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September 29, 2005
A Ruana, Shawl, and Sweater
Stacy was working on a fabulous ruana with Moonlight Mohair and Suede:
Click here for a close-up. It is gorgeous!
Allison was working on a prayer shawl using two colors of Homespun:
What a sweet thing to do for a friend!
Laurie just began a top-down raglan sweater, using Wool-ease Chunky:
It's similar to these sweaters, but it's knit from the top down, meaning her cast on stitches are at the neck. After an inch or so of ribbing, she started increasing every other row at the same places where this pattern would have decreases (at the beginning and end of the front, sleeves, and back). It will look wonderful on her as the color matches her eyes beautifully. Last year she knit this sweater for her husband for Christmas. I was impressed with her ability to keep it a secret the whole time she was knitting it, and the time between when she finished it and when he opened the present!
Posted by lauren at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2005
rabbit, rabbit
Have you seen the giant knitted bunny that's been erected on a mountain near Piemonte, Italy? It's stuffed with hay, and the artist plans to leave it in place for 20 years. What about rain and mold, not to mention spontaneous combustion?
Here's the press release:
Rabbit
The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.
The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit's body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.
Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.
I love the rabbit; the rabbit loves me.
Posted by Karen at 12:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 22, 2005
another wednesday
Last night, Jen came with her finished knit mittens that match her crocheted scarf
Now she just needs to make a hat, which she's working on now.
Claire finished her Wool-ease shrug, but she forgot to bring it to show us. She did bring a new shrug she's starting in black Wool-ease for a teenage relative. It will have a black Fun Fur trim, which she started last night.
We talked about a variety of topics including the weather. It's late September and I'm still wearing shorts and t-shirts! When do we get to start wearing the sweaters we've knit all year?
Posted by lauren at 04:38 PM | Comments (3)
knitting on NPR
American Public Media's "Weekend Edition" did a story this past weekend about the sweater curse. Listen (RealAudio required) at weekendamerica.publicradio.org. (Scroll down to "The Cursed Sweater" at the end of the first hour.)
Never heard of the sweater curse? Read all about it at knitty.com.
Posted by Karen at 04:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 16, 2005
Finishing
I'd much rather be knitting than sewing. But for many projects, the seaming and finishing touches make or break the sweater. I knit for three or four years before finally teaching myself how to seam properly. Here's a good tutorial on side and shoulder seams. To me, it is definitely worth the effort to seam carefully (even if it means you spend nearly as long seaming as you did knitting!).
Bryna had just finished knitting a garter stitch baby pullover with a little placket on the neck (the pattern can be found in the book Weekend Knitting). She was sewing a striped ribbon to the placket:
Then she was going to sew buttons onto the ribbon.
It is such a cute sweater and though her knitting is great, the finishing touches really make the sweater.
We talked about all sorts of things last night including different types of yoga and sushi, the education system, and quilting.
Posted by lauren at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2005
Ripple scarf
This week, Jen, who was working on the Wool-ease Tiles throw a few weeks ago, surprised us by bring knit mittens to work on and a crocheted scarf she had completed. The scarf was her first crochet project ever and it looks fabulous.
It is similar to this scarf.
They are both crocheted length-wise, meaning you are crocheting across a LOT of stitches each row. But it doesn't take many rows before you have a fantastic scarf. The nice thing about striped scarfs worked this way is that at the end of each row, you can simply cut the yarn and attach new yarn and voila, you have fringe!
Jen's scarf has a little twist to the plain striped scarf. It is done in a rippled, or chevron, pattern like these scarves.
The mittens Jen's working on are knit in the round, using double-pointed needles, so there is no seam. Jen just taught herself how to do this from googling for instructions. I find double-pointed needles a little awkward to use so I usually knit things in the round with one very long needle using the "magic loop" method. To each her own! Hopefully she'll bring them back when they're finished and I can take a picture of the whole set.
Posted by lauren at 12:19 PM | Comments (1)
September 01, 2005
Knit On
Last night we talked a lot about the devastation along the Gulf Coast. Although we live in CT, many of us are transplants from the South (TX, LA, FL, GA) and all of our hearts go out to those affected by the hurricane.
Elizabeth Zimmerman has said, "Knit on, through all crises." And knit on we did.
In the foreground, you can see Nancy's wild scarf. This is a cute use for leftover scraps of yarn you may have from other projects. She's holding 3 strands of different yarns together, and mixing the yarns up throughout the scarf. At the moment, she's using 2 strands of Wool-ease and 1 of Magic Stripes. I can't wait to see it finished.
In the background is the beginning of a baby hat knit by expecting mom Stephanie, using Jiffy. She's knitting a large rectangle and then it will be folded in half, seamed across the top, and sewn down the side, much like this hat knit with BIG.
Posted by lauren at 12:59 PM | Comments (1)