Icarus

Fol­low­ing the failed attempt at mak­ing this sum­mer top, I frogged the project and used the yarn (Patons Hemp­ster) to make the Icarus tank from Knit­ty issue 47. 

I bought this yarn at my local yarn shop, The Yarn Guy, last sum­mer, and had since frogged twice, but it’s hard­ly split­ting, so it’s a nice a durable one. The Yarn Guy is def­i­nite­ly oper­at­ing online and has a huge amount of stock, real­ly friend­ly and help­ful folks, so please check them out if you’re look­ing to sup­port inde­pen­dent yarn shops in the Toron­to area.

I made some mod­i­fi­ca­tions so that it was knit­ted flat in two pieces, with lace pat­tern on the shoul­ders. Not that I did­n’t have the cir­cu­lars to knit in the round, but knit­ting flat just feels more straight­for­ward to me at the moment, some­thing I have the men­tal capac­i­ty to handle.

The rolling of stock­inette stitch at the hems blocked out sur­pris­ing­ly well. I’m hop­ing it won’t roll back much after wear­ing and washing. 

The mod­i­fi­ca­tions I made is for a boxy-shape top that is cropped length. It is worked flat and seamed at the shoul­ders and sides. It mea­sures 36″ around. The yarn is DK weight and I used 4.5 mm needles.

Back:

CO 86. 

Knit in stock­inette for 4 inch­es, then begin lace pat­ter as indi­cat­ed in the Icarus tank pat­tern for work­ing flat.

(It may be help­ful to note that it’s actu­al­ly eas­i­er to read from the chart than the writ­ten pat­tern, as there are a few errors in the writ­ten one and can cause some confusion.)

Repeat lace pat­tern until piece is 18″, BO.

Front:

CO 86.

Knit in stock­inette until piece is 15.25″. 

Work lace pat­tern row 14–19, but reversed and split up over the two shoul­ders, as follows.

On row 14, p 6, pm, p 5, pm, p till there are 11 stitch­es left, pm, p 5, pm, p 6.

On row 15, begin with the 10th stitch in the chart, and k both the 10th and 11th stitch­es (i.e. omit the cable twist on this row and row 18), then fol­low the rest of the chart. k till mark­er, then work stitch­es 1–11 of lace chart (omit­ting the cable twist in stitch­es 10 and 11).

Work the rest of the lace pat­tern as above rearrange­ment of stitches.

In the sec­ond repeat of the lace pat­tern, start shap­ing neck at the same time.

On row 14, p 28, BO 30, place the 28 stitch­es on spare cable nee­dle, then p the remain­ing 28 stitches.

While fol­low­ing the lace pat­tern (and incor­po­rat­ing 5 more stitch­es toward the cen­tre every time the pat­tern repeats), k2tog on the neck edge of each RS row sev­en times. The last RS row will be row 15. BO 21 stitches.

With RS fac­ing, attach yarn to the oth­er neck edge. ssk, then work the rest of the row with lace pat­tern row 15. 

While fol­low­ing the lace pat­tern, ssk on the neck edge of each RS row six more times. The last RS row will be row 15. BO 21 stitches. 

Block the pieces. Sew togeth­er shoul­der and side seams.

Hope every­one is keep­ing well, and find­ing some knitting/crocheting/creative projects that sus­tain a sense of well-being at the moment.

reusable mask pattern

Had a vir­tu­al hang­out with my fam­i­ly fol­low­ing the pub­lic health announce­ment rec­om­mend­ing the wear­ing of home­made face masks when in sit­u­a­tions where prop­er dis­tanc­ing can’t be eas­i­ly followed. 

My mom said, why don’t you keep your­self busy and make some masks?

When we moved last spring I donat­ed all of my fab­ric stash to the art ther­a­py school for their pup­petry course, because I was try­ing to min­i­mize the amount of things we had to move. I kept, how­ev­er, a piece of fab­ric that was gift­ed to me along with some tobac­co from a woman who was part of an expres­sive arts group that I co-facil­i­tat­ed 7 or 8 years ago. Over the years I nev­er found a project that was worth using this gift. I also had anoth­er piece of vin­tage flo­ral cot­ton that I bought from Etsy and was sav­ing for mak­ing a dress (that I would nev­er wear any­way). So, mirac­u­lous­ly, I had fab­ric to work with.

Mike found this video tuto­r­i­al, which is by far the best one I’ve seen. It’s straight­for­ward, easy, and has fil­ter pocket.

The liv­ing room/corner now a mask-mak­ing station.

So I’ve been mak­ing them for friends and fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly those who are still work­ing in essen­tial ser­vice roles. The gift that keeps on giv­ing. Final­ly a project worth using the fab­ric for.

It’s a good pat­tern that works well, form-fit­ting to the face.

I did­n’t use elas­tics for the ears because I don’t have enough of it, and I was read­ing that elas­tics irri­tate the ears any­way. So I cro­cheted the ties.

Run­ning out of fab­ric soon, ordered some from a local yarn store, eweknit. If you’re in the Toron­to area and want to buy fab­rics, please con­sid­er sup­port­ing them — they’re offer­ing 20% off till end of April and free ship­ping over $75.

If you don’t have a sewing machine, the CDC also has how-to’s for no-sew ver­sions using a t‑shirt or a ban­dan­na and some hair elastics. 

If you do sew and want to sup­port front­line work­ers in Ontario, masks can be donat­ed to the Michael Gar­ron Hos­pi­tal, Tril­li­um Health Part­ners, this Face­book group that coor­di­nates mask orders and dis­tri­b­u­tion, Sew for TO, and The Sewing Army. (There may be oth­ers, these are the ones I know of.) 

Hope you’re stay­ing well as you’re read­ing this, and please wear a mask if you must go out so as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble can stay well too.

 

 

stay home project

I’m still here. Things have slowed down a lot more for me. That is a sign of privilege.  I work at home, with flex­i­ble sched­ule, unstruc­tured time, gen­er­ous dead­lines. To me that’s a lot more dif­fi­cult than hav­ing a fast-paced job and mul­ti­ple projects at once because now my mind has too much space to think. But I don’t have to work in the front­line, my work isn’t essen­tial, I don’t have to risk expo­sure, so I can’t complain.  

I kept see­ing the cov­er of Inside Cro­chet issue 123 on my Insta­gram feed. I was real­ly intrigued by the lace pat­tern jux­ta­posed to rows of dou­ble-cro­chet stitch­es. And I had skeins of Patons Hemp­ster that I frogged from anoth­er project. So I down­loaded the mag­a­zine and made an effort to work on it every day.

I knew from the mea­sure­ments that it was going to be a very over-sized fit. But I could­n’t tell until I put it together –

It was REALLY big on me. Like I made a table cloth and wore it.

I even went down a hook size (4 mm hook instead of 4.5 mm as called for in the pat­tern). I’m on the small scale of humans but I sure­ly am not that small. I don’t know if I messed up the gauge or if the mod­el on the cov­er is a lot taller or wider in the shoul­ders? I still real­ly like the way the lace pat­tern is incor­po­rat­ed. So I’m going to scale down on both the yarn weight and the hook size and see if it helps. Cur­rent­ly wait­ing for more yarn to arrive in the mail so, to be continued.

In the mean­while, pass­ing on some cat love from a friend who made sure I got lots of screen time with her cat.

That look says, “no work, all cat today.”

Wish­ing you good health, safe­ty, and peace of mind today. Take good care.

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