Sunday, 9. April 2006
No-seam, no-purl Rosebud!
knitting_keeps_me_sane, 21:16h
Right now I am soaring along on Rosebud from Heirloom-Knitting.co.uk (sorry no link) which I got for free with my Heirloom Knitting book, completed the center that had been abandoned for my Rainbow Pi shawl (I am currently trying to figure out if the used patterns are in the public domain or not.. all but one seem to be, still debating the last one, so that I can publish the pattern).
I picked up stitches for the border around the center square, but I couldnt be beaten to purl every second row... nor could I bring myself to knit all the borders seperately and have ugly seams in my shawl - i used a technique I have used to tighten the first row in socks to create a no-sew no-purl border version.
When the camera powers up I will bring a picture tutorial and also link to it from the Heirloom Knitting group - because, honestly, who wants to purl roughly 25000 stitches?
I am using a MAC (ewww) thus the short post and the typos, I just cant get aquainted with the keyboard.
Have a nice day
Lene
I picked up stitches for the border around the center square, but I couldnt be beaten to purl every second row... nor could I bring myself to knit all the borders seperately and have ugly seams in my shawl - i used a technique I have used to tighten the first row in socks to create a no-sew no-purl border version.
When the camera powers up I will bring a picture tutorial and also link to it from the Heirloom Knitting group - because, honestly, who wants to purl roughly 25000 stitches?
I am using a MAC (ewww) thus the short post and the typos, I just cant get aquainted with the keyboard.
Have a nice day
Lene
... link
Thursday, 30. March 2006
Me and my promises.
knitting_keeps_me_sane, 15:22h
I must admit; I am a human, and as such I often give promises that I forget to keep. It is a veery long time ago that I promised the ladys in the Spind og Strik gruppe to show my Kiri that was modified into a Kirland shawl when I got bored with the stockinette leaves and decided to put in a shetland lace motif. One row of large holes (dewdrops) and a Madeira motif, and also putting in a little flower (those are cropping up everywhere I can use my imagination) to help me fade out the leaves and not just stop them abruptly.
Excuse the messy photo. It is a wonderfull dark blue in real life, but it isnt a large shawl, it is a small shawl. A shoulder-shawl, if you so want.
Here is another shawl I never ever got around to show even though I had promised it oh-o-much:
The Mystery Stole. It has a nice little story behind its creation, showing, that even though you do not always know to goal when you start your jorney, it might be more than you ever imagined.
My parents took two three-weeks vacations together last year, alone, a thing they havent done for many many years, and which we had all encouraged them to do. My mother left her fiber stash at home... Lonely and unguarded! Sneekily I dug into it and found a really large bag of uncarded, unwashed brown alpaca, stuck my sneeky hand into it and took out a very tiny little small handfull of alpaca. I spun it up very thinly on my lace weight flyer, and when finished I had three skeins of laceweight alpaca.. but what to do with them? They were lovely variegated with the natural colour of the Alpaca that donated the fleece, and plied together without trying to preserve colour changes or anything.
I saw a link to a "Mystery Stole Knit Along" (The original inspiration for the Mystery Shawls Knitalongs etc), and really wanted to join. What yarn, what yarn to use? Oohh, the alpaca! So I sat down to knit it, keeping it with me everywhere I went and sometimes sitting in front of the computer for hours, waiting for new clues to come.
I finished as the first! Woohoo! This most lovely alpaca stole is my most cherished handspun and handknit object. This picture does not at all justify the suble colour hanges, nor does it show the fineness of the 2-ply yarn, or the sheer wonderfull chest-nut colour of the yarn, but it documents that I did indeed knit it... for what it is worth *sigh*
Oohh, and em?
Happy guessing :-)
Excuse the messy photo. It is a wonderfull dark blue in real life, but it isnt a large shawl, it is a small shawl. A shoulder-shawl, if you so want.
Here is another shawl I never ever got around to show even though I had promised it oh-o-much:
The Mystery Stole. It has a nice little story behind its creation, showing, that even though you do not always know to goal when you start your jorney, it might be more than you ever imagined.
My parents took two three-weeks vacations together last year, alone, a thing they havent done for many many years, and which we had all encouraged them to do. My mother left her fiber stash at home... Lonely and unguarded! Sneekily I dug into it and found a really large bag of uncarded, unwashed brown alpaca, stuck my sneeky hand into it and took out a very tiny little small handfull of alpaca. I spun it up very thinly on my lace weight flyer, and when finished I had three skeins of laceweight alpaca.. but what to do with them? They were lovely variegated with the natural colour of the Alpaca that donated the fleece, and plied together without trying to preserve colour changes or anything.
I saw a link to a "Mystery Stole Knit Along" (The original inspiration for the Mystery Shawls Knitalongs etc), and really wanted to join. What yarn, what yarn to use? Oohh, the alpaca! So I sat down to knit it, keeping it with me everywhere I went and sometimes sitting in front of the computer for hours, waiting for new clues to come.
I finished as the first! Woohoo! This most lovely alpaca stole is my most cherished handspun and handknit object. This picture does not at all justify the suble colour hanges, nor does it show the fineness of the 2-ply yarn, or the sheer wonderfull chest-nut colour of the yarn, but it documents that I did indeed knit it... for what it is worth *sigh*
Oohh, and em?
Happy guessing :-)
... link
Wednesday, 29. March 2006
Long, Longer, This Post.
knitting_keeps_me_sane, 22:04h
Prepare for a lenghty post full of happy babbling and pictures!
Around 4 this evening I went over to my grandparents and unpinned my shawl which had suffered under a quite imperfect blocking:
I couldnt wait to try it out, and danced around with it all evening before it finally occurred to me that it might be a good idea to take a picture before it got all dark, considering I'd promised Em a modeled picture today.
This was the first picture (that I could remotely accept), but sadly it came out blurry (unnoticeable in the extreme shrinkification that happened here)
The next picture I could approve: Still blurry, but it shows the "Cosy Factor", oh how I love this shawl... and watch out for the next picture of HUGE SHAWLNESS:
I am serious. I weight 200 pounds and stand 6"1' tall. This is larger than I am.
If I laid down with it over me I could probably cover myself from chin to toe with it. I think the correct word for describing its size would be "Look at all that acreage!". In the picture it even goes down to my knees even though it is bunched up a bit around my neck.
Last picture for today:
This is my mothers nose and my charming nephew, Erik! I finally got a picture of him in his new sweaters, luckily enough because after this picture was taken he vomited on it. Hmmmm.
Take care of yourselves,
Lene
PS: I went CANDY SHOPPING today for ye Em, I hope ye like.. uhm.. what was it again I was going to send? *oogles shopping bag* Hmm.. I could always send ye the toilet paper and keep the candy!
Around 4 this evening I went over to my grandparents and unpinned my shawl which had suffered under a quite imperfect blocking:
I couldnt wait to try it out, and danced around with it all evening before it finally occurred to me that it might be a good idea to take a picture before it got all dark, considering I'd promised Em a modeled picture today.
This was the first picture (that I could remotely accept), but sadly it came out blurry (unnoticeable in the extreme shrinkification that happened here)
The next picture I could approve: Still blurry, but it shows the "Cosy Factor", oh how I love this shawl... and watch out for the next picture of HUGE SHAWLNESS:
I am serious. I weight 200 pounds and stand 6"1' tall. This is larger than I am.
If I laid down with it over me I could probably cover myself from chin to toe with it. I think the correct word for describing its size would be "Look at all that acreage!". In the picture it even goes down to my knees even though it is bunched up a bit around my neck.
Last picture for today:
This is my mothers nose and my charming nephew, Erik! I finally got a picture of him in his new sweaters, luckily enough because after this picture was taken he vomited on it. Hmmmm.
Take care of yourselves,
Lene
PS: I went CANDY SHOPPING today for ye Em, I hope ye like.. uhm.. what was it again I was going to send? *oogles shopping bag* Hmm.. I could always send ye the toilet paper and keep the candy!
... link
Tuesday, 28. March 2006
No Picture
knitting_keeps_me_sane, 19:54h
There is no picture to show today of Pi.
Why?
Because she has left the time of being "Wip" and morphed into a beautifull "FO"! She is still cocooning on my grandparents floor, all wet and bedrazzled, but I am sure that tomorrow it will be able to unfold its perfectly colour-aligned wings, shake the border that took exactly one colour repeat to make (exactly!! This excites me so) and fly upon my shoulders to warm and comfort me forever more.
She is, measured while blocking, 190 cm or 74 inches large. This is not exceptionally large, but I knit her on 6's using 165 rows and 17 st. border which are not exceptionally many rows, but a quick calculation tells me that I have knit:
71848 stitches. That's a lot... :-)
Why?
Because she has left the time of being "Wip" and morphed into a beautifull "FO"! She is still cocooning on my grandparents floor, all wet and bedrazzled, but I am sure that tomorrow it will be able to unfold its perfectly colour-aligned wings, shake the border that took exactly one colour repeat to make (exactly!! This excites me so) and fly upon my shoulders to warm and comfort me forever more.
She is, measured while blocking, 190 cm or 74 inches large. This is not exceptionally large, but I knit her on 6's using 165 rows and 17 st. border which are not exceptionally many rows, but a quick calculation tells me that I have knit:
71848 stitches. That's a lot... :-)
... link
Saturday, 25. March 2006
Pi Progress!
knitting_keeps_me_sane, 18:20h
Despite the obstacles I did run into yesterday, I did pick out a new edging pattern - a very simple and small one, because at this gauge even a 15-st-border is 'large'. I am not a fan of too large shawl border.
This morning I cast on and started to knit:
Six houts later, this is what I have:
32 repeats out of 121½, roundabout.
Now excuse me, while I run around the house and try to photograph everything I can find that I have ever made...
PS: The next picture shows the beautifull flower in the middle (for which I cleaned my room just to find the book!)
This morning I cast on and started to knit:
Six houts later, this is what I have:
32 repeats out of 121½, roundabout.
Now excuse me, while I run around the house and try to photograph everything I can find that I have ever made...
PS: The next picture shows the beautifull flower in the middle (for which I cleaned my room just to find the book!)
... link
Monday, 20. March 2006
It's Pi!
knitting_keeps_me_sane, 21:22h
That must be the shortest EZ quote to ever have been quoted, and honestly, it is really longer, but I didnt dare to write half a chapter up there.
But indeed, it is Pi that has made it possible for me to knit this fabulous object (and a half-sister in two shades of blue that went to live with a Secret Pal that dropped off the face of earth.. sob). Elizabeth Zimmermann was the one who thought of using Pi in knitting too to create a circle, and here I am using it for a shawl. The formula goes: Cast on 9 stitches, knit a round, double the stitches, knit three rounds, double the stitches, knit 6 rounds, double the stitches, and on you go, doubling the row count and stitch count. This means that in every new section you will knit as many stitches as you have knit in all previous sections together.
I am at the final section that has 96 rows - should I chose to knit them all - and knitting at row 30. There will be a final knitted-on border, but I have yet to decide on
1) a pattern, and
2) yarn. Will I use the self-striping, or chose a solid from Kauni?
The patterns in the shawl are from the inside out: A generic six-petalled flower I kinda use in all my make-up lace patterns; a "Shetland Fern" that I stole from the "Shetland Tea Shawl" in "A Gathering of Lace", the large flower is from "Knitter's Almanac" and is EZ's own original design, and the outermost pattern is simply a zig-zag pattern I am devising myself.
The blue shawl I knit two years ago followed EZ's pattern to a T until I reached the last section where I also used a zig-zagging pattern, and finished with a 15-st-garter-st-border. I had calculated it very closely and ended with 5 yards of yarn left :-)
The yarn is something called "Kauni", which comes from Estland. It is part of the ever-growing group of yarns with colourchanges like Noro, but without the price tag.
You can get Kauni at Wollsucht.de, where they also carry Karen Noe Ombré, Rellana, Opal yarns and Villa/Rewool.
Aint I (un)lucky that she lives next town and will pull out her yarn for visitors too? Man, finally it has its yarny advantages to live in Germany!
It is a bit more muted in RL, and I dont know what mare rid me when I decided to use rainbow yarn! It does feel scratchy when in the skein, but when it is knit up and eventually washed it is soft - not cotton/merino-soft, but wool-soft.
Have a nice day.
But indeed, it is Pi that has made it possible for me to knit this fabulous object (and a half-sister in two shades of blue that went to live with a Secret Pal that dropped off the face of earth.. sob). Elizabeth Zimmermann was the one who thought of using Pi in knitting too to create a circle, and here I am using it for a shawl. The formula goes: Cast on 9 stitches, knit a round, double the stitches, knit three rounds, double the stitches, knit 6 rounds, double the stitches, and on you go, doubling the row count and stitch count. This means that in every new section you will knit as many stitches as you have knit in all previous sections together.
I am at the final section that has 96 rows - should I chose to knit them all - and knitting at row 30. There will be a final knitted-on border, but I have yet to decide on
1) a pattern, and
2) yarn. Will I use the self-striping, or chose a solid from Kauni?
The patterns in the shawl are from the inside out: A generic six-petalled flower I kinda use in all my make-up lace patterns; a "Shetland Fern" that I stole from the "Shetland Tea Shawl" in "A Gathering of Lace", the large flower is from "Knitter's Almanac" and is EZ's own original design, and the outermost pattern is simply a zig-zag pattern I am devising myself.
The blue shawl I knit two years ago followed EZ's pattern to a T until I reached the last section where I also used a zig-zagging pattern, and finished with a 15-st-garter-st-border. I had calculated it very closely and ended with 5 yards of yarn left :-)
The yarn is something called "Kauni", which comes from Estland. It is part of the ever-growing group of yarns with colourchanges like Noro, but without the price tag.
You can get Kauni at Wollsucht.de, where they also carry Karen Noe Ombré, Rellana, Opal yarns and Villa/Rewool.
Aint I (un)lucky that she lives next town and will pull out her yarn for visitors too? Man, finally it has its yarny advantages to live in Germany!
It is a bit more muted in RL, and I dont know what mare rid me when I decided to use rainbow yarn! It does feel scratchy when in the skein, but when it is knit up and eventually washed it is soft - not cotton/merino-soft, but wool-soft.
Have a nice day.
... link
