Okay - everybody knows how to pick up a dropped stitch.  You just whip out your handy, dandy hook and crochet that little sucker right back up there where it belongs - right?  What if you don’t have a crochet hook available, or don’t have one the right size or just plain don’t have one?

I discovered this trick when I accidentally pulled a needle out of the sock and 36 stitches made a run for the border!  Perhaps you heard me cursing?

Dropped Stitch

Here is a dropped stitch :) It has traveled down 3 rows - see the three loose loops behind the stitch?

Securing the stitch

First - don’t panic :) Pick up the dropped stitch with the tip of your left needle.  Now it can’t run any further.

Picking up the first row loop

Now, insert the tip of your left needle under the row loop nearest (just above) the stitch.  Your left needle now holds the dropped stitch and the yarn it released from the last row it fell through.

Moving the dropped stitch

Insert the tip of your right needle into the dropped stitch and lift it up and over the loop of yarn in front of it.  Drop it off the end of the left needle.  You’ve worked the stitch back up one row!

Working back up

Do the same with the next two row loops, lifting the stitch up and over the row loop and then off the needle for each in turn.

All better!

Presto!  You’ve rescued your stitch and your work looks great again - no crochet hook needed.

Have a great weekend!

On the home stretch...

I hope to finish this up today.

After working the gussets down, I returned to working on 24 stitches on each needle, rather than keeping them at 18, 18 and 36.  It’s a lot easier for me to manage.  I figure when I get to the toe shaping, I can redistribute the stitches or place markers.

When this is finished, I plan to cast on immediately for it’s mate, but I won’t be knitting it to the exclusivity of everything else.  I have developed a little trouble with my right shoulder and wrist which I’m attributing to tiny needles and small repetitive motions.  A few rounds at a time may be the way for me to go with socks.  I can deal with that.  If the size works out on this (and it looks likes it’s going to be fine) I’ll be making more socks.  It is fun and I’m grateful to whatever it was in my hindbrain that kept making me come back to it despite the protestation of my forebrain that it wasn’t interested.

BTW - I’ve been looking at my sock yarn and wondering - don’t you think this stuff would make great mittens?  Wooly and warm, machine washable and funkily patterned to boot.  I think I’m going to have to try this.  I’ve been trying to talk myself out of a trip to the Hub Mills yarn shop this afternoon, but I think I just failed :)

Just waiting for the noise to stop

We’ve had workmen right outside our windows for the last three days.  The landlord has apparently decided to paint the building and so much scraping and sanding has been going on. Not that he bothered to let us know.  The first we heard of it was when the sanding woke us up Tuesday morning with the workman right outside the bedroom window.

Sigh.

The cats, of course, have been very unhappy about this.  Strange noises and unidentifiable voices do not make happy kitties.  When Fluffy hasn’t been in my lap, he’s been under the bed.  Goldie has taken to withdrawing under my desk.  I feel awful when the cats are upset.  I can’t make them understand that there’s nothing really wrong and that it will all be over in a few days. So I just try to pet them and make a little fuss (up the treat ratio slightly too) and give them whatever comfort living in my lap can afford.

Myria finished “Munch’s Oddysse” yesterday afternoon.  It was one of the X-box’s launch games.  A typical Oddworld game, it’s funny (in a very tweaked kinda way) and full of endearing, if somewhat dim characters.  And it has a great ending!  I get seriously exasperated with games that cheap out on the ending.  The writers may be setting up for a sequel or they may have run out of money or ideas or both.  In my opinion, there’s no excuse for it.  Even a great game can be seriously damaged by a bad (or non-existent) ending.

Anyway, as you run around in “Munch’s Oddysse”, saving Mudokons and rescuing imprisoned Fuzzles, you run into a flock of these guys (the picture was taken off the TV so please forgive its less-than-pristine quality) :

Meep

They sound just like ordinary sheep, but they have only one eye and only one leg.  And I was wondering...what kind of wool would a cyclopean, monopodal sheep provide?  Monofilament?

See you tomorrow with a couple of tips.  Happy Thursday!

Sightings

Last week I went to get a prescription re-filled.  Outside the store was a woman selling raffle tickets for a knitted, sampler afghan to benefit a children’s hospital.  I stopped to look at the work and we chatted for a while.  The center motif of the afghan was a basket of fruit and I recognized it as a pattern I happen to have.  So I asked her:

“New Knitting Stitch Library?”

Her eyes went “boink” and I explained that I had that book too.  We both laughed and she went on to explain that she had taken all the patterns for the afghan from that book, working out repeats and numbers so that the panels and pieces would align properly.  She had done a lovely job with the work and was casting on to circular needles for something new while we were chatting.  She gave me a couple of pointers about working with DPNs and I wished her luck with her raffle tickets before going on into the store.

Then, a couple of days ago I was getting ready to check out of the supermarket.  As I approached the registers, I saw what looked to me like a hand-made sweater and that (rather than my usual decision criteria in such circumstances - which register is least busy) determined which line I got into.  The woman in front of me was wearing a crocheted sweater done in bobbles, chains and single crochet.  Both the body pieces and the sleeves had been worked vertically so that the stitch pattern moved up and down rather than from side to side.  It was beautiful work and the effect was quite striking in beiges and pale greens.  Of course this was a very slim woman who could carry the bobble-created bulk with ease and the sweater looked great on her.  I asked if her if she had made it.  She said that it was her favorite sweater and that one of the men in her church had made it for her along with a blanket for her child.

I wondered if I was noticing more hand-crafted things because there were more to notice, or because I’m particularly prone to noticing because I’m involved in it myself.  It’s certainly nice to see real evidence that hand-crafting is popular and practical.  Blog pictures are lovely (sorry - there aren’t any today) but, as I seldom see hand-knits (or crochets) on my daily out-and-abouts, it was great to spy these two items in less than a week’s time. Very cool!  Though, I suppose, I could have passed any number of hand-knitted socks and never known it.  While it’s tempting to ask people to pull up their pants legs so I can have a look, how many times do you think I’d get away with it before someone either called the gendarmes or popped me in the snoot?

Mathematics

One of the appealing things for me about knitting is the math.  I like figuring out pattern repeats, motifs and the general number-juggling that goes on when you’re trying to get something to work out the way you want.  I count things constantly, almost unconsciously, even when I’m not knitting, but especially when I am.  I’ll be working along, say, a 30 stitch stretch and get distracted around stitch 9 by something on TV only to come back to the knitting at stitch 21.  Something in the back of my brain has been tracking the stitches even while my forward consciousness has been otherwise occupied.

Consider the topology of an ordinary piece of yarn.  It’s a cylinder.  If you stretch out the length of a ball or a skein, it’s a long cylinder.  Now, knit that into a square.  What’s the topology of the square?  What would it be if you had knitted it into a Moebius scarf?

Then there’s this article, featuring the knitting of a tam which says in part:

bq. “In mathematical terms, Ellen has worked a band of translational symmetry with two alternating motifs on a reducing number of units, until another strip pattern takes up the journey to the centre of the spiral where she changes to another pattern - the star with nine-point symmetry. Working from the circumference in, shes produced a geometrically perfect dome-shaped design.”

I turned the heel on the sock without problem and, hopefully, will have a picture for you tomorrow.  I also pulled a needle out of 36 stitches.  Know what happens when you do that to a bunch of tightly knit stitches?  They run like hell.  But in retrieving the little buggers, I discovered a trick that I’ll pass along on Friday.  No, not the new swear-word trick :)

Finally, I’ll leave you with a recipe I was compelled to seek out when I discovered a box of strawberries was about to go vicious on me.  Adding the juice to the batter makes an oddly colored end product, but the results were pretty tasty all the same :)

O-kay, I’m off to do some more transformational geometry :) Hope you’re all having a good mid-week :)

Okay, it’s not exactly a bag or a pouch but it is sort of sack shaped and it does hold things.

Foot Bag, eventually...

It’s a Dublin Bay sock (.pdf pattern courtesy of Ryan over at Mossy Cottage)!

The cuff is a bit ruffled because I cast on with size 2 needles, being paranoid about getting the top up over my elephantine calves.  When I see how this one works out, I may make a couple of minor changes for the second one.

Remember the experiment with the circular needle sock?  The inconvenience of the needles and the Sasquatch size of the result?  Well, after discovering last week that working on three DPNs was much easier for me than working on four, I decided that attempting another sock was in order.  That meant finding a pattern written for three needles.  I know that any pattern could be adapted.  However, as I’m still working out this whole “sock” concept it seemed to me that something that didn’t require finagling was the way to go.

Mmmmm....lacey!

I’ve also discovered a reasonable fix for forgetting a YO :).  After the wave of panic subsided when I realized there was one less stitch than there should be (and why), I decided to try an experiment rather than frog back.  I had forgotten a YO after a k2tog.  To remedy that, I picked up the running stitch between the needles - just as though I were making an M1 - and knit that through the front.  Normally, when you’re making an M1, you knit the stitch through the back to twist it so that it doesn’t make a hole.  Here, I wanted the hole :) For a couple of rounds, the resulting eyelet looked a bit small, but after that, as I proceeded with the pattern (trying very hard not to forget any more YOs), it stretched just enough to integrate virtually invisibly with the rest of the pattern.  Forget the “running horse” - you’d need a magnifying glass and 20 minutes to spot the fix.  That works for me :)

I am absolutely astounded at how nicely and evenly the knitting is coming along.  I tend to be a somewhat klutzy type and my hands are sufficiently large that I seriously wondered about my ability to manipulate size 1 needles.  But you know what?  It ain’t too tough - even for me.  Like the stranded bag last week, I can’t quite believe this is my work!  I haven’t had any difficulty maintaining even tension, though it’s a bit looser than the pattern recommends (8-8.5 stitches/inch rather than 9.5).  I believe this is all to the good as I wear size 10 shoes and have large calves.

Gauge = 5 sts/coffee bean

Funny how things snowball.  I’ve been using four size one needles for this project, but one of them was a steel lace needle that was heavier and about twice the length of the others because I couldn’t find the fourth DPN of that set.  I set out to find that fourth blue needle yesterday and wound up cleaning and straightening up my entire work area.  I’m embarrassed to tell you how many tag end of yarn, darning needles and skein/ball remnants I ran across.  I also found a couple of projects that I knew weren’t going anywhere (including the Sasquatch circular sock) and frogged them, reclaiming needles and yarn.

Myria, bless her, seems to believe I can do anything.  When I was a couple of inches into the lace on the Dublin Bay, I held it up for her to see saying something like I couldn’t believe I was really doing this.  She was impressed, but not surprised.  There I sit, worrying and dithering, and there she sits, believing I’ll figure it all out in the end.  I can’t tell you what a comfort it is to have that kind of solid faith at your back. 

It’s a good life :)

First, I owe thanks to some people.

In yesterday’s comments, Chery suggested I have a look at Overstock.com to see what they had for knitting books.  Turns out they have a lot - most at substantially reduced prices.  Their shipping terms are very good as well.  Definitely a site to bookmark and check on periodically!  Thanks for the tip Chery - if I go bankrupt, it’s your fault :)

Second, I received a package yesterday from Bron - a selection of magazines and leaflets with some of the most beautiful crocheted lace you have ever seen.  I have adaptive ideas for this and right now my imagination is running riot with all the lovely possibilities.  Thanks so much Bron!  If I go blind - it’s your fault :)

Okay - I worked another small, flat swatch yesterday.

People really do this?

It came out reasonably well but was a major pain in the tuchus and took forever.  It’s the purling part that’s the disaster.  I don’t think I held the yarns (Lion brand Microspun, if you care) the same way on any of the purl rows.  Do-able?  Yes.  Desirable?  Well....

So, out came the DPNs for a try at something smaller than a bag.

Now, quite a while back, when I was trying to figure whether using 5 DPNs was better than using 4, Jerry Gaiser (I think) commented that working on three needles (and using the fourth to knit with) provided a more stable structure than working on four and knitting with the fifth - at least in the initial rounds.

Over the last couple of months, whenever I decided to have another go at knitting with the hedgehog, I’ve been trying to do it with 5 needles and finding it incredibly awkward.  Last night, I tried it with four.  And what do you know!  Even with the stranding, it wasn’t too bad.  I suppose it has something to do with the angles of the needles?  With the work on four needles, the needles were always getting in the way requiring more in the way of digital calisthenics than made for comfortable knitting - at least for me.  With the work on three needles, I found that I could work relatively easily and without feeling as though I was trying to pat my tummy and rub my head at the same time :) I can’t speak to the stability issue except to note that working with the Microspun on metal needles wasn’t a problem - everything stayed where it was supposed to and I had no problem with ladders or with needles falling out of stitches!

21 stitches

It was a little weird at first, but I got the hang of it quickly and went round and round for a while :) It occurred to me that as there were 21 stitches, a 4 stitch pattern would spiral up around the tube.  So I tried that - and it worked.

The Spiral Dance?

I hadn’t thought about the possibility of taking advantage of the fact that a knitted tube is a spiral!  That presents some interesting possibilities.  In the picture above, I was just doing 3 blue stitches followed by one cream stitch.  This is offset by one stitch on every round so that the design moves diagonally up the tube.  Kinda cool :)

Clearly there’s a lot to learn here.  I even dug out on of my books and read the stranded knitting section - which I hadn’t looked at before.  It had some nice tips and some pretty patterns (though it assumes you’re a continental knitter).  The book is Stanfield and Griffiths’ “The Encyclopedia of Knitting” which I have found very useful.  BTW, it is available at Overstock for about half what I paid for it :)

Have a great weekend everyone, and, in memory of my own mom who I’ve been missing lately, Happy Mother’s Day!

My default sample project, when I’m trying to understand and practice something new seems to be the pouch or bag.  It’s simple in construction and in the end I have something useful instead of a bunch of raggedy swatches.  I had thought this was going to be a gift (silly me - I need to get the hang of following a chart first!) and so wasn’t going to talk about this but I need to work a few more things out before this is ready for prime time.

Practice Bag

I bound this off last night after having started it for my S&B Monday.  I haven’t done a tie yet, but will probably work some i-cord for it.  The pattern is the re-worked version of the on I did for last Friday’s post.  This looks a lot better to my eye - more balanced.

Pattern close-up

I know that patience is not one of my virtues, as a rule.  I will never have the serene fortitude it takes to join new background and foreground colors every few rows to execute a true Fair Isle type of project - not to mention running in all those dratted little ends afterwards.  But I had the thought that variegated yarns might provide a similar effect, so long as they were chosen carefully.  This was done with a solid background (Red Heart TLC in “Spruce") with a light variegate (Red Heart SS in “Monet").  I think the background could be darker, but overall I’m happy with the results.  It isn’t going to fool anyone, but it’s not intended to.  I also want to try using a variegated yarn for both background and foreground to see if I can make that work.  Hey - it’s fun to play :)

Diamonds, before and after

One of the pattern problems I kept running into was this column of diamonds at the beginning of the round.  You can see the bottom diamond is off (and so is the one below it on the bag).  I kept forgetting that I wasn’t working in a circle, but in a spiral and that adjustment had to be made for that.  The top diamond looks better but its placement seems off to me so that still needs work.

In addition, the larger motif has a single, foreground color stitch in the middle of it.  I randomly forgot to include that in a few places :) I’m still getting used to reading a chart and distraction wreaks havoc (well, mild disruption) with my work. 

So this isn’t going to be given away.  I’ll make the ties and use it myself.  Despite it’s errors, I’m fond of it.  And I know the next thing will be better!

Pattern chart

Here’s the pattern chart, if anyone is interested.  The circle in the middle of the large motif is intended to represent an optional foreground stitch.  I did take the option on this piece - most of the time anyway :)

Oh, and I did find out what a peerie pattern is.  In Sheila McGregor’s “Traditional Fair Isle Knitting” she describes it as any small pattern repeated over 5-7 rows.  So now I know :)

I hope you all are having pleasant weeks.  It’s not Friday just yet, but you can see it from here!

Still More Animals!

The next zoo on the roster was Franklin Park.  It is a companion to the Stone Zoo and a much larger facility.  We haven’t been there in a very long time - mainly because of my nervousness about driving in Boston and the fact that we can’t seem to find our way home from that area without taking a detour through Iceland!  I always get lost.

Do these colors go together?

These guys were all over the place, just roaming around - park pets.  If I were wanting to put together a spectacular color combination, this is one place I’d be looking.  But it’s interesting to notice the almost khaki center ring in the “eye” of the tail feather.  Without that neutral shade, I wonder if the blues and greens would appear quite so magnificent.

Nope - not a bear

This fellow is a tree kangaroo and he hails from New Guinea where he is, unfortunately, considered delicious.  I had never heard of a tree kangaroo.  To me, he looks like a little bear.  However, like the Koala (another creature perceived as a bear) he is a marsupial.  The picture is a bit odd because it was taken through plexiglass. 

Who says polka dots are pass?

Now if I were looking for pattern, this fowl is something I’d spend some time studying.  The overlapping, dotted feathers are really something.  Myria commented that the pattern was almost hypnotic!

I work here!  What’s your excuse?

This was one of a small flock on the premises.  A bit later in the season, they’ll be part of the petting farm, but that wasn’t open yet.  She must have been the bellwether of the flock because whenever she moved, all the others followed her.  I offered to knit her a coat but she said, “What for?”, and that seemed to be the end of the discussion.  She was seriously unimpressed with us :)

Some privacy, please...

The gorillas didn’t seem very happy.  This one had an adolescent offspring and she was not thrilled about us watching them.  She eventually got up, nudged her young’un out of the way and stood between us and the child.  When this picture was taken a little later, Myria said that it was like taking a picture of a homeless person.  The animals are healthy and in good condition - but even to us, our presence seemed like an intrusion.

Wanna come up and see my etchings?

This guy is a Bali Mynah and there are only a very few left in the wild.  Thanks to breeding programs, and the birds’ ability to reproduce easily in captivity, it won’t be consigned to extinction.  I personally found this fellow very engaging and very attractive.  When I spoke to him (just my usual “Hello there!"), he raised his crest, bobbed his head and invited me to mate :) A girl doesn’t get an offer like that every day!

Over all, Franklin Park was disappointing.  A half to two thirds of the enclosures hadn’t been set up for the summer season yet or were being worked on.  A much larger place than the Stone Zoo, we had expected more from it.  Instead, there was less.  Since the Stone Zoo had been so impressive, I suppose it balances out.  It was worth the trip in any case to see that wonderful little mynah.  I hope the breeding programs are successful in being able to re-establish the kind of numbers needed for the survival of the species.  It would be a shame to lose such an engaging creature.