Author: Grace Page 11 of 12

I walked into the LYS at lunch yesterday for one ball of
black Lambs Pride and walked out with 5 balls of yarn.

They had a new kind of thick and thin yarn called Salsa
from Germany which I paired with a cotton cord for an
experiment in scribble lace. I am not fond of working on
large needles (15), but the results are worth the effort.
Now I have to go back to LYS to buy 3 more balls so my
scarf can become a stole.

On the outbound flight from LAX to Kona, a lady on the plane
had a copy of Debble New’s book, ‘Unexpected Knitting’.
The projects are a bit more involved than I would usually
undertake, but scribble lace looked doable. You knit
3 rows of thread or thin cotton cord and then 1 row of
a thick yarn in stockinette stitch on large needles. The
result looks like cobwebby lace.

I began with three armspans of the thick yarn, made a slip
knot, and then did a long tail cast-on until I had only 4″ left.
Then I knit 3 rows with the thin cotton cord, 1 row with the
thick n thin wool… Of course, this will only work with circular
needles.

(3 armspans should be enough yarn to cast on for something
one armspan long, slightly more or less depending on needle
size. Email me for the formula I worked out. But remember,
I was a math major in college.)

Ann’s progress and my lack of progress is a source of embarassment. I just managed to clean up my sewing room when the piles started to reemerge.

I lined up a bunch of balls of Cotton-Ease and told Iris mommy would make her a new sweater. Of course, she picked the only singleton ball, a medium lavender. I told her to pick a second color to combine with the first and she picked a light green.

In a fit of ambition, I decided to knit a sweater from the top down, with set-in sleeves knit as I went along (see Barbara Walker’s book), in a lace and cable pattern on the body. I then decided to make a semi-funnel neck, also knit in pattern. I left a yarn tail to continue the neck (no extra joins here).

Trying to figure out a good width to make the neck that goes over Iris’ head and continues the pattern from the body is no small feat. It ended up as a 1×1 rib. The yarn tail was too short so I had to join yarn in the neck after all. I used the green for 1 row and then bound off using a picot stitch. The front of the funnel neck is a bit droopy-looking, but maybe it will look better on Iris. That is, if she ever sits still long enough for me to get it on her.

Barbara Walker says knitting from the top down allows you to try the sweater on and check the fit as you go along. She didn’t mention that toddlers do not let you do that.

Anyway, I got to the bottom of the armpit, knit 4 rows more, then switched to the green using a 5×1 rib. Note to self, don’t even bother because you can’t see the 1 P stitch at all. The body is done and I have been stalled ever since I realized I miscalculated the # of sts required for the sleeves. It will have very
wide bat sleeves. I used the total armhole measurement instead of the arm measurement. The diagonal is always longer than the side. I will tell Iris to pretend she is a bat rather than rip it out. Remember, ripping the sleeves out means ripping the whole body out when knitting from the top down.

Anyway, I still have to update everyone on the domino sweater I made for Iris last spring which almost didn’t fit over her head because it started life as a potholder that grew and grew. Did I bother to measure her head and the neck opening? Of course not. That would mean stopping in the heat of creativity. Photos will be uploaded someday.

Did you know that the airlines do not allow even bamboo knitting needles on planes? I flew RT to Sapporo, then Berlin and am about to fly to Adelaide, and I can’t knit during the flights! Worse yet, because knitting needles need to be checked through to the final destination, I can’t knit during layovers either!

The next impossible challenge I set for myself is to find some possum fur fiber during my Australia trip for Ann to spin up.

I downloaded the “Chenille Diagonal Lace Scarf” pattern from the Martingale Publications website about a month ago. It is no longer on the website but the pattern is one of the projects in Nancie Wiseman’s book, “Knitted Shawls, Stoles, and Scarves.”

I used 2 skeins of Lion Brand Microspun in French Vanilla. I don’t know what size needle I used as I don’t care about gauge for a scarf. Why I made a second lace knitting project with a yarn that splits so easily is beyond comprehension. However, it was in my stash and I wanted to start a portable project for a car trip.

If I were to do it again, I would add some shortrows to make the darn edges lay flat at the corners.

It can be quite boring and tedious to do all those SSK’s on the second leg of the V scarf. I used a trick I learned in high school while teaching a friend to knit. She forgot which way the yarn travels on the perl stitch so she just pushed the yarn through sort of like the motion in the knit stitch. That makes the stitch lie the “wrong” way. On the knit side, the loops will lie with the left side of the loop facing you instead of the right side of the loop. That allowed me to replace the SSK with a simple maneuver. I just knit the next two stitches together through the back loops for a decrease that is the reverse of k2tog. It sounds more complicated than it really is. Just try it on a sample and it will make sense.