Projects
Organize Your Needles with My Needle Keeper Idea
March 27, 2012 | 
Author I have lots of straight knitting needles, and a few bent ones. Keeping track of the mates for them was hard for a while, as I didn’t have a needle organizer. I was going to make one, but I never bothered enough to find a good pattern. Being a cheap yankee and a compulsively creative sort I came up with these little gems. They keep needle sets together in pairs or sets of pairs. If I just want to take one pair with me, the individual keepers keep them together in my bag.
When you are using the needles you can leave the Keeper on one of the needles (for individual Keepers).
Use your imagination. I just made these up.
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Posted in Projects, Uncategorized | 
Tags: crochet, crochet projects, Knitting, knitting needles, needle keepers, needle organizers | 
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A Bunch of Scarves, Some Cable Knit, and a Shawl
Like so many of us I am finishing a few gifts I started late for Christmas. I didn’t really get the knitting bug for gifts until a week into December and managed to bang out four scarves and a shawl in time to ship and arrive before the 25th.
I did a soft, girly, garter stitch scarf for my grand-niece Rei in Vermont. She is all of 7 years old and just the most beautiful little girl I have ever seen. The scarf is made with some downy mini-bouclee yarn that is mostly white with a shifting of colors over it in pink, blue and green. No pic, sorry.
I made a simple shawl for my mom, who is all of 89 years old. You may know how it is when the right colors of yarn just announce themselves, “I’m for her” and you don’t have to think. I did this one in Homespun Tudor, which is a nice light mix of soft greens, aqua, lavender, gold, and rose. It was perfect for her. Just another garter stitch piece because I had to mail it asap. I was able to finish it in three days, with a total of 8900 stitches or so. I put a crochet chain fringe on it that I tend to favor for such things, as it looks really nice, but you also can’t do a cut fringe in this yarn as it just frizzes out.
Here’s a pic of Mom looking at me on the TV as we were doing our now annual Google video Christmas chat. I highly recommend it. This is the second year we’ve done it and Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Projects | Tags: black scarf, cable knit, cable knit scarf, cables, Casting on (knitting), Christmas, Christmas gift, Crafts, garter stitch scarf, garter stitch shawl, Google video chat, Jimmy Beans, Knitting, Knitting needle, leaf lace pattern, oatmeal yarn, piano scarf, scarf, shawl, Thick and Quick, Vermont, yarn | No Comments »
Super Plarn for Pillow Stuffing
How to save the planet with Knitting.
More and more lately I’ve become irritated by the prevalence of plastic in my life. Even when I try to buy less plastic, more of it comes home with me. I’ve been trying to use less, as well as shift to BPA-free containers. I stopped drinking out of the large plastic tumblers I’ve been using for years now. I won’t store food in plastic unless it’s just in the freezer, and I’m no longer buying Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Projects, Techniques | Tags: Cat picture, cat toys, crochet, grocery bags, Knitting, pillows, plarn, plastic bags, recycling, stuffing, super plarn, toys, Wool-ease, yarn | No Comments »
Knit a Crystal Cozy for Your Pocket or Purse
Could This Be a New Seaming/Bind-off Technique?
Posted in Projects, Techniques | Tags: bind-off, Glengarry, hat, kilt, Kitchener stitch, seam, short rows | No Comments »
Recycling Yarn, Part 2: Starting with a New Sweater
In my previous post about recycling yarn I stated that I didn’t like the process of hunting for the source sweater at a thrift shop, and I’m sticking with that opinion. You will not find me giving but a cursory glance at the sweaters there when I’m there for something else. It’s just too much effort for too little result. I have better things to do with that time.
I did however realize that recycling a new sweater from some inexpensive shop such as Ross or Marshalls is a great option. I was there shopping for the holidays last month and was lured to the men’s sweater rack. One thing I was confident of was that I would not be disappointed by finding a great sweater that had been ruined by washing and felting/fulling. While there were not a lot of colors and fibers that I wanted I did find one that is perfect.
A lot of nice yarn for just $20. Maybe I'll make a scarf and socks.
It’s a gray sweater in what I believe is Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Projects, The Knitting Experience | Tags: cashmere, Cat picture, Fiber art, intarsia, knit, Knitting, lambswool, modal, recycled yarn, recycling, Ross stores, sweater, turtle, yarn | 1 Comment »
Recycling Yarn Not the Treasure Hunt I’d Hoped (Part 1)
(Be sure to see part 2 of this topic at this link)
Well, I made a trip to our local Savers Thrift Department store to look for decent wool sweaters from which to recycle the yarn. I thought this would be a great, economical way to obtain several skeins worth of yarn for just about $6. In general, I do believe recycling yarn can be a worthwhile endeavor, but I don’t think it’s for me. The reality of the hunt is not worth the result, which today resulted in more awareness than wool.
First thing I did was examine the 20 feet of men’s sweaters. Feeling along the edges of them for something that might be wool, as well as looking for sweaters that are mostly a solid color I discovered a few things about Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Projects, Techniques, The Knitting Experience, Updated Since Posted | Tags: alpaca, Charity shop, fair isle, felted sweater, Knitting, recycling, sweater, thrift stores, wool, yarn | No Comments »
What Am I Going to Do with All These Needles?
As you see in another post I tried sharpening the bamboo knitting needles, single pointers, that I ordered from China, and which turned out to be about half defectively dull. It was a great success, but now I have fifteen pair of needles and I don’t want them to get all mixed up.
So, looking around the web for cases I found a link that lists about 30 different ways to make a case for needles. And can you imagine my surprise that one of the ways is – yes – knitting one? Durr.
Yes, not with pockets, but rather a simple rectangle of knitting that you skewer at intervals with your different pairs of needles, then roll up. Pretty cool.
So I went to the local Joann’s looking for yarn. First I tried some thick and quick but it was too thick. This being the fall holiday season, all the autumn colored stuff is in stock and I found some Red Heart acrylic worsted in a multi-colored skein called Falling Leaves that is beautiful. Yes, it’s just acrylic, but it’s also just a needle case. And the colors are really fun to work with. I really like the jewel tones, and it’s fun to watch the progression of the colors as they mix and pool and stripe variously.
For a pattern, some of the suggestions were to make cables and stick the needles through the cable holes but I wanted this to be nearly mindless knitting in case I need something to take to a knitting circle so I’m doing it in a basket weave that is about seven stitches by seven rows on my #10 bamboo 14 inch needles I just sharpened. The pattern is two sided and won’t curl up on me. But I’m thinking I may switch to another pattern for a sampler effect.
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Eastern European Knitting, a.k.a Combined Knitting?
Last Sunday I went to my nearest local yarn/knitting shop, Gails Knits, to take advantage of their summer sale and bought yarn for my first project, the cabled scarf with seed stitch border you see in the page header (That’s a pic from the book – I haven’t started the scarf yet, but I did pick red. ) and as I was checking out I told Gail about the Portuguese Knitting DVD and how much I liked the style. I showed her the basics, and she in turn showed me her style, which is eastern european knitting (EEK). Apparently, it’s pretty rare. She said there was an article some years ago in a knitting magazine that listed the top ten styles of knitting, and it was number 9.
It turns out it is a bit faster than Portuguese knitting, seemingly having one less step in that you don’t have to flick the yarn over the needle. That’s not a big chore, but when I was watching Gail demonstrate it she was amazingly fast. I’ll have links to videos and pages here soon. It’s a variant of continental knitting, a pick style, and is quite worthwhile.
I’m still practicing but I did find that it wasn’t so great for a bulky yarn. I am doing a cossack hat from the Folk Hats book by Vicki Square and even with my nice and pointy new Options Nickel Plated circulars didn’t work so well on the thick, bulky Wool-ease yarn by Lion Brand when using EEK. I couldn’t catch the yarn and pull it through. So I tried the Portuguese knitting and it was much easier.
That’s interesting and handy to know. Now we have more tools with which to knit. I’ve learned one should choose carefully from knitting style, yarn material, yarn thickness, needle material and pattern. When I started out I would never have thought it mattered.
Here’s what the hat will look like when done:
The cossack hat in the book.
The hat is from Folk Hats by Vicki Square, pages 88-90. This one uses a bouclet yarn which seems to emulate shearling. I may do one with black later. For now I’m just re-using the yarn from the crochet scarf I killed playing with my new ball winder.
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Posted in Projects, Techniques | Tags: ball winder, combined knitting, cossack, crochet, eastern european knitting, Gail Knits, hat, knit, reincarknitting, scarf | No Comments »
