Avocado Carnaby -- Finishing touches

It's done! It's done! I love the drape of blocked wool. It just hangs straight off of your hand all relaxed and happy. There is no fighting with it to lie still or tussling over sides that don't quite match up. Those were my thoughts as I pulled the blocking wires out of the skirt this morning.

 I grabbed the buttons and got to work.  Now, I know most of you have sewn a million buttons on things; so have I in my lifetime. But there is a difference to sewing buttons on to a knitted item as opposed to most woven fabric.

With these buttons, using regular thread would have taken forever, so I split the 4 ply worsted weight yarn I used into two sets of two ply and threaded a small yarn needle.

I then doubled the yarn over and tied a knot at the end. This is really important for an upcoming step.

If you line up the two sides with the button hole on top, you can mark the placement of the button by sticking your needle straight into button hole.

Holding the needle, pull back the buttonhole side and look at the placement of the needle. This is where you want your button to be centered.

One difficulty with sewing into knitted fabric is that there are so many holes! So one of the tricks that I learned many years ago is: When you go up and then down through the button's holes for the first time slip the needle through the loop formed by the two legs of the yarn. This will anchor the end of the yarn with the button itself so that it won't come loose.

It only takes a few passes with the yarn to fill up the big holes in the button. Try sewing on 7 of these with plain thread!

Make sure that the direction of the threads through the button holes all go the same way. It would look really funny if some were horizontal and some were vertical. I don't think it matters which way they go as long as they are consistent.

Happy Knitting!

Productive Knitting Week: Part 3 - South Bound Chullo

This was a really fun project! The pattern is a Chullo called the Southern Lights Hat which I have knit using Noro Hitsuji which is a bulky, 100 percent wool from Noro. The colors are really great -- the pictures just don't do them justice. I have three different views above so that you can see all the colors. The free Knitty pattern directs the knitter to knit the ear flaps one right after the other with the first one reserved to be attached to the hat as you start casting on the bridge across the forehead after the second ear flap is knit. This results in two totally different colored i-cords and ear flaps.

I went out and bought a Styrofoam head form just so that I could block this hat. I thought about using a balloon, but I saw that other people had used the Styrofoam forms to display their knitted hats, why would that not work for blocking them. I am sure that they use it to block their hats as well, but I just never thought about it. They are cheap and readily available -- I bought mine at my local Hobby Lobby.

There is still some work to be done on the hat. There is a pompom on the top of the hat and one on the end of each of the i cords. I have two more skeins of this yarn in this same color that will become matching mittens. I'll be styling this winter!

Happy Knitting!

P.S. for directions on how to knit i-cord -- click here. Again, Purl Bee to the rescue!

Productive Knitting Week: Part 2 - How Now Brown Cowl

It's amazing what difference is made in blocking a knitted item. Above are the before and after (OK, during) the blocking of my cowl that I knit to fill my commute time. 

How Now Brown Cowl was an extremely fast knit. I completed it in about 6 hours of knitting stretched over two days. I guess that is one reason I like using bulky weight yarns. When I got this item off the needles, I tried it on and was a bit dismayed to see that the tip of the cowl rolled under. I assume that this is because my gauge on garter stitch is tighter than my stocking stitch. 

Again, I used blocking wires to block the cowl after soaking it for about 30 minutes. I have two on the front side with one of them at an angle to pull the lower point out and away. The yarn is not in the least bit over stretched, so my hope is that this will stop it from rolling under.

Happy Knitting!

Productive Knitting Week: Part 1 - The Carnaby

I finally finished the skirt that I have been working on for about the last month. Last night I completed the stabilizing crochet stitches at the waist; this morning I wove in and skimmed in the ends of the yarn joins; and then I started the blocking process.

I have posted my blocking process in a prior post, so I won't go into it again, however, I want to show you that years ago I bought a really big bowl to put chips in for parties. It is bigger than a punch bowl and it turned out to be one of the best knitting tools I ever purchased! Here is the skirt enduring it's 30 minute soak.

Another purchase that I made a few months ago were blocking wires. Turned out that they work for a lot of things. In the set that I purchased are two flexible wires. I used both of them to weave into the waist of the skirt. This gave me the ability to set the curve into the top of the skirt and pull the panels out to a length of 20.5 inches which should make the skirt long enough to wear to work. You can just see the wire at the top of the picture on the right.

I left the skirt pinned to my blocking mat (aka my spare bed's mattress) with a small circular fan blowing across the top of it. Now, it was time for a field trip to my local Hobby Lobby for buttons.

I would have preferred a darker wood, but because I had extended the length of the skirt by 8 stitches, I needed to put in a 7th button. There were buttons that were more of a red cherry wood color, but there were only 6 of those buttons left. Hmm. I think these lighter maple wood looking ones look pretty good anyway. I will be sewing these on tomorrow and with any luck will be wearing it to work on Monday.

Stay tuned for parts two and three!

Happy Knitting.

Bandana Cowl

I have gotten so far in the knitting of my Carnaby Skirt, that it no longer fits in my bag that I carry into the city on my commute. This means one of two things: either I don't knit on my commute or I start another project. So I decided on a quick knit by Purl Soho called the Bandana Cowl. I found Purl last week when I was looking for a good pictorial for my blog on short-row knitting. I looked at several of the free, online knitting patterns that they had, copied a couple of them to my hard drive and went on with life.

A week later, I was looking at some postings on Knitting Paradise and noticed this one on the Bandana Cowl and immediately recognized it. To me, that is knitting destiny.

I am somewhat limited on bulky weight yarn at the moment, but I had some left-over Wool of the Andes Bulky from my Chocolate Diamonds Sweater that I knitted last fall. Perfect. I cast on the pattern and am following it as written. There was some discussion on Knitting Paradise regarding converting the project to knitting flat instead of in the round and adding some buttons, but I decided not to mess with the pattern and just go with what was written.

I am about half way and have only knitted for about 3 hours. For me, that will be a REALLY quick project. I may have to get some more bulky yarn.

Happy knitting!

Short row knitting -- One of my favorite things!

As you may have seen in one of my most recent posts, I am currently knitting a skirt called the Carnaby. The skirt is knit with a pair of panels: one in a pattern and the other a stocking stitch wedge formed with short row knitting. I have grown quite fond of short rows. I remembered first learning how to do short row knitting when knitting sock heels. But I have found that short row knitting is used in all kinds of knitting.

Just like increases and decreases, short row knitting is a shaping method. Think "darts" in sewing. From the photo above, you can see the wedges formed with the short rows. (Ignore the color, my iPhone doesn't capture color indoors at night very well.) In the picture on the left, you can see where the short row stopped and turned around. The Carnaby pattern, spaces each short row end about 10 stitches  from the last one, with six short rows in all so that it is a long skinny wedge.

The Purl Bee has a very nice short row pictorial tutorial (wow that rhymes) showing the wrap and turn that most people use with short row knitting. "Purl" has pictures showing both the wrap and the pickup when both knitting and purling. And since Purl did such a great job, I would rather you check out her link. I'm not sure I would do half as well with my iPhone.

On Ravelry, as of the date of this post, if you do a pattern search on just the word short row you will have 12,518 patterns come up. Well that isn't all socks or skirts! There are coats, dresses, scarves, swimsuits, toys and buttons. Personally, I have made dog sweaters, socks, and an ear flap chullo on my knitting machine.

If you haven't tried short row knitting yet, you are missing out on a very useful skill. Pick up some yarn, pick out a pattern and get some learn'n on!

Happy Knitting!

A good long yarn.

Little Flirt Skirt

I have been trudging along on the Avocado Carnaby over the last couple of weeks. Projects of this size take time for me. I am not a fast knitter, so I don't have much to blog about when I am in the middle of a project. However, I do have some more yarn to show you.

As long as I am ordering yarn for one project, I may as well order yam for a couple of more projects in order to save money on shipping. Along with the Wool of the Andes that I bought from Knit Picks, I also purchased Full Circle in Cardinal and Wool of the Andes Tweed in Claret. And I already have the (free) patterns picked out for these yarns!

Chelsea

For the Full Circle, I have selected the pattern Little Flirt Skirt. This pattern, by Faina Goberstein, is an A-line, knee length, pleated skirt. The skirt has a beautiful eyelet row through which many on Ravelry have used to thread a ribbon.

The Wood of the Andes Tweed will be used for a pattern by Cecily Glowik MacDonald called Chelsea. This pattern, like the Carnaby, is a wrap skirt. I love the piece of lace at the hemline. My thought is to use a few yards of lace that I have in a pale lilac. Yum!

Happy Knitting!