Joining yarn

While I was working on the lizard ridge socks, my thoughts turned to how to join the yarn at the colour changes.  I discovered the ‘russian join’ last year, and have been using it quite happily ever since. However, while working on the socks, two of the joins turned out particularly bulky because they happened at the same time as the yarn becoming quite thick for a bit. 

Then I remembered a throw away comment in one of the lace knitting books by Marianne Kinzel, about ‘how all accomplished knitters know to splice yarn, but average knitters can use a knot and weave in ends’. On my meanderings round t’internet, I stumbled across the Purlwise blog where Melinda describes how to splice wool yarns very clearly. I’ll now be trying splicing out on the next few joins in the socks.

Turning heels

After my first truly successful short row heel, I started wondering how other heels really worked. Now there are tons of tips out there to play with, but this one seems like it could be useful. ‘ Heels by number ‘ gives instructions for 6 different heels worked over 11 different numbers of stitches. It looks like it should be easy to extend the tables too – useful for bigger ankles or tighter gauge like mine

House hunting – bleah!

Am no further forward in getting a place. Unfortunately, I may lose one of the options today because they’re gonna start remarketing it. My favourite may turn out to need too much work done, so what’s a person to do?

Being somewhat frazzled these last few days, haven’t felt like doing much knitting and last night I took a different approach to distracting myself from house worries. I picked up this book from amazon.fr a couple of months or so ago, because I fell in love with one of the cables in it. Now, apparently it’s translated from english but I checked and there isn’t an english version available. Cue fun ‘n’ frolics trying to read a pattern in abbreviated french knitting terms!

‘Le Tricot en 300 points’ (300 knitting stitches) is the best presented book I have found in terms of pictures and layout. The stitch samples are presented still on the needles, with complementary plain backgrounds. The focus is therefore still very much on the stitch, but with the camera further away so you get a better overall feel for how it will look in a garment. You can still see the pattern clearly, and the corresponding instructions are always on the facing page.

The patterns covered in this book are not all original by any stretch of the imagination – a number of them are available elsewhere. In the odd case, the same stitch can be found in the Barbara Walker treasuries, ‘1000 knitting stitches’ ( a Japanese knitting book), and in stitch dictionaries that predate any of these collections. With this in mind, if you have any of the other books, you may not need this one, but I for one simply had to have it! I can imagine using several of the stitches in one garment, and if I want to show someone what a particular stitch looks like, this is the book I’d turn to first. And then there’s that cable, that I simply have to try out…

Hemp Yarn and a white lies design

Found this Canapone yarn, 100% hemp, approx fingering weight tension, and immediately thought of the ‘Marta’ White Lies pattern. Don’t know why, but the ‘bittersweet’ shade is talking, saying it would work perfectly double stranded for the top. Must resist…  At least for a little while

Especially since I want to experiment with a circular shrug model, created from a t-shaped piece of knitted fabric. ( I discovered an older post from guessica on Crafster explaining how it works.

Distracted by Socks..

I had great plans… I was going to work on MO1 again after finishing Chameleon, and write up the pattern. Then I started knitting swatches for wtp, and now?

Well, I was lookin around at what other folk had been up to, and was rather taken by Grumperina’s version of ‘fish-net knee highs’. Was also surprised to see that a so-called technical editor seemed to think they knew the stitch pattern better than the designer (Joan M), with the result that the version in the book didn’t work.  Luckily a solution was forthcoming. What does this mean for anyone submitting their designs? How do they stop some complete stranger from altering the pattern, and quite possibly messing it up?  Hmm.

Not quite being able to justify buying yet another book just for one pattern even if it is flawed, I started searching for a similar pattern, and found Lolita Toes. They’re ankle socks with a 4 row fishnet pattern, and I think I have just the yarn waiting in my stash 

Knitting Fonts

June has been a quiet month for writing – I’ve been busy!! And not necessarily with fun stuff. Having said that, I am going to be taking photos of my latest finished project tonight, and hopefully writing up the pattern too.

While thinking about pattern charts, I started considering creating a font to make things easier when laying the chart out in MS Excel. Then I thought ‘hang on’ someone must have done this already, and after a quick google search, yep. They have

• Air River Design – knitting font (not fixed width)
• Knitters Symbols Fonts by David Xenakis (fixed width). Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link to the download page.

These’ll save me time, at least to start with.  I have no illusions about my skill level when ‘designing’ knitwear – definitely beginner!

Double knitting in the round

And for my next experiment…  (This site  explains it without pictures and in a way I understood – yay!)

But I really must do some sewing first.  Sewing, not knitting?!  Yep, I have a commission I haven’t finished yet, and the person who’s taking it to a friend in the US is coming up next weekend.

Designs Upon a Shawl

The last couple of evenings have been spent partying, with Friday being a small wedding reception. So today is recovery and really not doing much. Ok, so I say not much, but I’ve been looking at shawls and thinking about my SP’s question about whether I’d consider knitting lace, and I think I may have found a concept I like…

The shoalwater shawl. This is a basic triangular piece knit from the top down. I then started playing around with it. I started thinking about changing it to a semi circle to lose the point, and so the increases wouldn’t be concentrated in 3 areas. I found the old shale tablecloth which is worked from the centre outwards, and thought it could be adapted to suit. Reconsidering, I’ve found shawls slip too easily when I try wearing them, so I started looking at other shapes. This turned up various images and comments about faroese shawls, which frankly intrigue me a lot! There’s even some basic notes on how to make them out there. However, it isn’t clear whether they should be worked top-down or bottom-up or whether the shoulders are shaped in the center of the triangles or along the outer edge . Last but by no means least, there’s also a cross between a stole and triangle idea in the pacific waves shawl.

Lots of shapes and decisions to make! If I go ahead with this, it’ll be next year sometime. Talk about organisation! The common theme is the pattern, so I’d better make a swatch or several with the help of the knitting fiends maths to see if I like it as much in real life…