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September 27, 2004
Pictures as promised
Nostepinde from Lisa Joy(Goatherd40 on Knitty)
and one other thing that I think I forgot to mention here. I bought some mohair wool boucle from Ebay but when it arrived i was horribly disappointed to find how scratchy it is. I know mohair is not the softest stuff but good grief, this yarn is like hay. The other thing I was disappointed about was that out of ten skeins, half were of some other fiber mix, so the whole thing doesn't even match (texture-wise, the dye lot is the same). The only saving grace is that the other half is very, very soft and luscious. It definitely has mohair in it too but is simply a different yarn. Anyway. I decided I was going to just felt the scratchy stuff because it doesn't matter how scratchy a bag is. I threw some eyelets in there just to see how well lace would show up. The swatch felted unbelievably! And best of all, it is much, much softer. The eyelets stayed perfectly defined but the stitches all around lost definition. I have now decided to make a slightly felted lace shawl out of it.
Here is the swatch, before and after felting.
Posted by DebC at 10:23 PM | Comments (4)
Time Spent Knitting
Equals no time for computering (I made that term up, like it?). I wanted to wait to update when I posted some pictures but since I goofed up and sent an email notice to the wrong blog post, I figured I better post something.
I finished the second baby sweater using the Tasia?s sweater pattern from Cabin Fever. It is starting to get to the point where I am going to have to give the pattern a new name and call it mine. I love that pattern for its ease but there are so many ways you can go with it (another reason to love it). This time around, I used a sport weight wool and size 7 (US) needles which gave me a three month size. I used bar increases for the raglan shape lines instead of the eyelet increases. I discovered that this actually keeps the stripes more intact than the eyelets, which cause a huge jog. Oh, and I made tiny pink and white stripes, two rows each. This forced me to get much better at carrying the yarn up. I changed the garter stitch bands to seed stitch. Let me just tell you how much of a pain in the patoot buttonholes are to do in seed stitch.
The shape of the sweater is very rectangle and not all nice and round like a baby. I decided, when I finished it last night that I was going to just chuck it in the washer and see if it would felt. Note to those that do not speak Italian. If the label says ?lava in latrice?, it means super wash. The sweater actually came out BIGGER than when I put it in. I kid you not. But it also is now SUPER soft and all the stitches are now nicely seated. So I pretended like ?I meant to do that? and it is blocking on my table. Pictures to follow. I just have to hunt down some buttons.
I have decided to do this pattern ONE MORE TIME (hahahahaha), except in the middle size and with some Cascade 220 and see how it felts into a coat. I think that would be adorable if it works. If it doesn?t, I will just recycle the felt. I have to alter the sleeves to be wider and change the bands to be stockinette instead of garter or seed (although, I wonder what seed stitch looks like felted?). At this point, I really am going to claim this as my design!
Last night I cast BACK on the boucle shawl that I wanted to have for my trip to Prague. I decided to do a feather and fan lace instead of the terribly undefined thing I had going on.
Out of sheer knitting boredom the other day, I made four of those ?mini socks? from sock knitters. Way, way fun to do. I didn?t like the shape at first but I modified it a bit and got more of a real sock. This was also the first time I have done a sock from the top down. So much more fun to learn a new trick when you are only dealing with 16 stitches! I still would rather do toe up socks but I like that there aren't any holes to contend with on the top down version. Turning the heel was so much easier (again, when you are only dealing with eight stitches, it is a breeze). Anyway, pictures of those to come later too. P.S. If you haven't surfed through the Sock Knitters website, you are really missing out. What a treasure trove of information!
Posted by DebC at 11:11 AM