February 2004 Archives

Take a peek! It looks like a nice first issue to me. I'm even considering making Tricot myself - in a totally different colorway.

After reading Christina's post yesterday I decided to join the program. It's pretty cool. The sponsor - Sandy - is collecting names and will distribute everyone's name to a different knitter. On birthdays and Christmas the secret pal sends the recipient a little knitting related gift. I thought it was a great idea! Read more about it here.

If you're interested, hurry up because Sandy is sending out names on Monday.

As promised, there has been no knitting around here. Good thing I didn't plan on much because my fingers are sore from all the wire nuts yesterday. To top it off I cut a pretty good gash in my index finger. Note to self - 80 year old rusted nails are indistinguishable from 80 year old wood. Oh well. I'm not really complaining though. The rooms are making good progress and I should be done with all wiring - electric, cable, and phone - by end of day.

So, here are a few of my favorite resources/links:

Patterns

• Wendy's Toe Up Sock Pattern - No need to explain


• The Incredible Custom Fit Raglan Generator - While I haven't tried this one yet I've heard it makes a fabulous basic pattern. I love simple patterns because you can start slow and just do the pattern as is, or choose to elaborate with textures, stitch patterns, and other fun stuff.


• Adriafil - I like browsing thru these patterns for ideas. They tend to use some interesting stitch combinations.


• Lana Grossa - I always like checking their Model of the Month. Check out July 2003. I love the laced up tank!


• Shapely Tank Pullover - I can't wait to try this tank! I'm hoping I'll be able to say - Finally, a tank that fits! For more detail on how the fitting works, see the Short Row Bust Shaping technique below.

• Combined Knitting - I love this technique when knitting flat. Since I already knit Continental I think it was easier for me to pick up. What do I love about it? Purling! It significantly increased my purling speed. It didn't really change my tension or gauge - which I was happy about.


• Short Row Bust Shaping - Do the armholes of tank tops gape open on the sides? If so, then you need to read this article. It talks about how to shape the tank so it fits you. A nice introduction to short row shaping as well.


• Bonne Marie's TEKTalk - If you're unsure about a technique, check out this page. She has GREAT explanations and lots of photos to make things clear. A few of my favs are How to Insert a Zipper and How to Felt.


• Cabling Without a Needle - Great photos to help you along the way.

Over the weekend I was discussing Kool Aid Dyeing at the SnB. I keep thinking I want to give it a try. It seems so simple. Maybe I'll look for some bargain bin natural yarn to play with.

I found a couple of good sources that I thought I'd share with you all. The Knitters Review had a pretty good article on how to use the dye, how to get the handpainted look, and a link to a gallery of garments done in Kool Aid yarn.

This one's my favorite though. A Kool Aid color chart! Can you believe it? And not just on white. She also dyed a darker grey/brown yarn as well. The darker yarn seems to come out almost heathered. Very pretty!

I'm tempted to try out a pair of socks or a tank top or even maybe a backpack.

In Other News

I have been knitting, albeit not as much as usual. I'm about 5 inches from being finished with the front of the Cabled & Ribbed sweater. I think I might be able to squeeze this in over the rest of the week when I need a break from all the renovation work. It would be great to get one piece of this sweater behind me. The good news is this is the hardest piece as the rest of it is just ribbing.

I just checked the weather and it's supposed to hit 60 on Saturday! 60! That's twice as warm as it is right now.

I don't know about you, but this warming of the weather makes me think about summer knitting. Tank tops, lacy edgings, openwork, feminine and frilly. And FAST! With some tops taking less than half that of a winter sweater, I can have twice as many WIPs! Twice the WIPs, twice the output - right?

Well, maybe not. But you get the idea. I've been looking at some warm weather yarn lately and thought I'd share with you two yarns that I really like so far:

• Manos Stria: I've loved their wool and this year they've come out with a cotton. I saw swatches knit up this weekend and it's as gorgeously variegated as their wools. It comes in a nice variety of summer brights as well as black and natural. 4.5 spi on 116 yard hanks. The best price I've found so far is at Rosie's Yarn Cellar.
• Rowan Summer Tweed: A beautiful variety of colors in a 70% silk 30% cotton blend (handwash only). It has a lovely, light hand to it. I've been eyeing Chamomile from the Rowan Summer Tweed Collection in Sunset, Smoulder, or maybe even Brilliant. Best price I've found is at Richesse Online. I've never ordered from them but I've heard they have great service.

What I'd still like to find are a couple of nice cotton or cotton blends that are inexpensively priced. What summer-weight yarns have you all used and been happy with?

House News

Thank you to everyone who posted such nice comments about the house so far. It's very encouraging to hear all those comments. And even moreso to hear that other people are in the same boat as I am. There are days when I love it and days when I think I'll never buy another old house in my life. I'm sure you all have experienced this as well.

Weekend progress - I haven't made a ton of progress yet. Saturday was PhillyKnitters' SnB. Sunday we bought most of the light fixtures. We did pull some more cable and hook up new phone service. Yes, phone line that actually comes thru the wall - as opposed to miles and miles of it tacked to molding and around doorways. What a concept! Today is the electrical upgrade and since the house will be without power for most of the day I've decided to do some work on the outside of the house.

Cabling Question

Louise is thinking of making the Kureyon scarf pattern in a heavier gauge yarn and asked about changing the cabling. She asked about making the cables every 6th or 8th row as opposed to every 10th. I think that's a great idea. Since your yarn is heavier, if you do every 10th row you may have 3 or 4 inches between cable twists.

Several months ago - on a whim - I decided to break a hole in the guest bedroom wall to see if I could expose the brick chimney. It was there - but not in a pretty, exposable sorta way. Moreso in a mortar leaking out, sun shining in through the cracks sorta way. Even still, it started me on wanting to redo that bedroom.

A few months -- and a lot of hard work -- later, and the walls were pulled down between two bedrooms to make way for a large, master suite. A new project was born.

Now, I've got 2 bedrooms stripped to the studs. Clean slates. I've taken off work next week to try and tackle as much of the work left as possible. The bigger bedroom will become the master bedroom. With closets! Yes, closets! Those of you who live in old houses understand the importance of this statement.

The smaller bedroom will become my knitting room! My very own stash-storing, sweater-blocking, cushy-chair-knitting, project-dreaming room! So, I need to decide what I want to do with this room. It's not very big. It's L-shaped, the long wall is 12 feet long, the short one is 8 feet long. But the attic stairs cut a decent amount out of it so I'm going to have to get creative with how I lay out things.

Here are a few pics if you're curious.

So, my question for today is...What suggestions do you have for this room? What would you say are must haves?

BTW, I probably won't have alot of knitting updates to post over the next week since the rooms will be my main projects. But, I'm going to try to still post. There have been alot of resources I've come across on the web in the past few months that I've been meaning to gather together and post. So I'll work on the resources section of my blog instead. Once I get back to work I'll also get back to knitting. Don't be surprised if I take a night off though just to sit and knit though. I don't know if I can cold turkey like that :)

Tank Search Update

A HUGE thank you to Sonja for sending me the link to Carolyn's site. That was the one! I just love those tanks. Not that I need to add to the Future Projects list, but I will :)

I've been daydreaming about starting up some warm weather projects. The idea of smaller gauge yarn, no sleeves, and finer detail work have been calling me.

A week or two ago I came across a blogger who was working on a tank knit along. It was choose any three tanks. She had great taste and chose three very interesting tanks. One was from Rebecca and was really cool. The bottom two-thirds of the tank was ribbing and the top portion was a cable or texture. Anyway, I really liked her choices and I'd like to go back and see them. Has anyone come across this knit along or know this blogger? I have no idea how I happened upon her site now :(

I tried Rogue on over the weekend and it was too tight. I mean - tight. As in no ease. As in form-fitting.

I know what you're thinking. Didn't she swatch? Yes. Maybe she didn't swatch in the round. I didn't, but that's because my purl rows are the same gauge as my knit rows. And that's not what caused this to be sized so small. Maybe she made the wrong size? Nope, that's not it either.

Rogue is too small because I chose to make it that way. Ya see, I'm on a diet. And when I decided to make this for me - now - I was faced with a sizing dilemma. Aftern hemming and hawing about which way to go, I decided to make it about 1.5 sizes smaller than I was when I started. I've since lost about 7 pounds (yay!). Yesterday I fit into my small jeans. You know, the ones I fit into for about 2 months last year when I had the temporary willpower to take off 8 pounds.

And that brings me back to Rogue sizing. What better motivator than hours and hours of work to keep me on a diet? And looking at it and slipping it on does just that. There's no way I want to give this baby away. And there's no way I want to fess up to you all that I couldn't do it. So there ya have it. My biggest diet motivator - my knitting!

OK, so that was a mean - tricking you all into thinking I made the sweater too small. So maybe this will get me out of the doghouse.

Russian Join

I'm sure some of you have used this before, but for those of you who haven't, listen up!

Do you have trouble joining a new ball of yarn?

Or, do you hate darning in all those ends before you get to say you're done?

Well, Russian Join may just be the answer. I was at PerkFection last night for knitting night and I showed the ladies this technique and thought I should share it with you all too. The instructions are here.

I've used this method on a variety of gauges of yarn. I haven't tried it on something as fine as a sock yarn, but other than that I think this would work for ya.

Curious what one looks like? I show you Rogue, done up to the armholes:

There's a russian join on the pocket. I kinda know where it is and still I can't see it. I will say that sometimes after a few rows I'll go back and play with the tension a little bit on the few stitches that have the doubled yarn. Maybe even trim the yarn a bit more if the end comes to the front. By by and large this is my favorite method for joining.

So I did it - my first heel on a sock! I'm pretty pleased with it.

I think I'm getting the hang of this "pick up the wraps" thing. The heel wraps are all flat. I put the wraps behind the actual stitch. I don't know if that's the normal way you do it, but it just felt right. I do have one small hole where the short row heels end. I probably should have picked up a second stitch. I think I caused the stitches to stretch that much by trying it on so often! So I'll have to contain myself with sock #2 and just let it evolve.

I did a little more work on Rogue too. Actually, most of the work was in winding the hank into a center pull ball. I really need to just suck it up and get a ball winder and swift. Every time I get ready to though, I just think about all the yarn I could buy instead!

*sigh* We should all have such problems, right?

I was searching around for striped sock yarn - yes, my hyperfocus has turned to socks - when I came across the Katia Book 28 for Babies. Here's what I'm thinking right now for the 2 upcoming births. What do you think?

I like the style on this one, but in a striped colorway like this. Of course, I'm still on a sundress kick, so this one fits the bill nicely

It's worked up in Katia Mississippi 3 a 60% Cotton 40% Acrylic machine washable yarn. Their color selection is pretty large. I found this color card at www.yarns-and.com.

The babies are being born at the end of April and this looked like a good choice for warm weather babies. Is it practical? Would you use it? I thought the buttons on the shoulder and crotch would make it easier to get on and off. So, girls, tell me the truth - is this a good option?

Can I tell ya how much I love sock knitting? An astute friend observed that it's just my ADD and this is my shiny object du jour, but I still love it nonetheless. I really expected it to feel like it was going slower, but the progress does come pretty quickly. I'm using 3.25 mm (US #3) so they're not as small as some sock needles. Maybe that's why. I'm almost to the heel shaping point:

There's one tiny thing that's bothering me though. Has anyone else noticed tiny spots of white in their Koigu? I have 2 or 3 spots on the sock so far. It's only a stitch or so on each spot, but it's still bugging me a bit. If you look closely you can see one of them in the second orange stripe from the top, by the ball of my foot. In this case it's only a half a stitch. Go ahead...tell me I'm just being too picky.

And, when I'm not knitting socks I've been knitting Rogue lately. I'm just above the point where you join the pocket back in with the body:

I do love the way this one is coming together. The color is great! I'm still a bit concerned about the vertical bars in the st st but I'm holding to the theory that it will relax once washed a few times. Has anyone else had this issue with single ply yarn and successfully resolved it?

Hmmm....looks like I'm full of criticisms today. In general I'm really happy with the way both of these are progressing. I guess when you spend soooo much time on something you just want it to be perfect.

I went down to DC for the weekend and couldn't resist checking out a LYS while down there. The place was a busy and quirky as I've ever seen, but I did manage to pick up 2 hanks of this:

It's Koigu in colorway P431. It's mainly a navy with bits of oranges, greens, and slate blues. I really love it!

I've been dying to try a pair of socks lately. It seems like everyone on the blogs is making socks and I wanted to join in. So I picked up a sock book and cast on for them on the train ride home. Well, the pattern wasn't my favorite - it had you cast on the tip of the toe stitches and do increases to get to the foot width. Or you could do top down and Kitchener stitch the toes together. Yuk!

So, when I got home I went to Wendy's site and got her Generic Toe Up Sock Pattern. Oh so much better! She used a crochet provisional cast on and does shortrow shaping to do the whole toe at once (both sides). So the toe is done with just 2 needles. Once you're done you pick up the provisional cast on live stitches and start your knitting in the round. It makes so much more sense. Plus, she explains how to do sizing, so even though my yarn wasn't the same gauge it was very easy to adjust for it.

So here's where I am now. The beginnings of my first sock:

I must have tried it on 10 times last night. I may end up bringing this project to work and doing a little at lunch. I usually eat lunch at my desk in the winter but I might have to carve out a half hour or so during the day just to work on this. I can't wait to see how it takes shape!

I got lots of great advice and pattern hints over the past few days on my 2 upcoming baby projects. As someone without kids, I can't thank you all enough. Your advice is invaluable.

I've been planning to put together some resource pages for my blog. When I get around to it I'll be sure to link up the various baby postings that have come thru. I can't be the only baby-clueless knitter out there :)

I still haven't decided what I'm going to do yet. I'm going to check out a few LYS this weekend and if some yarn draws me in I'll start there. The mom who's having the boy loves brights so I'll be on the lookout for some bright colored yarns that can work for warm weather newborns.

I can't help but think I'd love to do a little sundress (they're oh-so-cute!) so I may hold out on the one who doesn't know what she's having until the birth. Yes, I'd really love to do a little sundress, maybe with some simple eyelets along the bottom edge or throughout the bodice. I guess all the ribbing and cables I've been doing lately is drawing me into some openwork.

OK, I think I may have found what I want to do with the Calmer. It's Dale of Norway Santos in the Trend #128:

I like the pullover version that's in the back. While the yarn is pretty different - the Dale one is made in Sisik - I think it will work. The gauge is the same. I have some Sisik in my stash and it's pretty drapey as well. I just love the bell sleeves on this one and pretty edging. Now I just have to decide on a color. I keep going back to Jewel which is a burgundy very similar to Rogue. It's my favorite color but I'm not sure if I want to do 2 sweaters in a row in basically the same color. There's a good Calmer color chart at Woodland Woolworks. What do you think?

I finally remembered to bring home my card reader yesterday so I can show you some pics. I'm really happy with the progress I've made lately. In fact, it seems that I've become more productive since I added Rogue to the list :)

Speaking of Rogue, here's where she is right now:

I'm using Lamb's Pride Top of the Lamb which is a single ply wool. Can you see the lines along the right side of the knit stitches? I've been reading about it and learned that single ply yarn can cause that. I've also read that after a couple of washings it should relax. I hope so. While it's not horrible it gives the fabric more of a texture than I'd like.

As for the Cabled & Ribbed sweater, I've been switching between it and Rogue:

I'm about 6-8 inches from completing the front!

As far as baby stuff goes, thanks to all of you who sent me suggestions. I'm going to look for something acrylic or cotton/acrylic so it's both easy care and lighter weight. Christine - I love the whirly baby hat! While I don't think I'm going to make up hats for these 2 late spring babies I've bookmarked it for colder weather births. I love the swirl pattern the hat made on top.

I know I promised pics but I left my card reader at work and I'm stuck at home waiting for the heat repair man to get here. So, pics will have to wait til tomorrow. But, I do have alot of progress to report...

It's amazing how much knitting you can get done on a cold weekend! I did a good amount on Rogue and even pulled out the Cabled & Ribbed sweater!

Rogue

This pattern is just wonderful! I love the way she designed the kangaroo pocket. The decreases are hidden in a purl stitch and the pocket softly curves in on both sides. A couple things I did differently than the pattern:

• I knitted in the hem with the twelfth row. I hate finishing and will go to great lengths to avoid sewing. If you decide to do this just keep in mind that at row 12 you have done a few increases in each cable on the side so you can't go 1 for 1 in the cables. I skipped the cable area and am planning to tack those by hand because I didn't want to risk distorting the cables.
• When you start the pocket it says to join new yarn (but do not break current yarn) and knit the pocket with the newly joined yarn. I chose to work the pocket in the original working yarn and wait to join the new yarn until i returned back to knitting the body. I did this because I didn't want to deal with 2 balls of yarn thru each row of the pocket. Also, when knitting the body I weaved the end in and it is hidden behind the pocket.

Cabled & Ribbed sweater

I got another few inches done on the front and am right at the armholes now. I have another 8 or so inches to get the front done. The rest of this should go much faster because I don't have to deal with the cable rows in the middle third of the back or the sleeves!

What do you think?

OK, I have a few upcoming projects that I need your help on:

Baby sweaters for spring: I have 2 friends who are expecting in April. I don't have kids and I'm not sure what to make for them. I was thinking about a cotton acrylic blend so it would be lighter weight and washable. But I'm so programmed to dislike acrylic. What do you all think? I don't want to give the gift that never gets used because cleaning it is a chore.

Rowan Calmer: Amber and I are trading some yarn and I was thinking about getting some Calmer. I love this yarn but I haven't been thinking much about warm weather knitting. Go figure - it's 10 degrees out right now. I looked thru Rowan's Calmer book but nothing drew me in. Any ideas?