Yes, I'm still crazy about yarn, so I sneak in a row or two (or fifty) in between priorites. Here's what I've been doing for the past 6 weeks....
This is one of my favorite projects. Experimenting with instructions from Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top, I tried a top-down raglan with no front, in hopes of making a shrug, and then something very similar to the One-Skein-Wonder slowly emerged.
Increase #6 is also my new favorite double increase, though the book's instructions are easier done than said. Essentially, when you come to the seam stitch, make a lifted increase on the right leg of the stitch below, knit into the back of the seam stitch, then make another lifted increase on the left leg of the stitch below. The way she words it (and please forgive me Barbara, for I still think you're a genius) about knitting into fronts and backs is all wrong. The way I look at it, the front of a stitch is relative to the way it's mounted on the needle. Knitting into the front produces a standard knit stitch, and knitting into the back produces a twisted knit stitch. If you knit English with all your stitches mounted with their right legs in front, then you knit into the front by inserting your needle from left to right. If you knit combination, and all your knit stitches have their left legs in front, then knitting into the front means inserting your needle from right to left.
This is from my hand-painted yarn collection: blue, yellow, and green McCormick food coloring on Patons Classic Merino in Gray Mix. I piled the hank loosely in a bowl and randomly squirted colors all over, not caring if they ran together, and microwaved it.
I loved the pattern so much, that I made another, in Lion Cotton. Like the first, it took only 1 skein with less than a yard to spare. I calculated by knitting the body, then the front border, and finally divided the remaining yarn in half to work each sleeve until I ran out.
Those little shrugs are great. I really love that varigated yarn you made. Is there any manufacturer that makes a similar varigated quality cotton yarn? I did get some dishcloth cotton but I don't think it'll do for the top I plan on making for the daughter.
ReplyDeleteI know that Blue Heron makes some wonderful cottons. If I were to make my own, I'd use mercerized cotton, like Reynolds Saucy Sport, but with Procion MX fiber dyes instead.
ReplyDeleteI love your shrugs -- the handpainting is lovely on the first one!
ReplyDeleteI agree - those are very cute shrugs, especially the pink one (pink is my favorite color)!
ReplyDeleteYour shrugs are gorgeous. The variegated yarn is really neat, I'll have to try dyeing my own yarn sometime. You can enable Blogger to email you when you get comments, by adding an email address in your Comments setting.
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