Needles & hooks

Swimming back to the surface

My past few weeks of stress and non-stop work have caught up with me and I’ve come down with a cold. My voice totally disappeared, so that meant I left work around noon yesterday and sat on the couch and knit. And I got back to the halfway point on Mermaid!

I’m home again today because the snot-monster caught up with me. Maybe I’ll make it back to the 2nd armhole where it was when I frogged before.

I mentioned before that I did something different with the color changes this time. Instead of cutting and joining anew and dealing with many tails to weave in, I just carried the unused color along, catching it on the back under the sl2wyif/wiybs. As long as I stretch the hem out before using a new color, it keeps the proper drape to the hem. Here’s some close up shots of the back.

In the first you can see the back of a hem gusset, where I’ve carried colors A and B along under color C:

In this one, you can see where I switch to the stripe section. Now I carry color C along under color B:

A couple of other updates:

Remember that lawn I planted? Here it is at the 2.5 week mark:

Remember those kittens? Here’s Two at one week:

Compare to Two at 2 hours:

More 1-week-old kitten shots can be found here

Comments: 6 — Posted under: Random, Mermaid

Whee!!

Okay, things have slowed down at work some and I’m getting back on my feet. And catching up in the rest of life too. After a failed start, I got a pedicure (my toes are now purple, what did you expect?) and I got to do some knitting too.

I’m making progress on Mermaid. I got past the first armhole. I made some executive decisions about the counts in the pattern and spreadsheet that I don’t like (so there will be an update soon). And I took a different tact this time round with the treatment of the yarn for the color changes at the hem. I’m carrying along all the unused colors instead of joining new at each new section. It’s working out really nicely, so there will be very few ends to deal with when it’s all over. Next time I take some pictures, I’ll post details.
Update: Mermaid knitters — don’t worry, the changes to the spreadsheet won’t make you want to frog anything. They will just make me saner.

And I looked at Bloglines. 440 unread posts! Ack! Some blogs I was just keeping up with over the past few weeks, others completely got away from me.

Comments: 2 — Posted under: Mermaid

My Weekend: A Photoessay

Comments: 9 — Posted under: Mermaid

Swimming along…

I spent a lot of time with Mermaid last night. I’m now in the middle of the 3rd hem gusset. I had a counting issue with the YOs on my armhole gusset. I’m not sure if I charted something wrong on the spreadsheet or if I miscounted when I knit. I was only a stitch off, so I’m not concerned. It looks fine and it will be under my arm anyway. But I will spend some time with some graph paper to see if I can’t work it out for the next one and fix it on the spreadsheet.

Here’s what she looks like…curvy:

After the armhole, the pattern has you cast on stitches to bring it back to the back width. It suggests you use a double strand on your thumb and a single strand on your index finger for a long-tail cast-on. I found a technique I liked a lot. I wound off a long piece of color C from the outside of the ball. I doubled it and tied a slip knot at the fold. I inserted this slip-knot between the last two stitches on my right needle. Then I used both tails from the slip knot on my thumb and the working yarn from the right needle on my index finger and cast on my stitches, remembering that my slip-knot was the first one. At the end, your working yarn is exactly where you want it to be to knit the RS row.

I also worked a bit on my hat idea with some spare yarn. I found a few issues and I need to work it a bit longer to see if it does what I want it to do. Then I’ll try working up real prototype with the Artyarns stripes that I’m using for Whirligig.

I’m also thinking about a sock pattern. I’m a font of creativity these days. I think I need to start carrying around a notebook to jot these things down in and work them out.

Comments: 1 — Posted under: Knitting, Mermaid

For Anna:

Here’s what Mermaid looked like when I started knitting tonight:

Just about to start the 2nd gusset. I completed that one tonight and bound-off for the first armhole.

Comments: 2 — Posted under: Knitting, Mermaid

Swimming in the shallow end

I’ve waded into Mermaid.

I did a simple long tail cast on with Color C that is intended as a provisional cast on to be removed later and replaced with an i-cord bind off. Started knitting with Color A from the collar down and started the main directions. I made good headway on the plane. Just about to start the 2nd gusset.

Working with my spreadsheet is a breeze. Noticed a few tiny issues, but mostly it’s spot on. Will issue an update soon.

Pictures later.

Comments: 2 — Posted under: Knitting, Mermaid

Training for Mermaid

No, I’m not going to participate in the Knitting Olympics. But I am gearing up to start Mermaid. I hit a little snag in Zig Zag which means it needs some extra care in finishing and I have some long plane rides coming up soon, so Mermaid gets to go.

I made a spreadsheet listing the pattern instructions row-by-row. This means I don’t have to remember multiple things to get the shaping right. Tonight I used some spare yarn and tried out some of the techniques to see how they work.

The knitalong has been discussing using a provisional cast on and a later i-cord bind-off in place of the i-cord then pick-up-and-knit technique listed in the pattern. This appealed to me because I could tell from photos (and from what the pattern says) that the two edges in the front won’t match exactly. I wanted to see if I could do something that would.

So I tried it.

What you see in the photo above are two swatches (right-click and choose “view image” to see them larger). The one on the right side starts with the i-cord pick-up-and-knit that the pattern recommends (over the number “2″). You can see the white bumps showing through. This would be visible along the front of the jacket, but not on the collar where it folds over. Over the “3″ (almost) is the i-cord bind-off that the pattern calls for. As you can see, these don’t match. Disregard the stockinette bits in the middle, those are for a different project that I’ll show you later.

After the first swatch, I tried the method that Holly described, making a provisional cast on, knitting a few ridges, and then removing the provisional cast on and doing an i-cord bind-off (over the “1″). Starting my bind-off at the top of the swatch and moving toward the “bottom hem”, I was able to exactly duplicate the look of the bind-off at the end of the pattern. This is clearly what I’ll be doing for my Mermaid.

In case anyone is curious, here is what the back of the swatch looks like. The i-cord pick-up and i-cord bind-off look fairly identical.

Finally, I also wanted to see exactly what happens with all the slipped stitches called for. So I made a small swatch with the stripe pattern.

As you can see, the treatment of the stitches at the hem edge of the swatch make a nice, single color stockinette hem. The selvedge edge of the garment naturally tucks itself up underneath. At the top, there is a little ridge next to the selvedge edge (the reverse being stockinette). This is where you will put the shoulder seams. Clever touch.

I think I have a good understanding of the techniques involved, now. Time to start swatching for gauge!

Comments: 3 — Posted under: Technical, Knitting, Mermaid

Twists, turns, zigs, zags, charts

My hats and scarf were well-received by my niece. I received many baby kisses all weekend. And apparently, little-kid-length scarves are hard to find. Manufacturers are afraid of strangling liability or something. So I will in fact write up the scarf pattern, I just have to figure out what to call it. I think I will ask all of you for help with that and offer an incentive. I have to dig through my stash to figure out what, so just start thinking. As food for thought, here’s some pictures of Gracie in her new winter fashions:

I also started thinking about the logistics of Mermaid. I bought some double points and I have reclaimed my size 2 40″ Addis. Swatching will start soon. While in the car this weekend, I started reading through the pattern to see what was ahead of me and to figure out what size I want to make. And I discovered that it’s very densely written, referring back to previous sections and including lots of “AT THE SAME TIME”s and very few stitch counts as sanity checks. So I’m working on writing out line-by-line directions in an Excel spreadsheet. I’m somewhere on page 3 right now, in the middle of the armhole gusset and just about to reach my first stitch count, and it looks like it’s going to match! Someone on the knitalong did something similar by hand, and I’m amazed. I don’t know how I’d be able to manage this without copy/paste. Here’s my kit (play spot the photographer!):

Finally, I’ve been making good progress on Zig Zag. I’ve got more than a foot of the sleeves done now. About 40 more rows and I can divide for the sleeve caps. Maybe just about the time I finish that Mermaid spreadsheet. Here’s what the sleeves looked like tonight:

Comments: 1 — Posted under: Zig Zag, Knitting, Mermaid