Frogging

It's rainy and dark and generally yucky here today so please excuse the photo quality.

I'm pretty happy with how the sleeves have turned out. They are approximately 9" across at the shoulder so I only had to work the increases on the sleeves about 8 times to get the total number of sleeve stitches I needed.

Then I kept the sleeves a constant number of stitches as I continued to increase only on the Fronts and Back. Look at how the raglan line changes, interesting. I'm going to rip it back now so that I can experiment with adding more fabric on the Front for the bust. The more I look at these photos though, the more I think I should flip the shapeline so the it's less of an angle at the top and a steeper angle closer to the underarm. Stop, stop, stop, one thing at a time. Rip, add bust fabric and then think about the raglan line. I have a plan.

-Deb

What if

Jennifer, at the knitting guild meeting on Tuesday evening, had a surprise for me.
She finished the Hurdy Gurdy out of the Baby V booklet in Lime, Electric Blue and Sky Blue. It's for Wendy's new grandbaby, who has not put in an appearance yet. The little sweater looks great! There may be a hat in the making too. This is going to be one loved baby which will be evident by the amount of knitting it will be wearing. And does Jennifer have a beautiful sweater on or what? She's a gorgeous knitter.

Hi Commenters. Welcome back Valerie, I hope your surgery is successful and you can pick up the needles again soon. And everyone else - no more fighting over my one sock! I didn't tell you all the gory details about this sock but I knit and ripped and knit and ripped that whole top section of the cable. I know, swatching sort of solves that but each time I was so sure I had the answer to my cabling question that I just went ahead. That section looks a little tired so I will have to knit 2 new socks for a pair. You realize I am totalling caving to your pressure to knit a second sock.
This is the sock under discussion.

It looks like you're all going to get another look at it in a couple of weeks.

But it's spring and it's time to play, right? So I am trying out a couple of things here. I tell knitters in my classes that when they knit top down they can make sleeves narrower if they need to, by simply stopping to work the increases on the sleeve early. If you would like the sleeve an inch narrower than the pattern calls for then stop increasing on the sleeves about 3 Increase Rounds before the pattern tells you to. Continue to increase on the Fronts and Back as per instructions. Remember if you're making this adjustment and you are figuring out how big you want your sleeve to be, that you are casting on stitches at the underarm which will become part of the sleeve - it's best to go to the Sleeve instructions and figure it out from there. OK, so what would happen if ... we went to the extreme and began with a really wide sleeve at the shoulder, like really wide, like 9" wide??I only worked the increases on the sleeves 8 times. Whoo, I couldn't believe it. I am past that point now and am only working the increases on the Fronts and the Back and working the broken rib pattern on the sleeves. I'll knit some more tonight and we'll see what's what tomorrow. Ha, ha.
-Deb

Ooops

I just uploaded some new patterns to Patternfish and forgot to let you know! Julia usually takes a few days to post new patterns but she was right on it this week. So, my apologies and here's the current status.

I uploaded a new photograph for Deb's Point to Point Shawl:

I posted my Jane Austen Shawls:

Bernice's new preemie to 18 months, 3 in one cardigans called Sam, Sadira & Katie was posted and I expect it to be available in the next day or two:

And I also loaded up Shirl the Purl's "Shirl's Mittlets" so you should be up be up in a day or two as well:

I will be uploading several more (7 more? no, must be 5 as the socks are already on Patternfish) over the coming days and week so I'll keep you posted. My deadline is to have everything posted before we leave for the TNNA show ... will I make it? Now back to updating the catalogue.

-Lynda

Double Cross

It's done. I have tripled the double cross. What does that make it? I don't think this sock is getting a mate either. Too bad. The thing about being in the 'business' is that most of the knitting we do is not for someone, not me, not Lynda, it's for display only. I usually get some things back after they have toured around for a year. I need this one test knit and I'm not the person to do that so this sock is a single. Sigh. I have other things to get on with. But here it is. It was fun.Me taking photos of my own foot. Where are all the other people who live here when I need them? At work! Yeah, right, a fine excuse!
-Deb

Weirdness

It sounded like someone was throwing sand at the house. What could this be - hail? There they are on my car hood. Not big pieces but coming in waves. What's the date again?

I took a break and went to Ottawa, Carleton University actually, to sneak a peek at my friend's world of academia. This was the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held once a year which draws academics from across Canada and the U.S. My friend is a sociologist. I sat in on 2 talks and was quite surprised at how much I understood, of course the two I attended were hand picked for me knowing that lots of these talks would be way over my head. But I got to see Dr. S in action and see the response she gets when she speaks. It was great and now I have faces to go with the names of the people she works with and a much better idea of how that world works. I spent most of my time here, at the Book Fair, where every University Press had their list of books on display, rows and rows of vendors with lots and lots of books. Ahh, it was amazing. And it's true that a change is as good as a rest!I think 'take a friend to work' is a great idea. I know that Dr. S is really keen on coming to a knitting trade show with me sometime. A large gathering of women entrepreneurs, what could be more fun than that.

So, no intricate knitting done, too busy listening intently, but I did manage half a sock. I've lost the tag for the wool, sorry. That's the problem with 100g balls, there is no second ball with the tag still on it to check.When I got home I was ready to get going on the Double Cross.
I am almost ready to begin the heel. It went very quickly and easily. There was enough pattern to keep me entertained and when I looked up I was surprised at how far I had come along. That's always a bonus. And I love this colour Brown (looks like chocolate to me) of Soft Touch Ultra from http://www.shelridge.com/ .

-Deb

P.S. Commenters: Samm, this cable is fun. And Mom, you'll find this one much more enjoyable to knit.

Votes In

Lynda liked the last double crossing (which I personally liked the best too) so that's what's going on the sock.

I'm going to do some work on it over the next couple of days. I'm taking a little break, no particular reason, just seemed like a good time to get out of town and someone I know is headed east so I'm hitching a ride. I should have some knitting done when I get back.

See ya,

-Deb

P.S. We are getting all our new patterns ready for the TNNA trade show in mid-June (Jane Austen shawl included). I'll launch them on the blog when we get back with photos and everything. Thanks for asking Elizabeth.

Celebrate

Last weekend was our long weekend here in Canada. We celebrated by reading books and taking it easy since it was raining and sort of miserable. But this weekend we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Mariposa Folk Festival coming back to Orillia, ON (where it originated 49 years ago). This is the Mary Street Collective band . . .

having a terrific time celebrating on stage. Four singer songwriters who got together to cover each others songs. It worked really well. My husband, paul court http://www.followthatsong.blogspot.com/, smiling in the green shirt, and Aaron Howes http://www.myspace.com/ahowes singing one of his own songs.On the either side of the stage, The Brights http://www.thebrights.ca/, Don Bray playing guitar and Alyssa Wright playing her cello.
Only 6 weeks to Mariposa, Yay!

Back to our regular programming. I've been playing with the pattern from the panel of this sock.As I had said previously, the panel ends up to be quite dense. I thought I'd have a go at the pattern and see if we could get the same sort of look without it being so dense. The pattern is worked using 2 rows where you work the cable crossings with a rib row in between them. I tried working only one repeat of the pattern with several ribbed rows in between.

Then I started a swatch and worked one repeat of the pattern reversing the crossings (did the second cross first and then the first cross), again with several rounds of ribbing in between. Interesting.I tried working one and a half repeats and I like the double line but it's getting very dense again.It's a very fuzzy photo but these are the double lines.

And lastly I wanted to see if I could spread the double lines further apart.

So now it's decision time.

-Deb