Blog

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but I’ve felt like I have not much to say! I’ve just been knitting away on my braided cabled scarf. A couple of traffic jams this week have caused my DH to lose a few more hairs, and we both ruptured our eardrums listening to my 4 year old son scream for more that two hours during one of them, but hey, I had my knitting with me and I was ok! I think my knitting serenity probably drove DH even crazier. But hey, it works for me.

I just noticed that you can see my cable needle stuck into the skein of yarn in this photo. I don’t use one much; in fact I prefer cabling without a cable needle. It’s simple to learn, and so much faster because it doesn’t interrupt the flow of knitting quite as much. There are several websites that teach this technique, but the one where I saw it and “got it” was on Wendy Johnson’s site. Check it out!

The Circular Knitting Wiki

I was surfing the web looking for sweaters knit in the round and came across the Circular Knitting Wiki! How cool is that? I added some stuff about knitting with one long circular (of course!)

Ever Seen These Before?

I just bought a bunch of Addi Turbos this week in teeny tiny sizes I didn’t already have, and some larger sizes. The big ones weren’t pictured at the place where I bought them from online, so I had never seen them before. The 20mm needles are different! Kinda cool. Now I have to try and come up with something to make with them. Which is odd that I should feel so compelled; I HATE big knitting! But I gotta try these. Maybe somebody will get an unplanned scarf for Christmas this year. Haha.

Here’s the latest photo of my Fancy Cabled Braided Scarf. Yes, it’s my own design, based on some common stitch patterns and modified to get a completely mirrored design on either side of the cable. Since the poncho is too big to be my take-along project, this one has taken its place; and I do enjoy working the cable and look forward to each time when it’s time to do a cable row. I think next time I modify this pattern, I will make it as a tubular scarf so I don’t have a reverse side. Boy, that would take a lot of yarn, haha!! But it would be sooooooo pretty!

A Great Big Book

I just received this out of print book, “Great Big Knits” by Dawn French from an Amazon reseller, and I do love some of the cool design ideas. (Not to mention that I am a HUGE fan of both Dawn French and Lenny Henry!) Some of the sweaters are actually TOO BIG for me, but they give instructions in the book about how and where to reduce stitches to make the patterns a bit smaller. This book is definitely written with the “thinking knitter” in mind, but it definitely gives some great places to start when planning designs for fuller figures. I’m definitely feeling inspired.

It’s been a while, so here she is. Alison. Poor, poor Alison. Regular readers might remember that I’ve been working on this poncho on and off since August of 2005, and it just refuses to be done. It’s getting little by little, bigger and WAY heavier, and each 50g ball is now producing slightly less than one inch of length. I’ve placed one of those tiny, open-ended stitch markers randomly at a point a couple of rows back, to indicate the last time I held it up to its recipient, and so I can have a point to measure from. I think I have 10 inches in length left to go. Yikes. I definitely don’t have enough of the original dye lot of green yarn (Cashmere Luxury Chunky, from AC Moore) so I’m going to have to add a thin white stripe before continuing with a different dye lot of the green, to break it up a bit. I still have hope that one day I will be able to photograph Alison herself wearing this beauty. I hope ponchos stay in style that long!

It’s gotten so large that it is no longer a take-along knitting project, but I have a couple of scarves at the ready for that. Still, I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say I was neglecting it… it’s still a bit hard to knit on the projects I was working on before my dad died. There’s still a Santa hat in progress that I haven’t been able to bring myself to touch. But this poncho was his favorite; he asked about it every time I would visit and would always want to see it. He loved the braids and would say that maybe someday I should make him a braided Aran sweater. Maybe one day I will. An Aran for me. I’ll call it, “Dad.”

Someday soon I will post the pattern for Alison. Many people have actually written and asked me for it, and I am flattered! The main reason I haven’t posted it thus far is that I haven’t gotten to the bottom yet, and I don’t quite know what I’m going to do when I get there! To fringe or not to fringe, that is the question. Right now I am leaning more toward wanting to do a ribbed bottom to mirror the ribbing at the neck. But I also know that if I get slightly impatient, a fringe is a good way to “cheat” and make the poncho feel a little longer than it is. We’ll see when I get there what I feel like doing. Right now, it’s anybody’s guess.

I’m going to try to knit as much as I can of poor Alison this weekend. Maybe at the end of a couple of days there will be enough of a difference to post a new photo. (By the way, don’t put your money on that one, but I’m gonna try, nonetheless.)

I just got these lovely stitch markers in the mail today, and had to share! I saw an ad in one of the knitting magazines (forget which one… I grabbed everything off the magazine rack last week!) for Debra’s Garden, and I just had to order right away! I do love the idea of having jewels for my knitting! But alas, I don’t have the eyes for beading. So, I had to get these right away. I think I am in love!

Speaking of eyes, I’m adjusting this week to my first pair of bifocals (yuck, I’m getting older!) and while these glasses are horrible for looking at the computer, I can see all sorts of things in my knitting that I was missing before. Like, for example, I can read the teeny tiny print on the cables of my Addi Turbos… and I can see a whole new dimension in my stitches that I was missing before. I think guage will be a lot easier to count now, as I can actually see each stitch very clearly. But I do have to take these glasses back, as I can’t read the computer much at all, and they forgot to put in my sun-darkening lenses! Argh. Why can’t anything just be easy?

Hey, at least it is the meteorological beginning of Spring, even if I am freezing my a** off and the northeast got measureable snow. Luckily I got none of that white stuff, but it was quite dreary nonetheless. I’m counting the days til Spring gets here for real. In the meantime, happy knitting!

I just got the coolest thing from Knitpicks today! It’s the Row Counter Plus, by Nancy’s Knit Knacks. I’ve been waiting for weeks for it to become available, as I saw it last month in the last Knitpicks catalog. The Row Counter Plus allows you to keep track of three separate things, so if you’re doing a complex pattern with two different repeats, you can keep track of it all, all on this one device! You just toggle around to the various repeats, and wow… they’re all there. How cool is that? I can’t wait to use it when I combine cable patterns in my next scarf. It has a lanyard with a quick release, so you can keep it handy around your neck or detach it when needed. I’ll probably have it around my neck a lot, right along with my work ID, memory stick and now this. I think this will be one of the most valuable tools I ever wind up owning.

Here’s an updated photo of my cabled scarf… see my pattern below, if you like it and want to make one. If you do make one, please let me know! I am still enjoying it. The pattern is varied enough that I’m not getting bored the way I do with so many other things. Boredom is a real problem with me and my knitting. I love starting, have trouble sticking with it, and rarely finish. Hopefully this one won’t wind up on the UFO pile, though I am finding that the skein has some knots in the center, which are quite annoying. It’s slowing me up a bit. I still would recommend this yarn, Caron Simply Soft, as a good, inexpensive choice for this pattern. Next I’d like to try it in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran and Cashmerino Chunky. (Oooooh… I see that there is a plum color… I’m drooling already.) Anyway I’m loving it. Next I think I will try doing it as a tube scarf with the cable on both sides so that there’s no right and wrong side. It would probably take lots o’ yarn, and be really super-warm, but maybe those will be good qualities. Never know until I try!

That’s all from here for now… I want to stop talking about my knitting and actually start doing it. Later!