought this Paintbox yarn years ago from LoveCrafts because it was cheap.
Because it's cotton I basically didn't really know what to do with it and I've tried various
things.
I've just found it really unpleasant to knit with.
So I thought I'd make a crochet blanket.
However I was over ambitious and made it incredibly wide, wide enough to go on my double bed and
so it ended up about this wide.
So I've had to buy more yarn to finish that blanket.
But it's here now so hopefully that means I can crack on and it really didn't take very
long to use up 20 balls of wool with that crochet project, so hopefully this will be
gone, soon.
The other thing I've been working on.... continuing on with various other projects from last month
that lace in the round two ply blouse but that's downstairs.
I've just cast on for the sleeves.
But I've also...
my new up stairs knitting project is [tiny shriek] a vintage one.
It's this one these Weldon's pretty gloves.
And I am making these with the cables and the flowers and I'm making it in some beautiful
silk Merino.
That is not the colour that this is in real life it's much pinker.
I'll have to play with my settings and see if I can't get it to pick it up better.
But these gloves, [another tiny shriek] unlike the previous gloves I made these gloves are
actually knit flat and then, you can probably see, the the fingers are seamed up.
Which is pretty common for vintage patterns they use double pointed needles to not knit
things in the round, but also personally having just knit a pair of gloves in the round, including
the fingers, those tiny circumferences for the fingers on double pointed needles are
generally not pleasant or fun and you know, eurgh, oh it's horrid.
So I actually think I prefer this way, although could have knit the hand in the round.
Anyway, quite pleased with how these are coming along they're so soft.
They're going to be beautiful to wear.
But as of yet nothing to add to the tally.
That's all for now just a quick update.
I will see you soon.
November's a really busy month for me so I hope I actually get some footage.
See you soon.
So it's actually taken me a really long time to get my head back in gear to think about
knitting and about stash busting.
I think the last time I spoke to you would have been the beginning of November and I
have done basically nothing towards my stash busting project in that time.
Had a lot of other things on, I had a big IRL job I worked on, that finished at the
end of November, and then I've been working on this very involved both sewing and video
project in Clodmas where I'm making a 1940s suit.
So I just haven't done any knitting.
I mean I've done a little bit on a couple of works in progress, the crochet blanket
for example and my 1840s shawl.
I've done a few rows of that but the thing with those projects is they are both so repetitive
the progress is barely noticeable.
However I have managed to finish the knitting of this pattern.
This 1940s lace jumper that I was working on.
You might remember from the previous instalment I was taking this pattern which isn't it flat
and trying to make it work as a pattern in the round.
Now there's always a point where you have to knit flat, you know you can knit the body
in the round but you have to knit this section and like the sleeve caps for example we have
to knit flat.
So it wasn't entirely in the round but I did a lot of the main work of this in the round
which made it much more enjoyable and I think a bit faster as well.
And I did try and be really clever and do short row shaping at the shoulders so that
I could do a really a smooth decrease, and have a really nice smooth shoulder line, and
then do a three needle bind off or grafting or something to get a really nice shoulder
join.
However that turned out to be an absolute nightmare with the loose gauge, the circular
needles I was using you know, it just wasn't working out so I ended up just casting off
and seaming it up.
I think I got quite a neat seam.
I'm pretty pleased with that.
So this is what I've got at the minute in terms of the body.
So it was knit in the round to the armholes and then divided to knit the armholes, seamed
at the shoulders to knit the neck band The neckband was knit in two halves so I've got
a seam there as well.
I think I contemplated trying to knit the neckband in the round but um I decided it
was too much so I just knit it flat and seamed it as part of the shoulder seam, as was given
in the 1940s instructions.
So this is where we are and then I have two sleeves.
For speed I tried to knit the sleeves two at a time in the round.
Which I do know how to do.
It always takes me a while to remember how to set it up.
But there was something about a combination of..... one of the things about my interchangeable
circular needles that I'm noticing is that the cables are not as flexible as the cheap
ones I usually use.
So for things like doing magic loop kind of a bit more cumbersome.
And that's what I found when I was trying to knit the sleeves two at a time in the round
it was just, oh God.
It was really difficult to start off.
So what I decided to do was to knit the rib flat, so you can see I've got like a weird
vent here, that's because I knit the rib section of the sleeves flat and then joined it in
the round, two at a time, for the lace section.
Which as it turned out only ended up being about 20 rows in the round and then I had
to knit the entire sleeve cap flat.
But then working two at a time, it worked, and that was one of the things....
I'm really glad I spent all the effort trying to make it work two at a time because doing
the lace patterns two at a time was really good to make sure everything was the right
length and the right number of repeats and all of that.
So part of me wishes that I filmed it and showed it to you but honestly it was so frustrating
and I was so busy and stressed I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
So I'm sorry about that.
But um what I am going to do is I'm going to seam this up and steam block it with you
now so that you see sort of a bit more how this works.
[guitar music] Okay so I still have a very messy desk from Clodmas so I'm sorry about
that, you'll have to bear with me.
So the thing of course about knitting these in the round is that it's going to make blocking
them a lot more difficult.
Because it's a lace pattern it really needs....
it needs a good block to make the lace behave nicely and sit nicely, and so ideally I would
wet block and pin this out so that it really blooms.
However, it's winter in England therefore it will take three years to dry and also I
don't know how I'd make that work like this in the round.
So I've got a spray bottle here full of water.
It's not multi-purpose cleaner it's water I filled it up myself.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give it a spritz [water spraying] and I've got
my iron.
It's probably a touch hot.
Let's turn it down just a touch.
And then a pressing cloth.
This is... if you have been following along with Clodmas, this is a panel of my deconstructed
skirt toile.
And then I'm going to give it press.
You can see the moisture is coming through a bit there.
And this is what... this is what the Vintage instructions say to do.[reading] "Press the
knitting except ribbing with a hot iron over a damp cloth" So that's essentially what I'm
doing although I'm.... my cloth is not damp my fabric is damp but...
[music continues] and this should just stop the edges curling
in, make the the the lace behave a bit nicer that sort of thing.
[music continues] So for this bit that's joined up I'm going
to use my sleeve board and then avoiding the ribbing okay....
[water sprays] [iron sizzles]
Let's see if making it damp... using a damp cloth as opposed to spritzing the fabric makes
any difference.
Not really [laughs] I mean I don't think this is as successful
as wet blocking it would be but needs must.
[iron sizzles] Actually that was so successful using the
sleeve board I think that's what I'm going to do for the bodice as well.
[water sprays] And I think it is better to wet the cloth
than the knitting.
It just means it's less... less water...
[iron sizzles] So that this dries quicker [Music]
[iron sizzles] Riveting content Claude it's like watching
paint dry.
[Music ends] Okay so it's all pressed now and it's looking...Meh
it's looking okay.
You can kind of see the lace pattern a bit better and you can see at the bottom where
I wasn't pressing it exactly, it is a bit more bubbly than up here but I'll live with
that.
Now, first things first I have to seam up the bottom section of the ribbing for the
sleeves and then I've got to set the sleeves into the armholes.
Now as you can probably see that's a very long sleeve, deep sleeve head.
So I'm imagining.....
it doesn't actually look like there's any kind of gathering but I think possibly I've
made my sleeves much longer.
Yeah, oops, then my armholes.
Yeah definitely.
So it looks like we'll be doing gathered sleeves.
Not part of the original design but you work with what you've got.
So I think I'm going to do this very simply and that one should do it.
I'm going to use my end.
I'm just going to go through half a stitch either side and sort of ladder stitch it up.
[guitar music plays]
It's one of those things it's going to be on the underside of my arm nobody's really
going to see it are they?
I'm not that bothered.
So long as it's not really bulky and it'll annoy me, I don't really care what it looks
like.
This is where I put a disclaimer this is not a tutorial.
I'm probably doing this wrong.
I know.
I'm sort of whipping it together but I know people get really prissy about "oh you've
got to use a mattress stitch" or whatever.
No, no you don't.
If you've seen the inside of historical knitted garments they sewed it out, up, whichever
way was best, whichever way was strongest.
And also they often didn't come with instructions for sewing up so they did whatever their mother
taught them, you know, or whatever they learned at school.
[Music] Got a bit of a funny moment there but oh well.
See that looks alright!
It'll be fine.
I', gunna take this through to the wrong side and then weave this end in.
The thing is with such a loose gauge it's kind of difficult to weave ends in because
it gets.... it adds so much bulk.
You can't really hide that extra bulk easily.
And then same again.
Oh do you know what I'm quite pleased with that I think that looks quite good.
Ta-da!
Virtually invisible I reckon.
Okay maybe not quite but good enough.
So now we've got to get them into the armholes.
If you watch my sewing videos you've probably seen my very detailed tutorial about how to
sew sleeves and so I basically do exactly the same thing for knitted sleeves.
Of course I don't have an underarm seam to match up on these.
There do we think it's the centre?
You can't see what I'm looking at.
There I think is the middle of the increases.
Yep, so I'm going to match those up and I use these large.
They're firstly large in like diameter of the pin but also they've got these um flower
heads or heart heads in this case.
Now ideally I should turn the jumper inside out over the sleeve.
So I'm just going to roughly pin it around.
[music out] Okey dokey.
Ohh [sucks air through teeth] Right.
That's quite a lot.
Ahhhhh.
[popping sound] [sneaky music plays]
Um okay so here's what's gone wrong.
So the instructions for the front and the back so to work the armholes until they are
seven inches.
Now mine are not really seven inches.
I obviously measured it wrong.
But even so seven inches would be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten pattern repeats at my gauge.
Now the instructions for the sleeves tell you to work 11 pattern repeats before the
shaping.
So I think that's from here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven.
Yeah so I'm already I've three pattern repeats short and I think my gauge is a little different
as well.
So this armhole depth is like nine inches.
Which might be designated to fit into seven inches which would be a bit more realistic
than trying to fit it into six inches.
So basically....
do you know I thought I had a lot of yarn left!
[laughs] Looks like I'm going to have to do some sweater surgery here and take this apart.
And I don't know how.... oh my god!
Ohhhh!
So can you believe it.
That means this project isn't finished which means I can't count the yarn I've used towards
my destash total.
Firstly, because I don't know how much there will be because I need this to repair this
and make it work.
So the total for November is zero.
I've used zero skeins of yarn.
That's it.
Nothing is done.
Nothing.
And also because I didn't do any knitting in December, the total is zero.
So I think it was 161.5 at the beginning of November and it's still 161.5.
That's just the way it goes sometimes isn't it.
I'm really pissed about this.
Oh my God this is so annoying!
[sighs] Urgh!!!
I have a choice here.
I can rip this out straight away, start work on it, make this my work in progress and just
[claps hands together] smash it out!
You know and get it done.
However, I'm so... emotional about it I suppose, not emotional like [cries] but so angry really
and frustrated, I don't think it's a sensible thing to start unpicking what is quite a delicate
lace pattern when my instinct is to set the whole thing on fire you know.
I think I need a little distance from it, before I start fixing it and taking it apart.
So I think it's going to get confined to the UFO pile.
Oh I've got so many works in progress on the go as well I feel really bad about this but
I just want to cast on something completely different, completely new.
And they say knitting's relaxing.
Whuup, well um I guess that's all for this month.
I don't know how I'm going to approach unpicking this.
I will probably put in a rescue line or something.
It's probably not that much work to make it better so it should actually not take me very
long to fix it once I get around to it but um, not today Satan.
Well that's it, that's the video.
Doesn't always go your way.
Just keep plodding along.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.