Crocheted Edgings

After the previous questions, it turns out the answer was painfully obvious, and not one of the ones I'd thought of - crocheted edging.

Still, I tested the idea of crocheted "boning" and it actually was somewhat helpful. It was also virtually invisble on the right side. The idea is that the tightly crocheted bones act to pull the edge back toward the wrong side. I had to pull the yarn fairly tight and it probably would have worked better in a less elastic yarn (I'm using Elann Esprit, a cotton/elastic yarn). The downside is that you would probably have to crochet the bones quite close together to be enough help. The pictures below show the boning after I'd applied the crocheted edge, so you can't see how much it helped, but you can at least see what it looks like.

Right side (to the right of the crochet hook). Yeah, that's the point, there's nothing to see.


Wrong side


Next I tried some crocheted edgings. I did one row of single crochet and then worked back in backward single crochet, or crab stitch. The picture below shows several different variations. None of the stitches look like the illustrations in the book because the yarn is so stretchy, but a couple turned out quite nice. And I think they'll be enough, in conjunction with a few ribs, to tame the roll.


Variation 1a, on the far left side, is crab stitch worked too loosely and looking like glup
Variation 1b, to the right of that, is crab stitch worked fairly tightly; I love how it looks, but it is not very stretchy


Variation 2, as suggested by Vogue Knitting, is crab stitch, chain one, and then skip a stitch of the edging, crab stitch, etc.; this would probably look good in other yarns, but not this one


Variation 3 is crab stitch, chain one and crab stitch into the very next edging stitch; this is a little softer, stretchier and wider than plain crab stitch; it gives the piece a bit more flair at the edge


I haven't decided between variations 1b and 3.

Baby Kimono (and Serape)

The genesis of these projects was an invitation to a tie dye party. I don't much care to wear tie dye, but I'd been itching to try dying yarn. Tie dyes don't work on animal fibers, so I skeined up some Sugar 'n Cream cotton (making a 40-foot skein is non-trivial, by the way), and we came home with this.

Well, that's not quite true. Actually, we came home with this:

And this:

Everyone has some small superpower, and mine is undoing tangles and knots. But even I was sorely tested and started imagining more Gordian methods. Matt died the blue yarn very intensely and didn't tie the skein very thoroughly, so rinsing took a long time and pretty much dismantled the skein.

And here's what we ended up with:




My "serape" isn't quite done. It's in garter stitch and follows the Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono pattern in Mason Dixon Knitting. Matt's kimono is in stockinette (which I think looks much better and makes the yarn go farther). It takes the kimono aspect seriously by making squared off sleeves (so much easier to seam). Only problem is that it still bleeds blue, so will be next to impossible to wash without staining itself.

Here's a closeup of the sleeves for comparison.



I stopped 9 stitches short of the cuff on my seam because I didn't see how else I could get my hand in to pull a baby's hand through. I guess you could call it a design element.

Striped Felted Slippers

When I started knitting again last year, I was resorting to 20-year old stash, and had the '80s colors to prove it. I decided to make my mom some felted slippers from Robin Smith's Felted Slippers pattern on Angel Hair Yarn. Fortunately, my feet are the same size as Mom's. She loves the slippers - says they fit well and are just the right warmth. I did induce her to add some dots of squishy fabric paint to the bottom so they wouldn't be too slippery on her wood floors.

I didn't take a picture of the swatch before felting, but here are the slippers themselves - the athletic sock colors had me worried. Fortunately, as you can see from the first picture, the migration of the black during felting mellowed the colors out a lot.

I was tempted to do the slippers in reverse stockinette, because the back of the swatch looked so interesting after felting.

As is often the case, the white didn't felt quite as well as the other colors, but it wasn't a problem since it was only an accent.

Pattern: Felted Slippers by Robin Smith at Angel Hair Yarn
Size: women's 8 1/2 (10" long after felting)
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky in Onyx (M5), Creme (M10), and Antique Mauve (M85); Reynolds Lopi (I think) in teal; used about 110 yards total
Needles: size 11
Gauge: before felting, 2.9 stitches per inch and 4 rows per inch; after felting, stitch gauge shrank to 89% of original and row gauge to 77% (not obsessive at all, nope)
Felting: in my top-loader it took 3 1/2 washes plus a rinse and spin
Modifications:

• stripes! although another time I don't think I would do single rows of such a high contrast color as the white - I prefer the effect of solid bands of colors to a row of Vs


• cast on fewer stitches than instructed to have a lower heel and increased just before where the top got sewed together

Calculating size (the math squeamish should skip this):

• My foot is 10" long. Dividing by 77% yields 13" pre-felted length. At 4 rows per inch, that's 52 rows.


• My ankle is 8.5". Ten inches seemed like a reasonable foot opening. Dividing by 77% yields 13" pre-felted. Divide by 2, since half of opening is formed by each side of the fabric. 6.5" at 4 rows per inch is 26 rows.


• Although the pattern suggests that 32 stitches would be a good final width, that didn't seem quite wide enough to me. 34 stitches at 2.9 stitches per inch is 11.7". Multiplying by 89% for felting yields 10.4" which seemed about right for my 8.5" mid-foot circumference.

Details:
Cast on 28 stitches. Knit in stockinette stitch as follows. (Note: do not carry the yarn from stripe to stripe on the first 26 rows, as those edges will be exposed.)
Rows 1-2: mauve
Row 3: black
4-5: white
6-8: teal
9-12: black
13: white
14-16: black
17-19: teal
20-23: black
24: white
25: white (increase 1 near each end; 30 st)
26-27: teal (increase 1 near each end in both rows; 34 st)
28: black (now it's okay to start carrying your colors, but it's probably better not to, as the sewing up looks better if each stripe is done in its own color)
29: white
30-31: teal
32-35: black
36-38: teal
39-41: black
42: white
43: teal
44-45: black
46: white
47: black
48: mauve; start of toe shaping [k2,k2tog] across row
49: mauve; purl
50: mauve; [kl,k2tog] across row
51: mauve; purl
52: mauve; [k2tog] across row
Thread yarn through remaining stitches and pull tight

Here's what it looks like at this point.

Finishing:

• Fold the cast-on edge, and sew up the heel seam. Here's what it looks like.




• Seam from row 27-52. Pattern suggests whipstitch for top of slipper, which is what I did. Since it will be felted, it doesn't need to be beautiful, but I do wish I had changed the color of the sewing-up yarn with each stripe. The black that I used ended up showing just a little bit.
  
  
• Weave in ends and ends and ends.
  
  
• Felt using the same method and timing you used on your swatch.
  
  

Garterlac Dischloth

A more mundane finished object than the Shetland Triangle, and less well executed (if you click on the picture, you can see I got a little creative in the upper right-hand corner), but pleasing nonetheless. It makes an excellent facecloth.

Pattern: Criminy Jickets' Garterlac Dischloth
Yarn: Lily Sugar 'n Cream, Country Side Ombre (color 02235); nearly all of one skein; the color in the picture is fairly accurate

Needles: size 7 (probably) Denise; I seem to knit more loosely on the plastic Denise than on metal needles, which is more comfortable when using cotton
Gauge: who cares, it's a washcloth!
Size: about 9 inches square; this is larger than the pattern because I decided to add an extra repeat
Comments: I couldn't honestly tell you if the "creativity" in my facecloth was my fault or a pattern error. I tend to follow the directions meticulously until I think I know what's going on, and then ignore them, in faith that the knitting will tell me what to do. If you are new to entrelac I highly recommend that you pay more attention to his pictorial tutorial than I did. (And how on earth did he get his sides so straight? I even blocked, and this was the best I could get.)

Shetland Triangle

There has been lots of knitting since last July, but no blogging due to Adoption Related Trauma or ART (not the same as art). I hope to post more soon and yes, we're still looking.

This is my first lace project of any size, after cutting my teeth on Branching Out. It makes an excellent beginner piece. I had to tink a lot until my hands got the rhythm, but after that it was smooth sailing without being boring (until the end). I used Silky Wool because I wanted a slightly larger shawl. At first I thought the color was very elegant and restrained. About 2/3 of the way through, I was sick and tired of the baggy brown thing. Now that it's finished and blocked, I'm back with elegant and restrained.

Pattern: Shetland Triangle by Evelyn Clark from Wrap Style; lace pattern is Fir Cone
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool in Oatmeal (color 41); used 2 skeins (at 190 yards each), plus about 30 yards of a third skein
Needles: size 7 Addi Lace Turbos, 32" (the lace needles were a nice luxury, but not essential) ; bound off with size 8 needle, using lace bindoff
Gauge: 20 st x 26 rows in stockinette
Blocked size: about 60 inch wingspan, and 26 or so inches long

I'm including a before-blocking shot because I think the ripples are so cool. (Click on the picture for a larger version.)

I didn't quite think through the blocking process. After soaking the shawl and squeezing it out, I took it to the blocking board and found it was t00 big to block. The bed wasn't an option because it was nearly bed time. So I scratched my head and came up with this - propped the board up and draped the shawl over either side. The back side of the board is not nearly as easy to stick pins in, but it served the purpose.

Cherry Harlotty Sherbet

This recipe is in honor of the Yarn Harlot. I had dropped knitting for nearly 20 years, after making Lopi socks (ie slippers) for everyone in my gift circle, and never quite succeeding in getting a sweater the way I wanted it.

Then last summer, during our morning walk, I noticed the path was littered with fruit gunk. Looking up in idle curiosity, I was stunned to discover that we had been walking under sour cherry trees every day for seven years and I had never even noticed. Sour cherries are my central member of the fruit category. We had cherry trees in our yard when I was growing up, and we went to great lengths to pick (and pit!) the cherries for mom to make pie. But sour cherries just don't exist in the stores, so I hadn't had them for years.

We went back with ladders and picked quarts and quarts of the things. Handy tip for extending your reach when picking: bend a coat hanger so you can reach out with the hook to pull the branches closer to you.

I scoured recipe books and the Internet to decide what to make (aside from pie). Somewhere in my researches I happened across this post by the Yarn Harlot. Had never heard of her. Had never heard of knitting blogs. But was charmed by the writing and found a lot of useful information about cherries among the comments.

Still, it was another six months until I took up knitting again, and it wasn't even really the Yarn Harlot's fault I did. But it was indirect peer pressure. All the cool kids at work were knitting, and it looked like a fabulous thing to do during meetings. Then it was time for Christmas travels, when handwork is absolutely mandatory, so I bought some...crochet supplies. Crochet just seemed easier to manage. Easy to pick up and put down, no octopus wrestling. And it's all true. Crochet is very pleasing to do. I just couldn't like the results.

So I dug out the knitting needles and the leftover yarn. And wow, the Internet has changed everything. Knitting is so much more fun now. Everything you could want to learn. All the patterns your heart could desire. And smart, funny, wise, passionate people to help you along the way.

Cherry Harlotty Sherbet
(adapted from 1-2-3 Sherbet, from Arlene J Achterberg of Janesville WI - the original recipe called from strawberries, which are also very tasty)

4 cups fresh cherries, rinsed and pitted (More on pitting in a later post - short answer is Norpro Deluxe Cherry Stoner and dress to mess.)

1 1/2 cups sugar (The original recipe calls for 2 cups, but that was too sweet for me. If you're using very tart cherries, you might want to increase the sugar a little - whatever tastes good to you.)

2 cups buttermilk (I keep dry buttermilk on hand for baking, and that works just fine.)

an indefinable something else (With the ingredients above, the recipe is fantastic, even better than with the strawberries. However, it is not perfect. Which is odd, since the strawberry sherbet was perfect. But each fruit must be measured against its own standards, and my standards for cherries are very high. Preliminary tests suggest that almond extract or Amaretto is probably the missing ingredient when using cherries. I am also thinking of experimenting with toasted almonds, ground very fine. Please send me the results of any of your experiments.)

1. Blend ingredients until smooth (I used a blender, but a food processor would probably work, too). Freeze until firm. The cherry skins will probably not be completely pureed, but I think they add some nice, subtle contrast. (Other family members think they're icky - ah well, more sherbet for me.)
2. After the sherbet is frozen, break into chunks. Mash with a bean masher. (That's probably the ideal implement. I expect a pastry cutter would work, too. Or you might even be able to omit this step if you're using a standing mixer for the next step.)
3. Using an electric mixer, beat until smooth. Freeze again until firm. According to Ms. Achterberg, this step is important for muting the buttermilk taste. I like buttermilk, so that wasn't a worry, but I do think this step is important for the texture.

I was curious about the fat/carbs info on this recipe, since it's clearly radically low fat. According to my amateur calculations, one cup (about 1/6 of the recipe) of the original recipe would run you 228 calories/1 gram fat/ 46 grams carbohydrates/ 3.5 grams protein (I haven't looked into how cherries compare to strawberries, and that's assuming the full two cups of sugar).

Your Baby Here

This sweater is for a draft pick yet to be named. When I made it I wasn't planning that it would be for our baby, but the lovely ladies on the knittyboard gave me the great idea of making socks for the birthmother out of the remaining yarn, so I think it will be a keeper.

Pattern: Pinwheel Sweater by Shelley Mackie. Matt picked the yarn and did the design (in AutoCad, of course - which is really nice for figuring the area of each section so you can translate it into yardage).

Yarn: one skein each of Cascade 220 Superwash in colors 855, 860 and 865 (used virtually all the dark green, a good chunk of the light green and not much of the dark red); also Schoeller Stahl Big Mexico in color 7957 for accent (although worsted weight, this yarn is considerably thicker than the Cascade; but I used it sparingly enough that the different gauge wasn't a problem)

The picture washes the colors out something awful, so you'll have to trust me that they're all beautiful. The color combination is very sophisticated, which is part of the reason I wasn't imagining it on our baby at first. The dark green Cascade (865) is particularly gorgeous, with subtle hints of gold in it.

I used superwash because I wanted an easy-care garment. Washing my swatch didn't shrink it, but drying it did, so I haven't decided whether this sweater will go in the dryer or not. I'm uncertain what would happen since it's a circular sweater and the swatch shrinkage was mostly lengthwise (from 6" to 5 1/4").

Needles: Denise size 8 (I think), and dpns in size 7 and 8; the directions called for size 9 on the body, but I got gauge with 8; I also went down a size on the sleeve ribbing because it looked better.

Notes:

I ripped out a lot more sweater than I ended up with. Not sure why I had so much trouble. Partly knitting while socializing. The pattern is such that mistakes in the increases really show. And trying to match up my color changes with the events in the pattern was a bit challenging.

The pattern doesn't include row numbers, which didn't help either. By my calculations (please don't rely on these), the sleeve goes in at row 35 and the garter stitch starts at row 47.

I switched back to stockinette for the second round of the Big Mexiko, because it just didn't look good in garter stitch.

I experimented with a number of techniques on this sweater, including a more beautiful start to the ribbing (TECHknitter) and a kitchener stitch bindoff of the ribbing (The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques)

I am very proud of myself for the kitchener stitch bindoff, but I must have done it backwards somehow on the sleeve on the right of this picture. Still perfectly functional, though.

The loopy edge is pretty ruffly (i.e. girly) at this point. It may improve on blocking. If not, I might go down a needle size next time. Not that there's likely to be a next time for the loopy edge. The drudgery of I-cord hurts my teeth, and it's even worse when you have to stop every six rows to knit it back into the garment.

Niddy Noddy Quiver

Isn't that a lovely phrase?

A little while ago, Matt made me a PVC niddy noddy from instructions at www.doctordirt.com/blog/niddy.html. He says it took him 8 minutes. He is a showoff.

I wanted to make a storage case for my new toy, so I whipped up this quiver. It took considerably longer than 8 minutes, but most of that was design.

As you can see from the pictures, it turned out a tiny bit too small (I was using a scrap from the stash), but otherwise, very pleasing. And the first project to emanate from our newly outfitted sewing/guest/TV/storage room in the garage. The remodel only took 7 years to complete, so it has all our other projects beat.

Monster Feet Toddler Slippers

Pattern: Monster Feet from the book Felting on the Go

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Bulky (85% wool, 15% mohair), color M68 pine tree (flash photos below are much better approximations of the color); used about half of one skein (125 yards) for the larger slipper size

Needles: US size 13

Gauge: I made a swatch, but was too eager to start knitting the slippers to bother felting the swatch. I got a pre-felted gauge of 10 stitches and 13.5 rows = 4".

Notes:The construction is very clever, but there are no diagrams in the book so you have to simply knit on faith that it's going to turn into what you want. This is made more difficult by the fact that the pattern contains errata. Here are some process photos.

Heel: Start knitting at the top and decrease to the bottom. Switch to garter stitch to make a squishier heel. The bound off part at the bottom will later be sewn in half to make the back of the heel.


Foot: Pick up stitches along your original cast on and knit the foot. The sides will later be sewn to each other to make the top seam.



Toes: First, knit the two outer toes. Note that there are 1+4+1=6 stitches left over on stitch holders. The book claims there are 2+3+2=7 stitches. You will have to fudge it.


Third toe: Bring the leftover stitches into the center and knit the third toe.


Sewing up: It is not easy to do beautifully, but all that matters is that it be secure, since you will be felting.


Felt: It took 14 minutes in our top-loader with jeans. As it turns out, I should have stopped earlier. The slippers were a little too tight for our fast-growing nearly-3-year-old friend. He loved them anyway, viewing them as excellent slide-y toys. (And how cool to have socks with toes, just like Mum has!)

Monmouth Cap

It seems fitting that the first entry should celebrate a first finished object. These two hats were made from the same pattern, same yarn, same needles. One new knitter (Matt) determined to strangle the yarn. One experienced knitter (Sharon) exploring Continental knitting for the very first time.

Needles: Addi Turbo US size 10, 20" (a bit too short) or 24" (a bit too long); size 10 dpns; it also helps to have another circular needle for the stitches from the provisional caston when you knit the hem

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Bulky (85% wool, 15% mohair) in M77 Blue Magic or M03 Gray Heather; 125 yards per skein

Looser hat takes very slightly more than one skein; tighter hat takes very slightly less; to be absolutely sure, suggest seeing how much yarn it takes to complete a stitch, and counting stitches, so you can make adjustments on the fly to make sure you'll have enough.

Pattern: This pattern for a Monmouth Cap - the brim is constructed by doing a provisional caston, knitting for a couple of inches, doing a purl ridge, knitting a couple more inches and then folding at the purl ridge and knitting the two edges together before proceeding on to the body of the cap. The picture at right shows the cap just after the brim was knitted together.

Modifications: Knitted plain until hat is 5 1/2" (rather than 5") and tossed a couple of extra rows into the decreases, too. It's just too short, otherwise. Finished when there are 8 stitches on the needle - didn't make the little I-cord Jughead detail.

Sharon's looser hat is simply enormous, and will probably need to be fulled, which, fortunately, is traditional.

Notes: Very warm. Fits well. Handsome, simple, traditional and distinctive.

Additional background material:
http://www.qualitycaps.co.uk/pages/products/product-details.asp?ID=34
http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/jennifer/Monmouth.htm
http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/item1/7998
http://genvieve.net/sca/monmouthcap.html