Ewe and ram hand puppets spotted at Malabrigo’s booth at Stitches West 2013.
A pair of cute children’s mittens spotted at Stitches West 2013 last weekend. They are Horatio and Oren, by Barbara Gregory and published by Twist Collective.
Curses! $%#!
That’s me venting my frustrations over my Strago Socks knitting experience. I started this project a few weeks ago. By all accounts, it should have been finished within a week, really.
Strago has a very simple colorwork pattern; it’s only four repeating rows. Of course, stranded knitting, even a pattern this simple, is not mindless knitting that you should knit while watching a tv series in a foreign language that requires you to read subtitles. Mistakes happen:
I unraveled the few rows and promptly went to sleep.
And then, when I picked the project up again a few days later, while sitting in the High Camp at Squaw Valley, I had only managed to knit a few more rows, when this happened:
Ouch.
I sat back, enjoyed the view, and didn’t knit the rest of the day.
The next day, I was determined to power through the first sock, and I did so without further injury.
But, a few rows into the second sock, and well, I had to unravel everything…
Strago, I’ll get back to you soon.
Pattern: Strago socks by Jared Flood (ravelry)
Source: “The Knitter’s Book of Socks” by Clara Parkes
I love kate davies and her designs
…and I have an obsession with Japanese knitting and crochet pattern books. There’s something about the photography and design of their books that’s just so sweet and appealing.
So, to have a Japanese book feature her work—well, I would love to flip through the pages:
“Happy Knitting”
BNN Publishing, Japan
ISBN 978-4-86100-847-4
This book also features designs by Ysolda Teague and Gudrun Johnson.
Final FOs of 2012
Here are some of my finished just-in-time-for-Christmas and end-of-year knits:
A modified Indicum pullover. (ravelry)
A sparkly red crocheted beret. (ravelry)
A shortened Bowline hat. (ravelry)
Although I really didn’t post much about it, 2012 saw the renewal of my knitting and designing. I’m really happy to look back at my photos and see how many new and different things I knitted and to flip through my notebook and see how many design ideas I’ve jotted down.
Maybe this year they’ll be more than just ideas?
Happy 2013!
Sunday morning crochet
Pattern: Columbia Beret
Source: Rosie’s Yarn Cellar in Philadelphia, PA.
Yarn: Dream in Starry, Fingering weight.
Hook: G, 4.5mm
Block to measurements?
Block lightly.
Block as required.
Lately, this phrase and its variations, usually the last line you’ll read in a knitting pattern, has started to bother me. I mean really, exactly what is required?
For all of my knitting, I wetblock: that is, I soak and rinse the garment in shampoo or wool-wash, pin it out on a board to measurements, and let it dry for a few days. That’s easy to do when almost all of my knits have been accessories, such as lace shawlettes and hats, and small baby-sized garments. I also wetblocked my recently finished giant braided cable cowl, which was knit with a very thirsty chunky-weight wool.
But now that I’m coming to the end (okay that’s a bit of a stretch) of two sweaters — one in a chunky weight wool yarn and the other in a sock weight wool yarn, both seamless and knit in the round — I’ve really started to wonder, is wetblocking enough? Otherwise, what sort of washing and blocking do they require?!
I was pretty angsty about this (especially because I realized that even I am guilty of using those less than helpful phrases in my own published patterns) until I remembered that one of the reasons I adobted wetblocking was because I’d read it in a blog post written by Eunny Jang. (Hers was one of the first knitting blogs I regularly followed when I started knitting again in 2005.)
I quickly searched for the post to see if there was something I might have missed or forgotten over the years and laughed when I re-read “Block me, Amadeus” and “How to be happy”. She’s contributed a number of tutorials in her time as Interweave Knits’s editor; but, her old blog still contains such a wealth of opinion and valuable information about knitting and techniques.
As for me, I was satisfied that I found my answer: wetblocking is the way to go.
And in future, I will be more descriptive with blocking requirements for my own designs.
a little viking helmet
I’ve been back from Sweden a couple of weeks now, and when I think about it, two months was a long time to be away. But it flew by so fast, it hardly felt like two weeks. And at the end, I didn’t want to leave. Sad face.
On the plus side, being back to my more quiet and uneventful* life in San Francisco has been very good for my knitting! I’ve finished stuff (winter accessories!) and started new stuff (sweaters!)! And I have plenty of holiday knitting (more winter accessories and sweaters!) to keep me busy as I count the days until I go back to Stockholm.
So, let’s see… I wanted to show off a quick little knit I completed for a friend’s one year old:
Yarn: Cascade 220 (in off-white and dark heather grey)
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm)
Pattern: Knitty Button’s Vandal Helmet.
I made slight modifications for a bigger size. You can see more pictures and details on my ravelry project page.
—-
* I just mean the normalcy of my daily activities compared to uniqueness of traveling across Scandinavia—There’s really no room for “quiet and uneventful” when living in San Francisco. ^_^
