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Showing posts from June, 2016

Pitch Matters

I'm working on several projects right now. I've finished my Christmas in July project for The Whole Nine Yarns (more about that next month). I need to come up with a pattern for Georgia FiberFest . Several nights ago I woke up about 3 AM and could not get back to sleep for nearly two hours! I had an idea. After I got up late that morning, I cast on a möbius. I was knitting along fairly well. Then I decided to swatch from the other end in 1×1 ribbing. When you are working with a long-print yarn, the number of stitches in a row or round matters. Behold! On a round of 450 stitches, the long print in Cascade Tangier is not long enough. It produces one-row stripes. However, on a much shorter pitch of 40 stitches back and forth, the result is a nice gradient. In fact, for a gradient back and forth, I wouldn't want to work on much more than 40 stitches. Now that I think of it, wouldn't it be wonderful if yarn manufacturers included this information on long-pr

Tools in Revolt

I'm having a couple of days where my tools and I are just not getting along. I've been working on a fine-gauge reversible lace scarf. It is a lovely thing, indeed; all 75,000 stitches, 60 hours, and 97 repeats of 5 multiples of pattern. I finished it and blocked it, using the beautiful bronze Lacis blocking wires I wrote about previously . I used my typical method for blocking: thread blocking wires through the edges, pin onto mat, spray with water, ignore overnight. In less than 24 hours, the bronze oxidized and left blue-green stains on the edges of the ivory-colored scarf. Sigh. Fortunately, I was able to dig up some stain-removal information (thank you, Internet). The key was lemon juice and salt. I purchased half a dozen lemons at the grocery store. Once I squeezed them, I was armed with a cup of fresh juice. I laid the scarf in a glass baking dish, spooned lemon juice along the stained edge, and then salted. It worked! It took multiple iterations, as the whole sc