No loose ends

I've been working on the surprise jacket and decided it was a good opportunity to show off a technique I've been meaning to blog about. I hear all the time people avoid doing stripes because they hate weaving in all the ends. But stripes don't have to mean more work at the end if you weave them in as you go.

When you are ready to change colors knit the first stitch in the new yarn to anchor it. You want to carry the old yarn and the new yarn along together. Here I am changing colors but it works just as well for starting a new ball of yarn that won't splice. I am a continental knitter primarily, so the first method is how I normally do it.

Here is how I run them through my fingers, but you can do whatever is comfortable for you. The new yarn (green) is on the right and the old yarn (brown) is on the left.



Now you want to duck under the old strand to pick the new yarn. Knit this stitch as you normally would.

On the next stitch, work above the old yarn.

You just keep doing these 2 stitches, working alternately under the old yarn and then above it, working 4-6 stitches depending on how slippery your yarn is.

Here I'm showing how it works if you are a thrower. Hold the old yarn in your left hand and the new yarn in your right hand as you normally would. It doesn't matter how you hold the old yarn, just keep some tension on it.

Insert the right needle in the next stitch.

Now pull the old yarn forward, between the new working yarn and the new stitch.

Wrap the stitch as normal with the new yarn.

Then put the old yarn back behind the needles. This series of maneuvers
works 1 stitch behind the old yarn.

Now work the next stitch with the old yarn in back.

These are the exact same 2 steps as shown above for continental knitting. Alternate working in front of and behind the old yarn for 4-6 stitches.

Here is the back of the work, with the brown yarn woven in. I can now just snip it off and move on. On the next row I will weave in the tail of the green yarn, leaving no extra work. This is the same method you can use for trapping long floats when doing colorwork.

Speshul Snowflakes

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since I started the Speshul Snowflakes Yarn club. It's been really fun, I've managed to keep up with everything and get to know some of you better and haven't had to fake any deaths. So we're keeping it going.

Most people re-subscribed but we have a few spaces open right now. I'm dyeing samples for this month tomorrow and choices will be out next week. After that prices will be going up, so now is a good time to sign up! If you haven't seen it before, we offer 2 colors and several yarn bases every cycle (every other month) for you to pick from. We guarantee always a sock yarn and a soaker yarn will be included every month, and then often offer several other things for you to try. And I try to catch very different colors every cycle.

Here's a few previous colors

Drama Llama




Teal Deer



Blackberry Martini



Berry Pie



Foggy Dew




Tequila Sunrise (with Poolside pattern)

Surprise

Wednesday morning I had actually caught up on all my work by 11 am, for the first time in weeks. Finally marking off the list from the previous week, I decided I'd earned a break, and I was going to ignore all the blanket squares and knit.

I've been wanting to make an Adult Surprise Jacket ever since I'd been to camp. I kind of had NaKniSweMo in the back of my mind, so when I finally had time to work on it, I picked out some Peace Fleece from my stash and spent some quality time with my copy of The Opinionated Knitter, paper, pencil, and calculator.

I knew I wanted to make alterations to the pattern, because the boxy look is way better on babies, and that has been the one thing keeping me from knitting that sweater immediately.



By the end of the day I had a sleeve and had cast on for the second one. Love.

(And I do realize that this means I am now working on 4 sweaters. Shut up.)

WIP wrestling

Well I had far to many works in progress at one point a few months ago and that was making me uncomfortable so I started finishing things. Then I got to where I just really didn't have enough, so I started new things (ha!) I think I feel comfortable somewhere around 7-10 projects. When I get down to 5, the chances are they're all lace and cables and I need to start new public knitting immediately.

Right now I'm down to 1 pair of socks, these, from Sock Summit over a year ago.

They're a lot further done than that picture. The first sock is done and the second is about half way. They are toe up which is not my favorite sock structure, and there's a chart for the ankle, and I had lots of other socks, and then it was hot.

There's a fair amount of pressure over these, since that is the most expensive sock in the history of the world. They are made with Dream in Color Starry ($$$) and Socks that Rock (which I bought in Canada at a bad exchange rate). But I had to use them. The sock pattern is called Orion. How could I not use Starry? And the Socks that Rock is Tina's yarn and I bought it at Lettuce Knit in Toronto (Stephanie's LYS). It was like the universe was telling me to make a $60+ pair of socks.

Unfortunately because they're toe up, the first one is too long. I'll have to rip out the toe and reknit it when I'm done with the second one. And the universe doesn't seem to be telling me to finish them.

I also started this blob of lace around that time last year.

It's a feathery looking shawl I'm calling Fawkes. But I got to the beaded part and fell out of love with it so I buried in the corner and found something else to love. (Possibly that purple shawl I posted last week).

This is what's become of the rainbow hand spun. I still love it and it's still moving along, but slowly. I pick it up and do a few rows here and there. If I churned on it I could have it finished quick. I will, eventually.

Here's my Cuff to Cuff. The light does not do justice to this yarn in this picture.

I did pretty much what I expected with it, I ran right through the plain knitting and the intarsia in the round really fast after Knitting Camp. First bit of stranded work too, but it was summer and it was hot and so I grew weary of it. But I have a great head start and now that it's getting cold I expect I'll decide to finish it in the next few months. Hopefully.


This here was club yarn that I fell in love with and had to knit right away:

It's Lichen on Big Feet, which is a yummy squishy 4 ply DK merino, and the pattern is Evenstar. They seemed like a perfect match.

I started them planning on following the pattern but of course I didn't. There was substantial ripping back and reknitting on the first one, but I am happy and want to get the second one done pretty soon. I just need to knit the thumb on this one. (A gusseted thumb instead of the afterthought thumb it is written for). I'll post all the mods when it's done, and with better pictures.

Caitie has been complaining that she doesn't have a sweater (the last one I made her was several years ago, so she's not wrong). She picked out a pinwheel jacket in Kauni:

That's only about a week of knitting and it's probably half-ish way done (circles are deceiving, though). But she's kind of in the dog house so I am abandoning it for an Adult Surprise Jacket I have wanted to make, maybe for NaKniSweMo

But MOSTLY, I've been working on these:

which have been coming to my house full of these:

which in a fit of insanity I volunteered to crochet around and sew together into a blanket. It will be for Patience Ann, who's husband died suddenly. There are well over 200 squares so far and more are coming.

I'm losing this crochet the squares battle. I get help on Sunday. (If you live in central Indiana and want to help we're meeting at Strange Brew, Toni Carr's coffee shop in Greenwood.)

Doctor Who

Over the summer the kids and I fell in love with The Doctor.

We started with Eleven when the new season started



Who is adorable and charming. I really like him a lot. I have memories of watching Tom Baker after school as a kid but I knew a lot of people who watched the new series and I hadn't caught it yet.

It turned out to be literally the ONLY show that my entire family would watch for a whole hour. So naturally we had to grab all the episodes BBCA plays once a day on the DVR and got through all of Ten



(yeah we watched them all out of order). David Tennant is perfect barmy/nerdy Doctor Who.

We eventually got the DVD from the library of Season 1 of the new series. No one in our family likes Nine quite as much as the others. I was just starting to like him at the end of his season, but never as much as 10 or 11.

So my kids started saying I HAD to make Doctor Who yarn. Which sounded great to me until I started thinking about how everying is black or grey or olive drab. Not quite everything, but a lot. And I don't like doing solid colors, so I wasn't going to do skittles Daleks or Tardis blue.

Eventually we came up with these colors.


Time Vortex (which goes more with the the opening sequence for Nine and Ten)


Screwdriver (because this could be more sonic)


Gallifrey (the planet of the Time Lords, with silver leaves and a burnt orange sky)


Bigger on the Inside (inspired by the colors of the inside of the Tardis)


and Adipose (obvious, right?)

They make me stupidly happy because I am a total geek. I especially love the labels.
In case you're that kind of geek too, they can be found here. And if there is a color I'm out of or a base you don't see listed I'll gladly dye any of them for you (that's true of pretty much any of my colors, as long as I have the base available).

Actual Knitting Content

So now that I caught up with summer I thought I'd post actual pictures of some things I've knit.

There have been lots of socks but these are my favorite:



Just plain knitting, but hand spun yarn, 2 ply, Merino bamboo from Funky Carolina that I got from a Ravelry swap. I love everything about these socks, the way they fit, the yarn, how they feel on my feet. Yum.


I knit this tank up in a last attempt at extending summer. I got to wear it a few times before it got cold.

I saw it in a catalog 6 months ago or so but the pattern wasn't downloadable so I stuck it in my queue and thought I'd probably have to backwards engineer it if I couldn't find the pattern. Then one day I was in one of my LYS's and found the booklet on clearance. WIN!

Pattern: Empire Tunic (ravelry link). It apparently is downloadable now.

Yarn: Knit Picks Shine. I like it well enough, it's not the most glamorous yarn I've ever used but it's nice.

Modifications: Worked in the round. I cast on 1/8 more stitches and worked 5 k stitches in the rib lace instead of 4, then decreased the extra stitches out before the first cable. That gave me more room in the bottom. Also added short rows to the bust.


And I also recently finished Traveling Woman.



I actually finished it a while ago but after blocking was really unhappy with the bind off. It didn't seem tight but when I tried to wear it it was tighter than the shawl so it curled up oddly. And it was warm by then so I didn't need it so it got stuffed in the basket to do later.



Which I think is actually a great plan because then as soon as the weather turns you just have to finish it there it is! I ended up just taking out the bind off and doing it VERY loosely and now it's great.

Yarn: Briar Rose Grandma's Blessing. Love love LOVE this yarn. Love the color, love the way it knits and wearing it around my neck. I have about half the ball left so something else will come out of it I'm sure.

Modifications: Only 1. The pattern calls for an odd number of lace repeats, and I worked an extra one. I just prefer how the center eyelets run into the lace pattern, and how the center has a point.



This is one of my new favorite things. It became the new header of my blog (in case you're reading in a blog reader, check it out, I've got a new layout).