knitabit

On injured reserve

Here's a dumb thing:

I doubt this picture will lanch a second career as a hand model.

I was cutting into an onion last night and caught my finger. Really, it's not much more than a paper cut - it's very shallow but unfortunately big enough to need that bandaid on to keep the flap of skin from flapping around. I tried to knit last night but the bandaid just got in the way. So I vegged on the couch and watched a movie. I deserved the break - the last few days have been just too hectic. Don' know if I'll be back in action again tonight or not.

Tuesday night, I was able to combine a couple of shorter cords from the Denise's needle system so that I could continue to limp along on the sweater. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before disaster strikes again, and I'm hoping to find a way to get to a yarn store before Monday. Although it's a moot point with the bandaid right now. I'm feeling like the Fort Collins store is what I'm in the mood for. Their selection is eclectic (I like that word) and the store feels disorganized and for some reason, that gels with my current state of mind.

Peeved

Yes, I'm a bit peeved this morning. Let me explain:

Over the weekend, I started on a sweater for my husband. It's going to be very simple - a knit-in-the-round crew neck sweater. I'm starting from the bottom up, not really using a pattern but following some different 'percentage system' (Elizabeth Zimmerman) types of guidelines gleaned from a couple of different sources.

The shoulders will be patterned after a Lands End 'Drifter' sweater that I have. Here's the look I'm going for:

You can see that it's partially a raglan and partially a saddle shoulder. I think it hangs very nicely and would suit my husband's broad shoulder physique very well.

I used a kitchener (or tubular) cast on and it looks really, really nice. It's a time-consuming technique but worth every minute, in my opinion. I did a 2x2 ribbing. Then I started zooming up the body in plain stockinette. I was hesitant about doing just plain stockinette, thinking it would be boring to knit. But it's actually been quite nice so far to just put my mind on autopilot and sit and watch TV or engage in conversation and not have to be so totally focused on the knitting. Very relaxing - almost meditative.

So anyway, I'm zooming along and suddenly POP! One of the needles broke off the cord on the Denise's circular needles! Look:

This is the THIRD time this has happened to me. The other two cables I sent back for replacements (which they were very nice about, and quick, too.) But now I've kind of soured on their whole interchangeable needle system. For one thing, the yarn does not slide on them as well it does on Addi Turbos, for example. I have to keep shoving the yarn around to the right place. When I was doing the ribbing on my size 4 Addi's, the yarn slid around so nicely - I could knit at a really fast pace. And the constant breaking of the cables - I can't put up with it anymore. I do have a lot of stitches crammed onto the cable, but I don't feel that I'm being too rough or applying too much tension (faithful readers of this blog will recall that my swatching efforts have pinpointed a bit too much looseness in my knit stitches.)

I should also add that before the needle broke, I had a different cable on the needles that kept separating ever-so-slightly from its connector, allowing a stitch to drop down into the gap and get caught. Boy, that was annoying.

I bought the needles based on the rave reviews in a recent issue of Knitty. And although I still like their concept, it's just not executed very well. I will keep the set because they will make great stitch holders. For knitting, however, I'll be sticking with Addi's.

Unfortunately, I do not have any Addi's in size 6. And I cannot get to a yarn store today because the roads are really awful. In fact, I was supposed to go down to Denver this morning but I decided not to based on this morning's traffic reports.

So I am peeved that I have a snow day at home and cannot zoom along on the sweater. Ah, it's just as well - I really need to do some cleaning today, particularly the downstairs office. Now the question is, can I wait until next Monday to get to the yarn store? Hah, I doubt it.

Cute Little FO

I spent the last couple of evenings working on this:

A scarf to go with the leather coat - it's Colinette Isis chenille, same as what I used for some Christmas gifts. The colors in this picture look very obnoxious whereas in real life they seem much more subtle. This digital photography is tricky, isn't it?

I also finished My Little Companion but I don't think it got felted enough. I'm going to send it back through the washer again this afternoon and see if I can get some more shrink out of it. I'll post a picture of it when it's done.

Last night I got out the yarn that I bought to make a sweater for my husband and just played around with it a bit. It is a DK weight yarn; size 5 needles seem to knit up a tad too tight. I'll probably use size 6. I'm fishing around for a pattern or some other source of inspiration. I don't want to take on a guernsey or a similar style with lots of heavy patternwork. On the other hand, I'll go nutty with just plain stockinette. I will get out all my magazines and books tonight and see what I can come up with.

I might try to get in some swatching this weekend for the TKGA thing. The weather is supposed to turn nasty on Sunday so I'm hoping for a good knitting day!

I'm ba-aaack!

Vacation was FABULOUS. Here's proof:

We stayed here. We flew on this airline to Florida and rode this boat to Grand Bahama Island. We went on this kayak/snorkeling trip. End of boring vacation tell-all.

Oh, and what about the knitting?, you might ask. I brought along the stuff to work on swatches for the Master Knitting certification thingy, and also yarn and needles for socks and/or gloves. I worked on the swatches on the plane both ways, and maybe just once or twice in the evening. The sock yarn never came out of the bag.

I had more swatch frustration; I just couldn't get my purl tension right. So on the plane on the way home, a four-hour trip, I decided dammit! I'm just going to figure this out once and for all. So I just started knitting a 20-stitch wide strip of stockinette trying everything I could think of to resolve the tension problem.

And I discovered the most amazing thing. All the books say that if you're having trouble with a 'stripey' effect in your knitting, you need to tighten up your purl stitches. Well, I got to studying my knitting and looked to me like it was the KNIT rows that were too loose. Sure enough, I tightened up my knit rows and backed off the tension on the purl rows and TA-DA!! Beautiful stockinette. I feel like this was a major revelation and a major hurdle to overcome. I will now pick up the pace on my swatching and only knit BEAUTIFUL and PERFECT swatches from here on out.

I find that there are many instances in my life of an 'opposite' effect. The one that comes most quickly to mind is that with all four of my kids I had post-partum euphoria as opposed to post-partum depression. Isn't that weird?

One more vacation tidbit: the laundry facilities at the condo complex we stayed at were FREE, and I brought along pre-measured ziploc bags of detergent - enough to wash all our clothes twice. And that's exactly what we did - once midway through the trip, and again before we left; we brought home suitcases full of clean clothes! So when we got home last night, we just unpacked our suitcases, ate dinner, and relaxed and read the piles of newspapers and mail. And of course I was able to knit. I finished the My Little Companion bag, which I will felt later this afternoon.

The end-of-vacation reality check: I've been home less than 24 hours and already my lips are chapped and my hair is full of static electricity. I bought a high-power lip balm at the grocery store this morning. I need to find a new mousse or gel or something for my stupid hair.

Gone Until January 21

Gone until January 21

Goodies!

My meeting in Denver was done by 10 (why do they have to start so dang early?) so I had time to run over to the yarn shop. Bren from Brighton gave me a suggestion about another yarn shop to try which I will drop in on next time. I wanted to get another skein of Kureyon in the same color and dye lot to finish off My Little Companion - so I had to go to the same shop I bought it at.

So here's a portion of the haul:

Included are: 8 skeins of Naturally Guernsey DK yarn (only 2 are shown); 2 skeins Sockotta (only 1 is shown); 1 skein Kureyon; 1 skein Isis; a set of 10.5 dpn's and a pair of 10.5 regular needles.

The Guernsey is a rich chocolate brown - I will finally make a sweater for Dale, something I have been threatening to do since the last century. The Sockotta is just irresistably cute and might go toward some little gloves for my daughter. The Kureyon is for the bag. The Isis is for a scarf for me, and it looks good with my new coat. The dpn's are for My Little Companion, and the regular needles are for the scarf (the 11's seem just a skoash too big.)

While I was shopping, one of the clerks was on the phone with a customer and said that over 80% of their business right now is scarf and eyelash yarn. And speaking of their clerks, a couple of them had enough makeup on to make Tammy Faye Bakker blush. What's up with that?

Well, I must get back to the office and process all the garbage from this morning's meeting.

More about Hems

In response to stash and bamboo's comment, I thought it might be helpful to talk a little bit about hemmed edges.

I knew about knit-in hems from my years of doing machine knitting. Knit-in hems work best on finer gauge yarns; they would be too bulky on a worsted yarn, for example. You see them a lot on store-bought knit sweaters. Any sweater you have that does not have ribbing on it probably has a knit-in hem. Go to your closet and check around. (In fact, I like to study my store-bought sweaters - the more expensive ones that are trying to look hand-knit - and try to figure out how they did everything.)

The basic technique is outlined in most any good knitting reference book.

They're very simple: starting from the bottom edge do stockinette for "x" rows, then do one row with the purl side facing out, then stockinette for "x" rows again. Now fold the fabric at the purl row (called the 'turning ridge') with wrong sides together. On the next row, knit together one stitch off the needle along with one stitch off the cast on edge. When you're done, you have a tube. Now just keep knitting in stockinette. A variation is to do a picot edge hem, where instead of purling that row, you do a k2tog/yo all across the row. I don't see why you couldn't do this kind of hem coming from the top down, but I've never tried that.

After writing all of this, I see that Flor has this all illustrated on her site at http://flor.trix.net/tips12.htm.

Hemmed edges won't hug in the way a ribbed edge will, so you have to keep that in mind when you decide to use them. I wouldn't use them for socks, for example, because I think your socks would fall down! (Although it seems like I remember reading on somebody's blog a while back about using this on a sock. Can't remember who it was.) I thought they would make a nice clean edge for a glove. And it absolves you of any sins associated with your cast-on edge - it gets hidden inside the garment! (But do make sure it's got enough give in it.)

You can reduce bulk by using a smaller needle on the hem, and then switching to a regular needle after that.

The machine knitters do it by casting on and knitting a few rows with waste yarn in a contrast color, then switching to the garment yarn to do the hem. Then it's real easy to see the stitch you're supposed to pick up. I don't see why you couldn't do this with hand knitting - and I wish I'd thought of doing it that way for these gloves.

And this is probably more than you wanted to know!

Here's an update on the glove:

Picture taken with my left hand - it took about three tries.

This is so much fun, I feel an obsession coming on! I will now start looking at my sock yarn stash with an eye toward glove-making!

A Pleasant Evening of Knitting

Since I'm involuntarily stalled on My Little Companion, I decided last night to pull my Koigu out of the stash and get started on a pair of gloves. Ooooh, this might be fun! I'm following the general instructions in the last issue of Interweave Knits. Except I'm using circulars and not dpn's; I might have to switch to dpn's at the fingers - I'm not sure yet how they work.

They don't make any mention of a cuff, but I decided to add a knit-in hem. They always look so tidy and neat. I'm about halfway up to where I start the thumb. I'm getting psyched about this! And need I mention again, I love Koigu.

This pic shows both the glove and the bag in their current unfinished state. I wish my camera had a better close-up lens so I could show the hem on the inside of the glove. It is so neat and perfect, I impressed myself!

This photo has the bag colors almost right - doesn't seem like there's really that much blue in the yarn - it's more purple-y.

I stopped by Sarah's blog and got some renewed enthusiasm for the TKGA program after reading her post and bunch of the links she provided. It seems like maybe EVERYONE has these frustrations with the program. I can also see that sticking with this will really pay off over the long haul. So I will stick with the bag and the glove for my pleasure knitting, and will also stick with the swatching to improve my skills. The swatches are very small and portable - they might be good vacation knitting if I can keep the frustration at bay.

I am anxious to try out some of the tips that were mentioned in Sarah's post. Wow, this really demonstrates the value of being part of the knit blog community. If I was doing this on my own, I would really be discouraged as I don't personally know any good knitters around here.

Ponderings

I got up to the top edge on My Little Companion last night - the next step is an I-cord edging but I gave my dpn's to my sister a while back. So that's on hold 'till I get the right needles. I'm too lazy to go take a picture of my progress.

The boys at Threadbear are offering a "Threadybear" kit as a means of introducing knitters to fair isle. Boy, that looks like fun! And the kits, once they're ready, will be less than $25 each. Now that's a steal. They also have a knitalong going at yahoogroups. I've been wanting to do a fair isle, and this might be a good way to test my chops before going after the real thing. I don't know about the knitalong though; I think I'm spending too much time online as it is. I'd rather just knit it than read and type obsessively about it. Nothing against knitalongs - it's more a reflection on the overall busy-ness of my life right now.

Speaking of Threadbear, they've got lots of Koigu KPPPM on the way; this might be a good time to place my order for the Vogue pullover. That would be fun to get started on after vacation!

I have a meeting down in Denver Monday morning, and the big yarn shop is only 15 minutes away from there. I will hit it on the way home and find something fun for vacation knitting. Does anyone out there have some good suggestions for vacation knitting (besides socks)? This is an airplane and beach vacation, so I don't want to take anything big or bulky or scratchy or itchy or hot. Not that I mind doing socks, I just thought it would be fun to take along something a little bit different.

My Little Companion

DUH! I was looking through the closet last night and found the My Little Companion pattern that I bought out in Sterling a few months back. I started knitting right before dinner - I finished one whole skein by bedtime!

The colors in the photo aren't quite true-to-life. The colorway has sort of a muted vegetable-feel to it: eggplant, roasted red pepper, salad greens. The photo kind of exaggerates the colors a bit.

Unfortunately, as with most felted bags, it's all knit-stitch, so I won't have much opportunity to practice the Combined Knitting technique.

Anyway, I am re-evaluating the whole TKGA thing. It's starting to feel like some sort of dreaded school assignment. I'm battling two concepts right now: one is knitting just for the sheer joy of it; the other is to work a little harder at perfecting my skills - thus adding to the sheer joy of knitting over time. Is it worth the investment? Am I happy with what I'm able to produce with my skills staying at their present level? I will continue to ponder this while I pursue the joyous My Little Companion project.

A New, Less Scary Pee-Wee

Yes, if you look in the sidebar to the right, you'll see my new Pee-Wee. He is a friendly Pee-Wee, and not scary like the old one. (Of course, "mug shot" Pee-Wee would be the scariest of all.) If you click on him, he'll say "knitting...and knitting.." etc. It makes me laugh every time I hear it.

I am making a felted bag out of my Kureyon. I have the bottom and about 5" of the side done, and used up one skein so far. Lisa, don't bother sending info about patterns...I found one in my closet!

Will post a pic tomorrow.

Blast From the Past #6

I found another old knitting project to add to my "Blast From the Past" series of reports.

I was reading on Uli's blog about a kids sweater she was knitting, and how it seemed like the hood was taking forever. And that reminded me of this sweater that I knit about three years ago:

In fact, I think it was this project that got me started back to hand knitting after many years of not doing it. I can't believe I forgot to post about it earlier.

The yarn is Lion Brand Homespun and the pattern was free on a tear-sheet at Hobby Lobby. I see that the same pattern is now available online. (Not sure if that link will work - look for "Hooded Sweater" under the children's portion of the knitting pattern index.)

Anyway, it was fairly easy pattern but not very well executed on my part. Good thing you can't see the seams and the finish work! But my daughter loved it and wore it until it got all pilly looking. Acrylic yarn is so awful! Wouldn't this have been cute in Noro Kureyon? And it would still be as pretty as the day it was knit.

Notice how I seamed the hood inside out.

I have been swatching off and on today. Vanessa very kindly left some comments about giving Combined Knitting a try. This looks very promising, and some googling has led me to believe that there are a lot of knitters out there who have become believers in this.

I might look through my stash tonight and find something else to do where I can put this Combined Knitting into practice. Speaking of Kureyon, I wonder what I could do with two (unfortunately not three) skeins of it? A smaller version of a Booga Bag?

More swatching

I need to take a break from swatching. I started on swatch #4 today (bar increases) and just cannot get my purl tension right. I have been messing around with my tension so much over the past few days, it seems like my hands have forgotten what my normal, auto-pilot tension is supposed to feel like. I might need to give the swatching a break and pick up something else for a while.

It is so cold in Colorado, I will have to wear my Lochinver sweater to the office tomorrow!

Swatch out!

All of my knitting time this weekend (well, except for that sock repair that took about a minute) was devoted to swatches for the TKGA master knitting level 1 program. The knitalong at Sarah's blog actually starts tomorrow, but I wanted to get a head start since I'll be going on vacation soon, and I don't think knitting swatches is how I want to spend vacation!

If you haven't heard of the master knitting program, you can read more about it at www.tkga.com (and by the way, if you accidentally type in tgka.com, you go to a really skanky college girl webcom site.) TKGA publishes Cast On magazine, and there's information about the program in just about every issue.

Basically, you do a bunch of sample knitting, answer some essay questions, write a report or two, and turn it all in for scoring by a judge. There are three levels to the process, and I'm just now embarking on the first one. I'm doing it because it's a challenge, and I like challenges.

But I didn't think I'd learn so much three swatches into it! I've discovered all kinds of tension problems in my knitting, and I think I've figured out how to eliminate them. First of all, my selvedges have been really ugly; and I found all you have to do is knit the first two or three stitches of every row a bit tighter than normal, and loosen up the last two or three stitches of every row ever so slightly.

I also discovered that my purl stitches are a touch too loose also. This is especially noticeable in ribbing - and also in straight stockinette, leading to a stripey effect. To even up my knitting, I need to give an extra tug when I purl - specifically, I tug just a bit right after I insert the needle to make a purl stitch but before I wrap the yarn. The extra tension at just that point elimates that little bit of looseness in a purl stitch. I learned much of this from an excellent article available in the members-only area of the TKGA website: "Tension Problems" by Arenda Holladay.

I made, ripped and re-made swatches all weeekend long until I got it right. It wasn't all that much fun, but I could see that all the trial and error was doing me some good. So here's what I've got to show for myself:

(Sorry, pretty much all the knit texture is washed out in this flash photo. Also, I haven't hid the ends or blocked them yet; the center swatch has edges that are curling under.)

The swatch at left demonstrates a 2x2 rib and garter stitch. The center swatch demonstrates 1x1 rib (I did a full twisted rib) and stockinette stitch. The swatch at right demonstrates seed stitch. As it turned out, all of these ended up being knit at a higher tension than I otherwise knit at. Yet the swatches don't seem at all stiff or puckery or anything. Hmmm, that's kind of a revelation. I wonder if knitting in the round tends to "spoil" a knitter. Many of these kinds of tension problems wouldn't show up in circular knitting.

The next batch of swatches will demonstrate increases and decreases.

I might stick with this at a pretty steady pace here over the next few weeks and I might postpone taking on some projects for a while; I'd really like to get Level 1 done and out the door.

FO Crisis!

("FO" = "Finished Object" if you didn't know)

So we're at dinner at some friends house last night. I wore my new Wildfoote socks. We live in a "take your shoes off at the door" culture out here in the country. Midway through the evening, I'm wiggling my right foot and look down at it and THERE'S A BIG HOLE IN THE TOE. Un-fricking-believable. Looks like I didn't catch the last set of stitches when I kitchener'd the toe. Or something like that. Anyway, it looks like it will be easy to fix.

Today is my oldest son's 14th birthday. (My baby!! How can this be?) He is planning a big get-together at the rec center with his friends this afternoon, including some girls. There has been a flurry of phone activity at the house this morning. I'm not particularly excited about my kids entering the teenage years. They're so...controllable when they're little. Letting go little by little will not be fun. But it is necessary and ultimately good.

In other news, Lisa and I are on a weight-loss challenge which Lisa has aptly titled the "Fat-4-Stash Dash." First one to lose 10 pounds wins stash. Read more here and here.

At the top of the WIP list:

I nearly forgot about it - my attempt at getting a Level 1 certification through the Knitting Guild of America's Master Hand Knitting Program!! I am signed up for Sarah's knitalong on this. It starts (officially) on January 5, but since I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks, I thought it might be good to get a bit of a head start.

I got out all the paperwork last night and had a go at the first swatch. All you have to do is cast on 20 stitches and do 2 1/2 inches of K2 P2 ribbing, increase 5 stitches across the last row, then do 4 inches of garter stitch. Easy, right? Well, my edge rows looked like crap. So I found some tips in some of my knitting books and will have another go at it tonight. From what I've read, the judges on these things are really picky, and besides - the whole reason I'm doing this is to improve my technique.

My buddy Lisa is talking about getting KnitAble on a Palm - something I've been meaning to do as a means of getting organized. That sounds like a good New Year's kind of thing to do, doesn't it?

So the big elegant projects might be put on hold for a bit while I tinker around with swatches and Palms.

Wildfeete Done!

Got that second Wildfoote done this evening right after dinner.

My six-year-old took the modeling shot:

And here's the official 'finished project' shot:

These socks won't get as much wear as some of my others - the label says to hand wash.

Now I'm headed upstairs to the knitting closet to pull out some books and fantasize about some more projects for the coming year. I'm looking to update my WIP list (at right) within a week or so.