Spring/Summer Vogue Knits

My love affair with Vogue’s Knitting Magazine continues!  Every time I get a new (or at least new to me; the Local Yarn Shop, LYS for short, usually has a stack of year-old issues for $2.00, which I adore!) issue I flip through the pattern pictures like a kid at Christmas, imagining the feel of wools and silks and cottons, and how each piece would fit with my wardrobe.   I know I’m being exploited by pretty pictures and colors, but I can’t help it! 
Spring/Summer 2011 Issue

In April I flew out to Washington to visit my sister and catch her senior art show opening (side note: It was fabulous!  She did such cool stuff) which made me think back to my college recital days.  All performers expect flowers upon completion of a recital or show, but flowers generally die and get smelly, so I thought I’d knit her something pretty which would not die and smell.  I’d picked up 4 skeins of Katia’s Arc En Ciel in a variegated green (on sale!) at the LYS a few years ago, but hadn’t found the right project, until I found Brooke Nico’s tunic/cover-up (pg 57).  I knit it up really quickly and voila!  Instant art-show congratulatory present!

The yarn looks beautiful in the finished project and fit the style and gauge well (Arc En Ciel is a cotton/acrylic blend, so it even washes well!) but it was kind of finicky to work with.  The yarn strands are formed of knitted thread which means two things; 1. All ends unravel very quickly unless you knot each end (which technically should never be done in knitting) or draw the loose thread through the loops at the end of the yarn, and 2. No matter how careful you are in your knitting, or how blunt the ends of your needles are, you will snag individual threads in the yarn.  Also, knitting all the bobbles was kind of irritating (it is hard to Ktog7!) but they ended up looking really cool as an added texture on the finished garment.  I loved how the lace pattern (knit bottom up) was echoed through the tunic.  And best of all, this was one of those projects that looks better in real life than in the magazine! 

What could be better than this you ask?  Having another 4 skeins to knit myself one….

Spring/Summer Issue 2005

So I know this is an older issue, but it had some cute things in it which I have been waiting to knit for several years, not because I haven’t had the right yarn, but because the patterns have involved the most dreaded of all knitting techniques.  That’s right, techniques so dreaded that they are not actually knitting techniques at all: (dramatic pause) crochet.  I had tried using crochet before with disastrous results (creating terribly tight, tangled yarn messes instead of even fabric) and had generally given in to the knitters’ notion that crochet is an arcane form of yarn-witchery that uses too much yarn for the amount of material produced.  This is not to say that I hated crochet, one of my friends in college crocheted amazing projects (including a bright orange fuzzy hat I wear each time I run in sub-zero weather) but I had avoided it in as much of me doing it.  I figured that I would need to have someone physically show me how to do it, if I wanted to have any success. 

(Side Note: While my mother showed me how to knit in high school, I only half-remembered what she taught me a year later when I was in college, and then I made up the rest using internet knitting videos and trial and error, which is probably why I knit continental and she knits English.  My point is, having learned to knit this way, why would I freak out about teaching myself to crochet?  My answer: I am a pansy!)

The week before heading to Washington (after I knitted my sister’s fabulous tunic) I was looking for something fun and spring-y to knit for myself, and I came back across the lingerie-inspired spread  of knits, and Joan McGowan’s cropped jacket (pg 77).  In my stash I found 4 balls of lily’s Sugar ‘n Cream in natural with a couple balls of purple (I was at Michael’s the other day and have realized two things; there are now a ton of great colors for Sugar ‘n Cream that are really summery and fun and Michaels has cheaper cottons than Jo Ann’s) and decided that it was time to give crochet a second try. 

The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, and Sugar ‘n Cream calls itself a worsted weight, but I am wondering on what planet that’s true.  I ended up following the directions for XS (a size smaller than I am) and using need 8 needles instead of 9’s and my finished garment is still a little big for me (I’m trying to shrink it as we speak).  On the plus side, the yarn calls for really easy care, and although the label indicates that some of the colors might bleed, the purples I chose didn’t.

The jacket starts off simply enough, being knit flat in several pieces, with a simple lace pattern repeat on the back piece and sleeves.  I’ve started knitting left and right sides and sleeves simultaneously so that any weird tension-things I might have when I knit are in both pieces instead of in one and not the other.  Also, it helps me keep track of shaping, especially if I choose to alter anything from the pattern (I have the bad habit of slightly changing how the shaping is done, and not writing down what I’m doing so that when it comes time to knit side two or sleeve two or sock two, I have to work really hard to figure out what I did the first time).  Maybe I’ll try knitting the fronts and back pieces all at the same time on the next sweater I knit (it may depend on the needle lengths).

After finishing all the pieces, I blocked them to the size S measurements, which was when I realized that they were all slightly larger than I wanted them to be.  But, being me, I kind of hoped that they would work anyways, so when the pieces dried, I sewed them all together and forged ahead into crochet-land!  The trim that the jacked calls for involves the basic crochet stitches chain, single crochet and double crochet.  As a knitter, all of these were surprisingly easy to do!  I went to YouTube and found these great tutorials by theknitwitch, which I practiced with on scrap yarn a couple times until I got the hang of the different stitches. (Single Crochet, Double Crochet, and chain).  I would highly recommend that anyone having trouble with any technique check for video tutorials (or a knitter friend, but YouTube is there at 3 am when you can’t sleep and shouldn’t be knitting anyways!) before giving up!  My only complaint about the crochet edging is that because of the different colors, you end up with a lot of loose threads to finish.  More loose threads than a pair of gloves.  More than in a Fair Isle sweater.  Maybe more than in an intarsia sweater!  In fact, it may have actually taken longer to finish all the loose threads, than learn to crochet, crochet the edging and sew on the button closure.  Freaking threads.