I was just finishing another cowl knit in the round, and I realized that I haven’t shown you how I like to finish my bind off. It’s very neat and tidy.
Easy peasy. Now I’ve shown you my favorite ways to begin *and* end your project in the round. If you missed my post about joining to work in the round, here it is again:
And yes, the new project is yet another brioche cowl. Going on a deep dive here. I just can’t get enough! Sneak peek coming soon.
I’ve been knitting in circles so much lately, so many hats and cowls. One benefit? I’ve perfected my circular join. I used to cast on one extra stitch, and then knit the first and last stitches together. This snugged up the join, and it still will.
But I’ve started using that extra stitch in a different way, and it’s just a bit tidier. I really like the way it looks. I take the last stitch cast on, and pass it over the first stitch that I cast on. I made a video for you!
You do still have to remember not to knit with the tail…
May all your joins be tidy and snug!
I promised a video tutorial to 3 of my classes at the last Virtual VKLive, and I made one and sent it along. But I just re-made it with more descriptive detail. Here’s the link on YouTube.
I learned this technique from a video by Nancy Marchant, and then expanded on it as I learned how and why it works. Just another tool in the brioche toolbox!
I put a link to this video on my tutorials page, so you don’t even have to remember where to find it. And if you didn’t know I have a tutorials page, go check it out. I have lots of tips over there, and I’m getting better and better at making videos.
My brioche classes are sold out at VKLive, but you can take brioche classes from me at the Peacetree Fiber Adventures online retreat on July 24 and 25. Register here.
There’s still room in my Minerva Entrelac scarf/cowl class at Virtual VKLive. Register here!
Posted in classes, Knit, tutorial
Tagged brioche, fixing mistakes, knitting tutorial, tutorial
Planning for a Minerva KAL cast on tomorrow, which is Wednesday. Is anyone else having issues of not knowing what day it is, while working from home? What yarn are you using? Color changing? Or do you want to do stripes and sew in all those ends? Knitter’s choice!
While you’re off picking yarn for Minerva, let’s have a look at some brioche. You know brioche is never far from my mind.
If you’ve become comfortable with 2 color brioche rib, you may be wondering what else can you do with it. Let’s syncopate!
What is syncopated brioche? It’s a simple switching from brioche knit to brioche purl, or vice versa, within the row or round. What happens when you do that?
This! See where I changed from knitting with the blue yarn in the rib stitches, to purling with the blue yarn at the leafy border? The blue purl stitches sink into the background in the border. And I switched from purling with the yellow yarn in the ribbing to knitting with the yellow yarn at the leafy border. The knit stitches always stand out more than the purl stitches in brioche rib, so the knit stitch yarn will be your featured color.
Here’s the back of that same sample.
And here’s where two edges meet on my Syncopation Shawl, the leafy side border and the wide ending of this asymmetric triangle shawl.
Here it is in the scarf version of Syncopation.
I made a little video tutorial to explain what happens at that dividing point in syncopated brioche.
Let me know if you find it helpful. And if you’re not a knitter, you can just listen to me yammer soothingly while we all practice social distancing!
Well all that brioche knitting had to turn into something!
These are the three hat patterns in the Brioche Hat Trick e-book, available through Ravelry as a pdf download. I went for a botanical theme, so they’re Clematis Seed (the swirly seed pod), Golden Chain (Laburnum tree), and Heliotrope (heliotropism is the directional growth of a plant towards sunlight, and the leaves on this hat are seeking the sun.) Clematis Seed is the simplest of the three; it’s plain brioche rib until you get to the swirly top. Golden Chain and Heliotrope are great next steps with a bit of simple increasing and decreasing to form the stitch patterns.
I wasn’t planning to write up the cowls, but I was halfway there already. The Brioche Hat Trick e-book has patterns for three hats and two cowls. The patterns are $6 each, or the whole e-book of five patterns for $16.
If it’s just one stitch pattern you’re in love with, the Heliotrope Hat and Cowl patterns are available as a set for $9, and the Golden Chain Hat and Cowl patterns are also available as a set for the same price.
These are all knit with heavy worsted/Aran weight yarn. I used Malabrigo Worsted for everything except the Heliotrope Cowl; that piece is made with Malabrigo Rios and Wisdom Yarns Poems Silk Multi. I’ve been wearing it constantly since it came off my needles last week.
As part of this pattern release, I made a video tutorial! There’s a link to it in each of the patterns, and I’ve also updated my free pattern Petite Brioche to include the link, too.
I’m not sure I’m ready to return to lacy fingering weight shawls. Perhaps a fingering weight brioche detour is in my future! But not until after Madrona this weekend. Back to prepping for classes!
Posted in Knit, pattern design
Tagged Brioche Hat Trick, Clematis Seed, Golden Chain, Heliotrope, Petite Brioche, tutorial
It was a jam packed weekend! I was a guest designer at the Knit Picks WWKIP Day Knit Pick-nic, where I worked on my Go Tell the Bees KAL.
I love how my mannequin Lacey has my yarn ball tucked into her decolletage. I’m knitting with Knit Picks Stroll Gradient in Ice Sculpture. The project is well under way. While I was knitting, I noticed an error because I was one stitch short in one of my repeats. Usually this happens because I dropped a YO while purling back on the wrong side row. I don’t count stitches on the WS rows; this is my time to chat or watch tv or read. I find the mistake on the next right side row.
Do you have to rip/tink back two rows to fix this? NO WAY. I’d never get anything done. I made a video of this easy fix. It was a chilly day here in PDX, so I’m wearing my Beanstalk/Trellis Vines mitts sample, trying to get warm.
Hope this helps!
The rest of the weekend was a whirlwind. We saw Ira Glass (This American Life) at the Schnitz, I had my Go Tell the Bees KAL party at Pearl Fiber Arts, and I sang with my harmony singing class at a benefit for Artichoke Community Music. Whew!
How was your weekend? Did you knit in public?
I love September. It’s my birthday and wedding anniversary month. Lots of good celebrations are ongoing.
September is also the beginning of knitting season. I knit year round, but somehow September knitting feels more special. And I’ve been quite inspired this past couple weeks, finishing two shawls and charting out two more. The two finished shawls are variations on a theme. I noted that the bind off was too tight on the first of these in a previous post, so I had to tink the entire edge after the shawl was dry, and re-knit the bind off. I still need to re-block the shawl.
I want to share my favorite elastic bind off with you; this bind off makes your edge as stretchy as the rest of your knitting.
Elastic Bind-off
K2. * Insert left needle into fronts of these 2 sts from left to right and knit them off together through the back loops (like making an SSK). One st bound off. K1; repeat from * until one stitch remains on right needle. Cut yarn and fasten off.
I’ve already used this on my second shawl, and blocking went much better! Tight bind offs haven’t been an issue for me previously, but the new-to-me construction of these two shawls requires a really stretchy finished edge. As I’ve said elsewhere, I make the mistakes so you don’t have to.
The next two shawls use another new-to-me construction. I’m almost done swatching the first chart, and I’m in love. I’m not quite sure how I want to publish these four pieces yet, which is why you haven’t really seen them. The two finished ones are out on a design submission, and the two planned ones will be out on another submission. If they aren’t chosen I’ll self-publish them in October, either individually or as an e-book collection, maybe? What do you think? I’m looking forward to sharing them with you no matter how I do it!
To distract you in the meantime, here is a picture of Biscuit/Bisquee/BellaTrix with something polka dotty on her nose. Litter, maybe?
Knit on!
I’m working the knitted on border of my Aloha Shawlette for the Aloha knit-along. The border is 4 to 6 stitches wide, and it’s tedious to turn my work after every row. The solution? Purling back backwards. You can do it, too.
Edited to add: Some people call this knitting back backwards, or KBB. I’ve seen it referred to both ways. For me, what I think of as knitting back backwards would result in garter stitch. I’ve never done garter stitch with this non-turning technique, but it’s possible, too. I just haven’t needed it yet.
I’m almost done with the shawlette; this is a quick and easy knit! But it’s not to late to join the KAL. You can be part of the chat and prize drawings through my Ravelry group. I’ve just drawn the first prize winner; JBTCat will be getting these fishy stitch markers.
You can make stitch markers like these, too; check out my tutorial here.
There are a few more prizes in store, including yarn and a mystery fun thing. Come join the fun!
Posted in KAL, Knit, Other craftiness, ravelry, tutorial
Tagged Aloha KAL, kbb, knitting back backwards, purling back backwards, stitch markers, tutorial
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!
Tagged blocking, blocking tutorial, Garland KAL, Garland shawl, lace, tutorial
I’ve been saying for a while that I wanted to make a video of how to do this, and I finally did it. Sorry for the slight blurriness; my arms aren’t long enough to get further in front of the camera! I’ll experiment with other set-ups some time, but this is my first video, warts and all. It was kind of fun.
I’m a thrower; I carry my yarn in my right hand. I took a colorwork class with Anna Zilboorg at Stitches some time in the 90’s. In preparation, I taught myself to knit continental style (hold yarn in left hand, pick with right needle) so I could carry a color in each hand. When I got to class, Anna showed me how to carry both colors in my right hand, which was a lot easier for me. Here it is.
Enjoy!
Starfall
Ebb and Flow
Pooling is a Cinch
Deep End
Half the Knit Sky
Minerva Entrelac Cowl or Scarf
Syncopation
Sheepy Steeky Coasters
Brioche Hat Trick
Brioche Entree (free!)
Petite Brioche (free!)
Go Tell the Bees
Braided Wristlets
Summertime Blues
Thrumbelina Slippers
PDXKnitterati 