Phoenix Rising

I am still reeling from the response to the holiday towels I posted in my shop at the beginning of this month. I was not anticipating how quickly they would be snatched up and I spent several many late nights trying to get them all packaged up and out the door. I posted 27 towels for sale and within the first 24 hours more than half of them had sold, and the rest were gone by the end of the week. WOW!! I am so grateful, and so shocked, and excited to come up with my next designs.

By the end of all my deadline weaving and nights spent working into the wee hours, I needed a change of pace in my crafting for a bit. I have been itching to make another sweater for myself, but have been so focused on more time-sensitive projects that I hadn’t found the time to sit down and figure out what sweater I wanted to cast on next. On top of that, the last thing I needed was another project on the needles to bog me down. Having recently finished the fair isle vest I showed you in October, and the pair of socks I will be giving as a gift, my needles felt a little lighter and I could see there might be room for another project to squeeze in there. Still, I continued to guiltily look at my pile of unfinished knitting and knew I needed to wrap up another project before I could cast on something new.

I started these mitts for Kyle back on September 1, back when the sun was high in the sky and I couldn’t imagine wearing anything other than a tank top and flip flops. There was no urgency, plenty of time to get these finished. And they were knitting up so quickly, I knew I would have them done in a day or two. Flash forward several months and they still languished in the knitting basket as UFOs (unfinished objects). It was the fingers that did me in. So little, so pesky, tiny little tubes with yarn ends everywhere, so easy to avoid and procrastinate working on those with other more exciting projects. And now as I sit here, piling wood on the fire like my life depends on it, as the wind blows down from the mountain and it “feels like” -18 degrees Fahrenheit outside, I am happy to say that these too are finished and Kyle no longer has to gently ask me how they’re coming along, afraid I have forgotten them altogether. (Yarn: Madtosh DK. Colorway: Cloak. Pattern: Handyman by Lone Kjeldsen.)

Speaking of the weather, and completely unrelated to yarn, but here in our old farm house it seems that we humans are not the only creatures seeking warmth as the nights grow colder and the wind blows bitterly through the valley. To that end, allow me to introduce the two newest laborers to our small plot of land – Sammy and Lucy. This brother and sister duo is just about 6 months old.

I am quite famously not a cat person, but I am also not a “find little surprises in drawers and cabinets from small critters” kind of person, so these two devils will be patrolling the property and earning their keep by dealing with unwanted visitors. Sammy (Samael) and Lucy (Lucyfurr) better live up to their namesakes! Because as I recently discovered, our dogs are worthless when it comes to keeping a tidy house. in fact, I think I know who has been inviting these guests in to spend the night.

But back to the topic at hand. Surely now that those mitts are off the needles, it is time to cast on a sweater for myself as a bit of a treat. I looked back at my previous knitting projects and realized I haven’t finished* a sweater for myself in over a year and a half and was looking forward to diving into my stash to pull out some well-marinated wool to cast on. I needed something mindless, comforting and stress free and knew exactly what to choose – Cobblestone by Jared Flood. _{*Don’t mind the four sweaters in my closet that are 95% done, some of which have been that way for 15 years. We will address that in a future post.}

This was the first sweater I ever knit for myself, way back in 2007 shortly after I learned how to knit. The Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits had just been published and I kid you not, I was absolutely obsessed with that whole magazine. I still say it was the very best issue of IK to ever be published. I read this magazine from cover to cover so many times. I memorized the ads, I read the knitting patterns I had no interest in ever knitting, I looked up yarn recommendations and dreamt about future projects.

This was before Ravelry existed, and as a new knitter I was so eager to learn anything I could and I felt like this issue was such a wealth of information. I still talk about this particular ad for Lion Brand Yarn that was so adorable that it gave me baby fever – and I don’t even like kids! But how cute is that?! Can you even contain your excitement? I almost knit these just to have in my back pocket for “some day”. I still can’t even stand how cute this picture is.

But I digress… back to Cobblestone. (I really can’t tell a story in a straight line today, can I?) I was really thrilled to see a men’s sweater in this issue and I think I looked at it every single day for weeks. I would walk the few miles to my LYS (local yarn shop) to peruse their yarn selections and talk to the owner, Phyllis, about what I wanted to make and what she would recommend. Unfortunately the yarn used in the pattern was discontinued either shortly before or shortly after this issue was published, so I wasn’t able to get my hands on the exact yarn. Luckily my sister, who was the one who had encouraged me to learn to knit with her, gifted me with the perfect yarn to knit Cobblestone and I immediately cast on, knitting this sweater in just a few weeks over winter break my sophomore year of college. At this point, Jared Flood had not created Brooklyn Tweed as the yarn company we know and love today, but he had been writing a personal knitting blog that I followed religiously and his work was always so inspiring. This sweater seemed like the perfect distillation of his own design aesthetic mixed with a very heavy hand of Elizabeth Zimmmermann influence and it was just so perfect.

That’s college-Peter making monkey bread on Christmas morning 15 years ago, and the only surviving photo I have of myself wearing this sweater. The yarn was Cascade 220 in the color “Turtle Heather” (no. 2452, which is probably not surprising that I still have the exact color number memorized after all these years given how obsessed I was). Despite my gauge for the sweater itself being wildly different from the gauge swatch I knit, the sweater turned out the perfect size. It was loose and cozy like a sweatshirt and I was so excited to have a sweater that I made all for myself. I wore this sweater for a few years, until tragedy struck…

I took a shortcut. I always hand wash my knits, but on this fateful day in 2010 I tempted fate. I had several sweaters to wash and the washing machine had a “woolens” cycle and I threw caution to the wind against my better judgment. Suffice to say, I have never trusted a washing machine with my handknits ever again. My poor, sweet, perfect sweater shrank to become a crop top with 3/4 length sleeves, which was not the look I was going for and I very sadly and reluctantly accepted that it might not be salvageable. Still, I hung onto that sweater for several more years thinking that maybe one day it would just block out. Surely I could stretch it back into shape. My dear reader… I could not. But I did not want to give up on this sweater. The color was so great, and it was so comfortable that I didn’t want to pitch it forever. And so in 2013 (yes, three years later), I did the next best thing.

I ripped it all out, vowing that I would reknit this sweater and give the yarn new life. Of course now the yarn was felted and fuzzy, but I have to tell you it really held up well and if anything it is even softer and makes a really smooth and cohesive fabric. I reskeined the yarn and washed it to get all of the kinks out, and there it sat for almost a decade patiently waiting its turn, watching my crank out dozens of other sweaters for myself, for my husband, for designers, for yarn companies… but never Cobblestone.

Well the time has come. I am resurrecting my beloved Cobblestone like a phoenix from the ashes and, not to put too much pressure on this project, but it is going to be perfect. What could possibly go wrong? Is this yarn slightly felted and shrunken? Sure. Did I knit a gauge swatch before casting on? Nah. Am I knitting a larger size than before even though I don’t have additional yarn? Sure am! Fate really screwed me the day it shrank the original, so it owes me on this re-do. I started with the sleeves, because those are practically gauge swatches in and of themselves, so I’m sure everything will be fine. (Note: this is not my usual approach to knitting. I am a rule follower. I am a gauge swatcher. I am a soak it, pin it flat, let it dry, give it a day to relax, count it twice before casting on kind of guy. But this sweater needs to be effortless for me.)

(When I am ready to embrace reality we can have another chat, but today is not that day.)

And if I run into trouble and need to place this sweater in timeout for a month, or another decade, at least I have my trusty and constant pair of socks to fall back on.

And lest the loom become lonely, I am also preparing the warp for my next weaving project. this is going to take up the full 40″ weaving width on my loom, which will be the biggest project I have done and I am excited to share that with you as it progresses. For now it just looks like a whole lot of natural cotton. This is thicker than what I use for towels, so theoretically these projects should weave up pretty quickly once I have everything ready to go. I’m really excited to show you what the patterns look like! Hopefully I can start weaving in the next day or two.

Until next time, stay creative and happy holidays!