Fidget

Loosely based on Bad Penny from Knitty.com, by Stephanie Japel

Yarn: Patons Grace, 100% mercerized cotton

I started this little knitted top ages ago, like several years, and I’m glad to have finally finished it. If I’d known that it was going to turn out so cute and well-fitting, I would have worked to finish it sooner! I’m very pleased with the fit, and pleased with the process to arrive at the fit - It’s knitted in one piece, in the round, from the neck down. So, I could try it on as I went, and also it’s seamless so I didn’t have to sew a single seam. The finishing consisted of picking up stitches for the neckband and armbands, and also turning under and tacking down the ends of my spiral-stripe magic trick - there is no messy join where I had to change colors, I just knitted around in a spiral, one color at a time, one row per color. Pretty sweet!

From the Winter 2005 issue of Interweave Knits magazine; pattern by Katy Ryan.
Yarn: Katia Tundra, 50% wool / 40% acrylic / 10% viscose

In honor of the solstice (first day of yay, summer!) I’m finally posting this finished project, my first full-size sweater. I actually finished it awhile back, in April I think, and it has been cool enough to wear it a few times. It’s quite warm and cozy so I’ll be happy to have it come winter.

I think the thing I am most pleased about with this sweater is how the yarn looks, knitted up. It’s multicolored in a sort of heathery way, and space-dyed on very, very long repeats. So the bottom edge of a sleeve starts out with the yarn as a blend of aqua, purple, and gray; and then it very gradually changes to a mix of teal, pink, and brown. It was kind of a step out of my comfort zone to choose a purple/pinky yarn since those generally aren’t the colors I choose - but I figured with all those base colors this sweater would match a lot of things, whether warm neutrals, cool neutrals, denim… even pink. Though I don’t own many pink things, it matches my favorite jeans quite nicely!

The thing I am least satisfied with is the upper sleeve area. Those came out a little bulky, and my shoulders are somewhat broad for my overall size and shape anyway, so I’m sure it’s one of those things where I notice it because it’s a sensitive figure-area for me. For the next sweater I knit, I will probably go for a raglan-style sleeve instead of set-in.

I’m not sure if this had an impact on the sleeve issue, but I knit a larger size at a smaller gauge. That took some figuring, and maybe I miscalculated somewhere. But I found this trick worked out pretty well so I definitely won’t hesitate to try it again, maybe just not with a design with set-in sleeves. Another change that I made to the pattern was working the top few inches of the back in ribbing. I was afraid that just binding off stockinette would make the back neckline look really unfinished (and it would most likely curl.) Also I used short-row shaping instead of stepped bind-off, to avoid a jaggedy effect in that same area; and that allowed me to use 3-needle bind off as the shoulder seams. (I avoid seaming whenever I can.) So that all worked out well. The straps were very long, but I decided to leave them that way and wear them criss-crossed in front and tied in back (to avoid the belly-bow look. I am not a teddy bear.) Here’s the back view:

… since I started this blog! Hooray. If I was on top of my game I would have a visual re-design all ready to launch today. But I don’t. But I’ve accomplished lots of other projects in the last year - ran my first 10K, knitted my first real sweater, learned to throw pots on the wheel, designed quite a few user interfaces, and just yesterday I dropped 4 whole bags of stuff off at the Goodwill donation center. (It’ll be a lifelong effort for BN and I to keep our collector-of-stuff tendencies under control. You never know what might end up being useful someday!) Our spare room has never looked better.

Well, this has been a good week. We had quick visit from my brother and sister-in-law, and it was a blessedly beautiful day so I took them down to the river and we strolled around and checked out the geese, who were having a major convention with whole nestsful of goslings of all different sizes. Cute!

Monday evening I had my usual knitting group. Nowadays we meet at a cafe that’s sort of behind (or in front of) a restaurant. All the small tables are pushed together for a big knitting circle. (or rectangle.) We have a waiter to order dinner or drinks or coffee from, and a good time is had by all. I’ve been going to this group pretty regularly since early in the year. I really enjoy it because there’s such a range of people there - different ages, different skill levels. Even a few men. And they knit.

Today I went to my ladies’ lunch Bible study. This is pretty much the highlight of my week - everybody brings something to share, mostly salads, but sometimes we get other goodies like today was EL’s birthday so we had a not-exactly-cake confection that was constructed mostly of whipped cream and strawberries. It took 3 people to get it cut up and served because it was collapsing in all directions. Totally delicious, though. Even more than the food I enjoy the girl-time with a diverse set of sisters in Christ. I’m usually the youngest unless JM comes, and our 2 “elder stateswomen” (as GP would say) are in their 80’s.

It seems like we are squarely into spring, now, with temps up into the 70’s. we had a real heat wave a week or so ago, but the week before that the highs were in the mid-50’s again for awhile. That was weird… it’s really nice to see the sun. (At our ladies’ study we get to sit outside on TR’s deck surrounded by her beautiful garden.)

There are quite a few clothing resale stores in town, and this week I had a bit of success in selling some of my used clothing. Trading in, really, because you get more value if you opt for store credit. The first place was too LA-teen-trendyish to want most of my cast-offs. The next place was more sophisticated and the nice woman who helped me surprised me by taking one of my home-sewn dresses (those are the hardest to give away, but it never fit me right.) The last place, with a more hippie-like flair, took a record-setting 4 items, and all of them were garments I had originally gotten at thrift stores. Score! What a beautiful cycle of fashion funkiness.

So that’s what’s going on. A mixed bag of newsy items. I’ll leave you with a cooking secret: Those little tiny cans of Thai curry paste. You can get ‘em at the Asian market. They are the same shape as tuna cans except smaller, and seriously all you have to do is stir one (or part of one, they are strong medicine) into a pot of coconut milk (and whatever meat and veggies you have on hand) and you have an awesome tastes-like-we’re-eating-out dinner at home! Lemon grass helps, too. Serve over rice or noodles and you’ll knock the socks off of your dinner guests.

Well, I hope everybody’s having a good week and maybe by next year I’ll have this blog looking more customized.

Love,

KT

This is a set of accessories that I knitted off-and-on for the past year or more… I started out with a scarf, knitted the long way, on a long circular needle. This is actually a really fast way to knit a scarf, because you knit fewer, longer, rows, and there is less turning. At the end of each row, I cut the yarn and joined a new one - automatic fringe, and best of all, no ends to weave in!

I had bought this green fuzzy yarn many years before, way before I even learned how to knit. I think I bought it around the time that those “tube scarves” first appeared, thinking I would learn how to knit and knit a tube scarf, like the one my co-worker’s aunt had knitted her… Little did I know how learning to knit would open up such a new world of creativity and fashion… I still haven’t made a tube scarf!

Next came the hat. I knitted this hat “on the bias,” inspired by a pattern I saw in a book. You increase on one edge and decrease on the other, to make a diagonal stripe. It’s a bit tricky to plan and estimate yarn, so I knitted up a parallelogram and ran out of yarn before it was big enough to go around my head… at this point, summer came along and I wasn’t motivated to knit a fuzzy wool hat, let alone one that had to be unraveled and started over!

So, this winter I got out the hat and re-worked it. I had an extra skein of the multi-colored yarn - the fancy Japanese kind that gradually changes color from one end of the skein to the other with no repeats!

I decided to make fingerless mitts out of it, from a pattern in Weekend Knitting. Because I just had the one skein, I knew the colors would be different on each mitt. So, I decided to capitalize on this and do stripes from different sections of the yarn skein. The pattern, unlike typical accessory (sock and glove) construction, has you knit these sideways, from wrist to knuckles.

They are a wool-silk blend and very stretchy and warm.

The three items, along with having the yarns in common, are each knitted in an unconventional direction. I’m very pleased with how they came out. It also felt good to wrap up a project that had been on the back burner for awhile. If you run into trouble with a project, it’s a good idea to tuck it away and ignore it for awhile - when you come back you’ll feel like you have a fresh start!

This is a hat I finished a while back. It’s based on the Luggy Bonnet pattern in Weekend Knitting. It looks pretty different from the pattern, which was multi-colored stripes with star or heart motifs. But I had this fluffy blue yarn with coordinating novelty yarn, multi-colored yellow and orange with little nubs that knit up into a thick terry-cloth fabric, and I wanted a hat with earflaps and a crocheted border so I could get the nubby yarn in an even edging all the way around. The ear-flaps curled up a bit more than I anticipated, but I guess the overall effect is super-funky but in a cute way…

Hi, everybody! It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. I have been frantically at work on all my Christmas projects. A significant bulk mailing (multi-piece Christmas card) and lots of surprises for gifts. Today I mustered up my courage and took my packages to the “po” and mailed ‘em off. Wow, that feels good! (And let me tell you, I wasn’t the only resident of South Eugene that did the same) This year is exactly the same as other years in the amount of work I’ve made for myself getting ready. But this year the deadline was today, Mailing Day (Heck with Boxing day! Today was the last day to box everything up and check-box it right off of one’s To Do list. That’s a big deal!) instead of Christmas Eve at midnight or so. But this year I was forced to get done early so now I have a week to relax. That’s pretty cool.

I’ll post photos of my Christmas card soon, and the surprise projects after the 25th. For now, check out this funky version of an elf hat that I made awhile back, right after Thanksgiving when the Christmas projects were mostly still brewing on my brain’s back burner. That’s the problem - I usually don’t get my bright ideas until just before T-day, and then I just have to go ahead and bite off more than I can chew because the ideas are too good to pass up. And I truly do enjoy the projects, don’t get me wrong. Time just gets a little tight, that’s all. Like a few years ago… I think it was 2002. I had a new book about making handmade journals and memory boxes. So I dove right into making a hand-bound book or box for everyone in my immediate family plus BN and another friend (That’s 10 projects). It took way more materials than I thought and way, way more time than I’d planned on. I was living alone in my studio apartment and I stayed up ALL NIGHT on December 23rd, finishing them up. That was the pinacle of my tradition of last-minute Christmas frenzy. I sure was tired on Christmas that year!

Baby SI was due this week, but he was born almost 2 months ago! Praise the Lord, he was over 4 pounds and was able to come home from his out-of-town birthplace after a month in the NICU. This quilt was planned and begun by the time of his unexpected arrival, and then I was really motivated to finish it, as a coming-home present.

This blanket was hand-knit with love, in an “Illusion” or “Shadow-knitting” technique, with simple stripes that reveal stars when viewed from an angle.

The secret is in the purl ridges strategically worked either in the foreground or background color. This is my biggest project to date, using 6 balls of yarn, knit in three panels joined with mattress stitch and a hand-tacked cotton flannel backing (love those little spacemen!) with hand-applied satin binding. The yarn is a cotton-wool blend for softness and warmth. Completed size is 32 x 40 inches, not including the binding.

Knitting socks seems so magical and mysterious - even people who can knit fairly well think, oh, I couldn’t knit socks. They’re too complicated, and I’d have to use those scary-looking double-pointed needles. The funny thing is, the oldest knitted artifacts existant are socks - cotton, from Egypt, 1200 - 1500 AD. Think about it: All socks used to be hand-knitted.

I didn’t think about socks much when I first learned to knit. I guess I figured why knit socks when they are so inexpensive to buy. And, they were mysterious. I’d run across patterns for them, and they would have a decent photograph of the finished sock, but no diagrams or photos-in-progress or any explanation of the Anatomy of a Sock.

I wanted to knit for my husband. I made him a hat last year - it came out great, he likes it, and wears it a lot. But he doesn’t need many hats - he’s perfectly content with two (the other one he made himself, back in his crocheting days.) He’s not the type to wear scarves, and a sweater would be such a major undertaking. So sock knitting started to be a lot more attractive to me - I could knit socks for BN. He’s actually quite the sock connoisseur, and often wears striped or colorful socks.

Meanwhile, I found a great sock-knitting book: Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. The way this book is put together is perfect for me - It shows diagram-style photos of the Anatomy of a Sock, with each section knitted in a different color. It has a separate explanaton of each of 3 main styles of sock construction. All the size, gauge, and stitch pattern numbers are arranged in charts, so it’s easy to put together a customized design for your desired size, style, and yarn. Modularity rocks!

As if this weren’t wonderful enough, the instructions are arranged in an efficient 3-column layout, allowing you to use your knitting method of choice - 4 double-pointed needles, or 5, or my preference - 2 circular needles.

This book enabled me to truly learn about and understand socks, not just slavishly follow a certain pattern. I learned that socks are maybe a little complicated, but they break down into such manageable phases. They are seamless, meaning you don’t have to sew any pieces together, and you can knit an entire sock out of a single piece of yarn. (That’s only 2 ends to weave in at the end!) By measuring the recipient’s foot, you can get a perfectly customized fit.

I showed BN the book and asked him which socks he wanted. He picked the last pair in the book - the most complicated, with 2-color stranded knitting and a charted design covering the upper portion of the sock. I decided I didn’t want to do that one as my first sock project, so then BN said he wanted horizontal cables. Well, cables are sort of vertical by nature but I found this chain-like design in another book and did a swatch. He liked it, so that’s what I went with.

Hand-knit socks are not a money-saving item, but you do get what you pay for - in quality, customized fit, and knitterly satisfaction, they can’t be beat!

The recipient of this baby hat isn’t born yet, so I didn’t have a model to show it off to best advantage. One two-colored hat, to wear 3 different ways.

I knitted it in the round, but used a sly trick to do intarsia color-changes halfway around each row. The top is grafted with kitchener stitch for a seamless look (I hate sewing seams) and I-cord “antenna” sprout from the corners.

Isn’t it great to finish something? Gosh, I haven’t finished much of anything lately, except that 10K. I have 3 or 4 design projects in progress, including the one I started late last year. I guess that’s what you get in software design - applications are never finished.

BUT! I started knitting a set of 6 placemats last summer, and I finished the last one this week! With knitting projects, finishing one means I have permission to start another. Not to say that I only work on one at a time - on the contrary! I usually have 3 or 4 going at once. You know those design projects I mentioned? Yeah, well, I’ve been too busy to knit. If I’m too busy to knit, I’m for sure too busy to blog! Whew. I cheat a lot by editing my post timestamps. So now I’ve admitted it. I used to be really good about writing a journal, but even then I would get behind and have to write “catch up” entries. The best eras for my journal were early college, when I often felt lonely; and when I was single and living alone, ditto. Now that I have my best friend living right in the same apartment, I get things off my chest without using a pen.

Did I ever tell you how I ramble on? You might want to see the new placemats, here they are:

I used 6 skeins of Lion Brand Cotton, to make 6 placemats with 4 colors each. I’m pretty obsessive about color (among other things!) so I made sure to make 6 unique combinations of 4 colors for each mat. I’m quite pleased with the way the checkerboard texture “blends” the colors and gives them a bit more subtlety. The checkering is accomplished by using the “linen stitch” which uses slipped stitches rather than stranding to create the effect of multiple colors in each row of knitting. In actuality, every row is knit using only one color. So, that made them fairly quick and very simple to knit. It was a good project because I didn’t have to count stitches or pay very close attention, but it wasn’t boring either because it wasn’t straight knitting and when I got sick of a color combination it was time to switch colors.

I’ve been working on them slowly and steadily for the last year - if I got bored or frustrated with my current projects or needed a “mindless” knit for some reason (like riding in the car) this was there for me to pick up again.