PDXKnitterati

Bridge for Blankets…live!

Posted on July 23, 2013 | 16 comments

I knit them as part of a huge knit art installation going up on Portland’s Broadway Bridge. I’m one of over 150 knitters involved in this project. The first panel went up last weekend.

Pretty cool, huh? I didn’t anticipate that they’d be so poufy; I had envisioned a flat knitted banner. But knitting is very stretchy, as you know, so it’s going to drape. This panel has canvas strips basted to the back of some of the seams to help support the weight. When the breeze blows into the fabric, it billows like a spinnaker sail. Beautiful! I’m hoping that rain won’t stretch it beyond recognition; it’s superwash wool and sometimes superwash needs a trip through the dryer to bounce back to size. Here’s to sunny warm days!

I rode my bike down to the river (more maneuverable than a car) for a closer look.

Look! My squares! A mitered square in the center of the very bottom row of the purple section (curled under), and in the row above it: stripe, miter, stripe.

This adds a lot of fun and whimsy for traffic going by on the bridge, and on the river, too. Three more panels are going up on Friday, so there will be two on each side of the bridge. They’ll stay up through mid-August. After that, they’ll be disassembled into 42 blankets, cleaned, and given to local shelters and hospitals.

Here’s the view from the other side, looking south towards the Steel Bridge. It’s like a stained glass window with the light coming through it.

I spent a lovely afternoon on Sunday helping to sew one of the panels together. We finished the last two panels, but the reinforcing with canvas is still underway this week.

Tyler Mackie is the fiber artist behind this project. She’s sitting on a finished panel. It looks a lot bigger at home than on the bridge! Each of the four panels panel weighs about 45 pounds, measures 18 feet by 21 feet, and uses 210 skeins of Cascade 220 Superwash. That’s a lot of yarn.

Contrary to what you may have heard or read, the yarn was not donated. Tyler purchased it at a substantial discount from Abundant Yarn, with an additional discount from Cascade Yarn. (Thank you!) She is still fundraising to cover the cost of the yarn. You can donate to this project at the PDX Bridge Festival website.

Other fundraising is also happening. There’s a silent art auction at SoHiTek Gallery, 625 NW Everett # 102, this Thursday, 6-9 p.m. Prices begin at $30, and all proceeds go to support Bridge for Blankets. You can purchase raffghan tickets there, too.

Sharon Mackie knit this “raffghan” (raffle afghan) representation of the panel color scheme. Gorgeous! The winner will be chosen at the August 10 Block Party.

The Block Party is a birthday party for the Broadway Bridge on Saturday, August 10, noon to 7 p.m. at NW Broadway and Hoyt. Happy 100th birthday to this lovely and functional bascule bridge! (I’m going to make you look that one up…)

16 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Bridge for Blankets, Broadway Bridge, charity knitting, pdxbridgefest, yarnbombing

Blocking lace tutorial: magic!

Posted on July 18, 2013 | 6 comments

Blocking is magic for lace knitting. You may think that your project is finished once it’s off the needles, but that’s when the fun really begins. The true beauty of lace doesn’t show until you go through the finishing step of blocking.

Some of us are finishing up our Garland KAL shawls. I’m blocking Garlands for a couple of my local KAL knitters, as well as my own. Here are a couple Garland Shawls before

and during blocking.

After:

Magic!

I thought I’d walk you through blocking on blocking wires, if you haven’t done it before. If you don’t have blocking wires, it’s also possible to do this using string in place of the wires (I’d use mercerized cotton, or linen), but I prefer the stiffness of the wires. Don’t weave in your yarn ends until after blocking. There’s going to be a lot of stretching going on.

Let’s get started!

First, I soak the knitted garment in the kitchen sink with a little bit of Soak, my favorite non-rinse wool wash. Use warm water and allow the garment to soak for at least 20 minutes to relax the fibers.

The garment is really saturated and stretchy at this point! Support it from underneath, and squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands. Do not twist or wring. Next, lay it on a folded towel, fold the towel over that, and walk all over it. Really. This will get most of the water out.

The next step is to thread the straight edges onto the blocking wires. I put the wires along the top edge, going over and under the garter ridges. If you have an especially long edge, you would use two or three wires to cover the length, but overlap the wires by an inch or so at the place(s) where they meet. I know that you may consider this top edge to be a curve, but it works fine to block it straight, and it’s much easier to pin out this way. Triangle shawls are straight along the top; heart shaped shawls can be blocked straight along the top, too. Crescent shawls like my Webfoot or Filigree? I like to pin them all around, no wires.

Now the fun begins. Stretch out the garment so that the lovely laciness shines! Use the metal t-pins that came with the blocking wires to hold the wires in place. You’ll need to be working on a surface that can take your pins. In the summer, I’ve been using my old Dritz cardboard cutting board on a table outside. The cardboard is getting tatty after being pinned a bazillion times, but it still works. In the winter, I block on a futon sofabed in the basement. There are also blocking mats that you can purchase specifically for this purpose, and I’ve seen knitters use foam interlocking alphabet blocks, too. (A useful child’s toy, but be careful, some of the colors may transfer to your yarn.) Knitter’s choice!

If you’re pinning out points, you run the wires through the points like this,

or you can pin each point out separately, like this center point.

I pinned out each point of my peacock green Garland, but only because I forgot that I could run wires instead! Wires are much faster to set up.

Let the garment dry completely, and then un-pin. Sew in your ends. The result? Instead of a crumpled wad of knitting, you have a diaphanous piece of gossamer loveliness.

Do you block your lace? Aggressively? I hope so!

6 Comments

Posted in KAL, Knit, tutorial

Tagged blocking, blocking tutorial, Garland KAL, Garland shawl, lace, tutorial

Garland, Garland, Garland…waterfall!

Posted on July 15, 2013 | 7 comments

I bound off Saturday night. Blocking to follow. (And I wish I could capture the awesome super-saturated bright blue-undertoned green of this, but I’ve tried, and apparently I can’t.)

Cathy sent me this picture Saturday night. She’s on her last repeat. This color is called Madge. Love it!

I saw Claudia at church yesterday. She bound off Saturday, too. I offered to block for her. Pictures soon!

You may think that I’m just sitting at home knitting, cooking and jamming, but it’s not so. We went for a family hike in the Columbia River Gorge on Saturday. The weather was spectacular, and so were the views. I think that’s the peak of Mt. Adams across the river in Washington.

The destination Saturday was Upper McCord Creek Falls. These are twin waterfalls, but the one on the left is just a trickle at this time of summer.

I saw a picture from early June, when both were full, on this hiker’s site. Maybe next year.

Nearby is Elowah Falls.

How long until this rock is eroded away?

A pipe that used to carry water down to a sawmill, long ago.

We stood looking out over this ravine, watching hawks ride the thermals. They spiraled upward without flapping their wings. We also saw swallows? swifts? flitting about. Much more work for them. So cool to be above, looking down on the hawks. And I love how you can see that the gorge is laid down in strata over time.

I’m not sure what the function of this is. A pipe goes in from the back, and it’s overflowing at the top and leaking at the side. But it’s cool looking. It’s right at the trailhead.

It’s hard to believe that this is just 45 minutes from home. If you’re local, you might find this gorge hike guide useful. I always pick the easy ones!

It was a beautiful day! I hope you’re enjoying your summer, too.

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged columbia river gorge, Elowah Falls, family hike, Garland KAL, Garland shawl, Upper McCord Creek Falls, waterfalls

Sweet summer jam

Posted on July 13, 2013 | 7 comments

Knit nite was fun! It was a time for this loosely knit (hah!) group to reconnect (two people didn’t even bring knitting) and celebrate summer. Cathy is participating in the Garland KAL; her color is KnittedWit’s Madge, which is a glorious shade of raspberry. We were both using our Bead Aids and mine had a little adventure under the deck. It was found; the deck is pretty high which means you can get under it. I wish I had taken a picture of Cathy’s Garland; it’s gorgeous. Hooray for non-traditional leaf colors!

Lorajean brought me a big bowl of plums.

I used all the yellow and yellow/blush plums to make 10 jars of ginger plum jam. It looks like sunshine in a jar.

It’s setting up nicely. I tasted it and the ginger/plum ratio is
perfect. I used 1/4 cup chopped crystallized ginger, 6 cups of cooked plums, 8 cups of sugar, and a pack of sure-jell. I bypassesd my traditional water bath canner, which is really too big for my electric burner, and tried something new. My 8 quart stockpot and this:

Which is actually this:

A silicone trivet that sits in the bottom of the pot to cushion the jars. I read about it here. I can only process 5 or 6 jars at a time, and I miss my jar rack/lifter, but the pot doesn’t wobble and the cooktop doesn’t get heat stained from the larger pot’s overhang. I do wish the pot were just a little deeper; it was pretty full in order to have an inch of water above the jars. But the resulting jam turned out fine.

I brought a blueberry pie to knit nite, but wanted to leave something home for DH and CollegeKiddo for dinner, so I made a caprese canellini pasta salad. This time I reduced the pasta to 8 ounces to have a more goodies to pasta ratio, and used the interesting tomato medley you see here.

I love pasta salads in the summer. A little pasta, a lot of my favorite goodies, some balsamic or lemon dressing, and there’s dinner.

What are some of your favorite summer recipes?

7 Comments

Posted in foodies!, Knit, recipe

Tagged caprese pasta salad, ginger plum jam, jam

Blues Roundup: music, skies, berries

Posted on July 10, 2013 | 9 comments

Not much knitting here last weekend, but lots of music, and blueberries, too. The Waterfront Blues Festival ran from Thursday through Sunday, and the weather was perfect. Sunny and warm, but not hot. Portland knows how to throw a party! And it was for a good cause: The festival raised $1.3 million for the Oregon Food Bank, well in excess of their goal of $1 million, plus tons of canned food. (Admission most days is a suggested donation of $10 plus 2 cans of food.)

The music was great all weekend. My favorites?

Nikki HIll, a great big voice in a sassy package. Yes, those are sequined cowboys on her skirt, as well as sequined slide pumps on her feet.

MarchFourth Marching Band, with stilt walker/dancer/acrobats! I think this is every band kid’s dream of a band afterlife. But even cooler and funkier.

John Hiatt, an oldie but goodie. He’s written tons of stuff that others have sung, but I also like his own whiskey voice.

I don’t know that I’d classify all the music I heard as the blues, but the variety made the festival much more enjoyable. There was also a lot of zydeco music, which is always fun.

I missed Sunday, which featured Mavis Staples and Robert Plant. I was at the Oregon Zoo, enjoying the Go-Go’s and the B-52’s. Definitely a smaller venue than Waterfront Park, but still a sizeable crowd.

Zoo concerts are great; you can picnic on the lawn before the show. Go with a group of friends, and it’s a potluck miracle. I made a blueberry cobbler, as requested.

It’s great picnic fare, especially with a side of spray whipped cream. I’d prefer ice cream, but that doesn’t travel well.

I’m coming to the end of my blueberry harvest. It’s my last chance to use my own berries for a blueberry cream pie in a gingersnap crust which requires fresh berries, so that was last night’s dessert.

Lorajean saw my pie pic on Facebook, and then I saw her at Twisted when I was delivering patterns yesterday. She was hoping that the pie was for tonight’s knit nite, but sadly, no.

But I came home and did the last picking, and there are just enough berries to eke out one more pie. Let the rejoicing begin…

9 Comments

Posted in foodies!, music

Tagged blueberries, oregon food bank, waterfront blues festival, zoo concerts

Will it go round in circles?

Posted on July 6, 2013 | 10 comments

Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?

Oh, sorry, I got distracted.

I was swatching some small diameter circular knitting yesterday for a design idea, and went through the gamut of circular knitting methods. I’ve always liked dpns for small circular knitting, but it’s never too late to learn something new. I decided to start with magic loop. I knew that the very flexible cord on my Signature circular needles would make for a better magic loop experience than my first foray with that method. Getting started was dicey, and I think I may have knit a twist into my work which I subsequently twisted back and ignored, but I did manage to do this swatch.

This is Schulana Kid-Seta, laceweight mohair and silk. I love knitting with this airy fuzz haloed yarn, but not tinking with it! I think I could manage working magic loop with this needle. In fact, I think I could manage anything with this needle; I love its smoothness and sharp points. But alas, the gauge wasn’t what I wanted; this is a size 5 needle and I wanted the airiness of at least a 6 or 7 for the mohair. I’m not ready to purchase another Signature for just one swatch ($$$, but worth it if it’s your go-to size), so I went to the needle stash.

I poked around and found a size 6 Hiya Hiya bamboo 16 inch circular, which would make a good start for 100 or so stitches. The tips were a bit blunt, but manageable. I’ve always liked blunter needles, because I “scoop” through my stitches instead of poke, but with yarn this thin and needles this big, I’m beginning to see the value in a pointy tip! When I decreased down too far to use this circular, I moved to Brittany Birch dpns. Very comfortable, but they were so long compared to the knitting, their weight seemed to threaten to make them fall out of the work.

I popped in to my LYS and picked up a size 6 Hiya Hiya Sharp in stainless, 9 inch circular. This thing is tiny! I love the points but the 9 inch circular is not comfortable in my hands. Oh, well.

So then I thought, how about two circulars? The 16 inch bamboo and the 9 inch stainless? I tried that for a bit, but the tip on the 9 inch is still too short for comfort for me, because 2 circulars means working each one separately on half the stitches, and the making of a circle with the 9 inch is just too fiddly.

In the end, I went back to dpns to finish my swatching. If I really make this project, I think I’ll get some shorter dpns to do so. I’ll start my project on a 16 inch circular, and then move to the short dpns. I’m just an old fashioned dpn kind of knitter, I guess. It’s great to have choices, and great to have a needle stash to play with!

How do you manage your small circumference circular knitting? Two circulars, magic loop, dpns? Or is there something else out there?

None of the circles pictured are what I settled on. I can’t show you what I was swatching yet…

And because I gave you the earworm for this Billy Preston song, here you go:

You’re welcome.

10 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged circular knitting, dpns, Knit, magic loop, two circulars

monogamous knitting

Posted on July 3, 2013 | 14 comments

I’m back! I was traveling last week. I took two knitting projects with me. One was my Garland shawl, and the other was the beginning of a Filigree shawl.

I guess I really am a monogamous knitter at heart. I only worked on the Garland shawl; I never even looked at the Filigree. I had been worried about trying to knit with beads on this trip, because we were spending a week on this 65 foot catamaran.

(The Ouvea V)

Surprisingly, bead knitting wasn’t a problem, as long as I wasn’t knitting while we were actively sailing. Which is no time to be knitting, anyway.

(hanging out at Monkey Point, Guana Island, a great snorkeling spot)

We were celebrating my mother-in-law’s significant birthday, and it was a blast. Our family of 10 spent a week in the British Virgin Islands on a crewed charter (captain, chef, hostess). It was a blissful week of sailing, snorkeling, and beaches.

(The Baths at Virgin Gorda)

(Above the Bubbly Pool at Diamond Cay, Jost Van Dyke)

(DH getting away from it all, Benures Bay, Norman Island)

And sunsets…

I found a couple of these little shells on the last beach of the trip (Benures Bay, Norman Island). So cute!

It’s a coffeebean trivia (false cowrie). They’re about a centimeter long. They look like smiles on the other side.

I brought them home and turned them into the centerpieces of a little keepsake project. Ankle bracelets, one for me and one for sis-in-law. These remind me of sand and the color of the sea when the sun is shining on shallow waters. (I had to drill holes in them to string them; I did that with a bead reamer.)

The instructions for these beaded bracelets (or necklace, or whatever) are in my free Victoriana Bracelet pattern. They’re made with a crochet chain with a few beads worked in. Pick some beads and make one for yourself, and one for a friend!

Back to my Garland, and real life…

14 Comments

Posted in beading, Other craftiness, travel

Tagged BVI, crochet, sailing

Desserts, tried and true

Posted on June 26, 2013 | 5 comments

I hosted a going away party for our outgoing pastor last Monday. Who knew you could get 40 people in my house? There were six of us on the committee; we were each charged to supply a dessert and two bottles of wine. Being an overachiever, I made two desserts. The recipes have been here on the blog before, but I’m posting them again as things that are simple and that can go on a picnic or sit out on a buffet for a while and still look good! (This is not the time for homemade ice cream.) I like to experiment and try new things, but sometimes you need to go for the reliable old standards.

I baked a blueberry cobbler, which actually works well for a picnic dessert, too. Although I like it best with vanilla ice cream, a can of aerosol whipped cream will do in a pinch.

These are not blueberries from my garden. Mine are close, but they’ll be ripe in the next week or two. Store bought was the next best thing.

This is my favorite cobbler recipe. It’s fabulous with fresh berries, but I also make it with frozen berries from my garden throughout the year. If you use frozen berries, it will take an extra 10 minutes or so to bake. (Shout out to my friend Vickie, who sent me this recipe in 1986, when we still wrote letters via snail mail. I had just moved away to New York. I showed her the letter last month, and it really startled her that I still have it. It’s on my fridge.):

Berry Cobbler

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. Yields 9 servings, because I cut things in grid patterns. I can’t help myself.

I also made chocolate chip shortbread and cut it into 36 bite sized pieces. This is an old picture, so these are not the 36 squares!

Chocolate Chip Shortbread

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 and 1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips or butterscotch chips (I used mini chocolate, but I’ve also used butterscotch)

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Combine flour and salt, and then beat these with the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in chips. Press into an ungreased 9 inch square pan.

Bake 18-20 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool 20-30 minutes in pan on wire rack.

Score shortbread with sharp knife into desired size servings, but do not cut all the way through. Invert onto rack and cool completely. Break into pieces.

What are your go-to dessert recipes?

Obligatory knit content: Still knitting away on my Garland shawl. Repeat 12!

5 Comments

Posted in foodies!, recipe

Tagged cobbler, recipe, shortbread

Garland KAL: math, gauge, halfway point!

Posted on June 23, 2013 | Comments Off

Math is my friend on my Garland shawl KAL project. I want to use as much of this lovely Knitted Wit Cashy Lite as possible in this piece. The ball weighed in at 4.5 oz, or 127 grams, 495 yards. That’s a lot of yarn! I didn’t check my gauge before starting. I knew I’d be weighing my yarn as I worked, so no worries about not having enough. I just had to come out with a fabric that I liked. I just checked now, and I’m getting 19 st/4 inches, which is way looser than the 23 st/4 inches specified in the pattern.

I’ve completed 9 repeats in the increase section, and used 54 grams of yarn. I’ll need 54 grams for the matching decrease section, too, so that means I have 19 grams left for the single repeat in the center section. The 9th repeat took 9 grams of yarn, and the center one will take about the same. 19 grams is plenty of yarn for that single repeat, but not enough to do an additional increase/decrease set. Math portion of my shawl is officially done! Now that I no longer need to keep weighing my yarn, this becomes a portable project with the help of my new beading tin.

For comparison, test knitter Rachel knit at 24/st inch. After 9 repeats in the increase section, she had used 47 grams. (Her 9th repeat took 7 grams of yarn.) She needed 47 grams for the matching decrease section, so that left her 33 grams for the center section, more than enough for the 7 grams it would take. We could have added another increase/decrease set, but I wanted the pattern to work for a skein with less yardage, too. (Cashy Lite comes in a BIG skein, but not all fingering weight yarns do.)

My shawl is knit with the same number of stitches as Rachel’s, but mine will be larger because of the difference in gauge. I love this construction because it is so easily adaptable for YOUR yarn and YOUR gauge. The pattern has it all planned for you, but if you have more or less yarn, or you deviate from the specified gauge, all you need is a kitchen scale.

One more thing: I counted my garter stitches, and I’m missing one. I missed an increase somewhere along the way. It’s hard to tell where I missed it in the garter stitch, but I think it’s 40 rows back. If I can’t see it, no one else can, either. It’s not a big deal; I’ll just skip a decrease later. No stress! Knit on…

Comments Off on Garland KAL: math, gauge, halfway point!

Posted in KAL, Knit

Tagged Garland KAL, gauge

Showtime at TNNA!

Posted on June 21, 2013 | 2 comments

I’m not at TNNA…at least not in person. But I’m there in spirit! My Filigree Shawls are at Knitted Wit’s booth for Sample It. Lorajean just snapped this pic for me.

This is my scarf design that I reworked with a crescent shawl shaping to showcase Knitted Wit’s beautiful Shine yarn (50/50 merino/tencel). I liked the scarf, but I love the shawl. Shapings for scarf and shawl are both included in the pattern.

The shawl comes in two sizes.

I love its sister shawl and scarf, Webfoot, too.

If you’re at TNNA, stop by and see Filigree in person at Sample It tonight, or in Knitted Wit’s booth during the show. Have a great show, all! And have some Jeni’s ice cream for me…

If you’re not at TNNA, you can still knit your own. I’m knitting one for me, right now.