The Setesdal is finished.

I have had a lot of stuff happen in my family this past two months.  But things are settling down again and I'm knitting again.  I finished the black and white Setesdal-style sweater.

It was warm enough out on our deck to sit out here yesterday. This is where I did the picking up of stitches for the placket. The light here was great.  Then I knitted the placket and started on the collar. I finished up weaving in the ends and tacking down the inner facings today and wore the sweater to my yarn shop.  I prefer taking pictures outside, so took this when I got home again.

And I have started a new one.  This one is a kit by KnitPicks. I bought it because the price was right and I liked the sweater. So far I have one cuff and half the sleeve done.  Doing these one after another is helping me hone my skills and remember the things I did wrong the last time. 

Here is the cuff and sleeve so far. Well, actually it's a little longer than this, as I took this yesterday morning.

That's it for this time.

Setesdal pullover and some doodling with paint

I'm going to try to update this blog once a month.  So here goes for February.

KNITTING

I started a Norwegian style pullover early in January.   My knitting group at my local yarn store decided to all do Norwegian sweaters starting in January.  Since this fits right in with my resolution for 2010, I thought this was a good time to start a Setesdal style sweater.  I've wanted to do one of these for a long time, but was waiting until I felt my 2-color knitting was up to the task.

Here is what I have of it so far. It's going pretty quickly.  I'm sticking to the very simple, basic Norwegian shaping, which is very little.  More modern Norwegian and Dale designed sweaters are much more complicated than this, but I decided to see how this would go with very little structure. I'm not adding steek stitches, but will cut at the sides for the armholes and at the neck for the neck opening. It will have a placket.

This is the body and lower part of the sleeve.  I'm ready to start the patterning at the top of the sleeve.  I pulled designs from Setesdal Sweaters, by Annemor Sundbo, and made up my own pattern from there.  The traditional Setesdal sweaters, which are named after the valley of Setes in Norway, were worn by men and had embroidered wool fabric cuffs and plackets.  I'm not going to do the wool fabric.  I want this to be a comfortable everyday sweater to wear in the Duluth winters.  There is some more information on my Ravelry page.

 

ROSEMALING

I signed up for another class in Rosemaling. It meets one day a week for 8 weeks. It started yesterday.  I didn't have a project to work on, so spent the time doodling on paper.  Here is what I did.

And here:

I was just trying to get back into the feel of handling the brushes and thinking about my designs.  I practiced with a round brush, a filbert and a liner.

Alpaca raglan sweater and a new plate

I've been both knitting and rosemaling this month.  Someone asked me to paint a plate for his wife for Christmas.  I agreed with some reservations, but the plate is finished and I'm glad I did it. It didn't take as long as I thought it would and it got me back into rosemaling again, before I put the paints away for the holidays.  It was good to get that table cleared off finally this morning.

So first, here is the current state of the Alpaca sweater. 

I bought several skeins of Alpaca in April 2008. The seller had a lovely scarf done in grey, tan and natural.  I wanted to use those colors, but for some reason I bought black, two shades of grey, 2 shades of brown and the tan and natural. Then the next year I bought some more, because I didn't think I had enough to do a complete sweater and it was too much for a scarf and hat.  (These are undyed. They are the color of the animal.)

I did a gauge swatch last year thinking I might use it for the Ivy League vest, but decided not to. When I started again this fall, I did another gauge swatch, and this time tried a color pattern I found in a book by Alice Starmore.  I liked that, so started the sweater out that way.  The part that is below the armholes is the pattern from her book with a wider area of natural.  But at that point I realized I didn't have enough of those colors to finish the sweater and would have to incorporate at least one more color. So I added in the brownish-grey. At this point I used the construction method of the Dale of Norway Sapporo raglan sweater that I did a few years ago. I liked how easily that one went together and it is comfortable.  It's a bit tricky getting the first rows and the decreases going right, so it's easier if the pattern is simple-thus the plain stripes. Now I am hoping I'll have enough of the light tan/beige to finish the yoke. If I do it will be just plain from here on. If I have to add in another color--well I'll cross that bridge when I get there-if I have to.

And second, here is the plate I just painted.  It's 18", so one of the biggest I've done.  I needed to talk to my teacher about pricing and discovered Friday that she was teaching that day, so I went in to the class. I've missed several classes over the years I've taken from her and she has always said I could make them up any time, so I knew it would be okay to show up for the last class of the year. 

It was helpful to have her advice for finishing the plate and she also helped with some of the outer linework. I really need to practice that more, so I can do it myself.  I'm going to make a New Year's resolution to paint more next year.  The design in this plate is inspired by one by Marlys Hammer, from whom I took a class last year.

This is probably my last post here before the holidays.

 

So Happy Holidays to all!! 

 

See you in 2010!  We are going to have to think when we write the date next year and stop before we put 2 zeros down.  I'll bet most people will be writing 200 and then squeezing a 1 in between the 00's. 

Designing a Sweater for Fingering Wt. Yarn

I've been knitting some things, but just haven't felt it was of enough interest to post here on the blog. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep doing this. It just doesn't seem to be my thing. I need feed back. If there are only 2 people reading this then it's not worth my time.

 

I bought this Diaketo Diagold yarn in Osaka nearly 2 years ago with the idea of making myself a sweater from it.  I've looked for patterns using fine yarns, but not found much. I bought a book by Ann McCauley.  I like the book a lot and will definitely make a sweater or more from it. The book is Together or Separate.  But I tried doing a gauge swatch for one of the patterns that had a similar gauge to this yarn and it just wasn't working. I decided this yarn needed to be used with another color. I had this other teal colored yarn that was also a hand-wash wool. I thought the 2 would work together.

This photo is my gauge swatch. I have only one skein of the teal (300 yds), so I thought I could also add in some white, which I would have to buy, but that didn't seem to pose a big problem.

 

The lower pattern above came from a book on Setesdal sweaters

 

Setesdal Sweaters: The History of the Norwegian Lice Pattern

by Annemor Sundbø

 

 

 

 

 

 

and I used another pattern from a pattern booklet I have, which I bought in Norway. It was published by Gjestdal.

 

I worked that pattern with 3 instead of 4 colors in my swatch:

I was happy with that, so decided the sleeve cuff would be these two patterns. I cast on 72 stitches for a sleeve on #2 needles and did the 2-color part. I ordered the white yarn, but it will be a couple weeks before it comes in, so I will put this sleeve on a holder and start the second one and then wait till the white yarn comes in. In the mean time it would be good to design the rest of the sweater.

The sleeve so far:

 

Here's how the sleeve cuff would look with the facing turned under:

 

 

And that's really as much as I have now. I'm up to the part where I need the white on this one.

I think the body of the sleeve above the 3-color border will be done in a lice stitch with the white. There will probably be another border near the top and I'm thinking of joining the sleeves to the body and using a raglan construction.

 

I have the Stitch & Motif Maker software, which I use to print up the design for the color work. I'd love to have a sweater design program, but I think those are a lot more expensive and for as much as I would use it, I'm not sure it's worth it to me. I just do this for myself.

 

Any questions?  comments?