I suppose I should find it funny

So, let's get the knitting content out of the way first, shall we?

Did you know that the wonderous Andrea Jurgrau, first known to me just as Bad Cat Designs has a new pattern out?  No plain shawls this time around, it is a center back out cardigan, and let me tell you it is fabulous.  If only I had time this week to work on it!

Of course, I had to cast on right away and got through the first couple of charts before other things had to take the front burner and leave the poor thing whimpering in my knitting bag. I have promised her that on Monday she will get some of my attention!

 I don't think I mentioned that I wrote up and published another knitting pattern.  Maybe I did and forgot about it.

Shield Socks.

You can buy the pattern on Ravelry, no account needed!


But on to what I found funny this week.

In case you didn't know, I have been around the block a few times.  Maybe even a few times too many, and although my children as still (barely in one case) teenagers, I am much older now than my mother was when she became a grandmother, so no spring chickens here.

For years I have known that somewhere in my learning to sew I learned to cross stitch and needle point backwards.  As in the threads that I work with,  cross the opposite direction to the way they are supposed to when I am finished.  And I know, that if I concentrate really hard on it I can turn it around, but as soon as my mind wanders and I set my fingers to automatic sewing back I go to the backwards sewing.

For years I have known that I work the purl stitch differently than the people who taught me, and the way most American knitting patterns are written - what you call a slip-slip-knit (ssk) I perform as a knit two together (k2tog) and I adapt everything I do so that my backwards shaping doesn't ruin the line of a raglan sleeve or have lace leaning in the wrong directions.  (The beauty of charted knitting, just follow the lean of the symbols and it all works out no matter if we call it a k2tog or an ssk.)

But today, today I learned of yet another thing I do backwards.

Apparently, I even tie slip knots backwards!

I suppose I should find it funny.  Maybe everything I thought I know how to do, I do backwards.  It would explain an awful lot of crazy things!

~M

Why Do We Do That? or What I think, for what it is worth.

It is officially Socktober, which means that, for those of us that subscribe to the belief that somewhere in late December all our loved ones should be getting gifts and eating too much, the panic of post American Thanksgiving knitting is soon to be upon us.  No, this isn't going to be a post about why you should (or shouldn't) subscribe to the late November, early December knitting panic, it is more basic than that.

A friend and I were talking about, of all things, knitting today.  Specifically the things we don't find fun to knit, the miles of endless stocking stitch or ribbing, that make up plain knits.  Honestly, if I want a ribbed cardigan I do what any sensible knitter would do, I run to the store and buy one because I know myself well enough to know that before you can say "new patterns were released today somewhere in the world" that ribbed cardigan will be glaring at me from the work-in-process basket and never see the light of day again.

I honestly believe that it takes the best, most experienced, knitters to take a very plain garment and make it look good.  Slight variations in gauge, even putting down your knitting to answer the phone and not being really careful when you pick it back up, show in a big way.  It is hard to hide a badly formed increase or decrease in a plain sweater, and if you happen to twist a stitch it stands out like a sore thumb.

So why, I ask you, when someone comes to those experienced knitters, who obviously through trial and error and endless hours of practice have figured all this out, and asks us to teach them to knit do we hand them some size 8 needles and a ball of cheap acrylic yarn and tell them to go knit a garter stitch scarf?

I see a couple of problems with this ideology...the first being, size 8 needles, although common and easy to come by, are not the right size for garter stitch in worsted weight yarn!  The second, as one of those experienced knitters I can tell you, that even as quickly as I knit, I run out of steam with the garter stitch long before I have a scarf size object.  The third (yes my couple has three items) is that cheap acrylic yarn has no forgiveness in it.  No bounce to the stitches and every little flaw just grows.
We are also, unknowingly I think, teaching them to be afraid of the purl stitch.  I have heard from several knitters that they hate to purl or that they learned to knit "in the round" so they wouldn't have to purl as often.

Now unless you believe that there is a yarn shortage and by teaching newbie knitters to actually enjoy this craft is going to cut into your ability to obtain your drug of choice, I don't understand the logic behind setting them up to fail this way!

Newbie knitters need to see something being accomplished.  Small projects, with nice yarn and needles sized to make a nice fabric, maybe that is the size 8's, but maybe it isn't.  Teaching them to understand gauge (tension) and right side from wrong side right from the get go sounds like it would be much more beneficial to me. As does teaching them to read a pattern and I don't think that "here I will cast on for you" followed by "now you just knit to the end, turn, knit to the end, when you are nearly out of yarn come back and I will cast it off for you" really teaches a newbie knitter anything they will need to know to become a knitter.

Do you, as a knitter remember your first project* with fondness or frustration?  Were you wondering if it would ever end, or what could you make next?

For what it is worth, here is what I think.

I think we should start new knitters off with manageable size projects.  Maybe that is a dishcloth or a "spa cloth" in a really nice cotton, but maybe it is something else that they like the looks of and only requires one be knit. (I didn't start my kids knitting with socks because the missing second sock is a well known malady in the knitting world, as is the missing second mitten!)

Show them how to cast on, then pull your cast on out and have them do it!  Pull it out as many times as it takes to get it right, it is only knitting but it is all in the details, starting off right goes a long way to ending it right! 

Leave long tails for weaving in and teach them the importance of making sure that is done right!**

But most of all, remember there are no knitting police.  I worked at a yarn store, many years ago, where one of the other employees knit by bracing her left needle between her knees and holding her right needle so that the two formed a cross in the middle of her lap.  Her stitches were perfectly executed, even though she had to let go of her "working needle" to pick up the yarn she had sitting next to her and place around the needle to form her stitches.  But it worked for her and when her projects were cast off there was no telling how she held the needles and yarn.  Let your newbie knitter explore many different ways of holding their needles and yarn, one of them will feel comfortable for them and before you know it you will have another knitter in your midst!

~M

*mine was a dishcloth for my Grandmother.  Garter stitch and apparently every few times I put it down I was confused when I picked it back up which direction I was working in because it was not square when it was done. (I was very young and mostly I remember it because I overheard my mother making fun of the shape and short rows which made me mad as I felt I had worked hard on it!)

**More to come on the details at another date!

It's been HOW long?

What can I say, this summer kicked my butt in more way than one.  I have come to the conclusion that I do not get along with odd number years (and sometimes not even the even numbered ones!)

Lots of changes for us over the past couple of months, and although I know that someday I will look back and say that everything worked out the way it should, living through some of them is not at all what I would call fun.

But in every thunderstorm there are flashes of light.  Some of ours have been :

The Drama Queen bugging me about setting up her company to sell her beading until I did it - which if I had done it right would have been wonderful, somehow I managed to set myself up as her company!  (All comes from knowing my social security number better than hers and doing things too quickly.)  We will leave it the way it is for now and then I will "sell" her the company name once she has actually made some money and all will be right. As soon as college started back up she lost a lot of her creative time so it is left to me to be in charge anyway,  I might sneak a few of my things into her craft fair displays and etsy store!

The First Brother decided what he wants to do for a living, did his own research and is now attending a technical type school so that he can get a good chunk of the training he will need out of the way on the school districts dime. (Well, mine really, most of my property taxes are school levies but I was going to pay them anyway.)

The Other Brother is still trying to figure out how to make playing computer games, listening to pod casts and surfing the internet into a career.  As this is a knitting blog I should mention that he is taking after me (to an extent) and has mastered knitting in the round, making hats to go with scarves and suffers from end of project let down!

But the biggest flash of light to be seen, right this minute, is that I am officially a designer of knit goods!  I finally got up off my rear end, wrote down some patterns, had a couple of people look at them and give me some input. I then re-wrote and charted, test knitted and published!

Knitted Flowers Large and Small

Twisted Woolens - Easy Cable

Twisted Mitts with Large Flower

The Red Cap - Cabled Hat

Twisted Mitts - Easy Ribbing

Upcoming we have socks, hopefully ready for Socktober and a deceptively simple lace shawl.

~M

I said I would post before the end of June

As I sort of promised that I would show you some more of the 2014 Christmas knits before we got to the end of June 2015, I suppose I had better hurry up and post some pictures and stats before the entire month gets away from me!

Here we have TFB's (what is becoming traditional) Striped Christmas Hoodie. 

He wore holes in the last one and tried patching the holes himself with iron-on patches that I had stuffed in a drawer to repair the holes in knees of jeans for TOB.  The plan didn't work so well, for a number of reasons.

The first reason being that the patch, as it was made for denim jeans, didn't match the knitted red and grey fabric of his hoodie at all.

The second being he hadn't actually ever been taught the finer points of using an iron!  I will forever have an iron pattern in my dining room table!

But, back to the Hoodie.  It is a standard top-down-raglan cardigan with a zipper, two pockets and a hood.  He wore it most days until the temperatures starting rising to our Mid-West Summer normals, and even this past week when we had more Pacific Northwest temperatures and rain it got pulled out of the drawer and worn for parts of the day.

I know it sounds strange to the non-knitters in the world, but you know, it sort of warms the heart when socks and sweaters get worn so much they develop holes and thin spots.  Shows me that all the hours and effort I put in to making them were appreciated!

~M

Back Log

As I have mentioned before,  my knitting time is down to next to nothing these days, but luckily so was my blogging time so I actually have a back log of knits to tell you about.

Here we have TOB's (The Other Brother's) Christmas Sweater.
 
 It is really hard to tell in the picture but it is a dark green Henley-ish sort of thing with non-matching buttons (because he is not matchy matchy in anything!) and sleeves that "stay up past my wrists" (his request) so that he can wash his hands a million times a day!


I started by following a pattern for this, then gave up as the proportions didn't really fit the nearly 16 year old body they were going to be placed on.  the beauty of a top down raglan style sweater is you can try it on as you go and just divide for sleeves when it feels right and stop when it is long enough!

TDQ just looked over my shoulder and informed me that you all think that I am dead or a zombie because I haven't blogged in so long!

Changing jobs was probably the worst thing I ever did for what I consider my real life...you know the one that involves spending time with my family and friends, or knitting!  Many days I get to see the kids for less than 30 minutes before it is time for us to head off to bed or out the door in the morning.  I keep saying that things will normalize, but I am at the point where I am wondering if this is the new normal!

If I get the chance I will show you TFB's Christmas sweater sometime before the end of June!

~M

Quiet on the MidWest Front

Did you think I had fallen off the face of the planet?

That I had given up knitting needles and taken up some other form of addiction?

Or something more sinister? Or depressing?

I know I worried my friends, my email box was filled with notes, some of which went along the lines of "you don't even have to type anything, just hit reply so I know you are still alive, if not ok".

It has been a rough 6 months.  And, really, that is all you get to hear about it.

If it wasn't for the fact that it has been 6 months I wouldn't even have any knitting to show you!  I wish I could say it was because I have been working on test knits for books (I have but nothing that extensive) or secret knitting rather than some weeks it being an accomplishment for me to knit one row on a sock!

Luckily, there is a little bit of a back log of knits now, after all Christmas knitting did get done although not as much as in prior years and there is a new pattern from Andrea to talk about!

But when last we spoke I was working on my "Copy Cat Kelpie" which involved a yarn in a colorway called Vincent and the Doctor.

The pattern was another one of Andrea's, a Moebious that we had knit as part of a group project.  Another knitter had used this yarn and I instantly fell in love and needed one for myself!  As yarn wasn't in my budget for that right then, I bemoaned my lot and suddenly it arrived in my mailbox courtesy of a friend.  I have to keep stealing the finished scarf from TDQ, she loves it as much as I do, so I have taken to hiding it...but I won't say where, I think she stalks the blog when I am not looking!

But, I mentioned there was a new pattern to talk about!  One I haven't actually finished knitting, but that is more about my reluctance to be as free spirited as I should and just run with some randomness!

Andrea has a pattern in the next Knitting Traditions magazine, Margarita's Coverlet.  As with all test knits, a select group of us got to try out the charts and read through the pattern long before it will hit the stands and we started making hexegons.

The whole idea was to use up those ends of yarn from making socks, join them together and make a blanket.  Andrea has very clear instructions about making different sizes, from crib blanket to bed coverlet.  I dove right in and started knitting with the leftovers from Christmas socks past.

 And created the first "flower"

 But rather than continue adding hexes to the outside of the flower, my mind wandered to quilts.
 
Specifically a Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt (which truth be told is my second favorite quilt style, my favorite is the Double Wedding Ring, but I am not up to knitting one of those!)

I should have done some math first though, even if I make a smaller blanket, and not something big enough for my bed I will be knitting something on the order of 127 hexes before I am done!

The individual hexes go pretty quickly.  Cracker knitting really, you know, you can't just have one!  But they got put aside in favor of other Christmas knits and then.....Well, I still have a lot of knitting to do!  I lost a lot of knitting time the past few months, maybe by next year I will have the finished project to share. When I get there, Amanda has promised to sew in the last three yarn ends for me!  :)

~M

In which little to no knitting was accomplished

I swear, by all the yarn in my stash (and there is a quite a bit in there) that one way or another I am going to get this work thing organized and running such that I am not wandering home at nearly bed time to a group of starving children.  Not that the children can't feed themselves, they are used to having to fend for themselves every now and then, but when the menu has something on it that they don't know how to cook, or would prefer to wait for me to cook so that we can eat together, coming home so late really pushes dinner time too close to bedtime for everyone!

About the only knitting time I have had is when TDQ needed dropped off an hour before I needed to get to work and during our one hour of television time yesterday.

Which is a two paragraph way of saying...the only finished object to show you is a little one!

To try out some different center starts, or practice on them if you already have a favorite, Andrea of Bad Cat Designs has posted a couple of small doily patterns on her group page.  This is the 8 wedge doily, knit in a laceweight cotton held double.

I blocked it after our one hour television stint last evening, so it is a little wonky (It was late for me!) but a very enjoyable quick knit to make me feel like I accomplished something this week!

I got another pattern repeat finished on my Exploding Tardis Copy Cat Kelpie.  I will need to keep a close eye on this one when it is done, TDQ has already announced that she is stealing it!

And finally, I got through the increase section of the hood on the sweater for TFB. 
 
Still have most of the hood, the zipper band and sleeves to go, and then to find a pattern for TOB's Christmas Sweater.  TDQ has declared she doesn't want another sweater (mostly because she hasn't out grown any in a while so has several, unlike the boys who keep getting taller and taller) but has put in an order for "several pairs of socks, warm and toasty, a neck thingy (she means a cowl) and mittens.

Sounds like I should be knitting and not blogging to me!

Although, with the sale she has going, I might just run over to Lara's Etsy store and drool all over my desk looking at yarn! If you run over there quickly there might be some lovelies left for you to purchase!

~M