49 posts tagged “knitting”

Maybe I should have practiced English-style knitting on human-sized needles rather than the blankie's broom handles? By the time I was done with the colorwork stripe in my hat, I was pretty good at it. :)

At any rate, the class was a great experience. The teacher was Jane Bigelow, who also is half of Kindred Spirits Yarn Studio; she lives in Pennsylvania but ends up teaching a lot in Michigan because her daughter/business partner lives in this area. We were each issued a copy of a hat pattern with our choice of four charts, and we got a demonstration of two things: carrying one strand of yarn in each hand, and catching the non-working color over long runs.

That's it. That's exactly what the books said you needed to do: "Carry a strand of yarn in each hand, as you would for one-color knitting, and knit Continental-style for your left-hand color and English-style for your right hand color." Somehow there's a world of difference between reading that on a page, and actually seeing it done - and even between seeing it done and watching with intent to learn. So I will quote (or paraphrase) Abby Franquemont again:

NEVER PASS UP AN OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE A CLASS FROM AN ACTUAL HUMAN. All the YouTube videos in the world can't make up for the interaction between student and teacher; it's an okay substitute if a teacher is unavailable or unaffordable, but the real thing is worlds away.

I am also reminded that nothing in knitting is actually hard.

The hat did suffer from a problem common to stranded colorwork: I made my floats just a wee tad too tight, especially on the first couple rows where I was still getting the hang of it, so it's not as stretchy as it would be if it were just plain knitting. It wouldn't fit me, so Daughter won the hat lottery: she was the first person to try it on who could actually wear it. (That's the beauty of hats. If you know enough people, who have enough children of various ages, it will fit someone.) It has since vanished into her bedroom, so photographs are unavailable at this time. It also barely made a dent in my leftover yarn from Mom's bag - the pattern says that three hats can be made from 4 balls of yarn. So maybe I'll try another one....later.

This also means I get to strike another item on my list:
1) Finish the Blackwork Dragon.
2) Finish the living room curtains
3) Make one useful piece of Irish Crochet work
4) Learn to knit in stranded colorwork
5) Make visible progress on Tradewinds
6) Finish Mo's art
7) Knit or crochet something useful from my own handspun.
8) Frame or get framed or otherwise finish at least three of the stack of cross-stitch finishes.
9) a Tux shadow-knit scarf for Hubby.

The blurb for the class I'm taking on Saturday mentions that they're teaching a two-handed method. And that made me go 'uh-oh'.

Normally, I knit Continental (and purl Cathy - I've never seen anyone else purl like I do, although it turns out that I purl much faster than I knit, but purling is not relevant to the problem at hand.) Holding the yarn in my left hand just always felt more comfortable to me, because I started out crocheting.

I figured "Most of the class will be knitting English and need to learn how to knit Continental for the class - it might be a good idea for me to practice English just a little."

I tried. I did. I looked up videos and everything.

And I CAN'T DO IT. I'm a fairly slow knitter to start out with, and this brings me to a screeching halt. I need to...drop the needles? Wrap the yarn manually? Then pull it all back through? All the while managing the yarn in my right hand? (And people knit this way on purpose, built-in inefficiency and all?) I feel clumsy, like I've never held a needle before. I'm not 100% certain I'm doing it right.

At least the author of knittinghelp.com says the English method is more forgiving of clumsy knitters - I might actually be ahead of someone who's very good at English but has never even thought about doing it the other way before.

Whew. Tux Scarf #1 is done. The final product is huge - 11" wide, probably about 5'8" long. I would say "never again", but I've already promised another one... On the other hand, while I'm sure the recipients will inspire awe and jealousy in their fellow geeks, they will be instructed to repeat the following phrase if someone actually asks for one: "Find your own knitter." At any rate, this one must be photographed and mailed, and yarn obtained for the next one.

In the meantime, I'm working on a baby blanket. When I last went yarn shopping, I said the words "baby blanket" to the shop owner, and she handed me a model blanket she had in the shop and said "Hug this." I did so, and said "Sold..." - this blankie is so soft and squishy and cuddly and huggable that I can only hope it's destined for woobie status. Even better, it's worked double-stranded on size 13 needles; I'll be astonished if it takes me more than a week.

The Jaywalkers are almost done. I think I need to work through two more changes in the color repeat, and then work the toe. Again, shouldn't take me more than a week to finish. (We've all heard that before, right?)

Compared with the #2 needles for the socks, or even the #6 needles for the scarf, the #13 needles for the blankie feel like knitting with broom handles. I've never worked on needles that big before. And I'm thinking I might need to transfer it onto a circ at some point to manage the weight, or maybe learn to knit with one needle in my armpit.

I've signed up for the Fair Isle Knitting class this weekend at FiberExpo - scratch another item off the To Do list! I'm hoping the yarn left over from Mom's bag will work; the gauge looks about right, but it might be a question of "Do I have enough left". I suppose I could weigh the skeins, and buy a new skein of whatever I call the "main color" if I've got less than half left. (Not that I want a hat in '70's colors...or maybe I do...or maybe Mom does, but I don't think she wears hats. But it's a learning project, right? Worst case I can add it to the Hat Stash, and threaten Daughter with it if she loses all her hats again this winter.)

Of note: In addition to Lion Brand putting out Sock-Ease, Patons has introduced "Stretch Socks" - it looks pretty comparable to Plymouth Sockotta, but it has elastic in it. The price works out to be a little, but not much, cheaper than Sockotta. How weird to get sock yarns at the megacraftmarts...

• I think I mentioned at some point in the past that knitting a sock always seems to go faster once you're past the heel. I'm going to stick by that statement - the individual rows on my first Jaywalker of the pair are going by zip, zip, zip. But I'm in a Knitting Black Hole or something, because the sock doesn't seem to be getting any longer. Maybe I cursed myself by trying it on? At any rate, I know the likely result of this is that tonight or tomorrow I'm going to knit one row and then discover that I should have started the toe two inches ago.

• I need to get a Spinsanity spindle of my own. Daughter picked one up at a fiber fair, and she's learning decently with it finally - but I tried it out last night, just to see what it could do. I took about 4 inches of roving from Daughter's ball of Crap Fiber, and turned it into about 6 yards of two-ply laceweight! - it came out similar in thickness to a #5 perle cotton. I do remember thinking at one point "Holy crap I'm spinning sewing thread"... I don't think I'm going to do anything with the yarn except maybe show it off, but my gosh I'm proud of it, and I'm almost tempted to cable it back on itself to see if it comes out sockweight.

• Hubby's grandparents are in the process of moving - they've sold their house to move into an "independent living facility", where Nana won't kill herself keeping up with the housework and there's assistance available to care for Boppa. So they've given the grandchildren a chance to claim any furniture or knickknacks they're interested in, and I told Nana, who also cross-stitches, "I'd like a couple of the samplers." She sent four - three she made herself (two traditional samplers and a really cool Santa piece), and one I wasn't expecting (mostly because she'd told me previously she wanted to hang onto it herself, but she'd stick my name on it for after her own eventual death): a family heirloom, worked by Hubby's great-great-great-grandmother in 1836, when she was 10. Some of the colors have faded, the linen has darkened, and little Martha A. Goldsberry didn't leave quite enough room for the motto so some of the letters are kind of jimmied in - but I appreciate the family heritage that goes with it as much as the art of the needlework. Pictures will follow as soon as we've found a good place to hang it (and the others).
  

1) I finished off the knitting needle case from last year - mostly; I lost the smaller piece of felt that was supposed to make decorative flowers, but the case is fine without it.

It came out bigger than I expected - I don't know why I thought it would come out about the same size as my crochet hook case, given that knitting needles are twice as long as crochet hooks. Silly me. But it's nice and case-y and I managed to stitch the pockets without the seam showing on the outside, so it's good.

2) I got one piece of cross-stitch framed. My "stitching buddies" had an outing to our LNS last month, and it turned out they were having a sale on framing, so I figured I'd get an estimate... The one time I'd gotten professional framing before, I was kind of disappointed with the results; Michael's takes a kind of hard-sell approach, and I ended up with a very nice frame with a piece of needlework in it. This experience was completely different: instead of setting up a stack of triple-mats and expensive molding and assuring me that it wouldn't look as nice unless I got that mat cut 5" wide all around - the clerk asked "So do you want a mat on it?" Yes, I did. I ended up with exactly the mat, glass, and molding I wanted, all in budget...I'll be going back to the LNS for more framing as the budget allows; I've got a couple more that I don't want to do myself. (And, yay, this puts me 1/3 of the way to one of my goals for the year...)

3) I've almost completed Daughter's socks - I'm past the gusset on the second sock, and for some reason socks always seem to go so much faster once I get past the heel - doesn't matter what kind of pattern I'm using, or whether I'm going toe-up or cuff-down. She's tried on the first one, and pronounced it "cool" and "comfy". (Meanwhile the socks I made last year for my niece the Sock Nazi have become her favorites - I think she likes that there aren't any seams and the length is just perfectly right.)

Jericho really likes Panda Cotton. I've gotten to practice my nostepinde skills on the leftovers from the first sock more than once. If I think of it in those terms the yarn-thievin' cat gets to live...

4) I've spun some more. I had quite a bit of fiber left from the class I took last fall - there was one length of a light-brown fiber with other colors in it that was used to demonstrate twist (you could see how the red fiber twisted against the brown, for example), and some light blue Romney (?). I spun the multi-colored one as an experiment, just wanting to see how it came out, and it was pretty - but kind of thick (DKish?) so I'm not going to ply it. For a single it's kind of overspun, but there's got to be something cute I could make with an overspun DKish single. :) I'm working my way through the blue now - I'm spinning it pretty fine, so there's turning out to be a lot of  yardage even though I'm sure there's not more than an ounce or two of fiber there.

My biggest problem with spinning? Consistency. I can tell by looking at my spindle that the blue stuff has gotten finer as I've gotten farther along.

I would show you pictures of all the pretties - but the camera is hiding. Boo, camera.

My mom and my sister and (indirectly) my father-in-law provided me with fibery goodness for Christmas...

My favorite thing so far? My sister got me a Knitzi. It's very simple: a wooden tube with a slit, and threaded ends, and caps that screw onto the threaded ends. The overall effect is that you can store your DPN WIP, with the project sticking out the slot, and not have to worry about losing a needle, random two-year-olds pulling all the needles out, the points poking a hole in your bag, or any of a small host of disasters that can result from just leaving it lying around.

Mom thinks it's cool that I'm learning to spin - it almost seems like she's more excited about it than I am. So from her - copies of Spinning in the Old Way and Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning, plus a pound of BFL top in a beautiful aqua color. I've already learned some useful tricks from Spinning in the Old Way - it may work better to hold the fiber steady with the left hand and pull fiber out of the bundle with the right, rather than holding the right hand steady and pulling the bundle away from the working fiber with the left, and a horizontal or angled draw technique that means you don't spend quite as much time reaching up over your head. (Which, sadly, doesn't change the fact that eventually the spindle hits the floor, and you have to stop and wind on.)

Also, Mom provided a Boye interchangeable needle kit - which I've heard is people's least favorite out of the three easily obtainable ones, but we'll see how it works.

FIL got me...cash, with which I got sock yarn. Daughter picked out a pink-and-green colorway in Panda Cotton that is in the process of becoming a pair of Monkeys, and I got myself a skein of Austermann Step in a colorway that I didn't love as much once I got it home as I did in the store, but will make a nice pair of Jaywalkers.

(One of the Monkeys is presently sticking out of the Knitzi. It's a fun knit, easy chart to memorize, produces a really cool pattern when all is said and done. Thumbs up.)

My mom and my sister and (indirectly) my father-in-law provided me with fibery goodness for Christmas...

My favorite thing so far? My sister got me a Knitzi. It's very simple: a wooden tube with a slit, and threaded ends, and caps that screw onto the threaded ends. The overall effect is that you can store your DPN WIP, with the project sticking out the slot, and not have to worry about losing a needle, random two-year-olds pulling all the needles out, the points poking a hole in your bag, or any of a small host of disasters that can result from just leaving it lying around.

Mom thinks it's cool that I'm learning to spin - it almost seems like she's more excited about it than I am. So from her - copies of Spinning in the Old Way and Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning, plus a pound of BFL top in a beautiful aqua color. I've already learned some useful tricks from Spinning in the Old Way - it may work better to hold the fiber steady with the left hand and pull fiber out of the bundle with the right, rather than holding the right hand steady and pulling the bundle away from the working fiber with the left, and a horizontal or angled draw technique that means you don't spend quite as much time reaching up over your head. (Which, sadly, doesn't change the fact that eventually the spindle hits the floor, and you have to stop and wind on.)

Also, Mom provided a Boye interchangeable needle kit - which I've heard is people's least favorite out of the three easily obtainable ones, but we'll see how it works.

FIL got me...cash, with which I got sock yarn. Daughter picked out a pink-and-green colorway in Panda Cotton that is in the process of becoming a pair of Monkeys, and I got myself a skein of Austermann Step in a colorway that I didn't love as much once I got it home as I did in the store, but will make a nice pair of Jaywalkers.

(One of the Monkeys is presently sticking out of the Knitzi. It's a fun knit, easy chart to memorize, produces a really cool pattern when all is said and done.)