Saturday September 12 was a big day for the Bowie Knitters. A really BIG day. It was our biggest group session ever. We had a really long table strung together, and we still ran out of room! I couldn’t even get everyone’s picture. It was crazy fun.
The word is getting out about us. We had lots of new visitors to our group, and everyone was a real delight to get to know. I hope they’ll all be back!
As usual, to see a bigger version of the photo, please click on the thumbnail!
Yvonne helps Lorna with a crochet pattern
Alice is working on a baby blanket
Trish starts her Lady Eleanor stole
Sue joined us for the first time
Christen works on her February Lady
Rhoda plugging away on her felted bag
Sylvia shows off her big needle shawl
Lots of new folks stopped by this time. Thanks to those who helped spread the word!
Heather is doing a sweater sleeve
Bravo Camille for crocheting a scarf!
Kristen is working on a new hat
Jenn is getting ready to do the sewing in of the sleeves on her sweater
Tammy shows a new knitter how to bind off
Anna came by to learn how to knit. She’s a natural!
Ileana is working on a shawl
Deb is working on a dishcloth
April came too… she was working on a shawl that day
You know, I never imagined when I started my little once a month knit group that it would ever take off like this. I almost got overwhelmed when I looked around me and realized how many wonderful new friends I’ve made over the last year or so. This has been a real blessing for me personally. It sure has changed my life for the better to be in such good company.
Uh oh. My power is flickering. I’d better finish this post before it evaporates. More knitting news tomorrow… I promise!
I love it when I’m all excited about my knitting! And if you have been putting up with me in recent weeks and months, you know there hasn’t been a whole lotta glee goin’ on here at the House of Trish Knits. But then last week, I decided that I needed to WAKE UP my knitting. So, I decided to give myself a challenge.
I’m knitting the Fair Isle Sampler Hat by Mary Jane Mucklestone. Click the picture to see how pretty, and wonderful, and fun and quirky it is. All of the things I love most about a hat! You’ll have to click that link to see the picture; it doesn’t belong to me. (Or, if you’re on Ravelry, look here. If you’re not on Ravelry, WHY NOT? Go There! Sign Up! You will not regret it.) The pattern first appeared in Interweave Knits in the Winter 2004 issue. I was barely knitting crooked garter stitch scarves back then, and I certainly didn’t own any knitting magazines. But, soon I was attracted to a pair of mittens in the magazine and bought it as a back issue. I almost overlooked the pattern, when once again I pulled the issue off my shelf to stare at those mittens, and BOOM! There it was. That Hat. That hat I had to have.
By the way, Mary Jane says it will soon be available as a kit from her website. Which is good, since the issue seems to be sold out or gone from the back issues collection available from Interweave Knits.
I tried to cast on all those teeny tiny stitches using Magic Loop on a long needle, but for some reason when I Magic Loop with fingering yarn it always looks terrible when I start. I tried again, and it still looked awful. And to say that I HATE starting a new project, well the cast-on, anyway? THAT would be putting it mildly. Especially when we’re talking about a lot of stitches. It takes me, like, for-EVER. So, I got an idea.
The pattern consists of lots of charts. Each representing a band of a different design, with all kinds of crazy colors. It is knit, typically, from the bottom up, starting with the ribbing and working up to the point at the top. Casting on was driving me MAD. And it looked awful every time I tried to join the round, with a huge ladder in between the first and last stitch. I am usually pretty good at dealing with this, but usually with fatter yarn.
So, I contacted the designer for reassurance. If I knit from the top DOWN, instead of the bottom UP, and read the charts from top to bottom instead of the other way, would it matter? Doing this meant I could start with a miniscule 6 or 8 stitches (I fudged the designer’s original counts until I increased to the designer’s original band of 20 stitches). Would this work? Several members of my knitting mail list and the designer herself reassured me that yes! Why not? Knitting is all about what works for the knitter and makes her happy, right? And I’d had just about enough of the knitting unhappy. So, as of a couple nights ago, I have this:
Fair Isle Sampler Hat beginning
I also had to take the original charts from the magazine, and scan them into my scanner, so I could blow up each one to a size I could actually see. I have eye tracking issues due to my disability and charts and I do not usually get along. So I blew them up to 200% and put each chart on a separate page. Then my daughter found a report cover for me and put them all into the cover so I have a whole notebook of charts. Charts that I can actually see and knit from with no problem, although with quite a lot of concentration. Still, I am loving the challenge!
Oh, but there is a bump in this happy tale:
darn that dropped stitch!
See it? My first dropped stitch in this project. I’m sure there will be many! But, this being my first for this project I wanted to hurry up and snap it for posterity before fixing it. It’s a good thing I have great lighting on my new computer desk now; I’m going to need it.
I’m still loving the project, dropped stitches and all. Perhaps my knitterly brain needed a little exercise!
Hi there! I know, I know… not very nice of me to be away from the blog for more than a week. But… I’ve been sick. Nothing terrible, really… but I did wind up missing several days of work this week and sitting around like a bump wishing I could be more productive. But, last weekend, we had an interim monthly gathering of the Bowie Borders Knit Group, and I do have a few photos to share! As usual, click to make with the bigger…
Two hands, tackling some knotty yarn together
Yvonne says, I’m making THIS!
Rhoda shows off her beautiful wavy scarf
Marie is making stuffed animals for charity
Ileana joined us today with her daughter
Heather and Jennifer show off their matching sister shrugs from Vogue
Dina brought some yarn that needed to be measured and balled up. Luckily, Heather had a yarn meter.
Our group is meeting again next week on September 12, in lieu of meeting this week on Labor Day Weekend. I’m already looking forward to it. We had quite a few people just drop by our table and ask if they could join us, so maybe we’ll have some new people next week. We also had a young girl spy our activities and she asked if someone would teach her to knit. Luckily there was some spare yarn and some extra needles, and before long, our young charge was knitting away. She went away with a piece of knitted fabric somewhat resembling a trapezoid, but it was HERS, and she made it, all by herself.
As for me, I’ve been knitting again, rather happily. I have photos and stories to share later this week.
That’s all for now; I promise I won’t wait more than a week to catch up with the blog next time. Happy knitting!
Today I received the Learn to Knit Kit from Knit Picks. It is fabulous! If you know someone who wants to learn, do consider getting this as a gift! The kits comes with three hanks of Wool of the Andes Bulky, in coordinating colors, size 10 Harmony straight needles, and the most fabulously complete knitting instructions I have ever seen in any Learn to Knit Kit of its sort.
I thought sure I’d get them with the very first step. No way would they have instructions on how to wind the hanks of yarn into a ball in the booklet. But they did! It really looks like they thought of every detail to get a new knitter on his or her way.
The kit includes instructions for a hat and scarf, including how-to’s for several different techniques, from stitches to decreases to finishing. Maybe even I’ll learn how to do mattress stitch yet! God knows Lea-Ann tried to teach me (over the phone!) years ago, and more recently, my good buddy L. showed me. In person. I’m still pretty bad at it, but I think I get the idea. Having the booklet with the explanations will help.
It also has a section in the booklet on fixing mistakes! How cool is that? Knitting mistakes even happen to experienced knitters, as we know, but it is often those mistakes that will cause the new knitter to throw the needles across the room and give up. The detailed pictures and reassuring writing style throughout this whole kit are about as close to having a real knitting teacher sitting next to you as any booklet could be. Overall I think this kit is exceedingly well done!
But wait! There’s more:
Digital Scale
Last week I complained that I needed to be able to split my yarn hanks into two balls each to work on a shawl project. I had seen this scale for a while on the Knit Picks site . It’s also available on Amazon, in a wider variety of colors. Now I can finally wind the yarn for my purple shawl and get going. Something new to work on… I think I needed this.
Finally, I have to share the funniest kitten video I have seen in a long time:
This has been the longest knitting slump ever. All summer, I’ve been knitting this:
Pink scarf in progress
It’s a pink scarf for my friend Jen, that I was hoping to have done in time for her visit IN MAY. So much for that! I take the scarf with me absolutely everywhere, but over the last few weeks it’s only made it out of my bag a few times. I took it with me to dinner at the pool tonight, and I got THREE WHOLE ROWS done. Whoop-dee-do. I really need to find my mojo and get this project done! I had such good intentions. Don’t I always?
The sad truth is that my UFO pile is at least three times bigger than the pile of things I’ve actually finished. This has me wondering at times if I even like to knit! Oh, I know I do like knitting, but am I passionately in love with it? I don’t know. Probably not at the moment. I need to find a project that really excites me and makes me want to finish it. Heck, some projects even have road blocks to getting started! Such as:
The Lace Yarn Sampler Shawl from Knit Picks. It’s even purple, people! My most favorite color. What’s stopping me? It’s knit on two strands of each yarn throughout, so you can drop one and add another color, one at a time. So it blends nicely. Cool idea! Except I don’t have a yarn scale and the idea of winding two little balls out of each hank seems like a pain in the butt. Stupid, huh?
The Girasole Blanket by Jared Flood. I got some beautiful Eco-Alpaca to knit this in. It is SO soft, and so pretty,and I got it on a discount! But that ball winding thing again is getting in my way. Why oh why do I find ball winding to be a chore? Because my kitchen table is always a cluttered mess, that’s why. I seldom have enough room anywhere for my swift and ball winder to be set up. Sigh…
The Tam of Doom. I don’t know why I call it that. But I never got past the cast on before having to frog. I’m trying to learn Tubular Cast On and I messed up. I will get back to this…someday.
My conscience. This is my biggest roadblock of all. I have so many UFOs, so, so many, that really, honestly? I have no business starting something new. There’s a pink scarf to finish after all, and my February Lady Sweater, and let’s not even talk about last year’s abandoned afghan. It was for a sick co-worker. The co-worker is well now, thank goodness, and the afghan is just mocking me. It’s in my active project bin, snickering. Can you hear it?
Sometimes I wish my camera wasn’t so good at closeup photography. What you’re looking at is clear evidence as to why I should stay away from tubular cast on with small needles and fingering weight yarn. When joining the knit stitches with the live stitches in the waste yarn, I missed a few. They were SO tiny from being pulled and tugged that once in a while they got impossible to see. And I tried to think of a way to fudge and fix it, but I can’t. I’m sure there might be a way, but I think the safest thing to do at this point is to frog and go with a different cast on. Thank goodness I have the A Knitting Glossary DVD by Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen where I can look for ideas on something stretchy and attractive for my tam. Wish me luck!
So, my summer of knitting frustration and general slumpiness continues. Hopefully, things will get better soon. Until then I think I’m going to call it a night. Perhaps a fresh outlook and some sleep will do the knitting some good.
in a wider variety of colors. Now I can finally wind the yarn for my purple shawl and get going. Something new to work on… I think I needed this.
DVD by Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen where I can look for ideas on something stretchy and attractive for my tam. Wish me luck!