Note to self: next time you wing it on a sweater, make sure the neck fits over the head of the recipient before doing the final rib and bind-off. Having to rip back after weaving in the ends semi-invisibly is especially annoying.
After the excitement of all that shopping on the Friday, I took two classes on the Saturday. In the morning, I took Lucy Neatby's introduction to double knitting (A Dabble into Double Make a voyage of discovery to achieve a deeper understanding of your knitting! Try a variety of types of double knitting to produce two-layer fabrics. Starting with tubular knitting on straight needles, moving on to tubes within tubes and the double-knit pocket trick. Double Knit color patterning techniques include positive/negative and quilting for added texture and warmth.) After lunch, I went to see Pat Brunner teaching how to do art with short rows. (Tapestry with Short Rows Learn how to knit free-form wavy stripes, geometric shapes, and other intarsia-like effects with one yarn at a time using the short row techniques. Great for stash reduction and making unique sweaters, socks, hats, scarves, afghans and wall hangings.)
Personally I got more out of the double-knitting class, mostly because I was interested in the techniques. Lucy's style works well for me, I like her self-deprecating comments and her notes and exercises on the handouts were clearly written. The swatches were fun, and I got Lucy's DVD on the subject for when I want to delve more deeply.
These swatches for double knitting show a checkerboard (note that the edge is closed on one part, and open on the other), a basic tube, and a knitted-in pocket on the top swatch (note the part where the stitches are doubled, that's the pocket-in-progress).
The tapestry with short rows class was more difficult for me. The actual technique of knitting short rows wasn't the problem, it was the tapestry bit that I found difficult. It's obvious that Pat and many of the people taking the class have a much stronger artistic bent than I do (I'd call myself creative rather than artistic), and some of them came up with wonderful designs. I'd need to spend a lot of time figuring out designs on paper before wanting to commit them to yarn. For the more artistic people around, I can see the techniques being inspiring and the potential results stunning. No picture of my pathetic swatch from this one, as I didn't like it enough to want to keep it.
It's been a while since I posted about an actual WIP; in fact it's been a while since I posted at all (too much work at work, and too little sleep at home; at times we joke about giving the toddler the old-fashioned gripe water that really did put them to sleep for a while). So in this post you get two status photos, not one. This was my mindless knitting project while at Madrona, since there was only a small part where I had to pay attention to what I was doing.
The earlier version; the blue yarn is from the provisional cast-on. Nice and colourful and my son claims to like it (yes, he does like the pink bits scattered through). And since it's acrylic/nylon (Wendy Peter Pan Double Knit in colourway 1320), it's easy to toss in the washing machine (important with a 9-yr-old boy). Yarn reviews are available at Ravelry.
The design is a simple one, mostly cobbled together from Maggie Righetti's Sweater Design in Plain English, with a stocking stitch body and a horseshoe cable up the arm. I knitted the arms at the same time on two circular needles and I think it's actually easier to knit them flat and seam them! The bits of knitting and needles and yarn were forever getting tangled up and I think my gauge varied more than it usually does. Also, trying to graft together the sleeves and body at the underarms was more tricky than I anticipated because of the different directions the various bits of fabric were pulling in. I got it done eventually, and it should hold as I double-grafted some of it, but it was more tricky than I liked. Maybe practise makes perfect, or maybe I'll just stick to regular seams, which are easier to get right.
It turned out to be just as well I'd started with a provisional cast-on, since I am currently adding some more length to the body, knitting down. When you're designing "on the fly" as I was, provisional cast-ons make life a whole lot easier.
I didn't have any classes at Madrona on the Friday, so it was a day to hang out, go around the marketplace, fondle fibre, and generally blow the budget. I did restrain myself on the fibre and yarn, but made up for it in bags and needles. First was the trip to the Tom Bihn store; they only have one and it was more or less on the way from where I was staying to Tacoma. Tom Bihn has a ton of useful bags; I could have got more but restrained myself to a small messenger bag that I use as a purse; they call it the small cafe bag.
For my knitting I treated myself to a Namaste pleather (i.e., fake leather) bag. I think I would have preferred the turquoise, but the stand at the marketplace only had green and pink and pink is Definitely Not My Colour. This is the Laguna in lime, it has lots of room for everything I need and enough pockets to keep things usefully separated without having too much choice to put things in.
I added to my collection of needles; after I frogged the tiger hat I decided that maybe some bamboo needles would be useful for colourwork, to help keep the stitches stretched the right amount on the needles. I also fondled some of the gorgeous glass needles and specialty wooden needles and crochet hooks (the ones from Asciano made out of rosewood were especially interesting) but ultimately couldn't justify the cost to myself. I noticed though that the most useful sizes were gone by Friday afternoon, so lots of other people obviously could.
It was fun sitting in the knitting area outside the marketplace, watching people carry out their bags of goodies and then dive back in for more; I got a certain amount of knitting done while chatting to people, talking about yarns and colour choices. I've decided I've got a reasonable eye for matching colours although I wouldn't call myself artistic; I often manage to come up with ideas for colours to go with some yarn that others might not think of but that seem to work. Mind you, it is hard with some of the multi-coloured yarns around, since what they look like in the skein and what they look like knitted up can be two quite different things.
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