119 posts tagged “knitting pictures”
Sometime in the fall Stefan and I were at Purlescence and he picked out two colors of Cascade Cotton Club, a cotton/acrylic blend that I think is very similar to my beloved All Seasons Cotton. In fact the blue/grey he picked out is almost the same color as my Manon. His request for the yarn was a "spiky" hat. The red was supposed to be the spikes. I looked around on Ravelry for a while, trying to find just the right hat and finally settled on Chullosauro (Ravelry link to my project - sorry I have been neglecting to add these). I think it fits the bill, don't you?
This second picture is a bit out of focus but captures Stefan's smile so perfectly that I had to upload it too.
Mom's legwarmers were delivered on Christmas. I was a little nervous about how well they'll stay up. We'll see how it goes!
I'm hoping that a) all the new electronics will play nicely with each other tomorrow (once we get the right cable) and we can start sorting out what needs to go and where it can go.
Well, this is as far as I got in my NaNoSweMo goal.
I'm holding the sides of the sweater down because left to its own devices the front panel poofs out which is not good. I'm going to have to try to block that out of it, maybe with an iron. If that doesn't work I might actually tack it down so that it's more like a pleat. We'll see.
Last night I finished sewing in the front panel and
started on the first sleeve. I decided from the outset to do a top-down set-in sleeve following Barbara Walker's instructions in Knitting from the Top. I am doing this for simplicity's sake: I don't have to sew it in, but also because I don't want as slim a sleeve as Norah Gaughan likes on her sweaters. I got a bit of the sleeve cap done last night.
And the rest of the cap done this afternoon.
Since that photo was taken I have knit across the underarm and begun knitting down. I will put in the decreases as written in the pattern: one every 1/25 inches evenly down the edge with two inches straight at the bottom. I think it will make a nice sleeve and if not, it won't be too hard to rip back to this point and change the rate of decrease. Although, I hope I don't have to do that.
Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!
I noticed something odd today when I was taking my hand knit socks off of the drying rack.
Perhaps I should knit up my green mill-dyed Sock Candy next just to throw a wrench in the works.
I wove with the kids at school again today. They didn't seem as fast as last week. One of the other moms and I may have come up with a way to help the warp on the Beka looms stay tighter. I think it helped the kids a bit. I have a couple of weeks off before we weave again so hopefully I'll get my act together and rewarp the looms in advance. I'd actually like to try warping my loom for Niels and seeing if he can do it. He was really interested in it.
I have had a kid-intensive week, with a field trip and Arts Focus and tomorrow I'm working in the preschool to pay someone back for covering for me so it was good to get out tonight to BobaKnit. Those BobaKnitters know how to make me laugh. Hannah especially. <3 you, Hannah!
Both front pieces of my sweater are now done! I am ready to start the top of the back. I think I'm pretty on track to finish this thing by the end of the month! Although, that front middle piece is pretty big so maybe I shouldn't get ahead of myself. Since it's all still on one circular needle it's kind of hard to photograph, but hopefully you can get the idea from this picture.
I'm pleased with it so far. I look forward to the back being done so I can sort of try it on. Right now that's impossible unless I put parts on waste yarn or another needle and that seems like too much work.
I had a post in my head for yesterday, and I even took a picture to go with it of my fake seam in progress.
The fake seam is in the middle of the underarm bind off and the seam went in smoothly but for some reason I miscalculated several times how many stitches to bind off and how they should be divided between the fronts and the back. It started because I was working on it too late at night and somehow it just escalated. Three tries later, I had the number of stitches I wanted bound off (22) and they were divided as I wanted them (10 from the back, 11 from the front and the 1 seam stitch) and I started the left front. I love the fronts of a sweater like this because it's decreasing fairly rapidly and it just goes faster and faster. I'll probably do the right front immediately because it's so fast and satisfying but also so I don't forget what I did on the left. The final advantage will be that if I do the two fronts first when I finish the back I'll be ready to attach the shoulders. I'm doing to do a three needle bind off, I think. I am a fan of the three needle bind off even for shoulder seams. I know others feel that's not strong enough.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Before any of this can happen I need to finish off the two woven pieces on the Beka looms and rewarp. The cricket still has a bit of warp left on it so I'm not going to rewarp it yet. We have three more weeks so after this coming Thursday I'll rewarp it with a bit of a longer warp. I'm torn about the Bekas. I'm tempted to just warp them with the same length and let each kid do a bit less so that the end result is pieces that are about the same length. We'll see, though.
I think the silly names for H1N1 are pretty entertaining: hamthrax, aporkalypse, etc. However, six of Niels' classmates and his teacher were all out today with possible swine flu so I'm not laughing anymore. I really don't want it to go through my house. It feels inevitable at this point, though. One of his classmates' mother is a pediatrician and she told me I don't have to panic but she didn't give me much hope that we'd dodge it. Boo.
Anyway, I'm not thinking about swine flu tonight, I'm just working on my sweater and watching TV on Hulu. I love Hulu.
I had some success and some failure today. I finished the cap I started yesterday.
I found another hat that I made for myself last year that I never wear and I think will suit my friend's needs. At least, it will keep her head warm and it will be large enough! (She says she has a big head.)
I learned to use a warping mill.
And to thread the Beka Child's Looms that we have for school.
You may also be able to tell that I got my card reader to work again and was able to get photos off of my camera rather than just using my iPhone. The iPhone is great outside but inside it basically stinks.
I am thinking now that I should reassess my summary statement. I really only had one failure. The yarn I used to warp the loom is far too think. It gets caught on itself when I try to move the heddle up and down to, you know, actually weave. I have to say that I found measuring warp on the mill and threading the heddle one strand at a time with a dental floss threader to be surprisingly meditative. I was resisting doing it because I thought that it would be horribly tedious and much more complicated than warping my cricket loom which is done with a warping peg and the warp is measured directly onto the loom, basically. That way gets it all down to one step, more or less, but this was less stressful, perhaps because I could do the steps sitting down either in front of the mill to measure or at the table with the heddle propped between two books to thread. Having my friend Victoria's mill was key, clearly, as was her advice to use the lease sticks (the sticks you see in the above photo between where the yarn crosses itself) to maintain the cross. Excellent advice!
Tomorrow I hope to obtain thinner yarn and rewarp the loom I threaded and warp another one. I might have to give up on the idea of exclusively working with our school colors because I do have some cotton yarn that was far too thin for the Cricket loom which I think means it will be just right for the Bekas.
I have to say that I was worried that this month being our Arts Focus workshops at school was going to interfere with my daily blogging but it's actually given me more to talk about! If you don't mind reading about weaving, of course.
I'm not focusing very well on my NaNoSweMo sweater. I started a new project today, a chemo cap for my friend because no one had gotten a chance to finish one for her yet. She starts chemo tomorrow and I know her hair won't fall out instantly but I think if it were me I'd take it off before it had the chance to fall out bit by bit. I have no idea how quickly it all progresses, really, but I want her to have a hat in her possession, darnit! Anyway, I picked a pattern that calls for worsted weight yarn so it's a quick knit. If I write this post fast enough I may even get to the top decreases tonight. I thought maybe I could finish it but that's not happening.
So, now that I've figured out that I can export my photos from iPhoto in a roundabout way, my card reader won't recognize my flash card so I can't get photos off of my camera. I seem to have whatever is opposite of the Midas touch with mechanical and electronic devices these days. I took a couple of iPhone photos of my faded socks instead. I know it's not great but I think you can see what is going on in this one.
The sock on the left has faded less than the sock on the right but it is still faded and pretty dull looking. The ball of yarn between my feet is the leftover yarn that hasn't been washed. This is from one wash. In cold water and Soak. Here's the photo of them freshly knitted and not at all faded, for reference.
