Eek, a Steek Retreat

The challenge for the Knitting at Lake Lauzon was to come up with a steek project. They asked for steeking, really they did. So we steeked. Steeks are beneficial when knitting with 2 colours. Mosaic knitting is 2-colour knitting where you only use one colour at a time. A great technique.

First we all worked on the Mosaic pattern. Then we sewed along the 5 extra steek stitches we added to the hat circumference.

Then we CUT.

No one fainted, everyone sewed and cut, everyone! Then we worked the buttonband and the crown of the hat. A marvelous job by all and wonderful finished hats.

Liz finished with a headband.

A terrific weekend at Lake Lauzon Resort. There will be another retreat in 2016, same weekend, same place. Looking forward to it already.

-Deb

Our theme at the Yarn Over Sleep Over Retreat last weekend was to

Laugh a Lot,

Eat a Lot (I know I definitely pulled my weight there, ha, ha),

 Learn a Lot (I learned a couple of "new to me" techniques so I could teach them for our Speed Knitting:  new stretchy cast on and a new lace bind off),

and partake in some extra curricular activities.

 Same weekend next year at the Fern Resort.

 Have you been to a retreat lately? What did you really love about it.

I'm still retreating. Off to another retreat on Friday: Knitting at Lake Lauzon in Algoma Mills, ON (northern Ontario). We're going to Steek. The first cut is the deepest (song) right? There may be some sweaty palms. I hope everyone survives.
-Deb

YarnOverSleepOver Retreat

It's retreat time. This is the Yarn Over Sleep Over retreat that 9 needlework professionals, including Lyn and I, run together and teach at. We are being pro-active. Why wait to be chosen to teach when we could run a retreat of our own? This is our third year and the organization over the year leading up to this weekend is interesting, as all group work is, and very rewarding. Nine strong-minded entrepreneurial minds coming together, well you can imagine the sparks fly sometimes, all to the good. We have a wonderful weekend planned for our 43 attendees.

I've got all my samples for my two classes, a fashion show and for the Speed Dating Knitting.

What may you ask is Speed Knitting? Our first activity at the retreat is based on Speed Dating where one set of people, for example Women, sit in chairs along a wall and across from them sit those that came to date. Each person spends 2 minutes with the person in front of them and then moves to the next table. In our case, we're not looking for dates but for knitting know-how. A group of knitter sits at one table and tries a technique for 10 minutes then moves to the next table. It's quick, it's fun and hopefully educational. Our 4 tables this year are: Nupps, Garter Stitch Cast Off, Stretchy Cast On and Machine Knitting. As we all know, knowledge is power, power to the knitter.
Hope you have a great weekend, I am going to,
-Deb

Mosaic Sample

I've working up my first sample for a Steek workshop I'm running in Northern Ontario. It's a weekend at Lake Lauzon Resort in Algoma Mills, ON on April 25 & 26. Yikes, it's coming up soon.

Steeks work really well for 2-colour knitting because it's so much easier to do colourwork in the round. For this workshop we're going to make a hat or headband with 2 colours with a steek which will be cut and a buttonband put in it's place. Although the usual method for colourwork is to work a fairisle pattern, I decided to tackle Mosaic knitting.

I think I am in love. Have you tried this? There are lots of advantages, especially when worked in the round.
1.  Work with only 1 colour on a round at a time, perfect. No need to carry a second colour.
2.  The charts are easy to read once you know the trick. The trick is that each row of the chart must be worked twice with the same colour of wool.
3. The charts are easy to work with. Working with the dark colour, knit the dark stitches on the chart, slip the light stitches.
2.  The second round in the same colour is a snap. Phew. Always nice to have a comfortable, easy round. Work the stitches that are in the colour you're working with and slip the other stitches. You can have fun with the stitches on this round. By knitting the stitches you produce stockinette stitch or by purling them, garter stitch.

I see possibilities here. I worked the green (light colour) in stockinette stitch and the blue (dark colour) in garter stitch. What if I did it the other way around and made the green in garter stitch and the blue in stockinette stitch? How different would it look? What if I made the background the light colour and the shape in the dark colour? What if I did it all in garter stitch?

As you can see I have some more mosaic knitting in my near future. I can't wait to see what will happen.
-Deb

Stalled, why?

I'm stalled on my Blue. It just sits there making me feel guilty. I need to decide how long to make it which isn't a huge decision but I'm not making it. How come?

I like the colour.
I like the design.
I like the knitting, of course. But still, there it sits.

I don't want to write it out as a pattern. AH-HA, There it is.

The thought of writing it out has stopped me in my tracks. I think I have been knitting ahead of the writing. There is a tricky part around the buttonholes which has me questioning myself. Could I have worked this out better? Maybe and maybe not. I don't think even if I had anticipated the entire design before I started I could have set this up any better. Besides I don't generally work that way. I think up things as I knit along and then figure out how to do them. I did that several times on this sweater with much ripping back and reworking. I like the result.

It's easy enough to work the buttonhole, A-line increase and add another stitch pattern repeat, all at the same time, while I'm knitting but I'm anticipating a challenge when it comes to writing it out coherently. Did you catch those magic pattern writer words, "at the same time"? I know all knitters are a little suspicious when you see those words so I'm going to try not use them.

Reframe how I think about this:

It's a challenge I'm capable of meeting.
It will improve my pattern writing skills.
This may open up new avenues for more complex designing and writing.

I've almost convinced myself. I'm going to take this on and write a little bit of this pattern each day. And finish knitting it of course. Let's not forget about that. LOL.
-Deb

Toe-Up to Cuff Down

My favourite sock knitting method is to knit from the toe-up for a very silly reason. I get impatient and want the sock to be done before it's ready. If knitting cuff down I quite often start to work the toe early and end up with socks that are too short. I have ripped out the toes of many socks to work an extra 1/2" and redo the toe so that they will fit. Argh.

So now I usually knit from the toe-up since at the beginning of sock knitting I can hold on long enough to get the heel in the proper place and then if the leg is short, so be it. I have lots of socks with very short legs.

This is my To-Up sock.

But they are not going to work from the toe up. The short row heel is worked over 60% of the sock stitches. To do this several stitches from each side of the top of the foot get transferred to the heel needles. My swirl pattern can not be included in those stitches. That means the swirl must be sitting in the centre section of the top of the foot. Depending on the size of the foot this may or may not be where the swirl ends up. On my sock I was rather closer to the side than I liked when I did my heel.

I am going to knit another pair and re-write this pattern from the cuff down. I can then say STOP when the swirl is in the centre of the front of the leg before beginning the heel. The leg may vary in length depending on row gauge or size but better there than on the foot. I'll just have to hang on when I'm knitting the foot to make sure I get the correct length. I can do it. I know I can do it.
-Deb

Decision week

Kathy, one of the students in my Mittlets by Formula class, reminded me that I haven't written my blog in several weeks and she was checking. So here I am, thanks for the kick in the ... I needed it.

I get mired in projects that are partly done and can't seem to find my way out. My Blue is stalled. I can't decide if it's long enough. I'm going to make a decision this week and stick to it.

It looks long enough to me but trying it on is the test and I've done that several times which usually means I'm close or waaaay off and don't want to believe it.  I really like the Back.

Done in Cotton Tweed, Just Navy. I love this dark, dark navy. Much darker than photo shows.

And then to get ahead of the season I started a summer knit. A circular yoke following the Need A Circular Yoke numbers, in Saucon Fingering (cotton/acrylic) with a 3.50mm needle to get 6 sts = 1".  (It's really Cherry red, I don't know how the camera makes it pink.) 
The yoke has a mosaic colour pattern. I really enjoyed the affect. It's great to only have to work with one colour at a time and get a great two-colour affect.

Down to the bottom of the bust now. I'm putting in a line of purple and going to work out some sort of columns of increases down the front and back. Another decisions to make.

And because these are bigger projects I had to start something smaller to carry around with me. I'm calling them Catch The Wave Socks. They are surprisingly easy to pick up and put down again. That's the beauty of stitch patterns that work the same every round. Very little angst about which round I'm on. Who needs more angst?

Decision week. Do you have to make some this week?

-Deb