Knot Knecessarily Knitting

One seam, really?

2012-01-27T21:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, the knit, Swirl jacket does indeed have only one seam. But let's be very clear about this. This is not an easy seam. The sleeve portions aren't too bad, as the stitches are basically matched one to one. But the yoke seam, at least in the "Plum Perfect" pattern, required a lot of easing to make it all match. While a great deal of the knitting on this sweater is suitable for an advanced beginner, the seam is definitely not beginner knitting.

I've also found that a lot of people have trouble figuring out how to put the Swirl together. The video will show you how to fold your Swirl so that you know where to seam.

Red Willow Swirl

2012-01-25T18:03:00.000-05:00

First off, I must apologize for being away from the blog for so long. I actually wrote some drafts that I thought I might post during the holidays, but that so didn't happen. It was great to see family and delightful to travel to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl (even if Stanford did lose on a failed field goal).

Already 2012 is off to an amazing start. I'll be posting more later about where and when I'll be teaching. There will definitely be more teaching at conventions and festivals this year. Hurray!

But ya'all are here to see the knitting, yes? Here it is:

This is the "Plum Perfect" pattern from knit, Swirl by Sandra McIver. I'll have a full review of the book later, as I have much to say about it. The yarn is one skein of Mountain Colors Weaver's Wool, which is a 1450 yard put-up and a one-pound skein. The colorway is Red Willow. It looks great against the red rocks outside Oak Creek, Arizona!

I'll be teaching this construction method as a workshop on Saturday 25 February from 10 AM to 4 PM at The Whole Nine Yarns. We won't make a swirl jacket that day, but we will swatch a lot and work out the technical issues that come into play. There are some things I've learned by knitting the dang thing.

Before you even start, swatch! It is tricky to get the right tension in the welt pattern. On the one hand, you don't want your fabric to be too tight or all you'll see are the reverse stockinette purls. On the other hand, if it is too loose, your swirl will grow without your permission. I knit a large swatch -- over 8 inches across. If you can measure your swatch and hang it up for awhile, you can tell if it drapes nicely or gravity makes it grow like kudzu!

Be aware that many people are finding swirl patterns to run large. Sandra doesn't use the usual bust size measurements for sizing. The choice has to do with the shape of the sweater, but it does mean that this sweater can be trickier to size. And I know she says that the sweater looks good on any body in any size, but I really do think that a large size would make me look as if I am being fed to a giant clam. In my case, the sizes in the book do not run small enough for me, so I knit a swirl pattern that had less ease to begin with at a tighter gauge than recommended. This worked surprisingly well, as I just followed the numbers in the book.

My habit is to check the knitting against my body as I work. That is not an easy thing to do with this sweater. I kept thinking about that strange yoke measurement used to figure size in this garment. Eventually, I deduced that the yoke is based on the size hole you have in the middle of your swirl before you start working back and forth for the sleeve and bodice. Although you will have done quite a bit of knitting at this point, when you have completed the swirl part of the jacket and are ready to start working back and forth up the back and sleeves, try on your knitting! The yoke measurement should be the interior measurement of the swirl minus the measurement across your back. When you put on the swirl, you can tell if it will be too big if it hangs way down your back past your behind. You can also tell if the collar and lapels will be embracing you or swallowing you.

Another thing to watch out is that Sandra must be a tall person. I write this because the sweaters in this book also tend to run long in the sleeves, to the point that Sandra has posted on her blog how to steek the sleeves down to size. I have an alternative suggestion. The way the sleeves are knit up, there is a point where you will have the full stitch count from side to side, from one cuff across the back of the next to the other cuff. By this point in the knitting, you also have a large portion of the sweater completed. Use this to take a nice large gauge measurement. Plug in the numbers based on that long stitch count. Find out how long that sleeve span is really going to be. Compare it to your own arm measurements. Since the sleeves are created by casting on a whole bunch of stitches all at once, it is a simple matter to cast on fewer stitches.

In spite of some peculiar bits, this is a remarkably delightful knit and very fun to wear. I cast on the first week of December and finished the sweater in Arizona less than a month later. There are large sections that are happy, nearl-mindless knit-night or television knitting. And in the end, the flattering finished sweater is a great excuse to break out your shawl pin collection!

Off-Topic with the Tigers

2011-12-05T14:32:00.001-05:00

My home has been rather chaotic this holiday season. I decided to take a little mental health break and run down to ZooAtlanta on Friday afternoon. It was a nice day, cool in the morning but warming up to comfortable autumn weather by afternoon. I specifically went to view Chelsea and her five-month-old cubs, Sohni and Sanjiv. I had hoped to see them a month ago during Po's birthday celebration, but tiger father Kavi was out on exhibit that morning, the weather was extremely fine for November -- more like late summer than autumn -- and Kavi was not about to give up the yard and go inside.

Sumatran Tigers are a smaller sub-species of tiger, but they still have all the majesty one expects in a big cat. Unfortunately, their numbers in the wild have diminished to about 400. Like so many apex predators, tigers require significant space for territory and plentiful prey. With seven billion people on the planet, there are fewer resources for other species. This is true in the Unites States as well as far-flung places like Sumatra. (After all, when was the last time you saw a Florida panther or red wolf?) Places like ZooAtlanta provide more than a safe place for endangered species. ZooAtlanta works in cooperation with universities and conservation organizations to conduct research that helps both captive populations and those still in situ.

For the moment, this happy feline family represents a lot of hope. Big cats do not stay little and cute for long. By springtime, the cubs won't be little anymore. Right now, Sohni and Sanjiv are at the adorable and playful stage. I spent more than an hour watching their antics. They were thoroughly entertaining as they chased each other as well as their very tolerant mother. I am sure the cubs won't be out on exhibit in very cold weather. So, if you are in Atlanta and the afternoon is seasonably pleasant, it is well worth your time to scurry down to ZooAtlanta for a wonderful mental health break.

Slow Spin

2011-11-28T04:22:00.000-05:00

As you've probably guessed, I like to find projects that teach me something new. I had been reading and watching videos about spinning, and I decided to try making a cabled yarn. Cabled yarns are different from regular plied yarns in that they have an extra layer of twist.

Yarns start with singles. Some people will use a singles as it is, but for knitting, most people prefer to ply the singles. This is partly because a singles, by definition, can't be balanced. Unbalanced yarns can result in skewed knitting -- the stitches will push in one direction or the other, causing what should be a rectangular piece of knitting to instead appear as if it had been worked on a bias. A lot of times spinners who knit will create a two-ply yarn by plying a singles back upon itself. The singles are spun in one direction, but when plied together they are spun in the opposite direction. The two directions of twist balance to create a yarn that knits straight. Multiple singles can also be plied together to produce a three-ply, four-ply or more yarn.

In addition to balancing the yarn so that it doesn't skew the knitting, plied yarns behave in different ways. Most lace yarns are two-ply yarns because that structure will tend to push apart and open up. In lace knitting you want the holes to show. But if you are knitting plump, cushy cables in a warm sweater, a soft rounded multi-ply yarn is more likely to give you the fabric you desire.

A cabled yarn adds one more layer of twist.

For this particular yarn, I started with a three-color batt from Perfect Spot Farm. This batt was purchased a couple years ago at SAFF, but not by me. Betsy purchased it, but found that after a year, she hadn't spun it. So Betsy gave the batt to Jenna. I happened to be over at Jenna's house and admired the batt. Jenna took pity on my small spinning stash -- or maybe she just wanted to continue to corrupt me in the ways of spinning -- and kindly gave me the batt. I decided I wanted to try spinning a color-changing yarn that is also cabled.

I started by spinning four singles. I did this by ripping the batt across the color changes. I spun each singles from white to beige to brown to beige to white to beige to brown to beige and finally back to white. That gave me two complete cycles through the color sequence. It took me all summer to spin four bobbins of fine singles. Partly this is because when you spin fine you need more twist, and partly this is because I knew I would need extra twist for my planned yarn. And partly this is because I'm just not a good enough spinner yet to use the highest ratios on my wheel.

Next I made a pair of over spun two-ply yarns. I set up two bobbins and plied them together, being sure to add too much twist. I also watched carefully as the colors changed off the bobbins. I was not shy about breaking plies or rotating amongst the bobbins. If I spun all the white off one bobbin and was into the beige, I looked to see if the other bobbin was close or not. If not, I pulled off the spare white and set it aside. Sometimes I was able to incorporate those spare bits later.

For the final spin, I plied the two two-ply yarns together to create what is called a diamond cable. In this case, I had so much spin in the singles that you almost can't tell that this is a cabled yarn rather than a two-ply. One of my friends actually mistook it for a skein of Kauni. Although this was a major time commitment, the advantage is that I now have a very strong yarn. I'm not sure what I want to knit with it yet, but I have confidence that it will be long-wearing. And I am hopeful that the natural color gradient will be dramatic. And if I get really crazy, I might even be able to use it as a warp in my loom.

Foolproof Mashed Potatoes

2011-11-23T13:59:00.001-05:00

Okay, ya'all know this is a knitting blog. And those of you who know me know that I do not cook. I do not like to cook. I do like to eat -- especially other people's awesome cooking. But there's something about the impermanence of food art that I just can't get beyond.

Now, the fact that I do not cook means that if I figure out how to make something and it works, then anybody can make it. Furthermore, I do not own any fancy electric cook gear. No mixer, no blender. I do have a microwave oven. So most of what I do involves glass bowls, measuring cups, and basic utensils.

I do like mashed potatoes. In fact, I like carbohydrates in general. Potatoes are amongst my favorite comfort foods, probably because I lived off of them for six years of graduate school. They are inexpensive, filling, and they can be endlessly doctored with dairy fat. And I am in luck that at least some Thanksgiving meals require mashed potatoes. (Here in the South, sweet potatoes and yams are also popular.) This year, Cuddly Hubby and I will be home for the holiday; but in years where we are traveling and need to bring something, I'm happy to bring the mashed potatoes. I can make these and not embarrass myself.

Here's how I do it.

First off, you can make these potatoes a day ahead of time. None of this getting up before dawn nonsense. It's a holiday for crying out loud. If I am up and the sun isn't, by definition that's not a holiday.

Set your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Leave a stick of butter out on the counter.

Wash the potatoes. (For today's example, I'm using about 5 pounds of medium-sized baking potatoes.)
Using a fork, prick the potato skins all over. Do not poke yourself.
When the oven is preheated, place the potatoes directly on the rack. I usually space them out across the rack and in two rows.

Let them bake for 50 to 60 minutes. (Go do something fun like knitting while you wait.)

At 50 minutes, take out one potato. The skin should be crisp. Place on a cutting board and slice it open longitudinally. Check the potato's meat. It should squish and flake easily with a fork. Spoon the meat out into a bowl or, better yet, a 13 x 9-inch glass casserole dish. It should spoon out easily. It should crush easily with the back of the spoon. If it doesn't, let the potatoes bake longer until they do! You shouldn't need any measurable arm strength to mash.

When the potatoes are done baking, cut each open and spoon the meat into a bowl or casserole dish. Yes, this is time-consuming. This method is foolproof but not necessarily fast. If you want a fancy presentation, retain the potato skins for later. You can spoon the finished mashed potatoes back into the skins for easy serving. Or you can just eat those nice crispy vitamin-saturated skins now. Or you can offer those nice crispy skins as bribe to someone else to spoon out all the potato meat. Or you can throw the skins out back in your compost heap.

mashed spuds with butter before half and half

As you spoon out the meat, add tablespoons of unsalted room-temperature butter to the fluffy pile of carbohydrate goodness. (I do not use margarine. I may not like to cook, but I do have standards.) Using a fork or masher, mash the potatoes and butter together. I used about 4 tablespoons (half a stick) of butter, but use up to a whole stick, as you like. Your goal is to coat all the carbohydrates with dairy fat.

Warm a pint of half and half. (Some people use cream, but I was already using butter earlier.) I zap the half and half for about 2 minutes in the microwave, but you can also warm it on the stove. Don't let it boil. You just don't want cold milk making the melted butter congeal. And if you are about to take the finished potatoes to the table, you don't want them to be cold already.

mashed spuds after half and half

Add some warm (one-quarter to one-half cup) half and half to the mashed spuds. Stir it in with a fork. Add more. Stir it in again. Repeat as needed. Use the half and half to turn the stiff potatoes into something creamier. I used all 2 cups and had creamy potatoes but stiff enough to build castles or the Devil's Tower on my plate. Then again, I know I'm going to use gravy tomorrow, so I want some body in the spuds. If you like creamier, smoother potatoes, then you'll need to buy the quart size of half and half. Just be patient and add half and half sparingly. You can always add more, but you can't take it out.

At this point, embellish as you like. You can stir in whatever seasonings you prefer. I sometimes make these with cheddar cheese and bacon crumbles. In that case, I'll melt the cheese in before I add the half and half.

spuds almost ready to wait in the refrigerator

If you are making the mashed potatoes for tomorrow, then put them in a glass casserole dish. (If you were really on the ball, you already prepared them in the dish instead of in a bowl.) I use a butter knife to smooth the surface. Cover with aluminum foil, let cool, and place in the refrigerator. You can pop the dish into a 325 to 350-degree oven for 30 to 45 minutes when the bird is almost done. Or if you used a glass dish, the microwave is an option. I personally like to reheat in the oven. Those of you who remember tv dinners in foil trays can figure out why.

Wishing you and yours a filling and fabulous Thanksgiving!

Wounded Lions

2011-11-09T20:24:00.001-05:00

I hadn't bothered to post this little double-knit project earlier. Partly that's because I'm no longer sure which yarn it was, nor do I recall in which year it was made. I designed and knit it back in my Purly Gates days, and it uses both regular double knitting, and textured double knitting. You'll notice that the stripes at the top contain both knits and purls, while the stripes at the bottom are all knit. The cord is based on the Chinese crown knot braid from macramé. I even incorporated an open instead of closed edge at the top to facilitate display.

But I also just needed to fly my alma matters' colors tonight. The Cuddly Hubby had ESPN on as usual this morning and the endless loop of news coverage was upsetting. But it was worse tonight when NBC news led off their telecast with Penn State rather than the financial crisis in the European Union. That something so cruel and sickening could happen at a place I hold so dear is heart wrenching. I hold out hope for the victims to achieve whatever healing they need to make their lives as whole and fulfilling as possible. And I hold out hope for the judicial system to carefully uncover the whole truth, weigh the wrongdoings of each party involved, and mete out appropriate punishments.

The Penn State I know and love is better than this.

Helical Knitting

2011-11-02T15:55:00.000-04:00

As you all know by now, I'm pretty picky about whose patterns I knit. Yes, I want a satisfying finished object, but I usually also want to learn something. I look at a pattern and ask, "Is there anything new and interesting that is worth my time and the precious yarn in my stash?"

I thought I had worked out my teaching schedule for the remainder of 2011. Then Mariana sent out an e-mail to the shop teachers including a list of new class ideas for fall and winter. One of these was Double Heelix by Jeny Staiman from the First Fall 2011 issue of Knitty. As Jeny is already in my blog links list (Curious Knitter), I had already read about these and watched her video. And I've already been teaching Judy's Magic Cast On when I teach toe-up socks.

I can report that I thoroughly enjoyed the knitting. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I knocked out the project in about two weeks from cast-on to bind-off. First off, Jeny does some of the same twisted, maniacal stuff that I do. For example, she doesn't cast on at the end of the yarn, but rather, somewhere in the middle. Secondly, she and I agree that the Magic Cast On often works better if you cast on the lower stitch and then the upper stitch. (Accomplished sock knitter Woofgang Pug is also in agreement on this. Great minds in consensus.) The reason is that if you cast on upper then lower, when you rotate to start the first round you'll be knitting into the stitch you just cast on. If you do lower then upper, you'll end with an upper stitch, then rotate to knit into a lower stitch which was the next to last stitch cast on. Much better.

I am thinking it may be fun to try the helix flat in some other ways. Jeny has come up with an innovative increase using the Magic Cast On to create the heel shaping. In the heel there are two different colors going but four strands (two of each color) in what is called helix or helical knitting. Some people also call this barber pole knitting. If you worked on the Big Sock at STITCHES South 2010, then you've done helical knitting. TECHKnitter has a wonderful discussion here or you can dig out your back issue of Interweave Knits, Summer 2009, pp. 28-30.

The downside is that you have multiple strands going in the round. And you need one strand for each row of thickness you want in the stripes. So for example, if you wanted to knit a candy candy with a wide white stripe and a narrow red stripe, you might need one or two strands of red and maybe three or four or five strands of white. In this sock, you are knitting stripes that are two rows thick, so you use four strands (two of each color).

So why do this? The upside is that you don't get a jog at all. And if you are working in the round, as you are on a sock, you just knit around and around and around merrily.

Jeny mentions three different "flavors" of Double Heelix. They can all be viewed on her blog here or on the Ravelry page for Double Heelix.

A 2x2 spiral heel with a plain foot and plain leg. You can make your pair identical or fraternal, as you like.
A 2x2 spiral heel, then 1x1 striped foot and leg. In this case, Jeny also worked a plain instep and heel cuff, but you could just run 1x1 stripes through the whole sock.
A 2x2 spiral heel, then 2x2 stripes on either the foot or leg. On Jeny's blog, she worked the spiral on only half the sock and worked the other half plain. On mine, I worked the entire socks, heel to foot to toe to leg to cuff in 2x2 stripes.

How you handle your yarn may vary based on which flavor you wish to knit. I should also mention that this is a great pattern if you have single orphaned 50g skeins of sock yarn. Many manufacturers now use 100g put-ups for socks, meaning you can knit a whole pair out of one skein. If you can find two different but complementary 50g skeins in the discount bin, you are set. In this case, I had two skeins of Shibui sock yarn in my stash. Jeny's examples also show what a great pattern this is for paring a loud hand-painted yarn with a plain yarn.

For all flavors, I recommend dividing your yarn. So if you have two skeins, divide them in half using whichever method you like (scale, swift, or something else). You now have four balls, two of each color. One pair will be the left sock and the other will be the right sock. So right away, you can put half the yarn back in your knitting bag.

If you are knitting flavor 1, follow Jeny's directions in the pattern. She has you pull about 15 feet of yarn off the balls, then cast on at that location. That will allow you to work the spiral heel. When those 15-foot tails run out, you'll be left with a single strand of each color. One becomes the foot and the other becomes the leg, as you like.

If you are knitting flavor 2, you may want to find the midpoint of your strands and cast on there. This will allow you to knit your spiral heel, and then end up with one strand of each color to go down the foot and up the leg. I think flavor 2 with the plain toe and cuff would be especially good if you are knitting for someone with large feet. You can use a 100g skein for the plain main color and a 50g skein for the contrast. When the contrast runs out, just keep going with the plain main color.

If you are knitting flavor 3, you will want to find not the mid-point but the one-quarter-point of the ball. In my case, this was about 22 to 24 yards and I made size small. If you are making a larger size, you might want to wind off just a little more than one-quarter. If you do this, you should be able to knit your spiral heel, then work 2x2 stripes down the foot all the way to the toe. If you've guessed well, you'll hit that sweet spot between having enough yarn to finish but not having too much waste. Now you can cut the yarn, find the midpoint of the remainder (what started as the three-quarter ball), join in so you have two strands of each color, and work 2x2 stripes up the leg.

A last note: a did depart from Jeny's directions for the toe. I followed her pattern and shaping for both the foot and the leg, working half of each round with one color and half of each round with the other. This sounds strange now, but when you make a helix, you'll soon discover this is very logical. And in this case, this logic grows out of the spiral heel itself. So I just followed the pattern, and when the toe decreases are worked every row, I just kept going until I had only 10 sts on each needle. I worked 1/2 a round (8 sts on one needle). Then I finished the round by grafting the remaining half-round, including grafting the decreases. This gave me a toe that matches my heel.

And I had a little good luck. I managed to start both heels at about the same place in the color repeat on the skein, and did the same thing on the legs. If you look closely, you'll see that there is some flashing in the variegated colorway, but that the flashing is very similar on both socks. So they are closer to being an identical pair rather than a fraternal pair.

For someone who isn't a sock knitter, I seem to be having too much fun with socks!

A Little Entrelac

2011-10-11T14:15:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, I took a class from Gwen Bortner. Gwen was here in town to teach for Atlanta Knitting Guild. On Saturday she taught "Entrelac: Beyond the Basics."

I had been out of practice on entrelac, so I did some swatches earlier in the week. Specifically, I tried Jay Petersen's clever trick for joining entrelac. Oh my gosh, awesome! Here's what I did:

First, I ran a vertical lifeline up the side of the work. You are going to have to pick up stitches on the selvedge in entrelac, so you might as well trap a piece of yarn as you turn. When you need to pick up the stitches, they are then already there on the waste yarn and you don't have to hunt for them.

Second, I used Rick Mondragon's technique for modular intarsia. Jay is the clever person who realized you could use Rick's technique to make entrelac lie better. Instead of working ssk or p2tog to join a new unit to a unit on the previous course, pull up a loop in the live stitch. Knit out with the loop, then knit back backwards with the loop. Tighten. Repeat. Not only does this give you nicer joins in your entrelac, but it prevents color peek through between courses. When I showed this to Gwen, she observed, I think correctly, that the knitting back backwards part is important. While you could do this and turn your work to purl backwards, you are much more likely to have success if you don't turn your work.

Jay has done some experiments with how knits and purls behave when you pick up entrelac this way. And he has produced some intriguing reversible entrelac fabrics. But I've digressed from Gwen.


A bigger card case -- one extra unit at cast-on and two extra courses in the body. I also used crab stitch not garter to border the flap.

Gwen had us work a little card case in entrelac. One of the ways you can tell in Entrée to Entrelac that Gwen is a teacher first and a designer second is that her book is peppered with interesting little projects that you can use for learning a technique before you invest the time and money in a full-scale garment. In the class we learned a very interesting way to start the bag at the bottom. I was pleased that Gwen uses a crocheted provisional cast-on. (Jeny Staiman also uses it in the Double Heelix socks.) It is one of my favorite techniques, so it is nice to see if becoming more commonplace. After the initial set-up, we got to work up the case in seamless entrelac. At the end, we worked some shaping in back and forth entrelac. And the shaping at the top of bag opening gave us a chance to try some of the weird triangles used in entrelac.

Beyond the project, Gwen answered many questions. One of the things that ought to stick with me for future reference is that entrelac is a biased fabric so it stretches. This means that entrelac sweaters tend to look better if they have negative ease. Gwen was wearing her awesome Touch Me entrelac sweater, and it definitely fits better if it has to stretch just a little bit. I was going to de-accession the chenille yarn in my stash, and then I saw that sweater. What a good bad influence!

TKGA Fall Show, part 2

2011-09-27T16:23:00.000-04:00

So, what else did I do at the show?

I did do some shopping. I seem to be moving into an alpaca phase. The Carolina Alpaca Breeders and Owners had a booth at the show. They had some yarn, but they were also one of the few booths that had fiber for spinners. Specifically, they had whole alpaca fleeces. I took the intemperate action of touching the fleeces. Soft, very nice . . . soft, also nice . . . OH MY GOSH! There was a black fleece that was warm and buttery-soft. Gorgeous. LUST!!!! So I ended up purchasing the fleece of Black Diamond, who comes from 3 Hawks Alpacas in Murfreesboro, NC. Her sire is Ghost Dancer. I met Anita from 3 Hawks Alpacas, and she said she is breeding her alpaca for good hand-spinning fiber. I believe her. I've combed just a little of the fleece, and I can see already it has a lovely, fine crimp and a thin, soft fiber. I wish I could show you in a photograph just how awesomely soft and wonderful this fleece is. And it is environmentally-friendly, regionally-sourced.

I also purchased Surino yarn from Flaggy Meadow Fiber Works. Shawn and Jeff are doing a bang-up job creating and promoting alpaca products. Their mill produces yarn and roving. And they also make some finished objects, such as socks or hats. To continue their mission of promoting domestically-produced alpaca products, Flaggy Meadow will be hosting the Fiber Frenzy Retreat in Park City, KY on 17-19 February 2012. I will probably be using my two skeins of Surino to make a variant of the Convolute pattern that started my 2011 reject pile.

One of the nice things about the reject pile is that you never know when a pattern will get a second life. Dahlia, the shawl I sent to the Claudia Shawl the Love Contest, may also be getting another chance in a better, reanimated "zombie" form. I wore it around on Saturday and received many complements and questions about which pattern that might be. Dahlia may get a second rich fantasy life with yarn from Laura and Kelly at The Unique Sheep. Their Gradiance Collection may be an excellent fit of yarn and pattern design.

I should add that I also got some more leads on shows and festivals. Friends & Fiberworks will be hosting a Winter Retreat on 13-15 January in Asheville, NC. And Knitters Mercantile will host Knitters Connection on 15-17 June in Columbus, OH.

Although there weren't many Atlanta people at the show, I did get to spend some time with people I've previously met. I got to spend an evening with Charles D. Gandy, the wonderful designer of the Pedicure Polka and the Snake in the Grass socks from the Think Outside the Sox contest and book. Charles is teaching and writing, and I am excited that I should soon be able to take his classes and learn more about the embellished knitting techniques he uses. His work is dynamic and inventive. And I have no doubt that his book will need to be in my library. Charles has also completed Level 2 of Master Knitter and is closing in on Level 3. He very kindly shared some advice with me. After the weekend, I am feeling more motivated to get moving on Level 2 for myself.

I addition to Charles, I also spent some time with Marilyn Hastings. Marilyn is teaching 13-18 November at John C. Campbell Folk School on the topic of "Recovering Worldly Wool from Sweaters" during the school's Recycle It Week. Marilyn is also working on a book -- and I can't say more than that, other than I've seen her many samples and I think it will be an interesting topic for a broad range of knitters.

Finally, I rounded out the weekend by bidding in the silent auction. There were several items from previous issues of Cast On magazine. This pair of gloves appeared in the November 2010 - January 2011 issue, which has lots of great information about how to knit gloves. These are the Starry Night Gloves by Meredith Wills, and they appear on pages 17-22. They are a very advanced knit involving stringing several colors of beads in order, a lot of duplicate stitch, and embroidery stitches at the end. I am fortunate that I have skinny hands, as these gloves depicting the summer and winter sky do fit. I will have to wear them next year at Dragon*Con, especially when I am asking questions on the Space Track.

TGKA Fall Show, Part 1

2011-09-26T16:45:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend at the Knit and Crochet Show in Greensboro, NC. This is the show in which both The Knitting Guild Association and the Crochet Guild of America come together. Much like STITCHES, there are classes, a market, banquets, fashion shows, and lots of hanging out with other fiber-crafting enthusiasts!

First off, I must thank Jan Stephens for giving me a shove. I had put in a proposal to teach at this show, and hadn't gotten anything on the schedule. I didn't make the cut for STITCHES East either, so I was feeling discouraged. Jan told me to go anyway. Somehow Gro matched me up with Dana, who was going and needed a roommate. So it all worked out well. Thank you ladies!

I decided not to overload my schedule. I only took three classes. On Friday, I took "Tapas" with Candace Eisner-Strick. I've taken classes with Candace before, specifically “Strickmuster, The Beautiful Twisted Stitch Patterns of Austria” in October 2009 when she taught for AKG. "Tapas" was a fun technique class that was just a little of this and a little of that. I had already been introduced to many of these techniques, but it was nice to be reacquainted with them and to see someone else's viewpoint on when and how to use them. I particularly liked the Channel Island cast-on for 1x1 ribbing. And I had completely forgotten how entertaining Candace is. If you ever see her scheduled to teach something that interests you, please indulge yourself in the class. You won't be disappointed.

My other two classes were crochet. I thoroughly enjoyed the crochet at the show. In the market there was a wall of competition pieces. Some were well-done but familiar, others were well-done and quite inventive. Crochet has advantages including speed and sturdiness. And there really are some very lovely laces worked in crochet.

Using foundation stitches to add at end of row.

The first crochet class I took was "Foundation Stitches 101: The Basics" with Marty Miller. Not only is Marty a delightful teacher, but she even got us free cotton yarn, so we didn't have to use stash yarn for her class! One of the downsides of crochet is that it usually begins with a long chain, and then the first row of stitches is worked into the chain. This is a little tricky -- so tricky that when I was a child, my grandmother would work the foundation chain and the first row or two for me on my crochet projects. Marty showed us how to work the chain and the first stitches as you go. Genius! And once you get the hang of it, you can do this even with the fluffy novelty yarns that obscure your stitches. If I did more crochet, I would have taken the second class from Marty where she discusses more advanced foundation stitches. I doubt I'll ever start a crochet project the same way.

Left to Right: whip stitch, three versions of single crochet joins, zig-zag chain joins.

The other crochet class I took was "No Stress Motif Joining" with Mary Beth Temple. I was happily anticipating this one, as there are often knitting charity projects that involve many people knitting squares and few people assembling the blanket. Mary Beth was quite ill -- she had had an upper respiratory infection and the antibiotic to combat it had not sat well in her system. So it was admirable that she bravely soldiered onwards to teach us six ways to join motifs, as advertised. I have to admit, I was hoping for something totally brilliant and painless when it came to joining motifs. I did leave with a nice sampler of different methods, so I do have something I can use for comparison.

Slip-stitch joining granny squares.

The thing is, now that I'm sitting here at home looking at my great-grandmother's last afghan (detail at right) -- which is a bunch of granny squares I assembled without knowing what I was doing -- I like what I did on it better than any of the methods Mary Beth taught me. Because she was so ill, she had forgotten the handouts for the class. So, I am hoping that the handout will maybe give me some more insight. I wouldn't shy away from taking another class with her, as I don't think it's her fault I didn't experience the "Wow, this is awesome!" moment in her class. I suspect the brilliant, painless method for joining motifs just doesn't yet exist.

Tomorrow: Shopping!

Be sporting -- visit the zoo!

2011-08-29T17:05:00.002-04:00

Ya'all know by now that I have to throw in a zoo post every once in awhile. There has been a nice baby boom this year, which means lots of adorable animals that won't stay small forever including Sumatran tiger cubs, a waterbuck calf, a giraffe calf, Chilean flamingo chicks, and a baby gorilla. And, of course, little Po the panda won't be a year old until November. If you aren't spending the Labor Day weekend at Dragon*Con, please follow the link to view this update and promotion from ZooAtlanta:

College Colors Day at Zoo Atlanta

Basically, you get discounted admission if you show up this weekend wearing your collegiate logo apparel and remember to ask for the discount at the ticket booth.

Plus, the Sumatran tiger cubs, Sohni and Sanjiv, will debut. You can see for yourself whether or not they match Po the panda on the cuteness meter.

Pushing the Technology

2011-08-10T10:32:00.000-04:00

I'm pleased to present the finished Serpent of Eternity socks:

The origin of the design lies with Jenna Beegle, i.e. JennaB or Jenna the Yarn Pimp. As mentioned in a previous blog post from far too long ago, Jenna designed both the yarn and this sock with a horizontal cuff using the Saxon Braid. The original sock pattern was for the January 2010 sock guild at The Whole Nine Yarns. In Jenna's design, the cuff is worked horizontally, then, if I recall correctly, stitches are picked up and the sock is knit downward. I believe Jenna also picked up and added a little ribbing at the top.

I liked Jenna's design very much, as well as the hand-dyed yarn she designed. So I wanted to knit my own pair, but I wanted a couple changes.

First, I wanted the cuffs to be reversible. Sock cuffs are sometimes worn up and sometimes down, and I wanted that to be an option. (You'll notice I have one cuff down and one up in the photograph.) I spent much of last summer and autumn working out the technique for knitting traveling cables reversibly. And I succeeded in making two cuffs.

Then I decided I wanted some motif or detail on the instep. I wanted a design element that would tie the socks to the cuffs in a logical way. So I spent more time in the winter and spring swatching a version of the Saxon Braid that could be used as a stand-alone motif. I also came up with an alternative way to work a left cross and a right cross, after I realized the pattern needed some way to integrate with the stockinette fabric on the sock. So there were several technical and design challenges along the way. This was definitely a case where I had to up my game as a knitter in order to bring my vision into reality. I do hope to eventually post some video and pictorial explanations of these techniques.

After working the cuffs -- which required cabled double-knitting and grafting the double-knitting -- I cast on at the toes using a variant of Judy's Magic Cast-on. I worked both socks at the same time from opposite ends of the skein. I used Cat Bordhi's method from New Pathways for Sock Knitters. In this case, I worked double-increases at the sides every-other round to shape the toes. Then I went immediately into the Saxon Braid motif and increases at the sides of the sock every third round to shape the arch expansion. After the plain heel turn -- again following Cat Bordhi's directions -- I knit insouciantly in the round up the leg until I was nearly out of yarn. I do love the New Pathways method for toe-up socks, which is why I continue to teach it.

At this point I divided the yarn. I joined leg to cuff using a Kitchener seam. The legs are 60 stitches and the cuffs present 96 stitches, so it was a case of joining 5 sock stitches to every 8 cuff stitches. In the photograph, you can see how I used pins to mark each group. The rhythm was 2-1-2-1-2. In other words, the first stitch of the leg is joined to two ladders in the cuff. The second stitch is joined to one ladder. The third stitch is joined to two ladders, the fourth one, and the fifth two. Then you are at a new group and you start the rhythm again. I should add that in the photograph, the cuff should be rotated just a little more to the right so that the curved central part of the braid lines up with the center of the sock. I did place the cuff graft at the back of the sock.

Why We Block

2011-07-18T18:06:00.000-04:00

During the weekend I finished a shawl. This is White Lotus by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer. The yarn is Colinton 3000, which is 100% fine kid mohair. The yarn, pattern, and beads were sold as a kit.

The pattern is well-written, and includes both charts and written-out instructions. The lace pattern is a 22-stitch wide by 12-row tall repeat. For all but the final repeat, every 12 rows adds half a motif on each side of the shawl, which accounts for the almost trapezoidal shawl shape as well as the half-drop arrangement of the motifs. The chart has a thick vertical line indicating both the beginning of a motif its center. For this pattern, I strongly advise two colors of stitch markers. The markers that are the centers on one repeat will be the edges on the next, with the sole exception of the final repeat.

I did not want to swatch, so I just grabbed my 3.5mm / US 4 Kollage square needle and cast on using the surprisingly stretchy slip-knot cast on by Jeny Staiman. You can see her video here. I later matched edges using the surprisingly stretchy bind-off, which is rather easy when the whole row is purl. Jackie warns you that you will need to block this shawl severely, hence my cast-on and bind-off choices. Although I didn't swatch, I did do a little math. If you want to jump right in but you do not wish to run out of yarn, be aware that you'll need to be partway through the 7th repetition when the first skein runs out and partway through the 11th repetition when the second skein runs out. If you run short before then, you may not have enough yarn to complete as many repetitions of the pattern as Jackie recommends. Alternatively, you can just weigh your yarn as you go and adjust your number of repetitions accordingly. In the end, of the initial 150g in the kit I had only 6g left over.

White Lotus, as I worked it.

I did adjust a few other details. In addition to using a different cast-on and bind-off from that recommended, I also changed the center of the motif. I replaced the yo-ssk and k2tog-yo stack with my own unvention. The design challenge is to create a vertical element in a design with an even number of stitches. (This sort of symmetry is easier if you have an odd number, as you then have a central wale.) Jackie's choice gives you an element without changing the number of stitches on each row and without introducing wrong-side shaping. However, this solution is not bilaterally symmetrical. The change I made on row 9 was to work k5, yo, k5 between the beaded nupps. This increases the stitch count. On the return row, I worked
     p2tog a stitch and the yo,
     slip next stitch knitwise to turn it and place it back on left needle,
     place yo back on left needle, and
     p2tog through the back of the loop.
In other words, I've joined the yarn over to the stitches on both sides of it. This creates a symmetrical hole. I also maintained symmetry in the lace by working the double decreases as sssk and even by working the nupps symmetrically -- wrapping either Western or Eastern and then pulling the yarn through in the appropriate direction. Eventually, I started working row 10 by knitting back backwards instead of turning my work. It made it easier to see how to work the nupps and easier to work the symmetrical yarn overs. I used the symmetrical yarn overs again on row 11.

The yarn and I did not necessarily get along. I was working in my regular right-hand throwing mode, and this yarn seemed to get unbalanced as I worked. I changed to flicking with my right index finger, and that seemed to work better. There were still times I had to stop to rebalance the yarn. This was especially an issue on the dang nupps, as I used a size 8 steel crochet hook to work them, and a size 12 hook to add the beads. Unbalanced twisting nupp loops are hard to spear, and unbalanced yarn tends not to stay on the hook and pull through the nupp. And I can say that I'm just not a big fan of 2-ply lace yarn. I like lace and I like thin yarn. And I understand that a 2-ply yarn will push open, which is why you choose it for lace. But 2-ply yarns have a tendency to open and split.

The mohair also has no elasticity. None. And it isn't noticeably soft. So why use it? The kit did come with samples of Unicorn Fibre Wash and Fibre Rinse as well as Power Scour. Obviously, I didn't need the Power Scour as the yarn was already clean and spun. (I've placed the sample in my spinning supplies where it shall await some raw fleece.) After it came off the needles, I treated the shawl to a long soak -- a couple hours while I went out to a Mensa function. When I came back, I used the Fibre Wash and lavender Fibre Rinse. I rolled the shawl in a fluffy towel, then I stood on it to extract water. Finally, I blocked the shawl hard using blocking wires and the bed in the guest bedroom. The full-size bed was almost not large enough -- a queen size would have been better.

Right side, before blocking


Wrong side, before blocking

And from the pictures, you can see why blocking is necessary. From the back, this shawl looked like a meringue pie. It was a scrunched-up tangle of mohair.

I can't really say that the yarn bloomed. However, it did soften. It isn't going to win any softness contests, but it is good enough to be against the skin. The real interest is how lively it is. The stitch pattern puckers significantly because pairs of yarn overs are offset by double decreases of either sssk or k3tog. Even after blocking, the final fabric is subtly un-flat. In spite of the lack of elasticity in the yarn, the shawl fabric is springy and alive. This is noticeable even at the edges, which don't lie flat because the lace is stockinette-based. In a lot of projects this would be a problem, but here the liveliness of the curling edge is appealing, especially against bare skin. As it has been warm here in Atlanta, it may be awhile before I know if this shawl is warm. But is it the very definition of lovely.

Dolphin Lace

2011-07-06T20:53:00.001-04:00

Some days the gremlins just get in things and muck them up. At least, I have to figure that's what happened to a particular pattern in Victorian Lace Today. This is a gorgeous coffee table lace book. I sometimes refer to it as the lace porn book, because it makes you want to drop everything, even socks, and go knit lace. The samples were modeled and photographed at an English estate, Belton Manor House, as well as some other locations around Cambridge. And the projects are based on Victorian-era knitting patterns. So, it's all beautiful and all good.

My friend Becky sent me an e-mail over the weekend. She was having a little trouble with the Dolphin Lace scarf on pages 106-107; and could I take a look at it and give her some helpful hints? I started by going to the XRX website to look up the errata. Yes, there are errata for Victorian Lace Today. So I downloaded those.

Hmmm. Not as helpful as I'd hoped. In fact, I didn't see anything indicating a problem with the pattern. A quick check on Ravelry was only partially illuminating. As with so much knitting, casting on and trying it out is the way to enlightenment. And the stitch itself does have an odd maneuver, so maybe that was the source of Becky's consternation?

The project is a long lace scarf with a dolphin stitch border on each side and a lace faggoting insertion in the center. The pattern begins with casting on 60 stitches in 3 groups of 20. Chart B, the dolphin lace, is worked on both edges, while Chart A, a faggoting insertion, is worked over the center. Go look at the scarves on Ravelry. Now look at the scarf on page 107. The pictured scarf has three columns of faggoting in the center. The ones made by following the pattern only have one column. So, first error: Chart A does not match the scarf! This is not as much of a disaster as it sounds. Why? Because it is pretty easy to see that the business section of Chart A is a 4-stitch repeat. To get something that looks like the model, you'll need to work the faggoting 4 times across the center 16 stitches, not twice across the center 8 as stated on the chart. If you still want to stick with 20 stitches in the center, cut four stitches off the left and right sides of Chart A.

To review: for the central insertion (Chart A), k2, work the faggoting pattern 4 times, k2.

Okay, but Becky wasn't asking about the faggoting; she was asking about the dolphin stitch. And her timing is serendipitous, because I've just finished a shawl that involved a lot of faggoting and some peculiar graphing. Chart B isn't bad, but there are some ways to adjust it to make it more helpful.

First off, the ten stitches on the right edge of Chart B are constant. The double yarn overs flanked by knit two togethers form wide open columns on each side of a narrow band. This extension sets the edging off from the central panel. So, in addition to the two stitch markers you already have to divide the work into three sets of 20, I recommend placing a stitch marker in each border section to divide the 10 stitch extension from the dolphin lace. Why? Because the dolphin lace stitch count varies on every row! It is easier to follow if you can narrow the problematic area to as few stitches as possible.

That brings you down to just the dolphin lace. I've redrawn the chart and shifted the stitches. Why? Well, one way to keep track of what you are doing is by lining up the k1-p1 on the wrong-side rows with their double yarn overs from the right-side rows. I've done this, and I've added a hazy bull's eye symbol to call attention to them.

I've also split the chart. If you put a marker at the split in Row 1, that marker will follow the split up through Row 7. It all goes bad at Row 8, as the marker will fall in the middle of a knit 2 together. If you try to continue with the marker, the same problem occurs on Rows 10 and 11. And carrying the marker completely falls apart at Row 12. But, you can use a marker for at least a few rows.

And here's a really bizarre bit -- that double yarn over on Row 11 will end up underneath the double yarn over on Row 1 when the new repeat begins.

And just to help you a bit more, here are the stitch counts for this section of the chart.

Start with 10.
Row 1: decrease to 9.
Row 2: increase to 14.
Row 3: increase to 15.
Row 4: decrease to 14.
Row 5: increase to 15.
Row 6: decrease to 14.
Row 7: even at 14.
Row 8: decrease to 12.
Row 9: increase to 13.
Row 10: decrease to 12.
Row 11: increase to 13.
Row 12: decrease to 10.

One last note: The illustrations on page 107 are excellent for showing how to work the peculiar maneuver of Rows 1 and 2. However, the phrase "On next row" has been printed one illustration too low! The top four pictures show you how to work the passing over of stitches on Row 1. The bottom three pictures show you how to cast on five stitches on the return row. Notice that the new stitches do not cover the gap you made in Row 1; rather, they are added between two stitches!

Shawl Competition

2011-07-01T06:54:00.108-04:00

Today is the due date for entries for the Claudia Hand Painted Yarn Shawl the Love contest. For me, this was a great excuse to indulge in some linen yarn. I had heard great things about linen. For one, it likes being thrown through the washer and dryer. I've seen in person the Flounce duo skirt from Gwen Bortner's Entrée to Entrelac. Linen has some life to it, so a skirt or shawl will have a lot of sassy movement! I was glad to have an excuse to play.

I started by shopping for the yarn. The Whole Nine Yarns did have some, but only in half a dozen colors. Eat.Sleep.Knit carries the full line of colors. And I decided to work outside my comfort zone by choosing brown. In the end, I found two mismatched dye lots of "copper pennies" and a light-brown named "honey." I must admit that although I'm not a big fan of brown, "copper pennies" is a pretty colorway in either its dark or light incarnation. And brown can be a nice change-up from the basic neutrals of black, white, gray, and navy. Using mismatched skeins was a fun way to turn a potential problem into a design solution. Hand dyed yarns often vary significantly from dye lot to dye lot, but in this design, that quality is desirable.

I don't remember my original inspiration. I have been fiddling around with mitered squares for quite some time. I think I even made a teddy bear dress several years ago using non-square mitered shapes. For some reason, I came back to the mitered idea and played around with it. I thought about making a shape that would look like a feather. I chose a basic faggoting pattern in which the lace is worked on both right-side and wrong-side rows. The real trick was figuring out how to work the lace and the mitered shaping at the same time.

Remember all those Japanese pattern books I've been reading? The solution came from something I'd seen there.

If you are used to graphs, you may be tempted to draw something that looks like the diagram on the left. You'll start with a lot of stitches at the bottom, and decrease to only one at the top, and your mitered decrease line will run down the middle. It looks like a triangle on the page, but it will be a mitered square or its relative when you knit it. The problem with this approach is that the stitches that are disappearing in your knitting are not the ones at the edges. The stitches you are decreasing away are the ones next to the miter. The diagram on the left would work if you were decreasing at the beginning and end of the rows, rather than in the middle. Instead, lay out your chart so it looks like the example on the right. Yes, those big open gaps between the shaping and the miter look very odd on paper. But by graphing this way, the wales of the chart and the wales of your knitting will stack up and match. You'll be able to see on paper before you knit it how the lace patterning interacts across rows. You'll be able to tell what to do to keep your mitered shaping while still keeping your lace patterning continuous.

I am sharing this design technique because perhaps the best part of Rosemary Drysdale's Entrelac book is the section of swatches of entrelac knit in a variety of stitch patterns -- lace, Fair Isle, bobbles, cables, seed stitch. I haven't seen a lot of pattern play in mitered modules. Usually miters are just garter, garter ridge stitch (2 rows stockinette, 2 rows garter), or stockinette. I'd like to encourage some experimentation.

In my shawl I've also played with the rate of decrease. The first course of kite-shapes has mitered decreasing on right-side and wrong-side rows. This produces top sides that are half the length of the bottom sides. The second course of shapes is stockinette-based but with the usual right-side only shaping. Because all four sides have the same number of stitches, it resembles a square or a least a diamond. I have also swatched a number of variants on this, including decreases every third row, or alternating the central decrease line with decreases at the edges. In this way, you can produce a variety of quadrilateral shapes all with a central miter line. I would love to see more designers playing both with shape and with pattern in modular knitting.

In the end, my shawl doesn't really look like bird wings. But, it does have a pretty pattern. After consulting with my gardening friends, I named it Dahlia. At least my friends aren't science fiction fans. When I laid the shawl out to take a picture, I realized that in black it would loosely resemble the Shadow Vessels from Babylon 5.

Yarn Crawling Portland, Part 2: Eastside

2011-06-16T15:03:00.000-04:00

Not only are there good yarn shops in downtown Portland, but there are good shops on the east side of the river. Once again, there were more shops than I could visit. I was not able to get to Gossamer, Yarnia, or Knittn' Kitten. While the downtown is readily served by the train, the east side of town is served primarily by bus. I probably should have made an attempt to visit Gossamer (a little over a mile from my hotel), but Yarnia and Knittn' Kitten (both about 4 miles away) were just too far afield.

Since I was staying at a hotel near Lloyd Center, I was able to walk to Twisted. Go to the north side of the Lloyd Center Mall and walk a couple blocks north to NE Broadway. There are lots of delightful shops and places to eat on this thoroughfare. Twisted is about six blocks east at 2310 NE Broadway St. As I walked in, a copy of Respect the Spindle was set up on a table, front and center. While this is primarily a knitting shop, there was a Schacht Ladybug wheel and locally dyed fiber from Black Trillium. Yarn choices included Schulana, Claudia Hand Paint, Debbie Bliss, Imperial Stock Ranch, Malabrigo, and Noro. (Search a full listing here.) There was a thorough selection of books, including Japanese pattern books. There was even an instruction book about needle tatting! And in the clearance book section were copies of Gathering of Lace and Unexpected Knitting. In clearance I saw a book I had never seen before, called Knit an Icon. It shows you how to knit little dolls that look like famous people -- Madonna or Einstein, for example! Cute! The person in the shop the evening I was there took extra time to help a regular customer with a stalled project. There are several signs -- including one with the Eye of Sauron -- reminding you that you are being watched and shouldn't shoplift. I guess it must be a serious issue in that part of town. I got the sense this store places their focus on their regular customers. And a bonus -- the shop also carries tea!

The last two shops I visited are both on SE Hawthorne Boulevard, just a couple blocks apart and near Ladd's Rose Gardens Circle and Squares. The concierge at the hotel was able to give me directions to use the #70 bus. The distance is just over a mile and a half, so it wouldn't have been too expensive by taxi, either.

The first place I went was Happy Knits. Do not be fooled. The store front is not wide, and while the window dressing is clever, it isn't over-stuffed. The shop is larger than it looks because it is deep rather than wide, with a nice large sitting and classroom area in the back. Several bookshelves are back there as well, with a solid selection of books as well as ArtYarns kits and a full line of Knit Picks needles and cables. The main floor in front has square wine racks of yarn, nicely organized and very shop-able. Yarn lines include Alpaca with a Twist, Aslan Trends, Cascade, Dream in Color, Fibre Company, Madelinetosh, Malabrigo, Mirasol, and Jamieson's. (Other lines can be found on this list.) This is a shop where the buyer is carrying a wide range in each of only a few lines but making careful, thoughtful selections about what are the best possible offerings. There isn't a poor choice in the whole shop.

I was at this shop not only to check it out, but also to meet Jay Petersen, author of the Fuzzy Logic blog and entrelac knitter extraordinaire! Jay was correct when he said this is one of the friendliest shops in Portland. I discovered Jay on Ravelry, where he goes by "yarnover." We had a lovely little knitting summit, with me stretching my mind to understand what Jay is doing. He is using entrelac three-dimensionally. Some of his creations are quite interesting, like cube with cables that ends up looking very much like a knitted version of a Japanese temari ball. Additionally, he is playing with combining entrelac and a variety of stitch patterns. Jay has discovered some interesting properties of how knits and purls do and don't mesh when picking up stitches. He had one swatch where the knits and purls lie flat where they meet, and a second similar swatch where they don't lie flat, thus creating a highly textured fabric. Jay and I are both interested in reversibility in knitting. We both agreed that while we admire the innovation in Lynne Barr's Reversible Knitting book, we feel that there's a need for a more complete antd thoughtful treatment of the subject. Jay does have patterns for download and sale on Ravelry. I would dearly love to see articles or a book by him, as I think his innovations are worthy of being shared with as wide an audience as possible.

In addition to meeting Jay, I also met my West Coast counterpart, Jolie! Yes, there is a Jolie the Knitter in Portland! She's also an artist, as you can see from her work here. It gets more bizarre -- we were wearing the same Metropolitan Museum of Art watch! My husband works in aerospace engineering, and her in-laws work in aerospace engineering. I can see on Ravelry that we are both Aries. So my parallel universe doppelganger is alive and well and living, knitting, and painting in Portland, Oregon.

After the contact high of Happy Knits, Yarn Garden had a lot to prove. But first, Jay and I walked an extra couple blocks west to the corner of SE 12th Avenue and SE Hawthorne Boulevard. There's a nice little cluster of food carts, and we enjoyed Whiffies, which are deep-fried meat pies. Actually, I got the vegetarian version, which was quite good. I should mention that you can go totally vegan in Portland without realizing it, because there are equally attractive non-carnivorous meal options. There are people who like living in Portland because you don't need to own a car. I think you also might not need to have a kitchen.

Unlike Happy Knits, Yarn Garden has a very imposing street presence, as it takes up an entire block! Their address is technically 1413 SE Hawthorne Boulevard. I was wondering how two yarn shops manage to exist only a couple blocks apart. It turns out they are very different. Yarn Garden has room after room of yarn, and carries a huge range from many of the major national manufacturers. This is a shop that has all the price points and all yarn types, from sock yarn to novelties, practical acrylics to luxury natural fibers. Some examples: Berroco, Brown Sheep, Classic Elite, Schaefer, Prism, Koigu, Debbie Bliss, Filatura Di Crosa, Shalimar, Rowan, Plymouth, South West Trading Company ... you get the idea. Annie was minding the shop that day, and she was super nice and showed off a Stripe Study Shawl.

Between these two shops on Hawthorne Boulevard, if you can't find it, do you really need it?

Yarn Crawling Portland, Part 1: Downtown

2011-06-15T14:38:00.002-04:00

I spent last week away from the searing heat and sunshine of the Atlanta summer. This was my first trip to Portland, Oregon, and I must say I won't mind an excuse to visit again. The Cuddly Hubby was attending a conference, which meant I got to enjoy three days without adult supervision. In that time, I visited six yarn shops.

Let me say at the start that one of my rules was, as much as possible, not to purchase items I could buy in Atlanta. Also, I was looking more for books, especially Japanese pattern books, than for yarn. I love yarn, but I am trying to keep myself on a yarn diet until I can get the stash to fit back in the boxes.

If you are attending Sock Summit, be aware you can easily take MAX, the light rail, from the airport to the hotels. It will set you back all of $2.35 -- you aren't going to find cab fare at that rate. Plus, from the Sock Summit hotels, you can ride the train into the city for free.

In the downtown I followed a three-shop hop up 11th Avenue that included Knit Purl, Urban Fiber Arts, and Dublin Bay Knitting Company. I did not visit Angelika's Yarn Store (in the south end of town) nor Gardiner Yarn Works nor Black Trillium Fibre Studio, both over near Chinatown.

Begin by taking the red or blue line MAX into the city. Exit the light rail at Galleria/SW 10th Avenue, which is one stop west of Pioneer Square. Your first stop will be Knit Purl, which is at 1101 SW Alder on the northwest corner of Alder and 11th Avenue. I love the modern art-inspired fiber work in the windows. And jazz music played quietly over the sound system while I shopped. This shop has a nice selection of good quality yarns (list here) including Shibui, Habu, Kauni, Madelinetosh, and Koigu. If you are looking for an Oregon-themed memento, check out the Pendelton needle cases. There were several out of the ordinary book choices in this store. I chose a Japanese stitch dictionary, and this shop had several Japanese pattern books. They also had a line of German felting books that had adorable felting projects and several serious German lace books. And for those of you who do not have a comfort level with Japanese or German, Knit Purl carries back issues of the wonderful English magazine The Knitter. Clearly this is a shop that caters to capable knitters.

If you do this yarn crawl, do not do it on Monday. Why? Because your next yarn stop, Urban Fiber Arts, is not open on Monday. (I had to go back on Thursday morning.) But first, food! After you are done at Knit Purl, walk east one block on SW Alder Street. Near the corner of Alder and 10th, you'll find a food cart called Savor. There are other food carts on Alder, and I'm sure many of them are good as well, but I can personally tell you that the soups at Savor are awesome! For $6, I got the soup fight, which is three different soup selections. All were as good or better than what I would get as a soup appetizer at my favorite high-end restaurant here in Atlanta. So bring a little cash and find yourself some lunch at Savor or another food cart. Food hunting tip: if people are standing in line, join them. If the locals are willing it wait for it, it must be good.

I headed north by walking. If you can't do that, you can take the streetcar up 10th Avenue. Powell's City of Books is within the free zone. Urban Fiber Arts is one block west and around the corner from the last free stop at NW Glisan Street. Dublin Bay Knitting Company is outside the free zone, so you'll need a little pocket change for the ride.

After you eat, head north on 11th Avenue (or ride the streetcar on 10th). If you are game for a dangerous side trek, duck in Powell's City of Books, using the corner entrance on Couch St & NW 11th Ave. The hobby section, including weaving, knitting, and crochet, will be on your left as you enter. You'll encounter weaving first, just continue a couple bays beyond to find knitting. There are many, many knitting books. You have been warned. (I purchased a copy of The Weaver's Companion. Weight limits in my flight luggage prevented me from being more badly behaved.) And I must admit to a moment of amusement, as a young person asked the nice man at the information desk for the location of H. P. Lovecraft titles. Are you sure you want to open that book? Okay, but this way leads to madness!

Exit Powell's through that same corner entrance and head about four blocks north on 11th Avenue. Keep to the east side of the street. Just before NW Glisan Street you'll encounter Urban Fiber Arts at 428 NW 11th Avenue. This is a small, sweet little shop. I walked by on Monday when they were closed, but did notice that both Knit One, Knit All and knit, Swirl were in the window. Those books had both been recent purchases at my home friendly local yarn shop. Of all the shops I visited, this one is the most spinning-friendly. Then again, the local spinners do meet here the second Tuesday of each month. Cindy said she'd been open for about nine months. She was also wearing a recently completed Damask! I was short on time and didn't take a good look at the yarn (see what she carries here), but I did look at the rovings and batts. There is a wonderful selection with a specialization in local independent dyers or dyers who have some connection to Oregon generally or Portland specifically. After much internal debate, I chose a gorgeous yak, merino, and silk roving from Abstract Fiber. Urban Fiber Arts also had baskets of undyed natural fibers and a couple Schacht and Louet spinning wheels. If you wish to extend your interest in locally-sourced sustainable food into your textile practice, then Urban Fiber Arts is where to go. I can also report that Cindy was amongst the most upbeat of the yarn shop people I encountered -- a delightful person! I will be sorely tempted to call and order more Abstract Fiber when I find my spinning stash depleted.

If you have obtained your shop hopping map by searching on Ravelry for yarn shops in Portland (instructions here), be aware that Knit Knot Studio, which should be just a block away, is no longer in business.

At this point, you are about ten blocks north and one block west of where you left the MAX train. Remember, blocks in Portland are rather short, so it takes only about one minute to walk one block. If you walk another eight blocks north, you'll arrive at Dublin Bay Knitting Company, 1227 NW 11th Avenue. It will be on the west side of the street and about a block north of a lovely location for knitting in public, Tanner Springs Park. There were two busy ladies working the shop the day I visited. This is a nice roomy shop. I was pleased to see they stock Lucy Neatby dvds. Yarns (list here) included Three Irish Girls, Sweet Georgia, Rowan, and Lorna's. They had a full selection of Addi needles, including the really short circulars for working sleeves or socks. They also have their own line of yarn called Solstice. These are beautiful yarns made from beautiful fibers -- I saw a skein that was a whopping 45% cashmere, and it was soft as a lover's kiss. Alas, there wasn't a lot out, as they had stashed quite a bit of it away for Sock Summit. In the good selection of book -- and well-organized by type -- I found the booklet Patterns for Art of Lace Knitting: The Complete Works of Rachel Schnelling. Her work reminds me of Herbert Niebling or Marianne Kinzel.

So here you are at the northern end of the Pearl District. And you are laden with purchases. You will probably want to catch the streetcar back down 11th Avenue, exit near Knit Purl, and walk a couple blocks south and then east to catch the MAX train on SW Yamhill Street. Alternatively, you can walk south to NW Hoyt Street, then east several blocks to NW 6th Avenue, then south a block to find a MAX stop. Be sure to board a green line not a yellow line train to take you back to your hotel.

Finding a Shop Hop Map

2011-06-14T13:59:00.001-04:00

Here's how to generate a shop-hop map using the resources on Ravelry:
Choose "yarns" in the main tabs.
Then type the city in the box for "local yarn shop directory" and press "enter" on your keyboard or click the "search" button on Ravelry.
Choose the "location map" tab in the upper right.
Use the controls on the left to zoom in and out on the map and to adjust what portions you see.
When you like what you see on the map, choose "Print" from the "File" menu on your computer.
You may also wish to choose the "list" tab and print the list of shop names, addresses, and contact information.

Beyond the Pattern

2011-05-25T15:58:00.002-04:00

I thought I'd have a little fun with one of my own patterns. This little travel pillow is just two repeats of the Serpentine Short-Round Scarf. You have to stuff it as you work, because once you've closed the section, you can't easily get back in to it. I was initially going to work 3 repeats, but it was large enough to fit around my neck at only two. Another variation would be to use a provisional cast-on, work four repeats, and graft end to beginning to produce a doughnut pillow. Such a shape could be folded in half for the neck pillow, but would also be good for sitting during long trips. I used less then one skein of red but, alas, just barely had to break into the second skein of blue. Also, I dropped down to a 3.5mm /US 4 needle so that the fabric would be dense enough to keep the polyester fiber fill from showing through or sneaking out.

Because the information isn't in the pattern, let me tell you how I made the tie cords. They are cable-plied. For each cord, I cut one length of blue and one length of red, about a yard long. Using a blunt tapestry needle, I threaded both strands through the last chain stitch at the corner of the pillow. I pulled the yarn ends even. In this way, I didn't need to figure out how to weave in ends on an already-finished pillow. Holding both ends of the red together, I twisted them opposite the direction of the ply twist until there was plenty of built-up twist. I then held the red in my teeth while I twisted the blue. Then I brought them both together and twisted them in the opposite direction to make them ply together. I could have made a kumihimo braid or an i-cord, but this is fairly quick and I am hopeful that all the layers of ply twist will give the cords enough strength to wear well.

By the way, I made this very Atlanta-appropriate by choosing red and blue. I think the triangle-motif and the colors very nicely coordinate with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines.

How Do I Get a Class with Toshiyuki Shimada?

2011-05-16T16:43:00.000-04:00

Scarves from top to bottom: P, C, L, & O.

I know I haven't blogged enough lately, or knitted enough. And way too much of my Ravelry projects page is filled with secret projects, sans pictures. I am still experimenting both with labyrinth knitting and with double-knit traveling cables. I showed off the double-knit cabled sock cuffs at STITCHES South, and Gayle Roehm was kind enough to send me on a hunt for Ideas for Double-sided Knitted Scarves by Toshiyuki Shimada. I was able to find it on Amazon, and it cost about $33 with shipping. Fortunately, my sister had given me a $25 Amazon gift card for my birthday. The book shipped directly from Japan, and I was pleasantly surprised that my 25 April order arrived on 11 May, significantly before the 20 May to 13 June expected delivery date.

Can I just say up front that I now hold Toshiyuki Shimada in the same category as Cat Bordi, Lucy Neatby, Lynne Barr, Norah Gaughan, Debbie New, Kerry Ferguson, Kate Gilbert, Merike Saarniit, and Elizabeth Zimmermann? And I continue to miss Bruce/Scenter, and not just because he was learning to read Japanese. Truth be told, you don't have to read Japanese in order to follow the patterns. The Japanese use the same Arabic numerals we use in the West. And the patterns are all explained with charts and graphs. In fact, the Japanese charting system is standardized, so all Japanese publishers use the same notations. And any weird stuff is explained in the back with many, many pictures. It seems the Japanese are very visual learners and thinkers.

Scarves from top to bottom: K, E, F, & H.

The book consists of 25 scarves in a wide variety of techniques. The first five patterns (A-E) appear to all be ribbles or other variations of the techniques Lily Chin covers in Power Cables. (And if you don't already own a copy, why aren't you treating yourself well?) Scarf E is a particularly dynamic example. Several scarves are familiar techniques -- double-knitting (F & G), Fair Isle (O & P), and even a Gansey-style (V). But there are also some true surprises. Scarves I & J appear to be garter stitch with different beaded patterns worked on both sides! Scarves K & L are both entrelac, but the shaping of K is truly imaginative. I must admit, I don't know if I'd consider the entrelac to be reversible, nor the colorful Kaffe Fassett-like intarsia on scarf Q. The nubby textures in scarves M & N are both produced with unusual techniques. The latter part of the book is mostly interesting pattern stitches that happen to be double-sided, such as a thick and bold rib for scarf R, a lace for S, and two other inventive stitch patterns for U and X. Scarf W is a basic ripple pattern, but it is started at the center of the scarf with diamond-shaped motifs and worked outwards in both directions. If you like ruching, scarf T consists of plain areas of stockinette gathered by simple lace bands. And at the end, scarf Y is a two-color brioche.

If you were having a scarf club, this would be a great book to give you ideas for learning a new technique every few months.

The one scarf which may, in fact, be double-knit cables is scarf H. When I look at the technique tutorials, I see reference to stitches a and a', b and b'. And the pictures look like pairs of light and dark stitches on the needles, as in double knitting. The braided edge, by the way, is two separate i-cords attached afterwards and twisted as you work. I must admit to being tempted to try this one, as it is so clearly a show off tour de force. It is encouraging to see that there is another equally crazy knitter on the other side of the world -- and she has found a publisher willing to print her patterns.

Finished Objects from STITCHES South 2011

2011-05-09T20:18:00.001-04:00

In the past I've blogged STITCHES South as individual posts for each day. But this year, I'm going to do it a little differently. I know a lot of people go for the market. Mostly, I go to STITCHES for the classes and the networking. The convention attracts truly talented knitters -- both teachers and students. It is so much fun just to watch what people are wearing.

This year I took four classes. On Thursday I took "Embed and Embellish: Felt, Stone, and Bead Jewelry" with Sharon Costello. I must admit that by the time the convention came around, I could not recall why I signed up for the class! It must have been the beautiful pictures in the brochure. I had not done wet felting before, so this was new to me. My friends Debra and Linda were also in the class. Most of the students were very familiar with wet felting, and they were eager to move along. We learned how to layer the fibers and how to encase rocks or pieces of smooth glass inside the felt. Most of the other participants made cuff bracelets with three stones. Because I was new at this technique, I made a pendant with just one stone. The white strands meandering across the surface of the felt are flax. Some students used strands of silk to produce that marbled effect. During class we completed the felting; I sewed on the small beads later at home. Sharon teaches a couple other classes including Go Felt a Fish and Farmyard Friends. Later in the weekend, Debra made a cute sheep and Linda made a colorful fish. Unlike knitting, felting has the advantage of being fairly immediate. And I have to admit, when I left class, I was almost tempted to go see if there were still open spaces in the Farmyard Friends class. I just don't know what I'd do with a bunch of felted animals. (Maybe I could learn to make felted monsters for Dungeons and Dragons games?)

Friday morning I took "Fiendishly Difficult Stitches" with Merike Saarniit. Scenter took the class two years ago, and I have to admit I don't know why it took me until the third STITCHES South to take it! It must have conflicted with something else. From the bottom up the patterns are Alsacian Scallop border, Estonian Embrace Cable, Estonian Butterfly on Open Ground, and Berry Kisses. The border is lovely, and it has an interesting Estonian wrapped nupp maneuver. The Embrace Cable involves letting loops hang loose, then manipulating them in a very interesting way many rows later. Similarly, the Butterfly and the Berries also use unusual maneuvers. These are stitches that are definitely easier to learn with someone to explain and demonstrate than to try to decipher from a book.

On Saturday morning I took yet another class with Merike Saarniit, "Spinning for Knitting." Judging by the feedback on Ravelry, there seems to be a lot of interest in this topic! If you are a new or inexperienced spinner, this class is definitely worth considering. Merike showed us how to spin using high-whorl spindles, and she brought spindles we could borrow during class. For the small materials fee, we also received a very wide range of sample fibers to try. For me, the best part was the instruction and practice of how to ply a perfectly balanced yarn. I believe a lot of us left wanting a second class as we continue to develop our spinning skills.

I finished out the weekend all-day Sunday with "Even More Challenging Stitches from Japanese Designs." Gayle Roehm had been here two years ago, so this was a chance to follow up on what I learned then. Of all the classes I took during the weekend, this is the only one that wasn't packed full. I was glad to have friends Pam and Debra in the class. I also met Becky earlier in the weekend in Fiendishly Difficult Stitches, and she was here, too. So it was a nice intimate group of confident, skilled knitters. Gayle walked us through eight different stitch patterns. The Japanese use a standardized charting system. Some of the class covered reading the charts, but some of it involved very unusual elements in the charts -- loops pulled up from strange directions, wrapped stitches, patterns with different numbers of stitches on each row, patterning on both right and wrong-side rows, and the like. The beret is a circular motif which is, believe it or not, from a sweater pattern. I can't say a target is a flattering motif, even on a tiny Japanese lady, but I think it is fabulous on a hat. (By the way, this is the French market yarn from Uzes, France, courtesy of the Bard. Thank you, Ephram!) The complexity of Japanese stitch patterns is an indication of the high level of skill of Japanese knitters.

As always, an excellent weekend of expanding my personal knitting universe.

Serpentine Short-Round Scarf, finish

2011-04-20T19:30:00.001-04:00

This last video shows you how to work a three-needle bind-off. In this example, the bind-off closes the double-knitting. You can also use this bind-off to join two pieces of knitting. And I've even shot it both with knitting needles and with a crochet hook.

For those of you used to knitting straight through both stitches, you'll notice that I purl the stitch on the back needle and knit the stitch on the front needle. This causes the stitches to lie flat to form a nice, well-behaved chain detail. It also causes the wrong-side of the chain stitch to hide inside the knitting, rather than on the public side. It's a subtle difference, but one I hope you'll appreciate.

Serpentine Short-Round Scarf, continued

2011-04-19T17:48:00.002-04:00

Above is a nice, clear pictures of the finished Serpentine Short-Round scarf. The first three repeats of the pattern will turn in one direction, the next three repeats turn in the other.

You'll be carrying the shifting contrast color up the inside of the double-knitting. It isn't difficult as it only involves moving the yarn forward or backward, and some slipping of stitches. But if the words in the pattern don't make perfect sense -- or if you are just a very visual learner -- you can watch.

This first video shows you how to shift at the beginning of the pattern, as the contrast color rounds are becoming shorter.

The second video shows you how to shift during the second half of the pattern repeat, as the contrast color rounds become longer.

Tomorrow: Finish with three-needle bind-off.

Serpentine Short-Round Scarf

2011-04-18T17:47:00.001-04:00

Well, my first published pattern is moving out into the world. The Serpentine Short-Round Scarf was in the STITCHES South Fashion Show on Friday evening. If you were in the market on Saturday or Sunday, you could acquire the pattern with purchase of the yarn. The booklet will be published later this summer, hopefully in June.

I do want to be good about pattern support. If you purchase one of my designs, I want you to be able to work through it all and to be able to do so using the sort of subtle detailing that a long-time knitter would use. I want you to have a beautiful product you wear with pride around knitters.

Because I enjoy playing around with construction and technique, this scarf is knit in the round and shaped using short rounds, rather than short rows. It is also a type of double-knitting, this being the slipped-stitch variety. You only deal with one yarn at one time, working across the needle in knit one, slip one. I have given you a cast-on and a bind-off that match, which is the sort of quality detailing I think you all expect in a good pattern. I don't think this scarf is a difficult pattern, but the techniques are a little unusual. I hope the words in the pattern make sense, but if for some reason they don't, I've shot some videos to help.

This first video is the crocheted cast-on. I work it with my fingers. Yes, you may personally find it easier to use a crochet hook, but I'm working on the assumption that we're all knitters here, and you might not want to get off the couch to find the crochet hook.

Notice that the crochet cast-on will produce a chain-stitch that will match a regular bind-off. If you are knitting flat, try working a slipped-stitch selvedge (knit the first stitch of every row through the back of the loop, slip the last stitch of every row purlwise with yarn in front), you can have chain stitch all around. This is especially great on blanket blocks, because all the sides match and it is easy to seam. But this also is great on garments or afghans, because you can pick up in the chain stitch or add edgings very easily. And on a scarf you can make both ends match, which is great if you are adding fringe or trim.

The second video is how to convert the crochet cast-on into a double-knitting cast-on. If you want to make the serpentine scarf, you'll have to do that. Watch the first video to learn how to get started, then watch the second to see how to continue.

Tomorrow's videos: how to shift your yarn in the scarf.

That's no shawl . . .

2011-04-11T15:41:00.000-04:00

it's a tablecloth!

Earlier in the year, I returned to working regularly on Lyra. I was doing either two or four rounds a day, and enjoying just puttering along at a consistent pace. But then I decided that maybe I should check the boards on Ravelry to see if there were any errata or other bits of advice. Many, many people had stories and pictures about knitting Lyra and having trouble with a certain section not blocking flat.

So . . . I sat down and checked the math. Lyra is knit from the center out. And the math in the first few rows is roughly as expected, about 8 stitches every-other round through about round 42. But then the increases slow down. Part of this may be because hexagonal mesh lace is introduced at that point, and hex-mesh seems to stretch generously. But from round 69-86 the increases just stop. And then round 87 has 16 decreases! Inconceivable! And this is all the more perplexing because Herr Niebling was clearly a master lace knitter. How could his math be so terribly wrong?

I was discussing this problem on Wednesday with Pam. We were sitting at a round table, eating our lunch and sipping our tea. And then Pam had an epiphany. Why would a master lace knitter forget to increase? Because he didn't want to. He wasn't knitting a shawl, he was knitting a tablecloth! The lack of increases was to make the tablecloth hang straight and to prevent it from sliding around on the table.

Now I won't feel like an iconoclast if I make changes to the pattern.

First Peek

2011-03-28T12:00:00.005-04:00

Today I'm putting the sample for my first published pattern in the mail. If you follow my projects on Ravelry, this is currently listed as the pink scarf. It will have a better name later. But I wanted to at least give you all a peek. Vincent was happy to help.

The scarf has an interesting construction -- by now, you expect nothing less from me, yes? -- but you'll get to read more about that after the pattern is published. I also have better pictures to show the shape and the pattern. The scarf should be in the STITCHES South fashion show on Friday 15 April. If things go very well, the scarf may be at the Skacel booth and the pattern might even be available for purchase that weekend; but let's not hold anybody to that, okay?
The yarn from Skacel Collection is Simplicity by HiKoo. This is a budget-friendly yarn combining superwash merino, acrylic, and nylon. It has a nice soft and springy hand, but is also easy-care. The scarf will be in a collection of patterns from Atlanta Knitting Guild that all feature this yarn. My other pattern in the collection is a stadium blanket. The easy-care and hard-wearing nature of Simplicity makes it a good choice for blankets and children's wear, as it can stand up to a little rough and tumble play. And it comes in about 40 colors, including five variegated colorways.

Claudia Hand Paint Trunk Show

2011-03-09T15:36:00.004-05:00

Well, I forgot to take my camera to the trunk show. Phooey!

It was great to meet Claudia McLean, who is as friendly and vibrant as you would expect a brilliant hand-dye artist to be. And she'll be at STITCHES South, so those of you who missed her today will be able to meet her in another month. The trunk show had lots of good things, including the Flounce Duo from Gwen Bortner's Entrée to Entrelac. One of the ladies in attendance tried it on, and it was surprisingly flattering on the curves of a real woman.

I was well-behaved today, as I bought three skeins of linen last week in preparation for the Shawl the Love contest. Thank goodness the due date is 1 July, because it will be a few weeks before I have time to play with those skeins.

Erin and Claudia put together lovely little goodie bags for those of us who were able to r.s.v.p. Claudia provided four samples of her lovely yarns, and Erin provided a bag, measuring tape, pen, and a coupon for an in-store purchase. There was also a nice selection of munchies, although I couldn't help but notice that the food was mostly untouched. Hard to be interested in food when there is so much beautiful yarn calling your name.

Thank you Claudia and Erin for a lovely event!

SEFAA

2011-03-07T13:42:00.018-05:00

In my profile, I mention that I am a member of the Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance. So, what is SEFAA?

SEFAA is a 501(c)(3) organization that is seeking to establish a fiber arts center in the Atlanta metro area. SEFAA hopes to open a space this July which would include three artist studios as well as meeting, classroom, workshop, and exhibition space.

The long-term goal is that fiber groups in Atlanta would have a dedicated communal home space. Beyond just having a place to meet or hold classes, we would work towards owning our own property that is adjusted for our needs. For example, there would be adequate lighting. (How many of you have tried to knit or embroider in a dark hall?) Perhaps we would share some expensive equipment, such as a digital projector for PowerPoint presentations. We might eventually have library space and a dye kitchen. Heck, we might even have a little storage space for things like our convention booth materials.

But most importantly, we would have a place where fiberistas would interact. We would see what other groups are doing because we would be sharing meeting, classroom, and exhibition space. We would be building a large community of interrelated artist. Really, how many fiber groups could there be in metro Atlanta, I hear you ask?

Current SEFAA Member Organizations:
Atlanta Knitting Guild
Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild
Dogwood Chapter of the Embroiderer's Guild of America
East Cobb Quilters' Guild
Gwinnett Basketweavers Guild
Peach State Stitchers Chapter of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework
Peachtree Handspinners Guild
Surface Design Association, Georgia Chapter
TASA - Textile Appreciation Society of Atlanta

As a past president and past librarian of Atlanta Knitting Guild, SEFAA is an important project and dear to my heart. If you've never been on the board of a guild, you'd be surprised how tricky it can be, both politically and financially, to have to rent third-party space month after month for a meeting. And when the space isn't your own, you can't adjust it to meet your needs. I'm sure most AKG members have no idea how big and wonderful our library is because we can't house it where we meet. I'm very proud that AKG was one of the founding organizational members of SEFAA and that AKG has continued to provide both fiscal and volunteer support.

There is a core group of (mostly) women who have done a tremendous amount of work in the last two years just to bring the organization into existence as a 501(c)(3). Now it is time to raise money to rent our first community home space. So, what can you do? Well, you can send a donation. (And, yes, I've done that already. Gotta walk the walk here.) You can become a member. (Yep, done that, too.) You can attend a workshop. (Done that twice. The Peruvian hat was at a January 2011 workshop on Ethnic Textiles with Gail Goodwin.) And SEFAA still needs volunteers both for long-term commitments or short-term projects.

For information on how to donate (by check, Paypal, or Crowdrise), how to become a member, or how to get the latest information on events and classes (blog, Facebook, Twitter, Ravelry group), please follow this link to SEFAA's home page. And if you attend STITCHES South, be sure to look for the SEFAA booth in the market.

What's in a Panda's Name?

2011-02-15T15:16:00.007-05:00

Today was the day for the panda naming ceremony. The little guy born on the 3rd of November has passed his 100 day mark. The ceremony was scheduled for 8 AM, which is uncharacteristically early, especially when the zoo gates typically open at 9:30 AM. But I got up at 6 AM and faced down the morning commute.

The gathering was probably about equal parts zoo staff, media, and general public. There were a couple groups of adorable school children dressed in panda hoodies. And there were several of us hard core panda fans from last winter's deluxe nightcrawler programs. The ceremony included some delightful Chinese dancing first by two little girls and then by young women using ribbons. And there was also the obligatory puppet dragon with its flirting eyes and wiggling ears, alternately delighting and startling the children. Raymond King, CEO of ZooAtlanta, kindly kicked off the ceremony. Governor Deal said a few words. And a representative from Mayor Reed's office also spoke -- the mayor did not attend because he is in Washington, D.C. today to watch Rep. Lewis receive the Congressional Medal of Freedom.

And then came the big reveal.

The special guest was Jack Black. Kung Fu Panda 2 will be released in theaters on 27 May. As the star is a panda, Dreamworks and ZooAtlanta worked out that our new little guy is named Po, in honor of the main character in the movie. I don't know if he'll develop any awesome kung fu moves, but male pandas do have a tendency towards some pretty enthusiastic rough and tumble play.

ZooAtlanta's Po is still behind the scenes, working on moving beyond scooting to actually walking. Po should be making his debut in late March or early April. In the meantime, daddy Yang Yang and big brother Xi Lan were on exhibit. Jack Black shot a promo for Nickelodeon in front of the exhibit yard. Xi Lan (at right) kindly hit his marks by sitting in the background and munching adorably the entire time. What can I say? I'm biased, but I do think we have the best pandas here.

Sweet Hubby

2011-02-14T05:12:00.005-05:00

Valentine's Day is usually associated with chocolate, dinner, and roses. I like to think that knitters are a little easier to buy for than that. In this particular case, the Cuddly Hubby was kind enough to give me a White Lotus Stole kit. The design is by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer. The kit includes three balls of Colinton 3000 yarn, plenty of beads, the pattern, and a supply of Unicorn fibre wash. The yarn is undyed Australian mohair. It feels softer than it looks, and I suspect it will soften even more with use. I've done a little lace, but this kit is a nice chance to try something a little more complicated without getting into something crazy complex.

Knit Inn, part 2

2011-02-08T19:04:00.004-05:00

I took three classes during the weekend. On Friday afternoon, I took a class with Virginia on how to knit with beads. I've read a few books on the topic, but had never really sat down to try it. Not only did Virginia provide each of us with a spool of wire and some beads, but she also brought other beads to encourage our artistic play. And she says she recycles old necklaces she finds at yard sales and thrift stores. I don't know that I'm going to want to knit much with wire, but it was good to try it. Wire is rather stiff, so the kinesthetic feeling is like you are back in kindergarten and learning to write with a giant pencil.

This 3-row black bracelet was made as follows:

String 57 beads on the wire. (57 = 3 rows x 19 beads per row)
Sliding a bead between each stitch, cast on 20 stitches using backward loop. (Notice you'll use 19 beads, not 20.)
Turn. Do not slide a bead up between the last cast-on stitch and the first stitch of Row 1.
Row 1: Sliding a bead between each stitch, knit 20 stitches.
Turn. Do not slide a bead up between the last stitch of Row 1 and the first stitch of the bind-off row.
Leaving enough tail for a whole row, cut wire.
Sliding a bead between each stitch, bind off using Elizabeth Zimmermann's casting-on casting-off technique.
You should have a piece of wire at each end. Use that wire to attach the findings. Hide the wire ends down inside a bead or two.

I spent Saturday just hanging out. There were many wonderful goodies in the market, and I did show some restraint. I bought a beautiful necklace and pin from Pat at Bird Mountain Creations. I was drawn to the necklace in particular because it features beads in a deep mallard blue shade that is uncommon in jewelry. This is, however, a color I wear and a color that appears frequently in my yarn stash. The David Wright swirl pin was not expensive, and I liked the deep green color. But I didn't buy an interesting helical necklace. Well, I was very excited when later that evening, the necklace was one of the items in the raffle. I put quite a few tickets on it and won it! Glee!

On Sunday I took two classes. In the first, Terry taught us how to make copper shawl pins. These are surprisingly easy!And it was delightful to see how everyone came up with something different. Several of us felt that next year, the shawl pin class should be on Friday so that we could show off our creations all weekend. Lightweight shawl pins like these are also great for delicate shawls. As you can see, I ended up with two. One is very long, for when you want to pin to make a statement. The other is shorter, but I came up with two different types of closures for it.

My last class was on polymer clay buttons and it was taught by Michele from the Eccentric Peasant. She has played a lot with clay. I was a little burned out creatively by that point. Also, I didn't really have an item that needed buttons. I think sometimes I need a problem to solve in order for my creativity to really kick in. But on the up side, I was able to listen and take notes. Michele had many, many great ideas about how to use clay and shape it. For example, she cuts up paper clips to bake in as button shanks. I don't know if I'm really going to get into polymer clay because it isn't food safe, but I do know what to expect now. And who knows, someday I may have that perfect project for which I must make my own perfect buttons!

Knit Inn

2011-02-07T18:06:00.010-05:00

I don't know if I ought to be spilling the secret, but the South Carolina Knitting Guild throws a dang fine shindig!

(T-shirt logo with embroidered yarn from Mimi Makes Memories.)

Over the weekend, I attended the South Carolina Knit Inn. I hadn't been before, but a significant fraction of North Georgia Knitting Guild has been attending over the last couple of years. So, I decided I ought to check it out. The SCKG gets a ballroom for the weekend along with several meeting rooms for classes. Members donate their time to teach classes. Half the ballroom is a large knit-in area, with a nice arrangement of beverages and snack food on tables along one wall. On Saturday afternoon, the other half of the ballroom is used as a market. Participants could order boxed lunches for Saturday and participate in a pizza party that evening. There was a "bring one, take one" area for people to swap books and magazines. There was knitting bingo on Friday night. The guild even got lots of donations for door prizes and a raffle. Kimberly -- aka somebunnyslove, director of social media for XRX, Inc. -- attended with her bunnies and a pile of prizes including t-shirts, market passes, and yarn. All you had to do was bring her chocolate! And, of course, knitters spread out beyond the ballroom and through the hotel, taking over the lobby and the breakfast dining area.

Above is a view of some of the goodies I bought back. There were also a couple coupons for businesses in the Greenville area. Attendees received a plastic project basket, a sample of Miss Babs yarn, a sample of Simply Sock Yarn, a whole skein of Red Heart Heart & Sole sock yarn, and a South Carolina Knitting Guild metal key chain whistle. The book on fabric knitting came from the book exchange. And the STITCHES t-shirt came from somebunnyslove. Many thanks to all the organizations who were so generous, with a special shout out to Coats and Clark for donating an entire ball of yarn for each of us! Also, special thanks to XRX and somebunnyslove for deep supplies of STITCHES South-related prizes!

While I love the larger conventions, I can see the appeal of the Knit Inn. It is a smaller and more intimate venue, attracting about 200 people. You get to know the other attendees. And classes only cost $5, because all the teachers donate their time. While you don't have the overwhelming market, amazing fashion show, autograph opportunities, or chance to learn from top published designers, the weekend is more budget-friendly. And there is something very warm, friendly, and downright hospitable about an event run by a guild. From what I could tell, a large portion of the SCKG contributes their personal time and talents to make the party happen.

Tomorrow: More about the classes.

Program Ideas

2011-01-31T13:44:00.000-05:00

As you may have noticed when I updated my profile information, I'm the 2011 VP of Programs for North Georgia Knitting Guild. When Gerri was on the nominating committee, she called and said something along the lines of, "Well, you know so many people, we thought you would be a really good fit for the job." Now why did she have to go and present a valid argument? Dare I say that so far, things have gone pretty well. I have all of 2011 programmed. A couple months are only tentative, but a good many are confirmed.

At the last meeting, Pat from Taming of the Ewe asked me about programs. She is a member of a small guild over in Alabama. Newer and smaller guilds often don't have a lot of resources to put towards programs. So what can you do?

I thought it would be helpful to post here some free or nearly-free guild program ideas. NGKG has a lot of talent, so we've had a number of programs in which someone shared her expertise with the group. And we have been able to afford the occasional outside speaker. But there are other programs that can be put together by combining the resources of the group.

Tabletop Techniques
For this program, the room is set with with several tables and one teacher at each table. Members move around the room, learning a new technique at each stop. Technique ideas: bobbles, buttonholes, edgings, life lines, short rows, an unusual cast-on or unusual cast-off.

Knitting Tips and Tricks
Each member submits her favorite knitting tip or trick. Then one person reads aloud the submissions. Later, a handout is available to help everyone remember all the wonderful ideas!

Charity Knitting
If your group donates objects to a favorite charity, this is a night for learning the patterns. This could also be a night to seam a blanket or do other finishing that might be necessary. You might even invite someone from the charity to come speak about the impact of the knitted items.

Knitting Competition
Knitters seems to be natural show and tell aficionados. A competition gives members a chance to really look closely at the best work of their fellow members. The competition could be judged by a small panel or by the entire membership. Secret ballots recommended.

UFO Night
This can take several forms. You can have an ER, in which people present stalled projects and the group can offer suggestions -- or possibly sympathy when a project must be euthanized in the frog pond. You can also swap stalled projects, as one person's "Ugh!" is another person's "Oooh!" And to prevent us from becoming too proud, you can have a disaster competition. Guild not responsible for camera lenses broken by viewing hideous knitting disasters!

Yarn Tasting or Needle Tasting
Sooner or later, we all develop opinions about yarns and needles. If members are willing to bring leftover scraps and to share their needles, you can set up tables and give everyone the opportunity to test drive yarns or needles that are new to them. This is also a good program for local shop involvement.

Knitter's Wish List
I've done a couple previous posts on unusual gifts for knitters. After awhile, we all have lots of yarn and needles. For this program, members bring unusual ideas for gifts for other knitters.

Christmas in July
This program is sort of the opposite of the wish list, as this is about knitting for other people. Each member would bring an example of a favorite gift she likes to knit, along with information about where to obtain the pattern.

Stash Busting
This is another program that can take several forms. One is a stash swap, where members can swap yarn. It can also be similar to Christmas in July, except that members would bring an example of a favorite stash-busting project. Members could also swap tips about how to store or organize stash. If you really want to share, have people bring pictures of their own stashes and then have everyone try to guess whose stash is whose.

Travel Knitting
This one can require some long-term preparation. Ask your members to pay attention as they travel. If they visit an exceptional yarn shop, write down the address, gps coordinates, and contact information. They should also provide an exterior photograph, if possible. Most importantly, they should contribute a small review explaining what is so special and wonderful about this particular place. A little care must be taken not to offend any local shops. Alternatively, a travel knitting program could be another opportunity to share pattern ideas; this time for items that are easy to knit in planes, trains, and automobiles.

Measuring Night
Members bring a measuring tape and a non-judgmental friend and get accurate measurements. Ugly truth -- you can't expect to knit to fit if you don't know your own true size.

Book Reviews
We used this as an emergency program for Atlanta Knitting Guild. Have about half a dozen members bring a book and a project that was inspired by the book. It is a great opportunity to share with your group which books you think really deserve some attention. You might also craft this program around the books in your own guild library.

Auction or Raffle
If you need a fundraising event, an annual auction or raffle may be a good choice. Members donate yarn, needles, books, patterns, bags, and the like. You can have a full-up auction, a silent auction, a Chinese auction (raffle tickets and little cups), or a combination of these ideas.

Shop Night
The relationship between shops and guilds always seems to get sticky. Especially if there is a time of year when your local shops are clearing out old inventory, a shop night can be a nice way for members to become more familiar with what is available in the area. If any of your local shop owners attend TNNA, ask if someone would like to present a program on the new trends in fibers or fashion.

Holiday Party
Many groups find that December is too busy crazy a time for a serious program. Depending on your group, you may want a potluck event or a catered event. Some guilds will purchase a ham or other main course and have members contribute the rest of the feast. You may also wish to have a gift exchange.

A quick spin

2011-01-26T21:17:00.005-05:00

Artists sometimes talk about being blocked. There's writer's block, but other types of artists have similar experiences. At the moment, I'm being a lot more productive about spinning than knitting. Part of it is that the Knitting Needle Liberation Front needs to sweep through my house and rescue needles out of stalled projects and unfinished swatch experiments.

Sunday was a perfect day for spinning, as there were two football games. Cuddly Hubby and I were particularly keen to watch the Packers at the Bears. My friend Theresa had shown an interest last week in an orange blue-faced Leicester roving from Pagewood Farms. I was happy to spin that up for her.
Theresa wanted a thick yarn, but spinning thick is not all that easy. Spinning thick-ish and then plying seemed like a better plan. I pre-drafted the fibers during the first half of the game. During the second half, I spun using backward draw. I finished spinning just after the game ended -- about the time the interviews in the locker room started.
Today I plied the yarn during Knit Lit. I was trying to decide between chain-plying and cable-plying. When I played with it a little, it looked as if I wasn't going to get a lot of extra volume out of that fourth ply in the cable ply, and that all the extra twist might make it a thinner yarn. So I went with the Navajo plying.
Theresa will have to set the twist herself, either by steaming or soaking the skein. And I didn't have my good standing swift with me, so I'm not sure about the yardage. My guess is it would be between 50 and 75. Theresa hopes to make a hat and I'm very much looking forward to what she does. I haven't actually knit with any of my handspun yet, so this will be a first. And I have to admit, it came out so pretty, I would have been tempted to buy the other two rovings in the shop were in not that I just can't wear orange.

A Productive Month

2011-01-24T12:33:00.001-05:00

I'm pleased that 2011 seems to have gotten off to a good start. I have two patterns out in the world and under review. They may not make the cut, but at least I've gotten in a couple tries. I've received the materials for Level 2 of Master Knitter. I have more ideas on paper or in swatches than I have time to knit. Saturday I taught two workshops for Clicks & Sticks Knitting Guild -- my first time teaching all-day workshops for a guild. I've had good attendance at my classes this month at The Whole Nine Yarns. Next weekend I'll be teaching reversible traveling cables. The weekend after that I'll be at the South Carolina Knit Inn -- just hanging out, not teaching. We're even off to a good start with programs for North Georgia Knitting Guild. I have a tentative list for 2011, and most of the months are filled. I thought I might be stressed about being VP of Programs for this year, but I'm not. I'm managing to take most things at a steady but not frantic pace.

As we move into a new year, I tend to look around and see what is unfinished. There are quite a few swatches and half-finished experiments. I'm hoping to devote much of February to the Knitting Needle Liberation Front. I'm putting together some ideas about how to make the den more functional. And I've been doing some work in the studio as well. I've taken to leaving the spinning wheel set up in the middle of the room. This has turned out to be a surprisingly nice thing. For one, I can see the wheel clearly every time I pull up in front of our home. And as the studio is next to the kitchen, it has suddenly become very easy to just go spin for a few minutes while I wait for the tea kettle to boil or the microwave to zap dinner.

And it is funny how things work. One of my Mensa friends, Karen, had six small batts of wool roving that a friend brought her from New Zealand. Karen doesn't spin, just knit. So I invited her over in November to have a spinning lesson and see what she thinks of it. At the time, I hadn't been using the wheel all that much. Must of 2010 I was working on and off on Blue-tiful, a lovely skein that was a royal blue pain. I had spent a great deal of time hand carding blue sparkles into the roving. (Why didn't I get a drum carder?) Then I added even more sparkles at the wheel because I found that the sparkles tended to migrate as I spun, producing areas with a lot of bling and areas with none. It may be a beautiful yarn, but it was not a fun spin. Fortunately, with Karen coming for a lesson and bobbins filled, I was forced to finish Blue-tiful.

I don't have a big spinning stash, and that's just fine with me. Last summer, my friend Sue gave me a dark blue and gray batt. I wasn't all that impressed with it, as it looks as if someone took a Union and a Confederate jacket and ran them through the shredder. Those of you who have seen my stash know it is colorful. So Grant & Lee, as I named it, failed to woo me initially. But I needed something for teaching Karen. With a lack of spare spinning stash, I pulled out Grant & Lee. What it lacked in visual appeal it made up for in spin-ability. I quickly realized that I could spin it backward draw instead of forward draw. After Karen's lesson, I left the wheel sitting out in the middle of the studio. I found myself stealing spinning moments regularly. When it was time to ply, I figured I ought to learn how to Navajo (chain) ply. Granted, that's a technique usually used for multi-colored yarns. Grant & Lee certainly didn't need to be chain plied, but it gave me a chance to learn for later. I sat down at the wheel, thought about what I'd seen from both Debi Light at the shop and a Lucy Neatby class -- both of which were maybe two years ago -- and started. And I did it! Glee!

I finished Grant & Lee the first week of the month. (I think I was plying it when Atlanta Knitting Guild met in January.) I found I really enjoy backward draw. I like the fluffy quality of woolen yarns. And unlike worsted spinning, where you have to be more careful about when and where the twist enters the fiber, it seems to me that woolen spinning is more forgiving. You want some of the twist to run up into the fiber. And the fibers seem to grab onto themselves in a way that makes them spin a fairly consistent width. I felt so confident that I decided to spin a roving from Olive Ewe.
This particular roving was dyed like a rainbow. Alas, I think it wasn't completely light-fast, as when I opened up the roving the inside color seemed to be more intense than the outside color. I stripped the roving into three smaller rovings of equal weight. I spun the first roving as red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet. For the second roving, I tore off one-third of the red and moved it to the end. For the third roving, I tore off two-thirds of the red and moved it to the end. I then rewound all three bobbins so that I could access the red end. Finally, I plied from the red ends of all three. Unfortunately, I had spun the first one a little thinner than the other two, so the colors didn't mix quite as I had intended. Still, it is an interesting experiment, and one that I am certainly willing to try again.

What They Don't Show on ESPN

2011-01-10T18:07:00.001-05:00

What a difference a week makes. This time last week, we were in Miami, enjoying the Orange Bowl. Today we are snowed in at home, wondering when Atlanta will thaw enough to risk automobile travel.

The Cuddly Hubby and I celebrated the beginning of 2011 with a trip to the Orange Bowl. Cuddly Hubby got his undergraduate engineering degree at Stanford. As the Cardinal doesn't play on the east coast all that often, much less in a major bowl game, we decided to attend. Plus, there had been a lot of talk about bowl games not wanting a team like Stanford because they don't "travel well." Message heard and answered!

We made this a quick run to Miami from Atlanta. We drove to Kissimmee, Florida on New Year's Day. We left heavy rain in Georgia, which meant slower conditions on I-75. I had consoled myself that the slower speed would translate into better fuel efficiency, but then we encountered a major traffic snarl around Macon due to a bad traffic accident. On Sunday we drove the rest of the way to Miami, once again getting stuck in a traffic backup on the Florida Turnpike. We also got lost on our way to our hotel. And we got lost again on our way to the rally in South Beach. A helpful travel note: it costs close to $20 in tolls each way to drive the length of the Florida Turnpike, but as access is much more limited than I-95 and the route is more direct, the price can be worth the time saved.

Once we got ourselves parked and out and about at South Beach, the aggravation was rewarded. It was a fine evening. We sat outdoors and dined on local seafood. We got the NFL scores update. (Hurray, Falcons!) We admired the Art Deco architecture. We enjoyed a rally on the beach featuring bands from both universities. We walked in the sand. We followed The One, the Only, the Truly Incomparable Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band as they ran up and down Ocean Drive, pausing to play a tune or two at each intersection. It was a great date night!

We slept in on game day, then ate a big lunch and headed to the stadium. Although it cost a few bucks, we did go into the fan experience. It was a good way to spend the pre-game if you weren't tailgating. There was a small Ferris wheel and some activities such as mechanical bull riding. (We watched the bull riding.) We both liked the photo ops -- one with an ESPN booth set-up and another with the Orange Bowl trophy! We got to watch the bands perform again. And there was a tent with memorabilia from over seventy years of Orange Bowl games. That just whets my interest in the new College Football Hall of Fame which should open here in Atlanta in 2013.

The game experience was great! First off, lots of Stanford people heeded the call to please travel well. Cuddly Hubby ran into several friends from his bright college days with the Stanford band. So in some ways, it was like an all-class reunion. And I now understand why Miami gets to host the Super Bowl so much. Sun Life Stadium is very nice. The view to the field is completely unobstructed, so there isn't a bad seat in the house. And the large ramps make it easy for crowds to flow in and out. The first half of the game was close, with a 13 to 12 score at halftime. I was a little concerned about Stanford limping along on a one-point lead. Mistakes were made in the first half. But both the Stanford offense and defense came out strong in the second half. Final score: Stanford 40, Virginia Tech 12. And do note here that although Andrew Luck and the offense get a lot of the glory, the defense did a great job making sure that missed extra points, an interception, and a safety did not upset Stanford's game.

We hung around after the game for the presentation of the trophy. Stanford finished the season 12-1, with only the loss to unbeaten Oregon. Along the way they beat USC (for which the other eight Pac 10 teams give thanks), won back the axe from Cal, won a trip to Miami for themselves and the band, and won a lovely crystal fruit bowl with oranges. We stayed after the trophy presentation to listen to the band play, because the band always rocks! When they were done, we reluctantly headed outside.

We happened to come to an area where the team buses were parked. Some people were waiting. Cuddly Hubby suggested we join them. It turns out many of these people were the families of the players. As the players came out in their warm-up suits, they would sometimes stop to exchange greetings with their families. These are the truly beautiful moments you don't see on ESPN. Most of these young men will never play professional football. I'm sure their parents were thrilled they could get a top quality education at Stanford in exchange for playing good football. The joy they shared with their families is the special joy for which English does not have an adequate word. It is the joy of working hard for a long time, and actually succeeding beyond your dreams. It was a privilege to see it and be near it, and then to wave good-bye to the champions as the buses pulled away.

It was about 2 AM when we got back to our hotel. Check-out was 11 AM. We slept some -- it was hard to fall asleep after so much excitement. We got up, checked out, grabbed some sandwiches, and drove home, good traffic and weather with us and fuel efficiency not withstanding. We left the hotel about 11:30 AM and got home just after 10 PM. As we got back to Atlanta, I reflected on what a lovely "date weekend" we had, and how truly blessed life can sometimes be. To Coach Harbaugh, the Stanford football team, the Stanford band, and the many behind-the-scenes organizers: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for a warm and wonderful way to welcome a new year! May everyone have moments in their lives as joyful as the ones we witnessed on Monday night.

Only 1000 days behind

2010-12-31T17:17:00.002-05:00

More than three years ago, I started this blog because I knew I wanted to break into knitting designing and teaching. I saw that most people who published had a blog or a website, so I thought I'd better start a blog.

In those 1000+ days, the blog has given me a chance to practice pattern writing. And it has given me a place to share new ideas. It has forced me to learn how to use certain types of software. And it has forced me to learn at least a little something about shooting digital pictures and video.

Today I finally sent a submission to Knitty. I'm only 1000 days behind schedule.

To all my knitting friends out there, thank you for being so supportive in my creative endeavors. I wish you all a happy, prosperous, and knitterly new year!

Rare Week

2010-12-25T16:59:00.005-05:00

It has been a rare week indeed. On Monday night, we had a lunar eclipse that coincided with the winter equinox. This happy coincidence occurred most recently more than 450 years ago.

This evening, it is snowing in Atlanta. My understanding is that the last white Christmas in Atlanta was in the 19th century. The photograph is a nearly current view out my studio windows.

On this sacred day, it pleases me to think happy thoughts of those I love. Some are past, some are present, some are future, and some never were.

The Cuddly Hubby reading a book or running a D&D game.
The Yarn Pimp spinning or knitting with a cat or two close by.
The Bard eating a gourmet meal somewhere in France.
Carole decking her halls.
Ginny hosting Thanksgiving.
Andy playing a game.
Elalyr & Tegyrius' wedding.
Dana & John's pirate wedding.
Vincent eating tuna.
Brûlée pouncing on the feather toy.
My grandmother sewing something beautiful.
My other grandmother cooking something wonderful.
My sister singing so beautifully it moves the audience to tears.
My brother and dad flying together.
My mother making a new discovery.
My brother-in-law cooking an Italian feast worthy of the Pope.
The Extrovert leading.
The Introvert playing Bakugan.
The Princess doing anything confidently.
The Thespian shooting a movie or discussing his artistic passions.
The Architect dah'ling hearing the "Ooos" and "Ahhhs."
The Dear Friend flying model airplanes with his dad.
Scenter knitting lace or deciphering the math of the universe.
Sophia devouring kitchen plunder.
Copernicus lording.

To all my dear readers out there, however you celebrate the waning days of the year, may they be sacred and special amongst those you love.

Rescue

2010-12-21T11:14:00.008-05:00

There are some days when you just can't put a value on the networking on Ravelry.

I've been knitting madly on a pink shawl during the last week. By about Friday, I could see that maybe I was going to be just a wee bit short on the yarn. When I cast off on Monday morning, I came up short. My usual approach is to go find other people who have finished a project with the same yarn. In this case not so much luck, as they are in Italy, France, and Finland. But I did find someone in Ohio who had started a project with it. And I am figuring she'll still be able to finish hers, as I'm only needing about half a gram of yarn out of the 100 grams she has.

And it is nice to be able to talk to knitters about this, as these are the sorts of people who understand. Thank goodness this particular shawl needs to be done before the new year but not necessarily before Christmas.

My rescuer has a very crafty and creative blog and an Etsy shop called Maiden Jane. Her blog is full of a variety of interesting crafting ideas, some of which you could use right now to knock out those last second Christmas gifts. In her shop, Maiden Jane makes and sells lovely project bags made from taffeta, so they are light and strong and pretty!

Here's a small stash bag, perfect for a small project.

But I also think her mitten bags are innovative, as you can store the damp mittens hanging up and they will dry out. And with both mittens together, you are more likely to find the pair during the next snowball fight opportunity. And the doorway clutter stays under control.

Many thanks, Jane! And happy holidays!

Cold Day

2010-12-13T14:43:00.019-05:00

Some places have snow days. Today isn't a snow day here, but it is a cold day. The temperature in Mableton right now is below freezing. This is in the middle of a sunny afternoon. A typical mid-winter day in Atlanta involves dipping just below freezing overnight but climbing into the mid-40s Fahrenheit during the day. I have no idea how much snow removal equipment is owned by Cobb County, but I've heard tell that the city of Atlanta has a -- yes, one single -- snow plow. I'm sure it is meant only for emergencies.

Cuddly Hubby advised me to stay indoors today, and I've taken his advice. The house needed a good cleaning, and all the moving about kept me warmer. I put five Christmas CDs in the player, lit some frankincense and myrrh incense, dug out the wrapping paper, and went to work on wrapping the gifts for the nephews and niece. And now I'm here, at the computer, with a nice cup of hot chocolate to keep me company. Even the cats are hiding someplace warm. (I think Brûlée is upstairs on the master bed. Not sure where Vincent is, as he is usually sprawled across the computer if I'm trying to type.)

I have been knitting. Last week I finished what is probably one of my most beautiful finished objects to date. I don't think I realized how beautiful it was until I thought about how many people admired it while it was a work in progress and since it has been finished. As this one is probably good enough for prime time, I'll regretfully keep it off the blog and off Ravelry for the present. However, if you would like to see the white scarf with double-knit cables, it is on display at The Whole Nine Yarns. Alas, since it is in the shop, I'm not currently curling up in its confection-light warmth. It took five skeins of Rowan Kid Silk Haze. The little 3g ball is all that's left. I will try to remember to bring the scarf to show and tell at both the December NGKG meeting this week and the January AKG meeting. If you would like to knit it yourself, I'll be teaching the class on Saturday the 29th of January. Knowing how to double knit is a pre-requisite, so I'll be teaching double knitting on the 15th of January.

Planning for 2011

2010-11-22T10:32:00.010-05:00

It's that time of the year. No, I'm not referring to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the great triumvirate of cool-weather dark-day holidays. No, it's time to start signing up for all the great knitting offerings in 2011.

Registration has just opened this morning for STITCHES South 2011. Because of where Easter falls on the calendar, STITCHES South will be a week early on 14 through 17 April. Good for us, as the spring flowering trees should be in even better blossom than the previous two years. XRX will be setting up the party at the Renaissance Waverly Hotel & Cobb Galleria Centre, just off I-285 and I-75 on the north side of Atlanta. (Clicking the link at upper left will take you to the STITCHES main portal page. Clicking the link at the top of the sidebar will take you to the description of my class.)

Once again, it is my privilege to teach at STITCHES South. I'll be teaching "More Than One Way to Skin a Sweater." This is an overview of sweater construction, where we'll look at ten actual finished sweaters. Some have easy architectures, some are more complex. We'll discuss the pros and cons of each construction method. We'll also discuss some of the real-world problems I had to solve along the way. Here's a quote from one of the student evaluations last year, "Inspiring -- I'm going to go home and fix several UFOs. I learned practical applications for things I'd always heard about. Helped me not be afraid of "Out There" patterns!"

By the way, if you are trying to make decisions about classes using only the .pdf of the the brochure, the classes in the brochure are grouped by type, but in the online registration pages they are listed in order of appearance. Looking online can sometimes be easier if you are trying to see what your options might be for a certain day and time.

After much internal deliberation, I've registered for:
Thursday: Sharon Costello "Embed and Embellish: Felt, Stone, and Bead Jewelry"
Friday morning: Merike Saarniit "Fiendishly Difficult Stitches"
Saturday morning: Merike Saarniit "Spinning for Knitting"
Sunday all day: Gayle Roehm "Even More Challenging Stitches From Japanese Designs"

Sharon's class looks very interesting and unusual. Plus, Karin Skacel is supposed to reschedule with Atlanta Knitting Guild at some point. So it will be nice to up my felting skills between the two. And I do have some loose fiber lying around that I might not want to spin.

I couldn't take "Spinning for Knitting" last year because it was opposite my class. This year it is offered twice. Glee! And I noticed that "Exotic Estonian 'Patent' Stitches" (which I took in 2009) is offered on Friday afternoon rather than Sunday morning, so you won't be trying to learn it with a tired mind. Scenter took "Fiendishly Difficult Stitches" back in 2009, so I know from his review that it has some very interesting manipulations.

I'll end my weekend with Gayle Roehm. I took the first part of challenging stitches in 2009, so I'm very happy to see this nice long follow-up for Sunday. Between Gayle and Merike, I'm sure I leave with too many clever ideas about how to do strange things.

I have to admit I was keenly tempted to take Jean Frost's class "Lining a la Chanel." The homework is to knit a jacket but don't put it together so that in class you can put in a couture lining. While I like to think I can knock out a jacket between now and April, the reality is that I have a whole lot of other knitting that I ought to be doing. Still, I think it is a great class offering, as it is information that can't be found elsewhere. And if you already have a jacket in your UFO pile because it is waiting to be assembled, well then your procrastination has paid off!

Other good choice that I'm not taking:
Saturday morning: Sarah Peasley "Cut and Paste." This is the class to take if you are afraid of Kitchener grafting. Sarah not only shows you how to graft a variety of stitch patterns, she shows you how to do full-up replacement surgery on a sweater. I've done this sort of thing to sweater sleeves (both removing too much fabric and inserting more), and I can tell you this is a wonderful thing to be able to do. Being able to cut and graft gives you the freedom to make changes -- both aesthetic and functional -- to an otherwise finished garment. A lot of the really out there stunt knitting I do involves grafting. I highly recommend adding knitting grafting surgeon skills to your repertoire.

Saturday all day: Laura Bryant "Intentional Patterning with Hand-Dyed Yarns" I can't take this one because it is opposite mine. (Drat!) I have heard from other people that this is a very good class. Laura will show you techniques to make the most of those hand-dyed yarns that seduced their way into your stash. Maybe I'll get to take this one next year.

Saturday afternoon: Rebecca Ewing "In Loving Color" I've heard Rebecca speak at Atlanta Knitting Guild and I've taken her workshop offered through Southeastern Fiber Arts Alliance. If you feel uncertain about choosing colors, Rebecca can help you find the confidence to combine colors that will look fabulous.

Of course, I'll be doing some of the other fun things as well, such as shopping the market (but only for things I can't get locally), enjoying the fashion shows, attending the banquets, and partying at the pajama party. And I'll be sitting around knitting and admiring everyone else's work.

Good Deals

2010-11-12T15:25:00.006-05:00

North Georgia Knitting Guild has been hosting an annual auction as a way to raise funds. This year's auction was held during the October meeting. This is one of the advantages to being in a smaller guild. Atlanta Knitting Guild has too many members for something of this scale, although AKG is planning a yarn swap at the December meeting. I was being pretty tight with money this time, partly because I was in the midst of closing an old checking account and opening a new one. I didn't have the new checks yet, I didn't want to write any more checks on an account I was about to close, and my money was split between the two, so that kept me well-behaved. I spent between $20 and $30 for what you see in the photograph.

The three small booklets were all one lot. I find it interesting to browse even simple pamphlets. Sometimes you find something just a little interesting and out of the way. And you never know what will be lurking inside a stitch dictionary. I was pleased to find an old issue of In Knitters. I hope someday when the Southeastern Fiber Arts Alliance has a permanent building that AKG will have a permanent library space where we can have all the back issues of the best magazines -- In Knitters, Knitters, Interweave Knits, Vogue Knitting, Cast On and the like. The Leisure Arts brochure is "Sculptured Squares" -- blanket blocks that have a very three-dimensional pattern. I am intrigued.

There was plenty of yarn at the auction. I've put myself on a yarn diet because I have plenty of yarn. The evidence is even in the public domain on Ravelry. And yet, there's always another pretty skein or two. On the left is a skein of Artyarns Supermerino that looks like it is meant to be a raspberry beret. On the right is a skein of Yarn Place Vivace, 100% bamboo in a colorway that looks to me like an excuse to party. Packaged with it were the four long toggle buttons. Gro actually out bid me for it, but it came up fairly early in the auction. She was able to win some other items later, so she kindly let me purchase the skein from her for the amount bid. Thank you, Gro!

The last item is the reading glasses with case. These are 1.5 magnification. My regular optometrist-issued reading glass are .75. I bought these more because nobody was bidding on them and because they have little lights on the side! I suspect they will someday be a perfect accessory in a costume. They have a wonderfully nerdy quality!

A reminder to those of you in guilds elsewhere -- it really is true that one knitter's cast offs can be another knitter's new treasures.

When Less is More

2010-11-05T13:48:00.002-04:00

The Whole Nine Yarns has a sock guild. This is a sock club that meets once a month for social time and for education. Each month is a different, exclusive sock pattern and hand-dyed sock yarn to go with that pattern. It is a very cool idea and has proven to be a good way for sock knitters to try different techniques. Some socks are knit toe up, some top down, some lace, some texture, some cables. For January, JennaB the Yarn Pimp designed a sock with beautiful cabled Saxon Braid cuffs knit sideways. I'll get to that in a couple paragraphs. First, I want to draw your attention to the yarn.Yup, that's it. It really doesn't look like all that much, does it? It is mostly still the same undyed white. There is a little bit of pale grey at each end, and some pale rusty orange in the middle. When it first showed up in the shop, I noticed it for how quiet it is compared to some of the complicated sock guild yarns.

This is a yarn you have to knit up to understand. JennaB wanted it simple because she wanted the cables to show. A complex yarn would have hid the patterning rather than showing off the knitting skill. But the little bits of subtle color make this yarn look like white marble when worked in stockinette! So when you see a "simple" yarn in your local shop -- or if you dye your own yarn -- remember that sometimes less really is more. And when paired with the proper design and project, less can be fabulous!And speaking of fabulous --
I'm hoping to debut this new technique at the shop sometime in January. I've shown it around to a few savvy knitters, and none of them could recall seeing it in print. My guess is that it probably is in print somewhere, but that it is very obscure. This is a solution I worked out for myself. Already knowing double knitting will be a prerequisite. On this blog I usually tell what I did, but I'm going to keep this one to myself for a little while longer. I will give you a hint -- no purling was involved. The objects are sock cuffs, as I wanted to be able to turn the cuffs up or down. I'll be teaching toe up socks later this month, so I plan to work two socks at the same time until I'm nearly out of yarn. Then I'll graft the last row to the i-cord edging on the cuffs. This technique would be wonderful for band trims on a coat, hood, or blanket.

More Lace in Spokane

2010-10-28T15:06:00.007-04:00

The other shop we visited in Spokane was A Grand Yarn. This one is also a little tricky to find, as the shopping center sits perpendicular rather than parallel to the main road. You need to look for the dark brown buildings with the very slanted roofs. A Grand Yarn is just a few doors in from the road. The shop had lots of lovely samples and a fine selection of books as well as yarns. This is just the sort of good friendly local yarn shop every knitter ought to have close to her home. We chatted with both Mary, the outgoing owner, and Libby and Nancy, the incoming owners. All these ladies are clearly devoted to their knitting customers.

I purchased a few spare stitch holders and a copy of Myra Wood's Crazy Lace. The beautiful color and cleverly-styled photographs will lure you into adding this book to your shelf. This is definitely a book for the free-spirited knitter. If you are somebody who doesn't like lace because it involves too much following of rules, then you will like Myra's approach. In the first part of the book, she talks about the basics of lace such as how the increases and decreases compensate for each other and how the choice of yarn or needle can affect the work. I like page 39 where she shows the sizes of a plain stockinette swatch, a knitted lace swatch (patterning on right-side rows only), and a lace knitting swatch (patterning on both right-side and wrong-side rows). She also includes a good explanation of how to do a crochet cast-on and a crochet bind-off. The second part of the book gives a nice series of basic recipes for knitting geometric shapes. The third part covers a variety of ways to work edges, including how to add ruffles or ruching.

The book doesn't really have any patterns for making lace shawls, although there are plenty of photographs to inspire. Myra does show the advantages to using charts, including how to tweak a chart to make a lace pattern a slightly different stitch multiple. And her charts are in a large easy-on-the-eyes size. She does include several charts of lace patterns of various widths at the end of the book, but doesn't show them knitted up. You'd need to work a sampler yourself. Then again, perhaps getting you to get out your own needles and try things yourself is the point. If you were a novice trying to learn lace, I think I'd start with a different book or a simple follow-the-directions pattern just to get used to the concept. And if you got seriously into this approach, I think you'd want a lace stitch dictionary to supplement what Myra gives you at the back. Her approach is very freeing and I think will help those who are afraid of lace to see that it isn't all that difficult. It should provide a good starting point for someone who wants to design her own lace project. Also, I suspect that this book is probably a very helpful companion to her workshops.

Beginning Lyra

2010-10-27T19:45:00.000-04:00

During the summer, I decided to take Elizabeth Zimmermann's advice about travel knitting. She suggested a nice shawl, as it is light, easy to transport, and gives hours upon hours of knitting pleasure. For our trip out west, Lyra seemed like the perfect choice. I had purchased the yarn and pattern from the Yarn Place during a moment of unexplained weakness on the last day of STITCHES South 2010.

Now one of the things I really need to learn -- and by learn I mean totally take to heart -- is the idea that you ought to cast on such projects before you leave home. I've made this mistake the last two years in a row for Dragon*Con as well, spending four days of sitting and listening sans knitting. (I believe one year I got my Dragon*Con project cast on too early. I liked it too much and finished the whole thing in a week.) Because the trip west involved flying, I was greatly limited in what I could pack. Part of why I'll schlep the day and a half drive to Pennsylvania to see my family is that, if I drive, I can have my car full of my stuff. How did Auntie Mame ever limit herself to only 18 steamer trunks? After all, how can I be expected to enjoy myself without the large knitting bag with the full sets of needles, two more project bags stuffed full, the most recent issues of the major knitting and spinning magazines, the spinning wheel and the lazy kate? For flying, I was forced to pack lightly: the pattern, the ball of yarn, minimal needles and notions.

I'm a big fan of magic loop. I'm a big fan of circular needles. I'm a big fan of metal needles. But for some reason, I could not get that tight little center of Lyra to cast on nicely. And I hadn't brought my Blue Sky alpacas wooden needles in their pretty little metal boxes. Hissy fit. Was I going to be able to last a week of visiting my in-laws without any knitting? How badly do I love my Cuddly Hubby? Fortunately the drive back from Glacier National Park took us through Spokane. This is fortunate indeed because Kathleen Cubley had a nice article in the summer issue of Spin Off magazine about fiber shopping in the Spokane - Coeur d'Alene area. I opened up the magazine, pulled out my navigating device (Thanks, Mom!) and entered some addresses.

Our first stop was Paradise Fibers. Kathleen is correct that the easiest way to find the place is to look for the adult bookstore. When you find it, follow the parking lot along the right side of the building, as you face it. You'll find as you head back that the parking opens up and there is the front entrance to Paradise.

You definitely cannot judge a yarn store by the neighborhood or the outside of the building. Inside there were lots and lots of knitting and spinning goodies to be had. Travis and Sarah are super nice people. They even recognized me from STITCHES South. I guess they have a very good memory for faces or maybe for really dreadful blond "Alice" wigs. There was an entire wall of knitting needles of assorted types and brands. I resisted the yarns, mostly because I'm trying to de-stash at least a little bit. And there was a whole room of roving and batts. I had to think mighty hard to resist a beautiful green striated roving. They also had sparkly blending fibers in a wide assortment of colors. I may have to make a trip to Paradise Fibers a future requirement for any sojourns to visit my husband's family.

I may have resisted the roving. I did not, however, resist the Kollage square double-pointed needles or the Lantern Moon silk box or the needle tubes. After all, I was specifically looking for something to help me with Lyra. And I didn't want to duplicate what I already had at home. Plus, Mark & Susie at Kollage are the life of the party, so I'm happy to support them.

I did manage to get Lyra started. I think I had two or three false starts. I'd cast on, knit a few rows, scowl at the misshapen center, pull it apart and try again. But I did eventually get it going. And it provided me with a divine focus when needed. KateyJ said something to me about knitters who knit simple things to check out versus knitters who knit complex things to check in. Lyra definitely falls into the complex category. And yet, in some ways I find myself checking out because it is so complicated. I've tried yoga once or twice -- thank goodness there is no video evidence. I am so bad at yoga that I have to concentrate completely on what I am doing. I can't be thinking about a messy house with a dozen things to mend or a long list of errands or what stupid social blunder I made an hour ago or how far behind I am on my knitting and blogging and writing. Attempting to do yoga requires all my concentration. And knitting Lyra does, in fact, require my undivided attention. I think for very bright people, sometimes that's what you need. You need to check in completely to something in order to check out of your daily bothers. I wonder if this was part of the appeal to Scenter, who worked several very beautiful and very complicated lace projects.

I'll finish here with a quick review of the needles. They rock! Kollage generally markets them as easier on your hands. Carson Demers did pass a set around in his "Ergonomics for Knitters" class, but he said that the beneficial effect would be mostly in the larger not smaller sizes. For the record, I'm knitting a pleasantly springy thread-like yarn on size 2.25 mm needles. What I've noticed is that the square shape prevents the stitch from clinging to the entire surface of the needle. My initial reaction at about 36 rounds into Lyra is that the square shape makes it easier to work all those k2tog, ssk, and centered double decrease manipulations. And I am pleased that Kollage makes these in the metric sizes. I find that the 0.25 mm difference in size is significant on very small needles. I liked the needles so much, that I decided to buy the firm cable circular needles so that I could finish Lyra without changing to my usual needles. If you are a lace knitter, I encourage you to try these and see what you think.

Devil in the Details

2010-10-08T15:38:00.004-04:00

I haven't gotten nearly as much knitting done lately as I would like. I did, however, finally manage to finish this swatch for an upcoming class. I've been surprised when I teach by how many knitters only know one or two ways to increase. There are so very many, and they each have their own best application. So I've created this swatch which demonstrates 42 different mirrored double-increases in stockinette. I did not include any examples here of hiding the increase behind a cable or traveling stitch, as that would open up another whole area of exploration. I also haven't included on this swatch increasing by knitting with more than one strand at a time, such as using the tail or using the other yarn when doing double knitting or Fair Isle stranded knitting. And I didn't include casting on in the middle of a row, such as with an e-loop, crochet cast-on, knitted-on cast-on, or cable cast-on.

Some of these are quite decorative. I've used yarn overs, knitting directly into the stitch below, knitting into the purl bump of the stitch below, making a new stitch with the running thread between two stitches, and working multiple stitches into the same stitch by knitting & purling, knitting & yarn overs, or twisting stitches. This line of exploration is getting into the technical minutiae of knitting. It can be quite fascinating to see how something does or doesn't behave as you expect.

At some point, I really ought to do the same swatch in garter stitch to see how these change with the stitch pattern.

Cropped Linen Stitch Jacket

2010-09-08T16:02:00.001-04:00

I wanted to have something a little special to show in my "More Than One Way to Skin a Sweater" class back in April. This plain cropped jacket has an unusual construction method which I call "origami" because it can be represented by a rectangle that is cut and folded.

You'll recall this jacket is worked in linen stitch. I only had the one large skein, so I weighed it. This allowed for me to make calculations as I knit. How much fabric did I have? How much yarn had I used? How long could the sleeves be without running out of yarn? These questions can be answered with some confidence if you weigh the skein before beginning and at intervals as you knit.

I crochet cast-on at the bottom edge and treated the bottom part of the jacket as a rectangle. I planned and used about 35-40% of the skein. When I got to the underarms, I folded the rectangle as if it were the bottom of a cardigan -- right front, back, left front. I was at the beginning of a right-side row, which meant I was on the right front edge. I then knit one-quarter of the way across my rectangle and provisionally cast-on what was needed for the sleeve. I then knit the upper right portion of the sweater up to the shoulder, leaving the stitches live. At this point, I had to break the yarn, provisionally cast-on what I needed for the left sleeve, and knit across the quarter of the rectangle that was forming the left front. Once again, I knit up through the shoulder and left the stitches live. I had to break the yarn again, but I left a yard or two for a future shoulder seam. Now I flipped my garment over and picked up in the provisional bottom of the right sleeve, across the back (the middle half of the rectangle), and across the provisional bottom of the left sleeve. From there, I knit to the top of the shoulders. Once again, I left the stitches live.

At this point, the shape I had was very similar to a baby surprise jacket! I guess that shouldn't be surprising, as both methods yield a garment with seams across the shoulder. I used a very tidy three needle bind-off to join my live stitches from cuff edge towards the back of the neck. When I ran out of stitches for a three-needle bind-off, I continued to bind off the back of neck stitches to the center. So both yarns met at the back of the neck, where I secured them neatly and wove them in.

I did a little bit of shaping on this project. Because it is a reversible fabric, I could have knit straight to the neck with no shaping and turned back the fabric to create lapels. But I was a little nervous about my yarn consumption. I worked the upper part of the jacket only an inch or two before I began decreasing on every row at the collar edge. (The decrease is every row because of linen stitch. It would be every-other in stockinette.) When the opening became wide enough, I stopped shaping. I also worked a few short rows for shoulder shaping. I configured the short rows by taping paper to the wall, standing against it, and having my husband trace the outline. I used that shape as the template for the short rows.

I also worked a twisted slipped stitch at all edges -- slip 1 knitwise with yarn in front at the end of a row, knit the first stitch of the new row through the back of the loop. Because I used the crochet cast-on, all the raw edges on this garment have a chain edging. I do have about 10% of the skein remaining. The plain cropped jacket is very much in style now, so I have been wearing it with a closure from Purdy Thangz. But if I later decide that I want a band or edging, that can be easily added all around by picking up in the chain stitch. And if I use the remaining Rainbow Mills Crayons Lite, I should be able to get it to pool or flash in a way that contrasts with the garment.

Because of both the linen stitch and the cotton, the fabric for this garment very much resembles a woven fabric. (For close up views, see this post from March 2010.) It also behaves more like a weave, both with less stretch because of the content and also because of the stitch pattern. If you worked this in wool or a more elastic fiber, you might be able to eliminate the short-row shoulder shaping.

(Photo at top left is "right side" of linen stitch jacket, photo at bottom right is "wrong side." Both are good!)

The Northern Lights

2010-08-31T07:28:00.002-04:00

I've been enjoying spinning the Louet Northern Lights roving I bought at The Mannings during Christmas. This is a standard roving, color 28 Violets. It actually has a fair amount of blue and green, including a nice shock of hot kiwi and a little punch of almost plain white or very pale blue. There were two hanks in the shop and I bought both, figuring that eight ounces would give me enough yardage to produce a substantial project. One of the problems for me with spinning is going to be projects. I don't need or wear a lot of hats or gloves. Most of the things I make for myself are shawls or sweaters which require a significant amount of yarn. So my hope for this roving was that I'd have enough yardage at the end to really make something.

As per my typical practice, I pre-drafted the roving. Because I'm still a novice, I used the second-lowest ratio on my wheel. Sometimes I attend the Monday spin nights at The Whole Nine Yarns. It is a nice group, smaller and therefore a little more intimate than on Tuesday knit night. As I'm not spinning for speed, it took me most of January to spin up all eight ounces. You can see from the bobbin at right that the spinning part went well enough.

After the roving was spun, I had more artistic decisions to make. It definitely had too much twist to be a single. (Somebody remind me to take a class on how to spin a good single.) I could chain ply it, but that would loose two-thirds of the length. I thought about plying it with a blue roving I had bought at Uncommon Threads. Instead of making an irreversible artistic decision, I worked on the blue roving.

Now, the blue roving took much longer than I expected. For one thing, I bought blue sparkles at The Mannings. But I don't have a drum carder. So I had to hand card blue sparkles into eight ounces of blue roving. This took a great deal of time. And then I spun up about four ounces of the blue roving, which took more time. At that point, I had three full bobbins (2 Louet Northern Lights, 1 blue with sparkles). I was able to finger ply the Louet to the blue and also the Louet on itself. Once I could do a side by side comparison, I decided to keep the Louet to itself.

So, I started to ply. And at some late moment, I realized I was not going to be able to get eight ounces onto a bobbin. I didn't want to cut my yarn. And in any case, I didn't have any empty bobbins, as I had two ounces of Louet on each of two bobbins, four ounces of plied Louet on a bobbin, and four ounces of blue with sparkles on a bobbin. I was thinking about ordering a spare bobbin. Then I looked on the Majacraft website and discovered the plying kit. For about $125 (depending on the exchange rate) and a couple weeks wait, my friendly local yarn shop was able to get the kit. It includes one oversized bobbin and one oversized flyer.

By this time, we were into the summer travel season. It was July, and I was headed back up to Pennsylvania. Fortunately I was driving rather than flying, because I pack like Auntie Mame with her eighteen steamer trunks. I got to my mother's house midway through the day. I let myself in. No pets. No children. No distracting adults. I was able to unwind the bobbin, with the resulting pile of yarn spread across the hardwood floor. And while I watched the evening news, I rewound the yarn onto the new bobbin. And I did all this while being careful to thread the yarn out of the old flyer and into the new flyer. It was worth the evening's labors. I was able to ply both four-ounce rovings together into one over 500-yard skein of worsted weight delight!

I hadn't brought my Strauch standing umbrella swift, so I had to wait until I got back home to Georgia to skein the yarn, steam set it, and determine the yardage. I'm still not sure what it will be when I knit it up. And I might combine it in a project with the blue sparkles, which aren't done yet. For the moment, I'm just going to enjoy it. And if you like this skein, remember that the roving is a standard roving that your local yarn shop should be able to get, rather than a specialty hand-dye that existed once five years ago. I am a beginning spinner. Even if you are also fairly inexperienced, you should be able to reproduce this yarn if it strikes your fancy.

Conquered

2010-08-04T06:40:00.003-04:00

(Photo: Cuddy Hubby and I looking into a late afternoon sun with
Flathead Lake, Montana behind us.)

After two years and three previous blog posts (18 July 2008, 4 June 2010, 5 June 2010), I am elated to report that I have completed the Puzzlemaker Jacket by Kerry Ferguson. I completed it while on vacation in Washington State in late June. The knitting had been completed in Atlanta, but there was the matter of weaving in ends and devising a closure.

What I learned:
Even if you live in the South, cotton is not your friend if your project involves a lot of ends. I got the best results for weaving in mercerized cotton by splitting the plies and running them in different directions, then weaving the yarn back on itself and splitting it with a chenille needle. This is similar to the technique used in a Russian join or for weaving in ends on needlepoint canvaswork. There are triangles which took as much time to weave in ends as they did to knit. Changing the pattern from two colors to three only intensified this issue.

The trick of changing gauge to change size did seem to work on this garment. My gauge is around 5.5 stitches per inch. I believe the original pattern is written at 4.5 stitches per inch. I ended up with a garment that fits me, a 32-inch chest, rather than the 44-inch chest for which the pattern is written.

While part of my initial attraction to the pattern was the idea of picking up along the end of the previous triangle as you go, I think this project might be better worked as individual triangles later seamed together. For one thing, the combination of garter and stockinette tends to pucker, so it really needs to be blocked flat. I think it is easier to block individual triangles flat rather than a completed jacket.

Secondly, I am not certain that all the math on this garment is correct. I ended up cutting ten stitches off the right-hand edge of Triangle L, which forms the long diagonal right front of the garment. As that was the next to last triangle, I could tell from my well-established gauge that the edge of Triangle K was simply not long enough to pick up all the bottom of Triangle L. So I worked Triangle L as written, except that I pretended the last ten stitches on the right didn't exist. That adjustment did make Triangle L a little shorter as well as a little narrower, but that worked out just fine. There are a couple places where this garment sort of fits together, particularly at the shoulders and sleeves. If each triangle were worked separately, you could go back and make changes as you put it together if you discover it does not fit quite as you would like. But if you join as you go, it is much more difficult to make adjustments to fit. And I do have to say that the back fit together pretty well.

And speaking of fit and seams, I did make a couple short seams at the shoulders. The neck opening turned out to be a very wide boatneck. The seams I sewed are about the width of the blue border, so they fit in very nicely and make sense with the overall design of the garment. Without them, the sleeves would tend to drop off my shoulders to produce the retro Flashdance look. And if I were to make this garment again, I would not try to sew the bottom seam of the sleeves, but would just leave them to flutter.

I've made a closure using hooks and eyes. In the pictures I have two sets, but I might add a third or I might just seam the whole front closed. I don't know that I'd ever wear this jacket hanging open. I did paint the hooks and eyes to match the bright blue so they blend. And I sewed them on using a single ply split off from a leftover length of the bright blue cotton.

I should add that Abbi Barden at Martingale & Company was very kindly able to provide me with a correction for the "blob" problem on the Triangle I graph. I point this out because even if you don't wish to work the whole Puzzlemaker garment, I believe the individual motifs are worth consideration. Kerry Ferguson has a wonderful and rare sense of texture as well as color in her designs. I think some of the Puzzlemaker motifs would work fabulously on accessories such as mittens, scarves, or bags. I was able to get some wonderful pooling and flashing effects from the Schaefer yarn because the triangles are all smallish units. While I'm not 100% happy with the front of the garment, I love the bold graphic look of the back. Anybody who gets stuck behind me in a long line should be able to stay amused simply by contemplating the back of this jacket.

And just to add a little humor to this already long post, a few observations about Montana.

1. Cuddly Hubby and I both agreed, the sky really is bluer in Glacier National Park.
2. I now understand why Ted Turner wants to buy the state.
3. A place where people live "off the grid" in the middle of majestic nowhere and can be snowed in for several weeks at a time produces a population of self-sufficient, practical individualists who do not see a reason to waste highway funds on guard rails.
4. "Speed Limit 75 MPH." This is the only place the Cuddly Hubby has driven where he wasn't completely comfortable driving the posted limit.
5. Fishing is a basic human need. Other states have signs indicating where restrooms, food, fuel, and lodging can be found. Montana has signs indicating where access to fishing is available. There is an exit off Interstate 90 that doesn't go anywhere, it just provides access to a stream running along the expressway. After driving for two or three hours, don't you really need a quick fishing break to rejuvenate and regain focus?

Can we find a state to provide similar signage -- "Yarn Next Exit" -- for knitting?

A New Knitter

2010-07-16T22:10:00.002-04:00

My six-year-old niece learned to knit on Tuesday. I was up in Pennsylvania visiting family in June, and the Little Princess asked if I would teach her to knit. I wasn't sure she was really, truly serious. But I did go visit the friendly local yarn shop, Uncommon Threads, and buy a skein of heathered pink Cascade 220 and size 4.5mm/US 7 bamboo Clover circular knitting needles.

When I returned to Pennsylvania in July, she was still talking about wanting to knit. She had discovered some bright, multicolored craft yarn in her mother's stash. I cast on thirty stitches and worked the first couple rows. Then I let the Little Princess manipulate the needles. She made the sticks move, and I wrapped the yarn. It was a little awkward, but it also gave her the chance to learn the dexterity of moving the needles without also tensioning the yarn. By the late evening, she was venturing into working the needles and the yarn by herself, and our tandem team knitting was unnecessary.

In the photograph, her tension is still a little loose. And like so many knitters, myself included, she really has tension issues at the selvage as she turns a row. Sometimes I work the first two stitches on a new row, just to get her started. But she is off and running and very excited. So am I.

Silliness

2010-06-21T05:49:00.000-04:00

I've been updating my Ravelry files with some older projects. I realized I needed to add the Jester Tentacles Bag from Cat Bordhi's Second Treasury of Magical Knitting when someone wanted to trade for the four skeins of heathered Cascade 220 in my stash. Ummm, well, I don't really have four skeins of it anymore.

I must admit that I initially passed on the whole mobius knitting thing. The First Treasury of Magical Knitting is nice, but it is mostly scarves. Granted, what I didn't understand on a quick glance is that some lace patterns do very interesting things when you put them in a mobius. But when the sequel came out with its felted bowls and this crazy bag, I jumped in and bought both.

I had felted Cascade 220 before. This was a good thing, because I had written down the before and after numbers, so I could do the math to figure out how big to knit before felting. In the pattern, Cat Bordhi has the straps as separate long tentacles that are tied together after felting. This, of course, is so that you can adjust the strap to the length you like regardless of what happens in the washing machine. I had to be difficult and want one long unbroken strap. And I also wanted it to be the right length, between my waist and hip. My notes indicate that the strap was about 49 inches long before felting. It is now about 38 inches after felting. You can see how long it hung on the mannequin before felting. It was a big loose mess. This is also something to keep in mind when you are doing felting projects. Generally, you want to knit loosely. So not only is your object large, because you know it is going to get smaller, but it is also sloppy and floppy. And if it has tentacles on it, then it is that much more so. And I've discovered that when you dunk Cascade 220 in warm water, it grows first before it begins to felt. The whole project can seem really crazy and unwieldy until the felting magic happens.

The tentacles, by the way, took as much time or more to knit than the bag itself. For this project I incorporated bits of waste yarn randomly as I went. When the bag part was finished, I went back, opened up the waste yarn holes, and picked up and knit tentacles. You could also just snip and unravel and add tentacles wherever you like. And the fact that this bag is felted, even if you don't pick up smoothly, it will all look fine in the end.

This is a particularly fun project to use. I carried this bag around at a Mensa Annual Gathering. Strangers -- including men -- would come up to me and ask me about it. By the end of the convention, I think a few people knew me just because I was carrying such a unique handbag. It definitely starts conversations.

Tigers & Bears, Oh my!

2010-06-11T16:12:00.012-04:00

Today was the opening day for the new Trader's Alley exhibit area at ZooAtlanta. Although there are other things I ought to be doing, and it was a wicked sticky hot day, I scooted down for a quick peak. The zoo was pretty full by the time I left at 11 AM.

As a bear fan, I am super excited about Xander and Sabah, the new Malayan sun bears. This pair does have a breeding recommendation, although Dr. Snyder stated during the press conference that they can be tricky to breed in captivity. Bless Dr. Snyder -- she's becoming a love expert on unromantic bears. She and her team have managed with Lun Lun and Yang Yang, so we'll hope that Sabah and Xander are easy compared to giant pandas. Sun bears are active and will require lots of enrichment. Of course, today all I got was a distant view of a shy Xander. There is a small black blob in the center of the photo at right. At least you can see what a nice space it is and where the overlook is located. Once the bears are accustomed to their new residence, I am sure they will venture about and treat us all to lots of playful bear behavior.

Also back in the zoo are Moby the elusive clouded leopard, and Chelsea and Kavi the Sumatran tigers. Chelsea was a little uncertain about how much her home has been changed while she was away. I'm sure she didn't sign up for "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Eventually she was willing to come out, pad about on the fresh sod, and get close to the glass.
The new exhibit solves a problem the old one had -- viewing. The tigers used to go to a back corner of the exhibit and more or less hide from view. Moby will still be able to do some of that in his exhibit -- bonus points on your zoo bingo card if you see Moby. But the tigers and bears will have a harder time being shy. You'll notice the old viewing area, which has been cleaned up but is still familiar. But as you head up the trail connecting giant pandas with otters, you'll discover a "bamboo thicket" viewing area for tigers, a glass viewing area for both tigers and bears, and another "bamboo thicket" for viewing bears. If you go all the way up the hill, there is an enclosed overlook. It provides shade and fan air to visitors who can look down into both the bear and tiger exhibits. No matter where the animals want to be, you should be able to find a viewpoint that works.

Charismatic megafauna tend to get the headlines at the zoo, but the reptile and bird keepers are not afraid to be creative with their charges. ZooAtlanta has only 40 acres, and I think herpetology and birds will discover a way to fill every leftover crevice! As you go up to sun bears, be sure to look at the other side of the walk to see endangered tortoises. Some of these have surprisingly beautiful geometric patterns! And the ever clever bird keepers have inserted a bird habitat next to sun bears. Betelgeus and Zelda, a breeding pair of wreathed hornbills, have lived behind the scenes for years. Now they are out where you can enjoy their impressive size and bright colors.

For more information, you can read the zoo's own press release here.

Saving Triangle I

2010-06-05T07:48:00.010-04:00

Long before I met Rick Mondragon in person, I learned his name from an old Threads magazine article. If you have the February 1995 issue, or the reprint in Great Knits (Newton CT: Taunton Press 1995, pp. 58-61), you can read his article "Knit in Blocks of Color -- without Bobbins." Rick's technique allows you to knit individual blocks and then connect as you go. In that regard it is similar to modular knitting, except you really are ending up with the yarn in exactly the same place it would be if you had lined up a long row of little balls or bobbins and knit not-so-merrily across in intarsia. And if you are a Kaffe Fassett fan, this technique could open up a whole new world!

One way to learn this is to knit two plain intarsia blocks and then unpick only one of them. (The white dots are the tops of the pin heads. I've pinned this swatch flat to a pillow.) I've unpicked the top eight rows of knitting on the blue half of this swatch. Do you see the paired yarns? (The yarn all by itself at top is the working yarn connected to the skein.) Each of those four pairs is a long loop. Each loop comprised two rows of knitting, one out (the right side row) and one back (the wrong side row). The genius in Rick's idea is the realization that you could pull yarn through the turning threads on the back and create proper intarsia interlocks after the fact.

In this view of the wrong side, you can see each loop of blue interlocking with white.

Rick does teach this technique from time to time. I, however, have not had the good fortune to take his workshop. (Lois Mitchell, the AKG librarian and NGKG past treasurer, has taken the workshop and given it a fine review.) So I gave myself I little extra help. Lucy Neatby uses waste yarn a fair bit to aid in visualizing grafting. I decided to use waste yarn to aid in finding those turning threads and pulling the loops of yarn through in the proper direction. I worked across, then I used a little waste yarn to work two waste stitches beyond the current section. I worked those waste stitches as I would for normal intarsia. When I went back to add the next section with the precious Schaefer Laurel, I unpicked the pink waste yarn each row as needed and used the loop as a guide.

The photograph above shows the front of the work. Since this piece is worked to follow a graphed pattern, the stitch marker corresponds to a division on the graph paper. The photograph below shows the same piece folded down to reveal the back. Can you see how the pink waste stitches are forming perfectly normal intarsia interlocks? (That pink dashed line is the key.)

Although I am sure this gets easier with practice, I would characterize it as a more advanced technique; and I probably wouldn't use it if good old regular intarsia would work fine. But in this case, it helped me get the Schaefer Laurel to pool in a way that I liked and without forcing me to waste a lot of yarn.

There are limitations. Rick's technique works for square, rectangular, or tapered shapes. But it does not work so well for overhanging cliff shapes, because you would have to cast-on the overhanging stitches rather than work them into established stitches. You do have to plan your shapes carefully if you want to work this way. Also, how you attach loops is slightly different depending on whether you are adding to the left or the right side of a section. If you are interested in further exploring this technique, you might want to knit a sample swatch with three sections and unpick both sides but not the middle.

On the positive side, Rick's technique can be used to do some really amazing things. If you are working a gridded multi-color fabric in the style of Kaffe Fassett, you have more freedom to add on colors and rip back. And this technique permits true intarsia in the round. Seamless argyle socks are not impossible!

Still Knitting on Faith

2010-06-04T07:39:00.000-04:00

I've been knitting on some older projects that just need to get off the needles. In particular, I've come back to Puzzlemaker. You may recall that I started this project in 2008. I was moving along rather nicely that summer, and got a lot done during the Beijing Summer Olympic Games. This is when things went bad. I believe the Egregious Error was made sometime during one of the beach vollyball finals. The Americans were playing rather well at beach volleyball, and I got hooked on it. With the twelve-hour time difference, the finals that started at 1 PM Beijing time were at 1 AM Atlanta time. I couldn't resist staying up to watch the finals LIVE. And I knit along merrily.

Do you recall in Gremlins how you aren't supposed to feed the cute little creatures after midnight? I believe there may be a similar rule for knitting. If it requires the least bit of thought, do not attempt after your normal bedtime. Just don't risk it. Well, not only did I make a mistake, but I made a mistake and didn't catch it until after I had finished the following triangle. Ugh!

I finally ripped back and fixed the error in the spring of 2009. But I just couldn't gain traction on the project. Now I'm back to it again. And this time, I think I just may be moving in the right direction. The picture at top is the back of the jacket, sans right sleeve. It is much more complicated, but also I think more interesting and beautiful, than the triangles on the left sleeve. There is both intarsia and stranded knitting (Fair Isle) in this project, as well as modular construction. Trust me, you do not want to rip back intarsia and try to keep all those carefully cut strands organized.

I believe Triangle G (upper right with the zig-zags) was where I made the Egregious Error. But I also knit through Triangle H, the large triangle below it. I had fixed those two last year and recently started again with Triangle I, the large triangle in the lower left. You've no doubt noticed the cute Kokopelli figures in that triangle? In the picture in the book, they are obviously Kokopelli. But they are blobs in the graphs for the sweater. So I e-mailed the publisher, who was very nice but not able to help me on a book that is so old. And truthfully, how many people have made this sweater in the last decade? On Ravelry, I am one of two people with this project. (Kudos to fionamacardle for her black & white attempt.) So it wasn't as if the nice people at Martingale Company were going to have a .pdf file ready to send. In the end, I looked at the slightly too small picture in the book and gave it a good guess. Here's my result:
If you have the book, you can substitute my section of graph for the corresponding section of Triangle I. The figures are upside down because this section is knit top down. The wide lines correspond to the wide lines on the graph in the book.

(If you would like to copy the graph in a larger, easy on the eye size, follow this link.)

Once I got through that issue, I discovered another. The Schaefer Laurel yarn is lovely. However, it has small dabs of color that change every few inches. In the stockinette intarsia sections, I prefer a little pooling. Up until this point, most of those sections were relatively narrow, and so produced pleasing color transitions. (Again, return to those zig-zags in Triangle G.) In those sections, I didn't mind knitting up and doing the calculations for how much yarn to cut. But Triangle I has larger sections. So, it was time to learn a new technique.

Tomorrow: The Technique that Saved Triangle I

Alpaca Farm

2010-05-23T09:52:00.004-04:00

On Saturday, North Georgia Knitting Guild took a day trip to Seven Gables Farm in Milton, Georgia. In addition to the guild, many thanks are also due to Knit Witch and Only Ewe and Cotton Too for organizing the outing. We had a lovely time both watching the animals and enjoying our outdoor picnic. There was also a lot of socializing and a lot of knitting. We were lucky, too, because the day was overcast in the morning. As it got sunnier around two or three o'clock, it got hot and less comfortable outdoors.

The alpacas share a pasture with two burros and many goats. One of the goats was clearly a male, who strode about like an emperor overseeing his peasants. When we first arrived and a few of us walked over towards that pasture, this goat came over but not too close. He was checking us out and making sure we understood that this place is his domain. (See photo at right.)

After lunch, I spent a fair amount of time out in the pasture. Most of the animals only let me get within about 8-10 feet. Then they would just quietly shift to a different patch of clover. It was a lot of fun to get even a little close to them. There were five alpacas -- one white, one grey, one brown, and a black female with a cria. I was surprised by how large the cria was. Apparently alpaca are never all that small. The alpacas had been sheared recently, so their shaggy coats are not in the pictures. But you do get a sense of how long their necks are! There is something delightful and wonderful in that alpacas are cute animals with mostly reasonable temperaments, and yet they also give awesome fiber. Enjoy the pictures of happy animals!

Mother and Child

Just let me eat in peace. (A beautiful, rich brown coat.)

Who are you? (Love the Dr. Seuss hairstyle.)

Let me just stand here and blend.

Greetings from Finland

2010-05-19T16:58:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to share two photographs Leena sent. Her book and cards arrived safely on the 18th, which was ten days after I sent them and less than the two weeks the mail clerk anticipated. I am impressed by what a talented photographer and gardener Leena must be.

This first photograph is peeking down inside the mail envelope. I never would have thought of putting the purple flower in the corner of the image.

This second photo is the congratulatory cards. I love the flowers and the play of sunlight.

:-)

One Stash to Rule Them All?

2010-05-13T13:07:00.001-04:00

The post starts:

It began with the forging of the Great Stashes. Three were given to the cats, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings, because, you know, it's good for hunting and batting with your little paws. Seven to the Crochet Ladies, great hookers and craftswomen of the church halls.

Follow this link to read the rest.

(Thank you, Elalyr!)

Doublefun

2010-05-11T07:02:00.010-04:00

You may recall more than a year ago that I entered a pair of socks in the Think Outside the Sox contest. I didn't win any prizes, and my socks weren't chosen for publication in the book. But I did make a friend thousands of miles away.

Leena Siikaniemi e-mailed me last year after seeing my post. We exchanged e-mails about the contest and about knitting. Because the socks came to STITCHES South, I was able to see and touch Leena's socks. And she shared with me a secret -- her socks, which appear to be circular intarsia, are actually double knitting! If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you've probably figured out that I am a fan of double knitting. I might have thought of it for a sock cuff, but not for the whole sock. The idea is true genius! So I am very excited that the Think Outside the Sox book is now out and available. You can follow the pattern to make Doublefun socks for yourself, beginning on page 120. Leena also created the very first socks in the book, the Forgettable Socks that begin on page 4.

After STITCHES South this year, I e-mailed Leena to congratulate her. She had been following the festivities online. Someone had sent a picture -- were her socks really on the back cover? Yes they were. Did she have a copy of the book? No, she hadn't gotten one yet. Not a problem -- I could easily get a copy and send it to her. So I went to the May Atlanta Knitting Guild meeting with a congratulations card for guild members to sign. Thank you to Bill from Only Ewe and Cotton Too, who was kind enough to bring a book for me to buy, thus saving me the trip over to Crabapple.

At one point in the meeting, Whit Robbins was talking to the group about STITCHES South. She talked about all we accomplished and how much fun we all had. And then she asked me to come up to the podium. Huh? She pulled out a package . . . from Leena in Finland! This was totally unexpected. I opened it in front of the group. Leena had made Doublefun socks for me! They are just wonderful! And they are in my colors too. How did she know? I believe the socks got passed around at least part of the room, as many people were curious about their construction. Leena also sent me a couple Finnish postcards depicting children knitting. I wouldn't know where to find knitting-themed stationery in Atlanta. What a delightful surprise!On Saturday morning I put a thank-you card, a congratulations card, and a copy of Think Outside the Sox into the mail. I've never sent anything to Finland before. It was only about $15, which I think is very reasonable. I am eager to hear from my internet pen pal when she finally has the book in her hands.

Thank you, Leena, for sharing a truly brilliant knitting idea with the world! Big warm alpaca hugs! :-D

For Mom

2010-05-09T02:55:00.003-04:00

My mother taught me to do cross stitch when I was four years old. That means I learned to handle a needle and thread before I learned to write my own name. My paternal grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was about ten. And between these two wonderful women, summers with my maternal grandmother, and classes with the White Rose Embroiderers' Guild of America chapter, I learned many, many needlework techniques. My mother especially enjoyed cross stitch, crewel, and eventually canvas work. Needlecraft was a hobby we shared together, a point where we could connect regardless of our differences.

But my mother does not knit.

About a decade ago I discovered knitting. Oh, there are still cross stitch kits and other needle arts tucked away in the cedar chest in my guest bedroom. But I went off and discovered a new territory where my mother had never been. I love the way I can think in three dimensions with knitting. I love how knitting can be functional. And I love how knitting can be out in the world where others will see it, unlike my cross stitch triumphs that are viewed only in my home.

In all this time I have been knitting, my mother had never asked me to knit her anything. I don't think she enjoys clothes. Like many (most American?) women, she has spent much of her lifetime fighting her weight. (The skinny genes I so enjoy came from my dad. The tall genes came from both of my parents.) It is hard to enjoy clothes when they remind you of what you don't like about your body rather than celebrating what you do like. Not only has she never asked for a sweater, but she has also not asked for socks, or mittens, or gloves, or a hat, or even a fabulous felted bag.

You may recall my after Christmas post in which I mentioned how my mother arranged possibly the best gift I have ever gotten from her -- a trip to The Mannings. This was wonderful on a number of levels. My sister, grandmother, and Cuddly Hubby came along, so it was a social outing. And I appreciate that they all were willing to step into my knitting world for just a little while to see a glimpse of why I love the knitting community and what this art has to offer. But one of the loveliest things about the trip was that my mother asked me to knit something for her.

The pattern is from Oat Couture, the "Curlicue Blanket." The full blanket has fifteen different sections, all shaped with short rows. The shawl at The Mannings was worked over sections 1-10. My mother is a tall, broad-shouldered woman; and the sample didn't quite fit her through the shoulders. Consequently, I've worked sections 1-13 for her shawl. The yarn is Crystal Palace Mini Mochi in color 107 Autumn Rainbow. I used US 7 (4.5mm) needles and less than five balls of the yarn. The only refinement I made is that I worked a slipped-stitch edge to keep the selvage neat. The sawtooth border worked great for blocking with wires. After threading the wires, I stretched the shawl out on the guest bed, pinned the wires, and spritzed the shawl. I let it dry overnight. I don't often knit other people's patterns, but this one was worth it on more than one level.

Since I finished the shawl just before STITCHES South, I wore it to the Thursday night Ravelry meet-up. The picture at top right is me wearing the shawl to "The Magic Flute" opera at Cobb Energy Center the following week. The wall behind me in the photo is backlit alabaster. I showed the shawl off at The Whole Nine Yarns knit night and knit lit, and also at the May meeting of the Atlanta Knitting Guild. Many, many people came up to get a look at it at the guild meeting. One lady said, "Oh, there's still plenty of time to buy your mother a different gift." Another, who tried on the shawl, said, "Do you want to be my daughter?" I hope somebody in town has the pattern in stock! I think the picture was up on Ravelry less than three hours before someone favorited it. I finally put the shawl in the mail on Friday morning. I hope it will please her.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Day 4 of STITCHES South 2010

2010-04-25T14:18:00.005-04:00

In spite of the teaching being done, I still didn't sleep all that well on Saturday night. The convention is just so much fun, and my head is racing with ideas that all need to be worked out now, dang it!

For Sunday morning I took Carson Demers "Ergonomics for Knitters" class. I believe I had asked for a class like this on last year's feedback form. Alas, I don't recall the name of the knitter, but I sat next to someone who was wearing a beautiful blue, purple, and green Ann Feitelson Fair Isle cardigan. Hmmm, maybe it really is a good idea for the air conditioning to be turned up. Seeing a sweater like that in person makes you want to throw everything else aside and give Fair Isle a try.

Carson's class was exactly what you would expect. He did a wonderful job explaining what ergonomics is and what risk factors to watch. I got a little lost with some of the anatomy lesson, but it was fascinating none the less. And he had several videos of people knitting. It was amazing to see how many ways different people do this. There was one lady who knit super fast English style. There was another whose movements were so restful and soothing and thoroughly zen. I also felt very fortunate as most of the people in the class were there because they already had a problem with their hands or arms. Whit Robbins was in the class and she was one of the few who was there just to be sure she didn't develop issues. I was there because I need to be able to knit 40 hours a week if I want to accomplish my career goals. And I need to be sure I don't ruin my hands. So this class was definitely worth it.

At lunch time I went over to the market just to hang out. I saw local Gale Evans of Gale's Art whose work is always a colorful pleasure to spin. I finally met Jen Hagan of Figheadh Designs in person. She is such a delight! She comes to the Atlanta area about once a year to see family, so I hope one of the guilds will be able to snag her for a program sometime. I went over to the Trendsetter booth to thank Barry Klein for the student banquet goodies. On my way to find his booth, I passed Windy Valley Musk Ox and a fabulous sample sweater with very interesting cables and tucks. I failed my will save against that very interesting pattern. Like much of the crowd, I eventually ended up over near the stage to await the drawing of the grand prize. This is the part where XRX gives out money. While waiting, I bumped into Gro, Amy, and Dana. It was so good to see Dana, who is a new bride only a month! I had put a card with a gift card in my purse for the weekend just in case I ran into her. So that worked out perfectly. The winning names weren't people I knew, but all that standing near the Yarn Place booth caused me to fail my will save against Herbert Niebling's Lyra pattern. I bought the kit with a dark violet lace yarn. Ahhhh.

My last class for the convention was "3-2-1: Three 2-color patterns, one color at a time" with Merike Saarniit. I took her Estonian Patent stitch class last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. There were several familiar faces in this class again. I got to sit between local amazing knitter Pam Cornutt and somebunnyslove. People take classes with Merike again and again. The Estonian knitting tradition is so rich and so interesting. The manipulations that have been invented are clever and fascinating. We started with an interesting double-stranded cast-on that produced a firm and decorative edge. Merike showed us a faux entrelac that is very stretchy and swirly. It could be used to make basic swirl socks, which somehow don't require heel turns because of the swirl construction. And that pattern made the cast-on edge scallop just a bit. She also showed us an embraced stitch and two patent stitch patterns. A number of people left early because they needed to catch flights home. And many, many people asked Merike about her book. It is going to be lovely when it comes out. And I'm not pestering her about the timing because I know it all takes much longer than it ought.

After class, I went over to the AKG booth which was already mostly broken down. Thank you to everyone who helped with that! I basically just took the balloons away. I do not know how a dozen mylar balloons and all my STITCHES stuff fit in the back of the Zippy Sippy, but somehow it all did. I still had blankets and shawls, so I was able to weight down the balloons so I could see out the rear view mirror. I was home by about 5:15 PM. It will take me the week to put everything away. Once again, a truly awesome weekend!

Day 3 of STITCHES South 2010

2010-04-24T11:36:00.018-04:00

Now I wasn't afraid about staying up late because I had nothing planned for Saturday morning. This was done purposefully. I left myself time if I had needed to do anything last-minute for my class. Since I was already prepared, my plan was to sleep in, then teach. Well, between the Earl Grey, the thrill of the party, and the excitement of teaching, I just couldn't sleep. I did a lot of lying in bed pretending I was asleep, and maybe a little light dozing. Eventually I got up and went in to the convention, figuring that I might as well sit and knit since sleeping clearly wasn't happening.
That was okay, because it gave me a chance to go spend that Knit Witch gift certificate. I picked out some beautiful light blue lace weight yarn. The yarn bowls were also tempting, but I just don't trust Brûlée and Vincent when it comes to pottery within reach of their paws. Thank you, Brittany, for the door prize!

I think class went well. For some reason, it took longer than it did the last time I taught it. I'll have to decide if I want to drop a sweater from the group or not. A big thank you to the fourteen ladies who took my class! I hope you all had a very good time and learned something new. I'll see the feedback forms in a couple months. I hope all of you gave honest feedback so I can teach better and so Rick knows if it is worth bringing me back. It was truly a pleasure to meet you all.

I should note here that Karen from Clicks and Sticks took my class. And she had a The Whole Nine Yarns button! Somehow I didn't get one of those buttons. And by the time I went to the shop on Monday for spin night, all the buttons were gone. Maybe Debi will do it again next year? Also, during the coffee break, I bumped into Jean Frost. Her daughter had failed to get one of the limited edition Ravelry at STITCHES South buttons, so I gave her mine. Perhaps we'll need a place for button trading at STITCHES?

At this point I need to mention a big thank you to the local folks who have been so supportive. I lost track of the number of people who came up to ask me how it went or to offer their support. North Georgia Knitting Guild had a nice tri-fold backdrop of various events, and one of them had a picture of me. They also had the Monkey Wrench square hanging up. Atlanta Knitting Guild let me put the Felted Southwestern Bowl out on their table. And I suspect that Debi Light and the rest of The Whole Nine Yarns crew have been saying nice things behind my back. Ya'all are why Atlanta is where my home is.

After class I reloaded my car and went to the market. Specifically, I went to knit on the Big Sock some more, but did a bit of chatting on the way. I stopped at the Skacel booth and said hello to Karin Skacel, who is a big fan of sock monkeys. I said hello again to Otto of Strauch fibers who saved me $600 by not bringing the drum carders to the show. I probably won't be so lucky next year. I did get to the Big Sock. I even found a dropped stitch and learned how to pick it up with a latch hook. Cool! I had finished a needle's worth and just moved on to the second when I remembered that teachers are supposed to get to the Student Banquet early. Scurry!

Before the banquet I got to chat with Joan Schrouder and Beth Brown-Reinsel. I've taken classes with both of these ladies and they are wonderful. And Beth's Knitting Ganseys book is an excellent classic! Ideally there should be one teacher at each table during the student banquet, so I moved to an empty table when the doors opened. I got lucky because I got to meet more great ladies, including Lorri who later won the whole fashion show with her handspun vest. I am glad, because this means she'll be back next year. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to see Lorri on stage because I was out with the other teachers, posing for a group photo. But that was cool, too.

I happen to really like the Student Fashion Show. I love show and tell. I love sharing, but I also love seeing what other people are doing. And part of going to STITCHES is making new friends and meeting them again year after year. Last year Phyllis from Mississippi wowed with a sunrise jacket and matching shoes that were custom made in Italy. This year she showed a beautiful cabled reversible coat that also got her a prize. I think next year we should just start off with Phyllis as a returning champion, sort of like Iron Chef. Nancy the Knitting Gourmet had a whole ensemble of coat, hat, and mitts all with food names. Nancy was in Edie's Friday class, so I like to think we'll be seeing and hearing more from her. Diana Baber showed off a beautiful Candace Eisner-Strick shawl in the colors of the sunrise. Three ladies from Clicks and Sticks had made the Swirl Shawl as a knit along. Hats off to them, as I've heard that those hexagons can be less interesting after the first ten, tiresome after the first twenty, and slogging to the end.

And after the banquet, I found Betty Salpekar. She was able to autograph my sock book. I'll have to catch Charles D. Gandy and Amy Rutter on some other occasion. I was able to wish Betty good-bye before she left for Holland. I know she is working on a sock book. We talked some about the challenges of writing a knitting book. Betty has been knitting exclusively socks for some time now. If you are a creative knitter who likes to try new things, it is a real challenge to knit similar items over and over again. We also both have the good fortune to be able to live off our husband's single incomes. You would think with all this free time, it would be nothing to crank out a knitting book. How is it you have 40 hours a week and yet your work all moves slow as snails? A mystery, indeed.

Day 2 of STITCHES South 2010

2010-04-23T13:37:00.010-04:00

For Friday I wore the Bootkicked scarf. I also carried the Elfin Lace shawl and wore it a couple times. I have mixed feelings about appropriate room temperature. On the one hand, I don't like to be cold. On the other hand, if the knitters are cold, then they are wearing fabulous knitwear. Maybe keeping things a little on the cool side is appropriate in these circumstances.

Friday was an all-day pattern writing class with Edie Eckman. She did a great job explaining how submissions are done within the industry. She also showed us how hard it is to write a pattern to the industry standard. Our practice sample was a flat sweater pattern graded in four sizes. Writing it in the shorthand of the knitting world was really hard. It was also harder than I expected because I don't knit sweaters from flat patterns, so it really hurt my brain to try to think that way. I would much rather draw out shoulder and neck shaping on graph paper than try to explain how many stitches to bind off when and where, and I'd rather knit from a European or Japanese pattern that uses the charted standard. Of all the classes I took, I think this one probably will have the most influence in which directions I pursue and what I do next. I know already that I don't want to make myself crazy knitting on deadline. And I know I want my patterns to be teaching, which falls outside the industry standard. If you are somebody who is thinking about designing in this industry, you need to go take classes with Edie.

And one plug for her: her Around the Corner Crochet Borders book is coming out next month. It has 150 edgings explained both in words and diagrams and they are figured out for turning the corner in pattern. Would that everyone would be so wonderful when they write edgings!

I should also add that sometime half the fun is who else is in the class. Susan Dingle who designs for Only Ewe and Cotton Too was in the class, as was Nancy the Knitting Gourmet. And my friend Debra Davis, who has the most awesome stash! It was such a delight to take a class with these ladies.

I did go knit on the Big Sock after that. I needed a little therapy for my hurt brain, and the Big Sock was it. Aaaaah.

Friday evening was the dinner and fashion show. All the fashion was geared to Atlanta weather. If you think there isn't anything to knit for warm weather, you didn't see this show. And I never cease to be amazed at how Rick Mondragon can find the right skirt in that strange shade of green or the proper print to really bring an outfit together. I remember thinking that if we all looked that fabulously dressed most of the time how much happier a world it would be.

I was also especially happy to see certain items in the show. The first item out was a group of socks from The Whole Nine Yarns sock guild. One of the featured socks was Bruce's "Solar Wind" sock. In all the bustle in the run up to STITCHES, I had missed the part about the socks being in the fashion show. It meant a lot to me. My dear friend Jenna the Yarn Pimp had an original lace design in the fashion show. Kelly (go, Kentucky!) did special one-of-a-kind hand-dyed yarn for Jenna's pattern. And Ducky from the Knit Lit group knit the sample. I was sitting in the audience with Mary Lou, Laurie, and Julie, who are all The Whole Nine Yarns regulars. Rick kept saying "yards" instead of "yarns," and we kept yelling corrections. There's a reason I gladly drive the 50 miles round trip to get to the shop.

At the dinner afterward, I won a door prize -- $25 gift certificate for Knit Witch, who is local and wonderful. Glee!

Then I went to the pajama party. A huge thank you to Kimberly Reynolds aka somebunnyslove for organizing the Big Sock and the Pajama Party. Many of the XRX people showed up in pajamas, as did Shannon from Cascade. I loved Benjamin Levisay in a smoking jacket. Who knew he gets Hugh Hefner's cast offs? Alexis Xenakis sent down a fresh fruit bouquet for healthy snacking. My Japanese-themed ensemble included felted slippers with embroidery to match the lining of my robe.They were made from the Fiber Trends "Felted Clog" pattern. There were many other wonderful ensembles on display. One lady had sock monkey slippers and had made pajama bottoms out of monkey-print fabric. Another had a flashy sleeping mask and slippers made from novelty yarn. When it came time for the slipper contest, I scurried up at the last minute.(I had been at the bar getting hot water for my Earl Grey tea. By the way, be sure to support Kollage yarns. Mark was at the bar drinking a lite beer, and that just ain't right.) I turned to look at the person to my right, who was wearing a fabulous Christmas pajama ensemble with matching crocheted santa slippers. It was kagknits, whose Ravelry avatar is a picture of Lun Lun. So I was able to give her a free pass to ZooAtlanta, and I gave some extra passes to Team Ravelry and a knitter who had come all the way from Australia. There were four winners in the slipper contest, and we all got a little Skacel bag with a needle, pattern, and a six-ply Zauberball. More glee!
Thank you Skacel! There were prizes for best pajamas and prizes for best sheep-themed pajamas and prizes for the person who had been knitting the longest (Jan Stephens, adorable in a great Ma Kettle nightgown) and the person who had been knitting the shortest. Sarah and I even bowed down and prostrated ourselves before Casey the codemonkey. In the end we had owners of a publishing company, owners of yarn companies, vendors, teachers, knitters, designers, and Internet idols all hanging out in the lobby in our pajamas. Is this industry great or what? I left a little before midnight. I'm sure the evidence is out on the web somewhere. Don't Google it.

Day 1 of STITCHES South 2010

2010-04-22T13:36:00.012-04:00

First, thank you to everyone who makes STITCHES South happen. That includes XRX, who throws the party; but also the sponsors who give us all the fabulous prizes; the vendors who bring lots of gorgeous wares to dispose of our tax refunds and support the economic recovery; and the teachers who leave our minds swimming with new ideas and techniques. Once again, STITCHES was the best weekend of the year. Here's the story of my weekend.

Once again, I started off with the Opening Day presentation. I had to leave early for the teachers' lunch, so I missed Jane Slicer-Smith's part of the presentation. But I did hear Leslye Solomon. Leslye showed scientific evidence of why you have to wash and block your gauge swatch. She knit identical swatches, washed one but not the other, and then compared them. Oh my gosh! A knitter's horror show for sure! No wonder we think our swatches lie.

Because I knew I would be doing the Teacher's à la carte lunch, I made it a point to wear the recently completed Cropped Linen Stitch Jacket. It is very much in style right now, and the origami construction is my own invention, although I'm sure someone out there has done it before. It is also fun asking people which side they like best, as linen stitch is reversible but not identical. I had a blast. I got to meet lots of new people, including Team Ravelry and Clicks and Sticks, a knitting guild over in Gwinnett County.

For the afternoon, I took Jean Frost's "Chasing the Hounds, Tooth that Is" class. I took this mostly because I don't know how soon Jean will be retiring. Her jackets are classic and fabulous. In this class, she showed us thirteen different hounds tooth patterns -- more than we could try out in three hours. My swatch with four different patterns is at left. Some involved stranded knitting, some involved slipped stitch knitting using only one color at a time, and some involved very interesting passing stitches over other stitches maneuvers. I was very lucky in that Betty Salpekar was in my class and sat next to me. Betty and I both like to be exposed to new stitch patterns, but we also enjoy trying them different ways.

I got a quick lesson from Betty. While we were knitting a Fair Isle/stranded hounds tooth pattern, there was some discussion about holding the yarn. I usually hold one strand in each hand, but my tension is not perfectly the same. Depending on the yarn, that might or might not block out. I know Meg Swansen knits stranded with both yarns in her left hand. I asked if anyone had worked out how to hold both strands in the right hand. It turns out that's how Betty does it, and she was kind enough to show me. The trick was in how she tensioned the yarn over her ring finger. I usually tension by wrapping yarn around my pinkie. This led to a discussion with Jean about different methods of holding yarn and the various geographic regions associated with each. It was a fascinating discussion.

Jean also was kind enough to show off three of her own hounds tooth jackets. She even passed them around the room. Marian Rose was seated on the far side of the room from me, and she was ooooing and aaaahing over a red and grey jacket. By the time it got around to me, I could see that every cooing sound had been more than justified. It was wonderful to look carefully at a master knitter's work to see what she did. Jean seams her jackets together using a crochet chain, so she does have a small one-stitch selvage in her seams. She also edges her jackets with a single crochet edge. All three of the jackets she shared with us were worked in a fine gauge yarn, so the crochet edging was not wide. It is just a quiet detail that gives the jacket structure and refinement without the viewer being conscious of why or how.

The evening consisted of shopping in the market. My birthday falls about a month before STITCHES South, so I'd kept the money gifts aside for the occasion. Somehow I missed that the Think Outside the Sox book signing was going on. Duh! I will have to catch locals Charles Gandy and Amy Rutter some other time. I did pick up a copy of the book at Only Ewe and Cotton Too, because it is always nice to support Elyse and Bill. I spent a lot of time searching but still didn't find a red ribbon yarn that suits my needs. But I did find something that might work for the Carolyn Jacket. After much indecisiveness and an inability to recall which booth had lace weight Zauberballs, I bought hand-dyed yarn from Knitting Notions. I'm also a serious knitting book junkie. Big thanks to Yarn Barn of Kansas for bringing Lucy Neatby dvds and a great book selection. I was able to acquire Maria Erlbacher's Twisted-Stitch Knitting, which is a 2009 reprinting and compilation of three smaller booklets. Also many thanks to Handweavers Guild of America who had some rare books, including Daina Taimina's Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes and Bobbie Irwin's The Spinner's Companion. These wish list items are now securely in my library where they belong.

The evening was capped off with a big Ravelry party. A huge thank-you to Team Ravelry for sharing the weekend with us. Also a big thanks to all the sponsors. The mug with yarn samples is from Eat Sleep Knit. I haven't been over there yet, but they are in fact the closest yarn shop to my house. The coupon inside the mug included directions for how to find them, so I will need to check them out. There were goodies from other sponsors, too, including some very nice door prizes. On the downside, some of the goodies were coupons for places where I had just shopped in the market. I guess procrastination does pay off.

Black & White Magic

2010-04-19T12:10:00.023-04:00

It has been more than four years since I've taught double knitting. That's a real shame, because it is so much fun to do and so much fun to teach. This is one of those techniques that is a real delight because people think it is so much harder than it is. Students come into the class nervous or unsure, and leave feeling like they can work magic. It is wonderful.

For my class in May, I've chosen to make a less-intimidating sample by working the chart for the "Ukrainian Tiles" afghan. The book is Comfort Knitting & Crochet Afghans by Norah Gaughan, Margery Winter, and the Berroco Design Team (New York, NY: Stewart, Tabori & Chang 2010). I don't really need an afghan book, but this one has some delightful and interesting patterns. Because afghans are large empty canvases tossed around the house, there is a lot of opportunity for playfulness in stitch pattern and color. After all, an afghan doesn't need to pass the same fashion wear-ability tests as a sweater. For my sample, I used some leftover Cascade 220 rather than the Berroco Comfort called for in the pattern. Blasphemy, I know! Also be aware that the pattern in the book is written for stranded knitting not double knitting. I've worked the chart twice in order to get something close to a square.

There aren't a lot of books out on this technique, either. One of the few is Double Knitting: Reversible Two-Color Designs by M'Lou Baber (Pittsville WI: Schoolhouse Press, 2008). Blessings on Meg Swansen and the rest of the folks at Schoolhouse Press for their willingness to distribute and publish knitting books on some of the less popular techniques. True to the title, this book will give you the basic run-down on how to do double-faced reversible stockinette. Most of the projects are fabulous coats. Those would require a considerable investment in materials and time, but would be showpieces for years to come. You would be hoping for long cool spells and non-existent summers just to flaunt your finished project. If you want a smaller helping of the technique, the adorable and traditional child's bonnet would be perfect for a special child in your family. Or if you prefer less shaping and knitting for yourself, the cat shoulder bag would be a useful accessory year 'round.

Ms. Baber gives a nice technique for keeping the edges closed but tidy, and also has directions for 1x1 reversible ribbing. There are other more complicated techniques that she does not include. For example, she doesn't get into how to knit lettering, which involves knitting two sides that are not perfect mirror images of each other. And she doesn't discuss more elaborate knit and purl reversible patterns. Nor does she cover buttonholes in double knitting. But the directions for the techniques she does cover are clear and nicely photographed. Most of her designs draw from the traditions of European knitting so that the finished projects would always be classics. She also includes a few more modern designs for those who would like to push the edge of fashion. The decision to add this book to my library was a no-brainer.

Instant Gratification

2010-04-14T15:50:00.002-04:00

North Georgia Knitting Guild plans to knit an afghan or two as a charity project. The blocks need to be exactly 8-inches square. I decided to try a square for a quick change of pace. Sometimes a knitter needs instant gratification. Fortunately, I have the full run of Knitter's magazine's afghan series. Those of you who know my fondness for geometry will not be surprised that I picked the block by Linda Cyr in The Great North American Afghan booklet (Sioux Falls SD: XRX, Inc. 1999, second printing 2008, pp. 40-41). The North American afghan is the second booklet in this series. In addition to the geometry, I liked that this block is worked from the center out, which meant that I could knit until it was big enough. And I could fudge and add a few border rows at the end if it came out to seven inches square instead of eight.

I got lucky, and it seems to be right on the money at eight inches square. The booklet lists this as one of the five hardest blocks, but I don't understand why. There is quite a bit of picking up stitches on selvage edges -- maybe that's why? There is a tiny bit of either grafting or seaming at the center. And the block itself is garter stitch with decreases for shaping.

A couple things to keep in mind if you try this. For the center four little squares, I recommend using Lucy Neatby's waste yarn method for setting up a grafted seam.
In this case:
Cast on and work the first row of square 1 in waste yarn.
As you join in the working yarn, leave a tail long enough to graft the row.
Complete the remainder of square 1 with the working yarn.
Complete squares 2, 3, and 4 as written in the pattern.
Using waste yarn, pick up along the edge of square 4 as if starting square 1.
Using the two rows of waste yarn -- one at the beginning of square 1 and one along the edge of square 4 -- as guides, graft squares 1 and 4 together with the long tail yarn.
Remove waste yarn.
Wallow in the glow of your success.

The other change I made to this pattern as I worked has to do with the selvage edges. Usually I'm very happy to pick up along the edge of garter stitch. It is typically pretty easy to pick up in each little bump. Or you can work a slipped-stitch edging and pick up in the chain stitch. It is not so easy in this pattern because you have to decrease at both edges in order to make the triangular sections. A slipped-stitch edge does not really work because of those decreases. And as the blanket grows, you have to pick up more than one stitch for every ridge. My solution was to work the selvages of the triangles in stockinette.
Thus, a right side row might be: ssk, knit 11, k2tog
And the following wrong side row would be: p1, k11, p1
The result is a chain edge that has one chain per row rather than one chain per ridge. You can pick up the correct number in this edge by picking up in most of the chains but not all of them. I found skipping a chain now and then to be easier than trying to create something between ridge bumps in the garter selvage.

The original block has several more iterations of triangles than mine does. You can make the block as large or small as you like by adding or deleting iterations. Once established, this pattern is worked from the center out with four different skeins without breaking the yarn. This would be a fabulous project for a long-print yarn like Kureyon, Karaoke, Paintbox, Geologie, or Mochi Plus. I think it would also look good in a medium-length print like Tonalita. Several of these blocks joined together with the pattern flowing from one spiral into another would be dynamite. It would also be great with half in a plain dark yarn and the other half in a bright long-print. If someone experiments, please let me see your results.

An Alternative Edging

2010-04-11T13:52:00.005-04:00

Because I've taught the Baby Surprise Jacket several times, I've worked up several of them in different yarns and with slightly different details. This striped example requires about four skeins of Trendsetter Tonalita. Note that Tonalita is a variegated yarn that does not have a pattern repeat -- the color changes are completely random. The color changes are also several feet apart instead of just a few inches, but not the many yards apart of Kureyon, Karaoke, Paintbox, or Mini Mochi. On this pattern, the color will change about every-other row. You can see that the stripes on the left side of the picture are more solid, while the stripes on the right side are more broken. This occurs because of how odd colored blips poke through in purl bumps.

I am to the point of trying things out on BSJ just for the sake of seeing what happens. For a change of pace, I used a Debbie New double increase instead of the make 1 left and right Elizabeth Zimmermann recommends. I also changed the double-decrease to a mitered double-decrease.
Furthermore, I decided to add an edging that I unvented on the Bamboo kimono. This is a faux crab stitch edging in that it has some of the twisty quality of crab stitch, but without using a crochet hook. To the right of the button detail, the verdigris with lavender row is the edging. This is a 2-stitch i-cord made from purl 1, ssk. The purl stitches become the twisty bits and the ssk form a chain stitch wale. I think this would be a great edge on sample afghan blocks, as the border would set them off but the chain stitch would make for easier seaming.

Baby Surprise again and again

2010-04-10T16:58:00.002-04:00

I've been teaching Elizabeth Zimmermann's classic Baby Surprise Jacket as a class that meets three times. This is such a fun class to teach, as every student ends up with something different. This is a pattern that can be customized in a variety of ways. I've had some students make it with doubled or tripled yarn on large needles so that it becomes a jacket or coat for a young child. One student was knitting for her twin grandsons, so she made two in coordinating but not identical colorways. It always looks good. And it is always fun to watch people's faces as they try to figure out where they are as this thing unfolds on their needles.

Most times that I teach it, I knit another Baby Surprise Jacket. It has been fun for me to try different things. This little jacket is made from Koigu KPPPM (the orange and the purples) and Plymouth Happy Feet (the red). The whole jacket weighs 65 grams, with the buttons. Note to self: finding small orange buttons is not easy. I got lucky at the big box store. Because I was working with Koigu, I worked all the stitches in this project through the back of the loop. In this detail, you can see how the twisted stitches "pop" with strong stitch definition.

I also changed the back a little bit. Because I needed more rows to keep my pattern going (2 purple ridges, 4 red ridges), I worked the back extension for 12 ridges. Also, I usually break my yarn for the back extension. If you are working in all the same yarn, then it is easier to follow the pattern. But if you have a specific stripe pattern going, you may get better results by dropping (but not breaking) the working yarn, attaching a new yarn in the middle to knit the back and forth back extension for ten ridges, breaking that new yarn, and then returning to your original yarn when you are back to working all the way across the rows.

Sock Stunt Knitting

2010-04-09T09:56:00.007-04:00

If you haven't seen it already, be sure to check out Brian's (HRM Prince Entrelac) 24 March post on the Skacel blog. Brian cast on last year (see the 30 June 2009 post) and knit an entire week's worth of socks -- seven pairs, fourteen socks -- all at the same time on a long circular needle. You can check the 17 July 2009 post to see how he did it, and what special equipment/contraptions he needed to make it happen. At the end of March, Brian finished the task. His final post on the matter includes very nice pictures of all the socks.

Brian was out here last year for STITCHES South but, alas, won't be out here this year. I guess we'll have to congratulate him in person another time. I feel strongly that a stunt knit of this magnitude deserves a trophy, medal, or ribbon. Or maybe someone should send him bronzed socks?

I must admit I almost sprang for one of those special 120-inch long needles, but I don't need it in the sock size so much as in a sweater size. Specifically, I'd like to knit a labyrinth sweater large enough for me to wear, but I fear I need a fifteen- or even twenty-foot needle to do it. Please note that Skacel carries needles in the metric sizes, but they are marked in the English system for sale in the United States. This means that you can get the in-between sock needle sizes if you like the quarter millimeter increments. The Whole Nine Yarns recently acquired a 2.25mm Addi Turbo in the 60-inch length at my request. I believe TWNY may be ordering 7mm needles/US size 10.75 soon at well. Most friendly local yarn shops are happy to order whatever you need as long as you don't mind waiting for the order to arrive. Review your future knitting queue and plot your needle acquisition strategy accordingly. Or do as I do, and just buy one of everything in the 60-inch length.

STITCHES Class

2010-03-30T08:57:00.003-04:00

You probably noticed the STITCHES South peach link popped up on this blog a couple months ago. My class is still open. I don't know how many people have signed up, but I'm looking forward to the experience whether I have three or thirty. I've gotten good feedback on my practice run. I feel confident that if you are someone who has been thinking about moving beyond simple projects and trying a sweater, my class will give you the confidence to choose a sweater project that will give you success. I have plenty of tricks to share to make the knitting more enjoyable. And none of my examples involve knitting each section separately and sewing them all together at the end.

Of course, I'll also be taking a few classes myself. I've signed up for:
Jean Frost: Chasing the Hounds, Tooth that is; Thursday afternoon
Edie Eckman: Pattern Writing 101; Friday all day
Carson Demers: Ergonomics for Knitters; Sunday morning
Merike Saarniit; Three 2-color patterns, One color at a time; Sunday afternoon

I chose Jean Frost's class just because I want to take a class with her. She is the champion of great jackets.

I chose pattern writing because I need to be good at that. I don't think I'm too bad at it now, but I need to be sure I'm not making novice blunders.

I chose ergonomics because although I don't usually have any knitting soreness, I do every once in a great while if I've done a marathon.

And I chose Merike Saarniit at the end because she's wonderful and I'm sure these patterns will open up even more ideas to explore in the knitting laboratory. I would have chosen her Spinning for Knitting class (which is full), but it meets at the same time as my class. I can't be everywhere at once! Dang these limitations of time and space!

The homework information arrived recently. The most interesting homework is for the pattern writing class: "Bring a pattern you find difficult to follow and one you find easy to follow." I'm tempted to choose Baby Surprise Jacket as a difficult to follow pattern. This is one more reason I miss doing knit help. So often newer knitters would come in and the problem was totally not their fault. Magazines with tight deadlines often fall prey to gremlins in the instructions. And there is one designer who is horrible in this regard, but it would be inappropriate for me to out her in a public forum. Maybe I'll just take her whole book to class and leave Elizabeth Zimmermann alone.

One last bit: I do plan to attend the opening day lecture. And I'll be at the luncheon. Teachers are asked to eat first and then attend the luncheon so we can go from table to table and get to meet the knitters. I'm very much looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to the fashion show on Friday night and the student banquet on Saturday night. There is so much great knitting to see and share!

Catching up

2010-03-29T12:09:00.005-04:00

Where does the month go? I've been very busy knitting away. I'm not done with either project, so no finished objects to show yet. But I did want to show a little bit.

I'm working on a couple extra sweaters I want to add to my STITCHES South class. I've made good progress on both, so I have to just keep at it. One of them I cast on just a week ago. I'm using the hand-dyed cotton yarn Crayons Lite from Rainbow Mills. This is one of those handpainted yarns with color changes every few inches rather than every few feet. (Schaefer Laurel is similar.) I swatched this yarn about a month ago, trying different pattern stitches. The yarn is meant for plain stockinette in the round to create a tie-dye effect t-shirt. But I knew I would be knitting a cardigan jacket back and forth. After much testing, I settled on linen stitch.

Both sides of the fabric are interesting, so much so that I'm not sure which is the public side. Perhaps this will be a reversible garment. Glee! If you haven't done linen stitch, it isn't all that hard but it is time consuming. Working on an odd number of stitches, alternate knit one, slip one purlwise with yarn in front across the right-side row. (You'll end with knit one because of the odd number of stitches.) The right side is shown at the top of the post.

On the wrong side, alternate slip one purlwise with yarn in back, purl one. (You'll end with slip one because of the odd number of stitches.) In other words, you'll work the stitches that were slipped on the right side row and slip the stitches that were worked on the right side row. The wrong side is shown below. Because the purl bumps are on that side, it has a more textured surface. Can you see already that since you are only working half the stitches on each row, it will take twice as long to knit something in linen stitch as it would in stockinette?

The advantage of this extra patience is a reversible fabric that lies flat and behaves somewhat like weaving. That's because you are essentially weaving the working yarn in and out of the wales of knit stitches. The yarn on the slipped stitches is always carried to the right side of the work. However, I can certainly envision variations of this pattern where you slip more stitches, change which side the yarn is carried on, and the like. A special advantage for this yarn is that the slipping breaks up the color pattern on the hand-dyed yarn. There is some flashing and pooling, but it is broken up in a way that I think is very nice.

Refined Helmet Liner

2010-03-04T09:30:00.005-05:00

I'm not sure how many helmet liners I've made at this point -- maybe half a dozen? I can knock one out in just a couple nights. They are easy knitting in the round, plus they have enough going to keep me interested. There is some 2x2 ribbing. There is the interesting way in which the face opening is created. There is a plain stockinette section, perfect for television or knit night knitting. There are a few decrease rounds to close the top. And then the whole thing comes to a close with some picked-up ribbing around the face.

I've been asked to teach a helmet liner class at Rare Purls in Duluth. While it may not seem as if there is a lot to cover, there is quite a bit if you are looking to refine the pattern. To begin with: How to cast on? There's the trick of making the cast-on edge match the 2x2 ribbing in elasticity. This is important in a sock cuff that must hug the calf but fit over the foot. It is really important in a helmet liner that must hug the neck but fit over the head.

Then there's the 2x2 ribbing itself. Ribbing can sometimes show off minor tension issues to ill effect. The neck ribbing is a great place for practicing combination knitting, at least in the knit stitches but not the purl stitches.

The opening for the face works wonderfully with Elizabeth Zimmermann's provisional cast-on. Not only do you end up with the needed stitches, but you end up with the needed stitches going in the other direction. And if you use a circular needle in place of the waste yarn, then the needle for the face ribbing is already waiting.

If you are an English knitter and have been thinking of learning Continental, the four inches of plain stockinette in the cap are an opportunity for practice. And there are even a few decrease rounds to keep you intrigued.

When you come to the face ribbing, there's the challenge of picking up stitches in the corners and decreasing them out in pattern to close any holes or gaps. Then there's that last inch of ribbing -- another combination knitting opportunity. And the bind off at the end, hopefully completed seamlessly to create an unbroken line of chain stitches.

So when I teach this, I can cover:
German twisted cast-on
stitch facing and combination knitting
Elizabeth Zimmermann's provisional cast-on
Continental knitting
picking up corner stitches and decreasing in pattern
seamless circular bind-off

Who knew you could get so much learning out of a one-skein project?

Scallop cast-on

2010-03-01T12:17:00.008-05:00

Yesterday evening I was casting on a helmet liner. I've made about a half-dozen of these over the last few years. In fact, I plan to be teaching a workshop on helmet liners at Rare Purls in Duluth. A helmet liner begins with a lot of 2x2 ribbing. Since the ribbing needs to stretch to go over the head, the cast on needs to be very stretchy. There are several ways to achieve this -- a long-tail cast-on with a double-thickness of yarn in the tail (Lucy Neatby), a German twisted cast-on (Beth Brown-Reinsel), or a tubular cast-on (Elizabeth Zimmermann). I got to thinking about the tubular cast-on.
Imagine the black line in the drawing is a row of knitting, all by itself without a row above or a row below. The bright green line represents a piece of waste yarn or a narrow needle or wire. If you've done Elizabeth Zimmermann's provisional cast-on, you've done this on your needles. You create a single row of knitting that is ready to be worked in either direction because that single row is folded in the middle. In a typical tubular cast-on, you'd continue with knit one, slip one for one round; then slip one, purl one for the second round. At that point you either go right into your knitting or you work those two rounds again if you want a little more edge. The cast-on is a little tube -- or a bigger tube if you work more rounds. Because is has the same structure as knitting, it will behave as knitting and stretch and give. Once the edge is established, the waste yarn is removed.

Now, there's a nifty little game you can play with this. Imagine that the black "yarn" is slightly stiff. Imagine I have it laid out as in the diagram, with a narrow piece of stiff green wire across it. Imagine I fold the lower stitches up. Counting from the right, the odd numbered stitches would lie behind the green wire and the even numbered stitches would lie on top of it. In other words, the odd stitches are purls and the even are knits. If I worked purl one, knit one across the row, the edge would be mysterious indeed. This is why Elizabeth Zimmermann's provisional cast-on can be so great for 1x1 ribbing.

But the helmet liner is 2x2 ribbing. Hmmmm. I decided to mix it up a bit by working the stitches out of order. When I needed to, I skipped the next stitch the get to the one I needed. The result is that every-other knit-purl pair is crossed. Here is the result:
It is a little dark with the black yarn, but you can see there is a large then small then large then small rhythm in the cast-on edge at bottom. I'm going to tear this out because I think this edge is too decorative for military use on a helmet liner. But it may have uses later in other projects.

To review:
Use Elizabeth Zimmermann's provisional cast-on with waste yarn.
Work knit two, purl two on the very first row. Treat the stitches in front of the waste yarn as knits. Treat the stitches in back of the waste yarn as purls. Work stitches out of order when you need to to get to your next knit or purl as needed. There will be times when you are skipping the nearest stitch on the left needle, working the next one in line, and then returning to the skipped stitch. It is this 1x1 stitch twist that produces the scallop.
After you get a couple rows established, remove the waste yarn. Smile.

Carding Party

2010-02-23T11:02:00.003-05:00

Gale Evans of Gale's Art was kind enough to do a carding party during The Whole Nine Yarns regular Monday night spin night on 8 February. This worked out well for me, as I needed to learn to use my Strauch wool hand cards for things other than experimental mohair. The fact that I didn't have a drum carder also kept me from going completely crazy. I should note that 5 of 6 spinners who did bring a drum carder had the same model of Strauch drum carder. I was able to watch these in action. When I'm ready to move up to a drum carder, I'm going here.

Gale brought older roving samples that she is retiring. There were lots and lots of colors, so it was a fun opportunity to play with blending single-color fibers to produce more luminous colors. This sort of visual blending is similar to what happens when you look at an Impressionist painting. Some woven fabrics also take advantage of the technique -- plaids are an example.

Anyway, amongst my bounty was about one ounce of wool and silk blend. As this was prepared on hand cards, I had a bunch of little poofs. I blended to produce a series from gold through yellow-green, blue-green, blue, and a little blue-violet at the end. So last night I lined up my colored poofs in order and spun them up.

This was my first time not pre-drafting. I spun straight from each little bat. Silk is a little different to spin, somewhat catchy I thought. But it adds a little sheen polish. This is a lace weight, coming in at about 25 wraps per inch or more. But I got about 200 yards. I was planning on Navaho plying, but when I steam set the yarn, I realized it didn't have any excess twist. I don't know how I did that. I mean, I've been wanting to learn to make a balanced single. So, here's a balanced single. I have no clue if I can replicate the miracle. I'm just going to be happy about it. :-)

And a last geeky note: that image at top makes a great desktop wallpaper as is or even better if you invert the colors.

Experimental mohair

2010-01-30T13:58:00.000-05:00

One of my aerospace friends has a farm. His wife is a nurse practitioner in north Georgia near the Georgia-Tennessee-North Carolina line. They have a lovely home up there and many acres of land. The Nurse is also a spinner and crafter, and owns goats. Many, many goats of different colors, sizes, and ages. On a visit and rafting trip up there in the summer of 2008, they gave me some shed goat hair.

It is pretty neat to have fiber from a live animal you've actually met. I'm still working my way through the white fiber, and may or may not be able to spin it. I have used a little of it to very good effect as clouds on some Dungeons and Dragons miniatures. It has a lot of dirt and field bits in it and some of it is matted to the point of being felted. I need to find a really super scour. I was able to work more readily with the fiber from a goat named Cleopatra. She's a very pretty goat and her fiber is mostly brown, although she has black guard hairs. In this case, I washed the fibers twice and carded them three times in order to clean them enough to spin. This was a very labor intensive process, which I eventually broke down into only a few minutes each day. Towards the end of it, I developed a technique that was a cross between carding and combing, but using the hand cards. One of the washings used baby shampoo, and that did seem to bring up a nice luster on the fibers. Although the black guard hairs are a little rough, I left them in because I like the subtle interest they add.

The spinning challenge was that these were short fibers, only 1-2 inches in length. Short fibers have to be spun with more twist to hold them together. When it comes to yarn, I usually prefer fluff over drape, which means I want less twist not more. My solution for this fiber came when I read about core spinning (pages 98-101) in Amy King Spin Control. What I did wasn't true core spinning, which involves catching loose fibers around a core fiber as that fiber is spun. Instead, I caught the fiber as I plied.

I bought two spools of Coats & Clark Dual Duty thread color 8530 at my local big box craft store. I ran each spool separately through the wheel to give it just a little more twist. Then I put the two spools on the lazy kate and plied the two threads together in the opposite direction -- in other words, taking out the extra twist I just added to make it ply. Once that was established, then I started holding fluffy bits of mohair in the drafting triangle as the two threads came together. At first I got novelty yarn, which is what you get when spinning experiments go awry. But as I got used to it, I got better at spinning a smooth yarn that still retains the fluff of mohair. I didn't exactly turn straw into gold, but let's say I turned it into stainless steel. This is definitely one of those spinning techniques that requires a wheel. You need one hand to ply and one hand to hold the fluff, so it wouldn't work with a drop spindle unless you've established a peculiar association with Doc Ock.

I don't yet have a project planned for this. I have about 120 yards, although the first few yards are a little rough. Let's say a solid 100 yards with extra to spare. It does still smell like goat, even after two baths and setting the twist with steam. And let me add here that setting the twist with steam is a great idea. I'm still not that great at plying, but steam setting is very good at taking the extra twist out so that I have a balanced yarn. I'm using an old aluminum noodle pot that I've had since graduate school. I don't even remember how I got it, I just know it was somebody's cast-off item and therefore free. Good deal!

A Trip to the Mannings

2010-01-29T18:06:00.010-05:00

During the Christmas holiday, the Cuddly Hubby and I went to visit my family in Pennsylvania. We drove up the weekend before Christmas, which was just after the big snowstorm. On the drive north I was wondering if this was such a swell idea -- why hadn't I promised to come visit during a warm weather holiday? But it all worked out very well. Big credit to the state of Virginia, as those folks really know how to clear snow off I-95. And thanks to Audible for the members' free 3.5 hour recording of Tim Curry reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Between the clear expressway and the good listening, we made our best time ever from Georgia to Virginia.
For Christmas my mother took me on a surprise trip out to The Mannings. This was a totally awesome Christmas present! My sister and grandmother came along as well, so we got to spend nice time together. The Mannings is a shop out in East Berlin, Pennsylvania that offers classes and materials for knitting, spinning, and weaving. The shop is located between Gettysburg and York a little ways off old route 30. I was glad we took our picturesque outing in my mother's SUV, as there was still snow on the ground. You'll have to go back a one-lane farm road, but it is well worth it! There was a very fine stock of books, yarn, and knitting and spinning supplies. Rarely do you find so many spinning wheels and weaving looms in one place. They had a Louet Jane loom in stock, and I have to admit it is very tempting if I decide to expand into weaving. But that's for another year. My mother gave me a generous gift certificate and I had no trouble spending it and beyond. Some of the things I bought or that my mom bought for me:

Color in Spinning by Deb Menz
Omas Strickgeheimnisse by Erika Eichenseer, Erika Grill, & Betta Kron
Wild Fibers Winter 2009-2010 issue
two 4 ounce Louet Northern Lights rovings
two half-ounce bags of crystal metallic fiber
a cotton sampler kit (at right)
an exotic fibers sampler kit
quilted tote bag made by a local Lancaster Amish woman
one skein Araucanía Ranco solid, to make gloves for the Cuddly Hubby
one skein Berroco Bonsai, to stabilize my Coldwater Creek ruana
Oat Couture Curlicue Coverlet pattern, to make a shawl for my mother
seven skeins Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, for Mom's shawl

You can bet that a trip to The Mannings will be part of my itinerary on future trips to visit family.

The other place I already make a point to visit is Uncommon Threads at 294 W Market Street in downtown York near the historic Golden Plough Tavern at 159 W Market Street. The tavern is where the Articles of Confederation were signed, legally turning the 13 British colonies into the United States of America. This is also an easy place to visit from The Mannings, as Market Street is what old route 30 becomes when it is inside the city. Owner Beth Lutz also has a local alpaca farm. Uncommon Threads is not a large shop, but very good choices have been made about what to stock. I bought three very clever buttons from Zippy Pins. I also found a real bargain in the back of the shop. There was a large basket of loose roving. I suspect some of it was leftovers from practice or class. It was marked at $1 an ounce. I bought all the royal blue, more than 14 ounces of it. There was also a little bit of light blue with it, which should be fun for practicing carding. I think it will coordinate very nicely with that Louet Northern Lights roving.

So, if you find yourself in Pennsylvania near Gettysburg or York, be sure to sample the local fiber offerings.

It's a good day here

2010-01-24T13:49:00.005-05:00

I just came back from the Deluxe Panda Nightcrawler program at ZooAtlanta. Nightcrawlers is one of the oldest after-hours education programs in the country. On this program we got to learn about pandas, make enrichment for the pandas, and then have a behind the scenes encounter with the pandas. Cameras aren't allowed behind the scenes at the zoo, so I don't have any pictures of myself or anyone else in the party feeding biscuits to Lun Lun. I also don't have pictures of all the cool panda gear various participants were wearing. Most of the twelve of us were local, but Lola came all the way from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and another family flew in from Fort Worth, Texas. All of us are afflicted with Obsessive Panda Disorder, but none of us seemed to be in any hurry to be cured.

But, I am very fortunate the bag of straw and scent that I assembled and painted was given to Lun Lun and Xi Lan. I scented the straw with banana flavor. The photograph is Lun Lun investigating it. The video is Xi Lan having a fine time with it:

(Please ignore the background audio -- I haven't yet figured out how to delete it.)

My apologies that I was not more on the ball. Yang Yang also got an enrichment bag and did a fine job of tearing it up and rolling around and just being the wonderful, silly bear so many of us have come to love. Alas, I took blurry photographs and should have just shot video.

A big thank-you to all the nice people at the zoo, including Carvel who was our guide, and panda keepers Kate and J.T. who were very accommodating of us disrupting their routine.

Then I drove home back to the "real world" and realized that Saturday's mail was still in the box. So I went to get it and, oh my, my Master Knitter revisions were back already. Gulp.

I passed Level 1. :-)

I'm going to go watch some playoff football now. Glee! Happy dance!

And another new name on the list

2010-01-15T02:51:00.006-05:00

I've also added "And So It Goes . . ." from local knitter, teacher, and designer Laura. On Ravelry she's Angelfire212 and has designed Skolnick. Skolnick is a pair of fingerless gloves with a guitar design on the palm. There is a beautiful cable pattern on the back.

Laura had me test knit these for her last year. The process was fun, and funny. She gave me all the directions and a chart and I was ready to start. Then I realized I wasn't sure what the chart meant. And I couldn't figure it out. Finally, I asked. Laura had given me everything except the chart key. You can bet that complicated cable and the duplicate stitch made a whole lot more sense with the chart explained. This is why you need someone to check your work -- because the gremlins get in it at night and do odd things.

Laura has nicely placed the increases for the thumb opening so that the thumb gusset grows out the the side of the cable. This was a fun project. And it doesn't take a whole skein, so it is also good for partial bits, stash, and handspun. And the swirly cable pattern is a delight.