Knitting and Purling in P.R.

So before I get to my mitten progress, a few gratuitous shots from our vacation in Puerto Rico. I got most of my knitting done on the front end of the vacation, when we stayed for three days at a little eco-resort in the middle of the rain forest, "El Junque." No tv. No radio. Heavenly. Here, a couple of snaps taken from our balcony:


We hiked a lot in the forest, traversing boulders, a raging river, and jungly pathways. Here's some giant bamboo, maybe where size 15 needles come from?

And lots of really, really good coffee fueled our trip. Interestingly, the coffee was very different in each area. I preferred the stuff up north, a bit mellower than the dark acidic blend in the south. They take their coffee very seriously. Below is a set-up in a diner in San Juan where they frown on you having more than one cup. (And there are no free refills.) I had three that morning, it was so good. I didn't care about the waiter's scowls or the extra couple of bucks on our tab.


So on to the knitting. After futzing around for about a week with various (way too complicated) designs, I settled on a checkerboard-tiled pattern along the lines of what I'd originally wanted. It's pretty simple. Just four colors with brown being the main repeat. The checks are 4 x 4 on the outside, 2 x 2 on the palm, and will be 1 x 1 on the thumb.

(Back)

(Palm)

I'm not too thrilled with the cuff and am thinking when I'm finished with the bodies of both mittens I may cut them off and rework them from the wrist down. We'll see. I had to MacGyver my thumb hole with a little piece of floss, since I didn't have the right kind of yarn to thread through there to hold the stitches.

Moving along. Slowly

cast on for my second mitten but haven't gotten much further than that. still trying to settle on a final design. the reds there in the background are crying out for me to do something. crosses? a bit concerned about my gauge but i think i'll just forge ahead and hope for the best.

...and be sure to check out this.

Blocking Madness

Lest anyone out there think there is no reason to block...

I made the sock on the right a few months ago and blocked it then.
I made the sock on the left recently and here it is in its pre-blocked state.

This was a little disconcerting. I love this yarn, but I was not real happy to see all this dye coming out. It soaked in a bath of Euclan and tepid water.

Ok, this really worried me! Look how much bigger the sock on the left is! I was sure that I had taken careful notes and cast on the same number of stitches and knitted the same number of rows, measuring and re-measuring.
It is risky making socks two months apart. Maybe I shouldn't have done that...

And look how much more yellow the sock on the right is.
Everything was going wrong!
Could it be that when they dried, the sock on the left would shrink a bit
and return to its normal color? I didn't know that could happen.

It did. Phew!
By the way, the pattern is Monkey at Knitty.com
Very fun to knit. A little harrowing to block.

Color Knitting

Here's site with a bunch of links about color knitting. There is a really cool "Color Scheme Generator" that I can't really figure out how to use, but it's fun.

Knitting Mystery... or Not

John's cuff, on the top, has 72 stitches. My cuff, below, has 66. We are both using #2 needles. You can see the dramatic difference! I think two things are happening. At first I didn't notice it, but when you look closely, our gauges are pretty different. Johns is tighter. And the stitch pattern that John is doing - ribbing - may be pulling it in a little tighter. I am thinking of starting over with smaller needles. I think it will make for a more cohesive fabric (like John's) and a more defined pattern (like John's). Can you tell that I am a bit jealous? I had been in denial about some made some mistakes I had made in the pattern anyway ;-)

This wasn't exactly what I was looking for...

but it's so great! I was looking at Kristin's bargello-inspired painting and thought of an exhibit i saw at the Folk art museum in NYC, a Mexican "outsider artist" who drew fantastic pictures of tunnels and mountains...anyway, i found this instead, and thought immediately of Wendy. Enjoy!!! Andrea

Amazing Link

http://www.prn.ee/margit/ajakirjad/ajakirjad4/index.htm

Bargello Knitting Pattern

Birdies

A few people have emailed me wondering about the birds that Sharon is making. As luck would have it, she happened to email me some pictures. Aren't they great?! As I am sure you can tell, the cardinal is on the left and the bluebird is on the right. Did you know that seven states have the cardinal for their state bird? Sharon is currently making the ruffed grouse, which is the Pennsylvania state bird. I, for one, had never heard of the ruffed grouse and now I know. I can't wait to see him (or her) when Sharon finishes it. Our SnB's are so educational!

Inspiring Minds

Kristin's Latvian pattern has really blown me away. This morning in the shower (where I tend to do all my serious thinking) it occurred to me that her watercolor sketch was reminiscent of needlework Bargello patterns. (I used to love these as a kid.)


Here's a link to a really good site for Bargello, click here. Make sure to click on her links to see all the different styles of Bargello and where they come from. Who knew? Check out this crazy bed get-up:

Would it give you nightmares?

Anyway, I'm wondering how easy/difficult it would be to translate these into color knitting patterns.

A Commercial Break

I just wanted to take a moment to point out the new link to Techknitting. It's an impressive site -- the woman has an entire universe of knitting knowledge in her head and does an amazing job conveying it to the rest of the world in a smart and funny way. You can search the blog and, important for us, it contains three lengthy posts on two- and three-color knitting. I know Angela was asking about three-color knitting at the S&B yesterday.

And there are these doo-hickey's, for people who want some serious knitting hardware:

"Strickfingerhut" it's called and apparently it means "knitting thimble." Lots of people recommend these for three-color knitting. They're cheap, less than four bucks, so if someone wants to go in on an order with me, I'm game to try.

Kristin -- I'm completely blown away by your watercolor sampler. I knew you'd come up with an exquisite pattern. I thought it was a quilt at first. Hopefully you'll get your yarn soon and be able to turn your Latvian dreams into reality. Oh, and the braids are pretty simple to do.

Charting Unknown Waters...

Here is a pattern idea, I am waiting on yarn, but I was able to download the color swatches from the web page and I tried to match the colors in watercolor. How am I going to learn the braid all the way down here without any help? Do I have to buy the book? I want to see Sharon's birds!

Saturday SnB

A very busy Stitch and Bitch! We had: Andrea, Angela, John, Sharon, Tara, Wendy, and me. Click on the link at the right to see all of the pictures. Everyone seemed to be working on a new and/or challenging projects. Andrea started a lace scarf, and is off to a great start. She will surpass us all in her lace knitting talents very soon! (In my case she already has :-) Tara was solving a fitting problem with her fantastic orange sweater. Sharon was sewing a ruffed grouse, the state bird of Pennsylvania, and she has plans to make all 50 of the state birds! Wendy, John, Angela, and I started our Latvian mittens. We were charting, re-winding balls, casting on and attempting the braids. And Angela brought her finished argyles to show. I should have taken better, close up, pictures of all of these things. I will try harder next time! I get so easily distracted...

Baby Moon Boots

Pretty cool, huh. My friends Jason and Mary Kay just had a son about a week ago, Charles Daniel. I scrambled around and found two limp skeins of leftover self-striping sock yarn and decided to make these boots. It's a great pattern -- really enjoyable to knit -- and was a way for me to use up some extra yarn. (The yarn scraps in the foreground are all that was left!)

I Heart Alpaca

Happy New Year everybody, this is a scarf I made for Jean's mom. She loved it, and now I am known there as "la machine", the knitting machine! I made up my own lacy pattern, based on the triangular shawl pattern that Jennifer showed us a while back. It took alot of ripping out before I learned to inspect every row for boo boos. This was made from 1 skein of Alpaca "Drops".

Did I ever show you the two-sided cable scarf I made? Originally it was for my father-in-law, who asked "what about me?" when I gave his wife this...

But it went to a friend, coincidentally she lived in Buenos Aires at the time, the same city as my father-in-law! It went from winter there to a Boston winter here without a summer in between.

Look at these fuzzy mittens that I made for Olivia...I striped the fuzzy parts, and left the palms alone for better gripping. Sad part is, we have only had 2 days this winter that she could have worn them. :-(

Can you tell that I miss winter?

Loopy!

Hey Everyone!
Look at Alice's latest. It's a scarf/shawl called Loopy. And you can get the free pattern here.
Speaking of Knitty.com, do you all know about it? It's a really great online FREE magazine. All the patterns are archived so it is a good place to start when you are looking for ideas of what to knit. They also have interesting articles and how-to-do-its.

Plotting. . .

I've been monkeying around with the graph paper. Since I have 8.5 rows to the inch rather than 9, I was having a difficult time using the recommended customized knitting graph paper. So I've added a link to another site which has a cornucopia of customizable graph papers (including circular graph elements -- who knew??).

So, if you're having issues, I'd recommend using the "Asymmetric Graph Paper" link. I left all the defaults alone (including line width) and in my case, put 9 in the box for "smaller" lines for the horizontal grid spacing and 8.5 for the "smaller" lines for vertical. The inch line markers I wanted to be darker so I left them as is. Oh, and I designated black as my line color. Voila! (Or, as the musicians say, viola!)

Swatch 'til You Drop

First, a very happy 2008 to all the S&B blogistas out there. Here's a New Year's Buddha, from the Mummer's Parade, to get your year off to an auspicious start.


And speaking of auspicious starts, here's my swatch for the Latvian mittens. I wanted to use all my colors, which I did (except the white) to see how they would interrelate with one another. I, too, did my swatch on #2 needles which seems too big at first, given how thin the yarn is. But it somehow works out just right. I have 9 stitches to the inch and about 8 1/2 rows to the inch.

The yarn is very forgiving in the way it kind of sticks to itself. Quite a few times I lost a needle out of my stitches (I'm a bit rusty knitting with my left hand, so things have occasionally gotten a little Western) but the loops didn't go anywhere. Just stayed there, nice and round and loopy, waiting for me to stick my needle back in. Sweet.


Here's the inside, just to show that my tension is fairly even and loose. It's something I'm working very hard on. (Heh, she said hard on. . .)
Now on to devising the mitten pattern. Are we there yet? Is that permissible or are we waiting? I defer to the Alpha Knitter. . .

A Latvian Swatch

I know that some of you will think I jumped the gun. I may be the first with a swatch, but I was also the first to encounter and (I hope) solve a few problems. I cast on 30 stitches and I think it was not quite enough. Maybe 40 would be better. One good idea that I didn't even know I was having was when I decided the pattern to knit: Two stitches of each color in a checkerboard. It made counting stitches and finding gauge so easy! I really recommend it. And if you are gearing up to knit two colors at a time, it is a simple pattern to practice on.

I have about 9 stitches per inch. I used #2 dpns and I think I am happy with this gauge.

Another thing: it is impossible to find the center of these center-pull balls! So, I did myself a favor and rolled all the balls on my ball-winder. Now that I know my gauge, I can start to plan my pattern. I promise to stop here and wait for you all to catch up!