where is it now?

Knit and Crochet Blog Week day four: Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity. There are a lot of different aspects to look at when looking back at a knitting project and it can make for interesting blogging, as much of the time we blog about items recently completed, new and freshly completed. It is not so often that we look back at what has happened to these items after they have been around for a while. How has one of your past knits lived up to wear. Maybe an item has become lost. Maybe you spent weeks knitting your giant-footed dad a pair of socks in bright pink and green stripes which the then ‘lost’. If you have knit items to donate to a good cause, you could reflect on the ways in which you hope that item is still doing good for it’s owner or the cause it was made to support.

Where is it now? Why, it's in my clothes cupboard of course! It's the first sweater I ever knit for myself. On a trip to New Brunswick, Mom and I had an opportunity to visit and tour the Briggs & Little woolen mill. What fun! And while in the mill store I saw a knitted sample of this sweater and fell in love. I bought the pattern book, I bought the yarn and I set out to knit myself this sweater.

The biggest rookie mistake I made was in calculating the size. I measured from my underarm to wrist and used that for the sleeve length. I measured from my underarm to hips and used that for the trunk length. Only after I finished the sweater did I realize that the pattern had a fair bit of "ease" and that the underarm of the sweater was actually more than a couple of inches below my actual underarm. My sweater was way too large.

What to do? Rip it out to start again? Give it away? Throw it away? Finally I decided to take a chance - I machine washed and tumble dried my 100% wool sweater and voilà. By some happy chance the sweater shrunk about 15% to exactly the size it should have been in the first place. Serendipity! Now it's my favourite sweater; perfect for those cold windy winter surfing days by the lake.

tidy mind, tidy stitches

Knit and Crochet blogging week day three: How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

In a previous blog post I mentioned organizing yarn in clear plastic shoe boxes from the dollar store - one for sock yarn, one for baby yarn, one for dishcloth cotton, one for sport weight yarn and one for notions and accessories. That takes care of about half my stash which lives in a cupboard in the spare bedroom upstairs. The rest is worsted weight or bulkier which is organized in baskets.

For the projects percolating in my head at any given moment there's usually a variety of yarn residing in the trifle bowl on a dining room shelf, along with ball bands, labels and knitting notions. What's in there now?

• At the bottom is my sunshine dishcloth; stalled after I couldn't figure out the instructions for the iCord edged triangles. I really need to get this sorted out! Being confounded by a dishcloth is making me feel dumb.
• There are also a couple of balls of Habu silk for a small purse or two. I have some ideas about what I'd like the design to look like, but first I want to get hold of a copy of Interweave Knits Winter 2010 to read an article about adding zippers to knitted fabric.
• Towards the back of the pile are a couple of balls of cream coloured acrylic yarn. This was amongst the pile of Lopi donated to me. I put these aside thinking they might be good for knitting a bulldog.
• Near the top are a couple of balls of cotton. If I rework my design for double-knitting, then I think a lighter weight cotton is called for. The usual worsted weight dishcloth cotton might be too thick when knit doubled.

skill + 1UP

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week day 2: Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

I've picked up a few new skills over the last year, but the biggest change from this year to last is my confidence. Picking up stitches at a sock gusset used to be something I dreaded. Was I picking up the right loops? Would I get the right number? Should I fudge it to get the correct number of stitches? Would I end up with holes? Would it look alright when done?

After another year of steady knitting practice it's as if I can see the stitches more clearly. The loops of the slipped stitches at the edges of the heel flaps seem to line up in an orderly fashion - there's no longer any doubt which to pick up onto my needle. I'm better at keeping track of my row counts, and better at recounting rows correctly when I forget, ending up with the correct number of slipped stitches ready for picking up. And practice, practice, practice has evened out my tension to give me a consistently good finished result. By golly, I think I've got this!

In the next day or two I need to figure out how to graft 2x2 rib so that I can finish my green baby blanket. Thank goodness for all the online resources, particularly Ravelry! Seems like there's a YouTube video for almost everything.

a tale of two yarns

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week day one: Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

For me, it's sock yarn that does it. Over the last few years I've knit a wide variety of sock yarn, and I've learned a few things about my likes and dislikes along the way. Not just that I like a bit of nylon so that all my hard work doesn't wear out straight away. And not just that I prefer wool as the main fiber - I find it most comfortable, warm without being too hot, and nicely stretchy for a good fit. My hardest learned lesson is to walk past the tempting displays of colourful hand painted or self patterning yarns in favour of subtle multi-tonal yarns.

Take, for example, the yarns pictured. The Kroy yarn has so much colour and so much pattern that it's destined to become a pair of basic kids socks in the next day or two. Stockinette or rib; that's all I can think to do with self-patterning yarn. For the Diamond Soxy yarn, because the shade changes are so muted, I can take my pick of all the interesting sock patterns out there. Maybe Miriam by Monica Jines? That looks like a fun pattern!

something new

My dishcloth design process continues. I knit my first sample from natural colour dishcloth cotton, but after completing it I decided that the motif at the centre of the pattern was too subtle. Working it in a second colour would be just the ticket I thought.

Last week I watched some YouTube videos about Intarsia, and tried again. My conclusions? The design definitely benefits from the addition of a second colour, however, working it by intarsia was such a pain that it hardly seemed worth it just for a dishcloth. Also, I don't like the look of the reverse side using this method.

Yesterday I watched more YouTube videos, this time to learn about double knitting. This series of videos prepared for Twist Collective was particularly helpful. So far I've cast on and I've knit a small swatch - natural white on one side and pink on the other. Looks like the right approach for my pattern but I'd better take the time to knit a few double knit patterns to get a better feel for it. It's always fun to learn something new though. And it's given me lots of ideas of other things I want to knit!

socks for little feet

After knitting a pair of child's socks at the larger pattern size a friend remarked "Child socks?! Those look like they'd fit me."

That gave me pause. Because I have huge feet I find it difficult to judge what would fit a child. Small socks all look impossibly small to me. This time around I decided to knit the smaller size of Evelyn Skae's Most Basic Child's Socks, and to knit the pattern exactly as written to see how that turns out.

This morning I grafted the toe of the first sock. The finished size from toe to heel (unstretched) is 6.25". Based on this chart, it should fit a child with size 9 feet. (edited vis-a-vis Elizabeth's comment) Even better? This little sock took just 25 grams of yarn; that's one complete pair from a 50 gram ball of Kroy sock yarn! How perfect is that?

one more pair ready

When I cast on these socks I had hoped that we were done with snow and that spring had finally arrived. Clearly, winter is not done with us yet. Oh well, best not to wish my life away no matter what the weather. Maybe spring will get a better foothold next week!

The good thing is that these socks are done. March is my month for charity knitting, so I'm glad to have made a start on my knitting for the Warm Hands Network's September shipment. Much better to knit a pair or two a month through the year than try to mass produce socks in the few weeks before the shipment. Besides it's a great way to reduce the stash - there's no risk of running out of sock yarn!