I cranked out a cardigan last week. Yes, week. Yes, you heard me. Week.

I have great aspirations and dreams about being a garment knitter. Turning out Norwegian ski sweaters, cardigans from my growing collection of vintage patterns, lightweight summery tops, having a whole closet full of wooly handknits. However in my dreams, I am apparently a much more patient knitter with a much long attention span than real life. In real life, there have been plenty of false starts. Yarn bought, patterns started, projects ditched.

But I’ve officially conquered my first real garment.

I way daydreaming about knitting recently, and decided that a bulky weight sweater would be a good starting point to cut my teeth on garment knitting. I decided I wanted to knit it in Lamb’s Pride Bulky. Great colors and I love the halo from the 15% mohair content. I had a weight, I had a yarn. I plugged cardigans + bulky into Ravelry’s advanced search. And what was the first result? A cardigan in Lamb’s Pride Bulky, in colors I like and wear frequently, and in a book I own, Stitch n’ Bitch Nation. Cardigan kismet?

Why yes, I do believe so!

I ordered the yarn from Kaleidoscope Yarns, and Mel bought me the beautiful cranberry colored glass (shell?) buttons from my new favorite local yarn shop, Loopy. I made almost no alterations to the pattern, except one. The pattern called for garter stitch around the neck, bottom edge and cuffs. Not only am I not a really big fan of garter stitch as an edging, in my personal experience it wants to flip up and just generally look kind of funky. So I omitted the fair isle chart for the sleeves and instead did all the edging in 2x2 ribbing on slightly smaller needles. I’m really glad I did that because I think it looks grand.

It’s warm, it’s cozy, it’s soft, hell, it even looks good from the inside.

And remember that week thing? I started it on Monday, February 16th and was wearing it Saturday night February 21st when we went out with friends. This literally flew off my needles. At 3 stitches an inch, I guess that’ll happen.

But don’t think this was easy going the entire way. I had my first sleeve finished and was starting the second when I did a little calculation. Almost one skein of black per sleeve, up to the point where it connected with the body. Yes, that would be two skeins for two sleeves.

Out of a total of five.

As I started the body, I didn’t think I could possibly eek out the entire body, yoke and button bands with the three remaining skeins of black. I contemplated calling up Kaleidoscope and seeing if they had another skein in my dye lot. I had only just purchased the yarn, so I thought the odds were fairly good they’d have one. I usually over buy rather than under buy for a project, so I’m not sure why I took five skeins of black at face value, especially considering I was adding ribbing, which eats up more yarn. Nevertheless, I threw caution to the wind and proceeded on.

Since I didn’t start this entry off cursing about how I ran out of yarn, suffice it to say I didn’t.

But want to know how much black I did have left?

I won’t expect that luck next time. Enough said.

It’s cold in Chicago, but not too cold to wear a snappy beret, should you happen to have one. And since I finished my Kaura, I do indeed happen to have one.

This pattern was a lot easier than it looks like. I didn’t even do anything to convert it to a beret from a hat other than block it over a dinner plate!

While I admit that a good portion of my wardrobe includes black, I’ve never been one for black winter wear. Yes, my Insane Cold Level and Only Miserably Cold Level winter coats are both black, but I always have colorful accessories. Fortunately, I recently found a fantastic red plaid vintage Pendleton coat on eBay, which now fits the bill for a Pretty Cold But Not Going To Kill Me Level coat. That, my Lace Ribbon Scarf and my Kaura beret make quite a statement during a drab Chicago winter!

You know you think about knitting too much when, every time you see someone on public transit untangling their iPod headphones, your heart skips a beat because you think it’s yarn. And it’s always a disappointment when you see them stick the “yarn” in their ears instead of between two knitting needles.

Of course, you could actually knit with iPod headphones. Not that I would know.

I knit on the bus in the morning. Door-to-door, my morning commute takes about 40 minutes. I knit for about 30 of those minutes, or about until my bus gets off of Lake Shore Drive. (Unlike what the Wikipedia entry claims, I would argue that few locals abbreviate it to LSD. I call it Lake Shore Drive or the Drive. I won’t even do it in a text message. Who wants to tell someone “I’m on LSD”?)

I have a little system worked out that makes knitting easy. However, my system only works if I get an inside seat, which is one of the reasons I usually only knit in the morning. I generally have to spend my afternoon commute getting bumped in an outside seat, and it’s probably best for everyone involved that I’m not holding sharp pointy sticks when elbows and backbacks start flying.

I keep my project in a ziploc bag, which I smoosh between my inside leg and the side of the bus. I then open the smallest of the zippered pockets on my company backpack and shove my folded pattern inside (this also explains why half the patterns in my pattern binder look like someone chewed through them). I like to use mechanical pencils with clips, so I clip my pencil to the inside of the ziploc. Then off I go with my knitting, elbows locked so as not to disturb the person next to me. Why I bother with this I’m not sure, as most people are perfectly happy to overlap my body with their leg, arm, newspaper, or an endless cylce of each. (Clearly, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a more considerate person than most of my commuting non-knitting counterparts.)

My little system looks like this.

That’s sock number two of Gentleman’s Fancy Socks from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks: New Twists on Classic Patterns. The pattern called for casting on something like 90 stitches on microscopic needles. Okay, perhaps not so bad, but it was a laughable amount of stitches to me. Instead, I’m working them on size 2.5mm needles with 68 stitches cast on. That is working out quite well to accomodate Mel’s sturdy calves. The pattern is flying along and I’m about 75% finished. I’m using Trekking Hand Art, and it’s actually my first time knitting with a nylon-blend sock yarn. It’s not as soft to knit with as pure merino, but it’s working up very nicely and I think should make for fairly sturdy socks. Of course, I’m still going to wash them by hand. (Yes, you heard me right. I actually wash superwash by hand. Go ahead and laugh, I can take it.)

Elsewhere in my knitting, the Entangled Stitches gloves are not exactly on hold, but I have been having a hell of a time cabling using a DPN as a cable needle. A darning needle has proved to be a better tool, but still not perfect. So instead, I’m gleefully waiting on a custom order. I’ll discuss that more once it’s completed, but if all works well I will be the proud recipient of some spiffy hand-cast cable needles!

On the eve of sending off my first Ravelry swap package, I re-discovered one of the best postcards I’ve ever received.

This was from a yarn trade partner sometime last year. Look at this saucy little girl! I have no idea what she’s knitting, but it’s wider and shorter on both sides and long in the middle. I’m thinking it’s going to end up doll sweater. I also love that she knits English style, like I do.

But more importantly, this bitchy little knittin’ girl reminds me of something. Minus the knitting, the sentiment expressed in this card is pretty much me, about age 6 or so.

It’s about then that kids learn about the mythical “cooties” and why suddenly everyone of the opposite sex has them. I was no obviously different.

Sometime around that age, my mom, who was and is rooted in various traditional music scenes, was hosting a Norwegian Swedish Lapland (I’ve been corrected by my mom) band at our house for a week or so. Prior to their visit, I clearly had learned about said cooties, and was vehemently declaring the superiority of girls versus boys to anyone who would listen.

When the band returned home, one of the men knit both my mom and I a pair of mittens. Similar to Selbu style mittens from indestructible wool (none of that soft and fluffy merino here!). Gorgeous intricate patterns. Wonderful, thoughtful mittens. When I was older, we had a small cabinet at the bottom of the stairs by the front door of our house. Inside was enough umbrellas to outfit half of London and a couple of baskets of hats, scarves, gloves and mittens. I remember on many occasions pulling out my mom’s mittens and admiring them. (This from the girl who didn’t remember that her own mother used to knit when she was a kid. Go figure.)

And what of my mittens, you ask?

Adorable. But that’s not all. The palms hide a little secret.

And under those tiny thumbs?

Cooties, be damned!

When I was home over Christmas I took these photos. I’m considering the possibility of one day re-creating these mittens for my adult sized hands. I think if I started with a basic Selbu mitten shape, I could probably chart out the stranded pattern myself. I don’t think it would be that hard. (Famous last words.) Perhaps it’s an excuse to buy Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition? Do I really need an excuse to buy a knitting book? I know the actual mittens involve more than two colors, and from what I understand, Selbu is traditionally black on white (or at least one color on white), and also Norwegian, so perhaps these mittens are a different style. I guess it’s also an excuse to do some research!