Entrelac -- Entre*LICIOUS*

The Spring Bouquet sweater is complete!! This took some doing, let me tell you...

First of all, I washed the pieces before sewing, which was a great idea, in that it smoothed out all the edges and made the seams incredibly easy to do.

But the instant the entrelac fabric got wet, it flattened out like a PANCAKE. All the wrinkles and textured contours simply vanished!!

And the flattened fabric was noticeably bigger... The chest circumference of the finished garment measured 44", with a length from the shoulder of 30". Some spots, especially at the joins between entrelac segments, were undeniably see-through as well. It's a thick-and-thin yarn, after all. (Click on the image to get a closer look.)

Not good. I simply *HAD* to shrink it. Time for a hot-water bath.

I cannot let this moment go by without saying that I am struck by the way things come in threes. Before this summer, I had never intentionally shrunk or felted a sweater before, and now I have done it three times in the last several weeks. At least the success with the two Fjörgyn coats gave me confidence with the entrelac. I might have freaked out otherwise, but as it was I stayed remarkably calm throughout this whole process.

The sweater went through one washer cycle on hot with a short soak in the middle. I had placed it in a mesh laundry bag to protect it, but some parts still felted quite a bit, especially where the folded sleeves rubbed against the yoke. There's not much surprise in this, though, given the incredible softness of the wool. It was bound to felt somewhat when washed, even with gentle treatment.

It shrank exactly as I had hoped, to a chest circumference of 42" and a length of 26" from the shoulder. The sleeves were always on the narrow side, but I have short arms, and they fit perfectly.

The only real problem was the neck, because the ribbing of the collar did not shrink nearly as much as the surrounding fabric.

This resulted in a cowl that stood up about 2 1/2" away from my neck all the way around. (Click for a closer look.)

I *really* wanted a proper turtleneck, so there was nothing for it but to redo the collar.

Fortunately, I was able to rip out more than half of it and reuse the yarn. But the bottom part had felted almost completely, so I finally had to cut it off with scissors. Talk about nerve-wracking!! Careful, careful...

Once the neckline was clear, I used a pointy Addi lace needle to pick up stitches again (only 100 of them this time, instead of 116) and then proceeded to knit a new collar with a US size 5, instead of a 7, to ensure that the result would fit snugly.

Finally, I washed the whole thing again — in COLD water this time, to avoid any further shrinkage — and pinned it out to dry.

Some parts of the sweater are still more solidly felted than others, but the fabric has a uniformly soft texture. Here are some pictures of the finished product, which I will wear proudly and often, once the weather cools down. As always, click on any one of the images to get a closer look.

The more I look at this sweater in its finished form, the more I *LOVE* what the washing did to smooth out all the color changes. It looks muted and dreamy, just like an Impressionist painting. :-)

Laundry Day

Today is is a day for soap & water, bringing me closer to the finish line for two major knitting projects that I am eager to complete: the burgundy Fjörgyn coat (which is all sewn together & ready for a gentle shrinking/felting) and the Spring Bouquet entrelac turtleneck (the sleeves of which are now complete and ready to be washed & pinned out carefully, along with the front & back, prior to sewing).

Here are the pre-wash photos. Click on either one for a closer look...

Two Milestones

I was a bit surprised to discover just now that an entire *week* has gone by since my last post. I guess I have been doing more knitting than typing lately, and in the past few days the lighting was not good for photographs either. But I got some pictures in this morning, and there is now happy progress to report.

I have finished the knitting for my burgundy Fjörgyn coat. The sleeves, button plackets, and collar are all complete, so it is all done except for the sewing. LOTS of sewing, but that's another story... Here is a picture of the sleeves, which I modified to make them narrower (in keeping with my decidedly un-Walkyre-like stature) and shorter. Click for a larger view.

I also finished the front & back for the Spring Bouquet entrelac. It is shaping up really well. Here are wide shots and closeups of both pieces. Click any one of the four for a closer look.

These two sweaters have been lots of fun to knit, but I'll still be very happy to have them both done before August arrives with all of its back-to-school fury, not to mention the other projects (like the Great Guernsey Adventure) that are waiting in the wings...

Enchanting Entrelac

Entrelac, I have decided, can be dangerous.

It is highly addictive, quickly induces a trance-like state in the knitter, and because of the intertwined rows, has no obvious "stopping places." It is WAY too easy (as with potato chips or "Crunch & Munch" or certain controlled substances), to keep saying, Just one more, & then I'll quit...

Recently, in the course of one particularly susceptible 24-hour period with a lot of NCIS in the background, I managed to complete the first cycle through all 9 skeins on both the front and the back, and then to start the second one. When I finally came out of the daze & looked down at what I had accomplished, I was more than a little bit stunned at how far I had come.

Here are the results. As before, the notional "back" is on the left, and the "front" on the right. They are starting to look like real sweater pieces now! Click on either image to get a closer look.

The palest ivory skein (#6) and the one with the heaviest concentration of light blue (#8) both stand out from the rest as much as I knew they inevitably would, but I am still quite pleased with the blend overall. To help things along, I think I will start the sleeves with skein #7, so that the relatively dark band now appearing around the upper chest will have an echo at the cuffs. That will unify the look of the sweater as a whole. Since skein #1, which did the ribbing for both front & back, is also running low, I will be glad to restrict its use on the sleeves to a relatively narrow band slightly above the ribbing.

Happy knitting!!

Entrelac progress

After *months* of idleness earlier with the Spring Bouquet yarn while I waited for the right pattern to come along, I am now making rapid progress on the entrelac turtleneck. Woohoo!!

The entrelac pattern is easy to knit and goes very fast. Before casting on, I arranged the 9 wound skeins in the order that I thought would produce the best blend of colors, and then placed them in individual ziplock bags with a number for each one to mark the sequence. All the little bags then went into one great big bag, in numerical order where they're easy to see & locate at need. Each skein does one "row" (or band) of the entrelac. That simple scheme has worked out remarkably well. It's sort of like painting by numbers and takes ALL the anxiety out of the process of deciding which skein to use at any given moment. That's important, because the main reason I was so hesitant before to jump in & start knitting right away is that I had scared myself into imagining a scenario where I would have to switch off between skeins at odd moments, without any system to guide me. Now I'm wondering what the big deal was.

Meanwhile I decided to knit the front and the back in tandem rather than first one and then the other, because that way I can complete each skein's contribution to both of them before switching to the next skein, and keep an eye on the evolving color arrangement as I go along. I'll do the sleeves together in the same manner, once I have both the front & back done and can decide how best to arrange the colors for the sleeves to coordinate with the body. The front & back pieces are interchangeable until the last inch, when the front has shaping for the neck (& the back doesn't), so although I like to think of the first piece that I cast on as the "back" and the other one as the "front" for purposes of telling them apart and keeping them distinct in my mind, I will wait & see how they develop & eventually pick one for the front, based on what colors I want near my face.

Here they are now, with the "back" on the left and the "front" on the right. I've just finished the fifth row of the entrelac. Click on either image to see a larger view.

The patchwork effect of the entrelac masks the transitions between the skeins almost completely, exactly as I had hoped. Indeed I am amazed with how smooth & harmonious the whole thing looks, given how different the skeins themselves appear when you place them side by side. Here is a closeup of the front, showing off the subtle blend of colors. I'm going to have a HAPPY warm sweater in time for the winter weather. >grin<

Entrelac, entre nous -- mais oui!!

Well... I made a swatch for the entrelac turtleneck this afternoon, and proved to my satisfaction that I can get the required gauge without having to change needle sizes from what the pattern specifies, and that entrelac really will suit the hand-painted yarn perfectly and accomplish all my various goals for this project. I used a single skein for the swatch, of course, so the sample does not show what the mixture of colors & tones will eventually look like, but at least you can see that the yarn and the pattern seem to like each other.

FABULOUS.

I have also wound all the skeins now, and determined that I can group them by color into four categories. There is one especially pale creamy one, three alike that have the creamy background with blue & green leaning more toward pastel, two alike that are mainly light blue as opposed to cream, and three alike that seem to emphasize the darker shades of blue and green. So I will base my color scheme on those ratios (1, 3, 3, 2).

What a difference a day or two can make!! When this week started, I still had a great big pile of lovely yarn and only vague, incohate ideas about what to do with it. Now I have the ideal pattern, a definite game-plan, and every reason to expect that I will start seeing results sooner rather than later. Woohoo!!

First Impressions & Almost a Miracle

Earlier this year, I quite frankly splurged to acquire first a single skein of Rio de la Plata Impressionist Merino Pampa in the colorway known as "Spring Bouquet" — and then a full *eight* more to go with it. I know exactly why it was so hard to resist. The fact that it was February (blech) and that I was having a fairly rough semester definitely made me rather susceptible to yarn temptation at the time. But more to the point, this is positively dreamy wool, rich and buttery soft, and the colors are a feast for the eyes. The right sweater made with it will become both a snazzy showpiece and the ultimate snuggle garment, all in one. Mmmmmm.

The Impressionist collection is a Yarn Market exclusive. From what I can tell, they have arranged for several different high-end yarn companies (Lorna's Laces, Twisted Sisters, Cherry Tree Hill, Prism, Rio de la Plata, Fiesta) to design magnificent hand-dyed colorways in various elite fibres, all inspired by the same series of famous 19th century paintings. The artists represented include Monet, Van Gogh, Caillebotte, Sisley, Renoir, and Degas. The designers create their own "impressions" of the paintings' color schemes, and each skein comes with an elegant label depicting the painting in question.

Spring Bouquet (a.k.a. Grande Vaso di Fiori, "Large Vase of Flowers") is a painting by Renoir from 1866. You can see a nice large image of it here. The Rio de la Plata wool yarn named after it is all deep blues and greens and violets on a creamy white background, with occasional tiny flecks of crimson. These are some of my all-time favorite colors, and for my admittedly self-indulgent purposes, it is a good thing that they are not accompanied by either the golden accents or the pale pink that I also see in the painting.

When the second batch of this yarn arrived, I knew that I had just saddled myself with rather a tricky little project. The problem, of course, is that no two of these skeins are exactly alike. Some have relatively little of the cream color and concentrate on the dark blues and greens instead, while others are noticeably paler by comparison, and at least one is almost entirely cream with very little of the darker hues.

As soon as I saw this assemblage of wool, I realized that knitting a sweater in the conventional fashion, i.e. completely using up one skein at a time, would result in uneven blotches of color in odd places and obvious, ugly transitions from one skein to the next. So I decided to take my time & work out a way to switch around between all the different skeins in a consistent pattern throughout the sweater, so as to create a harmonious, balanced effect.

OK, fair enough. But then what pattern to use? For lots of different reasons I emphatically do *NOT* want to knit just straight stockinette. Even with smallish needles to ensure the right density, the fabric would be flat and could easily wear thin in places, and talk about *boring*. The sweater that I have in mind needs to have plenty of "nooks & crannies" to hold in warm air on a chilly day. Most conventional textured patterns, however, even simple cables, would inevitably try to compete with the variegated colors and create visual chaos on a large scale. Not good. I swatched one or two ideas and did not like the results at all. So I stashed the yarn away and told myself that I would just have to wait & think it over. I knew that if I could manage to be patient, the right idea would eventually percolate into my head.

At length I thought of entrelac. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to emerge as the IDEAL solution to my dilemma, with just enough structure and interest to make the garment something special, but also enough geometric simplicity to stay unobtrusively in the background and let the colors do their thing without getting in the way. It's also a French word, which simply sounds intriguing and stylish by its very nature, although there are some quite frankly hideous objects that were designed using this technique. Do a quick search on Ravelry for "entrelac" and you will see what I mean.

Now here's the fun part... The day before yesterday, a friend of mine whom I had not seen in person in a long time brought me along to join in a friendly gathering of knitters who meet 2 or 3 times a month at a bookstore in Louisville. I had a bunch of finished objects with me for show-and-tell (including the Wedding Ring Shawl and the Princess), and I also brought the Impressionist yarn to get my friend's opinion. She is very wise in the way of fibre arts (hence her blog handle: The Fiber Artist), so I was delighted when she liked the entrelac idea. And then she made the brilliant suggestion that each "row" of squares in the entrelac pattern could be done from a different skein. The natural tilt of the design, with the corners of each row interlaced with the ones before and after it, would effortlessly tie the whole composition together. And Bob's your uncle...

I came home from that conversation *thoroughly* convinced that we were onto something big here, and yesterday evening as a follow-up I did a search on Ravelry to see what sorts of entrelac sweater patterns I could find. I hoped to confirm that something vaguely like what I wanted had been done before, so that I could proceed to design my sweater with confidence.

What I found instead was *exactly* the pattern that I had envisioned, in a back-issue of Vogue Knitting that I actually happen to own. It's even a turtleneck!! Understand that the odds of this are decidedly in the "not bloodly likely" category, since I have never subscribed to the magazine, and only ever buy it when I run across it it at a bookstore and see something in it that I really like. What an amazing serendipity — almost a miracle — to have just the right pattern pop up, and then to discover that I do not have to do any design work, beyond figuring out the sequence in which to use the different skeins. YIPPEEE!! Time to get out the trusty ole' swift & yarn-winder. I am off to the races.