Warty Bobbles

How My Mind Works

Although our toes are barely into Spring, I have an Autumn project tossing about in my mind.  Fortunately, it is so Autumn-ish that I am not even tempted to make any moves toward starting it – but it is percolating on my mental back burner.

 

Ready?

An animal print stole worked in slip stitch (Barbara Walker Mosaic style) garnished with jungle leaves.

Awesome.

 

It all started with some mending.  My (store-bought) cashmere cardigan wore through on the left elbow.  Cashmere is not a particularly robust fiber, of course, and since I wear this cardigan every evening when I knit – and I knit leaning onto my left elbow – well, the wearing through comes as no surprise.  So, I stitched up the hole as best I could and thought about an appropriate patch – since the entire elbow is pretty ghostly and my elbow would be bursting through again immediately, a patch was required.

 

I have had success with knitting sweater elbow patches.  The patches wear well and protect the melting fibers underneath.  And they look good!  I prefer something plant-ish or animal-ish to simple geometrics – fun to knit and fun to wear.  So, I started thumbing through Lesley Stanfield’s 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet and 75 Birds, Butterflies & Little Beasts to Knit and Crochet, as well as Nicky Epsteins’s Knitted Embellishments.

 

But here’s the thing.  My sweater is off white with animal print spots (leopard maybe?) and the garden flowers, orchard fruits, butterflies, northern forest leaves seemed incongruous.  I closed my eyes.  What goes with leopards?  Jungle leaves!

 

I texted Sarah regarding the characteristics of jungle leaves (she does not blink when I send her these questions out of the blue!).  She stexted: big with obvious veins and suggested that the leaf shaping be in the center and the edge have faggoting.  Good idea!  I also thought about palm fronds.  I looked through the books and thought Lesley Stanfield’s elm leaves looked like what Sarah had described and knit 2 of them up last night.

They are not sewn on yet, but you get the idea.

 

On the subject of ideas, it was during the texting process that the animal print/jungle leaf stole concept was born.  I got to thinking about animal prints and, naturally, moved on to how one might knit animal print patterns (I am fond of animal prints! I consider them a neutral – rather to my family’s dismay, but I find they work well with any color…).  Having done rather a lot of slip stitch patterning in the past couple of years, that particular colorwork technique came to mind.  Perfect for random spottiness and it would make a firm, thick fabric, so…a stole!   And a sudden vision of knit jungle leaves along one end as a dynamic border! Stunning!

 

I credit Sarah’s and my combined creativity – we are kind of magical when we work together -- although I suspect she will take neither credit nor responsibility for the Jungle Stole!

 

 

 

Oops!

Here is the Otter Rock Sweater in process;

 

It may look a bit, um, odd because I took photos before the Oops.  Well, actually before I said Oops – the Oops had happened.  You can see the colors and the lace hem, though, so you get an idea of what it is going to look like.

 

The Oops was due to a simple math error – not an arithmetic error, but a failure to set up the equation for the stitch count correctly (one of the main things I remember from high school math is that you have to set up the problem correctly in order to get the right answer – this is golden information that all knitters and probably most other people should live by!). 

 

I did proper gauge swatching in both the lace pattern and stockinette – coming up with 3½ stitches per inch for the latter and “3 1/2 pattern repeats” at 2 stitches per pattern repeat for 2 inches (which I even entered into my notes as “7 sts/2 inches”) for the former.  Since I know that lace often works up to a different gauge than stockinette – and since I was using US 9 needles for the lace and US 10s for the stockinette – I anticipated having to change stitch count when I switched patterns.

 

You would have thought that I would have noticed that 3 ½ sts per inch is darned close to 7 sts per 2 inches.  Yeah.  Minor Oops.  The point is that I had a “change the stitch number when changing patterns” mindset.  So, I was all set for the Real Oops.

 

I worked out my cast on stitch count for the front of the sweater (with a little rounding): 80 sts.  Knit, knit, knit the lace.  Lovely.  Then, I worked out the stitch count for the stockinette part for the entire circumference of the sweater and came up (with a little rounding) with 159 sts.  Well, lace is a lot more expansive than stockinette, I reasoned.  And figured I needed to add 78 sts (wanted to keep an even number).  Gee, that would mean adding a stitch after every stitch.  Hey, how about doing simple yarn overs – a nice transition from the lace!  Brilliant!  And so I did.  And I happily put in my garter ridge on my 158 stitches and I admired my pretty “yarn over” transition.  And I knit about 6 more rows so I could take some photos and post them on my blog.  Happy, happy.

 

Until I decided to check the gauge on the stockinette – and it seemed more like nearly 4 sts per inch.  Argh!   I checked it several places.  Yep, somewhere about 3 ¾ sts per inch.  So, I held the sweater up to myself to see if it seemed too small.  Well, no, not really.  In fact, it seemed generous.  Hmmm.  By then it was late at night, so I decided to ask Sarah to take a look at it the next day.

 

Her first remark was:  Mom, your sweater is enormous!  It is all rippley!

I explained that I had had to double the number of stitches when I changed from lace to stockinette.  And we both measured the gauge again and again and concurred that 3 ¾ was more accurate than 3 ½.  The mystery was that the sweater which should have been  smallish was, in fact, biggish.

 

It was at this point that the Oops revealed itself.  Perhaps you caught it back in that big paragraph about stitch count?  Where I said I “worked out the stitch count for the stockinette part of the entire circumference of the sweater”?  And then applied that number (159 rounded to 158) to the front?  And since the gauges for the lace and the stockinette were identical and there was no need to add any stitches at all what I had done was double the size of the sweater front!  No wonder it was enormous and rippley!!

 

Nothing to do but rip it back to the lace and begin the blue portion all over – though I did adjust for the more accurate gauge (which I trusted as it had been worked on a 158 stitch gauge swatch over 8 or nine rows!).  So, I added 6 stitches (knitting front & back – no yarn overs this time) and knit the garter ridge and proceeded on to the stockinette.

 

And, hey, the rows go by so quickly now!

 

 

What The Turtle Taught Me

We are having college Spring Breaks around here – so lots of family time!

 

But a quick cautionary tale.

 

I am designing a top-down sweater, The Turtle Sweater -- named because it is kind of the color of turtles (both the reptilian and confectionary species) and because it features Track of the Turtle stitch, a cable-ish/lace panel.   Since I am knitting it in the round, I had to adjust the stitch pattern instructions from Right Side/ Wrong Side (back and forth flat) knitting to Right Side (in a circle) knitting.  And I converted the line-by-line directions to a chart.  I did so with the accompanying Waved Ribbon pattern, too (another panel).  And there are increases for the raglan and a varying number of background stockinette – all very complex and requiring both a lot of markers and a lot of concentration.

 

I made it through the 10 rows of the patterns and was just beginning the 11^th row, when I took a good hard look at my panels.  While the Waved Ribbon looked right, the Track of the Turtle looked wrong.  Dead wrong.  Absolutely, perfectly wrong.  It did not look like a turtle track (although it looked rather as if a turtle might have knit it!).  Nothing lined up – a stockinette column of random yarn-over holes and knit-2-togethers and ssks.

 

Rats. 

 

After some rather bitter study, I came to the conclusion that I had made the chart correctly for the odd-numbered rows, but backwards for the even-numbered rows.  And I had to admit that the chart itself looked nothing like the knitting was supposed to look (which would have been a dead give-away if I had bothered to look at it closely before I started!). 

 

I managed to fix the chart.  But there was no surgical procedure I could do to fix the panels.  Even though 80% of the sweater was perfect, the turtle panels were completely botched – so I had to rip the thing back to the ribbing.  (it is probably best not to calculate the number of knitting hours lost…)

 

Today’s lesson, my dears:

1)      When working from a chart (especially one you have written out or altered) look at if closely before you start knitting to see if it looks like the knitted piece is supposed to look

2)      If you are going to knit in the round, swatch in the round -- I had swatched the panel flat to figure gauge, etc., but had just jumped into the sweater assuming I had the stitch pattern charted right without testing it out as in-the-round knitting

 

 

 

So, I am a wiser and humbler knitter today.  And I have a textbook in-the-round Track of the Turtle swatch to prove it!

Of Designs

I seem to be in the middle of designing 5 projects – with one or two other lurking in the wings.  And this does not count the ones that are “in process” but having a wee nap until the weather gets better and sleeveless summer shells are on my radar again.

 

So, I am a little fragmented.  Having boldly converted several lace stitch patterns from flat knitting to in-the-round knitting (sort of means turning them inside-out and writing half of the directions backwards) and gnashed my teeth over the near-impossibility of charting a particular tam pattern with a double decrease (it must be possible – I just haven’t quite got it yet…), my brain is a little fried and I am second-guessing myself on even simple matters.  Which is actually a good thing since I discovered, last night, that I cannot add simple numbers!  I have been calculating a top-down raglan sweater, too – and should actually be on my knees praying that all the figuring I did to figure the fit will actually fit my figure.

 

And all this has me thinking wistfully of a several knitting reference books I would love to own.  I would love to just order them up from amazon.com this very minute.  Would even pay for expedited shipping.  Except that I spent all my knitterly money at Stitches West on fabulous yarn (which I do not regret!  I just regret that I do not have more money to spend on books!).  But, boy, these books would come in useful about now!

 

So, as in one’s youth, one might have written out the name of that cute boy in the second row of one’s algebra class, I will express my most adolescent longings for these books:

 

Knitting From the Top Down and Mosaic Knitting both by Barbara Walker

 

Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller

 

Creating Original Hand Knitted Lace by Margaret Stove

 

Charts Made Simple by JC Briar

 

Sigh.

 

 

Snow Knitting Photos

Fairy Tale Snow

It is snowing – really snowing!  Inches and inches of snow!  I feel as if I have been  transported to some Scandinavian Fairy Land!

And the absolute kicker is:  I have nothing more pressing to do this afternoon than sit in my cozy house with the snow falling all around and swatch up a shawl with lace-weight Isager Wool 1 (in 4 neutral-ish colors – very Scandinavian!).  I am planning to use an Estonian twig lace stitch pattern – and there are going to be silk/mohair accents. 

Pure enchantment – there is no other explanation!

How It Happens

My knitting has been crawling along uneventfully. Not much to write about (the thrilling stockinette trek? I don’t think so).  I was considering just doing a post about my cats’ habits or the uncanny way bras have of twisting themselves together in the washer (I could have called that post “Bra-ctopus”). 

But as luck would have it, Sarah and I had to dash out to the yarn store for a size 6 circular needle (16”) so she can work up the hat we are designing for a class.  Anyhow, on the way to the store 3 design elements came together in my brain in sort of a “perfect storm” and we walked away with the 16” circ and a new fall project!

The first element was a stitch.  In playing around with various ribbings for Max’s gansey, I came across a seed stitch rib which is reversible and quite handsome to boot.  Hmmm.  What could one use a handsome reversible stitch for?  A roll-over collar like a turtleneck or cowl-neck, perhaps?

The second element was a colorway.  On the way to the mall this morning, I passed a brick bank building which had large planters of deep purple and hot pink petunias in front of it.  Striking color combination! Would make a gorgeous fall garment.

The third element was a shaping technique.  The cowl-neck grew (in my brain) to a pull-over garment that would cover the shoulders and upper arms and I had a shaping inspiration: changing needle size to decrease the gauge would eliminate the need to work decrease stitches.  It is a technique I have used before to avoid messing with a pattern stitch.  On top of that, Sarah suggested that I hold 2 yarns together at the beginning when I have large stitches and change to a single yarn or 2 finer yarns as I decrease gauge.  Nice.

So, into the yarn store with a fully-formed concept.  We found Rowan’s Lima (alpaca/merino/nylon – corded braid-like yarn) and Amy Blatt’s Fine Kid (wool/mohair) both in a ruddy brick color for the body, Cotanani (cotton/wool) in hot pink to be held with Rowan’s mauve Kidsilk Aura (mohair/silk) for the cowl, and two accent yarns: GGH’s Apart (furry eyelash!) in eggplant and Louisa Harding’s Mariposa (eggplant cotton yarn twined with shiny ballet pink viscose). 

Okay, it got a little more complex as we started pulling yarns and holding them together – but it was kind of like mixing paints as we worked to get the color and texture we wanted (and the feel, too – we are careful to avoid irritating yarns close to the neck).  And I admit I did not wake up this morning thinking I needed to design a new fall project – but, hey, sometimes that is just how it happens!

The Seaside Qu'mitl

The Seaside Qu’mitl  is a good example of my design process.

 It began as the smashing together  of two  elements (sort of like nuclear fusion or fission or something like that):  my desire for a little knitted piece to wear on my shoulders on cool summer evenings and a bag of Rainshadow Yarn  wool and silk and mohair  yarns (an impulse purchase at Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat ).  One skein is thicker (lamb’s wool and mohair) in a fairly solid teal-ish blue, the other is finer (lamb’s wool and silk) in a range of blues with dashes of olive and purple. 

The idea was to make something  small and simple, like a scarf, with the 2 weights of yarn.  But when the hankering for a summer-shoulder-piece came up and I began stash-diving and fished up these yarns, well, it seemed “meant to be” (my design projects always seem “meant to be”!).  And since I had been wanting to make a smaller version of the qu’mitl, it went from “meant to be” to “imperative” (my design projects tend to become imperative…).  

I had fully intended to keep it simple and stick with the 2 yarns.  But, if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a lace edging to go around it, right?  And when it became clear that there would not be enough of the finer yarn for the edging (it being rather rapidly used in the body of the qu’mitl), it was time to go stash-diving again.  This time, I found variegated linen (in blues and greens – quite seaside-y).

I am a bit ahead of myself.  Before I had begun to run low on the finer wool/silk yarn – before I had begun knitting the qu’mitl – I had decided to make the piece in wave-like lace patterns (keeping to the seaside theme).   And I had, indeed, found 2 suitable lace stitches for the body of the piece.  And 2 suitable lace edging patterns, as well.  I chose the Ocean Waves pattern to go around the neck edge.  But then, it kinda seemed a shame to only use the one.  And I had quite a bit of the linen yarn.  Sooooo, last night I swatched up the second lace edging – a particularly entertaining Puff Ball Cluster Edging – and it should look swell around the hem edge!

So, a potential scarf project meets  up with chilly summer shoulders, 4 lace patterns, and a fat ball of variegated linen yarn – and the fun begins!   That’s how I roll!

Counting Down

The Gold Leaf Shrug (which is the bright yellow knitting appearing in several blog posts over the past couple of months) is nearly done.  Nearly, oh so nearly!

 

I purchased the yarn from Butternut Woolens – gorgeous sunshine-y wool/silk called “Silkie” – and thought the 2 hefty skeins would be enough for a summery shrug.  And at $25.00 a skein (a very fair price for such luxurious hand-dyed yarn, I hasten to say), I hoped it would be!  That is, I was hesitant to buy what would probably be an extra-just-in-case skein.  So, I didn’t.  Even though it was a design project and the yardage required was pretty much an educated (or shot in the dark!) guess.

 

When the yarn arrived, I cast on and began knitting.  The first skein made up the body and most of the first sleeve.  It looked promising.  I attached the second skein and finished the sleeves and the edging on the sleeves. The second ball was still goodly-sized and I began the lace edging.  The edging is a rather large dramatic “Willow Leaf” pattern and goes all the way around the shrug.  So, there I was:  picking-up-and-knitting to attach the edging as I knit it.  And the ball of yarn was (understandably) getting smaller and smaller.  But not too quickly and I still felt optimistic.  Besides, I could always break down and order more yarn, right?

 

And then Sarah found out that Butternut Woolens was shutting down production and that all of the Silkie was pulled from the website for inventory and subsequent discount pricing!  Well, okay, maybe I really did have enough to finish the edging. 

 

Knit, knit, knit.  Squeeze the yarn ball and wonder.  Knit, knit, knit.  Eye the yarn ball suspiciously, hopefully, pleadingly.  Knit, knit, knit.  It was kind of like that scene in The Abyss where the water is filling up in the submarine-thing and it looks like maybe the main characters are going to drown (but maybe not).  Or those Arctic exploration diaries where supplies are running low.  Maybe they will make it, maybe not.

 

Except, of course, this was not a life-or-death situation.  Really.

 

Sunday afternoon I passed the half-way point on the bottom edge – pretty much into the home stretch.  The ball looked puny.  Sickly.  Buy, hey, maybe… Knit, knit, knit – and then I saw it:  the tail of yarn hanging from my needles.  The ball was gone.  The yarn was gone.   And I had 7 inches of shrug edge to go.  Crap.

 

Followed by a rather desperate email to Shelley at Butternut Woolens and, the next morning, a kind and soothing reply.  Yes, there was still plenty of Mango Silkie.  Yes, she would be putting it up on the website again this week.  So, it looks like a happy ending after all.  But a cautionary tale:  ALWAYS buy extra yarn (especially when it is a design project and you don’t really know how much you will need).

Sweater Fever

I really want to start knitting a summer sweater.  “Really want” is not actually strong enough.  Maybe “wildly crave” or “ardently desire.”  Anyhow, I definitely have “sweater fever.”

 

I have been soooo good!  Sticking to a few projects, working diligently.  And they are good projects – a baby kimono, footies, the Gold Leaf Shrug (nearly done!), my Gull Pi Shawl (only about 10 rounds of pattern to go – at 570-some stitches per round – and then I get to start the edging).  And I did finish Gwen’s blanket.  And I did not start the Lily-of-the-Valley lace shawl.  Soooo good!

 

What has put me over the edge on this sweater lust, I think, is the excitement of our beginning knitter class as they all launch their projects (several of which are, in fact, sweaters…).  “Oooh, what a cool pattern!”  “Oooh, what at lovely yarn!”  Can you blame me for being envious?  Even Sarah has started a sweater! 

 

So, as I lay in bed in the early morning, listening to the siren song of my wooly stash, I recalled that I had yarn specially set aside for a summer sweater – one that I intended to design.  Designing, after all, is not knitting!  I smiled.  No, of course, designing is a totally other process that would not interfere with my knitting diligently on my worthy (and oh-so-nearly-done) projects!  Excellent. 

 

So, I dug out my summer sweater to-be-designed yarn:  Blue Moon LSS (Luscious Single Silk) and Blue Moon “Socks That Rock” – both in Manly, Yes, But I Like It Too (colorway) and Habu Kusaki Zome (silk) in lemon yellow.   

And I began leafing  through my Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts Movement books – the idea is to do an intarsia design in that style.  A happy knitter – er, designer – am I!

Design Element

Sometimes unexpected things happen when one is knitting, right?  And if we decide we like it, we call it a "design element," right?

Well, in knitting up the "Magick Hands" gloves, I found those pesky ladders forming because of the gap between the double-pointed needles.  And --not wanting to keep scooting the stitches around the needles because I was working the spade motif off a chart and also putting in a thumb gusset -- I figured that I could just kind of fix it later.  (okay, I know those things don't necessarily block out....)

But then when the glove was done, Sarah and I kind of liked the look of the ladder ridges!  They give the glove a sort of edgy-chic look.  Geoff even pointed them out and said "I like the design."  So, design element it is!  I just hope that when Sarah knits the second glove (which she is doing to check my notes) she gets ladders!

Gloves And Gauntlets

Sarah and I have been designing fingerless gloves (for Geoff, my magician son) and gauntlets to go with the Owl Q’mitl. 

 

The “Owl Gauntlets” are named for the cable which looks like an owl.

 

“Magick Hands” has a spade motif on the back.  One can roll back the ribbing at the top for finger movement or leave it long for warmth – designed with the street performer in mind!

Design Process

I have been in a kind of design frenzy this afternoon.  The projects at hand are a pair of fingerless gloves (the yarn is lying on my desk and I have been fighting the urge to wind it into a ball and start swatching!  mostly because I could swatch tonight in front of the Mariners game) and a summery shrug.  Also, I have Nancy Bush’s Knitted Lace of Estonia lying shamelessly open to a lily-of-the-valley shawl that I have no business even considering – but I discovered Knit Picks new Shadow Tonal Lace Yarn last night and am allowing myself to fantasize heavily (maybe the Springtime shade –  “Lime green shifts to chartreuse, green tea, celadon, mint, and green apple”…..mmmmm….).

 

I have taken hand measurements for the gloves, sketched and graphed bits and really it would be time to wind and swatch (except that I am going to do that tonight in front of the Mariners game – I have to keep reminding myself!  maybe I should remove the yarn from my desk).

 

The shrug design process has gone like this:

1)      Fall in love with Mango Silkie yarn (merino and silk) from Butternut Woolens

2)      Decide to make Retro Redux Shrug from Lace Style (Pam Allen and Ann Budd, eds.)

3)      Find out Sarah has dibs on that pattern!

4)      Mutter a tiny hmff and decide to design my own pattern

5)      Order yarn

6)      Study up on top-down sweater knitting in French Girl Knits (Kristeen Griffin-Grimes) and make a little sketch

7)      Begin leafing through stitch dictionaries for ideas

8)      Drink a double cappuccino

9)      Wish the yarn would arrive (by magic, poof!)

10)  Select a few good possibilities

11)  Notice that I am still in a leaf pattern phase!  Beech Leaf, Drooping Elm Leaf, Fancy Leaf Edging, Twin Leaf, Willow Leaf, Delineator Leaf Lace

12)  Eat a chocolate egg

13)  Photocopy patterns (this involves lifting a 2x3 ft. puzzle board off the copier without letting the completed puzzle slide off – George spent a long time on this difficult puzzle and is, I can only suppose, very proud of himself and/or cannot let go now that it is done, as the puzzle has been lying-in-state on the copier for about a month now)

14)  Replace puzzle board on copier reverently

15)  Begin writing notes on pattern copies (book title, what the abbreviations stand for, etc.

16)  Eat 5 jellybeans and a chocolate egg

17)  Finish notes and sit staring into space

18)  Wish the yarn would arrive

19)  Sigh

20)  Gaze longingly at the lily-of-the-valley shawl and decide not to order lace yarn

21)  Remember that there are still Easter cookies in the kitchen

22)  Decide not to eat Easter cookies

23)  Reason that it rather too much to give up both lace yarn and Easter cookies

24)  …………

 

 

Batty? Maybe!

I have been working on The Batwing Thing – a sweater with sleeves that widen from the cuff (at the elbow) to the entire waist-shoulder width.  Like triangles.  It has been a rather intuitive design project.  I started with a basic idea and yarn and body measurements and have been rather making it up as I go along.

 

To our knitting students, we frequently say (regarding knitting – tho it may have other applications) “There is no right or wrong, only predictable results.”  I do not know what to say of the results of a project in which there are few predictions!  I mean, is it coming along all right?  And how would I know?

 

I have two nearly-completed sleeves with some color work going on (intarsia) and am about to start a Batwing Lace motif section (the lace being an afterthought – since I realized we were using this particular pattern in our lace-knitting class and it seemed to fit the theme of the sweater!). 

 

I had to order more yarn and there is a slight difference in the  two multi-colored Many Glaciers skeins – so I am now working one skein in stockinette and the other in a stockinette punctuated with garter “dashes” 5 stitches long to sort of camouflage the difference. 

 

I had not predicted having 5 balls of yarn and a sleeve and (from the sleeve) a 6^th ball of yarn hanging from the sleeve I am knitting (the 2 sleeves are connected by the first skein/ball of Many Glaciers since I have worked them both it -- one from the inside end and one from the outside end).

 

But Sarah says I am never happier than when I have 3 or 4 balls of yarn hanging off my knitting, so I guess that is all right.

 

Then, when I had everything laid out (so I could untangle the yarns), I realized that the whole piece has a definite Arts and Crafts Movement feel to it!  The colors, even the intarsia patterns.  I love Arts and Crafts stuff!  And yet I swear I did not have it in mind when I started out.  Predictable?  Unpredictable?  I often feel that God is at work in my knitting when things “just work out.”  Kind of an affirmation of my creativity.  A sort of Divine Delight.  Sometimes when I need it most (perhaps when there are 6 balls of yarn and 2 sleeves strangling each other in a project that seems a little crazy?  or when I am feeling that perhaps plunging my passion in a craft might be a little crazy, in and of itself!).

Patterns Onto Paper

So, Sarah and I have been laboring over the phrasing, charts, directions, abbreviations, etc. on the patterns we have been developing for out layette workshop and some other up-coming classes (as well as some we want to market on Etsy and Ravelry).  I felt pretty good about it as we were knitting up the pieces since we made good notes all along (something we tend to do anyway).  And as we refined pieces, we re-wrote the notes.  So, you would think we were in good shape when it came to actually writing everything up – you know, just type up the notes, right?

 

Writing knitting pattern instructions – wow!  More challenging than I had thought (I confess).  Especially as I have been frustrated in the past – rather loudly sometimes – with poorly written patterns and have vowed that any patterns I would write for others to use would be:  Clear, Concise, Correct.

 

Well, writing clear, concise, correct knitting instructions is rather like writing incredibly detailed directions for baking brownies from scratch – not just “pre-heat oven to 350” etc.  More like:

 

“Take two large eggs and crack each one down the middle and let the contents of the eggs fall into the mixing bowl.  Discard the egg shells.”

 

Step-by-step directions with definitions (Egg shells: the hard white outer layer of the egg) and lots of numbers and measurements -- and schematics and charts, as necessary.  We fuss over the wording to keep it from being ambiguous – conversations like:

 

“Do you think people realize that you break one egg first then the next one or do you think they would try to break them both at once unless we tell them – of course, if they want to break them both at the same time, I guess they could…kinda messy, but do-able.”

And, remember, if eggs were yarn we would need to list the eggs' farm of origin and breed of chicken -- and, okay, I am not even going to try to figure out the egg equivalent of gauge!

 

Then, reading for errors. Re-reading for errors.  Freaking out a bit if we find one.  Re-reading everything again.  Worrying a bit if we don’t find any errors.  Re-re-reading again.

 

Photos and fonts.  Putting it all together.  It has to be easy to work from – and professional – and kind of jazzy and exciting.  Is it Clear, Concise, Correct?!

 

Okay, on to the next one.

The Hat That Went To London

In our last episode, the Wartybobbler had (almost) a week to design and knit a warm yet cool hat for her son (who is studying abroad) which was to be sent along with her daughter (who was flying to London to visit the son – which, oddly enough, sounds like something Pussycat, Pussycat did in a nursery rhyme, but we digress).

And so, TA-DA, we present The Hat That Went To London!

 

(modelled by a family member who is not in London and who wishes to remain anonymous)

I thought I might write about the agonies I go through as I try to get a hat to fit “just right.”  And the inexplicable irony that one can walk into a department store and buy a hat marked “men’s” and it will fill any guy well enough – but try to knit a hat specifically for a guy even if you have a good idea of his head measurement and can try it on a variety of family members who also have heads (which you can pretty much guess are slightly smaller or slightly larger than that of the intended recipient)….Well, Sarah says that store-bought machine-made hats are stretchier. 

Anyhow, I only had to rip back the hat twice. 

Once when I, knitting it in the round, apparently failed to “join being careful not to twist” and had a charming wool mobius going.  And since I had to start over anyhow, I flapped about in agonies over the size and added cast-on stitches (which turned out to be the right thing to do – so I forgive the mobius). 

Once when I had finished the hat and started trying it on random family members.  And it was too short. 

 

Okay, except on Gwen!

 Grrrrrr.  This was Monday night and I had been feeling almost smug because I (thought I had) finished 24 hours before the hat was due to fly to London. Sarah actually ripped it back for me and I worked on it that evening (after we taught our knitting class) until I was too tired to continue. 

So, there I was Tuesday afternoon, madly knitting away -- gritting my teeth and glancing at the clock.  The usual routine.  And 20 minutes before we had to leave for the airport, I cast off and wove in the ends.  And we stuffed it onto the head of the nearest family member we could find (who wishes to remain anonymous) and took a few pictures.

And then, The Hat Went To London!  In the “ta-da” knick of time.  As usual.

 

A Pink Layette

Of course, when one has a brand new grand-daughter, one does not need any further excuse to knit dainty wee pink things.  It is shockingly easy to go all pink-wild in the yarn store -- and I have the receipt to back me up! 

But, as fate would have it, Sarah and I are putting together a class that will require layette patterns (A Layette in Your Knitting Bag – a 6-wk workshop class).  Sooo, I have a professional mandate to knit dainty wee (pink as an option) things.  All good!

But it also means designing all the wee dainties.  Kimono, sacque, bonnet, hat, socks, booties, pram blanket….instead of efficiently following in the footsteps (or fingersteps?) of the hundreds of competent designers who have developed cunning layette patterns over the last several centuries.

Take booties.  There are something like 57 pages of booties on Ravelry.  And I probably could put my hand on at least a dozen sensible bootie patterns in my own collection of books and leaflets.  Yet, here I am concocting a bootie pattern! 

And all the while my little grand-daughter is sleeping and eating and growing!  There are serious time constraints here.  So is it any wonder that (after my eyes are too droopy to knit) I lie in bed at night turning little heel and toe options around in my brain?

Pink-Wild Motivation + Serious Time Constraints = OBSESSION!

"Spokane Ferocity" Part I

I have just completed my “Tunic Ferocity” (a Ferocity is a one-of-a-kind piece that Sarah and I design, either separately or together) – aka the “Spokane Ferocity” because I bought most of the yarn in a shop called Holy Threads in Spokane. A very cool shop, by the way!

One of my favorite designing techniques is to search my stash, a shop or a yarn market (like those at Madrona or Stitches West) for yarns that go together and then design a Ferocity with them. Sometimes I have a shape in mind – perhaps a capelet or a poncho. Sometimes I just gather up the yarn in sort of a mystical frenzy knowing I can figure the rest out later. That was the genesis of the “Spokane Ferocity.”

This Ferocity (like pretty much all the Ferocities I have made or am likely to make), incorporated several different yarns and stitch patterns – usually 2 or more going at once. I began knitting the back (actually, it is meant to be reversible, so “the back” is merely an arbitrary notation) on one set of needles and the front on another and switched back and forth between the two as the mood struck.

The so-called back has 2 shades (purple and blue) of Trendsetter Pandora Shadow which is a texturally variegated yarn and I thought it might be fun and (ha ha) simple to switch from stockinette to reverse stockinette to garter as the yarn “changes” from the smooth-puffy to the eyelash to the ribbon.

Just follow the visual clues, right? Knit as long as the ribbon part lasts, then as the smooth-puffy hits the needles, switch to purl (if I am on the wrong side – if I am on the right side, I just keep knitting, of course). Not too difficult until you throw in the third texture (from smooth-puffy to eyelash, go from knitting to purling on the right side, purling to knitting on the wrong side, but from ribbon to eyelash switch from knitting to purling only on the right side and do not switch at all on the wrong side…).

Add the second color of the same yarn – left side in blue and right side in purple with the purple advancing onto the blue side and the blue side itself gradually “moving” toward the left since the vest began as a blue point on the bottom right edge. Note that each separate ball of yarn has its own random changes of texture.

Sooooo, on each row there are the increases, the decreases, the color change-over, the textural changes which call for switching from knitting to purling or purling to knitting or not switching at all – and everything depends upon whether I am on the right or wrong side of the darned thing.

And, for quite a while, it looked like I was knitting one of the less well-known Muppets. The so-called front was, maybe? simpler. It had an 8-row repeat lace pattern (linen/silk) on the right and a 24-row cable (tweedy aran) on the left.

Actually, I can handle the complexities of this kind of project just fine – as long as my brain is energized, my eyes are fresh, and nothing in Western Washington makes any sudden movements. As ideal conditions did not present themselves (our house is kind of like a gypsy camp with the addition of cell phones – at least, I don’t think traditional gypsy camps had cell phones – and I realize that my daughter Sasha who spent last semester in Prague will say I should say “Roma People” instead of “gypsy,” but I am not sure the Roma People would like their name associated with the motley suburban/bohemian chaos that centers itself in my living room – oh, and my additional apologies to the Bohemians for the same reason) – where was I?

Oh, yes, concentration in less than ideal conditions….well, I would probably get twitchy if the house was quiet all the time and I had uninterrupted knitting time. On the rare occasions when I do get a silent hour to myself, I keep hopping up to check the laundry or write something on the calendar for the first 45 minutes. Then, once I start to settle into the groove, someone comes home or the phone rings and life is back to normal. I think I have the attention span of a gnat.