Articles by lauren

Today was the day I finally shipped the TKGA Master Hand Knitting Level 1 box off to Zanesville, Ohio. I opted for the 10 business day postal dlivery at $21 rather than the 1 day at $90+, given that it will take 6-8 weeks for me to get the results anyway. So that means I can tell myself the day of reckoning won’t be until late August or even early September. I wonder what the customs handlers will think of a declaration of “knitting swatches”?

I took photos of each swatch and the hat, and will post those later. Fortunately Ravelry now allows for slurping from my blog so I don’t have to clutter up my Flickr feed with project photos. There were a lot of swatches, but those were fun (even if I did have to do a lot of practice swatches). Except for the seed stitch swatch, which was not fun.

The report on blocking was fine. I found the questions difficult to answer, since so much of what I do is because it feels right (using the intuitive side of my brain) and having to come up with the right words for explanations was a little tricky. I felt like I was trying to explain what I see, and wasn’t sure whether I found the right vocabulary. Time will tell, I guess.

Anyway, so Level 1 is more or less done. I have no idea whether I’ll pass or need to resubmit any of the swatches. If so, I hope the feedback is something I can understand and incorporate in the reknitting process, something to learn from.

At some stage I’ll probably do the next level, but for now I have a few other projects in the queue.

One of the things I’ve noticed while doing the research for the TKGA Level 1 is that cast-ons are often given different names in the various reference books. I figured it would be useful for me, and maybe for others, to list the cast-ons I used, what names they’re known under in the books I’ve looked at, and any notes. Of course, this is really only useful if you have at least one of the books, for which I make no apologies.

I think it’s an interesting comparison. No wonder it’s sometimes hard to figure out what knitters actually mean by any given term.

Bibliography:

Knitter’s

The Knitter’s Handbook: Essential Skills & Helpful Hints from Knitter’s Magazine, 2005, XRX Books.

Stanley

Knitter’s Handbook : A Comprehensive Guide to the Principles and Techniques of Handknitting, Montse Stanley, 1993, Reader’s Digest.

Vogue

Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book, 2002, Sixth & Spring Books

My current non-TKGA knitting project is a cardigan for my toddler daughter. It’s my first “real” stranded knitting project (I don’t count the frogged tiger hat), and the roses have that embossed look to them. I assume some of that will block out eventually. Unlike the tiger hat, where I was holding both yarns in my right hand, I’m using the background colour in my right hand, and the “pattern” colour in my left hand. I usually knit holding the yarn in my right hand and throwing it, but picking with my left hand is quite comfortable. I watched Lucy Neatby’s Gems 2 DVD where she shows how she holds the yarn in each hand, and I find that her method works for me.

I’ve been trying out different methods of getting the stranding to work (with some success, despite the embossed look). I tried the “weave every second stitch” method, but that shows through too much. And then I tried weaving every 3 stitches. Since the yarn is so fine (32 stitches per 10 cm/4 in) in the end I decided to weave only on a gap or 6 stitches or more on the body, and more often on the sleeves, as that’s where the little fingers might catch.

Baby Ull cardigan

Dale Baby Ull cardigan

The photos were taken on the sundial in our front garden, while the tulips were blooming.

If you want to see what the finished article should look like, pictures are available on the Dale site (on pages 2 and 5 of the almost 3 MB PDF download) as well as Ravelry, both the pattern page and my project page.

For some reason I can’t sleep right now, and after browsing a few Ravelry pages I figured I may as well update my Level 1 progress. I was hoping to get the whole thing finished by the end of this month, which will be a little tight, but if I tell the world, that will help me stick to the timetable, right? Maybe?

I have the blocking report almost done, just proof-reading to go. I’m not worrying about the details too much on this one, it’s probably not my finest writing but I figure if all the useful information is there, that’s the important thing.

I have knitted and blocked the hat, just need to sew on the i-cord loops. I’ve knitted all the swatches, and blocked all but two. Except for, someone on Ravelry asked about doing traditional versus modified SSK decreases, and the answer was to do the traditional method (the one where you slip both as if to knit, whereas I usually slip the second stitch as if to purl), so I’ll have to reknit that swatch.

The major remaining items are to write up the cable pattern, answer all the questions, and fill in the tags for each swatch with the pattern information. In theory it’s doable by the end of the month, let’s see if I actually manage it. Getting over my insomnia would help.

My Ravelry notes show I finished this on April 20th, so I guess it’s about time I blogged it and put up a picture. I have a few other projects to blog about as well; maybe this will break the logjam.

Koolhaas hat in Malabrigo

The pattern as written works up to 16″ unstretched, which I decided wouldn’t look good when stretched to fit my 23″ head. It took a bit of swatching until I ended up with 5.5 mm needles, which result in a nice feel to the fabric in that crossed cable pattern. It ended up 18” in circumference, and stretches to 26”, which fits comfortably. If I make another one for me, I’ll do the extra repeat for the men’s size, as this one only just covers my ears.

I like the colour, and the pattern, but I don’t think they go together all that well; the colour changes override the pattern. If I knit it again I’ll knit it in a solid colour, and save the kettle-dyed yarns for a plainer pattern, like a brioche stitch or fishermen’s rib. You can see the difference on the designer’s site (or Ravelry).

It’s rated an intermediate project, which is probably fair. I found it a fairly straightforward knit; you do have to pay attention in the decrease instructions and it helps if you can cable without a cable needle, but nothing in the pattern is particularly difficult or hard to understand.

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 Wiseneedle and 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.

Tom Bihn bag

Tom Bihn bag, closed

Just the right size for my assorted bits and pieces, fits over my shoulder easily, and is hard-wearing.

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.

Namaste Laguna knitting bag

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.

It’s about time I wrote up my Madrona 2008 experience in more detail, so here goes with Day 1: the Thursday. I took in Pat Brunner’s “Make it Fit!” class, with the thought being to be able to adapt patterns not only for me, but also for other people I may knit for. The description read

Are you never quite sure what designs will flatter or fit properly? Wonder how to adjust patterns to fit or compensate for “non-standard” body parts? Do you want to learn various knitting techniques such as horizontal and vertical darts, and shaping methods to fit curves? Pat is the expert and you will come away with the know- how to make measurements and adjust patterns to achieve the fit that will be most flattering for you.

We spent the six hours enjoyably going over all sorts of issues; it mostly ended up being a brain dump of much of what Pat has learned over the years. Since she has a technical bent (worked as an engineer for years) to go with her creative talents, the explanations she gave made sense to me. Judging from the reactions of the class, they made sense to most of the other people as well.

Pat started with a description of the basic body types and then some guidelines for what tends to look good on which body types; some things like set-in sleeves she says look good on everyone (illustrated by a photo she found and edited to change the drop sleeves to set-ins; even on the model it looked much better). We spent some time measuring ourselves in pairs to get a full set of useful measurements, and then compared them to the schematics of patterns we’d brought. There was a certain amount of discussion about patterns that are developed for one size and then poorly changed for other sizes, resulting in things like armholes that are too big, or shoulders that are too wide. Pat was adamant that before spending time knitting anything we should match our measurements to those of the pattern, just to make sure the garment will fit after all that work knitting it. She gave quite a few tips on what sort of design looks good on various body types, what effect different types of yarn or stitch patterns have, and gave some ideas for modifying patterns to make them more flattering. We looked at a few photos and analyzed what didn’t work about the pattern, also looking for the tricks that photographers use to make a garment look better (such as pinning it from behind, or having the model hold down the hem that’s riding up).

Somewhere along the line we had a discussion on how yarns behave, which ones stretch and which are resilient, as well as a discussion on the best way to knit swatches (knit and measure, then wash/block and measure, maybe even hang weights on when the swatch is dry to mimic wear if you’re using a yarn that stretches a lot). We had discussions on the best way to estimate how much yarn you need for a pattern, based on approximating squares.

Then it was time to discuss particular issues; I have a broad back so I was interested in that and her advice was to look at sewing patterns and how they fit the back sleeve cap to be a little bigger than the front one. Pat talked about darts and short rows and when to use each and how to place them so they aren’t as obvious. I have pages in my notebook full of ideas for sleeve caps and diagrams of dart and short row placement waiting for me to use.

Pat finished appropriately with the last resorts: what to do if the garment just doesn’t fit. her suggestions: try blocking it. If that doesn’t work, try cutting it, picking up stitches along the cut line and reknitting borders or attaching sleeves (particularly if changing from a dropped sleeve to a modified dropped sleeve). Probably not something for the faint of heart, but worth keeping in mind as the last of the last resorts.

For me the class was well worth taking. Pat knows so much about different facets of knitting that I imagine there are few problems she hasn’t encountered at one time or another, and this sort of class where she can respond to people’s concerns is ideal.

We had our fortnightly Ravelry get-together this afternoon, which was fun. Since DH is out of town, I took the toddler in the stroller, in the hopes that she would get her afternoon nap that way. She’s starting to get too big for the stroller and, not surprisingly, only slept for about an hour. I did get some knitting in on a sweater for DS, it’s reasonably mindless. Marina made a comment about my knitting a real project, rather than swatches. Right now I just don’t have the mental energy to work on those TKGA swatches, it’s easier to knit on something where I don’t have to think.

After a while DD woke up and I amused her and the rest of the knitters (though probably not the other people in the cafe) by reading Derek the Dinosaur, a story about a knitting dinosaur who’s the hero of the day when the ice age arrives. The link there is to an Australian bookstore; all the US and UK ones I tried only had books that were inordinately expensive or no longer available. And that’s the version I’ve got anyway, so it seemed appropriate. The pictures of dinosaurs wrapped up in woolly hats and sweaters are awfully cute. In some countries the title is “Derek the Knitting Dinosaur”; that’s what it’s listed under in the Vancouver Public Library, for example.

We talked about this and that, including the problems you find when you renovate an old house (discovering live electrical wires in the walls and support posts that aren’t themselves supported by anything seem to be common issues). Some of the others are going to the Fibre Fest March 7-8, but I got enough of a fix at Madrona (not to mention spending enough money).

And then it was time to go, back out into the sunshine, one of those rare, warm, February days.

Today was just Not My Day. It started with the toddler spilling my orange juice at breakfast, then my mother is stuck in a house in Saskatchewan with a blizzard blowing. Not even my knitting went well, since I had to frog the second version of the TKGA level 1 hat twice. I had almost finished the first version when I noticed I had the colours round the wrong way, and given that part of the test is whether you can read a pattern correctly, I couldn’t send in that version. On the second version I forgot the increases in the last ribbing row and had already cut the yarn. On to the next try, where I found I’d twisted the join after knitting two rounds, this after casting on a number of times to get the long-tail cast-on in pattern to work out right. Sigh. At least it was the Ravelry get-together today, so I could knit and drink coffee while making my mistakes on the second version of the hat, and it was sunny this afternoon, contrary to the weather forecast. The weather forecast for Saskatchewan for the rest of the week is better, so my parents should be able to get out of the house tomorrow. Maybe my knitting brain will do better tomorrow as well.

I did a fair amount of knitting on the tiger hat over the weekend and it became obvious it would be far too small for either of my kids, at 40 cm diameter (unstretched, but it didn’t stretch enough either). So I frogged it. I had done swatches in the yarn, but not in pattern; I guess this just means I knit colourwork a lot more tightly than plain colours, which I’ll have to remember in future. I’ll try going up a couple of needle sizes and see what that looks like, but probably not today.

OK, I didn’t get the yarn tails woven in, the swatches are still sitting on the board waiting for me. Just too much else going on. But I did cast on a new project - the Tiger Hat. I need to figure out colourwork for one of the TKGA swatches, and knitting a cute hat seems like a good way to do so. I don’t know who it’s for, that will depend on what size it ends up! I cast on today during a phone call where I didn’t have to take notes, and will knit further over the weekend. I wonder how long it will take, I’ve always been a little scared to tackle colourwork, ever since I tried a project that with hindsight was way over my head some years ago. I can double-knit with one yarn in each hand, so colourwork shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Yesterday was the time to start blocking some of those TKGA swatches I’ve been knitting. I haven’t finished all the swatches, but I’ve done over half and didn’t want to leave all that pinning out to the last minute. It’s been a lot of work so far, but worth it in terms of making me look closely at my knitting and figuring out better ways to do things.

I used the standard wool blocking technique: soak in some warm water with a little shampoo for 20-30 minutes, rinse in warm water, squeeze out gently, wrap in a towel, pin out on a towel placed on one of those interlocking foam boards, leave until dry. This evening I get to weave in some yarn tails. Maybe I’ll do some more photos of the results once that’s done.

I found myself adding sites to my bookmarks list, and then thought, how silly. It’s not much more work to blog them, and then others might be interested as well. So here is a listing of a few web sites with knitting techniques of various sorts. The order is reverse alphabetical.

Techknitting

Technique discussions and illustrations for more advanced knitters. Good if you want to know the pros and cons of different techniques, could be a little overwhelming. Best read with knitting pins (needles) and yarn in hand, to try things out.

Sweaterscapes

I found this one when looking for a tutorial on shaping necklines with short rows. Tutorials on changing designs, intarsia knitting, i-cord, etc.

StudioKnits

This is a complete book, online or available on CD. There are over 38,000 words and 300+ custom knitted illustrations adding up to the equivalent of more than 190 letter-sized pages contained within. Lots of colour photos, which is good.

KnittingHelp

Lots of videos on all sorts of knitting techniques, illustrated in both continental and English knitting styles.

Of course, I have multiple books as well, but sometimes one of these sites puts things in a different way that makes more sense.

My mother-in-law, Jean, and I had a deal. She’d do some sewing for me, and I’d knit her a cardigan out of yarn she had bought. She crochets, but wanted something knitted this time instead. So I got her measurements and the yarn, designed a cardigan, and finally finished it on Christmas Eve Day, a couple of months after starting.

Jean’s cardigan

I don’t know what the yarn was but it looked like a worsted-weight, mostly wool, yarn, in a dark grey heather colour. The style is simple, a basic loose cardigan with about 10 cm ease at the bust, fitted sleeve caps, and a fairly high round neck. The overall pattern is a very simple lace repeat. The hems are folded stocking stitch folded hems on the sleeves and body. The front and neckline bands are double-knit bands as per Jen’s instructions.

Lace pattern, in a 12-row repeat:
rows 1 and 3: knit
even rows: purl
row 5: *k2tog, yo, repeat from *, k1
rows 7 and 9: knit
row 11: *ssk, yo, repeat from *, k1

The ssk row produces a left bias that balances out the right bias produced by the k2tog row. When I was blocking the cardigan there was very little overall bias, and the little that was there was easily held in by the double-thickness hems and bands. The cardigan draped nicely in this stitch done on 4.5 mm needles, with the hem inner on 4 mm needles (purl row as fold line) and the bands on 3.75 mm needles (double knitting needs slightly smaller needles).

For a change, the Ravelry group I knit with decided to go on a field trip, and it didn’t take much for me to convince them to try Homecraft Importers. The web site is new, and obviously still has some problems, but I do like the store. It has yarns, threads, and other supplies for knitting, crochet, and needlework. Supporting that range of fibre crafts is rare here in Vancouver, most of the LYS really only have knitting yarns and maybe some crochet hooks. We had fun looking at the brilliant rayon and silk stitching threads, the different yarns, and tried our best to enable each other to buy more. I was quite restrained and only bought enough yarn (superwash merino, nice and practical) for some hats for the kids. Not that I know when I’ll get to knit them, of course, but I have hopes.

And one day maybe I’ll have an excuse to make something out of some of the more exotic yarns there. Bamboo, or maybe that Bouton d’Or Ksar, a really soft yarn with camel and wool. It was gorgeous!

Then down to Country Beads for all the people making the Ice Queen shawl (no, not me, I have enough on my project list right now), followed by coffee. We even got lucky in the weather - grey and gloomy of course, but no rain. Which is all you can hope for at this time of year.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Portland (the Vintage Plaza), listening to the rain and relaxing. Tim and I came down for a two-day get-away, time to relax and catch up on sleep without the kids. This morning we went to Powells and I added to my library with Deborah Newton’s Designing Knitwear (Powells link, Amazon link) and Ann Feitelson’s The Art of Fair Isle Knitting (Powells link, Amazon link) as well as looking at some others that I’ll put on my Christmas wish list. We also added some non-knitting books to the library of course!

Lunch at the Rogue brewpub, followed by a visit to Knit Purl, lots of lovely yarns, friendly service. I got some Baby Ull for a cardigan for my daughter that I’ll start after the New Year, it will be my first Fair Isle project - I’ve always been a little nervous of colourwork so I figured a size 3 cardigan was a good place to start. I also stopped in at the little needlework shop next door (The Playful Needle, no we address), also very friendly service, even though all I bought was a magnetic chart-holder for my needlework charts. Apparently they do blocking and make needlework into cushions, bags etc, so maybe I’ll do that with some of the needlepoint I’ve had languishing around the house for years, to finally get it into a form where it’s not just sitting in a cupboard.

Only one person knitting in the cafe where we had coffee; not many coffee shops around downtown apart from the ubiquitous Starbucks. And although I have nothing against Starbucks, I do like patronising the smaller places where possible. I must look on delocator before we go out tomorrow.

It’s still raining outside, but even so it’s time to venture out again.

Yup, there were a few glitches in the Madrona Fiber Arts registration system, but they seem to be cleared up now and on the second time around I got most of the classes I wanted. I’m doing the classes on knitting different shapes on double-pointed needles, double knitting, and intarsia. The latter two are with Lucy Neatby, I have one of her DVDs and like it so I was glad to get into her classes. I know nothing about Margaret Radcliffe, the instructor for knitting shapes, other than what I’ve read on the Madrona site.

I’ll hang around the rest of the time and watch people and go to the market etc. I’ve never actually been to a fiber arts festival before so I don’t know what to expect; fortunately I’m going with a couple of friends. It should be fun!

I finally finished the seed stitch swatch for TKGA Level 1. It’s hard to get an even fabric with no holes. I don’t know how many rows total I ripped back to redo because on holding it up to the light I could see some obvious hole. In the end, I found I had to consciously relax, and rotate the stitches on the needle after each stitch to get the right amount of yarn in the knit/purl/knit transitions. It’s still not perfect, but I think it’s as good as I’m going to get it. Tammy and Louisa did some quality control at our Ravelry knit meeting, which helped my sanity on getting it done. And as soon as I got home I put it in the folder, to make sure no little fingers or sharp claws get to it.

I’ll take a photo when it’s blocked and post it.

I signed up for TKGA’s Master Knitting Level 1. So far it’s been more absorbing than I expected, and I’m only doing the swatches! I’ll get to the questions and report later. I’ve been practising cast-ons and increases trying to get them to look right before doing the final swatch. In a way it’s a lot freer than knitting a real project, these little swatches don’t take long but they do take concentration.

Now I’m wondering whether I’m using the right yarn. The LYS I went into to get yarn only really had Mission Falls 1824 wool in a light-coloured worsted weight superwash, and it doesn’t seem to hold the stitch definition very well. And it looks horrible if I need to frog or tink it. I don’t have anything light-coloured in worsted weight in my stash; it’s all darker or double knitting weight. Or something other than wool, and I want to use superwash wool as it blocks up nicely.

My current plan is to knit a couple more swatches and see how they look after blocking, and if need be I’ll redo in something else. And at some stage I need to take some photos and post them and see if I can get comments on how to improve them before submitting…

I thought about it for a long time, and finally decided to set up a separate knitting blog. I’ll still cross-post to my other blog, but having a knitting blog gives me more freedom for obsessive posts that would likely bore non-knitters to tears.

It’s called Lauren’s Knitting due to a lack of imagination on my part.

I finally got my Ravelry invite today. I got on the waiting list about a month ago, so it didn’t take long. I spent a few minutes poking around, though I will have to be careful as it could prove to be an immense time-sink for me, with all the discussion about knitting and crochet. There’s even a group for KnitML there, which I hadn’t heard of before.

It’s interesting comparing Ravelry to Facebook, as well. Surface impressions: completely different crowd, they don’t ask for any information when you sign up except for an email address, username, and password. Of course, you can add info such as birthday or where you live to your profile, but it’s not needed. Lots of links to sites outside of Ravelry, thus the site feels much more open to the rest of the world than Facebook. And maybe because it’s more focussed, it will be more appealing long-term (there already seems to be quite a lot of Facebook ennui out there in the blogosphere).

If you’re a keen knitter or crocheter, don’t be put off by the fact you have to join a waiting list; it doesn’t take long to get the invite and it looks like a worthwhile resource. One neat item: the yarn listing includes people’s destash info.

Originally published on Anyway, my other blog.

Eve’s XML and knitting analogy got me thinking.

You can think of a written knitting pattern as being the schema, with a set of instructions, just like the schema’s content model. Then each knitted item you make that conforms to that knitting pattern is like the document instance that conforms to the schema. Schemas can be restrictive or allow lots of instance structure variations, as can knitting patterns. And, to tie it into my previous post on knitting and copyright, a schema can be copyrighted (and often is). The analogy does have a few problems when you start trying to figure out the relationship of the set of tags in a document instance and the content within those tags; if you think of the knit and purl stitches as being the elements, then the yarn would be the content. Except for, yarn can’t really be original in the same way as the content in an XML document can be. Some people may disagree when it comes to hand-painted yarns, of course.

Originally published on Anyway, my other blog.

There was quite a lot of discussion about copyright issues in the comments to my knitted cushion piece; this is an important enough subject that it deserves its own blog posting. Obligatory disclaimer here.

The issue was whether a knitting pattern can be copyrighted. I believe that the complete pattern with all the words can be copyrighted in the same way as all my other postings are copyrighted. If it’s original content that I created, and I haven’t assigned the copyright to anyone else, then I have the copyright. So the main question is, can the straightforward description of the stitches (i.e., the “k1, p1″ bit) be copyrighted? Mark claims it can’t, because you can’t copyright the design and stitches. A related issue is whether you can impose licensing conditions on someone making the article described in the pattern (in the case of the cushion I designed, giving attribution).

Traditionally knitting has been about people making variations on known ideas. Elizabeth Zimmerman, one of the knitting gurus, used the word “unvented” to describe techniques that she discovered. She was convinced that someone else had probably discovered the technique long ago, but not written it down, so what she was doing was re-inventing, or “unventing”. She also encouraged people to make variations on patterns, to make things their own. However, there are the legal aspects of copyright to consider. In the US, a knitting pattern falls under the Visual Arts category for copyright as long as it follows the basic rules. Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. In the UK, I assume knitting patterns would fall under the written work category, as it includes instruction manuals (a knitting pattern is arguably an instruction manual). For Canadian law, it’s easier to refer to the web site written by an IPR lawyer. From there I read Section 5(1) of the Copyright Act specifies that copyright subsists in every “original” literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work. So my cushion pattern, since it is original in that sense, does have copyright protection. Including the arrangement of the stitches (or the basic “k1, p1″ stuff). The stitch patterns on their own, the modules that I built the cushion pattern out of, which are traditional, aren’t copyrighted, of course. It’s my arrangement of them to form the cushion pattern that is.

The other question is what conditions I can impose on someone who wants to copy the pattern, or make articles from it. In my pattern, I specifically said people shouldn’t copy the pattern, but should link to it instead. And that they can use the pattern to make articles, even for sale, as long as they give me attribution for the pattern. Most free knitting patterns contain the condition that the person not make the article for sale, but I decided I didn’t object to that.

From all my reading, it’s perfectly allowable (note I’m not saying anything about the moral aspects here) to impose such conditions on anyone wishing to copy the pattern or use it to make a cushion. You should not simply assume that because you have permission to make a copy of the sweater or afghan by following the pattern, you also have permission to deal with that work in any way, for example by selling what you made. In the knitting industry, it’s very common for people to say that the resulting article may not be sold, and this is basically a contract that the knitter agrees to in using the pattern.

In fact, the industry norm is that items made from any pattern that the knitter buys or downloads (even free patterns) may only be made for the knitter or as gifts. So in the absence of a copyright notice on the pattern, it could be argued that those would be the implied conditions of use. This is not universally accepted; here’s the starting point to one long discussion I read where this point was argued back and forth. I note, however, that even the person arguing that the knitted articles should be able to be sold also argued that credit should be given to the designer.

References

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp
http://www.copyright.gov/register/va-examples.html
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy
http://www.girlfromauntie.com/copyright/
http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall03/FEATcopyright.html
http://community.livejournal.com/knitting/8179698.html

Disclaimer

I am not a lawyer, I don’t know any lawyers personally who deal with the issue of copyright in knitting, and thus although I have read quite a lot about the subject, any detailed questions you may have should be taken to someone who is properly qualified. And all of this legal stuff does vary with the country/state/province you live in. Most of my reading has been based on Canadian and US law; the laws in other countries may vary considerably. I do hope that people who know more about the subject than I do will comment.

Originally published on Anyway, my other blog.

A friend in England got married, so I decided to knit her a cushion. Herewith the pictures, and the pattern, for those readers of my blog interested in my knitting posts.

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I was a few months pregnant when Tim asked when I was going to knit some bootees (aka booties) for the baby. I wondered why he hadn’t asked for the first child, he answered that he hadn’t known I could knit back then. Fair enough.

So I got some yarn in time for the trip to Hawaii, thinking it would be a good chance to get some knitting in. I tried two patterns, one from a book of my great-aunt’s, and one on the web; I preferred the web pattern (they’re the bootees on the right). Once the baby arrived of course, we rediscovered why we hadn’t used the bootees we had with our first child; they don’t stay on the feet! Socks or outfits with feet built-in are much more practical. Although I did discover that if you put socks on first, the bootees do stay on longer.

The results of the Hawaii knitting are here, showcased on a tablecloth I got in Hawaii…

The jacket is a seamless cabled jacket, knitted in Baby Soft by Lana Gatto from this pattern. The only slightly tricky bit was making the increases work into the cable pattern properly, that required a piece of paper and a certain amount of calculating. Other than that, a reasonably easy knit and the yarn is lovely and soft. I just hope she spends as much (or more) time wearing it as I did knitting it!

Originally published on Anyway, my other blog.

Some time ago I promised our son that I would knit him a sweater. He picked the pattern, and the yarn, picking something (of course) in a fine yarn that took seemingly forever to finish. However, finish it I did, eventually.

The pattern is Alice Starmore’s Fife, from the Fishermen’s Sweaters book. It comes in one size only, for an eight-year-old, so it’s a little big on him right now, but won’t be by next winter. There’s a picture at the virtual yarns web site, which is a show case for the Starmore designs (and sells kits and yarn). I knitted my version in Cleckheaton Machine Wash 5-ply Crepe, which I got in Australia last time we were there. They don’t seem to have the same colour any more for that yarn, it’s colour 2181 (pictured in a different yarn). For once in my life I got perfect gauge on the recommended needles! Both stitch and row gauges matched, which made knitting a lot easier - no calculating changes in increases and decreases to match a differing row gauge.

So here’s the sweater, nicely laid out on my new wooly board (great for drying knitted sweaters), photographed on a nice spring day in our back yard.

Originally published on Anyway, my other blog.

I’ve been knitting for most of my life, except for a long gap in the 1990s. I took it up again about 3 years ago and, due in no little part to Eve’s encouragement, am going to start showing off some of what I’ve done and am doing. Maybe blogging will even encourage me to finish things sooner - I tend to do most of a piece but not get around to finishing it for some time.

All that being said, here’s my first blog entry on the subject of crafts, my version of item 5443 in a pattern book called Inspiration 75. One would think that a book that calls itself “inspiration” could come up with inspired names for the patterns within it, rather than just numbers. In the book the top looks like the image on the left (note the link leads to an online retailer for the pattern books and yarn; I have no idea whether they’re any good or not but they did have all the images). Instead of the recommended yarn, I used Schoeller’s Micro-Cablé in colour 23 (yet another uninspired name). The link there is to Wise Needle, a great site if you want to figure out which yarns to substitute for that hard-to-find yarn from Europe. Tim took the photo of the results on a mini-golf course in Maui, hence the “shot on location” look.

Originally published on Anyway, my other blog.