Way late posting

Quick update, I've started teaching at The Yarn Garden in Portland, I'm test knitting a cool lace shawl, and I have two patterns for sale online!

A swatch for the test knit.

Pattern one for sale, Portlandia Hat.

Pattern two for sale, Cable Loop Cowl.

More Secret Knitting

Secret knitting for Sandy's birthday!

I designed a hat a mittens with matching cables. Designing the cable took a minute, but I really like how it turned out.

This is a close up of the cables on the hat.

And the set.

They are made from Malabrigo, a super soft merino yarn from Peru. I have it from the birthday girl that they are "so soft!"

And the Winner Is...

Not this one!

This is the drunken cable border with a pie crust cable center panel.  It still looks bunchy and sloppy to me.  I am not a fan.  

Next I tried a ribbed cable, something I'd seen in the Vogue Stitchionary but had never tried.  A commercial sweater that I have, with an oversized cable, utilizes this technique.  It also employs other cheater methods to give the appearance of a cable where there isn't one though, so I wasn't sold on the idea.  

I used the idea of the drunken cable, but instead of crossing 9 over 9, I crossed 9 ribbed over 9 ribbed.  It looks much much nicer.  The cables lay relatively flat and seem pretty defined.  

So the winner is this one.  

I tried different numbers of rows between the cables.  I think this distance works the best.  

And I think I will have to use three columns across instead of two.  

I'm currently working out how I want to make the increases/decreases for the sleeves.  I think I'm going to knit this from the top down.  I'm going to knit one more swatch to see how wide three repeats of the cable will be and to make sure I like how it looks worked upside down.  

I'm so close!

Another Debate, Another Swatch.

At the beginning of the debate I cast on for another brown sweater swatch.  And I really think this cable might be the winner.    

Anyway, I made one stitch every time McCain said "my friends", and look how far I got!

Ha ha.  

The cable doesn't show very well in this photo, I'll take better pictures once I've knit a few more repeats.  It's a ribbed version of the drunken cable idea.  Everyone cross your fingers.  

Brown Sweater Update

This is all I've been knitting. I could be halfway done a sweater by now. But I'm picky and I want it to be just so, so I'm still swatching. These swatches are big, the smaller ones are about 4" square. They are for the sweater that will have a large cable down the front with ribbing for the rest of the body. I'm planning raglan sleeves, knit in the round, probably from the bottom up.


My first pick, the Drunken Cable.

My first swatch, the little one is the cable as written in the Vogue Stitchionary 2. The bigger one is my attempt at enlarging it. Not so good. To me it looks like a big messy blob of knitting.

See, a close up of the original, much nicer.

Attempt number two the Pie Crust Cable.

Again, the smaller is the cable as written, the larger, my attempt at rewriting on a bigger scale. I also tried out different needle sizes, as well as different amounts of rows between repeats of the cable. Not too fond of this swatch either. I don't seem to have taken a close up of the small swatch, but it's very nice, with clean looking cables crossing at regular intervals, and laying flat.

One of the things I like the least about my attempts is that they get really tight where I cable the stitches. Then the knitting between gets bunchy and the whole thing looks like a mess.

Try three, the Drunken Cable bordering Pie Crust.

So then I tried this. I enlarged the patterns a bit, but not as much as my original swatches. I also used both, figuring that it could give enough width to be the center panel of a design. I'm not sure which border cable I like best. The left one is composed of 12 stitches, the right one 8. I think I like the bigger one, especially since I want the pie crust segment to be bigger than it is in this swatch. Here there are only two repeats of the pattern (width wise). I'd probably do four to eight repeats.

Anyway, moral of the story is that I've a bunch more swatching to do.

The last week (or so)

This is what I've been working on for the past week.

Actually the past year. It was supposed to be Josh's birthday present last year, and it didn't get done in time, or anywhere near time. One thing after another would go just a tiny bit wrong and it made me want to forget the bike existed for a long while. Then Josh kindly offered to help with his own present, and it's done! Well, mostly, bikes are in that class of object where something can always be done, improved, tweaked, upgraded, swapped out, etc. But it's complete enough to be considered done. We still have to adjust the bottom bracket's set screws (hopefully a five minute job) and next weekend I'll most likely be teaching Josh how to true the wheels (teach a man to fish and maybe he'll fix your bike while he's at it, actually I really like truing so we might have to fight over it). But we can both look at it and be proud and happy now. Yay!

Next post, back to the knitting.

I'm working on a brown ribbed cable front sweater. Right now I'm trying to design the cable, with mixed success and much grumpyness. I'll have photos of the swatches soon.

I'm also bouncing another cabled sweater around in my head, out of that red/purple Happy Feet sock yarn that I purchased a sweater's worth of. I haven't been swatching anymore of that though.

I bought new needles to knit Josh's gloves on. The yarn I bought and the sock needles I have were not playing nice. Their slick metal-ness would slide right out of the stitches at inopportune moments (not that any moment would really be a great time to drop stitches). I marched over to Loopy yarns Thursday after work and bought some nice pointy little bamboo needles. They should be much stickier, relatively speaking, and not give me the same trouble. I really want to take them out and play, but the brown cables are sucking up all my attention.

Deliberate Drops

Saturday Morning with Chris Blysma.

She walked us through several ways to drop stitches (intentionally).  My favorite swatch is the aran sampler.  In my own knitting so far I seem to favor the controlled yarn over variety.  I think the big runs of dropped stitches scare me a bit.  

A big run of dropped stitches in plain stockinette.





Another big run of dropped stitches in my aran sampler.

The controlled yarn over variety of dropped stitches in ribbing.

Dropped edge stitch fringe. And quite possibly the ugliest baby hat I've seen in a long time. Too bad. Some people in class liked it a lot. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Ethnic Textured Stitches

Friday, all day, with Joan Schrouder.  We learned about Scandinavian Twined knitting, Bavarian Traveling Stitch patterns, and making bobbles.  I don't really like bobbles.  

Details of Large Swatch:

My twined knitting.  You knit with two strands of the same yarn, alternating stitches.  Creates a very smooshy fabric.  

The Bavarian Cable I knit up.  They cable a twisted knit stitch for a raised more defined pattern.  

Fiendishly Difficult Stitches

Our first class, Thursday at 9:00 am, with Merike Saarniit.  She was awesome.  We knit up a little sampler in class.  

A previous participant dubbed it "The Cod Piece".  

At the bottom, we started with an Alsacian Scallop, next (above) we knit an Estonian Embrace Cable, then an Estonian Butterfly, and topped it all off with the Berry Kisses colorwork.