Latvian News

Hello Zimmermaniacs!

I have two orders of business: a picture of a new(ish) finished project and a proposal for you all. They're all very much "in the spirit of EZ," though I realize that they they're not exactly EZ designs or concepts.

A picture:

This is Joyce Williams' "Morocco" sweater/jacket from her book "Latvian Dreams," (2000, Schoolhouse Press). It took me far too long to knit (my own fault, I was working on other things, and I knit one of the sleeves to almost full length before I realized that I was decreasing at the wrong rate.) But it's a great sweater at any rate.

In an unusual for me, I basically followed this pattern from the book. Well, I changed the neck shaping a lot, added a collar, and I did the hem in my own way--at the very end and in one long mitered piece--but aside from that it was very by the book.

The yarn is "Old Mill Yarn's" Domy Heather which I knit at 9.5 stitches per inch. It's finer than jumper weight shetland, which is nice because I'm skinny, and this way the sweater is just "comfortably oversized" rather than obscenely oversized.

And now the announcement:

I'm designing and knitting a new sweater. This isn't news in and of itself, but rather than doing so in isolation, I'm sharing the pattern with the internet (that means you!) as I go. The sweater uses 3 charts (and variations thereon) of the more than 250 different charts from the Latvian Dreams book, and I'm writing up instructions including a bunch of different design and style options as I knit. The current version of the chart and design resources is here and I'm blogging the pattern as I go in a special tag of my blog, tychoish.com. There's a pattern and a group on ravelry if that's more your speed.

There's no set start date, but the more distance lead you let me get the better you'll be able to learn from my mistakes. I'm using the same yarn that I used for the Morocco sweater, but you could use whatever you have on hand In proper EZ style, the key number for the sweater is 340 and it's possible to tweak things to get a full range of sizes.

I'd love to have you (all) join me on this project and have you tell your friends about the project if you think they might be interested. This is going to be really fun, and I can't wait to see what you all come up with.

"Knit on, with hope and confidence..."

Seamless Raglan and EPS

This is EZ's basic raglan recipe, sized for a 5 year-old. I made very few modifications, but tried to add lots of kid-friendly features like the shortened sleeves, pockets, zipper, and hood. The front and hood were both steeked so the whole thing was knitted entirely in the round. If you want to see more I put up lots of pictures, and explanations, on Flickr.

This was the first time I've knitted a hood and it really got me thinking about how to apply EPS to hoods. This is what I've come up with and I'd appreciate any input other have.

The Tomten. This is the only EZ design I know of that incorporates a hood. For the tomten hood she instructs you take 1/14 of your 100% and do that many increase pairs. That means you are adding 1/7 of your 100%, which is about 14.3%.

With the tomten the neck has 50% of the body sts, and you add 14% for a total of about 64% for the hood. This fits a child really well. However, Tomtens knitted for adults have been known to end up with giant hoods or need serious modification.

EPS for the neck opening is 50% for a child -as in the Tomten- and 40% for an adult. Should we then infer that a child's hood should be knit on 64% and an adult's on 54% ???

What do you think?

First Twin Fishtrap

Last night I finished up the first twin’s birthday Fishtrap. I’m satisfied with how it turned out, but I can’t say I love it. I’m unhappy with the fuzziness of the yarn and how it blurred stitch definition. Harumph.

However, it is still a perfectly serviceable sweater. And I’m sure the recipient will never notice all the things I don’t like about it. And if he gets some good wear out of it, the time spent will not be in vain.

The idea came from the January Fishtrap sweater. This was sized down with EPS to fit a 4 year old and knit seamlessly. The shoulders are done with a combination of raglan and saddle shouder shaping. The back of the yoke follows normal raglan shaping. The front does too until the raglan lines met the Fishtrap pattern. I decided not to deal with the mental wrestling of chart-eating stitchs. When the raglan lines intersected the chart I started sleeve-eating decreases every round, as in a saddle shoulder sweater.

I think it worked out ok, but should have switched back to raglan shaping before the saddle shoulder shaping ate too much of the sleeve. As it is the Fishtrap design goes nearly to the center of the shoulder and you can see that the neck doesn’t lay too flat. Not ideal, but it should be fine when on the kid.

Now I’m going to relax and knit socks before I tackle the second [wiser, more experienced] Fishtrap.

EPS Princess in Action

Thank you all for the kind words about the Princess dress. I'm happy to say that my niece likes it too. I'm guessing the dress is about a size 6, so a little large, but it'll last longer that way!

An EZ Princess

My EPS dress is done!! I'll be delivering it to my princess-obsessed niece on Monday. I've posted the first half of the formula on my blog, and I'll post the rest in the next day or two.

I must say an enormous thank you to Ms. Zimmermann and her believe that any knitter can design their own work. Thank you for giving us such a great foundation in knitting principles EZ!! I could not have attempted this without you!

The EZ Way Out

I fell in love with this dress, but discovered that nowhere in my backwater little town can one purchase Interweave Knits. How ridiculous is that? EZ came to my rescue though and the top-down-raglan-using-EPS version is coming along quite nicely.

Lots more on my blog.

EPS, or YPS

There have been a lot of questions here lately about what percentages to use for sleeves in the EPS system. I really like some of the EZ sweater constructions, and I have made a few of the sweaters (one of them is blocking right now- I'll post a picture sometime soon), but I use my own measurements (or percentages). I would like to suggest that no two people are exactly the same size, and everyone prefers a different fit in their sweaters. Therefore, to make a sweater that fits YOU perfectly, use your percentage system, or YPS. I suggest using a sweater that, in your opinion, fits YOU perfectly to make three measurements. The body, the cuff, and the upper arm. We'll call your body measurement B, your cuff measurement C, and your upper arm measurement U. Measure carefully, and write down your three measurements:

B__________


C__________


U__________

Now pull out your calculator, and make these two calculations:

C/B * 100 = the percentage of stitches that you should have at the cuff of your sweater

U/B * 100 = the percentage of stitches that you should have at the upper arm of your sweater.

Example (numbers are totally made up):

Your sweater's cuffs are 9 inches around (C=9)
Your sweater's upper arm is 20 inches around (U=20)
Your sweater's body is 36 inches around (B=36)

C/B *100 = 9/36 * 100 = 25%
U/B *100 = 20/36 *100 = 55.6%

Use these percentages in EZ's sweater patterns to get a sweater that fits the way you want it to fit.