Monday, March 31, 2008

Pi Shawl 3rd Pattern

Still working on EZ's Pi Shawl, I'm up to the 3rd pattern (576 sts per round).  I didn't want to repeat the same patterns again (1st and 3rd would be the same), so I found another diamond pattern in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  It's the Gothic Leaf Pattern on page 288 of my edition.  Here's my chart to be used when working in the round.  (Walker's directions assume flat knitting, so I converted to circular by removing 1st K1; and all odd rows will be knit instead of purled.)

I'm up to 576 stitches per round, which is evenly divisible by 16 :-)

 

20080331 Gothic Leaf Pattern Chart

No, I didn't swatch....



Friday, March 28, 2008

Went to Monterey Bay

We went to Monterey for a wonderful visit to the ocean.  Click on "What is this" below to see the pictures.  It was such a good trip!  Drove down on Wednesday and walked at Pacific Grove.  On Thursday we visited Pt Lobos, Big Sur, and the Carmel Mission.  Friday, breakfast at Zachary's in Santa Cruz and then drove home.  Ah, life is good.








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This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called 2008 Monterey Bay. Make your own badge here.







Saturday, March 22, 2008

Too goofy to knit

20080322 KleenexI blame it all on the library.  People come in coughing, dirty, smelly, coughing, sneezing, bad breath and coughing... and to be fair people also come in clean and healthy.

I worked with some sicko patrons on Thursday and Friday.  By Friday night my throat was feeling sore.  I went to my favorite drug store and bought cold/flue medication.  Today is the 24 hour mark and I don't fee better, so we know it's not a 24-hour thing.  Phooey.

These drugs make me goofy enough to avoid lace and fair isle, my two active knitting projects.

So, I read.  I finished "You can't catch death" a memoir written by Richard Braughtigan's daughter.  Now I'm into "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John Bogle.  If this one doesn't put me to sleep then nothing will!



Thursday, March 20, 2008

JLG's Christmas Stocking & Talking to Meg

Meg Swansen xmas stocking my chart 3

So here's the next chart.  The knitting will look squattier in real life.  The trees look taller and narrower here because of the column and row dimensions I used in MS Excel.  Whatever.  It works as a guide.

20080318 Christmas StockingI'm not quite ready to knit the trees yet.  I'm up to the point where I knit the second little white repeat at the bottom of the hem.  The first time I knit this I tried to keep the seam stitch in green, which was fine on the rows that had both green and white; however, on the rows that had just white, the green seam stitch looks disconnected from its white neighbors because, well because it was disconnected from its white neighbors.  So, I screwed up my courage and called Schoolhouse Press to ask what to do about that seam stitch.  A nice person answered the phone and when I said why I was calling she put Meg on the phone.  Imagine being able to call and talk to a knitting celebrity.  Anyway, she had a couple of suggestions:

1) slip the green seam stitch from the row below, or

2) make the seam stitch white for that part of the stocking.

... and she was so nice about it!



Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Pi Shawl Progress

20080319 Pi Shawl with Abacus  20080319 Pi Shawl First Chart

It looks more like a tam than a shawl (picture right), so I'm hoping it will block out.  Fingering weight yarn.  US 6 needles.  I'll have to knit a lot to make it big enough, but that's the point, right?  You get lots of knitting for your dollar.  (Dollars are the thing in short supply, not the time to knit.)

The picture on the left shows a tail in the SW quadrant of the picture.  That's a Hide & Sheep knitter's bracelet/abacus.  That's how I know I'm on row 13 of the second chart for the shawl.  It's supposed to be a bracelet, but I much prefer it as a round marker slash abacus.

About the shawl.  It's Elizabeth Zimmermann's Pi Shawl.  The pattern can be found in her Knitter's Almanac, July, page 71 in my edition.  The charts for this pattern can be found in XRX's Shawls and Scarves, page 52 in my edition.  Be careful, though.  The written words for the chart don't exactly match EZ's pattern or the chart; for example, row 11 of chart B words and chart do not match.  (Errata, a pdf, for XRX book does show correction for row 11.)

Oh, did I forget to say it's really easy?



Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Ruthless Inspiration

Here's another inspirational designer.  Ruth.  Check out her Kinari Cardigan.  She sketched it.  She knit it.  It fits.  Kudos!



The closest I've come to sketch-then-knit was using Sweater Wizard to generate a pattern... which I have never knit.  Maybe someday.



Christmas Stocking - 253 days to completion

20080318 Christmas Stocking

 

Here's the progress so far.  My hands are like atrophying claws, so I think I'll give it a rest for a bit.

This yarn (have I already said this?) is Jamieson & Smith 2 Ply Jumper Yarn.  It's almost impossible to drop a stitch, thank goodness.  There are little sproingy barbs all over the yarn that keep it from coming out.  If you were going to steek-and-cut something, this would be a good yarn to use - no way it would come unraveled. Even with the sproingy barbs it's not too itchy feeling, but it wouldn't be so good next to the skin I think.  Good cardigan yarn.  Good xmas stocking yarn.



Saturday, March 15, 2008

Sally Kern represents some of the people of Oklahoma, U.S.A.

image This YouTube video contains a recording of Republican state representative from Oklahoma, Sally Kern.

Her speech is hate-filled and unacceptable.  She should be removed from office.  Good old Republican fear and hate mongering.  It's disgusting.

I wonder how many people she really represents?  I hope it's a small, really small percentage of her constituency.



First chart for Eli's Christmas Stocking

Meg Swansen xmas stocking my chart 1

I was having trouble deciding where the repeats were in the chart on the schoolhouse press pattern, but Meg gives very good directions, so I decided my "knitter's choice" would be to place the repeats thusly on the top of the stocking.

(Click image to see bigger.)



Monday, March 10, 2008

Finished... or not

20080310 Riverbed 2X2I finished another pair of Cat Bordhi Riverbed socks.  This time out of Trecking XXL yarn.  The way this yarn feels in my hands, the socks should last forever.  The previous pair of Riverbed socks I made was from Ray's nice sock yarn which I like the feel of more. 

Anyway, I used Bordhi's master numbers, and created this 2X2 sock.  The increases are on the bottom of the foot - can you see about mid-way up the foot from the toe the sock begins to get fatter?  That's where the increases are.


20080310 Moebius Scarf on modelI don't much care for this picture, but you take the models where you can find them.  In this case just after waking up early during allergy season.  This is a moebius scarf (the knitting, not the model).  I used Cat Bordhi's magical moebius cast on to cast on enough stitches to fit on a 47" needle (nbr divisible by 4).  The first half of the stitches are knit in a traveling rib which travels to the left.  The second half of the stitches are knit in a traveling rib which travels to the right.  The result (magically) is a scarf in which the rib appears to travel in the same direction over the entire scarf - except that small portion where the the ribs meet and there is a "V" in the rib pattern.  Because of the cast on, there is no way to avoid the line in the middle of the scarf, is there?

This was a project I made in a Cat Bordhi class.  I might make it again with better yarn and needles which are the right size for the yarn.


20080310 Christmas Stocking YarnLast year Meg Swansen did a Knit along project called Eli's Christmas Stocking.  I ordered the yarn from Schoolhouse Press and gave J the yarn with a note that it would be a Christmas stocking by this Thanksgiving.

It has taken me a while to finish charting the "JLG" to got on the stocking and begin to swatch, but finally it is a WIP.



Sunday, March 9, 2008

The Savages

The Savages: **** very good

imageThe Savages finally came to Chico.  It's about time!  Click on the poster for a full NY times Review.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are so good in this.  I see lots of movies, so I see it when somebody is acting and that takes away from the enjoyment for me.  I saw no acting in this movie.  Linney and Hoffman are brother and sister who are called upon to take care of their estranged father in the final Winter of his life.  Philip Bosco plays the unloving and unloved father.  He's very good too.  The supporting cast is good.  It's all good.

About the story... it's good.  The brother and sister are both smart, creative people living with the after effects of an unhappy childhood.  They take care of their father with mixed feelings.  There is humor in the story - grownup humor, not slapstick.

The setting is mostly Winter in Buffalo, New York:  cold, snowy, bleak.

Go see it in the theatre if it's not too late.  If you miss it, this one would also play well on DVD.

[Maybe this should be a six star review to go with the 6 occurrences of "good" in the text :-) ]



Monday, March 3, 2008

Knitted High Heel Boots

This was on Boing Boing today.  Could two people think of the same idea in similar colors??

 

Does famous designer read CRAFT?

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, March 3, 2008 11:21 AM | permalink

Marrin-Boots 200803031118 In the first issue of CRAFT (edited by my wife, Carla Sinclair) from October 2006, Tina Marrin wrote a how-to article about knitted high heel boots (left).

Last week in Paris, famous designer Hussein Chalayan showed his brand new knitted high heel boots (right).

Do you think he reads CRAFT? (Via Book of Joe)



Sunday, March 2, 2008

Spring in Chico

Today was a typical windy and beautiful Spring day...




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Pictures were taken.