Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Oh what a beautiful morning….


Scarf

Very cool!




I love the whimsy of Amanda Blair Brown’s Stripes and Bobbles scarf.  The idea of knitting each stripe separately and then joining them with bobbles is enchanting, cool, and cute.  Of course I started one last night and plan to proceed with the colors shown.  This is some of what I have left of the Classic Elite Follies that I was using for Christmas presents last year.  I admit, I’m jealously guarding my remnants because when it’s gone, it’s gone.  And it’s such nice stuff.

The colors above are quite cool in tone and I would like to find something (or a couple somethings) a bit brighter and/or warmer for the bobbles.  I have some deep red (also Follies) but while it would work with the other colors, it wouldn’t brighten things up any.  On the other hand, maybe that would be a good thing?  Not something I have to worry about right away, in any case.

I did discover that turning the work back and forth to work the short row of the stripe got a little tedious after a while, so I played with a notion that’s been percolating in my tiny little brain for some time now.  I already knew how to purl from the front (going left to right), but how would you do a knit stitch?  Well, stick around - I’m going to put a tutorial together to post on Friday.  It certainly can be done and, while not a technique you’d want to use on everything you make, it’s a useful little bugger for things like this :) And the work just flies!

YAM - Yet another mitten :)


Mitten

Mitten madness :)




I found the pattern for these mittens at Charitable Crafters .  They’re Lisa Messerer’s Classic Mittens.  It covers children’s sizes, S, M and L and also Women’s and Men’s.  The layout is easy to follow, but read it through before you start the mitten because of the way some of the instructions are given.  Also, there is no needle information given.  I used size 7s (US) and that seemed to do the trick handily.

This is a pretty standard gusset mitten and it worked out just fine.  I also made a discovery - well, at least it worked for me.  I’ve always had issues with gaps at the base of the thumb on mittens made in the round.  This pattern, in standard fashion, has you place the thumb stitches on a holder (11 stitches, for the size I made) and then cast on stitches to continue working the round.  For this mitten, the instructions were to cast on 2 stitches.  I didn’t do that.  Instead, I increased 1 in each of the next two stitches I worked.  This seemed help!

Then, when I got to picking up for the thumb I picked up every stitch I could find (as per Ryan’s long-ago advise) and decreased to the requisite number when I worked the first row.  Using both of these techniques seem to virtually eliminate the gaposis problem!  I don’t know how well the increase trick would work if there were many more than two stitches to cast on, but I think I’d want to give it a try in any case.


Pale sun

Sun, sort of...




At least the sun is making an attempt today.  I should go down and clean the car off but the wind is blowing like hell out there and I know how cold it’s going to feel.  So I think I’m going to stay in for a while longer.  Maybe make some more coffee.  Yeah!  That’s the ticket :)
Babbled by Robbyn on 03/02 at 11:09 AM
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Comments
  1. How about orange bobbles? I love that scarf, and love the colors you’ve chosen. And orange and green are my favorite colors currently :-)

    Posted by Lisa, Mike, Jack, Della  on  03/02  at  12:13 PM
    Location : reality-based

  2. Lisa - Funny you should say that!  I was thinking of an orangey-gold kind of thing - something warm and vibrant :)

    Posted by Robbyn  on  03/02  at  01:25 PM
    Location : Dancing in the dark...

  3. Mmm, you find the coolest patterns.  I love the idea of joining the rows with bobbles.

    Posted by Pamela  on  03/02  at  04:18 PM
    Location : UK

  4. Pam - It’s really cute, but I kind of don’t like the model in the Charlie Chaplin/Little Tramp get up because there’s nothing raggedy or down-at-heels about the scarf.

    Posted by Robbyn  on  03/02  at  04:50 PM
    Location : Dancing in the dark...

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