Random Linkage May 29, 2009

It’s warm and sunny.  So warm that I’m even thinking about turning on the AC for the first time this year.  Much too warm to be writing a blog post.  So here are some random links to interesting techniques that I’ve found in my wanderings of the World Wide Web.  Enjoy!

 

Russian Cast Off  Haven’t tried this technique yet, but it looks pretty!

 

Russian Join Cool way to join some more yarn without tying a knot or weaving in ends.  I like to use this technique with wool when I have to cut the yarn because there’s a knot in the skein.

 

Knitting Backwards  Easy to master and it makes heel flaps so much easier to knit.

 

Eclectic or Combo Heel  A combination of a gusset and a short row heel.  I like the way this heel fits better than a straight short row heel.

 

Double Wrapped Short Rows  Speaking of short row heels…

Memorial Day May 26, 2009

We had a gorgeous Memorial Weekend in Seattle.  Which was very surprising to all, since apparently it’s been thirty years since the last time all three days of the weekend were sunny.  Because it was such a beautiful weekend, I hardly did any knitting.  But yesterday we went on a great bike ride on the Iron Horse trail (an old railroad) in the Snoqualmie-Baker National Forest.  We bike on this trail a lot, but we usually stick to the first ten or twenty miles.  This time we started the ride where we normally turn around and went to the “end” of the trail.  Now, this trail goes all the way to Spokane and normally you have to go through a mile-and-a-half long old railroad tunnel to get through Snoqualmie Pass.  This winter the tunnel sustained some damage from the weather, so the tunnel is closed for a while, thus making the tunnel entrance essentially the end of the trail for us right now.  We could drive over the pass and continue from the other side, but that’s not really a continuous ride anymore.  Anyway, we had quite the adventure!

 

We rode over a great trestle bridge over Hansen Creek.

 

We saw an old snow shed that protected the tracks in case of avalanche.

  

 

Then, about half a mile from the tunnel entrance, we saw a sign on the side of the road.  “Sharp curve or dip ahead.”  What we saw ahead was this:

Not so much a “dip” as it is a giant devastated washout.  That used to be a railroad tie and concrete bridge.  That creek must have been running with a Biblical amount of water to destroy the bridge!  However, we were not to be deterred.  We are brave (and sometimes foolhardy) explorers.  I will say that it would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t had the bike.

 

Getting to this part of the stream was the hardest.  There were very few good places to step around those logs.  Oh, and that’s not dirt on the cliff behind me- that’s snow covered in dirt.  That was, er, fun to walk across.

 

That water is snow-melt.  And it came up to mid-calf.

 

Then we reached the tunnel, which was pretty cool.  There was water falling off the top.

Then we headed back, satisfied in our adventure.  We forded the stream again, climbed back up the dirty snow-cliff and biked onward.

And then we saw the bear.

He was pretty small, so he must have just left his mother.  This is the third bear we’ve seen on the trail and the second this year!  I know he’s brown, but he’s actually a black bear.  We don’t really have grizzlies in this area.  Black bears are much more common.

 

All in all, a pretty good Memorial Day.

ARrrgh May 21, 2009

   I’ve been knitting for three years now (well, knitting seriously) and I’d never broken a needle or even chipped one in that time.  And now I’ve broken two in short succession!  This time it’s not so crushing, since I broke a Size 1 needle and I have tons of those. But seriously, knitting gods?!  I had to break another needle?

 

  

 

This time I’m not even sure I know how it happened.  I had taken my knitting on some errands with Lowell.  When we got home, I had my hands full of goodies and my knitting bag slung over my shoulder. I took off my shoes and came through the door.  I slammed my foot into something sharp, which led to some jumping around, yelping, and dumping of goodies onto the floor.  I figured that I had stepped on a small stick or something on the welcome mat.  I put away the goodies and went back to look at the mat so that Lowell wouldn’t step on it too. 

 

I found some shard of something that looked suspiciously like a Harmony needle.  But that couldn’t be- my knitting was carefully stowed in my knitting bag!  I check my knitting, and there was a shattered needle hanging out of the bag.

 

 

I still don’t know how it happened.  How did my knitting jump out of my bag?  How did it get to the floor without my noticing and postition itself just right to get stepped on?  It must have wanted to be broken!  Do I have suicidal needles?  I thought needles like to be used.  Why would my favorite pair of needles jump to certain doom?  I don’t understand.  Clearly this wasn’t my fault.  I had everything put away nicely.  This needle wanted to be broken.  I feel terrible for its twin on the other end of the cable.  What must it be thinking?  Abandoned by its sibling and now useless to me.  That’s a terrible burden for a tiny needle.

 

Maybe I need a needle whisperer.  Or could this be a case of the rare needle flu?  I should go quarantine the other circulars; hopefully they’re not already infected!

The First Sock May 11, 2009

I was doing a bit of a stash reorganizing (there was Palette mixed in with my superwash!) and I ran across an old project.  Actually, it was the first pair of socks that I ever designed from the ground up.  Even though they were top-down.  Er, right.

 

I knit these shortly after I learned how to knit two socks at once on one long circular.  In fact, these might have been the first socks I knit with that method.  I believe these were also the last self-designed socks to be done that way, as well.  I had checked out a stitch dictionary from the library and I loved this thick, rich cable.  I had knit a few socks from patterns and I had noticed one thing: they all had the same stitch pattern on the leg as on the foot.  I wanted to design a sock that had a completely different pattern on the leg than on the foot.  I still want to do that, but now I’m a little more conscious of how things really flow together.

 

    

 

Top-down, short row heel, mostly standard toe.  Yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Baltic Sea, done on a size 1 (2.25mm) 42 inch circular needle.

 

I was (and am) obsessed with finding ways to make the ribbing at the top of the sock flow into the leg of the sock.  This obsession is usually the cause of much hair-pulling and cursing the immutable laws of counting, since the stitch pattern rarely matches up nicely with the ribbing.  These socks were no exception.

 

The heel on these socks is a little funky.  It’s a short row heel, because it was a new technique to me at the time.  But I liked the look of a heel flap so I used Heel Stitch (sl 1, k1 across) on the first half of the heel.  I didn’t know then that Heel Stitch compresses vertically and is not as long as the same amount of knitting in stockinette stitch.  This led to a very ill-fitting heel.

 

 

I particularly like the toe of this sock.  The first few decreases are part of the cable design, which is why the toe appears to be too short.  You can’t tell in the finished product, but the cable in the center of the motif actually ends in a point as well.

 

All in all, not a terrible attempt at sock design.  I didn’t look at them and immediately want to throw them away.  I still love that cable up the foot.  I’m not crazy about the cables on the leg; I remember they were a compromise at the time.  Their main problem is that they don’t really fit, largely because of the heel.  In the pictures of the sock on my foot, you can see the stitches straining pretty hard.  If only they fit, I might actually like them!

Afterthought Lifeline May 7, 2009

Having ripped back on a number of projects recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about mistakes.  Some mistakes are easy to fix, involving just a single stitch or maybe three or four.  Or there are the mistakes that require you to rip back rows and rows of knitting.  In detailed lace knitting, knitters will thread a lifeline every few rows or every pattern repeat.  A lifeline goes through a specific row of stitches so that when you have to rip back, you know which row you’re on and it’s easy to put the stitches back on the needles. 

 

Well, most of us usually don’t put in lifelines as we’re knitting.  I sometimes think about it and then am too lazy to do it.  So what I end up using is what I call the afterthought lifeline.  Like an afterthought heel, it’s put in after the fact to save you from pain and heartache.  It’s easiest when done on stockinette stitch, pretty straightforward on ribbing, and can take a little practice with fancier stitches.  I’m not sure what it says about my knitting, but I’m now practiced enough to do an afterthought lifeline pretty well on cables and lace.

 

Placing an Afterthought Lifeline

You’ll need a tapestry needle and some scrap yarn long enough to go through your project.  The yarn used for this tutorial is Knit Picks CotLin, in Key Lime; the scrap yarn is Patons Grace in Sky.

 

  

This is a swatch of stockinette.  We need to decide which row we’re going to rip back to.  I like to use a spare needle to help me keep track of columns of stitches.

 

    

Now I’ve placed the needle at the bottom of the row where I want to put my lifeline.  Remember that a knit stitch forms a V; each V lines up with the one next to it.

 

   

Using a tapestry needle threaded with some scrap yarn, pick up the right side of each stitch.  If you pick up the left side of the stitch, the stitches will be twisted when you put them back on the needle.  It can take a little practice to pick out the next stitch in the row without a guide; try practicing this on a spare swatch to get the hang of it.

 

Yes, I am using the world’s largest tapestry needle.  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let me take that thing on a plane- it’s 3 inches long and thicker than my size 1 needles!

   

Once the lifeline is in, take a deep breath, pull the needle out and rip back with gusto.  The lifeline will keep you from ripping back to far.  If you ended up loosing the row and threading some of your lifeline through the row above your chosen row, you can transfer the stitches back to the needles and tink from there.  Or move the lifeline around, or whatever works for your knitting.  Depends on the project and the number of stitches from the wrong row.  Experiment, there’s no wrong answers here.

 

Put the stitches back on the needle and return joyously or resignedly to your knitting.