Tips & Techniques: January 2005 Archives

I considering posting my near-done sock #2, but it looks a whole lot like his near-done sock #1.

Instead, I'd thought I'd share with you all some links I've come across that you may or may not have seen before.

New Project Ideas

• Sideways Short-Row Seaman's Scarf -- Really interesting technique, and a great way to use just 1 ball of Noro!


• Breast Cancer Sock -- I need to make these for my Mom, who's a 15 year survivor!


• Saxony Sock -- While visiting Lisa's site for the Breast Cancer site I came across these cabled socks. Very pretty!


• Lite Brite -- I don't know why I didn't notice this pattern when it first came out. It has a solid-colored body, and uses Noro only on the raglan arms. I can get my Noro and avoid horizontal body stripes! Put this one in the hopper for next fall.

• How to test if your fiber is wool -- without the chance of setting your house on fire!


• Nicely illustrated knitting basics. This is the site I link to whenever someone asks me things like "How do I do a lifted increase?". Their illustrations are clear and easy to understand.


• No-wrap short rows -- By now you all probably know I LOVE the OzYarn no-wrap short row instructions. I was describing them to my friend Hope and she told me that they're called Japanese short rows. I thought you'd like to know that.


• Great resource for old lace stitch patterns. Warning -- the charts indicate the stitch you'd knit when you're on that row, not the way it would look on a RS row (the more common way). I find it hard to retrain my brain to knit this way and actually rewrite the chart beforehand.

I feel like I had more than this to share! I'll add to it if something comes to mind.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Added Later

In keeping with the randomness of this post, I have a question about Opal yarn. How do you know which Opal pattern you have? The only thing I see on the ball that would seem to indicate the type is "Farbe 5 Partie 16". I've googled and translated and searched all over the place and still can't seem to find a way to figure this out!

It seemed only fitting that I give my favorite sweaters a bath today. I hate washing handknits! Wow, I'm sure that's a profound statement. I'm guessing you all just love it, right?

Well today I tried something new (for me) and it worked really well. I used my washing machine to spin them out after soaking in the sink. I have a front loader and I thought it wouldn't work -- but it did! I turned them inside out and switched on the spin cycle and voila! My sweaters weighed a fraction of what they did before they went in. I should have dry sweaters by the morning (with brand new Isabella paw prints on them to boot!).

I'm also playing around with my blog design. I don't think I'm done, although I am done for today. I wanted something cooler and with less color, but it's really hard to judge colors on this laptop monitor. So when I feel like hooking up a regular monitor I'll take a peek and do some tweaking.

I'm taking Margene's advice and making sure I do all the things I love today. Since I haven't knit yet it sounds like a fine excuse to do so! Make sure you do the same :)