I have an absolutely gorgeous basket that my mother made that I’ve been using now as a knitting basket. But… something tells me that I may have to either (a) impose some self-control with starting new projects or (b) get a bigger basket.
Off to the basket store….
I have been knitting, I swear. In fact, a couple days ago two things happened: my friend Gina pointed out a pretty scarf pattern and I realized my daughter and I had forgotten her friend’s birthday. So, a quick trip to the yarn store and about 1000 Yarn Overs later:
This was an easy scarf as advertised, except I should have paid more attention to the comments about the pattern (“It only takes one skein, so you know it can’t go forever”). Over 1000 purl stitches in a row (literally, in a single row)… and the yarn, while beautiful, is fiddly to work with so I don’t think that I’ve improved my purl technique (the opposite, maybe!). I will say, the best thing about working with mohair (or mohair-like substances) is that it masks mistakes really well. Which is good, because as far as I can tell, it prompts more mistakes, too.
Still – love the pattern! I’ll definitely try it again…
So it turns out the default header image was making it impossible to read the site header. So we talked for a few minutes and came up with the idea of a glass of beer on a scarf.
So I got out the tripod, setup a nice shot, took several minutes to get a good glass of beer poured (from our last batch of over-carbonated homebrew), played with the exposure a bit, and generally took a bunch of pictures to make sure I got at least one good one.
Then I took the camera off the tripod and took one last picture by hand. So of course that was the best one and the tripod and all that fiddling was a waste of time…
My local knitting shop finally opened. I dragged Redbeard along so we could go to lunch together afterwards, figuring it would be pretty quiet. Boy, was I wrong! Apparently there were lots of ladies who were itching to get their hands on more yarn. (Maybe some new year’s resolutions being started?) Â Plus, the shop was stuffed (over stuffed!) with all kinds of knitting things. (Gotta take my mom the next time she comes to town!)
So, Redbeard and I tried very hard not to step on anyone’s toes (unsuccessfully, on my part, I’m afraid) and get some yarn for the market bag project. I wanted to do a leafy green with brown accent, but I couldn’t find a single type of yarn that had both a great green and a great brown. So, I went with the perfect green and a nice, rich yellow.
I really should be working on the things they pay me for, but I couldn’t resist getting a start on this whole knitting in the round thing. The squeamish may want to look away for the next picture, though I think it could be going *much* worse:
My practice tries with starting an 8 stitch knitting in the round (with another yarn) were unmitigated disasters, so I’m actually kind of happy with this. Plus, the worst of the messiness will get obscured with the felting (right… right?). I will try to sew the tail in tohelp make it more solid, too.
But, first, back to “real” work….
(Isn’t that green gorgeous? That will be the main body of the bag and handles. The yellow is the bottom and a small part of the handle.)
So, I’ve decided to try to tackle this bag that I mention in my last post. One of the very first links on Google (for “knitting in the round”) turned up this video. This looks completely doable to me. I ran off to Michaels to get the right needles, but they don’t have the right yarn (even after I figured out what the heck “Aran weight” yarn meant). My local yarn shop (which I didn’t even know existed yesterday) is closed until Monday. Ugh! Must wait…
In the meantime, I finished my daughter’s blue scarf and then I started, and restarted (and restarted) a “sock” for my laptop. But, then my daughter showed me a knitting pattern for a scarf in a book she’s been really enjoying (The Magic Thief) – how could I resist switching to that? (Side question – just how many times CAN you unravel and knit with the same yarn?) Sure, I just finished a scarf for her… but her brother has a scarf AND a hat (and is now angling for mittens. Ugh – mittens?! I could probably manage some sort of bag-like device that fit over his hands and tied around his wrists with a draw string… maybe…)
After my daughter went to bed, I realized that I may have gotten over my head with the scarf, too. It turns out it has a “keyhole” at each end that requires having two balls of yarn going at the same time to work each side of the scarf around the keyhole. I got spooked by this and when the instructions offered a  non-keyhole alternative, I took it. I’m regretting that a little now, because upon second thought, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. But, in the meanwhile, I’m discovering all kinds of cool things you can do with knitting and purling:
Unfortunately, I’m also learning that I really need to remember what stitch I’ve just, uh, stitched (stutch?) because the knobbly part at the bottom starts to look pretty weird if I get off by one K1-P1. Muttering out loud while I knit gets me some weird looks from Redbeard, so I’ve got to come up with some system. Maybe the way a hold the yarn out of each stitch? My purl stitch “technique” is still pretty “fluid”, though…
My hideously poor short term memory also means I also can’t keep track of how many rows I’ve done and so I’ve just been eye-balling the checked squares to make sure they’re square. Â I guess I’d better figure out a trick for that, too. The problem is worse because I can’t tell how to count rows after I’ve done them!
Still – I really like how the scarf is going so far. I think I will try the “keyhole” thing at the end of the scarf.
Working on my daughter’s scarf:
And now that it’s really, really not a secret– here’s Redbeard’s scarf:
I’m starting to think beyond scarves, now… and I have my eye on this project as my “work up to” goal. Felting is what got me re-interested in knitting in the first place.
A couple years ago, my mom decided to move on to the next generation and teach my daughter to knit (since I was clearly a lost cause). Because we don’t live that close, she sent her a book to help her remember after we’d gone back home. I was looking at the book the other day and decided to both learn to purl and knit a hat. (Why not?)
So, I took the remainder of the red yarn from my son’s scarf and made him a hat!
Why did nobody tell me how magical this whole knitting thing is? (Oh, wait, she did…)
I only had instructions for an adult-size hat, so I had to improvise a bit on the number of stitches, but it fits!
This purling thing is not so bad, actually….
Totally sold on this knitting thing…
I’ve been working on two scarves. One is a secret, which is why I haven’t posted anything about it. Well, it was secret until my youngest child told Redbeard yesterday “You’ve got a grey scarf, Daddy! But, it’s a secret.” So, no pictures of it yet, but I will now acknowledge its existence.
Anyway, I made that scarf with a heavier (yes, grey) yarn and it was so easy. All my stitches were just right – it looks great, if I say so myself. I used size 10 needles, for what that’s worth.
So, my youngest wants a red scarf and so I’ve started knitting one for him. It’s worsted-weight, on the same needles. I’m not finished yet, but let’s just say that I’m banking on the undiscriminating tastes of 3-year-olds when it comes to fine fashion. (So far so good, he ran up a little while ago while I was knitting and rubbed his cheek against it, happily exclaimed that it was soft and ran on).
I’m not sure what’s going on with this scarf, but everything that can go wrong has. I pulled out a couple rows, but what I redid was worse. So, now I’m just plowing ahead. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
It’s not totally clear from the picture, but it’s like my stitches reversed themselves briefly. And then left a big hole. I’m trying to decide if I can claim it is a button hole…
I ran out of yarn, does that mean I’m done?
I think I figured out how to turn the corner to the next row:
And I know what I did – at the end of the row (at least my rows) there is always a big loop that can’t be tightened. Unless, you loop the yarn over the needle. I just assumed that anything that made that big loop go away was the right thing to do!