On The Knitting Needles

A coworker saw me knitting in the lunchroom one day and asked me if I could knit a Christmas stocking.  I can knit socks, and my 'no' was broken that day, so I said sure, probably! 

He's a granddad and his mother had in the past knit stocking for the entire family to hang on the mantle during the holidays, but she has dementia and is no longer able to knit.

He brought in her folder and a picture of all of the stockings she has made, and one actual stocking for me to see.

It's pretty awesome...

My camera has a dead battery so this is a scan, it's folded in half, and the toe is showing up at the left corner.

This is charted knitting, something I hadn't attempted before.  Last night while watching Rizzoli and Isles I thought I'd do a gauge swatch and see whether the letters would look decent.  The child's name is Krewe (pronounced like "crew"), and it's from the family's ancestry somewhere.

Here's my chart:

The stocking is 55 stitches wide, folded in half.  So that means you have to fit the letters into half the number of stitches or 27.5.  Leaving at least one stitch on either side and disregarding the half stitch, that leaves 25 stitches for the letters K-L-E-I-G-H.  (Pronounced 'klee').

The chart for the alphabet showed all letters being four stitches wide.  Four times six is 24 plus five spaces between letters is 29.  Too big.  I had to skinny up some of the letters.  K and G didn't work but the rest of the letters did, so I got it down to the proper size, at least on paper.

Of course if you're a knitting, you know that you read the chart upside down in this case because it's a top down pattern.  Mom had actually written out the stitch by stitch instructions to the other names in her folder.  As in "Row 4:  k1r, k2w, k1r" for knit 1 red, knit 2 white, knit 1 red"... etc.  I can totally see why she would have done this!  Once you get into the snowman pattern, this would come in  so handy!

Then there's the whole knitting with two colors thing.  You have to twist the yarns around each other in order not to leave a hole in the knitting.  And don't pull too tight or the letters bunch up, and not too loose or they stretch out resulting in a different kind of hole.  I had to stop at some of the more exciting spots in the TV show during this part!

My gauge appears to be OK, and my letters are even decent. 

Of course I didn't read the directions completely so I cast on too many stitches (64 instead of 54) so I have overhang, and the name was supposed to be on the OTHER side of the seam, so I'm glad I was using this for gauge instead of it being the real deal, or I'd be ripping it all out and starting over!

All in all, I'm pretty pleased.  Now I just have to buy a skein of blue yarn because of all the colors I have in the stash, that's the one I don't have in sufficient quantity.

Can I knit this before Thanksgiving??  Don't know, but I'm giving it a try!  This much took me most of an hour last night.  No, I'm not showing you the back.  It's not bad, but it's not great.  I hope this gets easier, and I've been watching knitting videos on YouTube.

I've got more projects in the works, a few quilts going, and I cut out some pants for myself last weekend.  It will be a busy summer!

Knit and sew on...

Judy Made Me Do It!!

Most mornings I do the same thing, my regular routine... I get up and shower, get ready for work, go downstairs to greet the hubby and grands, make my lunch and drive to the office.  Today, hubby said "the computer's broken", which really means "I saw something I didn't understand, can you please fix it?"

It was a pretty easy fix, a Microsoft message that didn't require response, but then I had to check the internet, because he has to check the bank statement and his lottery numbers or the whole day will go badly.

So I checked a couple of my favorite websites, Rita's Sew Fun blog and Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times. 

Judy loves a yarn shop in Colorado called the Loopy Ewe.  I've seen her blog about Loopy challenges, and her yarn stash grows with the most gorgeous colors of hand-dyed yarn that I have ever seen.  And when she knits these wonderful yarns into garment she posts photos that make me jealous -- first of the yarn and second that she actually completes things!

I saw a scarf she knitted called the Hitchhiker.  There's a reference to a book about 43 steps or something, I know I'm not getting it right, but this scarf has one edge that curves around your neck, and the other has periodic decreases that create little steps.  You can find the pattern like I did, on ravelry.com, which is a site for knitting and crochet projects and patterns.  You join for free, but the pattern is not.  I bought it and made one with some variegated yarn I had, which turned out really well.  If I had taken a picture before I gave it away, you'd see it here.  (Next one, I promise.)

Today I also checked out Just Quilting, a blog by Denise Russart who also sews and knits.  She was talking about having sent in an inspiration for colors for hand dyed yarn to guess where, Loopy Ewe!  Her color is called Denise's Mandarin Duck.  OMG the picture of the duck is gorgeous.  She said Judy had asked her about it.

Of course I HAD to go look at the yarn at loopyewe.com.  I had to. 

Judy made me do it!

I ordered some -- not the Mandarin Duck, I started looking at the colors and the other hand dyed yarns, and before I knew it, I had five skeins in my cart.  I bought some red/teal/black/white called Lisa's World Fair Celebration dyed by Lorna's Laces, and some green/teal/brown called Lark which is dyed by Huckleberry Knits.

I'm going to try the Loopy Challenge for the second quarter of 2014, which is to knit (and finish and post a photo) of something made with multicolored yarn. 

If you read my blog you know that my speed is little things that knit up quickly.  Baby sweaters, doll clothes.  Scarves.  Maybe some socks.  This challenge will have to be done by the end of June.  Wish me luck!

Hopefully I can do something for myself.  I was thinking of another Hitchhiker that I will keep. 

Fingers crossed... knit on!