My Knitting Life

Anyone else out there struggling with that white New England light?  Here is the back of Larstrop, all knitted up in it's glorious Noro color, bleached out by the winter daylight.  Hrumph.  I think it looks like a field all plowed and ready for planting.

On the bright side, I am having so much more fun knitting Noro this time, because I am trying to re-create the stripe sequence.  Here is how I patched together several skeins to get the stripes to repeat in order...

I just wind the skeins into balls, and then stare at the tops until I can see which direction the yarn is going.  Sometimes I have to start from the center, other times from the outside.  And I usually have to wind some off to get to the right starting point. 

Why do I find this so amuzing?

I was greeted on my doorstep this afternoon by the wife of my husband's friend.  She was holding a warm loaf of homemade bread all wrapped up in a linen towel, with a little note attached that said "thank you for the pattern!"

We were out as couples a few weeks back, and she mentioned that she had been searching for a vest pattern for herself, in worsted weight, but she didn't want a v-neck.  I remembered this one from Forever Favorites - Fifty Years of Family Classics.  It's an older Leisure Arts book that took vintage patterns from each decade and updated them for today - the original vest was a man's design from the 1930's.  She said her jaw dropped when she saw it - it was just what she had in mind.

There a few things that bring me as much joy as making a pattern match.  I love leafing through my book and pattern collection, searching on line, searching over at the shop, searching the library shelves.  I think she must have thought that I went out of my way to find this pattern.  I made sure to tell her that the pleasure was all mine!

This pattern intrigues me.  There's another version here.  The basic idea is that you increase by knitting into the front and the back every other row, 4 or 5 stitches in from the end of the row.  Once you are halfway there, you decrease by K2Tog in the same place, making a triangle shawl - no biggy.

What's intriguing is that at the last 7 or 8 stitches, you slip one, k2tog, bind off these stitches and then UNRAVEL all around to create the fringe.

So I guess the increase/decrease stitches create a stabilizing knot in the fabric, which allows unravelling up to that point, but not beyond?  (scratching head.)  I just never thought of them that way before.

A student brought some pricey yarn to class with the pattern from K1C2.  I was nervous that it wouldn't work, so we tried it with some acrylic, and sure enough, it worked.  So off she went!

I've got two skeins of Brooks Farm that has been sitting around for over a year now.  Snowstorm's coming, maybe I'll give it a try....

Brooks Farm PrimeroBrooks Farm Duet

This is the farm that sheers the sheep and sends the fleece to the mill that dyes and spins the yarn that the knitter uses to make her warm and cozy thrummed mittens.

These are thrummed mittens from Robin Hansen's Favorite Mittens book that I talked about a few ago.  I'm using yarn from New Pond, a local farm that sends its fleece to Bartlett in Maine for processing.  Robin uses Barlett yarns throughout her book.

The pattern is full of great techniques - Maine Cast-On, M1's for the thumb gusset, twisted M1 for the gap over the thumb.  I chose the simplest fleece chart because I am using these mittens for teaching.  Mittens are great for teaching because there is a lot going on in a short amount of time.

Maddy likes to sit and prepare the thrums as I knit along - this makes the project go so much faster.  I resist the urge to correct inconsistencies in her thrums, just working them in as she churns them out, trying to enjoy the experience of quietly working on something together.

Life has been so hectic lately.  Blogging, and posting, has really had to be put on the back burner.  I'm really savoring every minute of knitting time I am able to squeeze in these days.