First, I must say that I don't really hate them. They are filled with great ideas and fabulous photographs, which can be very inspiring. However, I do have some issues with most books and patterns.
I've recently been dealing with a nerve problem that has made my left foot perpetually numb, so I decided that I deserved a special sock to keep it warm.
I'm currently working on a sweater that will eventually require some buttons, and I'd like to use something a little more special than the plastic ones you buy on a card at the fabric store. Can anyone suggest an online source that has a good inventory of interesting buttons? I'm looking for understated quality rather than flashy. Glass, maybe? Metal? Bone?
Now that many of you clog boyz are already felting your creations, I've finally found out the sizes I need to make and bought enough yarn to make two pairs. I came home from work this afternoon and got started on the first inner sole, which I'm doing in one strand of blue and one of light grey (hoping for a blue jeans effect).
I thought I'd pass along something that I found helpful when I made these clogs before. First, I went through the entire pattern and underlined every occurrence of the center stitch, which is easy to recognize because it mostly occurs between two increases or decreases. Then I marked the center stitch on my needles with a brightly-colored scrap of yarn so that while I was working I could easily verify that that stitch corresponded to the marked center stitch on the pattern. I found it reassuring to have a landmark while repeatedly turning my work, rather than finding out further down the line that I'd miscounted and having to rip out several rows.
The sweater I'm currently working on doesn't have ribbing at the waist or cuffs, but rather garter stitch bands that are picked up and worked after the body panels and sleeves are finished. The pattern calls for knitting the bands on each piece before sewing them together, but I'm tempted to wait until I've assembled the sweater and then pick up the stitches and knit them in the round, thus avoiding seams in the waist band and cuffs. I've never made a sweater this way, but it seems that it would be quite easy to add the bands at the very end. Does anyone know of any reason wh
My mom once told me about seeing a very fine lace shawl, so lightweight that the sales lady was able to draw it through one of her rings. Has anyone made something like this? Do you know of any good patterns? I was thinking it would make a nice birthday gift.
Saturday I accompanied a friend to the Estes Park Wool Market, an annual event in Estes Park, Colorado. She mostly went to pet the animals, but I was excited to see what yarn they would have on offer. (With apologies to those of you who raise them, I think sheep are disgusting, goats slightly more tolerable and alpacas adorable, though I still don't want to touch them.)
At a stall operated by Interlacements of Colorado Springs my friend spotted a knitted-up sample of the Squirrel Monkey Sweater:
I encountered a woman at a flea market on Saturday offering baskets of recycled yarn, which she confirmed was obtained by ripping out knitted garments. She was purposefully vague about where she buys them, but told me she has learned which brands are most likely to yield long continuous lengths of yarn. It was all quite clean and neatly wound with a mechanical winder, though she would not make any representation as to the fiber content, weight or yardage. WYSIWYG. The yarns I bought immediately melted when subjected to the flame test at home, and I imagine that mos
This is not the sort of project that would normally appeal to me, but it was a special request by a friend who positively assured me that she would actually wear such a hat. More than once. In public.
In a what-was-I-thinking-in-the-middle-of-the-night moment, I started knitting with worsted weight yarn on US 2 needles, producing a fabric which stands on its own and could possibly be substituted for Kevlar. To make things worse, I used dpn's because I didn't have any circular needles in that size. Very soon I had to move one quarter of the stitches to a holder because they were falling off the needles, and I became rather adept at substituting needle for holder on every round.
Just in time for summer ... mittens from a WWII knit-for-the-troops pattern. The accent stripes created extra work evening up the stitches and weaving in the ends, but in a solid color the mittens knit up really fast. Since our boys in Iraq probably have little need for these, I'll just put them away until it gets cold again.