Tag: Knitting Projects

Journey into 3-D: Notebook – The Jewel Scarf

I learned a valuable lesson when working in 3-D: never take the knitting needle out of live stitches by accident, especially when working a lace pattern.

I bought some lovely yarn on one of my trips and, since we just moved, I can\’t find the ball band to tell you about it. But suffice it to say that it worked up into a lovely narrow scarf for use with a work outfit or something. Just as I was trying to figure out how to cast off, I pulled out what I thought was the non-working needle and voila.

It was the working needle.

For those of you who don\’t know what I mean, in knitting, you have live stitches on a needle. If you have experience, you can generally put them back on a needle. It takes practice. I can do it, if I\’m careful, with stockinette stitch – so-called \”plain\” knitting. I can do it with rib stitches and garter stitches too. But lace? Not so much.

Sadly, I fiddled and faddled and put the project away sometime last year or early this year.

In moving, I found it again and decided to bite the bullet and start over. Yesterday, I sat down with my trusty ball winder and took the scarf apart. I\’m going to make it over again with a pattern from Barbara Walker\’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, called \”Rick Rib.\” It\’s a combination of rib stitch and lace. It\’s very simple to work, just two lines, and can be made on any even number of stitches. I\’ve cast on twenty and started. Here\’s how it looks so far (there\’s not much yet, but from tiny acorns…)

Here is the project with the yarn next to it. The jumbled bits are because I did about six rows and realized I\’d made several errors and had the wrong stitch count. Some knitting days are like that. I started over this morning and it\’s going more smoothly.

I love the way the knitted cast on looks like a series of sideways knit stitches. I\’ll post more pictures once I have the pattern established so you can get a look at it.

October 1, 2013
Saturday Showcase – Upcoming Releases!

I\’m so excited. I\’ve been emailing around the interwebs and am tickled pink, purple, and yellow to report that I have TWO surprises for you coming in October!

October 19th, author Tina Holland will be coming to KK to talk about her craft of scrapbooking. Tina is a trip – she lives on a self-proclaimed \”hobby farm\” in Minnesota, writes sexy romances with the tagline, \”Have You Been Naughty Today?\” and hopes one day to open a bed and breakfast with her husband, a pilot and something of a mad scientist himself. My kind of people!

When I asked Tina what crafts she likes, she said none. None? NONE? Well, scrapbooking. It\’s really her aunt\’s passion, she told me, but from the sounds of it I think Tina qualifies as a crafter. Have you seen some of these scrapbooks? But I want to know more about why she focuses on writing and what niche it fills for her in terms of creative expression, and how that ties in with scrapbooking. I can\’t wait.

On October 26th, author and textile artist Maddy Barone will be coming to play! I so want to marry Maddy and hide her away as my kept woman to write books and make stuff. Multi-talented, she can design period clothing, knit, write awesome books, and I wouldn\’t be surprised to find out she can do magic too. We haven\’t yet managed to meet in person, though we\’ve talked on the phone, but one day I will make her part of the Noonypod.

Noonypod. I just made that up. I love it! 🙂

Now, don\’t be like that. You won\’t be assimilated, silly!

At least not until October… o.O…

September 28, 2013
Saturday Showcase – Me!

Now that we are moved and almost all settled in, (I unpacked the last box of books today!), I have knitting knews – and it\’s HUGE!

I\’m knitting again!

That\’s right, sports fans, I started knitting again! My carpal tunnel is still aching, but it\’s subsided enough to let me do some gentle tasks. I also started playing the piano again and am doing some finger-strengthening exercises from the Hanon book that are really helpful. I\’ve noticed my hands don\’t ache as much and I\’m getting strength back in my fingers, though I still get really numb.

Wow. Get me talking about my hands and I sound like a little old lady. \”My bunions are…\” Yeah. Shaddup and git ta tha good stuff!

I bought some very ridiculously expensive suri alpaca and Merino wool blend, one hank of cream and one of … hmm. Mocha? Sand? Not sure. It\’s pretty, whatever it is, and beautiful to work with. I wanted to do a pattern that set off the colors well so I settled on making a short stole with one of Barbara Walker\’s patterns. Take a look at how it\’s coming along:

I figure it will be long enough to wrap around the neck like a collar and then be secured with a shawl pin or something similar. I wish I had enough for tassels, because I think that would look cool, but there isn\’t enough of the stuff unless I want to take it apart and make it more narrow. I don\’t really want to do that, so a pretty shawl pin (or maybe even a button) it is.

Stay tuned. I have weaving journal pictures to share but I\’ve been so busy with the move that I just haven\’t had time. What WILL you do without me?

Knit!

Duh.

September 22, 2013
Happy Stashbusting New Year!
Welcome to 2013! 365 days to knit, crochet, weave, or play with your favorite craft; 52 weeks of inspired ideas; 12 months of possibility; 4 seasons filled with opportunities for enjoyment; it\’s a brand new year, kids, and we ain\’t gettin\’ any younger! So LET\’S GET BIZZY!

My theme for this year is Completion. Here\’s my plan of attack:
- Define the parameters (i.e. what is my stash, exactly?)
- Define the weaponry (i.e. what tools do I have, and what, if any, are needed?)
- Easy wins (what\’s already started or nearly done?)
- Planned Campaigns (what\’s already planned but not yet executed?)
- Contingencies (what can we come up with that\’s new?)
There\’s a lot of play to do this year. Today I\’m finishing the Celebration of Light and Color Shawl (it just needs to be washed and blocked), and working on the diamond wrap. Weaving class is Thursday and Michael and I are planning our next item for the Wardrobe of 2013.

What about you? What yearnings have you got buried in your little crafty heart? Trust that today is the day, and this is the year. Craft on!
January 1, 2013

Humpday Update – Bryce Canyon Shawl and Prayer Shawl

I finished the Bryce Canyon Shawl today. The last step was to add a 6 row garter stitch border to match the edges of the shawl and the bottom of the triangle. Then I used a knit one, purl one bind-off to make sure it would be elastic enough. The edge took a while to finish but I’m pleased with the results. I’ll share the bind-off here since I’ve used it a couple other times and really like it.

1. Cut the yarn 3 times the width of the edge and thread a yarn needle. Insert the yarn needle purlwise into the first stitch. Pull the yarn through. With the yarn needle behind the next stitch, insert it knitwise into the purl stitch and pull the yarn through.

2. *Slip the first knit stitch knitwise and insert the yarn needle into the second stitch on the needle purlwise. Pull the yarn through.

3. Slip the first stitch purlwise. Go behind the next stitch and insert the needle knitwise into the next stitch. Pull the yarn through. Repeat from the * in step 2 until all the stitches are bound off.

The next step is to block the shawl. It is stretched out of the way because of the lace. It needs to be stretched to allow the lace to lay flat. I’ll post pictures of that, but here are the images of the finished shawl (below).

In addition, I finished the prayer shawl for a friend of a friend who has colon cancer. It’s a triangle shawl like the Bryce Canyon Shawl, but with an allover lace pattern that’s K1, *YO, K2T. The edges are a 3-stitch garter stitch border with a YO, which is where the shape comes from. I used a picot bind-off which is quite pretty, along with 3 tassels.

This is an overall view of the shawl that shows the 3 lace diamonds and the lace outline, which is a vertical lace trellis stitch from Barbara Walker.

This is the bottom, center, medallion, also from Barbara Walker.

This is the medallion on the left. When worn, this appears over the left shoulder and down the arm.

This is the right medallion and, like the left, appears on the arm.

This shows the bound-off edge with the garter stitch edge and the sewing needle bind-off.

This is the first comprehensive picture of the Prayer Shawl. I used Lion Brand Homespun, in Harvest colorway. The shawl is too large to show flat (it\’s on a Full bed), so I folded the edges. I used tassels on each of the 3 corners.

I stepped back to show the shawl again. I love the way the yarn stripes.

This is a detail of the picot bind-off, on the inside left; ont he inside right you can see the garter edge with yarn-over increase. The bind-off takes a while, but as you can see the results are worth it.

The preparation of the Prayer Shawl will simply be to wash and dry it. It doesn\’t require blocking, since the yarn doesn\’t pull out of shape.

July 18, 2012

Humpday Update – Pictures and Thoughts – the Bryce Canyon Shawl

The Bryce Canyon Shawl

You know, it\’s hot enough here in Chicago to fry an egg on the sidewalk (maybe not literally, but it sure feels like it), so working on a shawl that is reminiscent of my time in the desert is, perhaps, fitting.

As I work on it, I am surprised by my progress. It feels massive, like it will never be done; as I add new yarn only a couple inches from the last addition I worry I won\’t have enough yarn and will never get to work on my other projects. My Puritanical Critic chimes in with, you\’d better not work on anything until this is done, and I despair.

Yet I see progress. There are four more inches over the last medallion, which surprises me. When did I have time to add four inches? I only just finished that medallion this last weekend! But this is the magic of knitting. Stitch by stitch, inch by inch, progress accumulates.

Kind of like life.

My husband is the professional photographer, which you can sort of tell since all you see of me is the top of my forehead. And MAN can you tell it\’s hot by how shiny my head is! What a pate.

Oh, right. The knitting, Noony, is why they\’re reading this. ~blush~

See how many inches I\’ve added above the ending of the center medallion? Wowsers.

Okay, this time I got my eyes, at least. I\’m still wearing my old glasses, since my new ones had to go back to the doctor to be fixed and they\’re not ready yet. This is one of the two medallions that will be on the top.

And this is a close-up of that medallion. I love Barbara Walker\’s sampler ideas! These are so fun to make. I\’m on row 84 here. Only about 50 more to go before the end, then I\’ll add a few inches of the lace stitch. (It\’s called \”faggoting,\” but I keep not typing that because it makes me blush and I don\’t want folks to think I\’m being rude.)

July 4, 2012

Journey Into 3-D

This weekend I had an object lesson in the difference between 2-D planning and 3-D execution. Namely, yarn estimation.

When my baby Bryce Canyon Shawl was nice and small, it was easy to imagine I\’d only need a few skeins of yarn. I\’d done other triangle shawls and wanted this one to be \”bigger\” (technical term) so I knew if I got more yarn, I\’d be fine. So I got a few skeins.

Then I threw in the wrinkle of the two extra lace medallions.

But this also means that there are continuous increases, all the way up the shawl.

Those of you who already knit know what\’s coming. I ran out of yarn this weekend. We went and picked up six more skeins, after running my new estimate by my husband who isn\’t as geometrically challenged as me. We shall see.

Here\’s a couple progress photos for you.

The center medallion is now done, as of this weekend. I put it on my dress form to take this picture, which turned out surprisingly well. However, the fabric I already had on the dress form clashes horribly, which is why I\’m not showing you the view from the front.

The side medallions are getting really big. I love the way they get set off by the lace on either side; I think it\’s coming out really well. I love it when a plan comes together!

July 2, 2012

Humpday Update: Designing the Bryce Canyon Shawl

The design of the Bryce Canyon Shawl is coming together. I selected two more lace diamonds to incorporate; they\’ll start at the midpoint of the center medallion. I\’m estimating the shape on the fly, rather than working it out mathematically; I decided I didn\’t want to draw it out but am trusting my gut. We shall see.

I\’m loving the colors and the way the yarn looks in the pattern. Lion Brand did a nice job with this fiber.

As an aside, my birthday present arrived from KnitPicks and now I\’m all excited. I want to play with it (16 balls of electric dark blue and 16 balls of maple syrup brown), but I\’m staying focused on the shawl at the moment. I don\’t know if I want to make one blue sweater and one brown, or do two mosaics with both colors. We shall see.

But for now, here are some pictures of the Bryce Canyon Shawl so you can see how the design progresses:

This is a picture from last week, and you can see the start of the center medallion. It will be a diamond and has a 3 stitch border in plain stockinette stitch on either side, with a yarn over (i.e. a hole) just inside that.

The two small clear crystals aren\’t beads, those are stitch markers and they sit on either side of the medallion (this is one way you can keep track of knitting pattern changes). They don\’t have to be fancy, and in fact I have several plain steel rings on the needles but I wanted to use my fancy rings for the medallion since I have them and they\’re pretty.

They\’re actually a little annoying to work with, to be honest. There\’s a bar that hangs down from the ring, and it\’s twisted metal. That\’s what is used to attach the crystal. The problem is that a) it attaches to the stitches sometimes, and b) it gets in the way of the needles when I\’m knitting. I make it work, because I like the way they look as I\’m working, but they\’re not the most practical of beasts. I prefer the plain steel rings my husband made for me from heavy-gauge steel wire.

Here is how it looks today. The faux cable look of the center \”V\” is deceptive; that\’s just because the needle isn\’t long enough to let the pattern lay flat. But in this view, you can see the center medallion progressing up to its middle panel (a helix laying sideways that mimics the vertical one you can see).

The little white bit that looks like a scrap of paper on the left is a scrap of paper. 🙂 I was knitting outside yesterday, sitting on the grass by the river, and dropped one of my rings. The grass ate it. I spent quit a while looking for it, too, but no luck.

I decided to stop increasing the lace lattice that is on the outside. Since I\’m adding two medallions and they have their own increases/decreases, I stopped adding stitches at the sides and will let it grow from the stitches within the medallions. I may change my mind once it grows some more, but we\’ll see. (That\’s the geometry I mentioned earlier.)

This final image shows the right-hand medallion just beginning. There are only about 6 rows so far, so it\’s not easy to see in this image, but you can at least get an idea of where it will go. The lattice will continue between the medallions on the sides and the center panel, to keep the overall feel of the shawl consistent.

That\’s our Wednesday update. Happy knitting!

June 13, 2012
New Shawl Design

I bought some lovely yarn from Lion Brand, called \”Amazing.\” The colorway is Regatta, which is a subtle rainbow of overdyed colors. I decided to make a triangle shawl with it, using a couple different lace patterns and center diamonds from Barbara Walker\’s Fourth Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

In designing, I first tried a swatch of stockinette stitch. Somehow, I misread the ball band and thought it wanted Size 6 U.S. and made the swatch with those needles. It didn\’t look the way I wanted, especially the honeycomb slipped stitch design.

Then I read the ball band. Size 9 U.S.

Oh.

Trying it with Size 9 produced better results, but still too dense of a pattern when I knitted a simple moss stitch. I took that out and played with Vertical Lace Trellis, also by Barbara Walker but this time in her A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I added an increase stitch on either side of every even row. Due to the nature of the pattern, I simply didn\’t use a decrease on the one side, but added a make 1 to the other. While this allowed me to get the correct stitch count, it pulled the design out of shape.

I\’m going to pull this swatch out, and try it again with simple make ones, while banding the lace with a simple garter stitch edge. That will let me center the triangle in the middle, keeping the edges straight. We\’ll see how that works from here.

May 13, 2012
A Bit of Baby…

Wow, it\’s already October! Time passes so quickly, eh?

I have been knitting, just not writing about it. Currently, I am working on holiday gifts and a very quick baby blanket for my husband\’s boss, to give to him tonight at his birthday party. He just had a baby (well, his wife did), and so I wanted to have the blanket done when I see him. JUST finished it today! ~pants~

It\’s from a very easy pattern book by Jean Leinhauser and Rita Weiss called 7 Day Afghans called \”Raspberries and Cream.\” I varied the pattern a bit and used two slip stitches for the main color rather than one; I like the receding window pane effect as well as the loft of the resultant fabric.

I don\’t have time to wash it before tonight, and it needs to be; while blocking isn\’t strictly necessary with the acrylic yarn I used it does need to be reshaped and washing will help that. It has a two-inch seed-stitch border around it which allows it to lay flat.

In this image, you can see the back of the blanket and how the two-stitch carries along the back help it to be extra fluffy. It\’s a nice blanket to squish against and I think it will feel really nice against baby\’s skin.

October 14, 2011
Fiji Kit

My friend works in an industrial sales office, and is around men most of the day. She lives in the Midwest, but I think would be more comfortable in a writing cabana by the ocean where she had nothing to do all day but write.

Since I can’t buy her the cabana in the Caribbean, I’m making her a desk set instead. It’s one of those awful, uber-cute desk sets, too – the kind you find at White Elephant sales and bad parties.

Yes, I’m that kind of friend. ~leer~

But in all seriousness, the box for paperclips and the stapler cover shaped like a shark are worth the kitsch. Here’s a picture of the kit in its entirety:

I’ve finished knitting the cabana box cover bits, and now all that’s left is to felt them. Since the rest needs to be felted too, I figured I’d do it all at one time to save washer water. Here are the box pieces:

This is the base piece, done in plain stockinette stitch (which is knit a row, purl a row). I actually finished these and realize I don’t have a picture of that, so that will have to wait. But here are some more pix:

This is the base all finished up. As you can see, it’s quite long. It will shrink when it’s felted, and it will be sewn together over a plastic mesh base.

The bottom is knit in plain stockinette in a sand color. At first, I couldn’t figure out why they selected a mud brown for such a cheerful piece, and then I realized that it’s supposed to be the sand floor.

Duh.

These were fun to knit. The cabana caps are just about the right size to be a cat hat.

Yeah, don’t try that at home…

Knit in the round, you can see the gradual decrease pattern in the grid under the knitting. You decrease each of the four sides on the decrease rounds, so it has a very pronounced triangular or pyramidical shape.

Next we come to the wrist rest. Knit in intarsia, it’s got a complex little picture of fish and kelp. Quite cute, if you’re needlepointing.

Rather more complex if you’re knitting. Each of those strings hanging down is a bobbin of color that you pick up and knit with at the relevant point in the design. While one could knit complex needlepoint or counted cross-stitch charts this way, it is very detailed and requires concentration.

I’m just past the halfway point in the intarsia design, and should be done in another week. The rows take about 15 minutes each, since they require wrapping each new color. I could not for the life of me figure out why the stripes on the edges are brown and light brown, until someone said “oh, when does the color start after the sand?”

Bong.

Sand.

Duh.

~knityfy~

March 23, 2011
Update from the Itinerant Knitter

Our writing group, the Writers Retreat, had a mini-retreat March 4th through the 6th in Indianapolis, Indiana. Authors A. Catherine Noon, Nicole Gordon, Darla M. Sands, and the Pack Rat met for a weekend of touring and hanging out and, of course, writing.
Since I went along, we of course had to do a side-trip to the LYS (Local Yarn Shop). We visited:

Mass. Ave. Knit Shop
Susan Brennan, Proprietor
862 Virginia Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46203
Main tel: (317) 638-1833
Website

It’s a very large store with a big sale room. I found some neat stuff on sale:

di.ve brand, from Biella – Itally, a ribbon yarn that’s full of luscious fall colors and a startlingly bright silver splash. It’s the Luxus line, which is 91% Polyamid and 9% Polyester; I bought color 29204, lot 1496.

I first swatched with garter stitch on size 10 needles. It yielded a very dense fabric, springy and stiff. I didn’t like it, and since garter uses up so much yarn and I only bought three balls, I decided to try something else.

I swatched a pattern from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns called “Vertical Lace Trellis.”

Vertical Lace Trellis
Odd # sts.
R1 & 3 (WS): P
R2: K1 *YO, K2T
R4 *SSK, YO, REP *, END K1

Since it’s only 4 rows, and only 2 of those rows are the pattern row and the rest is purl stitches, it’s a very easy pattern to follow. I’ve done another scarf in this pattern, but need to post some pictures of it. In the meantime, here’s what I’m trying with the Luxus:

CO 3
YO after first and before last stitch, all even-numbered rows; do pattern in the middle on the odd-numbered stitches.

This will create a triangle shawl.

I think I’ll add a bead at the point of the triangle for weight, or maybe some tassels. We’ll see.

March 23, 2011