8 posts tagged “knitting”

So, I am rushing to finish a lace scarf/stole for Mother's Day.  I was trying an experiment and knitting it in the round with the plan to drop stitches at the end to make the fringe.  Perhaps lace is too strong a word -- it is stockinette, sock yarn, and size 9 needles.  And it was taking me twenty minutes to complete one round so I had put in at least 11 hours when ---  a stitch was caught and pulled out.  We are not talking a small pull we are talking feet of yarn, my scarf looked like an open-ended drawstring bag.  "Don't panic," I thought.  "You can fix this." 

No, I couldn't.  I tried pulling what I thought was the errant thread at a further point to help (!!!) the process but it was a different thread so now I had two hideous pulls.  And the part that I had un-pursed looked like crap anyway so I decided to let it go.  I haven't frogged it yet but that's its future.

I have had the yarn (3 balls of expensive Touch Me Due) for the Minimum Scarf from The Knit Stitch by Sally Melville (love that book) forever.  I had started it with two balls thinking I would just make it shorter than the pattern (which calls for four), bought a third when I realized it would be way too short, then frogged it after finishing one ball which showed me it would still be too short with three.

I cast-on 24 rather than the 32 called for (3/4 stitches for 3/4 the yarn so hopefully) and have been knitting like mad since last night.  I've put in around three hours and have over 15 inches (the final length should be close to 39 inches) so I still have hope I can mail it off to my mother in time.  And I received the fun scarf pin I purchased for Mother this weekend (all the way from Canada) so perhaps the stars are in alignment.  I do have to felt the scarf after it is done which means a laundromat for me but I am feeling strong.

Well, obviously I am not a dedicated blogger which is funny because I get impatient for a new entry in the blogs I read if a week goes by without one.  My knitting has increased in one sense -- I am knitting hats and vests for a great charity, Warm Woolies -- and slowed in another sense -- I'm trying to stop doing as much knitting for individuals because I find it rather stressful, at least if they know about it. 

A case in point; I have been trying to make the half-dome hat for a friend who requested a kufi-style hat (moslem prayer hat) and it turned into the CURSED hat.  You knit the majority of the hat on number 5 needles but the brim is knitted with 3s!  I started with addi turbos which I have liked on other projects but they were a nightmare on this one.  I made more errors in the first three rounds than I had for all my previous projects put together.  Small needles are hard enough for me but small slippery needles?  And to get gauge I should have gone down a size but that wasn't going to happen.  So I frogged it, got some bamboo needles and started again. 

One thing I hate about small needles is I find the small stitches hard to see (and this was in a dark slate blue) so I end up dropping or mistakenly adding stitches and not discovering the problem until several rounds later.  I frogged the middle section of the hat a half a dozen times.  I also hate how long everything seems to take with small needles.  And my friend had a much larger than usual head (he wears a size 8 fedora -- I have a big head and I wear a 7 3/4 hat so we're talking a long circumference to knit around. 

Then the decreases added a fresh level of hell.  Not the decreases themselves but more needle issues.  I switched to two circulars and had one of my Denise needles separate and drop a boatload of stitches.  I love my Denise needles and they had never come undone like that before.  But this was the CURSED hat.  So I laboriously picked up the stitches and started using dpns (look at these great colors).  They fell  (were pushed?) out.  So I put the hat aside and my friend pretty much gave up. 

Then I saw the Knitty sweater pattern Thermal and I loved the waffle stitch.  She described it as stretchy so I thought it would make an excellent hat.  I decided to make my own pattern using the waffle stitch but I couldn't bear to unravel the hat and use the same yarn, what if the curse came with it?  I bought a new ball of what I thought was the same slate blue color and cast-on a narrow brim with silver gray (from the CH but it hadn't actually been knit  so I thought it would be safe) and started away. 

It went very fast at first and was enjoyable (size 6 needles - yeah!) but then I got to the decreases and realized that I had cast on too many stitches for the decreases I wanted to do (but what was needed for the stitch pattern and his size) so I had to do a lot of thinking and decided to decrease 5 stitches in the non-ribbing section of the waffle stitch and then I'd be fine.  But I wasn't.  I had thought to do the waffle stitch on the entire hat and because I was doing double decreases it should reduce in each section by one rib pair.  But I somehow added a stitch or forgot to do one of the decreases and couldn't figure out what I should do so I put it aside again.  Then I was reading AlterKnit and she had a beautiful silk kufi style hat that changed to stockinette stitch at the decreases and there were 5 paired decreases which looked cool.  Aha!  I started doing the same and it looked great but then I started to panic a bit because I was getting close to the end of the skein.  No problem, I'll just use a teeny bit of the cursed skein, right?  Oh no, different blues entirely.  Thankfully I eked out the yarn and finished the hat 6 months after I started.  And here, modeled by me is the no-longer-cursed hat (And my friend liked it):

Waffle Skull Cap-4

Alpaca Earflap Hat

 Other recent projects (I love that you can see the snow falling in the earflap shot:

Mission Falls Striped Hat

And projects for the Charmed Knits Knitalong: A Ravenclaw beret is on the needles (using the cursed yarn but the curse appears to have been broken) and Gryffindor and Slytherin waiting in the wings.  I don't have a yellow wool so Hufflepuff will just have to wait.

Harry Potter Yarn-1

Dog in window with scarf

I did finish a scarf for myself.  Lengthwise scarves are great.  I know it is the same number of stitches as a scarf knitted the usual way but without as much turning of the project it felt faster.  I used two colors of a yarn I first saw and loved in Yarnplay called Filatura Di Crosa 127 print and made a simple garter stitch scarf. 

Long suffering dog

Well, I thought it would be brilliant for my co-worker's dog to model it since she has similar coloring but she was much more interested in treats.  She's a sweetie and I wish she visited the office more often.  She is a coonhound though and every once in a while let's loose a bay that rattles the windows.

Filatura di Crosa scarf

Here is a non-modeled version draped artistically around a bookend.

Dan's cashmere hat

... is that I finished none of them.  I started hating the striped one so I unraveled it and made a hat for my friend in New York out of the cream colored yarn.  One of my partners kindly modeled it for me.  You can't see it but I used the decreases used in the Half Dome hat which don't spiral.  With this thicker yarn they weren't a total success but I still liked them.

As for the other scarves, I still think they were a great idea but I just ran out of time.  And I'm thinking of frogging the ribbed one to make a slipped stitch pattern I like instead.  The colors are a continuing exploration of bright colors with bright colors.  I've always had a bit of color around but always paired it with something muted, usually black.  An example of my new style is a hat I knit for myself using the same yarn as the unfinished Xmas scarves.  The pattern is a K6P6 rib and I had to make it twice because the

My ribbed hat

first one was huge (I don't like tight hats and I have a big head but, come on, it looked like I was wearing a placemat balanced on my head).

Knitting is meditation for me but I've made the common error of thinking that meditation is easy.  I've been so tired lately due to health issues that just holding the needles up quickly exhausts me.  But I miss it and notice that I'm not as grounded when I don't knit.  As well, the little I achieve on my far-too-many in process projects makes me tense rather than calm.  Especially the scarves -- they seem to be the same (short) length they were a month ago. 

Which brings me to my scarf rant.  Why are these seen as great beginner projects?  I understand the theory that knitting a large repetitive project writes the movements into your body but I also think undertaking something that takes a slow knitter a long time to finish leads to abandoning knitting altogether.  Oddly, I have thought that one approach that might help me deal with my scarf block is to add more knitting to each scarf by knitting them in the round.  Sounds crazy to knit twice as much, right?  But I find I can go for much longer if I don't have to flip the project over after each row.  It has nothing to do with not wanting to purl -- I've never minded purling and, unless you are only knitting stockinette, you purl in the round also.  Maybe I am still just too awkward and it shows most clearly when I am turning-- trying to keep the yarn, needles, tension, and what's the next stitch in mind and under control.

So why did I decide to knit three scarves for Christmas presents?  Because they are great presents and, in one case, a scarf was requested by the recipient.  And I made the decision way back in early October when I thought that was plenty of time, before my physical ennui.

Gee, now that I've whined about them, I think I'll just start knitting on them.

I was thinking about the circuitous routes I sometimes follow in deciding what to knit - colors, pattern, and even more interesting, how the pattern will be modified. 

A case in point:  I decided to make the Architect scarf in Greetings from Knit Cafe for a friend in NYC.  He loves architecture and design and I loved the non-symetrical stripes so it seemed a good fit. 

First the yarn.  I was working on the Half-Dome hat for another friend and decided to use the yarn the designer suggested (non-scratchy for bald heads - very important), Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, even though I had a bad experience with DB's Cathay (slippery, split very easily, and hard to rip -- not a yarn I would recommend to a fellow beginner).  What a joy the Cashmerino was to knit with and so soft!  When I thought about this scarf which I also wanted to be soft, Cashmerino seemed a natural --- although in chunky rather than Aran.

Second, the colors.  The scarf called for 4 colors but I knew I didn't want the same colors as in the pattern.  NYC is rather conservative but my friend is creative so I wanted classic with a twist but nothing he wouldn't mind wearing around wealthy conservative clients.  Obviously I was limited to the colors Cashmerino comes in - chunky limits the colors more.  I decided on black, cream, dark red, and medium blue.  Then I found a website that had cashmerino on sale but only in certain colors.  I changed to charcoal, cream, medium red, and lime.  When I received the order I liked the combination.  I wanted to keep the thinnest stripes as red and lime to be used less than charcoal and cream so I was ready to translate the pattern per my color choices.

Third, the stitch pattern.  The pattern was a K2 P2 rib with US 11 needles.  I knit loose so I started with US 10 then went to 9.  The scarf was to be 9 1/2 inches wide but I didn't want it that wide.  I decided on 7 inches which became 7 1/2 to accommodate the rib pattern.  I began knitting.  After 4 rows I decided that I really did not like the way the ribbing was looking.  I was knitting to the recommended gauge so I considered reducing the needles again to tighten up the stitches but wasn't sure if I wanted a rib at all.  So I decided to turn the scarf into a swatch and try out other stitches.  I started with garter stitch and after a few rows I realized I really liked the combination of ribbed edge and garter stitch.  The swatch turned back into the scarf and I kept going.

Fourth, the color pattern.  As I mentioned I really liked the striped pattern in the original scarf so decided to keep that even though nothing else remained of the pattern.  It was not to be --- after knitting the first narrow red stripe I started on the next stripe in the pattern so it was charcoal, cream, red, charcoal.  After 4 rows I knew I wasn't happy with the scarf anymore.  What was the matter?  I decided that the color combo was looking kind of dated.  Start over?  Put it in the UFO pile?  I decided to rip out the last charcoal rows and do lime instead which meant that the rest of the striping pattern would need to be modified.  Using lime instead of charcoal worked for me.

So, my question is, at what point does a project become a personal design rather than the inspiration design?

Attorney Scarf

Half Dome: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEsummer06/PATThalfdome.html

I made this for my goddaughter's birthday and I've already bought yarn to make one for me it is so cute.  I am a new knitter so if I thought it was pretty easy . . .

Except for adding a stripe and doing the straps a little diffferently* I followed the pattern I found on MagKnits exactly.  http://www.magknits.com/warm04/patterns/sophie.htm

*  Rather than weaving in many tails, I made the first strap then attached it with a three-needle bindoff then moved straight to the 3 live stiches next to it using the same yarn and made the second strap in the opposite direction.  I wound it around the first strap before attaching the second strap to the bag with another three-needle bind-off.

Alpaca Roll-brim Hat

Roll-brim hat - My first completed project.  After a frustrating web search to find a free pattern for bulky yarn, I came up with this pattern on my own and it turned out great even if I have to say so myself.