FO – Jessica and Robert’s Wedding Present

Cushion Cover Detail

Jessica and Robert got married in Sept 2007 and I offered to knit them a wedding present of their choice.  They chose cushion covers and sent me an idea of what colors.  Since I decided to knit them in Knit Pinks Wool of the Andes, they purchased a color card and matched it to a woven blanket that had also been a wedding gift.

Yarn for cushion covers

Originally, I have planned to knit Trivial Pursuit by Woolly Thoughts but this just didn’t work out.

Trivial Pursuit Started

Since knitting with preordained colors proved to be much harder than anticipated, I tried swatching with the different yarns and trying out different patterns.

Swatch for Cushion Covers

I probably should have stuck with the Trivial Pursuit pattern and it would have worked out but in the meantime, I dreamed a design.  So I bought more yarn, as recommended by Kaffe Fasset when colors are not working, and knitted up that cushion.

Dream Cushion Cover

I started a second one based on the same design elements but it was just taking too long, so I had a brain wave for another design.  Robert is a graphic artist and so I used the idea of graphics and pictures from Let their be Wyverns to design the second front.  The center detail was the opening photograph to this blog post.

Graphic Design Cushion Cover

In the meantime I did the backs, one of which I have no recollection of at all and the other one I finished just in time for their second wedding anniversary.

Fourth and final cushion cover

So they now have four 20″ x 20″ squares waiting to be converted into cushion covers.  I guess I sent them as cushion covers-to-be, some assembly required!

JnR are in the process of moving house so everything, including marvellous hand knitted cushion covers-to-be are packed away.  If they aren’t converted into cushions by the time I visit next visit, I will make finishing them up as my project.

Now I need a house warming project for them.  I hope they don’t mind waiting a couple of years!

—

All pictures are Copyright © 2009 cdavies.  Please ask permission to reproduce.

Socks!

Seaweed Socks

I designed these so that the cable would start up the foot and then as stitches were added at the gusset and heel, the cable became wider.  If you look closely you can see that the cables are different on each sock.  I had a better idea of what I wanted the second time round.

Here is the gusset cable increase:

Seaweed socks gusset

The cable isn’t quite right yet.  I need to do some redesigning and try again.

Pattern Info

Pattern: Seaweed Socks.  A basic Toe Up sock using Judy’s Magic Loop cast on, 20 stitches total, increased to 52 (13 stitches on 4 double points)

Size: US 7/ UK 5/Eur 37

Needles:  US 1 / 2.25 mm

Yarn: Zitron Trekking Color

Started: During Sock Summit (August 6th ish 2009)

Finished: Sept 17th 2009

Comments

The heel was narrow as that’s what I have and I didn’t add many gusset stitches (as I didn’t know any better then) so the heel is fairly short.

The initial cable is a knit 4, cable two, keeping the cable on top. I purled twice on the top side of the cable, and once on the instep. Essentially, it went *p1 K4 p2, knit foot stitches, p2 k4 p1 knit sole stitches* repeat rows as between *  * except for cable rows when you held stitches in front or behind depending on which way you wanted the cable to go.  Except for the p1, the cable patterns were on the top of the foot side not on the sole side of the sock.  Thus there are more stitches between each p1 than between each p2.

The larger cable is double the first cable (described above), the twist of the second cable goes in the opposite direction of the first.  As I went up the leg, I increased the number of center (noncable) stitches.

I think I cabled every 5 or 6 rows, but that was fairly random sometimes.

If any one is really interested, let me know and I’ll try writing the pattern out.

Sock Heels

One of my best purchases at the Sock Summit was Chrissy Gardener’s Toe Up (amazon).  She manages to condense everything I worked out for myself in my first year of sock knitting into a book.  No, I don’t wish I had had this book when I started last August, but it definitely would have helped.  It is helping now.

One of her suggestions is to knit practice heels.  So a couple of weekends ago, I started this exercise. First, I knit the short row heel:

Short row heel

and discovered that it was reversible (not where the white strip is):

short row heel upside down

I don’t like the short row heel that much because my heels are so skinny, so I next tried the heel that Chrissy calls the hybrid heel:

Hybrid Heel

I’m not sure what I did wrong to get the teal strip in the middle of the heel.  Well I kind of know and probably could avoid it next time.  It is all do with where you drop one color and start the next.

I put in less gusset stitches than calculated from Chrissy’s worksheet, which meant the heel was really really short.  This was a important lesson for me.  To save having to redo the heel – I dislike frogging and redoing at the best of times and definitely on a practice piece – I just carried on with the slip stitch partridge stitch after the heel was finished.

Another change I made was that Chrissy does a slip stitch rib so that the slip stitches are on the same stitch every purl row.  I changed this so that the slip stitches alternates every other purl row.  I call this partridge stitch because I read that name in a sock pattern somewhere, but I never checked the stitch name, so it might actually be something totally different (such as turkey stitch?).

One thing I found with the hybrid heel is that it is important that your gauge is right – size matters.  The slip stitch heel was much more forgiving than the hybrid heel.  Also the hybrid heel takes up a lot of your sock.  As you can see below, it need about a third of my foot and if I had done more gusset stitches, i.e. the right number, it would have been nearer half:

Hybrid Heels need lots of space!

Next I’ll try the after thought heels from Chrissy’s book and I want to try this round hat heel from Knitty.

FO Friday – EZ’s Wearable Art Stockings

EZ's Wearable Art Stockings

At Sock Summit, I took another class with Meg and Amy and finally finished these stockings.  Not to be worn with shoes however as those toes would get in the way.

I had some issues with the front increases and sole decreases.  On the first stocking I increased either side of three center stitches.  I changed this for the second stocking to four center stitches which fits with the pattern better, as you can see below.

First stocking knitted is on the left

For decreasing on the sole at first I had the decreases side by side but this left a gap which I filled with an afterthought stitch – so it looks as if I have three stitches in the center:

Wearable art stocking with three stitches centering base

For the second stocking, I knitted two stitches between the decreases, so I have four center stitches.  This matches the four center stitches on the front/top of the foot:

Wearable Art Stocking 4 center base stitches

To make these more practical, I am going cover the soles with slipper soles.  Then I can at least wear them around the house and not have to clean them every time.

Arch-Shaped Stockings

My second class at Sock Summit was with Meg Swansen and Amy Detjen.

Meg and Amy

Admittedly by this time, even though it is the first afternoon of the conference, I was feeling  wiped out and a headache was beginning.  I had eaten lunch at the convention center buffer, the food was great, but I really needed my afternoon nap.  So my photographs are limited to the one above, even though I did get to try on one of the samples of arch-shaped socks.  Despite how I felt, I’ll try to share some of what I learned in this great class.

Firstly, it is hard to knit and pick up stitches and count while listening to Amy and Meg pass on their fabulous tips. This also influenced my Wearable Art Stockings class.

Secondly, I did learn some knitting tips, but I can’t remember them all. There was a new to me method of picking up stitches along the side of the heel flap. Once the stitches are picked up, this method makes a nice edge without holes.  I have to work this out before I can share it. I’ve used it on, and adapted it for, that cotton project I keep teasing you with.

Once home I was able to concentrate much better and last week I finished my pair:

As well as the information above, we were shown three ways of how to make one (M1).  Well, six ways actually because each way has an opposite so that you can mirror your pick ups. As an aside, I found it amusing that Meg wanted to have her M1 paired but didn’t seem to mind if her twisted knit stitch was twisted or not every row! The three M1 were (Knitting Help has a swatch with links to videos showing these):

1. Twisted yarn over AKA e-stitch AKA, on knitting help  M1A/M1T
2. Pick up strand from row below aka M1R or M1L
3. Pick up thread from stitch below aka daughter/grand-daughter stitch aka, on video KRL and KLL

On the first sock I did increases using my preferred method which is (2) above but with this yarn it left holes:

First Foot

So on the second sock I tried increases number 3 and it looks much better:

Second Foot

BTW The socks are too small for me to model, but my spectacle case makes a good model, doncha think?

We also found out that even experienced knitterati types need to test their patterns and if they make errors on their patterns you, the knitter, needs to be easy and take control of your knitting and don’t follow a pattern blindly.   Be willing to change and adapt as you go.

If you look back at the above pictures you will see that the increases behave a little differently.  On the first sock, I have two extra stitches on the left side.  On the second sock, I was very careful to have the same number of stitches on each side so I ended up with three knit stitches together.  When it came for decreasing for the toe, I didn’t want to have a purl stitch as the main decrease stitch so on the first decrease row I increased again at the middle.  Here is a picture of them side by side with bits marked.

Toes side by side

Part of this, apparently, was adapting the pattern for a child size sock. They didn’t want us to do too much knitting. But while adapting some errors crept in. Oh, yes, we were the pattern testers.

I am going to knit an adult-sized arch-shaped stocking some day. I am also interested to see if the pattern can be reversed and knit as a toe-up sock.

Ta-Da!

Blue and pale green wrist warmer sampler

I knit this last night.  I did it with purl on the outside and I tried Norwegian purling for the yarn carried in the left hand.  I ended up switching yarns around so they weren’t always carried by the same hand.  In fact at one point I had the yarns around my neck and I was just using my left hand.  It seemed to stop the yarns from getting twisted up around each other.

Next: It would be interesting to see what would happen if the lighter color was the main color.

Details:

Pattern: Wrist Warmer self designed using Anna Zilboorg’s Turkish Stitches chart

Yarn: Knit Picks Cotton Shine Sport in blue (hydrangea) and pale green (silver sage)

Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm)

Instructions

I cast on 48 stitches using a long tail cast on and knit k2, p2 rib for 5 rows.  I then purled the body of the wrist warmer carrying the yarn in front.

For the first round I purled 2 blue, followed by 2 green for one round

For rounds 2 & 3 I purled in green above blue and blue above green.

Next I did two repeats of the Turkish stitch.

To end I repeated the 2 green and 2 blue

Finally k2,p2 rib for five rounds

Bind off using Russian/Grumperiana’s bind off.

Duplicate stitch the one spot where I had got a blue instead of a green. Sigh.

Sew in ends.

Grin widely as you turn it to the right side as it looks good.

Wrist warmer detail

Sock Summit: Turkish Stitches

Anna Zilboorg

Turkish Socks

Another Pair of Turkish Socks

And another pair of Turkish Socks

Lots of Turkish Socks

Star Toe - yes, toe, not hat top.

My Turkish stitches sampler

Turkish socks were made with the left over yarns from rug making, so they were not soft.  The patterns came from the rugs too. The socks were knit to a very tight gauge with the purl on the outside.  They were knitted from the toe up and there were different kinds of toes, including the one that looks like it has a bobble,  I’m calling it a star toe, but that is probably the wrong name.

So after this class, I want to try lots of different color combinations, including those in the examples of Turkish stitches that Anna bought along.  I  also want to try knitting with the purl stitch on the outside.  I also need to try the star toe.   For this one, I seem to remember that with your yarn you make a figure eight and wrap the middle. Fold in half and pick up the stitches for the toe from the wrap.

Knitted Village

You really need to visit this village.  It is really cool.

Hat-Tip: Gini

Knitting Uh-ohs!

Perhaps since I have been able to knit more while convalescing I have had more opportunity knitting crises than usual.  In the last two weeks were a couple of doozies.

First up was this:

Look Closely

Here is a close up:

Broken Needle

It broke towards the end of a heavy cotton project.  I had been worried about the cable join as that seemed to bend 180 degrees at regular intervals.  It never occurred to me that the needle would break off at the shaft.

The photo would have been more impressive if the project was on the broken needle but my immediate reaction was DO SOMETHING NOW.  So I did.  Unfortunately, the only needles I had long enough in the right size were these:

Altermative Needles

Which made a rather painful finish for the last few rows.  So I now need a new circular US 1… in metal.

The second knitting uh-oh happened on my return from Sock Summit. While at Sock Summit I finished Mum’s Socks:

Mum's Socks

Don’ they look great.  I love that fishbone cable up the center:

Fishbone Sockes

Before I sent them off to my Mum I added them to the next load of laundry as they were in superwash wool.  Big mistake:

Tug, tug! Socks Don't F.....g Fit

Obviously,  I am seriously pissed off about this,  angry and frustrated, so I used lots of words I don’t like to use in public (think Physioprof and add some), but only the cat heard.  Mind you, it is a good thing it didn’t happen to Mum, because she would be sad.  The most aggravating thing is that if I had checked Ravelry for this yarn, I would have read that it does felt despite being labeled “superwash”.

I love the pattern though, so expect that to be written up soon.  Poor Mum will just have to wait awhile for a pair of socks.

Sock Summit Homework Part 2

Arch-Shaped Stocking

Another class I am taking at the Sock Summit is Meg and Amy’s class on arch-shaped stockings.  I know, I know, I am taking two classes with Meg and Amy.  The other one was EZ’s Art Stocking.  It was just the way it turned out in the chaos that was registration, luckily for me.

My homework was to knit a child’s sock up to the end of the heel.  The pattern is fishbone cables with twisted rib at the sides.

Detail of Fishbone Cable

I liked the pattern so much that I used it for my next toe up socks which are for Mum.  It turns out that the only differences between our feet is her feet are 0.5 inches longer and her ankle is 1 inch skinnier.

Mum's Sock

I like the way the pattern is turning out and soon I will have fudge calculate the heel.  I want to a have a few less stitches on the leg for Mum so that it doesn’t slip down.  So I intend to reduce the number after the heel is turned.

Mum's Sock

I have two of each of the arch-shaped and art stockings, so I should actually be able to do stuff in class and then practice it immediately afterwards.  There are some advantages to convalescing.