September 2007 Archives
... when you see this poking out of the top of your mailbox: 
And think, after the day at work that you had, a little yarn porn could make your day. "Yaay!"
So you pull out the "catalogue" only to find this:
I know my stash is an investment, great maker knows I've been trying to convince my husband that my yarn is an investment, but I didn't know they knew it!
How can you not love this?---> cakeyvoice: knitted hellboy
This blogger is amazing with her knitted zombies and now hellboy! I love it!
So, I present, Blumengruss Translation.
You will, of course, need the book for yourself, because there are a number of charts that need to be referenced and I won't reproduce them here. That would violate the copyright of the original author, so please don't ask.
Yarn: Lace Weight. It translates phonetically as pappy pappyness which I can't find reference to anywhere, but it seems like any laceweight will do. I list the color numbers below anyway.
Gauge: 24.5 sts and 60 rows over 10 cm. (This seems a little off to me, but it's what it says in the book)
Finished dimensions: 156cm x 84cm
Colors:
| Color Number | Color Name | Amount needed |
| 211 | Rose | 75g |
| 237 | Pink | 10g |
| 203 | Ivory | 15g |
| 206 | Light Grey | 5g |
| 219 | Purple | 13g |
| 220 | Wine Red | 5g |
Needles:
| Japanese Needle Number | mm | Closest US |
| 2 | 2.7mm | 2.75mm |
| 3 | 3.0mm | 3.00mm |
| 4 | 3.3mm | 3.25mm |
Directions:
With #2 needle and Rose yarn, cast on 3 stitches. Knit the first chart(Yellow area of diagram).
Use the e-wrap cast on for the increases at the end of the rows. 162 rows.
Place stitches on a holder or extra needle, break yarn.
With # 3 needle and Rose yarn, pick up 80 stitches on the first side of your knitting, pick up the three cast on stitches, and then 80 stitches along the other side, 163 stitches. (Pick up one stitch for every other row you knitted in the first chart.)
Knit rows 1-53 of second chart (the large chart) with needle #3, according to the color sequence in the chart below. (Pink area of the diagram.)
Change to #4 needle and knit the next 91 rows (chart rows 54-144).
Leave stitches on the needle, break yarn.
Color sequence: 30 row repeat, start from the bottom and work up.
| 5 rows | Rose |
| 3 rows | Purple |
| 2 rows | Wine Red |
| 3 rows | Purple |
| 5 rows | Rose |
| 2 rows | Pink |
| 3 rows | Ivory |
| 2 rows | Light Grey |
| 3 rows | Ivory |
| 2 rows | Pink |
| Setup of 6 rows Work only once. | Rose |
With #3 needle, cast on 22 stitches in a waste yarn using a provisional cast on.
With Rose yarn, knit edging chart, joining to outside edge of the last chart (around the bottom of the vee).
Knit on 846 rows of the edging chart to 423 live stitches of the bottom of the vee.
Knit on 144 rows of the edging chart to 144 rows of the end of the vee.
Knit on 326 rows of the edging chart to 163 stitches left on the holder from the first chart.
Knit on 144 rows of the edging chart to 144 rows of the other end of the vee.
Remove the waste yarn and graft the last row of the edging to the first row of the edging.
Soak, block and enjoy!
Now, I haven't knitted this yet, but it's high on my list. I may actually use a single variegated yarn instead of following the striping, or I may buy some KnitPicks laceweight and dye my own stripes, I haven't decided yet.
I've only seen one other version out there in blogland, and it was done in a handpaint and came out very nice. Maybe you were thinking about it but were put off by the pattern. Maybe this will help?
Let me know if you find any errors or info you may find valuable that I can add to the translation, then we can all have a good version of the pattern to work from.
I've been struggling for weeks with trying to translate some characters in the Blumengruss pattern from New Style of Heirloom Knitting. I was doing sort of ok with the kana because they are mostly foreign words and with some clever pronunciation, I could figure them out. (The best one so far? ra i to gu ri - light grey!)
But the kanji. The ABC's of Knitting covers quite a bit of the kanji I might need, but not all of it. It really only covers the knitting terms. But in the book, there are more than knitting terms, there are descriptions of the knitting that aren't covered in the ABC site.
Tonight I came across this site: The Kanji SITE - A guide for students of Japanese Kanji It's a well organized site, and even though you have to search several pages to find the character you are looking for, once you find it there are often very good definitions, and also definitions of the character combined with another character and even sometimes a "not to be confused with" example. I've not come across a site with such a nice layout and so much content.
Plus it has the kana as well, with charts comparing them and explanations of the combining of symbols with the characters, such as adding the degrees-looking symbol to he makes pe, and adding the quote marks-looking symbol changes he to be. Many of the charts on the wikipedia don't have all that. Plus there's some nice commentary on the pages, and the author clearly has a sense of humor, which many sites don't seem to have.
I'm thinking this will be helpful for translations of sites like Ten Old which has some beautiful Fair Isle style patterns (although I hear the author of that page speaks english if you email her) and also Pierrot which has a lot of crochet patterns available to download as .pdfs.
Anyway, I've still got more to figure out, but I thought I'd share this great resource.
It's damn hot in so. cal. today. I went to the gym and about died after exiting and heading home because during the hour that I was in the gym it got to be about 500F in my car and thank the great maker I was wearing longish pants because I surely would have had third degree burns when my pale white skin hit the charcoal grey leather interior of my CR-V.
So now I'm home and resisted putting on the A/C until about 3 pm when it was over 90F in my living room. I'm trying to listen to some music on my laptop while I convert a bunch of tunes I stupidly ripped in Apple Lossless(read GIGANTIC) files into much smaller AAC files.
But about every 20 minutes for the past 3 hours, the weather-alert radio goes off, and I have to run to the other end of the house and turn it off. So far we've had:
- Flash flood watch for the mountains north of LA but not the Santa Monica mountains
- Flash flood warnings for the Palmdale/Lancaster area
- Extreme temperature warnings for the valleys and northern LA county with temps of 106F to 113F til Sunday night
- Hailstones 5 miles north of Lancaster and Palmdale
- Tornado Warning!!
- Severe Weather Statement
- Hazardous Weather Outlook that includes Long Beach
- Excessive Heat Warning
We bought the radio because it had a short-wave receiver, and leave the WX on just because, why not, there may be a tsunami one day, and although we are 7 miles from the water, it might be useful to know it's a potentiality. And it goes off a few times a year, so no big deal. But holy cow, they must be having some crazy weather in northern LA county today.
If, and I'm not saying you are, but if you are the kind of person who:
- Makes a huge batch of spaghetti sauce in your
- Super-exquisite French Blue Le Cruset 8 Qt French Oven and
- At one point, the pot boils and sends molten spaghetti sauce all over your shirt, arms and counter and
- You slam the lid on that puppy, turn the heat down and change your shirt and let it simmer down for a few hours and
- You make a mess o'lunches for the week with the sauce and
- You pack all of the remaining sauce in nice neat quart-size freezer bags for later and
- You remember to remove the bags from the glass loaf pan you used to keep them upright in the freezer before they have frozen into a solid block of glass and sauce and
- Six full days later your husband says "babe, did you know there is spaghetti sauce all over the ceiling?" and
- As a matter of fact, you didn't know (see molten sauce on arms, above) then
Not that you, dear reader, would ever have a need, but just in case. Just putting it out there.
* I say passable housekeeping because a)someone else owns the name Good Housekeeping, and b)clearly Good Housekeeping would have noticed it six days earlier.
