In the round short rows with no holes!!!

So my lack of posts relates to my continued need to knit Elijah elephants. The stalk is still working overtime in Middle England. It’s really makes for boring posts so I just haven’t bothered however I’ve come across a new technique that I want to try out. One thing that has left me unsatisfied with my elephants is the little holes in the trunk when I’ve been putting in short rows to add a curve to the trunk (an adjustment I’ve made to the pattern). Because they’re knit in the round using the usual technique you get these slightly annoying holes. While looking for a solution I came across this on YouTube. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Update 31.12.17

So I’ve dropped some short rows into the back of Elijah’s trunk. I’m pretty sure I’ve not quite done this right on all of the turns as it looks a little messy to me. A bit more practice needed I think but it’s a promising start.

Woven Basket Stitch

I’ve been more prolific than usual in the knitting department and have been a little tardy with my blog posts so if you follow my Instagram or check out my Ravelry projects you’ll find the next few posts are somewhat out of sync.  Oops. must try harder in future.

This is another one of them ‘written for me’ posts so I can find the instructions for the great  textured basket stitch the next time I want to use it.

A good written and pictorial guide to this stitch has been written by  Froginette and is found here on her old blog, and the comments include a video to help.  Now all I need to find out is how to unknit it when I’ve made that inevitable mistake.

Casting on… Magic Cast On for Toe Up Socks

Baby’s hat is blocking so it’s cast on time again. I love cast on time and this time it’s a new cast on for me. I’ve picked a pattern with a number of new skills this time so there’s likely to be a few posts about it that get my blog back to it’s orginal purpose of keeping all my knitting ‘stuff’ in one place so I can find it in the future.

A magic cast on for toe up socks. “But you hated knitting socks” I hear you say puzzled. Well don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind and decided to knit socks again.  I won’t be using this for socks but for the hood on a cardiagan/coat for my little wriggler that still has about a month to cook.

I found a number of versions of this cast on. What seems to be the original posted online is from Judy Becker published here on knotty.com known as Judy’s Magic Cast On to the web (recommended by the pattern I’m following). Then there’s another version from Curious Knitter known as Judy’s Magic Cast On a la Jeny. Both are really well illustrated and I didn’t need to resort to YouTube to work either of them out.

Plumping for the original, just because it’s the first I tried, rather than any preference for the technique and the result is a very boring invisible cast on at the top of the hood on Baby’s cardigan. So boring in fact that I’m not even bothering to photograph it!

 

Jogless stripes in the round

The ombré blanket hasn’t materialised.  Why I hear you ask? Well the pram arrived and it wasn’t the colour I was expecting and that kind of threw me and now I don’t know what colour to use.  Leave me to think on that one for a while please.  I probably just need some new inspiration on the colour and then I’ll get my ombré mojo back.

Instead, I’m planning something smaller… much smaller. No idea where the inspiration came for this one but I want to make a hat for Baby Cosmo.  I’ve got left over Baby Cashmerino from two Hermione Hearts Ron hats I previously made that I’ll use so this is a destash project as well as the first piece of knitting for my own little baby boy.  I haven’t used left overs for so long I’m calling this a little victory.

So the pattern? No pattern! This one is coming from my head. Flying by the seat of my pants as they say.  They do say that right?

In my quest to keep discovering new skills I’ve been inspired by a Pinterest Pin on jogless stripes knit in the round so this is going to be a stripy hat knit in the round.

Following the pinterest link, I find myself back at the TECHknitting  blog. A three part series none the less with Differnt methods all clearly explained with pictures.

I settled to try helical stripe. This means a continuous candy stripe of each colour knit continously from two balls of wool (or more if you’re feeling adventurous) with no cutting or joins. That means no weaving in the ends!!!

And this is what it looks like…

Sock heels

So my failure to get the first heel turn right got me to thinking about different types of sock heels.  I follow a blog in which the afterthought heel gets referred to regularly and I had no idea what that was when it was at home so I had a look around and found a Pinterest pin (promise I’ll put the pin in here properly when I get to a computer – my mobile I.T. skills are letting me down).

Sock heel variations
Warning – this pin links to a blog but the actual source is ravelry notes.  It’s not all in English but I liked it anyway.  It’s a wonderful way to display different types of heels.

I also found a Crafty course that looks at heels and toe variations which I might be interested in if I thought I was going to be an avid sock knitter, but I don’t think there’s much danger of that so it’s probably not a good use of my hard earned pennies.

Update on the sock saga…just the toe to go on sock 2. Do you think I’ll get away with two slightly different heels or will I end up knitting sock number 3?

Applied/Attached I-Cord Edge

I’m just finishing a babies bonnet (Lilacs for Lila).  There seems to be three ways Ravelers are adding ties to this bonnet:

1. Ribbon
2. I-cord tied attached to the chin
3. I-cord for one tie, followed by attached i-cord around the neck of the bonnet then i-cord for the second tie

Looking at the edge of the bonnet, it’s a little untidy so it’s an applied i-cord for me and another new technique.  I can’t quite believe how many slightly different techniques there are to add an applied i-cord to an edge.  I started by looking at The Purl Bee tutorial and after a few false starts I got going.  Checking my work it looks like I’ve put the i-cord on the wrong way round (oops) but I quite like the little bumps on the outside as it adds a little interest.  Another oops by the way is that I’ve lost a needle while doing this … how does a knitting needle disappear into thin air when you haven’t moved from the sofa for more than an hour???

There’s plenty of videos available demonstrating how to do this.  A nice clear one is from Berroco Yarn  

Casting on more stiches in the middle of your work

I’m working on a project that requires me to cast on additional stitches at the end of a row part way through the work.  I’ve done this a few times before with a small number of stitches in ‘my way’.  I’ve never been quite happy with the result so I thought I’d a have a look at different ways to do it, especially as I’m casting on an extra twenty something stitches and not just a few.

‘My way’ of casting on stitches turns out to be the backward loop method.  Stretchy and not very stable or robust.  I can vouch for this.  Good for a few stitches but any more than this and it has never really worked.

There appears to be two other ways; knitting on (now why didn’t I think of doing this) or the cable cast on.  The best video that explains all three techniques that I found is from newstitchaday.com.  It explains says that cable cast on is the most robust and good for things like button holes so I guess knitting on is somewhere in the middle.

So for my current project (Baby Kimono by Elizabeth Jarvis) I’ve chosen to go with the knitting on method.  It should match the rest of the work quite well and be robust but stretchy enough to be comfortable for whichever baby it gets gifted to.  More on this later.

Italian Tubular Cast On

I like to think I choose patterns that will enable me to learn a new skill or trick but maybe I’m just a sucker for punishment! One lovely new pattern chosen (a hat to go with the coat I am receiving as a Christmas gift from my parents) which requires one new cast on to be learned this time … the Italian tubular cast on.

From reading a little I have learned that this cast on gives a nice ribbed edge and is quite stretchy.  Perfect for a hat, or the cuffs of a jumper.  It’s not dissimilar to the long tail cast on so once I’ve got the hang of it, it should be quite a quick cast on.

The first video I watched made a great explanation of the cast on while casting on with the needles but I simply couldn’t remember the process while being able to count my stitches! I have however found a video that on YouTube by lunaknits that explains the cast on perfectly.  The working yarn always goes over and the tail moves behind the needle like a metronome.  The (non-practising) musician in me likes this explanation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xa_Te5UOFM%5B/embed

Confessions of a knotting knitter

I knot my knitting!  There, I said it.

I know that there’ll be some of you reading this with horror right now but please forgive me, I didn’t know any better.  I promise I will try to get out of this habit.  For those of you reading this thinking, I always knot my knitting, I promise I will still knot some of my knitting (it would be slightly boring to comply with convention all the time).  I can see from a quick web search that I’m not alone in my knotting habit.

I’ve finished knitting up the Christmas Table Stockings, two of which have been knotted and stiched together.  I have resolved to weave in the ends of the wool tails on the remaining stockings so I guess that means I need to learn how to do it!

I’ve been busy pinning knitting techniques onto my new Pinterest Knitting Techniques board and one of those techniques is a really helpful tutorial ‘Weaving in Your Ends’ from PurlBee.com.  A quick look on the Ravelry forums and I find a wealth of posts.  Gladtobemom explains how she weaves in ends in this forum.  These among others have been really useful and ta-dah … six stockings with weaved in ends.

Casting on from the middle with a disappearing loop – the most frustrating cast on ever?

So on a very frosty morning here in middle England, I am thinking about the cast on method used in the Elijah pattern I posted about recently.  Looks like it would be a perfect day to get out into the garden (my other big love) but decorating the Christmas tree and finishing off the table stockings are going to take priority today.

Elijah is knit in the round, starting at his head and his body is joined  to his head by picking up stiches, and arms, legs, and ears are then joined in the same way in turn.  The cast on for his head is a circular, disappearing middle cast on.  Ysolda’s pattern directs the knitter to a techknitting blog page which explains how to cast on.

Trying this cast on for the first time is not for the faint hearted.  I cannot repeat the language that I was using trying to cast on my first Elijah head; fortunately I was sat in hotel room in Manchester all alone on a work trip so no one else had to hear me. Following the diagrams is not easy, and once you’ve worked out what you’re actually meant to be doing, and you’ve tried five or six times and got the stitches cast on to one needle, you then have to distribute them over three needles and knit them.  Well you’ll almost certainly have to cast on again because a needle is bound to slip out at least once.  I know this from experience being on Elijah number nine.

What I have learned from repeating this cast on a number of times…

1. Use bamboo needles if you’ve got them and not metal
2. Use a crochet hook to do the initial cast on rather than a knitting needle
3. Keep everything as tight as possible
4. Keep the yarn taught by clamping in between your knees (or any thing else that will serve that purpose) and wrap the yarn around your had twice so you’ve got two parallel pieces of yarn across your hand.  (Picture to follow)
5. Be patient
6. Pray
7. Then have a go at belly buttons or umbilical waste cord method 

So I’m yet to try the belly buttons or umbilical cord methods simply because I’ve only just found out about them when I was linking the disappearing loop page to this post.  I will reserve judgement on this method until I’ve tried it but will let you know which I prefer when I get round to it.