PDXKnitterati

Third time’s a charm

Posted on July 21, 2008 | 6 comments

I hope.

The February Lady. I made the baby version, eons ago; I know how it’s done. Simple, no?

No. The first time was my own fault. I fell in love with another yarn, so Lady 1 was frogged and Lady 2 begun.

Saturday, my less than charming third button-hole finally got to me, so I took it off the needles to frog back to re-do it. While it was off the needles, I tried it on. Uh-oh. (Good thing there’s no picture.) The fronts barely met up. And that makes sense; there are the same number of stitches in the front as in the back. Same width, no overlap.

So I frogged THE WHOLE THING. Good thing I like working with this yarn, even though it’s making my hands turn blue. I added 5 stitches to each front, which gives me an inch to overlap. And I redid the buttonholes, moving them a stitch further in and worked from the right side instead of the wrong side, because the side I was working looked way better than the back side. I also continued the raglan decreases further instead of doing the eyelet row. After knitting like a madwoman Saturday and Sunday, I’m almost back to where I was Saturday morning. I’ve divided for the armholes again, and am cruising on the lace. I tried it on this morning (Monday) and it fits perfectly.

Still can’t capture the red, purple, and green in a picture; you’ll have to take my word for it!

I can’t seem to knit a sweater as written. There are always modifications that I want, but it’s hard to tell what they are until I have something tangible to work with. Smaller items don’t give me this problem (hats, socks), but the big stuff is more of an investment, and I want it to be PERFECT.

6 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged february lady, Knit

Still not really a sock knitter…

Posted on July 18, 2008 | 6 comments

But last Wednesday Michelle showed me Judy’s Magic Cast On, so I can try toe-up socks. This cast on was just featured by Cat Bordhi (sock goddess) in Knitter’s magazine. Judy is a fellow PDX Knit Blogger, and she’s becoming very famous!

Later that evening, I bought some gorgeous sock yarn from Lorajean. She brought it to knit nite, looking for input on new labels. This won’t be the new label, but I love the new yarn!

There’s a blue undertone to the whole colorway, even in the pink and purple. And you know how I love blue.

I guess I’ll be knitting some socks, soon!

6 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, knit socks, sock yarn

Everything’s coming up roses!

Posted on July 17, 2008 | 7 comments

Last week, Cathy showed me Nicky Epstein’s book, Knitted Flowers. What a beautiful book! I’m not one for a lot of adornment, but I had to make some of these, just to see what they were like. I plundered the scrap stash in search of flower-colored yarn.

The first one I knit was the cabbage rose. This one is made with Tahki Cotton Classic on a US 5 needle. It’s done with a small number of stitches cast on, and then a series of increases, which made it pretty tight on the needle by the time the knitting was done. Leaves were made on a US 7.

The second was the American Beauty rose, also in Cotton Classic. The leaves are from the cabbage rose pattern, though. This one is made with a larger cast on, and a series of decreases.

I made an American Beauty rose in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece on a US 7 needle.

And this one, my favorite, the American Beauty rose bud.

The flowers didn’t take long to make, and they weren’t too fiddly, either. It was a fun project, and I’m looking forward to making more flowers and leaves. There are a lot more flowers in the book; I just chose two that looked simple, so I could sample!

7 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, knit flowers

Needful things

Posted on July 12, 2008 | 7 comments

Let’s see: Josephine is knitted but I still don’t have time to seam until after this weekend. My favorite aunt and her family are visiting (of course she’s my favorite; she taught me to knit when I was 16!) for my brother’s birthday celebration. We went to Twisted yesterday for a little shopping, and to Powell’s, to look at knitting books (and cookbooks, but not for me). I managed to avoid buying more yarn or knitting books, but I did buy these. They are the most elegant pins I’ve ever seen.

While at Twisted, we wound more of my Dream In Color Classy. I told you there was no going back on this one! This means commitment. Although there is one more skein to wind. It just wouldn’t fit in the cute little bag I was carrying. You can see more of the color variations here, but it’s still not as good as real life. The February Lady is coming along nicely; I just moved from a 26 inch needle to a 40 inch needle. It feels better not being so scrunched up.

I just received this as a gift.

It’s a needle case for double pointed needles. I’ve been looking for a way to manage them, and this is practical and beautiful. It’s from Lantern Moon. Now that my needles are in there, I’m wondering where my size 3 dpns have gone? I know which socks my size 4 dpns are living in, but the 3’s should be free. Oops.

Oh, I have a fairly recent Lantern Moon silk circular case, too. I love it; it’s nice to have all my circulars in one place so I can find the right size quickly. And I like that I can just tuck it away. Again, practical and beautiful.

And last of all, I think we’ve declared a winner in the squirrel war.

It’s not me.

I think he’s jumping from the trellis on the front of my house. We’ve moved all the other possible launch points away, and moved the bird feeder, too. The trellis has a really ugly climbing hydrangea on it, and it will probably be removed next spring. But for now, it’s Mr. Squirrel 4, Me 2, maybe. Mookie doesn’t seem to mind. She finds the birds more interesting, though.

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, the squirrel

Tagged february lady, Knit, lantern moon, squirrel

My Cheating Heart

Posted on July 8, 2008 | 8 comments

That French blue Riverstone? Beautiful yarn. Lovely to work with. But when knitting yards and yards and yards of garter stitch? Just a tad bit…boring.

The gals at Twisted sent out a twitter (do you know about Twitter?) that they received new Dream in Color Classy. Lots of it. That was enough to make me go look. Only looking, you understand. Just to make sure I had made the right choice for my February Lady.

Somehow this followed me home.

The pictures don’t do it justice. Sure, it’s blue yarn. But it has green, purple, brown…everything. It’s amazing. The colorway is called Night Watch. It will be fun to watch the color changes as I’m knitting all that garter yoke.

You’ll note that I’m a cautious knitter. I only had one skein of the Riverstone wound up into a ball. It will make a lovely something, later. The rest of it was exchanged for this Classy. And you’ll note that there’s only one ball so far, too. But I don’t think there will be any more exchanges. It’s too lovely.

And it still fits my blueberry theme!

Here’s the cobbler recipe we’ve been using (shout out to my friend Vickie, who sent me this recipe in 1987 or so, when we still wrote letters via snailmail):

For the batter:
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 TBSP butter (I admit that I misread her 4 as a 9, and have been using 8 TBSP, or 1/2 cup, of butter. Yum. 6 is a good compromise.)
3/4 cup sugar (I reduce to 2/3 cup)
1 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
3 cups berries

Stir together flour, baking powder, salt. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla; beat in egg until blended. Add flour mixure and milk–beat only until smooth. Spread in buttered 8 inch square baking dish; scatter berries on top.

TOPPING:
1/4 cup soft butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour

Combine topping ingredients and beat until smooth. Drop teaspoonsful of topping over berries. Bake @ 350 degrees for one hour–toothpick should come out without batter, and top is golden. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream, or both. 6-8 servings.

Enjoy!

8 Comments

Posted in Knit, recipe

Tagged blueberry, Classy, cobbler, Dream in Color, february lady, recipe

Blueberry Forest

Posted on July 6, 2008 | 7 comments

I just realized why I picked my February Lady yarn.

I seem to have blueberries on my mind. They’re just coming into season, and I have five bushes in the side yard. We’ve been having blueberry muffins, blueberry cobbler, and my favorite, watermelon and blueberries. I’m going to try to freeze some for later, but I usually just pick enough for whatever I’m making that day.

I swatched for the February Lady, and am 15 rows in. I’m not sure I like the increases I’m using, and am thinking of a simple yarn over increase instead, which would make a double eyelet line at the raglan corners. There’s a knitalong group on Ravelry, as well as the upcoming KAL at Twisted, so I’ve been looking at pictures of finished Ladies on Rav. As you can probably tell by now, I don’t mind frogging and re-knitting!

I finished the knitting (and reknitting) on Josephine, and now it’s leap of faith time. Will it fit? Will it look good? It’s time for the seaming, and there will be a lot of mattress stitch in my near future. And we’ll see…

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, ravelry

Tagged blueberries, february lady, josephine, Knit

Viral Knitting

Posted on July 2, 2008 | 8 comments

There’s a new sweater pattern that’s getting a lot of attention on Ravelry. It’s called the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne, and it’s a grown-up adaptation of the February Baby Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s classic book, Knitter’s Almanac. Cute!

I put it in my Ravelry queue as a joke, just to see if it would spread there. Yup. Then I heard that Twisted, my favorite LYS, is hosting a KAL (knitalong). And then they decided to have an anniversary sale to celebrate their first year in business. How could I resist all that?

I couldn’t. Last night I bought Louet Riverstone Worsted in a gorgeous color, French Blue.

I think it will be great with jeans. Twisted’s KAL begins on July 11, but I’ll need to swatch before then. For now, I’m reading Ravelry’s February Lady KAL group forum for tips and ideas.

Side note: Emily bought some of my patterns, so they’re available at Twisted, as well as here on my blog. They’re for my felted slip stitch tote,

entrelac socks,

log cabin baby blanket,

and zigzag pedi socks.

More pattern sales mean more yarn for me. Do you feel like an enabler? 😉

8 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, ravelry

Tagged february lady, Knit, louet, twisted

Josephine of my dreams

Posted on July 1, 2008 | 5 comments

and the Josephine on my needles aren’t quite matching up. :sigh:

I finished one shoulder of the front this evening, held it up, and realized that the eyelet row wasn’t going to land where I want it to be (under the bustline, not on it). But in order to add some length on top, I have to take it back to the armhole bind off, and add it *before* the armhole.

So I frogged back to the armholes. Rip-it, rip-it, rip-it.

I’ll have to redo the back, too, after I finish the front. :sigh, again:

But look at all the practice I’ll get with short-row shoulders! Hey, I’m trying to find the bright side. Work with me.

Sunday’s piano party was fun. The premise of the group is that the more you play for others, the more comfortable you’ll be playing in public. It’s a small, non-threatening group. So far, so good. I also go to a bigger group that meets bi-monthly at a local piano store, but I’ve missed the last several meetings. Something about spending all my free time knitting instead of practicing!

I wore this:

I love this pattern; it’s ingenious. It’s knit smaller than body size, and it stretches to fit (negative ease). The ribbing on the back makes it work. The pattern is the cabled tank from Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2007. A quick knit with 6 skeins of Berroco Cotton Twist (cotton/rayon blend).

5 Comments

Posted in Knit, music, piano

Tagged cabled tank, Josephine Top, Knit, piano

You can’t make me knit socks…

Posted on June 29, 2008 | 4 comments

but I seem to have knit a lot of them.

One of the cool things about living in Portland is having Powell’s City of Books right here. It’s the largest used and new bookstore in the United States, covering a full city block. The kids and I went there yesterday to sell several years’ accumulation of excess bookage. We came out with $190. Only $42 of it was mine. I restrained myself in the very well-stocked knitting section, and bought one book. It’s Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.

I still don’t consider myself a sock knitter, but I seem to have knit a lot of socks, and designed some, too! So I thought I’d learn about some alternate construction techniques. I really want to try a toe-up sock with a heel stitch flap *under* the heel, because that’s where my socks wear out. But you can’t make me give up my dpns. No magic loop or two circulars for me; I’m big on that knitting with sticks, Little House on the Prairie experience.

My other favorite sock book is Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. I love all the heel and toe options and explanations, along with the beautiful patterns.

I won’t tell you how many other sock books I have. Because I’m not a sock knitter. Really.

4 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, socks

Knit haiku

Posted on June 27, 2008 | 1 comment

I wrote a haiku the other day. I’m not really in the habit of doing so, but Dee at Cooking with Dee is having a haiku event, and I wanted to send her something.

Knitting in sunshine
Pink yarn on smooth black needles
Poetry in lace

I made some more stitch markers yesterday. They’re pretty, but not as fun as the first batch. I think the difference is that it’s just the one bead, and that wasn’t as much fun as picking several beads for a marker. It was more of a job than a creative activity. But here they are, anyway:

Pianists, note that this picture is on the back of a Schirmer book. The previous markers were on Henle blue; I thought I’d continue the theme! Henle is my favorite urtext edition.

I’m going to a piano party on Sunday, so I’ve started playing again. Nothing like a deadline to get me on the bench. At this point in my piano life, I’m not practicing enough to learn something new, so I thought I’d try to resurrect some old repertoire. I have several pieces that are easily revived, but I’m reaching further back and trying to re-learn some other things, notably the andante from Mozart’s G major Sonata K. 283 (I used to play the allegro, too, but that’s an ambitions resurrection right now), and Beethoven’s G major Sonata Op. 49. No. 2. Neither one will be ready for Sunday. I’m enjoying it, anyway.

1 Comment

Posted in Knit, music, piano

Tagged haiku, Knit, piano, stitch markers