Tuesday, February 13

I would love to have a snow day but I walk to work.








If I could stay home, I would bake bread and knit.

And probably sit with the babies.



// posted by Diane H @ 9:22 PM 2 comments

Monday, February 12

Decreases increase the knitting

Blogger ate the comment I was trying to leave on Julie's blog so I thought if I had to re-write what I had to say, I would post it on my blog. Julie has the perfect example of The Perfect Sweater posted, BTW.

Here is my Dale of Norway sweater:



First serious effort at colorwork and I am once again defeated by math. If I had shown you a picture of my progress on Saturday, there would have been much more yoke. The original version had 1/2 as many decreases as there should have been. I think I am supposed to decrease at the yoke edge (purl one stitch) and then decrease at the sleeve edge. Four times total, every other row. This sweater is worked right to left, clockwise. In the end, I should have 120+ fewer stitches over 8.25 inches called for in the directions at the time to cast-off for the neck. Math. What's a knitting project if there isn't lots of ripping out and re-knitting?

In the meantime, I am also working on the EZ Moccasin socks for the boyfriend. I think I am making each differently. Another decrease issue at the heel:



Decrease on the knit row or does "work back" mean to decrease in the purl row too? I am not going to frog the sock that seems wrong. But I will commit to fixing the "weave in" which is the last step to close up the bottom. I don't think there is supposed to be a ridge of yarn shooting through the bottom.

// posted by Diane H @ 10:04 PM 2 comments

Monday, February 5

After much pain there is a scarf

I haven’t posted since early January because I have been in pain. 13” in 6 days plus all the Christmas knitting and creating this pile of paper in two months:



did in my right elbow. You see one original, 5 copies, 5 copies of the appendices, and 2 office copies of the training grant competing renewal. Pain in the morning, pain in the evening, pain all the time in between.

Through the miracles of modern medicine, physical therapy with Rene, and these aids



I can raise my arm, carry a load and knit to my heart’s content. It helps to use the elbow band which apparently redistributes the pressure on my tendon, do my exercises, and not have to produce 420 pages of records for my job.

But more interestingly, I finished a scarf. This was inspired by Julie, who created a similar one in fancier yarn for the Red Scarf project. You can see the original yarn in this post and if you double click on the 3rd photo, the final version, fluid and beautiful, is wrapped in a red bow. I thought I might make this for DD#2 whose birthday was Jan 3. But, see above. I finished this scarf as the Super Bowl was winding down. Alas.


Yarn: Cleckheaton Country 8 ply in navy, light blue, taupe and light green from Loopy Yarns, Chicago
Needle: started on straight size 8 but finished on circular size 8. If I were to make it again, I might use size 10.
Cast on 214, using a background color throughout, change accent color at the end of each row, leaving some at the beginning for fringe and cutting it long at the other end to make complementary fringe. Double the background color over itself for the desired length of fringe and pick up the new accent color, leaving a bit for the fringe. The yarn change is tedious but this annoyance is minor, compared to perhaps never knitting again.

// posted by Diane H @ 6:52 PM 2 comments

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