Category Archives: Knitting

No, I haven’t managed to knit another scarf already. But I did manage to buy some more yarn for a scarf! Josh doesn’t know yet. -giggle- To get it I spent some of my budget for the Knitting & Fiber Expo in a few weeks, which is kind of sad… although I don’t mind so much, because I was just going to look for yarn to make this scarf there anyway. This way I’m just thinking ahead, right? The yarn did cost me $40 though, which sucks a big one. But it’s so nice and soft! It’s almost all wool, and a wonderful color that I just can’t describe, you’ll have to see a picture for yourself. And what do you know, I just happen to have one!

Don’t you just love that color? -sigh-

I’m going to make that woven scarf I was fawning over in the VOGUEknitting Holiday 2006 mag (remember, I posted a pic of it awhile back). I know I said I wanted to make it out of variegated yarn, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this stuff when I was hanging out at Hilltop Yarn this afternoon. It’s soft, and pretty, and will make such a nice scarf. The variegated one looked great, it really did, but the woman at the yarn shop made a great point by saying that it was such a bold scarf on its own, it’d look just as nice in a single shade.

Anyway, that’s my yarn purchase for the day. I got a lot further on the baby blanket and managed to do a semi-decent russian join this time around! Woo! Only a tiny bit to cut off, and I think it’ll look great. No update picture this time, because while I did spend a few hours knitting it today, I don’t think it’s enough of a difference for another picture.

That’s it for knitting news today.

I’ve gotten somewhere with the baby blanket for my cousin! As you can see, I’m very excited about it. I was a bit skeptical about my ability to distinguish the knit stitches from the purl stitches on the wrong side, just because I haven’t had to do that much. As we all know, I’m not one to alter a pattern, I need exact instructions damn it! Heh.

Needless to say, it has been much easier going than I thought it would be, and it turns out that those wrong side rows are actually the easiest part of the blanket to knit. For maybe the first third of the blanket I was following the pattern to the letter and only using stitch markers to separate out the border stitches on either side, instead of what I should have been doing, which was using stitch markers to visually show me the repeats of the pattern within each row. So for awhile there I constantly had to tink back through a row because I’d done so many repeats of the pattern then set the knitting down (or talked to Josh) that I didn’t remember where I was when I went back to it. -sigh-

All is well now though. I have all of my stitch markers in and knitting it is going along nicely. Although I have to say I kind of messed up a bit about 6 rows ago…

I learned how to do a russian join! I’m so excited. If I were using a yarn made out of natural fiber I would have “felted” the end of the old yarn and the new yarn together by splitting the plies in the yarn, meshing them together, and in a sense “felting” them together. Since I’m using a yarn that is definitely not a natural fiber (save the 8% angora), the felting method will not work at all.

The russian join entails (in a sense) running the old yarn end through the eye of your sewing needle and running it through the yarn, moving away from the cut end. Before it folds completely into itself you run the new yarn through the loop that’s created and do the same thing, on the other side, which is running the end through your needle and weaving it through the strand of yarn. I know this doesn’t make much sense, but there’s a wonderful video on how to do the russian join at KnittingHelp.com

The one bad thing about my new skill is that I decided to practice it on the baby blanket.  Bad idea, really, because the plies of yarn that I wove the ends through have decided to kind of come undone and fray out, as if they were proud of themselves and saying, “look at me, look at me!”  Which of course does not amuse me in the slightest.  So, next time I have to attach a new ball, we’ll see whether I decide to give it another go on the russian join or not.  Knotting it isn’t an issue, as it’ll be much too visible.

But in the end, the main point of this entry, other than the fact that I learned something cool and new, is that I have a progress picture of the baby blanket!  I’m pretty happy with the pattern, let me know what you think!

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I finally have some pictures uploaded into my photo gallery so that I can put them in entries here. And, of course, these pictures are knitting-related.

First off, we have a nice little close-up picture of the linen stitch scarf:

Which, if I say so myself, looks pretty spiffy.

This other yarn here happens to be the other two colorways I bought just so I could make more linen stitch scarves. All three colors are pretty, but I bought two skeins in the colorway that’s already being knitted… the burgundy/dirt/cream.

Next up, we have a picture of the yarn/needles I’ve finally bought for my cousin’s baby blanket:

I went with the Soft Aqua color… doesn’t it look nice?

If you haven’t figured out yet how obsessed I am about knitting, take a look at my Box ‘O Needles…

Seriously, it’s insane.

Okay, okay. So I found this awesome knitted woven scarf that someone made, and had posted to a knitting community. I immediately fell in love. While I was at the Bellevue Pacific Fabrics & Crafts buying the baby blanket yarn, I just happened to ask if they had the winter issue of VOGUEknitting. Well, she didn’t know, but she suggested that I wander around and have a look to see if it was displayed anywhere. Guess what? It was! Ha. It was actually the Holiday 2006 issue, not the Winter one. And of course, the editors were smart enough to display this scarf on the front cover for easy droolage:

Yeah, I know that all of these are thumbnails, but I think that all of these pics should show up as links to their original page in my gallery, so you can see the full versions there.  -edit-  Yeah, the Gallery2 plugin is being weird, so I’d avoid clicking on the pictures for now, and just head over to my photo gallery via the Blogroll link instead if you’re so inclined.

Either way, the scarf I saw the other knitter make was actually made out of a variegated yarn, and it looked way more awesome than this one.

Now I know what I’m going to look for at the fiber expo… enough variegated yarn to make this scarf! And maybe some really pretty laceweight. We’ll see what my budget is.

What could possibly be going on during April that would have me so excited?

Well, it has to be related to something I’m into these days, right?  It’s too long for any kind of concert, and it isn’t the time of year for most festivals here in Seattle.  What is it then?

The Knitting & Fiber Expo

Oh yes, that’s right.  At the Marriott in Sea-Tac, by the airport.  Lots of vendors will be there from all over the pacific northwest (well, I inferred as much due to the fact that some were coming from Oregon, I didn’t look up everybody).

I feel quite lucky that we here in Seattle get to have something as cool as this… the only other cool expo that I usually want to go to is PAX.  Which actually will suck a bit more this year, because it used to be at the Meydenbauer Center right here in Bellevue, two blocks from our apartment, at least until last year, when they realized that they were finally too big for that venue, and moved it to the Washington Convention Center in downtown Seattle for ’07.  Way to make things difficult, guys.  -grin-

Okay, enough about PAX.

Other snippets that I’ve read about knitting expos in other parts of the country say that there’s a lot of swag to collect… sometimes you get free needles, or samples of new yarns, etc., although I’m skeptical for this one because I think the vendors are yarn shops, not yarn manufacturers, so new product won’t actually be theirs.  Who knows, it should still be lots of fun.  I’m going to have to save some cash for it though.

Man am I excited.  Woo!

Why yes you can!

I spent a good chunk of today organizing my yarn and UFOs, but I also spent a good chunk of time calling various yarn stores trying to find Crystal Palace Yarns’ Bunny Hop in either Soft Aqua or Teal Lake.

At first I was calling fine establishments in Seattle that I either haven’t been to, or want to go to again, mostly as an excuse to visit this week. But of course neither Fiber Gallery nor Weaving Works had what I was looking for, so I had to go to other sources.

I lucked out on my next call, because I found what I was looking for at Pacific Fabrics & Crafts. Well, I called the Bellevue location and the Northgate location and both of them only carried one of the two colors I was after: Soft Aqua.

Soon afterwards Josh arrived home and we were off! (zoom)

Once we’d arrived I was fairly sure that the aqua color was going to be the way to go.  I had a bit of a chat about it with Josh, and we decided that with all the heat during the summer it would just be better that way.  The yarn came to a total of about $50, which my mom says she’ll help cover, which will be nice.

As far as needles go, I did have to buy a new set of those.  29″ size 8 circulars.  I’d forgotten to print out the pattern and bring it with me (which would have been the smart thing to do), so I went and looked at the gauge for the right needle size.  I knew that all of the circs that I already owned were more for making felted items, thus having too large of a needle size.

In the end the pattern actually said I needed size 9 circs, but I’m not going to worry about it, because I already have a nice set of size 9 Addi Turbo circulars sitting in my UFO box… with an UFO on them.  Heh.  Seems silly to buy two of the same needle, and at the very least it will just be more encouragement to finish what I’ve already started, should it turn out that I just have to use the size 9s.

The yarn does feel really nice though.  It isn’t quite as soft as I would have thought it would be, but the reviews online say it will bloom a bit post-wash.  And the color is really nice.

Oh!  And I found the most awesome thing while I was there.  The Holiday 2006 VOGUEknitting issue!  I saw a FO posted in a LiveJournal community the other day that was a woven scarf pattern taken from that magazine, and I totally fell in love.  Whilst explaining how the construction worked for the scarf to the many admirers, the knitter had unwittingly given me just enough information that I might have been able to re-create it myself, but actually finding this issue myself and being able to buy it will be much easier.  I’m quite happy with myself that I thought to ask if they had any back issues.  It turns out that after a certain date, the stores selling it are required to rip off the cover and send them back to the company if they don’t sell them all, something I’m quite glad they didn’t do.

I am definitely making this scarf right after I finish my linen stitch scarf, baby blanket, and lace scarf respectively.  Maybe I’ll even get the linen stitch scarf done tonight!  /sarcasm

Who would have thought that I’d actually be able to organize all of my yarn… and in one day!  I spent this morning separating out all the yarn I want from the yarn I don’t want, and putting it away accordingly.  Josh and I have some plastic tubs that we got from his parents that used to have books in them, but we’ve managed to get some other plastic drawers to put them in, so they’ve been empty for a few days.

Deciding which yarn I wanted to keep and which I wanted to go wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be… there’s just so much of it that I have no plans for that has been sitting in my knitting basket for upwards of a year now.

So all of my partially used yarn balls (which are already individually bagged) went into the new plastic bin, along with my UFOs, my Knifty Knitter loom knitting set, and all of the yarn I’ve put up for swapping (all bagged as well). I kept yarn I still plan on using that’s in full skeins in my fun woven knitting basket, and of course the needles are still in their knitting case, and the notions are still in the tupperware container.

Knitting awaits!