PDXKnitterati

Falling for falls, all over again (aka Gorge-ous)

Posted on April 29, 2008 | Comments Off

Sunday was a beautiful spring day, and my friend Nova was in town from San Diego. We drove out into the Columbia River Gorge to look at waterfalls and wild flowers. I used to take the kids out to the falls to play in the water on hot summer days, but I hadn’t been out there in the past few years. (At ages 20 and 15, it’s just not the same.) It was fun to see the falls through fresh eyes. Wahkeena Falls is my favorite; Wahkeena means most beautiful. Too bad I didn’t bring the camera!

I did have the camera phone, though, and took this picture of Nova at Multnomah Falls:

And I tried to capture the shaft of sunlight coming down the hillside:

But it was much more beautiful in person. I’m so glad Nova came to visit! A perfect afternoon.

I was actually out in the Gorge last weekend, too. I was working at a women’s retreat at Menucha. Lovely, lovely place. Friday night’s sunset was spectacular through low curtain-y clouds. The sun is reflecting off the Columbia River down below.

It snowed Saturday morning! We had a visitor on the back deck during Saturday evening’s song circle:

The rose garden labyrinth at Menucha is beautiful, and should be finished in a few months. It’s come a long way since we visited last year.

From winter to spring in one week flat! April is an exciting month in Oregon.

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Posted in travel, Uncategorized

Tagged Menucha, waterfall

Entrelac socks, redux

Posted on April 25, 2008 | 2 comments

I had tea with Anna on Monday. She’s cruising along on the entrelac socks. The first is done, and the second is halfway there. A completed first sock means that the pattern is readable and knittable, so the entrelac sock pattern is ready to be published. It’s now available on the sidebar.

Anna says that she only knits with dirt-colored yarn. I think it’s good looking dirt! Although we prefer to say, “earth tones.” We bought this yarn at Coastal Yarns in Cannon Beach, Oregon during Crafty Moms Weekend in February. I bought some in variegated blues. It’s Hacho hand-dyed merino wool, DK weight, from Mirasol Yarn, spun in Peru. Yum. I’m trying to finish the Shetland Triangle shawl before I jump into another pair of these socks, but the siren song is strong.

2 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, ravelry

Tagged entrelac, Knit, socks

Holey, holey, holey

Posted on April 22, 2008 | Comments Off

I’m working on Evelyn Clark’s Shetland Triangle from Interweave Knits’ book, Wrap Style. Wow, this lace knitting is really addictive! The pattern is easy to remember, except for the first few stitches of the odd numbered rows, but other than looking at those few stitches on the chart, it’s cruise control knitting.

I love how the knitting looks like a crumpled blob on the needles, but when I spread it out a little, I can begin to see what the fir cone pattern is going to look like. Blocking will really bring out the pattern after I finish knitting. Soon!

The yarn I’m using is Silver, Silk, and Superwash Merino Sock Yarn from Painted Skeins. It has a thread of real silver in it, which appeals to the magpie in me.

I worked on this a little last week on the Amtrak train from Seattle. I went up to see Perri Knize read from her new book, Grand Obsession, at a piano party at Classical Grands. The book is the story of her search for the perfect piano, falling in love with one, and the journey that begins when the piano, Marlene, arrives having lost her distinctive voice. Perri is a member of a piano forum that I frequent, and it was nice to meet her in person! The trip also gave me a chance to catch up with some other piano friends.

Knit on!

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Posted in Knit, piano

Tagged Knit, lace, piano

Mitered squares for all

Posted on April 11, 2008 | 4 comments

I’ve been playing with the Frog Tree Alpaca Sport, experimenting with garter stitch mitered squares. I like the idea of garter stitch, because it’s square instead of rectangular, and I want the squares to be square! More or less. It’s still a little diamond-y, but I think it will do. Blocking will help. Since this is a group project, I also want the square to be pretty simple. Here’s the square:

And here’s how I made it:

CO 72 sts with color A, knit one row (wrong side).

Row 1: K 34, SSK, place marker, K2tog, K34

Row 2 and all even rows: Knit

Row 3 and all odd rows: K until 2 sts before marker, SSK, slip marker, K2tog, K to end of row.

After first 6 rows, change to color B. There are 4 garter ridges on the right side. (Why not 3? Because the one row you knit on the wrong side before row 1 made a ridge on the right side, so there was one ridge before we even started the pattern. After this, it will take 8 rows to make 4 garter ridges.)

Continue in miter pattern, alternating between color A and color B every 8 rows (you’ll have four garter ridges on the right side). At the beginning of each right side row, bring the current color up under and behind the color not in use. This will carry the color not in use up the side of the block.

When you have 2 sts remaining (one on either side of the marker) after completing a right side row, K2 tog on the very next wrong side row. (Don’t change colors; I know there are 4 ridges, but we don’t want a little blip of color.) Cut yarn and pull through the last stitch. Cut the other yarn, too, leaving nice tails!

I’m using size 4 needles, but as usual, it’s all about gauge. Square measures 7 inches across the middles, and 10 inches point to point. Now we just need to make a lot of them! I’m guessing we’ll get three squares out of each set of two balls of yarn. Wish I had a digital kitchen scale…

The square I was experimenting with at Knit Nite was decidedly ugly (the corner looked like a wart), so we passed out the yarn and now I just need to send out this pattern.

ETA: Edited to add: There are many ways to go about this, but it works in garter stitch as long as you have two decreases, every other row. You could also do one decrease each row, always before the center marker. Or always after the center marker. You could also do a centered double decrease on every right side row, but then there’d be a lot of “moving the marker” activity. I wanted to make the square as simple to knit as possible. This is the way it turned out: easy!

4 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged afghan, Knit, mitered square

ZigZagZigZag

Posted on April 7, 2008 | 2 comments

I’ve been working on these pedicure socks for a friend’s birthday. I ran through three different design ideas before I came up with a stitch pattern that would let the yarn tell its story. This yummy yarn is Yarntini Variegated Sport, and the colorway is Mimosa. It just screams “orange creamsicle” at me. I love this yarn; it’s the same yarn that I used for my Entrelac Socks. It’s a little heavy for a sport weight yarn, but it has a wonderful springy texture.

ZigZag Lace Pedicure Socks

I hope she likes them! Pattern should be up in a few days. :edit: pattern is up!

I also put up the pattern for the log cabin baby blanket; I had already written instructions for knitting the squares for my knit group; it was just a matter of adding assembly and border instructions. Enjoy!

2 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged blanket, Knit, log cabin, pedi, socks, yarntini

Log Cabin Baby Blanket

Posted on April 3, 2008 | 4 comments

What Lorajean didn’t know when she proposed a group project is that the rest of her knitting group was already working on a group project…for her! She’s expecting a baby this month, and we wanted to do something knitty for her. The result is this log cabin baby blanket. :edit: pattern now available!

I wanted the blanket to be easy to knit because we have all skill levels in our group. I wanted it to have a theme. And I wanted it to be easy to assemble, since I was going to assemble it.

I wrote up directions and wound off yarn for the knitters. (I want a digital kitchen scale; my old analog one isn’t very precise!) The greatest challenge was getting everyone to knit to the same gauge. An encounter with the steam iron made the smallest a bit bigger, but you can’t steam something to be smaller! The blanket is made with Plymouth Encore, a blend of wool and acrylic, so it’s machine washable and dryable. I slip stitch crocheted the squares together and added a rolling reverse stockinette border. Hat tip to Kay Gardiner from Mason-Dixon Knitting for this easy, fast border. (The border recipe is described in the post from August 6, 2007.)

The whole thing was presented in a Lantern Moon rice basket.

I love these; they are the perfect knitting basket for a sizeable project. Lorajean is actually keeping baby clothes in several of these already.

Lorajean’s baby shower was tonight, and now she knows about group project number one! We’re still thinking about the next one.

4 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged baby blanket, log cabin

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.