This evening I'm doing a talk at the Kawartha Hooks and Needles Guild. I'm going to use mittens

to point out that there is a very nice blank canvas right there on the back of a Basic mitten pattern. What might we do with it? I've made some samples with patterns from the Need A Hat book.

Basketweave pattern from the Ice Cubes hat,

and the Mock Cable pattern from the Snowshoe Hat. Also it's easy to see that any mitten pattern can be made into fingerless mittlets. We're going to have fun playing with patterns and imagining all kinds of mittens we might make.
-Deb

The new Crescent Spokes scarf is up on Patternfish. I knit it in Saucon Fingering, my current favourite yarn. It's a cotton/acrylic fingering (sock) weight yarn and makes a really great scarf. I think I'm a convert to scarf wearing now. I had a great time figuring out how many ways this scarf could be worn.

 

Deb

We are hard at it, planning our April 12-14 retreat. Here we are doing it the way knitters do it: knitting, eating and planning. We were working out a class schedule and some ideas for fun things to do over the retreat weekend. YarnOver SleepOver Retreat

Ten of us are working on this project. It involves many designers, a couple of yarn distributors, a yarn dyer, the patternfish.com ambassador, a couple of tech editors, sample knitters, a store owner, a machine knitter, a couple of crocheters and probably some areas I've overlooked. It's been an exciting way to get together with different people who work with fibre, all self-employed, independent workers in our crazy industry.

 

Are you working on any community projects, yarn related or otherwise?

Deb



I am playing with mittens again. I need to knit quite a few to get the pattern writing details down. One detail I spotted on these is that it's necessary to specify which yarn to use for the decreases at the top of the mitten. I think the decrease stitches should all be in the solid purple colour (see the bottom mitten - one set of decrease sts are in variegated blue and the other side is in solid purple).

Details, details.
I am enjoying the small project colourwork. Do you do colour work? Do you do big projects or small things? Do you knit with a colour in each hand? I'm finding the variegated/solid colour combo gives a big impact.
Deb

Here's my first attempt at a video. It's for the Cast On I used for the latest crescent scarf where the Cast On needs to be really loose so that the points can be blocked nicely. The beauty of this method is that you don't have to go up several needle sizes to get a loose Cast On. You can use the needle you're going to use to knit the scarf or shawl.

Here are the written instructions.

VERY LOOSE Cast On:

It is so loose that you can use the smaller circular needle to cast on.

 

This is a Cable Cast On with an extra knit stitch worked between each cast on stitch and is worked as follows:

Make a slip knot and place on Left needle. - 1 stitch on needle.

Insert Right needle into slip knot, wrap yarn around needle and pull through, place resulting loop onto Left needle. - 1 stitch cast on, you now have 2 stitches on needle.

*Insert Right needle between 2 stitches, wrap yarn around needle and pull through, place resulting loop on Left needle, knit this stitch and slip off needle, replace knit stitch onto Left needle. - 1 more stitch cast on; repeat from * until number of desired stitches cast on.

It allowed me to block the points nice and long, even when using a cotton/acrylic blend. It's really, really stretchy with fingering weight wool.

If you try it let me know what you think.
Deb

I've been playing with mittens. They are the greatest little project to play with colour. This is an easy stitch pattern with 2 Main Colour rounds of 2x2 rib and Contrast Colour knit and purl rounds. The mitten on the left has the purple as the MC and the variegated wool as the CC. The right mitten has the variegated wool as the MC. They do look quite different in person. I like the right one better.

I love the striped palms. I think I'll do the next set of mittens all stripes, forget the pattern, I like it so much. I'll be working on the thumbs tomorrow. I'm going to work them as a large I-cord. Never tried this with stripes before so will be interesting.

Deb