Posts filed under 'Knitting'
When this month’s Rubber Ducky shipment came, I thought it would make a nice sleep mask. It looked soothing. Turns out, I couldn’t get a dense enough fabric for it. I tried linen stitch, which makes for a very dense fabric, but the colors really didn’t work well for that stitch, and the light still came right through. So Sharron asked for an ice pack. When she gets headaches, ice often helps relieve them.
Normal ice packs are poorly shaped to drape over your forehead. I thought a tube would be much better. So, I knit this (you can click to enlarge).
It works up quickly, and does a good job of things.
To knit this you’ll need DK weight cotton yarn, 50 grams should be enough. Mine is in Pima and it took half a skein. The color, Put the Lime in the Coconut is a club color, so won’t be available generally for six months. It’s somewhere between cool drink on a summer day and army camouflage.
Size 6 needles suited to knit a small diameter in the round. I used dpns.
A one gallon storage bag, like a Ziploc.
Water.
Cast on twenty stitches.
Knit ten rows garter stitch flat.
Knit into the front and back of every stitch, giving you 40 stitches.
Now you switch to knitting in the round. I have to admit to wanting to scratch a double knitting itch here, so I just went with that, and stayed on two straight needles. Knit the first stitch, move the yarn to the front. Slip the next stitch. Do this until the end of the row. You will have slipped the last stitch. Now on the next row, you do the same thing, starting with a knit. You knit half the stitches on one row and the other half on the other row, alternating stitches. Check every so often to see if you’ve inadvertently joined both sides, and if you have, drop the stitch to right below the join, then pick it up again correctly. If you prefer, divide the stitches up 10-10-20 on dpns, or 20-20 on 2 circs or do a magic loop with 20 on either side and just go around that way. I know sock knitters will want to do 10-20-10, but that’ll mess things up at the end. You’ll ultimately need to have that tube open while you work. Double knitting won’t take this all the way to the end.
Once you have an inch or so, fill the bag with enough water to make a tube of ice about the size of the knit sack and lay it in the freezer so that it will form the shape you want. I used the little door tray.
Continue knitting until your piece, when lightly stretched, is about the same size as your bag. By now, unless you’re a really fast knitter, the bag should be reasonably well frozen, at least enough to be sure of the shape.
If you’ve been double knitting, now is the time to start knitting in the round with the break up as above. Insert the ice into the sack and go around and around until you’ve covered it and, when you hold it closed, it’s the way you want it to be.
You’re going to do something like a three needle bind off now. If you’re using dpns, combine the stitches from the first and the second so you have a 20-20 break.
Knit the first stitch on one needle together with the first stitch on the other. Do the same with the next stitch on each needle. DO NOT PULL THE FIRST STITCH OVER THE SECOND. We’re not actually binding off. Keep doing this until you have 20 stitches and you’ve closed the tube around the ice bag.
Return to working back and forth for ten rows of garter stitch and bind off. Weave in ends and enjoy.
June 18th, 2010
I have one friend who tells me everything is about sex. I have another who tells me everything is about politics. This is basically how it works.
Breakfast.
Breakfast is about sex, because you can have it hot. You might have a bagel, or a donut, which can be seen as containing erotic imagery.
Breakfast is about politics. You might buck the popular trend towards watching your cholesterol and eat 6 eggs. Your coffee comes from some country, and that country has laws, and elected officials, and international relationships, and then there’s the FDA watching over your salmon. Why, you’re practically voting with your orange juice.
Shoes.
Some people see shoes as a kind of sex fetish, so they are linked to sex.
Cobblers have to pay taxes on the sale of their shoes–and shoe manufacture is influenced by labor laws–thus making pumps political.
They’re both wrong. Everything is about spinning.
Think about the world without spinners. Politicians would have to attend debates wearing nothing but plastic bags. That just can’t look good.
The navy wouldn’t be able to keep its boats (manned by bag-clad sailors) in port. The ropes they use are spun and braided.
Religions depend on spinning. You can’t pull a burka off a tree, like it’s some kind of acorn. You can’t weld a yarmulke. You can’t carve priestly vestments on a lathe.
Doctors rely on spinners for everything from gauze to suturs. Even synthetics must be spun. And aren’t they sewing people together?
Without spinning we wouldn’t have teddy bears, wedding gowns, shag rugs, or red carpets.
Forget sex and politics–it’s all about the spinning.
May 25th, 2010
These are Anklet Coronets in Sushi Sock glacier.
This is a favorite pattern. If I were told I had to knit the same sock pattern a hundred times, this would be it. I’m not sure I’d even mind. They’re fun and fast and beautiful when they are finished. They were the first beaded thing I ever knit, back when I was first learning to knit socks and had no idea what size 6/0 or 8/0 seed beads were, or what those numbers meant (they refer to a close approximation of how many beads fit into an inch, so 11/0 is about half the size of 5.0) , and it was a lot of fun to go back, years later, to try them again.
This is the Joe Van Gogh roving from Stitch and Sip all spun up and almost ready to knit.
It’ll be actually ready to knit when it dries. I soaked it to set the twist.
I’ll actually be ready to knit it, when I clear my needles some, which I expect will happen in March of 2017.
May 24th, 2010
This crazy merino has become something of an obsession around the house.
This is a small portion of it. I’m working with it a section at a time.
It’s both terrible and wonderful. This fleece came from a sheep who was determined to be as dirty as possible, sheered by a drunk (no fleece should have so many double cuts as this one does), and skirted only by someone’s imagination.
Here’s an average size bit of vegetation pulled from it.
I was up to four ounces of veggie matter when I gave up and stopped weighing. The veggie matter was the least of the problems.
And yet, it’s wonderful somehow. I can’t keep my hands off of it. When I’m in the same room as it is, I have to keep myself from trying to card it, to pull out the best of the locks and open them. I just walked near it this morning and suddenly realized I had to run if I was going to make it into work on time (made it with two minutes to spare only thanks to a fast bus ride). I’m using a flick carder on the locks that just want to be opened and spun right as locks. The rest is going on a drum carder. I want to spin it on a spindle, to spend even more time with it, to really enjoy it.
The cats feel the same.
I can’t lay it out on the floor to work with it without some cat or other coming over to play with it. I don’t blame them. It’s exceedingly soft, even for a merino.
If you need me, I’m going to be spending the next ten years turning this into a sweater.
May 18th, 2010
The fourth shawl of the 10 shawls in 2010 challenge is Citron, knit in Malabrigo lace from stash (making it the second of the 5 that are to be from stash yarn).
This is the first time I’ve worked with this yarn and it’s amazing. It’s so soft, and it works up easily. I didn’t frog much, but I tinked a little, and it held up fine. It’s definitely a single. when I finished, I couldn’t find my scissors, so I unspun it a bit to break the end. It’s spun a tiny bit thick and thin (it’s advertised as hand spun and I can believe it). It’ll find its way into a larger shawl soon. Maybe after I clear the needles and finish Moonfleet.
The pattern works up very easily, and by the end you can do it by sight and memory. Fair warning, the end takes up A LOT of yarn. I thought I could do another repeat before I started the ruffle, but I ended with only 5 grams left.
I carded that merino yesterday. If pigpen were a sheep, he would be that merino. I spent two hours scouring each part of the fleece and I can still spin it in the grease. I carded it for close to 12 hours, and I have 5 grams of ready-to-spin wool to show for it.
After all this, I’ve decided to spin it on a spindle, not a wheel. If I’ve spent this much time with the prep, I’m going to take my time and enjoy the spinning.
May 17th, 2010
Forgive the headless webcam photo. I couldn’t find my camera, and I wanted to show the whole sweater.
This is Hey Teach, in Knit Picks Comfy Worsted. It knit up very fast. Just a fewdays from cast on to sweater.
This is a fun one. One friend thinks the right side is longer than the left. One thinks the left side is longer than the right. One thinks the whole thing is too long. One thinks the whole thing is too short. I think it serves its purpose. It keeps me warm in the office when the air conditioner is set to Arctic Blizzard Blast, and that makes me happy. It rarely visits home, except to get washed and go back to work.
It makes me want to knit more sweaters.
May 12th, 2010
Jane’s daughter takes horseback riding lessons, and the teacher, Nancy, has alpaca as part of her petting zoo. She’s not a fiber lady, though from what I’ve gathered she’s dabbled in machine knitting, and she had a ton of fleeces lying around. Jane asked her for one for me, and Nancy gave it to her.
I have to admit, I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. Would it even be skirted? Skirting a fleece is what removed the poopy stuff. Would I be pulling leg hair out of the blanket? The good part of the fleece is the blanket, from the back of the animal–the rest is useless. I studied everything I could on how to skirt a fleece, as I’ve never done that before.
I was a fool to worry.
This is probably the cleanest raw fleece I’ve ever seen. It’s perfectly skirted. No guard hair. Very little veggie matter. It’s about three pounds, all of it usable, and extremely soft, even with all the dust still on it.
I look into this bag and see a cardigan waiting to be born.
May 11th, 2010
There’s a lot of shawl knitting going on around here. A lot of shawl knitting. Here are some photos from the various mystery knitalongs.
This is the April clue for the KALendar shawl. The theme is branches and saplings. It’s the first clue that has purls on the right side row.
Clue 1, clue 2, and part of clue 3 of the Goddess Knits anniversary Knitalong. I chose C, C, and Q in that order. If you’re not doing Goddess Knits, it’s a choose your own adventure shawl. Every clue has four charts, A, B, C, and Q. You just pick one and knit it. You can mix and match at will, so there are 1,024 total possible combinations.
This is the first six clues of Evenstar. the beading section is kicking my tuckas. So far I’ve started and ripped that six times. Seventh time the charm?
Up close of the last clue. I love the giant flower with the evenstar motif in clue 6.
And this is the swatch for Moonfleet, which is starting Friday. Yes, I’m going shawl happy.
May 10th, 2010
This shawl and I are having a kind of rocky relationship. It’s Evenstar, and I do love the design. The yarn is Knit Picks Gloss Lace in Mango, a color I fell madly in love with the first time I saw it and which has finally found its calling.
I think I knit clue 1 something like fifteen times before I got it right. It was a short clue. It was done before clue 2 came out. Clue 2 sped past. In clue 3 there was a tiny errata concerning moving stitch markers that I countered by assuming I was an idiot and had somehow misplaced all of my stitch markers, so it all evened out nicely. I dodged the second error in that clue, the one that wouldn’t have an impact until clue 4, by not starting clue 4 until it was noticed (a whopping 5 minutes after the clue came out). So it seemed all was sunshine and light with this darling.
Then I did clue 4. Somehow I dropped a few stitches. Now I’m good at fixing lace, and worst case I thought I could knock the whole panel down to the stockinette portion and knit it back up. I tried, and tried, and I totally failed. So I put in an after the fact lifeline on the last row of stockinette and tore all the way back to that. I knit one round and put it in a short-term time out. There are a lot of stitches in this clue and clue 5 comes out on Friday.
Then I woke up to find a moth larva on the shawl. A big one. It didn’t damage the shawl. It didn’t damage the yarn. It damaged its own life expectancy by crossing my path–I don’t do mercy when it comes to moths.
The game of late has been knit 200 stitches and tink 50, but I’m halfway through clue 4 and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be done before clue 5 arrives.
April 5th, 2010
This is yet another Unoriginal Hat, my fourth so far. I’m certain there will be more. This is with the size 10.75 needles and finally it’s exactly the right size. The yarn is gigante and the color is Cherry Tree Blossom. It’s fun working with a bulky yarn after using laceweight for so long. It works up so fast. The hat took about two hours total, and right now, a single round of Evenstar is taking close to an hour.
Hikari now likes to eat standing up. My cats are weird.
April 3rd, 2010
Previous Posts
