I got my yarn out and casted on, so far so good. Well almost, no gauge conducted, just went with my gut feeling on the weight of yarn I was using. Come on, that is hardly not following a pattern (especially for someone as hardcore a non-follower as me). I made the raglan increases and it was going to be a straight forward knitting project following someone else’s instructions. But hey, no baby likes a plain onesie, what if I had a motif (it will break the monotony of just stockinette stitch as well). Yes that sounds fab, plus I am technically still following the pattern (“yeah right” mumbles boyfriend). So off I go and find a perfect gender neutral boat motif. This made the boring circular knitting fun and challenging enough for me to keep at it.

Now as I come closer to the shaping of the leg inserts, I think to myself, “Oh the bother of getting a crying baby in and out of this complicated outfit.” I am sure my sister-in-law would appreciate something simple to operate. Also, I have just seen this cool tutorial of the i-cord edging by a fellow blogger which I was dying to try and somehow the length of this onesie was just right to bind off as a jumper! This is perfect. I am doing my sis-in-law a favour and also learn something new. Surely I can make a onesie on the next go, I will give her two gifts. Yes thats what I will do. So thats exactly what I did. I bound off the supposed onesie as a finished jumper with a lovely darker colour edge.

Do you like it?

The story of my digressions do not end here, dear readers. It gets worse. My sister announces that she is going to have twins soon!! Oh the joy! that means twice the knitting! That’s it, the onesie can now be finally followed to the letter and I will redeem myself. You know where this is going don’t you?

Here are my faults all plain for you to see admire…

I have managed to learn a few more things with these new jumpers, a two colour long tail cast on (that totally eliminates that nuisance of guessing the amount of yarn you will need) and how to rib the neck before the raglan increases. Its funny but it is such small little steps forward in the learning process that makes knitting so addictive. To hell with plain ol’ stockinette… here is to more modifications and digressions from instruction sheets.

Once you achieve the increases then its just “TV knitting” from then on. Back and forth till you get the desired length. I wanted this cardi rather long so that I can also throw it on in springtime without a coat (I didn’t think it would be ready before then!). I also wanted my little cutie cat Hobbes to feature on my first major project.

Isn’t he just gorgeous! So this gave me an opportunity to try another technique I was quite keen to get going with – intarsia!! I got a bunch of cross stitch cat patterns and worked out the position of the motif and added that to the cardigan. Here is the complete cardi (sans sleeves) with my cat motif.

As much as I’d like to say, “isn’t the cat motif lovely?”, it does look a bit strange. My buddies at the knitting club did not even recognise the motif as a cat. So here is to better choice of motifs in the future. Well at least intarsia is no longer a mystery. Infact it was just a common sense approach, if you have a block of a different coloured yarn why bother carrying it all the way round? The trick is to drop it but wrap it with your primary yarn on your return, that’s it! If you don’t you get holes in your knitting. Even that is not any major stick as you can pick up the stitches later with a tapestry needle and some same coloured yarn. So all of you who always wanted to learn intarsia I say go for it. If you want more information on this I have re blogged a brilliant tutorial on intarsia from knitting daily.

Once I finished the sleeves and added the buttons, I then blocked the sweater and in about four days it was ready to go.

This has been quite a satisfying project and I am quite proud of it. I have learned some valuable construction techniques and importance of getting the shaping right, even though it is not perfect this time around. One of the biggest arrogance of mine was that I skipped swatching! Big mistake. It is a little less consequential with this loose fitted over the clothes cardigan but next time around I will swatch (as most good teachers will say to you).

Reblogged from Daily Fiber Adventures with Wildhare:

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Another knitter/etsy seller has named a series of scarves after me!  How cool is that!  How it happened:  we are both in etsyFAST (Fiber Arts Street Team), a group of sellers who support and challenge one another to make our shops the best they can be.  This seller posted in our yahoogroup about trouble she was having with the edges of stockinette-based scarves rolling. 

Read more… 863 more words

The Basics of Intarsia Knitting
Intarsia or “picture knitting” is a color-work technique used to create basic geometric shapes or complicated pictures in a knitted piece. Intarsia patterns can be worked in as few as two colors or as many as needed for a given design. Unlike Fair Isle knitting in which small, repeating patterns are created by alternating two strands of yarn in different colors across a row, intarsia designs are generally free-form, and each area of color is worked from an individual ball, bobbin, or length of yarn. When a color is not in use, it is dropped to the wrong side of the work until it is needed again on the next row for its designated stitches.

Intarsia patterns are generally worked from a chart in which each stitch is represented by a colored square or a square containing a color symbol. Charts for very large intarsia projects can even show every stitch of an entire knitted piece. If only one area of the project features an intarsia motif, then the chart will usually show only the stitches and rows used for the motif itself, and the instructions should tell you where to position it. Although most intarsia patterns are worked in stockinette stitch, there’s no reason not to explore the possibilities of texture stitches in intarsia patterns.

Getting Started
The key to working intarsia is to interlock the yarns when it’s time to change from one color to the next. At each color change, the old color is brought over the new color; then the new color is picked up from under the old color and worked from there. Overlapping the yarns catches the old color as the two strands “link elbows” and prevents a gap at the color change. Another important thing to note is that although the main color is often referred to as the background color, in intarsia knitting, an unused color is never carried horizontally across the wrong side of the work, even if it is needed several times across a single row. Each isolated area of background color requires its own separate bobbin, butterfly, or strand of yarn.

Working with Intarsia Charts As already noted, each square of an intarsia chart represents one stitch. Chart rows are read from bottom to top (the same way your knitting grows). Right-side rows are read from right to left, and wrong-side rows are read from left to right. You may find it helpful to draw arrows in the margins of the chart to indicate the correct direction of knitting. To keep track of the current row, use a magnetic strip on a metal board, or a long Post-it note, and align the strip or paper along the top edge of the row you’re working. Placing the marker above the current row allows you to see how it relates to the rows already completed.

Most knitters’ stockinette stitch contains more rows per inch than stitches per inch. If you’re creating your own intarsia design on graph paper, remember that any motif drawn on a square grid with the same number of rows and columns per inch will look more “squashed” from top to bottom when knitted. To prevent this, look for graph paper created especially for knitters in your local yarn shop or on the Internet. Knitter’s graph paper contains more rows than stitches per inch, so designs drawn on it will look more like the drawing on the graph paper when knitted.

Joining a New Color

Figure 1

Figure 2

Knit side (RS) Begin the row with the color indicated on the chart. When the chart shows that the next stitch or set of stitches is worked in a new color, drop the old color to the WS of the work. *Insert the right needle into the next stitch as if to knit. Leaving a 4″ (10-cm) tail of the new color, work the stitch with the new color. Let go of the new color, then pick up the strand of the old color and place it over the strand of the new color just worked. Keeping a slight tension on the old yarn, pick up the new yarn from under the old and make the next stitch with the new yarn (Figure 1).

Drop the old yarn and continue to work the stitches indicated on the chart for the new color. When it’s time to change colors again, repeat from *. Remember, if the chart indicates that the next set of stitches is worked in a color that you’ve already used, start a brand new strand of yarn or bobbin of that color. Don’t carry the old strand across the back of the work. When you reach the end of the row, turn the work as usual to begin a wrong-side row.

Purl side (WS) Begin the row with the color indicated on the chart. When the chart shows that the next stitch or set of stitches is worked in a new color, drop the old color to the WS (the side facing you). *Insert the right needle into the next stitch as if to purl. Leaving a 4″ (10-cm) tail of the new color, work the stitch with the new color. Drop the new color.

Pick up the strand of the old color and place it over the strand of the new color just worked. Keeping a slight tension on the old yarn, pick up the new yarn from under the old and make the next stitch with the new yarn (Figure 2). Continue to work the stitches indicated on the chart for the new color. When it’s time to change colors again, repeat from *.

Changing Colors after the First Join
Once the colors have been joined and the work is in progress, continue to work the stitches as indicated on the chart. When you come to a color change, drop the old yarn to the WS of your work, insert the needle into the next stitch as if to knit or purl, then bring the old yarn strand over the new before you take the first stitch in order to close the gap.

On the row after a completed motif, you no longer need to work with separate bobbins for the background color. Just work across the background color stitches with a single bobbin or strand of yarn, and snip off the unneeded strand when you come to it, leaving a 4″ (10-cm) tail to weave in later.

—Leigh Radford, from Interweave Knits, Spring 2006

Intarsia is a wonderful skill, and it’s really quite easy once you have the hang of it. The most important thing to remember is to drop the old strand of yarn over the new strand before you knit the first stitch with the new yarn. If you don’t do this, you’ll end up with a gap between the old and new yarns. We don’t want that to happen!

I have also found a wonderful YouTube tutorial for Intarsia if you prefer to learn by watching rather than reading .

This video comes from my favourite teacher on YouTube on everything knitting, author of http://verypink.com/

So use these wonderful tutorials to start your new year on a challenge that has limitless possibilities once you get going.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Wow lets have many more Dreamliner full interactions in the new year. This success has been totally unexpected, all thanks to the new friends we made both at the club and online. May there be plenty of beautifully handcrafted objects filing up your life in the coming year. Lets keep sharing the craft.

After a year in existence, here are some of us on our last pre-Christmas meeting -

As you can see we are normal!

PointedNeedles started with a simple desire to have a knitting club in the neighbourhood that was accessible to full time working people rather than the other afternoon clubs.

We have amongst us chemical engineers, primary school science teachers, environmental agency researchers, university lecturers and staff, physiotherapists, HR managers and more… Lively conversations and a healthy dose of urban humour that’s what makes PointedNeedles. Come join there’s plenty of room….

This one is a gorgeous dark grey with touch of red for the fussiest boy in the house. It is everything masculine and warm on cold crisp winter day. Made with Shetland wool this is the very first hat I have knit.

This second one is also a boy hat only a bit more flamboyant shall I say. The emerald green is striking and suits the wearer perfectly. This too is made from pure Shetland wool and the pattern is simple yet the twisty ribs have a dramatic effect once worn

This last one is for a young ten year old chap who when asked what colour he would like, swiftly said anything but pink! So I made him a fun but yet a boy colour hat. I repeated the twisted ribs on this one too but here as the colours are dominant it has a more subtle effect. The bobble just screams fun, don’t you think?

I started with a front panel for a vest. Now by this point I must confess – I hate measuring, anything. I am generally over confident that my approximations will be quite exact. And this from a scientist?! It’s just that measuring things means I can’t start knitting ASAP. So I casted on what I thought would be fine for my waist measurement and went to work. I love this little border pattern from Alice Starmore’s gorgeous Fairisle knitting book.

But soon I began to realise I was being rather optimistic about my cast on. I had a few options now, and one of them was unravel the whole thing and start again. But then the other problem that I wasn’t convinced I had enough yarn to make a vest for myself made me rethink the unraveling. Now here I display another unscientific nature of my personality. I buy yarns before I have any project in mind. In fact it almost always is the other way around, the yarn inspiring the project.

So I made the rookie decision to convert this vest panel into a beanie side panel. I was happy with its length if it were to transform into a beanie. So I set out and made a second panel exactly the same. Thus knitting my first beanie without any pattern help from the pros or circular needles.

Then I did the stupid thing of joining the two panels in flat!…

…realised this won’t work, and started watching some tutorials at last after eating my ego. It was at this point I knew that there was only one right thing to do, order a set of double pointed needles. I unravelled all the flat joining the top of the two panels, left the side joins intact. I then unravelled the two cast off rows and picked each stitch carefully on the double pointed needles.

Did I make sure I had equal stitches on each needles? Yes, approximately!
This is what I have now…

Phew! So have I learnt my lesson on making sure I know my measurements before starting? Well all I can say is, I have realised that the bigger and more ambitious the projects get the less of an escape route I will have If I don’t get more organised.

So here is an update of the back rest cover…

This back rest was knit with the same 3 strands of DK yarn knit together and a cable pattern from, you guessed it – 200 knitted blocks for blankets, throws and afghans (Paperback) by Jan Eaton (pg. 53).

My old office chair is now completely transformed in true yarn bombing style.

The rest of the furniture patiently awaits.

I am quite proud of these. And my friend loves them…so here’s to lovely presents all year round.