Knitting!

HI all,

I've enjoyed looking at everyone's WIPs and FOs, and wanted to share my project. I made the Shigra Floor Bag from Folk Bags by Vicki Square. I used Cascade 220 instead of Classic Elite Montera. (CLM is really luxurious and felts well, but I don't like the excessively fuzzy look of the felted yarn.)

I learned to knit a few months ago, and this was my first intarsia project. I had no idea what I was in for, which is why I named this project "The Bag from Hell".

WIP

Finished bag, prefelting. Sasha the cat agreed to pose for scale

After felting

The bottom of the bag

I'd brought the finished, freaking huge prefelted bag to show to my work colleagues and got nice comments. I brought it back after it was felted and they couldn't believe it was the same project. As one colleague said, "I said it was looked good before, but I was only being polite!" LOL

Finally got my camera battery all charged up so I can take pictures again, so I thought I'd finally get around to sharing last month's knitting projects. :o)

The booties weren't actually planned, but I got a freebie with some baby patterns in it when my hubby brought me home the recent issue of Simply Knitting as a treat, and on a whim I decided to whip up a pair to (kinda) go together with the Edwardian Carrying Cape I made in February. Which, incidentally, is finally being couriered up to the mum-to-be it was intended for. I no longer have to be paranoid about losing it, yay!

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The Diva Stole was planned, and it took me almost the whole month to knit. I can only take so much zen-knitting before I have to put it down and run around like a spaz for a week or so. :o) I used Cotton Classic by Tahki-Stacy Charles in brick, gold and sunflower because I was jonesing for autumn. I cast on 90 stitches instead of 78 and only did 7 repeats of the main pattern instead of the 8 called for, and after blocking the measurements came out only a couple inches smaller in both width and length than the pattern said it would with the reccomended (and no longer produced) yarn. It's 19" x 76" and the pattern said it should come to 20" x 80". Since I'm only 5'2" I don't think those extra inches are all that necessary. ;o)

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EDIT: I found a working link to the pattern, whee!

I made a pair of stay-on baby booties for one of my co-workers who had a baby shower today. Needless to say they were adorable and a big hit. One of the other girls I work with was wondering if I could make some booties for her older baby. He's a year old, but small, at 10th percentile for height, with small feet. I don't want to make the stay-on booties because I think it's an awkward design for an older baby who's more active. Does anyone have a good suggestions for a bootie/slipper pattern that's more appropriate for an older baby?

I'm a beginning knitter. My 6-year-old son is very interested in knitting and wants to learn how. Does anyone have any suggestions for needle sizes/types and yarn type/weight to use for a child? He's big for his age, so he's about the size of an average 9-year-old.

Any book recommendations? I learned using the Klutz book, but I found the illustrations and descriptions for some of the stitches to be vague and/or confusing.

Anyone ever taught a child to knit before and have suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Okay, we all know rule #1 of productive knitting. Gauge. I know this but aparently I must be immune to rules because i never gauge. Actually that's a lie. I do gauge but not properly and i admit this. Reckless knitting, thats me.

I decided to try my hand at fair isle and i've decided that i really like it so i think i'll knit a fair isle sock (just enough instant gratification while seeming technical) . Throwing caution to the wind i cast on basically what my book is telling me and i go at it.
The good news...it's pretty! The bad news...it's huge.
Sure i can make gloves...long gloves but that would involve math and decreasing and i'm just not comfortable with his kind of math and thinking while cheating on other more long term projects (to name a few...1 and 2) .

Can I say lesson learned? Probably not. Will i give more thought to it while i frog this very pretty first fair isle attempt while swearing up and down in front of my husband that something is wrong with the pattern? Definitely.
Will he believe me? Absolutely not.
In the end, i'll use this first attempt as a swatch and continue it as gloves. Probably get second glove syndrome and trudge through the second glove.

But honestly, i wouldn't have it any other way.

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I blended shades of blue wool with brown/rust/burgandy silk for one strand and blue wool and pale blue soysilk for the other. Yardage is probably 300-350 yards and just a wee bit thicker than sock weight yarn.
A larger picture is here of the yarn

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The new wrist warmers are from a set that has matching socks. Gloves are picot edged on the top with feather and fan around the wrist. Hanspun in a lighter dk weight yarn in greens and burgandy/purples. The handspun (my own, as usual) made very squishy and warm gloves. There is a larger picture of the gloves here!

Would anyone be interested in sharing images of your knitting above and beyond posting FO's here?

I'm active in a computer game/world/design environment called Second Life. One of the things you can do in-world is design clothing. There are lots of great clothes made from silk, cotton, velvet and leather -- any solid or patterned fabric you can imagine! But there's very little in the way of knitted sweaters/jackets/tops, or felted purses. And that's not even getting into the shocking lack of knitted socks!

I'd like to change this, by creating Second Life clothes based on Real Life hand knits. But to do that, I need high-quality photos to feed into the design process.

This is where you come in. :-) If you'd like to see any of your FO's made into virtual clothes, I need high-quality (i.e. not taken with a camera phone) straight-on photos of the item being worn, from both front and back, arms away from your sides, and then pictures of the sleeves (if there are any).

You will of course be credited as the knitter of the item in question. And I'll send you digital "photos" of your clothes being worn in-world. (See this example of an in-world photo.)

Anyone interested in giving this a try, please respond in comments, and I'll email you with more info.

I've been working on this for the past few weeks and last night I finally finished. :D I had decided to make up a bag with no pattern and unknowingly cast on about 60 stiches too many (160). This made the project HUGE and I almost quit a few times. Now I'm glad I kept on going because it's turned into a wonderful bag. I named it the Catnap since thats the first thing my cat thought it was for.



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Last fall I had decided that I wanted one of those super-bulky long scarves. I decided to double strand Prairie Silks by Brown Sheep Company and use a wheat-esque pattern. It came out nicely, but I have to admit it just wasn't my style! So as it collected dust on the shelf I decided to frog it and use the yarn to make a simple stockinette stitch seamless raglan sweater. I had wanted to do this for a while in order to get to know the construction.
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For all the Yanks in the community, Local Harvest, a website that offers listings of family farms, farmers markets, etc., now has a listing for fiber. Raw fleece, roving, yarn, wool, alpaca, llama, etc. Check it out and support your local farmers!

x-posted to spinningfiber

I'm knitting this up and I'm stuck on the pattern. Can anyone help?

It reads:
yfwd, SL1K, K2tog, psso, yfwd, K19

Seems simple enough but when actually done it makes no sense. yfwd and then K19? doesn't seem like the yfwd was doing anything. Can anyone help me interpret this?

After the discussion the other day I decided to try a moebius scarh from scrap yarn.

Instead of an invisible cast on over a smooth piece of cotton yarn, I used the middle part of a circular needle. Since the stitches have to be picked up on the other end anyhow, they are already on!

Using one circular needle coils the work rather tightly and hurts my hands as well as making it diffivcult to see where I am and what I'm doing. So I wound up using three. (With two, you alternate between a tigh circle and a loose one.) Fortunately, I have several needles of similar sizes.

I noticed that if you try to knit scockingette stitch, there is a marked transition from "right" side to "wrong" side. On a second test piece, I experimented with little cables on 2x2 ribbing but had to cross te cables from the purl side on the lower edge, and again on the finished product ther was a marked difference where the two "sides" join.

This is my first ever entry (as opposed to an occasional comment on someone else's entry so if this works I amy try to figure out how to add photos. But to do that I would have to start another scarf to take pictures of.

i'm hoping some of you knitting guru's can provide your expertise for a second. it's 9:30pm on a friday night and i'm literally going mad because this pattern is driving me crazy.... it's the Debbie Bliss Garter Stitch Jacket from The Baby Knits Book. Garter Stitch, seems easy enough, right???

I've made the entire back and I've Dividing The Fronts (whole pattern is worked in one piece). Now I'm STUCK in the Shape Neck section.


K51 sts, BO 22, k end of row (done)
Cont on last set of 51 sts for left front (done)
k7 rows (done)

SHAPE NECK
Inc one st at neck edge on next 6 rows (done)
Cast on 8 sts at beg of next row (not done)
k18 rows (not done)


so if i do this, it seems like I will be COing on the edge with the orange holder (see picture). So she wants you to CO additional sts on the sleeve edge? That seems weird, like there will be a nub hanging off the sleeve?


am i absolutely making no sense! this is what happens when you stay in and knit on a Friday day and begin to go a bit mad!

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I want to make a Soleil from Knitty for my mom for Mother's Day, and I wanted to use Knitpicks Shine Worsted for it.  Do you think that would be an okay substitute? If I'm reading the pattern right, it calls for DK weight, so how would using worsted weight yarn affect the needle size used/gauge? Any help you can offer is definitely appreciated!

Also, a question on blocking. I'm nearly done with my Lelah, but because its a tube top I don't really know how to block it.  The only thing I've ever blocked is a scarf and I just pinned that down.  I made my Lelah out of Cotton-Ease, which is 50% acrylic, which I hope won't affect blocking TOO much.