Author Archives: Jean

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!

Friends, Knitting

Pretty in Pink

Posted on by Jean

This is my all-time favorite gift to knit for a baby girl:

Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Practically Seamless Baby Sweater from Knitter’s Almanac.  I’ve knit this pattern so many times, my copy of this book automatically falls open to it.  It’s a classic that’s easy to knit with great results.  I have notes written all over the page.  I’ve also replaced the Gull Pattern with a Little Shells pattern.  For the Little Shells, you knit the 1st row, purl the 2nd and 4th rows and here’s Row 3: K2 * yo, p1, p3tog, p1, yo, k2 – repeat from * across.

I knit this one up for Elann friend, Libby, who’s baby girl was born just last week.  You can see a photo of her on the Elann chat page (scroll down and look on the left side).  Karolyn Ann is a beautiful for a beautiful girl!

Family, Friends, Knitting, Spinning

It’s the Little Things in Life

Posted on by Jean

It never ceases to amaze me how much joy I can get out of a little fleece, a drop spindle and a pair of knitting needles.  Fellow Army wife and knitting blogger, Erica, could be in the hospital as I type having her baby boy.  Happy Labor Day, Erica!  Hopefully her hubster made it back from Iraq in time for the blessed event.  I met her a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to make something special for her (it’s always nice knitting for another knitter).  I had some scrumpdilicous Shetland fleece in my stash from Judy Colvin’s ranchin Montana.  I spun it up and knit a little pair of oh-so-soft booties.  Not a moment too soon because the wind is howling outside right now.   They’ll go in the mail today.

My sock-knitting friend, Lynn, made a pair of these with her handspun when I was pregnant for Joseph six years ago.  They were a gorgeous shade of hand-dyed deep maroon with jewel-tone fair isle knit into the leg.  I remember how touched I was that she did that for me.  I’ve been making them ever since.  I must have left them in storage in the States because I searched and can’t find them.  Lynn is known to many as “The Sock Lady”.  You can check out some of her beautiful work here.  I won’t forget you, Lynn, when I get to the Opal Factory!

Those booties and a baby quilt and sweater (also in storage) knit by my friend, Jessica (I met Jessica on the knitlist about seven or eight years ago), are my most prized items of Joe’s baby gifts.  I thought of how kind Lynn was every time I put those booties on him when he was a baby and I think of Jessica every night when I tuck Joe in with his quilt that he still drags around as his comfort when he’s sick or wants to snuggle.  One day his children will be kept warm with them all and that just give me the warm fuzzies.

You’ll find many renditions of this pattern as it’s been out there for eons.  With Lynn’s permission, here is my version of her version of the bootie pattern (when you knit something this many times, the pattern is bound to change here and there).  As EZ would say, these are “pithy” directions.  If you are a beginner knitter or something doesn’t make sense, just holler:

You can use any yarn from fingering to worsted.  Worsted makes a pretty big bootie.  The handspun I used for Erica’s is about fingering weight and they should fit the baby till he’s about four months (I hope).  I usually use DK weight.

Cast on ten sts.  Garter for 18 ridges.  Knit up 18 sts down next side, 10 across cast-on edge, 18 up other side.  Knit in the round now.   **Four rounds purl, four rounds knit (x2) and then knit four more rounds.  Now you’re ready to do the top of the foot.  In the booties Lynn did for Joe she did a 4×4 garter sts up the foot.  I like that better, but I forgot about it and just did st st on these.  You can do about anything you want to here.  A small lace pattern would be cute.  You’ll be knitting back and forth across the ten end sts.  As you come to the last st of each row, knit it tog with one st from the 18 st side until you have 10 sts on each needle.  Knitting in the round again, knit 3-5 rounds and then do an eyelet round for the ties (k2, yo, k2tog).  Now you are at the leg and can do whatever you want.  Add some lace or fair isle here.  I just did a plain 2×2 ribbing.  Garter st would be cute here too.  For the ties you can do I-cord (I tried but it was too big for these booties), twisted cord (which is what I used for these) or crochet a chain.  Have fun.  They make great gifts.

Family, Knitting

Loose Ends

Posted on by Jean

I’m trying to update my knitting journal this weekend.  Thought I’d share some photos of a  couple of recently finished items.

Booga Bags!  Pattern courtesy of  Julie at Booga J. Need a quick gift? These are da bomb.  Knit in Noro Kureyon they are quick and easy.  A lot of bang for your knitting buck.   I blocked them on two different sized boxes to get the slightly different shapes.  The one on the left is in color #116 and the one on the right is #51.  They’re a little more muted in person. 

Next up is the Fiber Trends Field of Flowers Shawl.  Designed by Evelyn Clark.  It’s a beauty and a pretty simple knit for lace.  I gave this one up to my Gram.  She and my Grandfather sit outside early in the morning in the White Mountain area of New Hampshire.  I knit this one from a cone of weaving yarn I scored on Ebay a few years back.  It fulled perfectly when I blocked the oils out of it.

I got an email from my Jeremy yesterday.   Things have picked up quite a bit in Mosul and he knew I’d be worried.  I’ve spent a good portion of the last few days surfing all the news sites trying to keep an eye on what’s going on.  Can’t really watch it all on TV with the little guys running around.  Please keep Jeremy and all our troops in your thoughts and prayers.

Knitting

As the Heel Turns….

Posted on by Jean

Admit it… you do a little happy dance inside your head when you turn the heel of a sock and it does that perfect little angle. Ahhh… that’s the stuff life is made of. I *love* short-row heels. I love how easy they are to keep track of where you are, I love how they fit, I love how they look… The sock is on my nightstand and I’ve been knitting on it a few minutes each night instead of reading.

On other needles, I finished the top-down jacket but still have to put in the zipper. I think I’m stalling. It’s the same thing when I have to cut steeks on a fair isle. I let it sit there and “ripen” while I get up the courage. I want to wear it to Mass on Sunday so I’ll put in the zipper (my first on a knitted garment) tonight or tomorrow.

This has been sitting in my knitting basket since April. It’s the Hardangervidda from Dale of Norway. I knit the Thunder Bay sweater for Dan about five years ago and he wears it quite a bit, so I figured he’s worthy of another Dale. I picked it back up when I finished the jacket and have made quite a bit of progress on it each night while watching TV. I forgot how much I love color knitting. Once you get into the rythym and start seeing the pattern appear, it’s very satisfying. I’m just a few rows above where the front placket starts. I’m using Gjestal Ren Ny Ull Superwash Sport that I bought for steal on Elann