44 posts tagged “knitting”
Watching a favorite knitting author speak. :) (yarn harlot = Stephanie Pearl-McPhee)
My socks in progress and part of my loot.
I'm going somewhere very cool tonight and with me, i'm bringing my knitting and camera. Any guesses? Hint, i went across the bridge to portland.
Yesterday, I got a package. Weee! It's my yarn for my next sweater, which I carefully labored over what I wanted to pick. I'm making a Mr. Greenjeans with Blue Moon Fiber Arts "Socks that Rock Heavyweight" in Beryl, a beautiful dark greeny-blue slightly variegated color.
So of course, that meant hanks of yarn to wind into balls to make it usable.
I don't have a Swift or Ball Winder. That's a big investment, and so I've wanted my craft money to go towards buying yarn and good needles instead.
Last time I turned a hank into a ball, I sat cross-legged and looped the ends around my knees and wound that way. That's hard on my knees to be sitting that way so long, and it's easy to tangle still. Before that, I dangled the yarn over the back of E's desk chair, but it just didn't stay where I wanted it to nicely.
Today's solution was my favorite yet. I have this large wooden board that used to be a shelf in our garage, about 30" wide and 20" deep. It's been a good lapdesk throughout college (it actually says my maiden name on the spine because I stored it in the dorm one year). I wrapped it with one of my big towels that was in my guest room from the last time I blocked something, just to protect the yarn from snagging on the board. Then I set it on my card table with several inches off the end of the table. This was just perfect for hanging my hank, and I sat on my exercise ball in that room and bounced lightly as I gently and loosely wound a center-pull ball. This was much better!
(I'd take a picture, but that room is such a disaster area, I don't think I could find an angle that was *safe* to shoot from!!!!)
The ball is still not as pretty as it would be from a ball winder, but it's okay. Someday, maybe I'll get one and make pretty balls, but until then, this will work... 1 done, 3 to go (one is destined for socks, and the others are for my sweater).
I did a lot of teaching and a little knitting. Another garterlac. Great but busy night!
The think geek monkey is helping me knit by climbing into my bag. :)
Even though it's the end of January, it's never too late to write up my knitting recap from the holidays, right? :)
For Christmas, I planned a variety of knitting projects to go with my gifts. Since this was something I was going to enjoy, not feel pressure with, I kept thinking of other ideas along the way of things I could gift instead of my knitting if I didn't get it done. But actually, I ended up making additional knitted gifts because I got done *faster* with most things that I thought.
Happy Clapotis Scarf. For a gift for my mother-in-law, I wanted something fairly light because she's in CA, and so a regular warm scarf was not going to be great. I didn't think I had the time to do a full clapotis wrap, but I found a scarf sized version that looked more usable. And then for the yarn, I did some research (Knitty Boards, membership required to view) because I wasn't as excited about the chunky look from the scarf pattern, and the Lion and Lamb that the wrap had was nice but not from a yarn store I normally shop at. I found that Knit Picks had some great colors of their Shimmer, and I was sold, it had beautiful color options and was baby alpaca and silk which seemed like it would be light. Then I found someone on Ravelry (CaseyK's clapotis) who had used the same yarn and colorway triple stranded, and that looked like a really nice weight, so I went with that.
Actually knitting this was a joy. I had so much fun figuring out the stitches and anticipating when the next drop happened. It curled up a bit while knitting, but then blocking it made all the difference in the world, the drop ladders turned out all straight and perfect and much more beautiful than I thought. I would seriously consider making myself a full Clapotis wrap if I could think of somewhere to wear it.
Stripey Anastasia Socks. For my mom. I thought she might be the only person who would appreciate socks, and plus with our drawing names, I wasn't sure who I would get to have enough time for this project. I knew that she had slightly smaller feet than me (and in hind sight, I probably still should have made them a little less long), and so that helped for knowing what measurement to use.
I found the yarn before picking a pattern. When I saw the Felici yarn from Knit Picks when they introduce it, I knew the Firefighter colorway was totally her. So then I just had to find a pattern that would work okay with this yarn and be a little more interesting than just straight stockingette. The Anastasia pattern had a spiral that was reversed on the 2nd sock, and that looked like fun to knit (it was).
I started these when I first got the yarn, but then did them slowly alongside all the other gifts, so it was the last thing finished of my gifts. They blocked up really nicely, although my k2tog/yo and ssk/yo aren't exactly the same size, so the holes on the 2nd sock are slightly bigger, and that was a little sad. It's certainly not as noticeable when the socks are on.
Chocolatty Armwarmers and Scarf. For Lisa, who works in the family business in an office/warehouse that is cold. I figured she could use these armwarmers when driving and typing in the cold. I saw someone on Ravelry (lixolux) a while back that had armwarmers with plaits (braids) instead of the fancy flowery cable from the pattern, and I really liked that. My Stitchionary comes in handy for that, and I'd used the plaited cable on an afghan square already, so I knew I could do it. And I was more comfortable this time around with doing cabling without a cable needle, which came in handy!
And then instead of looking for the suggested Noro online, I found some people making things out of the new Debbie Mumm yarn, which I could get at Jo-Ann's w/o stressing about finding a real yarn store. This yarn was not great to knit with, but the finished product was pretty good. The repeats in colors weren't the same anywhere in the 2nd skein so I had to do a lot of work to make them look the same.
These were such a fast knit that as I got to the end of my holiday knitting, I decided to make a really skinny scarf to go with them. I did it in the same rib as the armwarmers, and every once in a while, I put the plait cable in. I made it nice and long and I enjoyed trying it on for photos :)
I love the construction of these. I've finally gotten very comfortable with short rows, and so this was easy. I made the ties a little longer, but I still wish I'd gone further, they didn't wrap around twice like ballet slippers very easily. The stretchy yarn was fun to work with, and they really did strech well. Of course, this made them look little in the package! I think I could have made them a little bigger and had them work for longer, but I made the kids size already, so I was scared I was overthinking it.
Then when I was shopping for the Cascade Fixation, I thought I'd also get some yarn and make some stretchy legwarmers to go with. I used the Fixation held with a variety of other worsted weight yarn (Wool-Ease, the Swish Superwash, and some Knit Picks Twist I picked up on clearance). They didn't quite come out as strechy as I'd hoped, and it took me a little longer due to wanting to weave in ends as I went but not detatch yarn. I should have done them on dpns, but I was trying to get a feel for using circular needles on small diameters, so this also took me a lot more adjusting than I wanted. Overall, I wish I'd made them a little bigger and even maybe just with the fixation instead of stripes.
Also, I found patterns with some sort of neat stitch patterns on them, and I liked those, but I was worried about getting his little fingers caught. So I came up with a slip stitch pattern that looked like it was fair isle instead. This made for a nice warm and pretty mitten. I had a hard time with getting the placement of the thumb right and the length of the mitten to actually look like the length of his hand. It took quite a few tries to get it right, but I really like how it turned out in the end. The thumb was stripey to keep the bulk of the fabric down, and that looked super cute.
The thing I was most disappointed with was my i-cord. I still don't feel like my i-cords are very even, and I tried to jazz this one up with alternating the colors, which made for ends to weave in and potentially look funny after some wears.
But the best thing was Leonard wearing the gloves around his neck from the i-cord on Christmas Eve. Even if he doesn't wear them much, that picture in my head was worth it!
It's cold outside and i'm getting a ride from a cute boy soon. Knitting went good, i'm inventing something based on a pattern and i need to rip again but it's gonna be cool. :)
- What are your knitting fears?
- What would it take for you to become a truly fearless knitter?
I'm still such a new knitter that I do still have quite a few things that make me nervous. There's a ton of techniques that I know are supposed to make my (knitting) life better, but I am scared for whatever reason. Here's an example - I know that the idea of knitting two socks on two circulars should really help me get a pair done both the same way for each and probably more quickly. But I'm scared that I put my money into buying circs for the technique and then don't enjoy doing it.
One thing that is nice about knitting is that it can always be ripped out, and this removes some of the fear that normal crafting has (glue or cutting are more permanent).
I also am scared of picking the wrong colors or the wrong yarn. I don't always like the yarn in a pattern, and so I want to substitute, but i'm always a little nervous doing that. Right now, I'm trying to pick out the yarn for a sweater I want to make, but I'm just not sure if the yarn I want is going to pool. Some pictures it does, and others it doesn't (obviously, different stitch counts, but that doesn't necessarily give me confidence). For socks, pooling is okay, but on a sweater, not so much.
So yeah, all good thoughts! Check out this daily email, it really has nice thoughtful content that I enjoy receiving.
Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.
I knitted this year.
Everything I finished my first year of knitting (2006) was very basic. I'm ending out 2007 with a ton more knowledge and skill under my belt. I well exceeded my goals, which I found were setting the bar pretty low in the grand scheme of things!
I learned what to look for when purchasing yarn and how to substitute. There were 3 different online stores (KnitPicks on many occasions, TheLoopyEwe, and Little Knits) that I've ordered from, as well as the local craft stores, branching out from only really knowing about Lion Brand and Lily's Sugar 'N Cream at the beginning of the year. I'm starting to learn about combining colors, with some success and some turning out less than what I expected (Leah's pinwheel sweater was a success, but my in-process heart socks aren't as perfectly color coordinated as I hoped).
In mid-January when Vox introduced Groups, I created the Knitting group. Even though I'm not as active in adding content as I wish, the great thing about this is that you don't have to do much to make your content part of the group, and there are a lot of people who are members (around 375 right now), so it's really a fun way to browse people who are knitting on Vox. (I still like to zoom through people who tag things as "knitting" and invite them to the group whenever I can!)
Starting in March, I began going to the library's knit-in every 2 weeks. I tried to bring easy projects I was working on at the time and found myself enjoying the company even when the discussion was not usually about knitting. I became known as someone who had a basic grasp on knitting and towards the end of the year when I joined the Friends of the Library (the group that puts this on), they made me a leader of the group as well. I've helped people who didn't know how to knit yet, and contributed to knitting discussions as well. It feels good to be part of this!
The roundup: 4 pairs of socks (and almost a 5th), 2 sweaters, a doll with a full wardrobe (among my very favorite thing I knit this year), a turtle, booties, 2 bibs, 2 hats, 3 scarfs, 2 shawl-like scarfs, 10-15 dishclothes, a potholder, 2 different pairs of slippers, armwarmers and legwarmers, mittens, part of two afghans, border and several squares of a patchwork afghan, and probably some other small things.
Ravelry: I did some tracking of my progress on my blog, but many of my knitting projects were gifts, and needed more privacy. Enter Raverly (my profile, if you have an account), a new site this year for tracking projects, stashes, and more. For the first few months they were around, I helped on the forums quite a bit and helped with bug tracking. I'm still watching a few groups, but mainly I'm using it to track my projects and my queue, as well as inspiration for new projects! Super awesome site, if you aren't on the waiting list, get your name on there!
Media: I've read a lot of books about knitting, above my skill level to try and start absorbing what's out there. I've purchased books about knitting for reference and patterns. Watched Knitty Gritty on HGTV for as long as they had it, and this was so helpful to see visually how things were held. Listened to knitting podcasts inspired me to think about knitting too.
Techniques: My colorwork experience has grown, attempting fair isle, multiple colored slip stitch patterns, stripes, and a little intarsia, as well as plenty of projects that used multiple colors and were seamed together. I've also tried entrelac, and short rows, and plenty of different shaped pieces. Some i-cords, but not as neat as I'd like them to look yet. I've adjusted patterns, and come up with my own and even written them out in a readable fashion. Different bind offs and castons, and plenty of increases and decreases. I've used straight needles, circular needles (interchangable), and double pointed needles. I'm still not an expert at all of these things, but I feel great for having tried so many things that I can work to improve!
My Groups
-
Voxaholic Updated: 2 minutes ago
-
Photography Updated: 47 minutes ago
-
Etsy For Everyone Updated: 1 hour ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
