Another New WIP

April Fool's Day is over and I must 'fess up, I'm still knitting!   I'm so gullible, I believe almost everything people tell me, but I'm not usually so successful at pulling off a prank myself.   

Thanks everyone for your comments, I knew some of my friends would NEVER be fooled, but I hoped I would at least see if anyone noticed.  It was a fun day, and I hope you had a chance to pull a prank on someone else.  

But I am still here knitting, writing about knitting, ripping out my knitting, (and spinning and crocheting) etc.  I've been hard at work on several versions of a new knitting pattern project that is almost ready to show, but not quite - I still want to tweak a couple of details before I offer it for test knitting.  

The yarn I'm using is Madeline Tosh Merino Light, a 100% Merino singles fingering yarn in luscious hand-dyed colors.  The photo at the top of this post shows three of my favorite colors (left to right) - Silver Fox, Tern and Antler.  

This swatch in garter stitch is knit in a color called Calligraphy, a beautiful mix of silver, beige, copper, and pewter grey.

The layers of colors in the base yarn and in the soft halo are rich and complex while still subtle.  Many of the Madeline Tosh colors are tonals with closely-related shades in a colorway.  A few are higher contrast.

 

Everyone makes such a fuss about this yarn I decided to give it a try.  The colors are exceptionally beautiful, and the yarn is springy and enjoyable to knit with.  I'll do a proper review soon.

On another note, I was thrilled to hear from Helene Rush, designer and owner of Knit One Crochet Too yarn company, who wanted to know if she could use my Brandywine Falls capelet pattern, knit in Knit One Crochet Too Paintbox yarn, on her Facebook page.  Of course!  

I think Helene has some great patterns, one of her most popular is  Hey, Teach! a cute lace cardigan from Knitty.com. 

Helene has recently started podcasting as well, so if you enjoy listening to podcasts while you knit, as I do, tune in and listen as she discusses knitting, patterns, her yarn company business, life and other things. 

Until next time, peace, blessings and happy knitting to you!

  

Short Rows and Wraps Video Tutorial Link

I love garter stitch, but that's ALL I have been doing lately as I finalize some projects.  I'll be glad to get back to some different things soon, including a new lace pattern to post here eventually.  Today I want to share a great way to pick up short row wraps, as I've been doing in these garter stitch projects.  

I know sometimes the wraps are left in place when working every row in knit stitches, because they usually hide nicely in the fabric.  However, there might be times when you want to neaten things up or when you're using more than one yarn color.   And sometimes the public side looks nice, but the back side looks messy.  

The photo above shows the back side of a swatch worked in multiple colors in garter stitch where the wrapped stitches lay neatly along the mitered corner, important if your project will be seen on both sides.

There are several techniques for picking up the wraps in both knit and purl stitch, but the one I used here, and I think my favorite method for many types of knitting projects, is to pick the wrap up, pull it over the left needle tip, and place it over and behind the next stitch on the needle, then knit them together.  This is demonstrated by Cat Bordhi in these helpful You Tube videos. 

Video #1

Video #2

Happy knitting!

Summer Knitting

Summer is truly upon us now that the 4th is over and the days are in the 90's, but that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for picking up my knitting!  I admit; however, to a preference for lightweight yarns and projects.

June was my month to work up the slate Hempathy top, mentioned in some other posts.  I'll try to get a few good photos of it posted this week sometime.

I've also been adding bits here and there to my little alpaca shawlette.  This is one of those projects I love to have around to pick up and work a row or two when I don't feel like working on other things.  It's also light enough to not feel hot while it sits on my lap. 

I had a vague idea that I wanted a textured shawl in my favorite wide triangle shape, so I just went ahead and cast on the yarn, Misti Alpaca Lace in a lovely hand-painted colorway #22.

The purples, greens, blues, pinks and golds reminds me so much of the wildflowers along the nature trails where we like to hike and run.  In the spring, there's columbine, cranesbill, dogwood, violets, trillium and phlox and those have phased through to wild roses, honeysuckle, Queen Anne's lace, echinacea and rudbeckia amongst many others in recent weeks.

 I started the shawl with a garter stitch tab and began working down in garter stitch, with a 3 stitch border on each edge, and increases worked on each outside edge and on either side of the center stitch on right side rows, and on the outside edges only on wrong side rows.   This increase method makes the triangle shallow and wide - a great shape to wear draped as a scarf or wrapped to accent the shoulders.  And I love working multi-colored yarn in a texture like garter stitch because the nature of the stitch adds a three-dimensional quality to the surface to help break up pooling and splotches.

I'll be posting more about this project and yarn later.   Right now, I' m also working on a bunch of new designs - a soft cardi-shrug, a scarf pattern and several top-secret projects for publication.  The cardigan was a big hit at the knitting events I've attended lately but I want to knit it up in a couple of other yarns before making a final decision.  The pattern is mostly written though, and will be test-knit soon. And that's just for starters, there's a few other things cooking at various stages of 'done-ness' as well as those mentioned already, but I'll save those for another time.

Have a great week!