Photos

Finally got around to taking some photos and uploading them. Also, I finished the purple shawl except for weaving in all the ends. The shawl is lovely, fairly heavy, too, as it is mostly cotton and just about worsted weight. It will be nice for fall.

This is half of the pair of socks I am knitting for my son. Using Knitpicks sock yarn. Did not think he was ready for self-striping or self-patterned yarn! I like to knit socks toe-up using the mitered toe and heel. I tried grafting toes and that was not in my skill set; I also disliked the heel gusset or whatever. When I finally learned how to do the mitered method, I fell in love with sock knitting.




Here is another pair of socks I knitted for myself out of Tofutsie yarn. I did a "fake cable" pattern that is very easy and very effective that I got out of my stitch dictionary.


And, finally, the beginning of another purple shawl. This one is wool (remember the free yarn?) and am adding beads to the edge..it will be triangular. I'm not sure about liking a triangular shawl, since I am 5' tall, but am getting bored with rectangulars, and the pattern included in the yarn package was triangular.

Free Yarn

I am a complete sucker for free yarn. I am a member of Charlotte Knitting Guild and at the last meeting, a member had done a stash clean-out and brough a box of yarn to give away. I decided to take a peak, and right on top was a kit with three skeins of purple merino laceweight wool with a simple shawl pattern. You know I love purple, and this was not quite the same shade as the purple cotton shawl I am working on, so I grabbed it.

Since I also love to start a new project immediately, no matter how many UFO's I have in my knitting bag, I started the shawl that same night. It is a standard triangle shawl done in garter stitch, but this one is knit from corner to corner. After a few dozen rows I got bored and decided I had to do SOMETHING. Hmmmmm....so I found some pretty purplish gray size 8 beads, by teeny tiny crochet hook used for attaching beads to the yarn, and am adding a bead to the final stitch of the increase row, giving me a subtle beaded border for the bottom of the shawl. (Every other row is an increase row to get the shape for the shawl). And no, I did not frog the whole thing so the first 12 inches would have the border...figure I'll thread yarn with the beads when I am done and sew or crochet beads to that section.

I still have the purple cotton shawl on the needles, one wool sock to go for my son, and am working on a khaki cotton shrug for fall (it is in the 90's right now and hard to conceive of wearing that thing). But this way, I have lots of things to knit to keep from getting bored!!!

On the Needles

First, thanks to everybody who checks my blog frequently. And apologies that I am one of those bloggers who rarely updates. Whenever I get the Sitemeter report I am surprised that so many of you continue to check on me.

The purple shawl is coming along. It is knitted from purple Callista from Elann.com and I love the way it feels in my hands. It knits up a bit heavy, as compared to my "famous" pink shawl, but that means it will be nice in the Fall. I think it is going to come out in a slight curve, which is nice. As I said in the previous post, a month ago, I started with three stitches and increased every row until it was the width I wanted, then just knit back and forth in the pattern I chose. I was supposed to decrease and one end and increase at the other every other row to make it straight: Slant Shawl Pattern.. Since I had a pattern stitch I liked and was not sure how to keep adjusting it for the increase/decrease, I chose to just knit back and forth and have been surprised at the shaping; perhaps when it is done and blocked it will be straight. Stay tuned.

Another Shawl Begins

Finally am knitting a little again. Not that I stopped; just that I am enjoying it more and thinking design again. I do have socks on my needle with my favorite Tofutsies yarn. I also am knitting baby hats for Charlotte Knitting Guild charities. Those are fun.

I have started and stopped several projects; a sweater I know I will not wear, a shawl that I knew I would run out of yarn halfway through, etc. The sweater I had started was out of a lovely purple elann.com Callista yarn. I kept looking at that yarn and looking at it; it needed to be a shawl, not a sweater. I think a shawl in that yarn would come close to making me as happy as my 'famous' pink shawl does. So....

I am designing this purple shawl, since I like to do things like that. This shawl is going to begin and end with a point. The advantage of this is that I can take notice of how much yarn I have used when the shawl is wide enough, and save that amount to finish it with, and just knit in between.

I thought about doing it just in garter stitch, but knew I would be crazy with boredom within two days. I like the smoothness of stockinette, but a little lace does give a wow factor. There is a pattern in one of my books called Overlapping Waves. I have been going to use that pattern several times and it just never happened. Well NOW is the time.

I could have taken the easy way out and just knitted the pointy part in stockinette or some simple yo's here and there but I have never been known for making things easy on myself...no challenge there. So, I started this overlapping waves pattern down at the point. The pattern naturally widens as the shawl widens. Multiples of six, so it is pretty easy to do that. The pattern is also very easy for my brain to comprehend. And I must say it is gorgeous so far. I am doing a six stitch garter border on each side of the shawl to give me a nice selvedge to hold onto.

A photo will show up in a bit.

Summer Sewing

As usual in the spring, my attention turns to sewing clothing. In this case, pants. Summer weight fabrics are easy to find, work with, and wear. The colors are fun. I have difficulty finding pants since I like pull-on styles that come to my waist. I am a combination of sizes.

Earlier this spring, I took apart my favorite, worn-out pants and made a pattern. I can whip up a pair now in about two hours. Have ordered quite a bit of fabric at www.fabric.com and for the first time in years actually have a choice of pants in my closet to wear. Linen, cotton, silk noile, microfiber.......

My interest in knitting has waned as my interest in sewing has grown. I tend to have a one track mind and concentrate on one thing at a time. My knitting mood right now is to knit mindless things; no lace!!!

I do still love knitting socks and have a pair on the needles; great for knitting in the car! My daughter-in-law told me to knit my son a pair of socks, so will do that when I spend a week with them at the beach this summer. I need the foot with me when I knit socks, since I knit from the toe up and do a mitered heel, if the foot part is too long, it is too long. My daughter's second pair of socks is too long. Sigh.

Spring Knitting

I have drifted away from knitting recently. I fell in love with knitting socks and now that it is too warm to wear them, I am at a bit of a loss what I want to knit. Have several things started, nothing enticing.

I was at Biltmore Village in Asheville, NC a few weeks ago and a knit shop was right across from the restaurant I had eaten lunch with on a tour of Asheville. We had free time so I made a beeline for it. The proprietors were very nice and upstairs was a table full of yarn bags, discontinued lines and colors. Since I am a bargain hunter at heart, I could not leave without a bag! I chose a bag of Debbie Bliss' Cotton Cashmere in a khaki color. And since I have trouble buying yarn without casting on something immediately, am working on a shrug.

I also decided I needed a new small drawstring purse and had some cotton yarn in a beige and a khaki color; I strung some wooden beads on one of the yarns and began the purse, will knit the beads into it in some sort of pattern.

I got out the pink shawl I completed last year and have been enjoying it this spring; it is still the one item I have knitted that I adore and continue to get compliments. In fact, I was just tossing it over my shoulders at the end of our shopping break on my Asheville tour and one of the woman gasped and asked me if I had just bought it in one of the shops! The yarn was a German mercerized cotton yarn that I bought from elann.com and it turned out to be on closeout and the entire line discontinued. This is the nicest feeling cotton yarn (it is a very upscale version of the crochet cotton on the cardboard tube we find at discount stores)and I wish I had known it was discontinued; I would have bought more in every color!

Sock Toes and Heels

I figured out (maybe) why my two sides of the mitered toes and heels were uneven...when I turned after the final purl row on short rows, I was not doing my yo's before I started the knit row back to start closing the gaps.

Since I last blogged I have explored other methods of short-row toes and heels. What looked to be the simplest, Japanese short rows, I decided against finally because of the fumbling about with markers. I tried safety pins, paper clips, and yarn scraps and it was very awkward, also I could not "read" the stitches and gaps very well. I hated the markers, and with the cheater method of sssp a knitlister taught me, "purl, move stitch back to left needle, pass next two stitches over and drop them, move stitch back to right needle", am happier with the YO method. The knit gap closing rows are still neater than the purl gap closing rows, but nobody but me is looking.

I love my socks and alternate between the three pair I have knitted. The second pair of Tofutsies is underway. I really gauged it and measured my foot better and this pair is going to fit closely to my feet. I have tiny, narrow feet. Bad for buying shoes, but good for getting two pairs of socks out of a ball of sock yarn!

Love Affair with Socks

I continue to adore knitting socks. I have knitted three pair, one in the Lion Brand, one in Tofutsies, and one in Plymouth Yarn's Sockotta I got from Yarn Girls. My daughter visited this weekend and loved the socks so much, I have started her a pair in another color of Sockotta. This is a big thing....she has never been a fan of anything handknitted. These short row toe up socks just fit so good!

The only problem I was running into was how to do the sssp. The instructions to do this require one to be a contortionist. So I threw the question out to the wonderful knitlisters and got good replies. For anybody out there that blanches at the sight of sssp in the instructions....when you come to the stitches to be 'sssp'ed' you purl the first stitch, put it back on left neeedle, pick up the next two stitches, one at a time, and DROP them over the purl stitch and completely off the needle. Then put the purl stitch back on the right needle, turn. Perfect.

I still do seem to have a problem with the right and left sides coming out the same when I increase on both toe and heel, always having the knit side finished and still have more wrapped pairs to purl (guess I need to do this part of the socks NOT watching tv)....so I just finagle it by knitting plain rows and finishing up the purl wraps. Does not seem to matter so much as the stitches are tiny and pretty much hidden in your shoes all the time! Knitting perfectionists or purists will shudder at this, but I am NOT frogging a toe or a heel, I would drop so many stitches I would end up with big holes in the toe or heel and would rather have it slightly lopsided instead.

Socks, Finally

I have mentioned that socks elude me. I have pretty much done everything else knitty except a successful sock. I even did Fair Isle back in the 1970's with Lopi yarn that I bought in big bags at the Icelandic factory.

Well, I have knitted two single socks and frogged a couple. Traditional cuff down socks pose two dilemmas for me. One, I hate to finish and having the dreaded toe graft to do at the very end is more than I can bear. Two, I hate to pick up stitches and you have to do that on the heel. Also, I have "princess feet" and don't like a seam or ridge anywhere near my feet. Grafted toes and picked up stitches both produce lumps as far as I am concerned. Also, I feel like it is just too much guesswork trying to figure out where to pick up those heel stitches and to get the right number of stitches picked up, then there is the 'ridge' created. I know yarn is soft, but still.

But I have resented all the socks I see people knitting and posting on their blogs. Not that I think I even want to wear hand knitted socks, I just want to know how to knit them. After all, they are nice and portable. And cheap in the overall scheme of knitting.

I absolutely can't stand dpns. I knit loosely and those needles simply slide out of the stitches. Every time. I knitted a single sock using two circulars that was semi successful. I did not like the cotton yarn; not soft enough for princess feet. I decided that I might have actually had a pair of socks IF I had knitted 'two socks on two circulars', so I got my instructions and tried. I really did. And just about went insane. I spent more time untwisting and untangling the yarn than I did knitting. Those are frogged and rewound.

Well, dpns are out and I did not really like the dangling needles you have with two circulars. That leaves one long circular to learn. I practiced on some worsted yarn and fat needles (created a long circular out of my Denise's). I love the technique.

With all the aggravation I have described you are probably wondering why on earth I am still muddling over knitting socks. Pure stubbornness. And I love a challenge.

So I know I don't want to knit a cuff down sock again. I keep hearing about toe up socks, but I can't seem to find instructions that I can understand. But I want to try the toe up sock. mostly because I am stubborn as I said. I happened upon The Perfect Sock Pattern and loved the result. Amazingly, using the exact stitch count from the pattern actually made a sock that fit, since my gauge was different (I promise I did some math and thought it would fit, and you can try on as you go with toe up socks, anyway). I have completed one sock and am almost to the heel of the second. No second sock syndrome!!! No lumps, no seams. I am using Lion Brand's Magic Stripe washable wool and really like the feel of it on my foot, although the yarn is making my hands sticky. What's with that, anyway? And I love the striping yarn that hides mistakes.

The only downside of the pattern is having to do a sssp. THAT is awkward, even though I did find a video of the technique online but can't find the site just now to link. There HAS to be an easier way to get the same result, some sort of a "cheat". After all, I do cheat on the ssk. Ha.

The person who designed the sock pattern cited above indicated that the sock is based on Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts. They just added a Turkish Cast On that I found surprisingly easy as compared to all the other toe up cast-ons I had tried to understand.

Interestingly, I will finally have a pair of wool socks to wear now that spring has sprung in the Carolinas!!! But wool breathes, right?