Category: Knit Page 33 of 88

Spring Cleaning #3

On 25 May, 2009

pinwheel-edge

Project #2: Circular Shrug

I started this back in January. I was always cold while sitting in my home office for hours at a time. I was thinking shrugs. Then my mind went to the circular baby blanket I made a while back. I used the dimensions specified in Elann’s Pinwheel Sweater for the sleeve placement. I chose to use the same edging as the baby blanket — Godmother’s Edging.

The yarn is Araucania Nature Wool. The kettle dyed yarn makes really pretty subtle variations, which gives the fabric some depth.

I stopped after working 2 repeats of the edging. I remember thinking that the edging took more mental power than I had remembered. I don’t know why I thought this because it definitely wasn’t hard before.

The other night, I sat down with an Agatha Christie DVD and got to work. Again, I have no idea why I had problems with the edging. It’s going very quickly right now. But quickly is relative. It took about an hour to finish the edging for one panel. There are 8 panels, so 7 to go.

Then there are the sleeves. I knitted in some white waste yarn where the sleeves should be. I need to unpick those stitches and knit the sleeves before adding the lace edging. This will take a bit longer than the last project to finish.

Spring Cleaning

By Ann

On 23 May, 2009

In FO, Knit

I know. This weekend actually marks the beginning of summer here in the United States, but the summer equinox isn’t for another month, so I’m still good.

I’ve been thinking a lot about projects that have been languishing in various knitting bags around the house, and it’s time to make some hard decisions about these projects. What caused me to stop working on them? Are they worth reviving? If so, what do I need to do to get them going again?

Project #1: Unspun Silk Scarf

unspun-silk-1 I actually don’t have a picture of the state of the project before I picked it up. This is a picture of it after I started working on it this week.

Last spring, I had an urge to play with unspun silk hankies, so I dug up a package of Chasing Rainbows hankies in Peacock colorway. I chose a simple 5×5 rib for a quick scarf. I casted on 40 stitches and worked about 4″, then stopped. I don’t know why I stopped. (Maybe I needed a manicure?) In any case, I stuck the whole thing back in a bag with the silk hankies and forgot about it.

This past week, I had an idea for working with unspun silk again.Â (Hmm. There seems to be a theme here.Â Looking back, it’s always spring when I want to play with unspun silk.Â There was at least one other instance of this to support the theory. If it’s May, it must be time to play with silk hankies.) Anyway, back to today. I pulled out a bag of silk hankies and found the knitting with it.

unspun-silk-scarf A few hours of knitting over the course of 3 days, and it is finished. I don’t know if I intended one of those long and skinny scarves, but I chose to finish it off quickly by making a slotted scarf instead. Many, many inches shorter this way!

The finished scarf weighs less than half an ounce, between 10-15 grams. (I really need to get a better scale!) So, one package of hankies (Chasing Rainbows put up is 1 ounce) is more than enough for a scarf.

Knitting notes:

40 stitches in 5×5 rib with 2.25 mm needles
at approx. 24″, knit 20 sts,Â attach new strand and knit the next 20 sts
continue working 2 sides separately for 2″
join the 2 sides again to close the slot
continue knitting as a single piece for another 4-5″
cast off

unspun-silk-2 I like the sewn bind off, but it’s a bit difficult to work the sewn bind off with unspun. I worked around this by compressing the unspun a bit by rubbing the unspun between my palms, as if I was washing my hands. Do this all along the length of the unspun.

It’s not spinning because the twist goes every which way. But because the silk is so sticky, it stays compressed.Â Now, the silk strand is ready to be used for the sewn bind off. The rest is history.

On to the next project!

Cabling Along

By Ann

On 15 May, 2009

In Knit

cable-mitt When I first started to knit cables, I used those metal cable needles that looked like a shepherd’s crook. I hated it. Moving stitches around the crook was a PITA.

I moved on to the metal cable needles with a little hump in the middle, like an elongated omega (Î©). This wasn’t bad. You can knit directly off of the needle, but my stitches were always in danger of slipping off of the needle.

Then I found the wooden cable needles with the little grooves in them. I thought I was in hog heaven. Everything is staying put. I even progressed to using whatever random DPN I had laying around. I learned this trick from Eva. Don’t know why it never occurred to me until I saw Eva do it when she was making the DNA scarf for an auction.

I knew about cabling without a cable needle, but the thought of leaving live stitches hanging out there, flapping in the breeze, was enough to give this control freak a heart attack.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t attempted it. I just wasn’t comfortable with it. And it took just as long, if not longer, than it would for me to execute the cable with a cable needle.

This year at Madrona, I took 2 classes that worked on my fear of cabling without cable needles: Lucy Neatby’s Even Cooler Socks and Elsebeth Lavold’s Viking Knits and Mitered Corners in Cabling.

Lucy showed me why I was having so much difficulty with my earlier attempts at cabling without a cable needle — I was manipulating my stitches too much. All that movement allowed the stitches to be stretched and ladder.Â She showed me how to minimize the gymnastics and get the stitches mounted quickly and easily.Â Elsebeth’s class allowed me to practice the technique over and over again until I was comfortable with it.Â I, unknowingly, had the classes in the correct order.Â Lucky me.

This week, when I picked up the yarn leftover from these socks to make a wrist warmer, I thought I’d spice it up and add some cables to it and practice my cabling without cable needles.Â Of course, to fit the cables, the wrist warmers became fingerless mitts/gauntlets.Â The good news? The immediate and repeated practice at Madrona was enough to imprint the methodology into my brain. There was the barest hint of a hiccup before I was zipping along. Before I knew it, the mitt was done, and nary a cable needle in sight.

Now, I just need to remember what I did so I can make the left hand mitt.