You all have probably seen this long since, but take a look at this scarf.  It’s the stitch pattern that’s so interesting here.  It’s very simple:

On an even number of stitches:

Row 1: K1, *sl 1, K1, psso but before dropping the slipped stitch from the left needle, knit into the back of it; repeat from *, end K1.

Row 2: *Leaving the stitches on the left-hand needle, P2 tog, Purl the first stitch again and then slip both stitches from left-hand needle; repeat from *

Repeat these two rows for pattern.

When I first saw the directions and tried to work them, I was totally lost.  I couldn’t figure out how to knit that passed over loop in the back.  While I was fooling around with it last night though, something clicked into place.  There was something familiar about this…Hmmmm…

There’s a stitch pattern called Tweed Mock Rib.  I used it in the Cameron Scarf.

On an even number of stitches

Row 1: K1, *sl1, K1, YO, psso - passing the slipped stitch over both the knit stitch and the yarn over; rep from *, end K1.

Row 2: Purl

After working part of the above swatch as directed for the So Called Scarf (having figured out how to manage that knit-through-the-back on the slipped stitch) it dawned on me that this row (Row 1) and the Tweed Mock Rib are exactly the same except that for me, the Tweed Mock rib instructions are easier to interpret and to follow.  So I switched over to that and saw no difference in the resulting fabric.  The switchover took place about in the middle of the swatch.

The difference between the two stitch patterns is in how the wrong-side row is treated.  For the Tweed Mock Rib it is simply purled.  For the So Called Scarf stitch pattern, pairs of Purls are twisted so that instead of getting vertical rows of Vs running up and down you get horizontal rows of Vs running across the width of your work.  Very spiffy!

This is another pattern that I want to try with two alternating colors.  The fabric is not so dense as Linen stitch, but has beautiful visual texture and can be pretty solid.  As with Linen and Half-Linen, needles a couple of sizes larger than are recommended for the yarn would yield a softer, drapier fabric while the recommended needle size would produce something sturdier and more solid.

I also started on my Monk’s Bag with the plum cotton and size 4 (US) needles.  If you have made this, you know the most tedious part of it is the strap/sides/bottom piece.  As I look at the stitch above though, I find I’m not sure I want to continue with the Monk’s Bag or start something else entirely.  Or maybe just use a different stitch for things?  We’ll see when I pick things up this afternoon :)

I will be taking the holidays off blogging so I’d like to wish all of you very dear readers the very best the holidays have to offer -  peace, love and happiness - however it is you celebrate!  Stay warm.  Stay safe.  May the new year be a good one for all of you and all of yours!  Blogging will resume on January 2, 2006.

Good morning everyone.  We had an interesting weekend, both of us having gotten to do something we had been looking forward to.  For me, it was seeing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and for Myria, it was playing an Xbox game called The Indigo Prophecy.

While these are two different things, they fell down in some similar areas, chiefly that of coherence.  I’ve loved the HP books and movies so far and I really wanted to like this one but it was just a disaster with the story so cut up and rushed that if I hadn’t read the book I wouldn’t have had (as Myria didn’t have) any idea of what was going on or why.  Myria’s game wasn’t much different; no coherent plot, things tossed in for no apparent reason with no explanation, difficult to follow and impossible to understand.

We might have been less shocked at the stinkiness of our weekend entertainment except for one thing.  The critics and reviewers gave both my movie and Myria’s game better than average marks.  Ugh….

These are the things I picked up last week.  All of them are Classic Elite yarns.

I’m not sure what this will become just yet but, in the manner of the true lemming, I had to have it, knowing that Spotlight has been discontinued.  I’m thinking, perhaps, another, slightly larger version of the Monk’s Travel Satchel.  I made a smaller version of this (about 1/3 the size) a couple of years ago in a light multi-colored cotton and have been using it as a summer bag ever since.  Because that purse is so light in weight, I’ve found myself wishing for a winter version as well.  Well, maybe this will be it :)  I’ve wanted to make this again anyway because I like the pattern so much!

Pursuant to our discussion on linen stitch last week, my eyes lit up like a pinball machine when I saw these three skeins lying cheek-by-jowl in the $1 basket.  The gold and the taupe are Provence, a mercerized Egyptian cotton.  The marl is Flash, another mercerized cotton.  I got to wondering how the Linen stitch would combine the Flash and the taupe - and wouldn’t the gold be a perfect trim for that?  It does seem that this might also go into a bag or a purse.  What the hell - it’s not like you can have too many anyway!

This lovely pile is Wings, an alpaca/silk/wool blend.  It’s a nice yarn to work with and I’ve used it before for Dulaan items - which is what the blue and the pumpkin are slated for.  But the pink is going into my Island Stole.  The mill shop had, probably, 50 hanks of this is a pale lilac as well.  Oh, I would have loved to scoop that up, but discretionary finances only stretch so far…

Have a great Monday!

This isn’t knitting exactly, but it’s knitting related.

I received a note from Koko who is making the Peony Purse.  She has done a gorgeous job and there are pictures up at her website, Koko’s Swatches - scroll down a little bit.  She has used Rowan cotton in Spanish Red - just beautiful!

However, she was having a problem with how to make Monk’s cord.  The site she’d gone to for instructions showed how to make a cord - just not the kind of cord she was looking for.

That made me curious, so I did a Google search on “monk’s cord”.  Not a lot came up and the references were, for the most part, just references to using it - not instructions or making it.  All of them, however, referred to what I have always believed the item to be - a graceful, twisted cord made from several lengths of yarn, string, twine, etc.

The process isn’t difficult and takes very little time.  I will make a four strand cord here, but you can use as many strands as you like, depending upon the effect you want to achieve.

First determine how long you want your cord to be.  You may have to experiment a little to get your yarn long enough so that your final cord is the length you want.  For this tutorial, I measured out about 15 feet of yarn and my final cord, after knotting and trimming, was 17 inches long.  So measure out a good, long length of yarn.  Fold it in half and then in half again so that you have a length that consists of four strands of yarn.

At one end of this length, you’ll have two loops.  The other end will have one loop and two free ends.  Tie a knot on this end.

Now, take the other end - the one with the two loops and place it around a doorknob or something that will hold it for you.  You can have a friend hold this end if they are willing.  In the following picture, you can see that I have looped my cord over the decorative hinge on a closet door.

Now, holding on to the knotted end, move backwards until your cord is stretched out to its full length.  Begin twisting the cord.  I generally (and for reasons unknown) twist to the right but you can twist to the left if you prefer.  The direction doesn’t matter as long as it’s consistent.

Keep twisting until it begins to get a bit difficult.  Then, keeping a firm hold on your end of the cord, allow a little slack in the line, say, take a step or two forward allowing your cord to do what it wants.  When it starts kinking up like in the picture below, you’ve twisted enough.  If your cord doesn’t do this you’ll need to do some more twisting.

Then, still maintaining your grip on your end of the cord, carefully retrieve the other end from whatever (or whomever) you’ve had holding it.  Keep a tight hold of this end too - you don’t want to release any of the twist in the yarn.

Move one of the cord ends so that you are holding both ends in one hand.  Carefully knot the ends together.  Now you can relax that death grip :)  See how the cord twists and turns on itself?  Run your hand down the length and use your fingers to arrange the twists until they are all neat and approximately the same size.

That’s all there is to it!
Have a wonderful weekend!

...or

Sometimes I obssess about things!

When I started this...

...I wanted to intersperse the colors, but I didn’t want plain old stripes.  The notion of a slip-stitch pattern presented itself and this seemed like a good idea.  The slipped stitches on the last row of one color would move up and be worked with the new color in the next row.  This way, the colors would kind of bleed into one another without a straight-as-a-ruler dividing line.

I was going through my notebook of stitch patterns and ran across something called the Half-Linen stitch that looked likely.  I had also heard of the Linen stitch, but I didn’t know how to work it - so Half Linen it was :)

I have since found out how to work the Linen stitch and these are an interesting pair.

From the bottom up (because they were worked that way :) they are:

1.  Linen stitch, solid color
2.  Linen stitch, two colors
3.  Half-Linen stitch, solid color
4.  Half-Linen stitch, two colors

On an odd number of stitches:

Row 1:  K1, *sl1 wyif, K1*; repeat between *‘s to end.
Row 2.  K1, P1, *sl1 wyib, P1*, repeat between *‘s, end K1

Repeat rows 1 and 2 for pattern.

Because stitches are slipped on both sides,  there is a lot of vertical compression.  Any design made with this stitch pattern would require more yarn than say garter or stockinette stitch - a fair bit more yarn.  The fabric is quite solid and sturdy and while there is some stretch along the width, there is almost no stretch from top to bottom.

You can see the pattern much more clearly in the two color swatch.  I worked this with very different colors so the individual stitches would show clearly, but I kept thinking that using two colors that were closer in tone - ecru and taupe or teal and royal blue, for example - could yield really elegant results.

On an odd number of stitches:

Row 1:  K1, *sl1 wyif, K1*; repeat between *‘s to end.
Row 2:  Purl
Row 3:  K2, *sl1 wyif, K1*; repeat between *‘s, end K1
Row 4:  Purl

In this version, stitches are slipped only on the right side.  You’d still have to factor in vertical compression in determining yarn quantities but you wouldn’t require as much more yarn as you would with the parent stitch pattern.  There is a bit more give in the fabric with this stitch and it tends to spread out a bit more.  Half-Linen also has more drape than Linen does.

I think both solid and bi-color versions of the Half-Linen are very handsome and am using the stitches both ways in the stole/throw.

The swatch was worked with Classic Elite Spotlight cotton on size 6 needles.  I have seen it recommended that much larger needles than usual be used if you don’t really want your fabric to be bullet-proof - especially with the Linen stitch.  On the other hand, sometimes bullet-proof can be good…

I pass along from the horse’s mouth (I was at the Classic Elite Mills this afternoon), for those that don’t already know, that Classic Elite is discontinuing Spotlight cotton.  I will miss it as it’s been my favorite cotton yarn for some time now, soft, stable and just a real pleasure to work with.  My typical luck :)

When I’m traveling with dad, Myria and I keep in touch via e-mail.  All ships have internet connections these days, though it can cost quite a bit to access them.  E-mail prices are ridiculous but not extortionary :)

Anyway, I got to the ship, set up the e-mail account and wrote about making it there safely, the stoopnagle at the airport who nearly broke my wooden needles, how good the food is, etc.  And the next day I had a note back from Myria talking about how cold it’s gotten and that there’s a possibility that her sister may be announcing a new little niece or nephew in a few months!  And I wrote back the day after that…

....and waited and waited for a response.  As I went to dinner that night (formal night - ewww!) I figured she’d gotten involved in a game and probably had no idea what time it was :)  So I went down to the computer lab after supper and discovered that a note from Myria’s sister had just come in.  Myria had called her and given her my shipboard e-mail and asked her to write me because the internet connection at home wasn’t working and she didn’t want me to worry.

Okay :)  I shrugged and smiled to myself.  These things happen, nothing to fret about.  So I waited, figuring Myria would suss out whatever the problem was and write the next day.  Only after dinner the next day I got another note from Myria’s sister talking about the stupid company that handles our internet connect.  Myria had called them to report the problem and had been told that there was no such account number and no account under our name.  Moreover, the MAC number on our modem (a MAC number is a unique number assigned to any network device) was the number of a modem belonging to someone else - and had been for over two years!

Since Myria doesn’t drive and the cable internet company was unwilling to do anything (because it didn’t seem to them that anything needed to be done) that was pretty much that until I got home.

Thanks to Myria’s pack-rat tendencies, we still had the original work order from when the cable modem was installed 2½ years ago with the MAC number scrawled across the front.  We took this and our most recent bill down to the cable company and showed them that we were indeed the owners of that modem and there really, truly was an account with our name on it…

...at least there had been until our neighbors-across-the-hall had cable TV installed!  By some fluke, the cable company decided that our neighbors were the only people in the building with cable and so “corrected” the name on the account.  And, since our neighbors didn’t want internet access, that would just be turned off.

Oy!

Anyway, they were very good about things once they had seen our paperwork.  In fact, the woman I spoke to called everyone else in the office over.  “Come here guys and take a look at this!” she called and everyone came over to look at the papers vs the information in the computer.  Everybody had a good laugh over the mistake (though it was never resolved exactly how it had all happened in the first place) and she promised that the internet connection would be turned back on and that we wouldn’t be charged for the week it had been shut down.  She was as good as her word; we were back online that afternoon.

We got our Christmas tree yesterday, after a brief search, and he’s quite a striking character!

We haven’t quite arrived at a name for him yet.  I’m kinda liking “Stringfellow”  but Myria’s suggestion was “O”.

“O?” I said.

“Yes, O.  As in ‘O Christmas Tree’.”

I laughed at that but then a thought struck me.  “What about the inevitable association with ‘The Story of O’?”

“Well,” she explained, “Being a Christmas tree is only seasonal work and he has to so something else for the rest of the year to keep body and soul together.”

Oy!

Some trips are fabulous and other not so much.  This was of the latter variety for a number of reasons.  For starters, the flight down was just about standing room only.  Because dad and I were in the last zone to be boarded there was no room left in the overhead compartments and we had to put our carry-ons under the seat in front of us.  Essentially, that meant that we were frozen in place for the next three and a half hours.

Practically, it meant that my back got good and angry and it was nearly time to disembark before it decided to play nice again.  So I didn’t get onto the islands and I didn’t do a lot of walking.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; the ship is lovely and there would be plenty to do, I thought.  I wasn’t too worried about amusing myself.  Unfortunately, the ship has changed how it does things since the last time I sailed.  Previously, there were classes, lectures, trivia games and all kinds of things in which one could engage if one didn’t wish to (or couldn’t) go ashore.  That’s not the case any more.  Now, when the ship is in port, it seems to be assumed that all passengers will make a mad rush to the jewelry, electronics and duty free liquor stores so almost all on-board activities are cancelled.  Even the library hours are seriously cut back.

So what I did was read, watch movies, knit and count stars out on my veranda.

And actually, this wasn’t bad at all.

I finished the knitting in Barbados and finished the “finishing” in St. Lucia.

That’s the railing on my verandah and a bit of St. Lucia in the background.  The mitts came out very well.  I was very pleased with how the thumb gusset worked out and will carry that forward for any other mitts I may wish to knit.  I gave them to dad just before dinner that night and he immediately put them on and pronounced them great :)  I don’t really know if he will find them useful and I told him it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if he didn’t.  But I hope he gives them a try because they really are nice to have.  I find my own indispensable in the cold weather and will never be without a pair again.  Well, so long as I can knit :)

I began this in Antigua and it will probably become known as the Island Shawl.  It’s very, very simple being worked in the half-linen stitch on size 10 needles.  The yarns are KnitPicks Ambrosia (that’s the main color, that lovely, dusty rose), Cashmerino (the palest pink) and Classic Elite Posh (the brighter, shinier rose bracketed by the pale pink).  I can’t begin to describe how silky and soft this is and how beautiful the colors are.  I also have a ball of Cashmerino in a kind of mulberry shade that will go around the edge when this is completed.  I have already tested it by attaching it and crocheting up the side about 20 stitches to see how it would look - it looks wonderful!

Geek Alert

Color aside,  these yarns have another common element - cashmere.  In fact, while I was knitting one evening, I kept wondering about this:

50% of the yarn is 20% cashmere.
25% of the yarn is 30% cashmere
25% of the yarn is 15% cashmere.

What percentage cashmere is the finished item?

I’m pleased to report that I did finally figure it out :)

The ship does a Grand Buffet on the last day at sea - and it really is something to see.  In fact they open things up for half an hour before lunch time just for picture-taking.

This fellow stood about 2.5 feet tall and was solid chocolate.

The sculpture in the background of fish and seaweed is made from butter.  The cheeses are all the types the ship serves and oh boy - are they something special.  I nearly overdosed on Brie, Camembert, Port Salut and good old-fashioned cheddar (plain and smoked varieties) - incredibly luscious accompanied by a croissant and a good cup of coffee :)

I believe this homely fellow is a representation of the original Carib Indians, an incredibly ferocious group who’s name is remembered in the collective term for the islands.  The medium this time is ice.

We got home a great deal later than we expected to because the disembarkation was delayed for hours (new security regulations, I gather) which threw everybody’s schedule right out the window.  And, of course, the longer this went on, the more I wanted to get out of there and back to my home and my Myria whom I always miss as though I had lost an arm.  Normally, we keep in touch via e-mail but it wasn’t possible this time.  Arrrrgggggh!

And it’s snowing here, as I type this.  Normally, I’m not much of a fan of the white stuff, but right this minute I can’t decide which is prettier: a Caribbean sunset or a good old, New England snowstorm :)

I hope all you good folks have been well, happy and healthy!  I missed you too.  I am so glad to be home :)