Knitting with Earrings!

Um....what?

It was a trick I stumbled on the other day when I was working on a pair of fingerless mitts for my sister.  See?

I have rubber stitch markers but they were making me crazy, always in the way and just plain irritating.  I thought, I need to get some of those pretty hanging stitch markers I've seen on Pinterest.  Then I thought - why don't I just use earrings?

Worked perfectly!  The right kind is essential as you need ones with a closed loop and with a smooth enough clasp that it doesn't catch on your yarn.  But these worked beautifully and are pretty too.  I have several pairs that I don't wear anymore that will work well and now they are in my knitting kit instead of my jewelry box. 

Yarn Mania

Oh dear.  Shopping sprees.  Yarn shopping sprees.  We need to stop.  But there is so much loveliness to be had...

I got my sister addicted to WEBS, the glorious yarn website with so many goodies.  She had browsed about and found some yarn she wanted to buy, but wasn't sure about putting in an order.  So I looked to see if there was anything I wanted.  What a silly idea, of course there was stuff I wanted.  And then she found more that she wanted.  This was the result:

I blush when I tell you this is only the top layer.  There are 2 more flat layers underneath this.  Hee hee!  Some of it was so soft I wanted to just pet it.  And there, right smack in the middle is that spooky, color-changing Jade.

Oh look!  I just got another email about their new clearance items....

The Importance of Lighting the Sequel

Oh WEBS, you are going to be the death of me.  My sister and I went on kind of a yarn buying rampage (more about that in another post) and now I have far more yarn than I know what to do with.  Not like that will prevent me from buying more, but that's besides the point.

Part of the order was a bunch of fingering weight yarn to make linen stitch scarves.  Generally scarves made from this stitch are made with many colors to make the effect seen here. That was what I was going for, but my sister decided she wanted hers in a solid green color.  She ordered a color called Jade.  The box came in and I sent her the picture:

This was not the color she wanted.  She has enough in turquoise already and wasn't looking for more.  She had hoped it would be closer to the picture that was shown on the website and was a bit disappointed, but knew it would still look lovely when it was done.  I tucked it away in the bin with the rest of the order and went on to other projects.

A few days later I was rooting about in the bin for a particular yarn when I saw a pretty green yarn I didn't remember ordering.  What is this?  I pulled it out and looked at the tag.  It was the Jade!  I immediately took a second picture:

Seriously?!  It doesn't even look like the same yarn!  This was more the color she was looking for and was happy when I forwarded her the picture.  So weird.

Alpaca Grief

My little cousin is pregnant and any knitter knows...that means I have a project!  I was excited for this one.  I went off to The Needle Emporium to find my yarn after speaking secretly to my cousin's mom - she would like a dove grey blanket and loves cable knit stuff.  Easy enough. She is a girl who likes things of a better quality so I didn't want to use a basic acrylic yarn that I knew I could find scads of at Walmart and Michaels. I found a lovely grey color in the Berocco Ultra Alpaca and knew the pattern I was going to use.

Well.  You know what they say about the best laid plans.

It didn't work.  Several rows and a few cables in to the pattern I was all set to go gung ho with and it became painfully clear it just wasn't working.  I don't know if it was the pattern or the yarn or me or what, but it wasn't going to happen so I ripped it all out, rewound my yarn and hopped online in search of a new pattern to use.  I found the Red Cable Blanket and thought, hey, that looks perfect.

Well. I was wrong.

Turns out the pattern was missing a crucial step.  Or it was written in a confusing way. Pattern reads, repeat rows 1 and 2 for 8 rows and then every 8th row, do a cable row.  Which in my way of reading, if you are repeating rows 1 and 2 for 8 rows, you are doing the cable row after the 8th row, not on it. That being the case, that would mean you are starting the pattern repeat on the wrong side, so you actually have to do another row 2 after the cable row to put you back on track. I rewrote it thusly...

CO 146
Row 1 - (K2, P2, K6, P2), K2
Row 2 - (P2, K2, P6, K2)
Repeat  3 more times, total 8 rows
Row 9 - (K2, P2, CBL, P2)
Row 10 - same as row 2
CBL = sl 3 to cable needle, hold to front, K3, K3 from cable needle.

It worked!  There wasn't a whole lot of info on the site beyond that, such as yardage and all such, so off I went, cabling away, measuring as I went.  Knit, knit, knit.  I don't find cabling particularly difficult but man I was sick of it by the end of this blanket.  Finally finished, I bound off and set to blocking it.  Blocking finished a day later, removed the pins....

Oh. Oh no.

It was flat.  Limp.  Nicely drapey, but it was a cable blanket and that was not the objective.  I didn't realize just how much alpaca stretches and this just looked ironed.  Flat and ironed and not what I expected at all.  But what could I do?  It still looked nice, so I folded it up and set it aside, disappointed but knowing that my cousin will still appreciate the gift.

It bugged me, though.  Every time I glanced at it, it bugged me.  There has to be a way to undo my overblocking I thought.  Back to the internet I went.  Searched, and searched and searched.  There are countless articles about how to block knitting, but nothing about how to unblock it.

What's a knitter to do but experiment?  I figured, I don't really have much to lose at this point, so back in the blocking bucket it went and I let it soak really well this time, for over half an hour.  I pushed all the excess water out and laid it out carefully on the blocking mats, and row by row, cable by cable, I gently "smooshed" it back to more of the shape I wanted.  Then all I could do was wait. It took 2 days to dry this time since it was so wet to start with but I was definitely happier with the look of the cables and ribs afterwards:

Before

After

As you see from the top picture, it was very flat, the cables almost looking sharp and embossed, and the ribs were very far apart, stretching the stitches open around the cables.  The bottom picture is more what I was going for, softer looking with a bit of "puff" to the cables.  Not exactly, but better.

There is a catch though.  Of course there is!  Now that it wasn't stretched as wide, the proportions are off.  It's longer than it should be.  That irritates and disappoints me, but not a whole lot to be done about it now.  In the future if I ever redo this pattern, I would definitely cast on a lot more stitches than this pattern called for.  And I would do a swatch.  This was my first time blocking such a large item and I was shocked at how much the look, feel and size changed with this particular yarn.  Swatches using different blocking methods and strengths would have prevented me a lot of alpaca grief.

Fino Take 2

I gave the finished Fino Circle Scarf to my friend and she loves it!  Here are some pics of her beautiful self modelling it for me.

                                           

Bittersweet

A friend of mine really wanted a cowl made so she had me bring over my ginormous pattern binder (wish has  since blossomed to 2 ginormous pattern binders) to browse through.  She couldn't decide, so she picked two.  This one was the second one I did, using the Bittersweet Cowl by Megan Goodacre.  It sent us back to The Needle Emporium to pick up the yarn she had seen when we had been there previously. She purchased Cascade Eco Cloud in a kind of mushroomy color.  Here is the result...

I will never deliberately use this yarn again.  Looks nice but man did it ever feel weird.  Being chainette it was like working with a tiny little cord, which I disliked, and it took four days to dry when being blocked.  FOUR DAYS! No, thanks, I don't have that kind of patience! Despite that, however, I do like the finished result.

What a difference a needle makes

A little while ago I had a conversation with my sister about gauge.  She is a crocheter and was curious how the material of a knitting needle affects gauge after I pinned a graphic about it on Pinterest.  I find there can be a huge difference in the way different needles will knit up so I thought I would do a few swatches to show it.

In the picture, all three of the swatches were knitted on the same day, with the same yarn which was a worsted weight acrylic (incidentally it was the first yarn I ever bought).  I used a 6mm needle for all of them because that is the size I have the most variety in.

The top swatch was knitted first with my bamboo set which I find very grabby and tight, good for very soft yarns, which this is most definitely not. The swatch measures 5.5x6.5 and has 4 stitches per inch.

The middle swatch was done with my aluminum needles, which I usually use with acrylic because they slide so much better.  It measures 5.5x6.75 - so the rows are the same but it is a quarter inch wider with a gauge of 3.5 stitches per inch.

The bottom one was done last with my KnitPicks wooden needles.  These are my absolute favorite and were a gift from my sister because she knows knitting contributes to my sanity (although there is never a guarantee with these things).  :)  I find I can use these compressed, laminated birch needles with just about any yarn and they are simply delightful with my fancier sock yarns I am currently obsessed with.  This swatch meaures 5.5x7, so again, the same row height, but a full half inch wider than the bamboo, with a gauge of only 3 stitches per inch.

This may seem like an insignificant difference, and it often is when you are making things in which gauge doesn't matter as much, such as blankets and scarves.  It does alter the look though, with the bamboo creating a tighter fabric and the wood being more "airy".  That being said, if you are doing anything that requires a specific gauge, you have to be a lot more careful.  This is why gauge swatches are VITAL for doing any project that requires fit such as clothing.  

Think of it this way...You are knitting a pattern that calls for 100 cast on stitches for a 20-inch wide panel, based on 5 stitches per inch.  But you knit 5.5 stitches per inch, which means your finished piece would be only 18 inches wide.  If you are doing a front and back panel to seam together, that is a difference of 4 inches and your gorgeous sweater is too small.

Something else to keep in mind is that the pattern is really just a guide.  They are written by people and people are different.  The person who wrote the pattern might have been a tight knitter knitting on bamboo, and you might be a loose knitter who prefers wooden needles. Or you are substituting one brand of yarn for another, and like clothing sizes, weight grading doesn't always mean exactly the same thing between yarn makers. For example, some "sock weights" are rated at 7 stitches per inch, others are 8 - a full stitch difference can make a huge difference in sizing. You may also find that you knit differently with alpaca vs. wool vs. blend.  It's all about making that swatch first and going from there.