Knitters! (and hookers!)

[Sam_2.0]

Set I made for a friend's new baby girl


Blanket for co-worker's baby


Rainbow blanket for a sweet rainbow baby!


Jado sleeping with the blankie I made him


And for my best friend, TTC again after a loss. "Hope anchors the soul"

[cael]

Wow, nice work! Love the different stitches in the blankets (I always think just of basic granny squares) and love the teeny dress I haven't made any baby clothes yet, but I'm going to test run a baby sweater soon - i'm excited that it'll take a fraction of the time that adult/child sweaters take

[shopaholic814]

Hi everyone! I'm branching off the Women In Red Boards, trying to break out of my shell/shy exterior & trying something new. I hope you don't mind me jumping in, I've been thinking of learning something new. I would love to learn how to knit or crochet. I used to quilt, but I sold my very expensive Janome sewing machine a few years ago & haven't quilted since. But I have this thing with colors, I'm not quite able to "see" what colors will look good together in my head and I'm terrified of screwing it up.  That is part of the reason I stopped quilting, it was so darn expensive to buy fabric, then change my mind about the color.  I also painted years ago in grade school & High school, and did pottery in college. I miss having a creative outlet.

Sam_2.0's work is gorgeous!!  I see her stuff on FB & am in awe of her creations EVERY time!!  I don't know how she has the time for it!!  her work!!

[cael]

Welcome, absolutely jump right in! I haven't been doing a ton of stuff lately.. are you on ravelry? Tons of great ideas and patterns there. Do you have a local yarn store you could take a beginners class at for either knit or crochet?

Sam does do great work! I'm hoping since winter is coming I'll want to knit a little more, but I have homework occupying a lot of my time so that's also put a damper on my knitting, plus a shoulder issue that was making it uncomfortable to knit for long periods of time.

[shopaholic814]

Nov 17, 2015 15:18:03 GMT -5 cael said:

Welcome, absolutely jump right in! I haven't been doing a ton of stuff lately.. are you on ravelry? Tons of great ideas and patterns there. Do you have a local yarn store you could take a beginners class at for either knit or crochet?

Sam does do great work! I'm hoping since winter is coming I'll want to knit a little more, but I have homework occupying a lot of my time so that's also put a damper on my knitting, plus a shoulder issue that was making it uncomfortable to knit for long periods of time.

Sorry, I lost this thread & just found it today. I've been kind of busy with work/home, etc.  I've been Ravelry & have seen some of the beautiful work & patterns there. There is a local high-end yarn shop, in a college town about 25min from me. I haven't really looked into other shops since I don't have a lot of time right now. I have a good friend from church who would give me some beginner lessons when I have the time. She knits & another friend from my husbands' work crochets. I would love to learn scarves, shawls, fingerless gloves, hats & blankets. I'm not big on sweaters yet. If I can just learn the basic stitches & learn to read the patterns, I think I can figure it out. I hope at least! 

[cael]

Oh sweaters take soo much time and focus lol. Definitely start with scarves! Fingerless gloves are actually pretty easy too, you can start knitting them flat and sewing them together before learning to knit in the round (which is actually not as hard as it looks). I'm kind of bad at reading patterns, complex ones at least... but if you have someone show you the stitches, practice it and get comfortable with it, you can definitely teach yourself a lot from there.

We're at my SIL's right now, and my youngest nephew wanted to learn to knit a year or two ago. He hasn't done it in a while (he's 8 now) and asked if I could help him remember how. I showed him and he remembered pretty quickly! He wants to make a washcloth or a scarf... I suggested he make it washcloth sized and see how he felt from there. Scarves take commitment lol, and he doesn't take a lot of time to do it, so it'd take him forever.

[Sam_2.0]

I've never made a blanket for DH. So working on a KC Royals one for him except I mis counted and had to rip out 30 rows

[Deleted]

I'd forgotten about this thread! I've been busy; this time of year I make hats for Project Warmth. I've had a lot of fun playing with color patterns. Here are a few examples; the mittens are just a pair we found in our closet when we were downsizing, so I didn't make those.

I just picked up a book on knitting for charity by Debbie Macomber; plenty of good places to send your work where they'll keep someone warm- everything from helmet liners for soldiers to clothing for kids in orphanages in Eastern Europe.

[haapai]

I seem to have taught myself how to knit continental last night. 

Here's how it happened. 

I was knitting an all-white toe-up sock just to see if I had gotten good enough at short-row heels to never have to use the Kitchner stitch again. 

I got bored.  I found some pretty dribs and drabs of yarn and started mucking around.  Then I googled fair isle knitting.

I could not keep track of the two balls of yarn well enough to figure out if I was consistently crossing them correctly, also, I hated de-twisting the yarn. 

So I put a ball of yarn on either side of me and figured out how to somehow get the yarn on the left over the needle in the correct direction. 

After knitting the heel with the help of an Arne and Carlos vid, I continued working only in continental. 

And I remembered it in the morning. 

I think that I have caught the fair isle bug.  I'll be knitting thicker socks from now on.  And some day, maybe, I'll learn how to purl continental-style.  Maybe. 

[mmhmm]

Dec 18, 2019 18:09:44 GMT -5 haapai said:

I seem to have taught myself how to knit continental last night. 

Here's how it happened. 

I was knitting an all-white toe-up sock just to see if I had gotten good enough at short-row heels to never have to use the Kitchner stitch again. 

I got bored.  I found some pretty dribs and drabs of yarn and started mucking around.  Then I googled fair isle knitting.

I could not keep track of the two balls of yarn well enough to figure out if I was consistently crossing them correctly, also, I hated de-twisting the yarn. 

So I put a ball of yarn on either side of me and figured out how to somehow get the yarn on the left over the needle in the correct direction. 

After knitting the heel with the help of an Arne and Carlos vid, I continued working only in continental. 

And I remembered it in the morning. 

I think that I have caught the fair isle bug.  I'll be knitting thicker socks from now on.  And some day, maybe, I'll learn how to purl continental-style.  Maybe. 

I learned continental knitting on a Rhine cruise years ago. A European woman and I were sitting in the observation area quietly knitting and she took an interest in how I was knitting as opposed to how she did it. We ended up sharing and had a great time for several hours.

[haapai]

Tell me more.  Did you have a language in common?  Did you pull out scrap yarn to practice with?  Were you both proficient enough in knitting back instead of ripping that you didn't care about mucking up your pieces?

I have a feeling that I will soon become proficient at knitting back.  It seems to be part of the fair isle tool kit.  What I don't understand is why I never knew that it existed before. 

[mmhmm]

Dec 19, 2019 17:57:45 GMT -5 haapai said:

Tell me more.  Did you have a language in common?  Did you pull out scrap yarn to practice with?  Were you both proficient enough in knitting back instead of ripping that you didn't care about mucking up your pieces?

I have a feeling that I will soon become proficient at knitting back.  It seems to be part of the fair isle tool kit.  What I don't understand is why I never knew that it existed before. 

Yes. Thankfully, she spoke English as she was Eastern European and I don't have any of those languages. We both had plenty of yarn, fortunately, and weren't making anything of value- just test swatches to perfect tension, etc. She showed me how to knit back. Such a nice gal and really as interested as I was in learning how others do things. I'd never realized there was another way to knit, either.

[haapai]

Wow, you'd never heard of continental?  That blows my mind.  I'm pretty sure that one of the first things said to me when the first person tried to teach me to knit for the first time was "This is how I learned.  There's other ways."

ETA:  I didn't mistype that last sentence.  When we speak, "There's other ways" isn't uncommon or uncouth.  It's only when you type it out that you realize that "There are other ways" is what you want to type, except for that voice in your head that tells you that, that isn't what she said. 

[Apple]

I'm just posting now that this thread is revived, and I don't want to forget to read back.  I've learned to quilt, crochet, and knit (in that order) in the last 3 1/2 years.  Each was brought on by wanting to tackle a certain task, and I'm doing that with knitting, am kind of there with crochet, and my next hand quilting project is finally the one that led me to the craft.

I'll post more when I catch up later!

[mmhmm]

Dec 19, 2019 18:23:44 GMT -5 haapai said:

Wow, you'd never heard of continental?  That blows my mind.  I'm pretty sure that one of the first things said to me when the first person tried to teach me to knit for the first time was "This is how I learned.  There's other ways."

ETA:  I didn't mistype that last sentence.  When we speak, "There's other ways" isn't uncommon or uncouth.  It's only when you type it out that you realize that "There are other ways" is what you want to type, except for that voice in your head that tells you that, that isn't what she said. 

No, I'd never heard of it. I learned to knit from a book (and hours and hours of practice) so I really didn't have anyone to tell me there were alternate methods to get the job done. The continental way is really easier, once you get a handle on it.

[haapai]

Actually, I can understand what you are saying.  I also leaned heavily on books when learning to knit and while trying to learn how to croquet.  Even when those books are completely honest about telling you that there are other ways, it does not pique your interest quite as much as watching someone produce what you are trying to produce using a completely different technique. 

[haapai]

I am evil.  I am reviving this thread. 

I've become entranced by the eye of partridge knitting pattern.  I've knit several sock heels using this stitch pattern despite my suspicions that the exquisite pattern will disappear with wear. 

Do any of you have any experience using this absolutely entrancing stitch on scarves or hats?  Are there multi-strand variants that I don't know about yet?  

I'm in love with the stitch but it only enthralls me when it is knit pretty tightly over fairly small needles.  When I try to use thicker yarn and/or wider-diameter needles things get messy and reading my work becomes very difficult.  It also curls like crazy despite the border of four garter stitches on my swatches. 

Can I use this mathematically entrancing stitch on anything except sock heels and scarves knit in the round? 

[Sharon]

I had to google that pattern as I was unfamiliar with it.  I found this

[megaptera]

Also, here is a free hat pattern made from that stitch.

I've never used it on socks (and I've made PLENTY of them ), but want to try it sometime.

[teen persuasion]

Interesting. I hadn't heard of that stitch before.

I know I've done a slip stitch pattern on sock heels, reportedly to make them thicker, but I don't remember it having that honeycomb look. I thought it was more of a rib look; maybe it depends on odd/even numbers, and mine weren't lined up the same. It was years ago, and I was working from written instructions with no detailed picture, so maybe I was doing it wrong. I did have trouble reading/remembering which row I was on, slip or knit; I prefer mindless patterns I can either do w/o thinking or easy to read/remember repeats.

I keep telling myself I want to try toe-up socks, but I just haven't started yet...

[haapai]

I've lost my interest in toe-up socks.  I loved the thought of no Kitchner stitch, no picking up stitches on the heel flap, and the ability to knit the cuff until I ran out of yarn, but I'm over that now.   I have high arches, so heel flaps work well for me.  There are some alternate ways of knitting the heel on a toe-up sock that promise to accommodate higher arches, but I've never been terribly successful with any of them.  I have a lot of socks that are hard to get over my heels or have holes in the back of the heel, so I'm gonna stick with heel flaps for a while. 

Were you attempting to use a slip-stitch pattern with a decrease-row heel instead of a flap?  Yeah, I can see how that would get a bit confusing until the rows of slipped stitches established themselves.  Attempting to use eye of partridge instead of the standard reinforcing slip stitch that forms rows would be madness.  

I'm afraid to attempt any project that involves knitting eye of partridge in the round for similar reasons.  The pattern is a gazillion times harder to read and very dependent on the size of the needles used and thickness of the yarn.  Knit on needles too small, the pattern disappears into something that appears very flat.  Knit on needles too large, the pattern disappears too.  I have no idea how I would keep track of it in the round and I can easily see myself knitting the brim and several rows of pattern before figuring out that I was using a combination of needles and yarn width that would never establish into a pattern that pleased me or could be read if I ever deviated from some rather strict use of stitch markers.