The 2009 Oklahoma State Fair was good to me!

Michael Kors Cabled Tunic
1st Place - Knitted Sweater and Best in Show


Printed Silk Cardigan
1st Place - Knitted Cardigan


Prairie
2nd Place - Knitted Shell


Rhiannon Kilt Hose
2nd Place - Knitted socks

Thanks, Bette, for giving me your advice on entering!

Prairie is finished!

Prairie is finished, I decided not to do the neck and armhole finishing because it would have made them too small, and they aren't curling, anyway. I think I'll like it, we'll see this weekend in Lake Tahoe! Woo hoo!

A Study of I-Cord Bindoff

Been nosin' around the internet for techniques for an I-cord bindoff for my Log Cabin Blanket. There are various ways to do it. They all agree that after you are through knitting, you cast on 3 sts (or however many you want, depending on the thickness of the cord that you desire) at the beginning of the row using backward loop e, chain or knitted cast on. You knit 2 stitches (or all of the new stitches except for the last one), then perform a decrease with the last new stitch and the first stitch of the main piece. How you perform the decrease dramatically affects the look of the cord:

This one from Knitty.com uses K2TBL. I like the look of it, but the thought of doing K2TBL for the 12-foot circumference of a blanket makes me want to run screaming into the street naked. Okay, not naked.

This one from wikiknitting.com uses K2tog. I don't like the zigzag ridge at the bottom of it.

This one from Knitpick's website uses SKP, I like this one the best and plan to use it.

So here are the directions that I plan to use. At the beginning of the bindoff row, cast on 3 stitches using cable cast on. Knit 2 stitches. SKP (Slip one, Knit one, pass slipped stitch over). Slip the last 3 worked stitches back to the left hand needle and repeat. I haven't worked out yet how to end the cord. Each side of the blanket is knitted separately. I think I'll have to leave the last 3 stitches live, add on the next side, pick up stitches along the edge of the new side, and possibly continue on around the corner. We'll see when we get there.

Oh, and here's a picture of the first square of the blanket. Went really fast.

Prairie is still languishing on top of the dryer, I may not have time to finish it before we leave for Lake Tahoe, I have appointments all day today and we leave tomorrow.

Log Cabin Baby Blanket

My husband's best friend in high school just became a grandfather. That rates a baby blanket, not just some quickie cap and sweater. I found several with techniques that interested me, but finally settled on the Valley Log Cabin Blanket in the interest of finishing the thing sometime before the little nipper graduates preschool. And of course, it was going to be a throw-in-the-washer and generally mistreat it sort of yarn. Vanna's Choice didn't have enough bright colors, so I settled on Caron's Simply Soft Brites in 7 colors bright enough to interest any baby that's been plopped down on it so that mother can go pee and get a cup of coffee. It's constructed of four panels with 14 strips in each panel. Here's 7 strips done in about 2 hours:

Should be good airplane knitting next Wednesday.

Have also made great progress on the Master HandKnitting Level I, finished up through swatch 15 and wrote up the pattern for it. All that's left now knitting-wise is to knit swatch 16, which is color work and not my strong suit, and the project hat. Then it's answering questions and writing a little report.

What has happened to Prairie, you may ask? She's languishing in unfinished sweater land. Front and Back are knit, blocked and dried, just need some kid-free time to figure out the crochet trim around the neck and armholes.

Knitting Progress

Since being essentially stymied by knitting mishaps the last couple of months, I have now managed to ACCOMPLISH something. The front and back of Prairie are now knitted and are drying (yarn faded somewhat, no longer that Aegean blue, but more sky blue now). Still plenty of finishing to do on it (must investigate crocheted crab stitch), but should be finished in time to take on vacation next Wednesday to ACTUALLY WEAR. Woo hoo!

Met with the girls today to work on the TKGA Master Handknitter Level 1 course. Am now on swatch 13, breezed right through the lace swatches already. We may fool around and finish this program by the end of summer!

Going to be going to South Lake Tahoe next week for Terry's stepdad's family reunion. Have never been, so of course have Googled yarn stores, one store in Lake Tahoe, 9 others in surrounding towns. Should be good shopping.

Prairie almost thrown out on the prairie

Finished the front, the double decreases look a little wonky, but it was that or huge armholes. I washed the front piece in Knit Wash that I bought at Hancock Fabric's and set it out to block. That's when the pain started. That thing grew and grew until it was absolutely huge. It could have wrapped around myself twice. I was so disapointed. So I set it on the top of the washer and went on to do other things. Changed it's status in Ravelry to frogged, added my 'angry' pic to it to designate it as a TOAD, put the needle back in the case and threw away the directions. Came back to it later and held it up to myself, and all of a sudden it wasn't huge anymore. Guess it contracted as it dried. I'm going to go ahead and knit the back (after going back into Ravelry and fixing that, and making new copies of the pattern after my kids dumped a wet paper towel on top of them in the trash).

I've also finally taken pics of my blocked swatches for the TKGA Master Handknitter Level 1 course. I have more finished, but ran out of blocking pins last night.



Sorry for the crappy pictures, it's cloudy today in OKC.

Prairie cabling error found at 11pm

I actually got to sit down in my own home on my own couch to watch TV and knit after eating a home-cooked supper last night. Wonders will never cease. I worked on Prairie and got to the point where you're to divide the fronts for the straps (it's a tank) and got distracted watching Leno's last night on the Tonite Show. When Conan O'Bryan made his appearance and I lost all interest, I started looking at Prairie to place stitch markers where the front neckline dividing decreases will be and found an error. A glaring error:

Did you see it? Look closer:

Yep, here it is in all it's uncrossed glory, a cable crossing left instead of right:

This will cost me 8 rows of ripping back and while keeping track of where I'm at in the armhole decreases. Grrr!

SSK is an ugly stitch

Well, the newness of Facebook is starting to wear off and I'm now returning attention to my other online interests.

I'm still working with Jo Ellyn Wheeler and Carolyn Faircloth on the TKGA Master course. Today we worked on the three swatches concerning decreasing. And I learned something that amazed me. I mean, really. I just sat there staring at it. I knit almost exclusively sweaters, which require shaping, a lot of it. I had vaguely heard of the term 'full-fashioned' but had yet to knit a pattern requiring it. Usually, your right-hand side of the garment decrease is an SSK (slip knit-wise, slip-knitwise, return both to left needle and knit the 2 together through the back loops), and the left-hand side is K2tog. These two are supposed to mirror each other but seldom do. Enter full-fashioned. This is the opposite, i.e. K2tog is on the right-hand side, SSK on the left. The regular way produces a vertical line up the side of the garment. Full-fashioned produces a series of 'slashes' pointing outwards at each decrease. Okay, to each his own.

Here's the part that amazed me. K2tog on the right-hand side MIRRORS K2tog on the left. I am NOT KIDDING. As soon as I take pics of my swatches, I'll point it out. Try it and see, I'll never do that ugly SSK again!

Also OTN, Prairie from Anny Blatt Timeless Classics from the Knit Collection.

Vacation Knitting

Well, the husband and I are driving to Dallas tonight to catch a plane tomorrow morning for 5 kid-free days in Jamaica! Woo hoo! Naturally, I have a cold. But the most important packing consideration for the trip is, of course, what knitting project or projects to take. I'm still in stash-busting mode, so I'm going to take that cheap, er inexpensive, acqua Sinfonia yarn and make a (silk purse out of a sow's ear) tank out of it, working in pieces.

Digression: everytime I get seduced to the dark side of knitting from the top down, I am reminded why I don't like that method. Sure the collar and yoke are fun, and it's exciting dividing for the arms and body. But after that the thrill is gone and you're left slogging through miles of knitting and having to constantly rearrange a huge mass of knitting in your lap. No fun and not very portable. And the stitches at the underarms stretch out forcing you to pick up more stitches than called for on the sleeves to hide the holes and then figure out how to decrease them away. End of rant.

So, back to the tank. I am knitting Prairie out of Anny Blatt Timeless Classics from the Knit Collection (I added the pattern to Ravelry, but there's no picture, since I'm not sure of the copyright violation of scanning in the picture published with it, although I've seen others on Ravelry do it). I bought this book when I first started knitting, but was so intimidated by it that it's sat on the shelf ever since. Anny, you're going down. I will conquer a pattern from you or die trying. Okay, not DIE, but the desperation of forcing two sticks and string into something beautiful sometimes approaches that emotion.

And what of the Master Level Handknitting course, have I flaked out on that as well? No, sir, I have finished swatches 4-6 and when I laid them out side by side, noticed swatch 5 was much shorter than the other two, due to the fact that I missed an increase. I'll have to completely redo it, so it's going into Time Out until I get back.