Here’s my buddy Katie at the new Thursday night Tapestry Craft Stitch and Bitch. We had six people tonight… Success!
Tag: knitting
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S’n’B!
Stitch and Bitch at Hart’s Pub in the Rocks. Made several new internet knitting friends!
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Solstice is finished!
A solstice a long time coming…
I am so happy to report that my Jo Sharp “Solstice” sweater is finally finished, nearly two years after I started the damn thing! I ran into difficulty in September (2003) when I started sewing it up and realized that I’d made a complete cock-up of the drop sleeves. I’d cast them off too tightly, which meant that the armhole was rather tight and not nicely drapey like it should be. Unfortunately I only realized that after I’d sewn the sleeves on and woven about 50,000 ends into the seam. Frustrated and annoyed, I packed it in a bag and set it aside to work on happier projects. It languished for over a year. Periodically I’d take it out and pick at the seam, then sigh and put it away. I just couldn’t deal with it, you know? Then last month I had a flash of inspiration: Why not pay somebody to fix it for me? So I took it in to work and gave it to Ann, the lady who runs our knitting clinic. She worked on it all through our holiday and had it ready for me when I got back today. She not only fixed the sleeves (and added a bit more needed length), but she also seamed the sides, knitted the collar, and wove in the remaining 100,000 ends! Of course, as part of the deal I had to put up with a fair bit of griping and criticism from her about my crappy finishing techniques, but hey, I was a beginning knitter, all right? And she did compliment me on my even knitting, which was nice. (Apparently my final measurement was only two centimeters off the 130 specificed in the pattern.) At any rate, it’s finally finished and I can wear it… in about six months when this damn summer heat wave ends. *sigh* But aren’t the colors great? I wanted something big and crazy bold to wear with jeans in winter, and I think this will fit the bill nicely. -
The Cabled Throw
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I finally gave the happy couple their wedding gift: the Sunday cable throw from Jo Sharp’s fourth book, Home. It took me well over a hundred hours to knit, and I used 36.5 balls of Jo Sharp 8-ply wool. I modified the pattern to make it a bit wider and added fringe to both ends to make it a little more “blanket-y”. It’s really pretty and warm. (Unbeknownst to me, it also perfectly matches the beige and red of their living room color scheme.) It’s about six feet long by four feet wide. Here’s a pic of my sister lounging under it along with a detail of the cabling up close:
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Tales from the Knitting Trenches
Since I’m sure none of you have been able to sleep from the anticipation, I’m happy to be able to bring you the end of the Saga of Angora Man. You remember him, right? Well, our knitter finished his sweater fairly quickly and I was eager to get a look at it. It’s your basic men’s crew-neck sweater… just in extremely fluffy snow-white angora. We discovered a problem when we went to call him though – his number didn’t work! I guess that’s what non-refundable deposits are for, right? But wait, this story has a happy ending. A few weeks ago I was busy cutting some embroidery fabric for a customer when I noticed a familiar fuzziness in my peripheral vision. I looked up. It was him! “Hey!” I said. “It’s you, Angora Ma–” (Just caught myself there.) “And you’re wearing a new sweater! Gee, it’s sooo lovely!” And yes, folks, he was wearing a third white angora sweater. This one was also a women’s garment, as evidenced by the puffy sleeves and the panel of smocking on the front. “Your new sweater is ready!” I told him. “It’s really gorgeous!” We took him over and he immediately wanted to model it. I had to deal with other customers but evidently he was pestering the other manager for ages. Did it fit right? Did it hang correctly? It really didn’t seem to be hanging quite right, he thought. Losh had the unenviable task of trying to explain that this was simply because he’d been wearing ladies’ sweaters, and the new one was actually a men’s garment. In the end he was happy enough, though, and forked over the rest of the cash. And thus ends the strange, fluffy tale of Angora Man.
In other news, I’m in the latest issue of Creative Knitting! I met the original editor, Nicola, eighteen months ago at a Stitch & Bitch in the city. Earlier this year she read on Amy’s site about my career change. She e-mailed me and asked if I’d write the “Cable Knits” section for the next issue. (It’s just a little sidebar where a knitter talks about what they’re doing right now.) Anyway, I sent my copy off to her and pretty much forgot about it. Then in the past 24 hours I had two different customers at the store ask me if I was “the girl from Creative Knitting.” Yeah, that’s me! So I ran out at lunch to buy a copy. It’s really cheezy and kinda “gee-whiz!”, but apparently it was also pretty memorable, so I’m proud of it.
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Competitive Knitting
Man, I would so be up for a World Series of Knitting! Only it would need to be re-thought a little bit, as the author of that article clearly knows nothing about the craft. (Crochet, cross-stitch, and quilting are entirely separate disciplines.) Now, would I compete for Australia or America? I think about things too much. (Link courtesy of Max.)
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Crap. What a day.
The class turned out to be a bit of a debacle, mostly because I seriously overestimated how much material we’d get through. I figured that since I’ve taught people to knit before individually, teaching a half a dozen wouldn’t be that hard. I was so wrong. Each person could only manage to follow the pattern for about thirty seconds before yelling for help. And it wasn’t that the pattern was hard, it’s just that they needed to be shown every little thing. Me, I’m a book learner, so that’s why I spent hours writing down explicit notes on everything for them. (Mental note: Don’t bother next time.) By the end I was apologizing all over the place because I felt terrible that we’d only accomplished so little. Most of them seemed happy though, and a few actually managed to “get” it before they left. I guess it was a good learning experience for me, huh? Next time I need to remember not to be so ambitious.
So what did I do afterwards? I came home and flopped on the couch, hoping to clear off some TiVo and do some knitting. Two hours later, just as I’d started The Princess Diaries, the f**king television exploded. Yes, you read that right; our TV just exploded. So now there’s no telly. This sucks.
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Class time!
Sorry for the lack of posting, but I’m all in a tizzy because I’m teaching my very first class at the shop tomorrow morning! I’m teaching “Sock Knitting on Two Circulars,” which should be pretty fun. Wish me luck…
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127 Print Scarf
I’ve been obsessed for weeks with this 127 Print Italian wool that we’ve got at the shop so I finally bought a few balls last weekend and knitted it up into a scarf. Here’s Snookums modelling the finished product. Isn’t it pretty? The colors just come out like that when you knit it. I tried to combat the dreaded stockinette-curl with a border of garter stitch and regular thin garter stitch bands between the color stripes, but the darn thing still has a tendency to roll into a tube. *shrug* I still like it.Notes: For those wishing to do something similar, I used three balls in total. Casted on 35 stitches on 6mm needles and did a few rows of garter stitch before starting the pattern. I worked out that I there was enough space between color patches to do three rows of stockinette, then four of garter, and then back to stockinette. It only got irregular where I changed balls.
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Sweet Mittens
Sweet mittens, eh?
So I finally finished my own pair of Broad Street Mittens with just a few weeks of winter left to spare. As you can see, mine are knitted in navy “argyle” sock wool from Heirloom. I basically followed the pattern as written (with a few exceptions based on the error I mentioned in the previous post). And yeah, I embroidered “DUDE” and “SWEET” on the backs of the mitten flaps in a subtle red wool. Heh. Somehow I doubt many of my fellow commuters are going to get the joke.
