Monthly Archives: December 2004

Knitting

Itty Bitty Beads

Posted on by Jean

I promised progress photos of the Elaine beaded change purse from Purse Paradise.  The kit came with a hank of size 11 beads, pearl cotton and the clasp:

First order of business is getting the beads from the hank on to the pearl cotton.  This is done by gently pulling one end of a strand of beads out of the hank.  Start tying a knot in the thread at the end of the strand but don’t pull it yet.  Slide the end of the pearl cotton through it until there are about 5″ past the knot.  Thank God for digital cameras because I’m obviously horrible at explaining things like this (click on the photo for a clearer view):

Then you pull the knot closed and start CAREFULLY sliding the beads from the thread to the pearl cotton:

After sliding the beads on to the pearl cotton I slide them little by little down the length of it till I have a strand with no beads so I can start knitting.  I wind the beads around a paper towel tube (you can see this in the last photo) to help keep them from getting tangled.  Every now and then I have to slide them all down again to have a blank piece of cotton to knit with. 

Knitting the beads in is the easy part.  Actually being able to **see** the beads is the hard part.  All you do is slide the correct number of beads (per the pattern) in between two stitches.  From here I would just knit the next stitch. 

Here’s how far I was last night about an hour into pulling the kit out of the bag:

Here’s how far I got last night before I went to bed:

I’ll post again when I have it finished.

Knitting

Photo Finish

Posted on by Jean

Pattern for Mobius is at bottom of page.

Finished the Mobius for my Aunt.  I used three skeins of black Elann’s Peruvian Collection Alpaca (it’s sold out now, but rumor has it there’ll be more soon) knit in garter with the Cat’s Paw lace design on US size 8 needles.  This was the easiest lace pattern I could think of after having to frog back way too many times.  Ever try to see black fuzzy stitches in the evening? Not an easy task, but the rewards will be great when this is snuggled around my Aunt’s neck.   So soft and cuddly.  Pattern is at the end of today’s post.

Need a really quick knit?  I cast on the ChicKnits Felted Bucket Hat last night for a friend who’s been bugging me for a hat.  I finished the last couple of rounds this morning while the boys ate breakfast.  I did mine in my favorite worsted weight, Elann’s Highland Wool (Deep Blue Sea).  Which, oddly enough, is the wool of choice for ChicKnits Ribby.  Seriously considering this one for my next HW order.  I didn’t even use two whole skeins for the hat

  Joseph thought it was hilarious that the hat was so big and is concerned I made a huge mistake.  “Miss Tari’s head isn’t that big!”  Won’t he be surprised when it comes out of the washer.  I’ll post a photo when I get it felted.  You can be sure Joe will want to be in that photo also.

Here’s my pattern for the mobius:

Abbrev: pm = place marker  sm= slip marker

Use your favorite temporary cast on and cast on 43 sts. (3 sts on each side will be kept in plain garter for the border)

Row 1 and 5: K3, pm, K1 (K5, K2tog, yo, K1, yo, K2tog), repeat to last 9 sts., K6, pm, K3

All even rows:  K across

Row 3: K3, sm, K2 (K3, K2tog, yo, K3, yo, K2tog) repeat to 5 sts before m, K5, sm, K3

Row 7 and 11: K3, sm, K1 (K2tog, yo, K1, yo, K2tog, K5), repeat to 6 sts before m, K2tog, yo, K1, yo, K2tog, K1, sm, K3

Row 9: K3, sm,(K2tog, yo, K3, yo, K2tog, K3) repeat to 7 sts before m, K2tog, yo, K3, yo, K2tog, sm, K3

Knit till you don’t have enough yarn to finish a full repeat.  Put provisional cast on onto another circ needle.  Here’s the only tricky part.  Put a half twist into your strip and kitchener the two ends together.  Weave in ends, block and there ya go.

Family, Friends

Peace and Joy

Posted on by Jean

It’s so odd.  I’d just been “chatting” (as well as you can via the internet) with Vicki at Knitorious about our love of Christmas ornaments and how every year it’s like saying hello to an old friend when they come out of the box to be put on the tree.

I have two new friends this year.  Peace and Joy.  As usual, the camera does not do justice. These precious gifts will be cherished by my family for years to come.  They were a gift from Jamie, a fellow Elanner.  I’d just organized a swap so that a bunch of us could have a color card for my favorite yarn, Elann’s Highland Wool.  This amazing gift was her thank you.  I explained to my son, Daniel, about the work that went into them and showed him a picture of an inkle loom on the web so that he could appreciate the value of these wonderful pieces of handwork.  He was amazed.  Thank you, Jamie, from the bottom of my heart.

Another piece of art made it’s way into our home today.  A certain kindergartner named Joseph built his first Gingerbread house all alone today in school.  I wrung my hands as he pounced off the bus wondering how close to the door he was going to get before it crashed to the ground.

Oh ye of little faith.  It made it to the door unscathed.  He wanted to eat it as soon as his dad got home.  As always, when we have something planned, Dan gets a duty call (he’s a Criminal Investigations Special Agent for the Army).  So we took a picture and emailed it to Dan at the office because Joe could not wait any longer.

Family, Knitting

Baby it’s cold outside….

Posted on by Jean

Dan and I went to the Marktplatz today for lunch at the Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market).  Bratwurst and Glühwein.  Yum.  The thing is, it’s freezing out there and you eat outside standing at a small table or where ever you can find room.  The Glühwein works it’s magic quickly and warms you up from the inside.   It’s delicious hot mulled red wine served in little mugs that you can keep or take back for your deposit.   We have a large collection that we’ve gathered over the years from the various Christkindle and Weinachts Markets.  Next week we’re headed to the big one in Nürnberg so I’ll post pictures from that trip.

Here’s my always happy hubby.  The sweater is another knit from wool we picked up on our trip to Shetland.  We saw one similar to it in Shetland that he liked and I wanted to knit one for him. We chose the yarns while in Jamieson & Smith’s in Lerwick. Two years later he got his sweater!    When I got to the first band of the maroon background I hated it.  It sat in my knitting basket for about a year and a half and finally I picked it up one day and decided to finish it.  Once I got the second band of the maroon in it pulled it together nicely. It’s Dan’s favorite sweater (at least he says it is – it may be because of the sweat that went into knitting it) and he wears it often.  I have to say, he’s freezing in this photo and yelling at me through clenched teeth to hurry up and snap the photo since I made him take his coat off for the picture.

If you could see clearly what is in the window behind me, you’d take no notice of the sweater. This is the Hues in Horizontal from Knitter’s #60.  It’s Lopi Lite and one of my favorite sweaters.  Behind me is the  Hussel chocolate.  I had to pop in there for a little suprise for a certain girl in South Boston.  These quaint little shops are one of the things we missed most when we were back in the States for three years.

Back to Christmas knitting….

Family, Knitting, Shetland, Travel

Shetland Memories

Posted on by Jean

For someone who knits as much as I do, I sure don’t wear my sweaters very often.  I was going through my drawers yesterday looking at some of my old labors of love.  Since I didn’t get much knitting done this weekend to share, I thought I’d share my blasts from the past.

My all time favorite garment is this one from Ann Feitelson’s “The Art of Fair Isle Knitting”. 

It’s the Fridarey vest on page 120.  I bought the wool for it and the Scalloway yoke sweater while we were in Lerwick, Shetland in 1997.  Here’s the yoke of the Scalloway:

The nice thing about these is that they are the perfect souvenir of that trip and I’m reminded instantly of how much we loved Shetland.  Dan had just come home from eight months in Bosnia and we needed family time alone.  Couldn’t have picked a better place.  It’s the perfect get-away.  Enough to keep you from getting bored, but all relaxing and you are surrounded by natural beauty.  We spent a few days in Edinburgh, then a week in Shetland and then back to Edinburgh for a few days for the Military Tattoo.

I still have about five sweaters worth of Shetland wool kitted up.  It’s my favorite style of knitting.  That trip is the best one I’ve ever taken in my life.  We went to the mill where they used to spin the Alice Starmore yarns, visited bird sanctuaries, watched the Shetland women knit lace and fair isle at the speed of lightening and watched them spin cobweb weight yarn like it was second nature. 

I was inspired by a sweater I saw in Shetland at the Sumburgh Hotel at the where we were staying and knit one similar for Dan. I bought the yarn at Jamieson & Smith in Lerwick.

When we first arrived at the hotel and got to the top of the stairs I almost was so excited to see a brass plate that said, “Fair Isle Room”  Is that fate or what?  It’s called that because you can see Fair Isle (25 miles away) from the window when it’s clear out.  We couldn’t go to Fair Isle because we didn’t time our trip right with the mail boat that takes you there and back.  If you look at a photo of the hotel from the front , we were in the room with the big picture window upstairs.  It was gorgeous. The house used to be a family home of Robert the Bruce.  The sea is just in front of the house and there’s a croft that you can walk to just up the road.   We happened upon a man shearing one of his sheep.  Heaven I’m telling you.  Sheer heaven (no pun intended).

Here are some photos of that trip:

Dan and I look a little shell shocked as we were pulling into Lerwick Harbor because it was about 5am.  lol.  As you can see, Daniel slept just fine in the tiny berth on our P&O Ferry overnight journey from Aberdeen.  We couldn’t get over how it never really got dark at night.  It looked like dusk at about 2 am.  It was stunning with all the fog.

Here’s Daniel and I at the croft by the Sumburgh.  You can’t see it very well, but the sweater Daniel has on was from my second project all from my hand spun. It’s done in 1×1 rib with a cable going up the sleeves.  The yoke sweater I’m wearing was my own design based on Meg Swansen’s “Cardigan Details” video and EZ’s percentage system for yoke sweaters.   I call it my one-week sweater.  I knit it in a week while Dan was in Bosnia.  Lots of knitting till the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep.

This photo of Daniel and I feeding a lamb is probably my favorite from the whole trip.  It was taken at Burland on Trondra, a working croft you can visit. It’s run by Mary and Tommy Isbister.  The nicest people. We had so much fun there we went twice.  They had every kind of farm animal around.  They invited us back for tea (hence the 2ND visit) and they gave a small toy to Daniel that is tucked away in his keepsakes box.

I think I’m going to go watch the videos now so I can fully reminisce.

Knitting

Promise kept

Posted on by Jean

Finished the Flower Basket!  As promised, here she is unblocked (color is weird on this picture):

And here she is blocking.

This is for my Aunt Gloria who’s a knitter in NH (she lives about 20 min from Patternworks!!).  I have to finish a scarf for my Aunt Ruthann and then I’ll package them up and send them off to my Gram to pass out for Christmas.  Funny, looking at the photo I see I need to go back up and straighten out the top.  It looked straight via the naked eye.  Those are four steel knitting needles I bought in Shetland back in ’97.   Lord knows I can’t knit with them.  I tried with the horsehair belt when I first got home from the trip.  Dang near poked my eye out.  I don’t know how the Shetland knitters do it but they do about 200 sts a minute on these bad boys.  They make great blocking wires though!