Week 5 of the Knit Red KAL!

Just a quick update this week! One week to go and we have another nearly finished hoodie! Sara, who has just returned to work part-time at JBW (YEAH!), has been gracious enough to allow me to photograph her progress as she's participated in the KAL.

Our swatches! 

For those of you who follow us on Facebook, you may remember this photo of our swatches (left). Sara chose to use MadelineTosh Vintage in the Badlands colorway. She alternated three hanks throughout the body because they didn't match as well as she would have liked.

The staggering made all the difference!

Here's her sweater with the body nearly completed (right)! This was her second try. Working with hand-dyed colorways can pose to be difficult and Sara struggled a bit to get the colors to come out just right the first try. She opted to stagger the spots where she changed from one ball to the next, which really made a big difference and really helped mix the colors well.

Here's a little photo collection of Sara's Badlands A-line Hoodie!

This is how a top down sweater's raglan line should look, with that nice elongated stitch! 

The back view shows off those beautiful raglan lines!

Sara opted to do a three needle bind off for the top of her hood. The photo to the left shows how it looks on the right side. The photo to the right shows how nice and tidy the bind off is on the inside of the hood. This is a great join that is very sturdy and brings some structure to the soft drape of the yarn. Never done a three needle bind off? Have no fear! We have an instructional for that! 

Sara! 

And last, but not least, here is Sara modeling her gorgeous A-line Hoodie! As you can see she made some modifications. Instead of increasing for the A-line shape she did waist decreases and then increased again for the hips. She also added buttonholes all the way down the front and made the sleeves three quarters length. Here's how she did the waist shaping:

• Decreased 4stitches every 23 rows, 3 times (12 stitches decreased)
• After the last decrease round, work even for 13 rows
• After working even for 7 rows, increase 4 stitches every 7 rows, 5 times (20 stitches increased)

She still hasn't decided on buttons so we fastened it with a shawl pin. We'll have to wait and see what buttons she chooses, but based on her past choices I know they will be fabulous!

We have a few more A-line Hoodie's coming along beautifully - I can't want to see more finished projects! You're welcome to stop by our Facebook wall and share a picture of your finished A-line! 

Stay tuned, Diane and I will be filming a couple more videos! 

Happy knitting!

Terry

Ready, set, GO! It's time for a Knit-A-Long!

This time it's a Knit Red KAL! We will be knitting Diane Soucy's (of Knitting Pure & Simple) pattern from the Knit Red book, the A-Line Hoodie. We chose this pattern not only because it is one of our favorites from the book (although I think they are all favorites!) it also has the highest number of favorites on Ravelry of all the Knit Red patterns!

Diane Soucy's A-Line Hoodie

We've been receiving such positive feedback on using Diane's pattern! We are so excited that everyone loves the A-Line Hoodie as much as we do because Diane is one of the people who helped inspire Laura to start Jimmy Beans Wool; which we're sure you read about in our Hand Dyed catalog. What's even more exciting is that Diane is going to be participating in this KAL right along with us by filming some videos with me (Terry) that will take you through the steps of how to knit a top down sweater! We'll learn things like how to decide what size to make, the importance of gauge and how to find it, how to cast on and what are all those markers for? And, the big one I know you all want to know because it was a much discussed issued in our last KAL, how to pick up stitches for the underarms without holes!

The KAL will start on Monday, August 6th and run for six weeks until Monday, September 17th.

We'll be blogging each week right here on the Stitch Red blog and the JBW blog, as well as having an on-going discussion, camaraderie, and support in threads on both Ravelry groups- Jimmy Beans Wool and Stitch Red.

For our local customers, I'm willing to hold KAL Knit Nights on Tuesday evenings every other week if enough interested people respond to this blog post by Sunday, August 5th.

The A-Line Hoodie pattern can be found on page 22 of Knit Red by Laura Zander. The pattern calls for Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street Collection, Cashmere Fleur de Lys in color #416.

The Cashmere Fleur de Lys is an absolutely lovely and soft yarn and as always you are welcome to use any worsted weight yarn that you want. If you have questions on if a yarn is worsted weight check the yarn band for the suggested gauge. A suggested gauge of 18-20 stitches to 4" (4.5-5 stitches per inch) on a US 7-8 needle will work for this pattern.

My swatch - it feels wonderful knit up!

Personally, I'm going to be sticking with the Stitch Red color theme and making my sweater out of Berroco Vintage in their Stitch Red color, #5150 Berries. I'm choosing this yarn because I'm not always as gentle with my hand knits as I should be and I want this sweater to be an everyday sweater that is durable and easy to care for. In addition, I don't look my best in blue-reds so I need to stick with orange-reds or reds with a hint of black and the Berroco Vintage fits the bill for me in every way.

I would also like to suggest a few other Stitch Red colors you can consider (if you'd like to join me in supporting Stitch Red):

Encore Worsted #475
Fantasy Naturale #3611
Shepherd Worsted - Bold Red
Shepherd Worsted June '12 LLE - Stitch Red (we still have some!)
Merino 5 #1012
Bamboo Ewe #5280
Red Heart Soft Solid Color #5142

I've already made a swatch for my sweater with the Berroco Vintage on US 8 and US 9 Knitter's Pride Cubics and after washing my swatch I got gauge perfectly on US size 8.

So choose your yarn and get swatching! This is going to be so much fun!

Terry

What are you doing August 6th?

We hope you'll be joining us for a Knit Red KAL! Pick up your needles and Cashmere Fleur de Lys (or any worsted weight Stitch Red yarn, Terry is using Berroco Vintage) to furiously knit with us as we begin this Stitch Red inspired KAL.We couldn't think of a better way to start sticking it to heart disease one stitch at a time!

The pattern we've chosen is not only one of our favorites, but you have given it the highest number of favorites on Ravelry: Diane Soucy's A-Line Hoodie! The two-button closure and draw-string hood make this classic design more modern for women on the go. It's the perfect flow-y sweater to slip into on cold afternoons. When we received our Knit Red trunk show at the beginning of June, Casey slipped into this cozy knit and wouldn't take it off! It quickly became a shop favorite, not to mention it has over 515 likes on Ravelry!

It was a tough choice; we had to choose from Ysolda's Slip Stitch Beret, Martin Storey's Lace Heart Cardi and Kit Hutchin's Reversible Wristers. In the end Diane's simple, yet sophisticated top down design won because we could see so many knitters falling in love with the design just as we did! 

This won't be your typical KAL, in fact, we have Diane Soucy in our store preparing to film some helpful videos about her A-Line Hoodie design! We are so thrilled to be working with Diane on instructional videos on how to do various parts of top down sweaters.

Be sure to stay tuned for KAL details! We will be posting right here and on our Jimmy Beans Wool blog as well.