I bought this Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton last year from Hershnerr’s Yarn Sale (which sometimes has some nice stuff!) and have had in mind a ribbed cardigan as the project for this yarn.

I started with a size 3.75mm needle, my Barbara Walker treasury, and some 2×2 rib, and 3×3 rib. I did a full repeat of the cable and realized I didn’t like it, so then I switched to 3.25 needle and I really like the result a lot better.

Last night I brought it to Stich n’ Bitch and showed the women what I was up to. Once again, Monika had a great idea of 3×2 rib, because she liked the width of the 3 stitch stockinette rib, and the width of the 2 stitch purl ditch. And I gotta say, I agree. She’s got the vision, and once she puts it in my head, I discover that she’s really got the vision. So I think I’ll try a swatch of that next. This one is a whole ball, and I bought two bags, so I think I’ll have plenty of yarn for more swatching.
I think I’ll use the The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns to figure the rest of it out.

I also started playing with the idea of knitting some gloves, starting with the fingers. Why? Why not? That way every finger will fit perfectly! I don’t know, I may give up in boredom, but since I had my i-cord thingy out, I started by knitting some i-cord in waste yarn. This was a tip I picked up on one of the lists I’m on. It gives you something to hold onto while getting started.

As I mentioned previously, I am participating in a knit-along. Since I am not really knitting the sweater as intended, I am able to experiment a bit. The topic came up on the KAL list that one woman was seeing strange results on her twisted stitches, and suspected that it had to do with the fact that she’s knitting in the combination style.
In combo knitting, you wrap your knits just like western knitting, but when purling, you wrap the stitches in the opposite direction, so the legs fall to the back of the needle. When I knit a large amount of stockinette, I really prefer combo knitting because I think my knitting looks so nice and even with no signs of rowing-out. But one thing that I have noticed is that in addition to the stitches being placed differently in combo knitting, the stitches also look different after they’ve been purled. Everything is recovered once it’s off the needle, but while it’s on the needle, I think it looks weird.
Trying to explain it in words isn’t easy, so I offered to take some photos. Feel free to offer any commentary you have.

This is an example of combo knitting, after completing a knit row, as seen from above, looking down at the needle. Looks normal, right?

Here is an example of Combo Knitting after completing a purl row. See how the stitches are seated opposite to western knitting? See how the yarn seems un-twisted, compared to the after-knit shot?

Here’s a picture after knitting halfway across the last purl row, so you can see the two together. Knit stitches look normal, purled look unfurled. The bottom stitches are the knitted ones, the top stitches were purled.

Here you can see that the result looks normal, the stitches look great after all is said and done.
For info about combination knitting, see:
or

This is Knitpicks Swish Superwash in Ballerina on size 3.5mm needles. It comes out at 30 st over 5 3/8 inches. That’s about 5.6 stitches per inch. Not exactly how Jade Starmore intended, but I am swatching for what I would call a sweater inspired by her beautiful Beadwork. I only have the child’s size pattern, from her book A Collector’s Item. There is an adult pattern out there in Interweave’s Winter 99/00 issue, but I am sure it’s not in my size, so I would still have to do the math. I am thinking of using this yarn (but probably not this color) for a baby sweater, since it’s superwash but still wool. It’s wonderfully soft yarn, and I may buy some more for a sweater for me, so I don’t have to be so dainty with my sweaters. If you know me, you know I’m not dainty. ;/
Here’s another swatch. I watched Annie Modesitt on Knitty Gritty. She did a Corset T and it was really cute. I read the pattern and it specified a yarn that she calls Worsted Weight, but the website for the yarn calls DK. I emailed for clarification, but while I was waiting for a reply, I got out this Knitpicks Merino Style and started swatching. The top of the swatch was made up in my head, I forgot to print the pattern and didn’t feel like booting up to look it up, so I just started making stuff up, some double decreases and increases over some garter stitch and k2p2 rib. I loved the look so ordered a bag of Merino Style in Iris, the same color I used for the obi of my Kyoto sweater. Then I heard back from Annie that the yarn was definitely worsted weight. So, I’ll once again have to do some math. Whatever. I love this yarn, so I don’t mind.
But here’s the problem. I have finally started to do something about my weight and am going to Weight Watchers. So far, it’s working! I am down 13 pounds so far, and plan to keep going. I won’t tell you how much, but it’s a lot. So I am thinking about avoiding knitting things that will end up being too big when I am done. This one is rib all over, so might work for a while but eventually, if all goes well, it won’t fit. Do I knit it anyway, and then frog it and reknit it again in a year or so? (The idea of re-knitting Kyoto kills me, but I will one day, and have plenty of yarn left over!)
Meanwhile, I hope to pick up some linen for the shawl from Big Girl Knits this weekend, for after my xmas knitting and other ideas.

I took two classes taught by Melissa Leapman. The first was Basic Pattern Drafting. I thought it was going to be the basics of pattern drafting, but it was more like the drafting of a basic pattern. A drop shoulder sweater, even. Oh well, next time I’ll pay attention better when reading the class description. But, I actually did learn a few things towards the end, and even got a refresher on solving simultaneous equations. I did it the hard way when figuring out the front of Kyoto, so that would have come in handy and will definitely go into my knitting notebook. All in all, I am glad I took the class, just for the second half when we got more into the interesting stuff like set in sleeves and planning decreases or increases.
You don’t actually do any knitting in this class. She has you create some swatches and then has you measure them in class, to demonstrate the correct way to measure gauge. She also has you measure your bust measurement with a tape, and then with a piece of string, to show that a lot of people make their bust fit the number they are going for on the ruler rather than the actual measurement. I did measure a half-inch difference, but some people were up to 3 or 4 inches different when measuring the string instead of the tape.
The second class I took from Ms. Leapman was Fully Fashioned and Fabulous. This class has a few homework swatches that you build on in class. She discusses moving ribs across a garment and the types of figures that this style might flatter.
She talks about interesting neck treatments, such as splitting a cable along the neckline and having it meet at the back of the neck.
This swatch demonstrates another way of travelling your ribs by using YO for your increases instead of an M1 type increase, leaving a trail of lace along the edge as it moves. I liked this one.
And here is an example where the lace has a series of increases and decreases, and where you can continue the lace pattern as you split for the collar. You could continue the collar as in the cable swatch above.
She discussed the idea of letting your knitting do what it wants to do instead of fighting with it, as in the case of the stockinette collars. She has you cast on stitches at each edge and then you let them roll to the inside, making a nice smooth edge, which is exactly what the yarn wants to do. Pretty neat, eh?
I really enjoyed this class and it gave me lots of jumping-off points for designing my own sweaters. This class, along with Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English, and the other classes I took at Stitches really have my mind going and I am hopefully going to design a sweater for me (instead of just a kiddie sweater) with lots of nice design elements that fit.
Ms. Leapman is an interesting personality with a sense of humor and a great attitude. I really enjoyed her as an instructor. She had lots of stories of mistakes she has made, or that her assistants have made, which added a lot of humor to the class. A bit of a reminder that this is all supposed to be fun, so we should do good work, but not take it all so seriously. After all, it’s just string – you can unravel it and start over when you make a mistake.

Sorry if you are on the RSS feed and getting repeating entries. I am now having time to add in URLs, correct spelling mistakes and add pictures into entries from earlier in the week so I have been republishing some entries with updates. Hopefully it’s all good info so no one will be upset about it!

This was the first class I took, right after arriving on Thursday afternoon. I don’t really have a problem with my short rows, but I thought that more knowledge in the old brain is better than less, so why not try something new?
Susanna Hansson has you knit two generous homework swatches so you are ready to go right away when you arrive in class. She has everyone start with the “before” part of the short rows, and then wait for everyone to catch up before moving on to the “after” part. So there are times when you are either bored waiting or furiously knitting, depending on your speed. For me, it was fine, I got to work on my side project during the waiting time, which wasn’t too bad since I am not a speed demon.
Then she has everyone start back to the point of working across the short row stitches and has everyone wait again so we can all have the same Aha! moment together. And we did! This technique is great and really isn’t visible on the front side of the work.
Next you start on the second swatch and this time you are doing the shaping in the opposite direction, so she again has you wait to learn this technique with everyone together, and again, it looks great.

Since we were moving along at a decent clip, she threw in an additional technique called Japanese 3-needle bind off. This is basically just pulling the back needle’s stitches through the front needle’s stitches in one pass across the needle, then binding off the traditonal way with the stitches that are now on a single needle. I had accidentally discovered this technique myself when I was first trying to do a 3-needle bind off, but it didn’t look as nice as the way she demonstrates it, with specific placement of the needle into the stitches for each movement. It really looks nice.
The swatches here have been worked from class and then bound off using the above technique. I haven’t blocked the swatch, and if you look closely, you can see the short row turns every five stitches across the very center edge of the swatch. I am sure that blocking will remove the slight indication of where I turned.

For those who want to see the back.. here it is. Same thing here, you can make out where the turn happened, but I’ll bet after blocking it won’t show. I may block this swatch and post later if I think of it. I have been knitting so much since returning from classes last Sunday. All these classes have really pulled me out of a bit of a funk I’ve been in the past few weeks, and I can’t wait to knit every day now.
Ms. Hansson was a lovely teacher, open to ideas from the audience and I think she learned some things from us also. It’s always a good sign when a teacher is also willing to be a student. I really enjoyed the class and this makes me want to rip out my progress so far on Eris and re-do my short rows.

If you have a Palm, you may have tried out the program called “Palm Life”. This is one of a number of programs designed to demonstrate the idea of a cellular automaton. Based on a set of rules, a cell either reproduces or doesn’t. The rules are there to keep the organism from reproducing too quickly, using all of it’s resources, and dying off.
Debbie New introduces this idea to your knitting. You can make up some rules, and then apply them to each stitch as it is presented as you are knitting. What a fun class! You end up with cool fractal-looking designs in your knitting if you use two or more color knitting. But you don’t have to stop there, you can use YOs instead of colors. Or cables – twist to the left if the rule applies, or twist to the right if it doesn’t apply – or have more than one rule and test each rule as you get to the next stitch.
The class was a bit unstructured, sort of like a lab, where she gives you some rules and then lets you go as she wanders the room to see what you come up with. She offers some guidance as she travels the room and it really feels like you are experimenting. It was a very different experience than the other classes I took while at Stitches. I really liked it. Ms. New is the kind of teacher I loved in High School, the kind that led you to an idea but stopped short of showing you the result – but let you discover it yourself. Those were the kind of classes I loved in school, and I am discovering that I still like it that way.

I made this sweater a few years ago (I bought the yarn at the last Stitches Market in Oakland, I think) and the pattern called for a Fun Fur collar. Well, if you know me, there is no way I am letting a bunch of fuzzy, furry stuff touch my face without me trying to rip my skin off in irritation. So, I decided to just do a simple 2×2 rib collar and I have hated it since I finished it. It never looked right, and I just didn’t know what to do to fix it, but vowed if I ever figure it out, that I would rip out the collar and re-do it. I even have saved the leftover yarn because I was sure the collar would need to be longer, I just didn’t know what to do to make it right.

Well, now I know. I took Maureen Mason-Jamieson’s class called Collar Obedience Training and now have the skills to make a nice collar on my purple sweater. (Just as soon as I finish Kyoto. I swear. I think.) She provides instruction in creating a collar stand, then some strategically placed increases that basically force the collar to stand up, roll over, and point.
You start with a homework swatch of a little cardigan sweater top – a back and two sides. At the end of the class, you have a lovely collar that just sits there all perky by itself. Amazing.
She even threw in another technique which I may use on the very same sweater, since I steeked it. She showed how to enclose an edge by picking up stitches on both sides of the garment edge, then joining to form a single edge. I have also not really liked my button band, and even bought new buttons, so I think this is my chance to get rid of some of the bulk on the front of the sweater and replace it with … different bulk, but much better looking.

Ms. Mason-Jamieson shared freely and asked lots of questions to get us thinking. She does really want you to follow along though, to keep things moving so everyone can get to the same point. She didn’t expect that everyone would finish, and I am not sure everyone did, but most people were able to get to the point of Aha! where you see the collar starting to flip. It takes a lot of fabric to make a collar long enough to look good, which was what I suspected all along. It was great to find out how much and what to do to get that nice flip.

I signed up for Stitches when it was first announced, then picked up Sally Melville’s Color book a few weeks later when I needed some help working the front of the Green Lantern sweater. I wanted to make sure I was doing it right at the color changes, which I wasn’t happy with in my swatching. The book helped tremendously, and I also used her advice on the duplicate stitching on the Green Lantern.
I started thinking maybe I should pick another class for Sunday morning instead since I figured I knew how to do it now… but I am so glad I didn’t. I learned a lot and even taught Ms. Melville a new trick!
She has you pickup from a small homework swatch and start knitting, and takes you through the various ways you will encounter the yarns crossing as you knit intarsia. Sometimes the next color is far away and you need to span the back of your work a bit, and she shows you how to handle that, and how to maybe catch floats if you need to. She also shows you how to weave in stitches on the back if you decide to not go for a “pure intarsia” work. She shows this technique for both right- and left-hand yarn hold, and when you are working on the front and back of the work. (This last bit ended up as a refresher for me from Beth Brown-Riensel’s Norweigan Purls class, which I took a few years ago at TKGA and which contained so much info, some of it leaked out. It was great to see how it works again.)
After this class I feel a lot more confident in my intarsia, that I know how to handle each of the different ways the yarn might present itself and make the public side look great. I don’t know how much I will use the technique, but with the book and the notes, I am sure I will be able to produce something nice.
So, what did I teach Ms. Melville? I shared my technique of doing the duplicate stitch upside down to bridge the edge of two colors meeting underneath, as I did on the Green Lantern. She hadn’t thought of that before and thought it quite clever.

Ok, who knew I was there anyway? I took some great classes which I will describe over the next few days. I met some nice people, and some not-so-nice people. I bought some cool stuff, and learned a lot!
I’ll try and update this later in the week with some pictures of the goodies. UPDATE: I’ve added the pictures today (Feb 25).
The shopping
I bought some Microfiber Ribbon from Next was a bag of Noro Kureyon from Webs. Strangely, I am thinking of a raglan sweater again, but maybe with black sleeves and edgings, I don’t know. We’ll have to see. UPDATE: In the photo, you can also see a skein of some yarn I won at the Student Banquet. It seems to be a worsted weight wool. It was dontated by Carolina Homespun, along with some dyes and the book Yarns to Dye For : Creating Self-Patterning Yarns for Knitting so I will be sending them a thank you note and asking what I’ve got here, in case I want more. It’s lovely and soft.

Next is two skeins of bamboo from Habu. I still love my scarf from a few years ago and it’s holding up great, so I bought two more skeins so I can make a larger scarf out of it. It’s a red color, sort of brick red, I guess.

I also bought a tiny skein of cashmere in a green variegated color. It’s only 1/2 ounce, but should make a nice cravat-length scarf.
I picked up some books. The Opinionated Knitter by Elizabeth Zimmerman, and The Anarchist Knitter by Anna Zilboorg. The first I have wanted to pick up for a while because it has a few good garments in it, and lots of great attitude. The latter I have been looking for a while, and was happy to find it at the market. I read the whole book by Saturday night, I think. There was a lot in it that I have already figured out on my own, but there was also a lot that was a new way of looking at or exploring things. She has a great idea of working out cable design by cutting a bunch of lengths of differently colored yarns and arranging them on the table until you get a design you like, and then try turning that into a cable. Brilliant! I can imagine doing some of those crazy reversing and starting from nowhere cables by using this technique on a block of foam with some pins. I can’t wait to try it.

I also bought some rayon cord in a few colors but I can’t recall the vendor. The colors are lovely and bright, and I have a ton of beads at home that will work well for creating a beaded scarf or something. Although I don’t relish stringing the beads before knitting. I may try crocheting instead. UPDATE: It’s Swallow Hill that makes the cord I bought.

So that’s all for the shopping, I think. UPDATE: I was wrong! I forgot some Koigu I bought. I picked up two skeins in the darker shade here, that I have propped up on a skein I had bought in the past. I think they go together well. I prefer their “nearly solids” or whatever they call them. I still don’t know what I’ll do with them, but I’ll be ready when I figure it out.
The People
I met some lovely people just sitting around in the bar, and didn’t even get their names but they were nice to chat with between classes or during lunches. I observed some people dining alone inviting the hostess to bring another lone diner to join them rather than making them wait alone for a table. Very cool. I had dinner and drinks with some Stitch n’ Bitch pals and that was a lot of fun. I saw Joan M-M at White Lies Designs and said hello. I missed some people I would have like to have met had I known they were in town, like Flory and Rebecca. Ah well, there is next year.
All of the teachers were great, and Rick Mondragon is a perfect stereotype, which really made me laugh because I had heard all about him but seeing him in person was a hoot. I have to say, anyone with boots as cool as those gold ones is OK with me, even if I don’t like his magazine. I have a thing for fun shoes, what can I say?
There was one thing that really bugged me though. It’s not knitters specifically, but I think it’s women in general, of which there were plenty at Stitches West. Women are so helpful and generous to a point, but if they see you approaching their skill level, or even something they want, they can be competitive as a boxer on fight night. I saw it all over the place, from the mob for coffee where people would just ignore the 40 people waiting in line and go right to the front, to people hiding their knitting because they don’t want to give away their secrets! One woman was wearing an interesting thing around her neck and I asked if it was her own pattern or something commercially available. It held her crochet hooks and cable needles and stitch markers and a tape measure and I thought it was very clever. She actually put it out of sight and said it was her invention, clearly not wanting to let me ‘steal’ her idea. Whatever. One of the spools of rayon cord will become my own version of that thing because it looks quite handy. Unless I decide to use cotton instead.
My everyday project is an idea I got from Kay over at Mason Dixon Knitting where she mentions doing the Barbara Walker’s Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book. I have had the book for some time, and when I saw that Kay was doing it in denim, well, *ding*ding*ding* the light bulb went off and I dug out the couple of balls of denim I had picked up a few months ago to play with. I had three colors but needed four, so went on a search and found a great price at elann.com on three colors. One of the colors was new, and one was missing from my sample balls, so I supplemented at my LYS on the darkest color and then I was off!
I am telling you all this because it’s hard to knit for 6 hours in class and then work on denim as your side project for relaxation. You get the owies in the shoulder (also caused by carrying your shopping on your shoulder!) and by Saturday night I was pooped! I took 6 classes all together, and it was actually ok, although when I got home my husband was trying to rub my shoulders and noticed they were hard as rocks. I’ll have to go to the chiro this weekend and get it all worked out.
One good thing about the project though is that it’s portable (one square at a time) and I can work on things that I want to learn, like combined knitting, eastern crossing and uncrossing and deciding what works for my hands and what doesn’t. I haven’t quite figured out the way to increase and decrease yet in the various methods, but probably will be able to do that when I get to the lace swatches in the afghan.
Overall, I had a great time and I hope there are some interesting classes so I can do it again next year!