Before y’all abandon me

I swear I have been knitting, although judging from the blog you wouldn’t think so. It’s just that this is the Big Summer of Gift Knitting, and gifts can’t be blogged about until they’ve been opened up.

This weekend I finished sewing in the zipper on my dad’s birthday present and it’s in the mail as we speak. I don’t know if it’s normal, but it took me over 4 hours to do (it’s 60 cm/24” long). Am I the slowest seamstress in the whole wide world?

What made it a little bit more difficult was that now the temperatures here have reached the intolerable upper 20’s (about 80 Fahrenheit) and my fingers were sweaty and slippery. Since we want to keep the heat inside for the main part of the year, apartments become like sauna’s during the summertime, just without a nice cool lake to jump into when it gets too hot. So I’ve been sitting and perspiring and it surely didn’t help that my dad’s present is made of bulky 100% wool (Álafoss lopi) :-)

Now that I’ve finished this project I can continue knitting my mom’s cardigan. I’m using a pattern from a Danish book I found in a bookstore in Reykjavík, Vintagestrik & fashion by Sus Gebhard. The pattern name is Cykeltrøje, or Bicycle sweater. Here’s a photo

There seems to be a curse on my mom’s sweater. As you might remember I’ve already knit her one which didn’t fit, and this one is wanting to get ripped over and over. First I knit half of the front but I didn’t slip the edge stitches so the edge looked really ugly. I decided to rip it and start over doing the whole body in one piece, because I don’t particularly like seams on knitted fabric, especially when it’s bulky like this one. This time I remembered to slip the edge stitches, although on one side they’re twisted on the first few rows. I still think the edge is ugly, the slipped stitches are too loose and open.

slipped edge stitches, slipped and twisted edge stitches

Normally I have no fear of ripping if there’s something I’m not perfectly happy about and for a short while I considered starting over again and twist the edge stitches but really, I’ve done almost a third of the body and it would be so sad to have to start all over again. Now I’m thinking that before I take a decision to rip, I’ll get a fat crochet needle and see if I can make a neat border to save me.

There are also some nice glove patterns in this book and one I’ll definitely knit soon but with some modifications. Inexplicably, all the gloves in the book are knitted flat, isn’t that the strangest thing? If there ever was a good reason to knit in the round, it’s with gloves.

I’m a bit obsessed by gloves at the moment. It all started when Kris posted a picture of the beautiful lace gloves she made, and I felt like my life could not be complete without a pair of pretty gloves. I found a nice pattern in Handknit Holidays and immediately cast on. I took it with me to Iceland, and that’s when all the trouble started. When I began knitting the fingers, it quickly became clear that although the glove fitted my hand nicely, the fingers were much too small. I did some tweaking and stitch adding to get them to fit but when I had finished the four and began with the thumb I naturally realized that doh, if the other fingers were to small, the thumb is going to be too small as well, and it’s not really possible to fix that easily. So I had to rip back to the cuff and rethink. In the end I decided to make a thumb gusset and so after a lot of knitting on a small thing, I finally had a well fitting glove.

Now it is eagerly awaiting its sibling the poor thing. But first, more gifts.