Happy New Year

My projects haven’t made it out of the basket in a few days and probably won’t for a couple of weeks since we have a house full of guests.

Wishing everyone joy and peace for the new year.

I just finished this new stocking for my mother-in-law who loves visiting lighthouses.

The designs come from two sources, www.sweaterscapes.com and “And a Time to Knit Stockings” by Katherine Pence.

Here’s the back.

The intarsia part was done in the round using a new method described by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts  in the new version of Knitting in the Old Way and in the winter 2003 issue of Interweave Knits.  I highly recommend this method over others.

Thanks for all your kind thoughts through this difficult time. In honor of my brother, I plan to donate many pairs of socks every year to a worthy charity.

I tried working on Irish Moss last week but didn’t get far before I ripped out what I had done. Needless to say, It is not the best project to work on during a stressful time.

I’m happy to report that despite my initial problems achieving correct tension on my swatches, the width of this front piece seems to be fine.

While Irish Moss languished, I did make progress on Pretty Comfy Socks. The lace pattern is really quite easy to remember thus making it easy to pick up during a few spare moments. The second foot is coming along quickly so hopefully this weekend I can take some pictures to show how to work this short-row heel.

February 26, 1963 – October 7, 2004
I love you.

~ your sister, Melinda

While I haven’t been spending as much time online lately, I definitely find time to do something fiber related almost everyday. When I’m not knitting or spinning, I research patterns and try to think about design something simple. It all takes so much time so it doesn’t always translate into tangible results that I can post.

Washing hand knit wool clothing

Have you ever been tempted to throw your hand knit item in a front-loading washing machine? Last week I threw in my Merino Lace Socks (Interweave Knits, Summer 2003) and my first hand knit sweater made out of shrink resistant merino. It wasn’t the first time for the socks and I swear the sweater has been in before.

Well, the socks came out great but the sweater felted and shrank a bit. I should have known better. I’m not quite sure what I did differently that would cause the sweater felt. Perhaps I forgot to use the delicate cycle.

Luckily, this mistake wasn’t a total disaster. I can still wear the sweater but the fabric is no longer soft and springy. I’ve learned my lesson, from now on I’m hand washing all my hand knit items except socks make out of Koigu. Don’t you just love Koigu? These socks still look great even after a year mild wear and tear.

Irish Moss

I’ve managed to finish the front ribbing plus two rows on Irish Moss. After the first few rows I was able to get rid of the markers and do the rest by memory. If you look carefully you’ll see that the ribbing has several zigzag columns between 1/1 cross-stitch ribbing.

Even though I’ve been very distracted* this week I managed to cast on and work the first four rows of Irish Moss. As you can see I used plenty of markers to keep track of stitches.

Yes, that’s all that I’ve done in one week. Kind of pitiful, but the pattern is much more difficult then most and takes all my attention when I’m knitting it so I haven’t attempted to take it along on the bus. That’s why I haven’t gotten very far.
Here’s the project that I’ve been knitting while on the bus. I got this Pretty Comfy Sock pattern via Emma’s blog in May.

I tend to be a tight knitter and ended up using 3.5mm needles to get the correct gauge. Just like Emma, I’ll be using PGR’s short-row heels.

Back in the days when I had time to read the Socknitters list, I saved a post by Maggie Dicey that mentioned using coil-less safety pins (like the ones in the Irish Moss photo) to mark the working yarn instead of doing yarn-overs. Here are her exact words.

“The purpose of the YO is to make the turning thread from the previous row(s) available to be worked with the following stitch. You can achieve the same thing by hanging a coil-less safety pin or a length of waste thread over the working yarn close to the needle when you make the turn. Then when you get back to the turning point, lift up on the thread or pin and slide the loop(s) onto the left needle and proceed as above.” She then goes on to mention that this is known as Japanese short-rowing.

As some of you might remember, I took a Japanese short-rowing class recently and this is exactly what the teacher had us do. I asked her if she had tried it on socks and she hadn’t. I was curious because I remember reading in one of PGR’s books that that Japanese short-rows should only be used if there are a few stitches between each turn. I can’t remember why but I’m sure she tried it and would have mentioned it in her sock book if it could be done.

So I bring this short-row thing up because I’m going to try a new twist on this technique by using the coil-less safety pins to hold the yarn-overs in an effort to keep the stitches very tight. I’m about to start the heels so we will soon see how it works.

*I’ve been thinking of what to do with the purple wool & silk fiber that I spun a few weeks ago. I’ve been looking for the perfect pattern but might just attempt to design a hat or a mobious scarf.

This weekend I set aside my knitting to look for bears with a North Cascades Institute class taught by Chris Morgan. Although we saw many bear signs we didn’t actually see one. If you’re ever interested in learning more about bears, Chris gives a very informative and highly entertaining class.

Being such an avid knitter I always keep an eye out for any interesting sweaters that catch my eye wherever I go. This afternoon on my way to the bus, I spied a woman wearing a very interesting multi-colored hand knit sweater. At least I think it was hand knit.

As I stood behind her waiting for the street light to change, I noticed that my eyes started seeing very subtle large diamond shapes in the fabric, with some of the diamonds being more prominent then others. Perhaps the diamonds blended together so well because each appeared to be knitted with two strands of yarn. It sort of reminded me of color blended quilts that I’ve seen but with a much more subtle affect. It would be simply gorgeous done in hand spun yarns.

I did a google search for color blended sweater patterns but didn’t come up with anything. If anyone has heard of a pattern like this I’d be interested in learning more about it. In the mean time, I’ll keep searching the web.

Yes, this blog is about knitting and not my cat.

I try to keep cat pictures to a minimum but no matter how hard I try to keep Toby out of shooting range he continually finds ways to make it into my pictures. I guess it’s revenge for all the times he has decided not to crawl onto my lap because I was holding knitting needles. We’ve tried mixing lap sitting and knitting but he’s decided the two can’t be mixed.

We got in a little tussle while I tried taking pictures of the yarn I plied last night. I purchased the fiber earlier this summer at the Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon.

The first batch (bottom) was randomly plied with two strands. I didn’t like the muddled affect so I did the second batch using Navajo plying. This technique allows each color segment to be plied together so that the colors don’t get mixed.

Fiber

I can’t believe that I haven’t touched my spinning wheel for a couple of weeks now. Summer is always a challenging time to keep up with my projects.

Yesterday I got a chance to meet up with another spinner from the Weaving Works Spin In. She worked on some lovely silver angora wool from her rabbit. It was simply lovely.

While she worked on the angora, I tried to finish spinning some bright multi-colored wool fiber that I got at the Black Sheep Gathering last month. It’s fun to spin the singles but when I ply them together, the random colors don’t go well together. I plan on plying the rest of the fiber using the Navajo 3-ply technique so that the same color gets plied together.

I was tempted to start spinning this Rainbow Roving that I got from The Bellwether at the Black Sheep Gathering. It’s wool, tussah silk and silk noil. Oddly enough, the silk noil specks remind me of dyer lint. If only my dyer produced such beautiful fiber, I’d be in spinning heaven.

Gilet Lace

Gilet Lace is coming along well. Once the second sleeve is done, the sweater should come together quickly since I plan on doing the back in stockinette stitch.

Crossing Cables

I’m still waiting for Danny Ouellette to send me the PDF that I ordered.

This is my second attempt at figuring out the stitch pattern without the actual pattern. After studying the photo, I think each rope cable is four stitches wide and ten rows tall with a purl stitch on each side of the cables. This sample is close but missing some purl stitches, so I’ll rip it out and start over.