Monthly Archives: March 2008

How can I keep from singing?

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 2 comments

I went to a folk harmony singing class this morning; it was really fun. But it will take a lot of practice to be able to do it reasonably well. I can “hear” where the upper harmony should go, a third up, but my voice is pretty low, and hearing the lower harmony isn’t as intuitive for me. The subtitle of the class was: How to Find and Keep a Part. I found it, but keeping it was a challenge! The teacher is Lauren Sheehan. I would love to take another class with her. We worked mostly with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” finding tenor (upper) and baritone (lower) harmony lines, and then went freeform on “How Can I Keep From Singing?”

Working on surprise project number one. Whose idea was it to use navy blue yarn? It’s really hard to see what I’m doing. The sun has to be shining AND the lights have to be on. Oh, yeah, it was me. No picture yet, but soon!

2 Comments

Posted in Knit, music

Tagged singing

Knit Nite Project

Posted on March 27, 2008 | 4 comments

Lorajean brought a bounty of Frog Tree Alpaca Sport to knit nite last night, with a proposal that we all make squares for a blanket, perhaps for Afghans for Afghans. This is beautiful yarn!

We kicked around ideas, and decided on ballband squares in alternating directions. But this morning I woke up and realized that ballband dishcloths are rectangular, not square. Back to square one, haha.

The other challenge on a project like this is to have everyone knitting to the same gauge. This is either easier or harder than it sounds, depending on how willing your knitters are to rip and re-do. I don’t mind it, but I know that some knitters are completely undone by the prospect.

Now I’m thinking that mitered squares might be the way to go. I’ll do a little more research, some swatching, and bring ideas to the next knit nite.

Last night I worked on my log cabin blanket. This is perfect knit nite knitting, completely mindless garter stitch that doesn’t go off track because of chat.

I have two more fun projects on the needles, but I can’t talk about them yet. They’re surprises!

4 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged afghan, Knit, log cabin

New socks = happy dance

Posted on March 23, 2008 | 1 comment

I love my entrelac socks so much that I want to make another pair. (Not that you can see much of the socks in this picture, but it was Crafty Mom Weekend, and I was wearing them!)

My LYS, Twisted, didn’t have more Yarntini Sport in a color I wanted, so I bought some LavenderSheep Superwash Sport. I finished most of one cuff and realized that this yarn didn’t want to be entrelac socks, or at least not the entrelac socks from my pattern. I’m never afraid to rip and start over, especially if yarn tells me that it wants to be something else. Apparently this yarn wanted to be plain old ribbed socks.

sox 2

sox 3

But they’re really not plain. The colors are wonderful; I love how the purple and blue spiral down the leg. And I added a baby cable to the 2×2 rib. It adds a little pizazz, and it makes it easy to count the number of rounds so the second sock can match.

I’ll find another yarn to make the entrelac socks. The hunt is on!

1 Comment

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, LavenderSheep, socks

Entrelac love

Posted on March 22, 2008 | 2 comments

The first time I fell in love with entrelac, I was looking at Kathryn Alexander’s amazing entrelac socks in Spin-Off’s Socks book (1994 Interweave Press). But it was about 10 years ago, and I was nowhere near ready to try something so ambitious. I was also afraid of skinny yarn at that point. Consider it an entrelac flirtation.

In 2006, I received a gift of handspun from BeeLady, a friend on a piano forum (and now Ravelry, too). We had both made baby gifts for another forumite, and BeeLady sent me some yarn she had spun and dyed. I found the perfect project for it, the Felted Entrelac Tote from knitpicks.com. There’s just enough entrelac in this project for a beginning entrelac knitter.

I was completely smitten. So smitten that I made three more as gifts, with yarn from knitpicks. That wasn’t quite enough to satisfy my burgeoning entrelac affair. I wanted to design a small project, something to take with me on a trip to San Antonio. This ear band pattern is the result:

But I still wanted a sock. I couldn’t find a pattern that matched the sock of my dreams, so I made my own. It’s not the many colors of fingering weight yarn wonder that first caught my eye, but it makes me really happy. Sport weight yarn, variegated so the yarn does the work and I don’t have a million ends to weave in.

My friend Anna is test knitting the pattern for me. Thanks, Anna!

2 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged entrelac, Knit

The first one is the most exciting

Posted on March 19, 2008 | 5 comments

I sold my first pattern on Ravelry today. It’s my first pattern sale ever! I was especially pleased because it was confirmation that I set it up correctly. The pattern is for this bag:

I love the Mason-Dixon Knitting book, and after making a ballband washcloth, I just had to take it to the next level. I needed a project to donate to the church youth fundraiser (for their mission trip), and came up with this.

Unfortunately, I fell in love with the colors in this bag, and I just couldn’t give it away. That meant that I had to make two more! I went to the stash and came up with two other color combinations, and they did go to the auction last Sunday. The blue one is still my favorite, though.

orange tote

vineyard tote

Felting is a funny thing; I increased the number of rows in the new bags because I wanted to make them a little taller than the blue bag, but they came out shorter! Different washing machines, different agitation. But they’re all cute.

See the link for the Felted Slip Stitch Tote on the sidebar for purchase information.

5 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, ravelry

Tagged ballband, felting, Knit

Knitting + WordPress = ?

Posted on March 17, 2008 | Comments Off

Where am I? Why am I here?

I’m curious about the blog world. My page at comcast is hard to manage, so I thought I’d try WordPress.

I’m currently in love with knitting. I’ve been knitting for about 30 years, but most seriously in the last 10. I have some free patterns out on the web; I’ll post them here, too, when I figure out how. I’m in a creative whirlwind (mania?) this spring, designing and writing some new patterns, and I’ll be selling them through Ravelry.com. It’s a big step, and I’m learning all sorts of techie non-knitting things along the way.