A bit of crazy experimentation. A cozy blue web. Sculptural experimental knitting, Wearable art. This is truly a one of a kind piece. (It took way too long to hand knit, and I most likely will not be making another) It is something that I created to keep my hands busy when I was unable to sit at a loom.
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This piece was hand knit with a bulky super-soft wool blend. It can be worn as a scarf or shawl...or one can play around with its web like forms to drape and wrap it like a poncho of sorts.
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In the days before I began weaving I utilized a much simpler tool, the crochet hook. I created hundreds of hats using this same super-soft super-bulky wool blend. Though I rarely use this yarn anymore, I love it for its warmth and durability.
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This is another of the pieces that will be for sale soon in my shop at Jeannieortiz.com To be the first to know, sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already. https://tinyletter.com/NewTribeTextiles
Ok, so I had actually learned to knit once upon a time, quite some time ago... but had only made a few knit hats at the time. In the past couple of years I picked it up again, had to re-learn the basics of knitting and did some practice before trying to do a sweater.
This was made using a wide assortment of various yarns from out of a box that had been given to me at some point. Since the way I learn best is through trial and error (even when I learn from patterns first, it doesn't really stick in my head well until I play around with figuring out my own patterns) I decided to make a sweater using all these different yarns, without a real sweater pattern, and make it up as I go. (though I do have a decent concept of how one would put together a similarly-shaped hoodie using stretchy fabric... I discovered that the way the knit stretches makes some things not quite sit the same as it would if the same parts were made from, say, sweatshirt fabric)
Also, mostly it was to get a whole lotta practice in stitching a simple ribbed knit sort of thing.
See below for pics of process:
So, for starters: I used the biggest knitting needles I had, so as to work two sleeves at once, splitting yarn I was using into evenly-sized balls (or just working each sleeve from a different end of a skein)
For the cuffs, I wanted to make them with thumb holes and use the cuffs off an old pair of socks, so I cut partway down the sock cuffs and worked around them using a crochet hook, then made loops connecting from there to the knitting needles, and knitted the sleeves from the cuffs up. After getting the sleeves worked up to the shoulders, I concluded that I wanted them to be more roomy than I had originally estimated, so... I put a set of long shoelaces through the loops to transfer off of the knitting needles without casting off, and then started back at the thumb holes in the cuffs and knit the way up to what would later go under the shoulder.
Next I decided I wanted a little more coverage for the thumbs, not just holes, so I grabbed my crochet hook again and worked that a bit.
Below is a pic of what I was doing when attaching the sleeves... I put the loops from the tops of the sleeves onto as many knitting needles as was necessary (max of 4 because that's how many I have) (the white shoelace seen had been holding the loops from around the chest under the arms, off-loaded onto knitting needles as needed for the places to join the sleeves), and used the crochet hook to join the loops together, crochet-like (I didn't want to have cast off all the loops and then be using an additional bit of yarn to sew the pieces together, so I wanted to join them like this)
I forget whether I had done the majority of the sweater before or after the sleeves, but apparently I don't have in-progress pics of the main body of the sweater... but here's some pics of when I was doing the pockets: It may be more trouble, but in order to not have to count the rows, I worked both pockets at the same time (like I had done with the sleeves) (pulling from the inside of a ball for one pocket, and the outside of the same ball for the other) (multiple small balls, using leftovers) Did joining of the sides using crochet hook (in a somewhat haphazard way) as I went up knitting the pockets, and then did a normal basic casting off at the top of each pocket.
I remember now, when I had started, I had begun at the bottom of the sweater, and knit up to the point at which I would join the sleeves (under the arm) ...and then after that I knitted the rest of the way up to the neck, with decreases in a couple places going up the shoulders on the chest and back, and then went straight from the neck up into the sides and back of the hood to the top of it, all in one piece open up the front, and I stitched up the front afterwards. I don't recommend doing it that way, because I found that having the bottom of the hood merge straight into the shoulders, chest, and back of the sweater in this way, tends to stretch out too much at the neck and not hold the shape of the shoulders very well and pull the hood down. Also, unless you have big needles for circular knitting, even using big needles (not made for knitting in the round) results in a really annoying number of loops going back and forth between the needles (if you are making a big roomy sweater for an adult human, as opposed to for a child or a close-fitting sweater for a thin adult)
Also note, I don't like this way of making the hood; even after adding a wide, generous, and stretchy portion to feed a long shoelace through to make a drawstring front... the hood ended up not being as roomy as I wanted (and also the whole thing of the neck stretching and the shoulders being pulled down by the weight of the sleeves made the hood always want to slide back, too)
Still, the below pics show how it all looked (before I worked in the yarn ends) from various views... at this point I had thought the sweater was finished, but changed my mind later.
Here again, below, are the last pics (seen at the top of this post) of what I did after washing the sweater to see how much it would shrink in places (mostly the natural wool above the shoulders and across the top between sleeves) which in some ways made for a better fit there in this case (oddly, and unexpectedly), but... made the whole thing shorter. I wanted it longer, to be the sort of sweater that covers the lap (and rear) even while seated (and even if wearing multiple layers of shirts underneath) and so I grabbed some more miscellaneous yarn and knitted up a portion to attach to the bottom (not being able to properly knit in the round, I had to knit a long rectangle and then join it to the sweater bottom and in the front, and using different sizes of yarn kind of messed up the stitch counts... also I hate having to count the stitches. With small numbers for a pattern counting is no big thing, but I have trouble keeping the numbers in my head when I have to count up in the triple digits)
For the hood, I added another portion to the front to expand the hood. Not recommended to do it that way, but if you're working without a pattern and accidentally make the hood the wrong proportions, adding to the front can be a manageable fix.
Also, because of shrinking of some of the yarn, the pockets ended up higher up on the front than I had originally intended. Still works, but not how I want it.
All in all, though, I learned a lot about making a sweater (and how not to), ended up with something basically usable (though not great) and also a way to use up a bunch of random yarn in practicing my knitting.
