Frogging Day
26 Jul 2020 11:04 amI finished knitting the Fickle Heart sweater I was working on, and now I'm waiting for the zipper I ordered to arrive so I can sew it in. In the meantime I girded my loins to frog some sweaters that don't fit right so we can reuse the yarn to make another, hopefully better-fitting sweater.
First up is this sweater![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism knitted for me at the end of 2018 using a big bunch of natural Finnish wool from the rare Kainuunharmas breed (who are all the same color, but their coats are tipped between black and white and gradually change from one to the other as they age, producing a full spectrum of shades of gray wool):
This pattern is Milk Stout by Thea Colman and it just doesn't fit. It was designed to be loose-fitting through the body, but the shaping of the neck and shoulders means that it won't stay on my shoulders at all; it falls down off them so the collar is too far away to do any good and the sleeves are about five inches too long; and the sleeves are also too wide and the body too short. The idea was to use it for lounging around the house but because of the terrible fit, I've only worn it a few times. We're (probably Wax is, because she loved working with this wool and she enjoys complex cabling) going to reknit it using this free 'Dad's Cardigan' pattern from Patons, which should produce a better fit. She's been given freedom to pick whatever cables she feels like working as long as it's very cabley. It's easy to replace one cable with another; the pattern is mostly there for stitch counts and neck and sleevehole instructions.
Next I decided to frog this teal pure cashmere sweater I knitted in 2016:
The wool shrank when washing - it came on a cone of oiled wool from the spinnery and you're supposed to wash it to deglaze it and fluff it up after it's been knitted, but it shrank slightly and failed to stretch back out to the size I wanted in the process. So it's now several inches shorter than I wanted, the sleeves are too short and the armholes are uncomfortably tight. I'm going to find a good pattern for fingering-weight yarn (this was sold as DK weight, but it's... not at all... it's about half that, although you could mayyyyybe use it as sport) that's got a boxy silhouette and an adequately loose sleeve. I'll probably redo the feather fan cable, but without any eyeletṣ. That level of transparency was inconvenient. Because the yarn doesn't felt, it was necessary to weave all the ends in extremely carefully to prevent accidental unravelling and it was so difficult to frog that I ended up giving it to Wax to do.
So while Wax was doing that, I dug out a half-finished project: a worsted green-and-white striped sweater I started making for Wax several years ago, before she declared she couldn't wear it after all because a worsted sweater was too warm for her. It was meant as a replacement for this earlier green-and-white cardigan I had knitted for her, which we had also frogged because the yarn was a 50/50 wool-cotton blend and the cotton in it ruined the drape and fit (cotton is heavier and isn't elastic like wool is, so it doesn't spring back and hold its shape in the same way). I finally picked this project by Rav user KiwiJennifer (2nd pic) as stripe inspiration after several years of going back and forth about how I wanted to space the stripes.
I also have Wax's Dessine-Moi Un Mouton by Maison Rililie waiting to be frogged. The texture of the stripes is beautiful, but Wax dislikes the fit and the neckline so much she won't wear it at all and it doesn't fit me. I'll be able to reknit it with the same textured stripes but a different body shape, I just have to pick a pattern to use; I'm thinking maybe Sibeal by Isabell Kraemer:
First up is this sweater
waxjism knitted for me at the end of 2018 using a big bunch of natural Finnish wool from the rare Kainuunharmas breed (who are all the same color, but their coats are tipped between black and white and gradually change from one to the other as they age, producing a full spectrum of shades of gray wool): This pattern is Milk Stout by Thea Colman and it just doesn't fit. It was designed to be loose-fitting through the body, but the shaping of the neck and shoulders means that it won't stay on my shoulders at all; it falls down off them so the collar is too far away to do any good and the sleeves are about five inches too long; and the sleeves are also too wide and the body too short. The idea was to use it for lounging around the house but because of the terrible fit, I've only worn it a few times. We're (probably Wax is, because she loved working with this wool and she enjoys complex cabling) going to reknit it using this free 'Dad's Cardigan' pattern from Patons, which should produce a better fit. She's been given freedom to pick whatever cables she feels like working as long as it's very cabley. It's easy to replace one cable with another; the pattern is mostly there for stitch counts and neck and sleevehole instructions.
Next I decided to frog this teal pure cashmere sweater I knitted in 2016:
The wool shrank when washing - it came on a cone of oiled wool from the spinnery and you're supposed to wash it to deglaze it and fluff it up after it's been knitted, but it shrank slightly and failed to stretch back out to the size I wanted in the process. So it's now several inches shorter than I wanted, the sleeves are too short and the armholes are uncomfortably tight. I'm going to find a good pattern for fingering-weight yarn (this was sold as DK weight, but it's... not at all... it's about half that, although you could mayyyyybe use it as sport) that's got a boxy silhouette and an adequately loose sleeve. I'll probably redo the feather fan cable, but without any eyeletṣ. That level of transparency was inconvenient. Because the yarn doesn't felt, it was necessary to weave all the ends in extremely carefully to prevent accidental unravelling and it was so difficult to frog that I ended up giving it to Wax to do.
So while Wax was doing that, I dug out a half-finished project: a worsted green-and-white striped sweater I started making for Wax several years ago, before she declared she couldn't wear it after all because a worsted sweater was too warm for her. It was meant as a replacement for this earlier green-and-white cardigan I had knitted for her, which we had also frogged because the yarn was a 50/50 wool-cotton blend and the cotton in it ruined the drape and fit (cotton is heavier and isn't elastic like wool is, so it doesn't spring back and hold its shape in the same way). I finally picked this project by Rav user KiwiJennifer (2nd pic) as stripe inspiration after several years of going back and forth about how I wanted to space the stripes.
I also have Wax's Dessine-Moi Un Mouton by Maison Rililie waiting to be frogged. The texture of the stripes is beautiful, but Wax dislikes the fit and the neckline so much she won't wear it at all and it doesn't fit me. I'll be able to reknit it with the same textured stripes but a different body shape, I just have to pick a pattern to use; I'm thinking maybe Sibeal by Isabell Kraemer:
