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 it has turned out great. Mom says the shawl is warm. I didn’t think it would be with such a large needle. I would have done something fancier but I didn’t have time. She is also legally blind so wouldn’t be able to see any fancy stitching with her very blurry vision anyway. I was going for color and feel alone because of that.

I also did a leaf lace scarf for my other niece Erin. I did it in Thick and Quick Charcoal on 15 mm needles. It was my first serious lace and I really liked how it turned out. The large needle made for a pleasantly squishy fabric that is good for stuffing around your neck and in the opening of your coat or jacket.

The photo is not so good. I used two skeins and joined them at the finish line with mattress stitch as I liked the naturally shaped starting row caused by the pattern. It gave it two lobes that eliminated the need for any fringe. Left unblocked it had a nice, rumpled look. I will do a similar scarf for myself with another leaf lace pattern. I got her pattern from Jimmy Beans wool website under the title “Twin Leaf Beaded Scarf Free Knitting Pattern“. Here it is in case it’s not there any more. There’s a pic there of it done “normal” size.

Abbreviations

• CO – Cast On
• Dec – Decrease
• DD – (Double Decrease) Sl 2 sts together knitwise, k1, pass 2 sl sts over k st-2 sts dec.
• P – Purl
• PB – Place Bead, slide bead up next to the needle and knit stitch with bead ending up on RS of work (on DD, PB, on k st, on SK2P, PB on k st)
• RS – Right side
• SK2P – Slip1, knit 2 together, pass slip stitch over K2tog
• sts – Stitches
• WS – Wrong side
• yo – Yarn Over

Directions

**Pre string beads, by using a small needle, threaded with your yarn (250 or so) prior to CO

• CO 22 sts
• Row 1 P10, PB, k1, PB, k1, P10.
• ** all following WS rows P10, k2, P10.
• Row 2 K6, DD, yo, k1, yo, p2, yo, k1, yo, SK2P, k6.
• Row 4 K4, DD, k1, [yo, k1] twice, p2, k1, [yo, k1] twice, SK2P, k4.
• Row 6 K2, DD, k2, yo, k1, yo, k2, p2, k2, yo, k1, yo, k2, SK2P, k2.
• Row 8 PB, DD, k3, yo, k1, yo, k3, p2, k3, yo, k1, yo, k3, PB, SK2P.
• ** Repeat rows 1-8 until desired length. Bind Off.

I also did a couple of scarves for my older niece Jaimie and her Husband Morris, my first big cable projects. Here’s the (crappy) pic. I need a better camera.

They are done in Thick and quick Oatmeal and Wheat. I think I need to block the one on the right as the two cables make it curl back too much. I’m tempted to rip it out and redo it on larger needles to make it bigger and more relaxed. I used US17 needles.

I also did a piano keyboard scarf for my brother but I’m waiting for him to send me good pics of it so I can post them here. The scarf turned out great and was pretty easy to do. Stay tuned. Happy Gnu Ear.

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 baked goods that come in those plastic boxes at the grocery. For a while I was still buying my croissants there and couldn’t bring myself to throw away the tubs, which are about six inches deep, fifteen long and twelve wide. I have a stack of six of them with their lids and hope either to find a use for them or a friend who has recycling in their neighborhood.

So what about knitting in all this? I have all these plastic grocery bags. Yes, I can take them to the recycling box at the store, and I keep some in the car and take a few in to use when I shop, but I came up with another idea for recycling these spawn of petroleum.

Last weekend one of my cats, Lucy, got hold of a ball of yarn and was nuzzling it to death. I rescued it before it became a hopeless tangle and gave her a small ball of Wool-ease bulky to play with, but she wasn’t crazy about the acrylic any more than I was, so I sat down and crocheted her a ball out of the wool she was nuzzling. It is just a simple free-form ball you can make up as you go, so don’t look for instructions here. Anyways, when I was done I stuffed one of my stash of grocery bags inside and crocheted it shut.

Lucy loves it. The plastic bag inside makes a soft rustling noise, but the toy is soft and squishy and she can nuzzle it all she wants and it won’t come apart.

So my next thought is that a great way for us to recycle these bags is to use them to stuff pet toys and kids toys and even pillows. It occurred to me that the bags would shift around a bit in a pillow so, thinking about plarn, I came up with the idea to knit or crochet a pillow blank from bags to make a stable foundation for a pillow or other toy. Crochet is easier to do for this and all you really need is structure, not appearances.

But as you know, plarn can be laborious to make. So I came up with Super Plarn. To make super plarn take a bag and find the two insets or gussets on either side of the bottom of the bag. Pinch them together and then pierce a hole across the bag with your fingers. Then take the handles of the next bag and thread it through this hole. Next, thread the bottom of the second bag through it’s own handles and pull it tight. Keep repeating this until you have enough to work with. Because of the varying thickness of the result – handles are less bulky – it won’t look so good but this works fine for stuffing material since it won’t show.

Because of the bulky linking “knots” you may not love the feel if you draw them very tight, but if you keep those links between bags a bit loose it won’t be bad. You could also just cut the bags sideways in very wide bands and link them that way but you would be wasting the handles and bottoms.

Here’s a pic of five bags finger-crocheted together:

I tried crocheting this with a size Q crochet hook but it was difficult and tight and not really necessary. Just finger-crochet a chain wide enough for your pillow, chain one or two more, then turn and skip one or two links and begin either a chain stitch or single crochet back in the other direction. IMPORTANT: start crocheting or knitting with a handle end of the super plarn chain so you can add more bags to the bag-bottom end if you run out.

Keep going until you can fold up this pad to the bulkiness you want for your pillow or toy or whatever. The result will be a stable, squishy pillow form with a soft crinkle sound that will remind you of how you are saving the planet, one pillow and dozens of plastic bags at a time.

Got a little yarn for a tiny project? Do you like to carry crystals or other lucky/healing stones in your pocket or purse, but don’t want them damaged by coins and other hard things in there with them? Knit a crystal cozy! These would make great mini-gifts for friends as well.

They are about 2.5 to 3 inches long. Make yours to fit your stone plus and inch or more so the ribbing can close the opening

It’s really simple. I suggest you use all natural fibers, preferably wool, to allow the crystal vibes unimpeded. I knit it all in k2p2 ribbing and it snugs around the stone perfectly, preventing it from slipping out with the coins and other pocket dangers. Wool has better springiness in ribbing.

Measure the circumference of your stone and determine how many stitches you need to fit around it. With something so small you can just do a test and not worry about wasting time. One if my stones is about three and a half inches around and 24 stitches fit around it fine, done in worsted wool on size six US needles.

I knit mine using magic loop and cast on with Judy’s magic cast-on and knit “toe up”. Alternately, you could start at the cuff and then graft the “toe” shut, or you can use my cast-off seam method where you use a third needle to knit two together (one from each needle), slip the loop back to the left and knit three more together (one from each needle and the slipped-back loop) until cast off completely. When you are done if you don’t like the look of the bottom end turn it inside out and see if it looks better that way, as it’s completely reversible.

If you work cuff downward to the toe you may want to decrease a few stitches for the last few rows to taper the end a little and make it more rounded. Use your imagination. Again, I did mine toe up, and so the cast-off wouldn’t be too tight I added an M1 every third stitch in the last row before casting off and found this made the opening flare a bit like a flower bud and that looked nice.

I did my first two in red wool but experience has me recommend you use lint colored yarn!

I mentioned previously that I am working on a Glengarry hat for my kilts and I have finished the second test piece. The first one I did was in gray wool and followed the pattern exactly as found in Folk Hats by Vicki Square  so I could figure out how to do all the short rows, check the size and see if it all worked out like I want.

And I have pictures…

First off, the size is for a 22 inch head and starts with a cast-on of 112 stitches. My head is a seven and seven eights which is almost 24 inches, so I checked my gauge in the test piece and added another 16 stitches to bring it up to 128. This turned out to be just right.

Second issue was that the band edge was all stockinette so it curled like all get out, so in the second test, in denim colored wool by Patons (looks nice – I may do a sweater in it) I did just three rows of 2 by 2 ribbing to control that.

I also wanted to make a couple of mods. From what I could see in pics on the web of Glengarrys the prow at the front is higher than that at the back, but in the book’s pattern they are both three inches, so I modified the pattern with more short rows on the sides so the front is three inches and the back is just two. This turned out juts right and the hat looks better than the first test (which I didn’t totally finish as the curling was just too much. No, don’t tell me to steam it.)

So I worked on the hat between calls at work all last two weeks and finished at home this morning. The last task was to graft the top center seam with the Kitchener stitch, which I had never done. Reading the how to in my knitting reference I compliantly said to myself, “Hell no.” and proceeded to invent another way. I don’t know yet if this is new, but it made sense and worked great. If you know it from elsewhere, let me know.

So when you finish this hat, before grafting the top, you end up with half your stitches on each side of a circular needle. I remembered binding off and thought I would try binding off the two sides together. Here’s how:

1.    Divide your stitches evenly between your two halves of the circular needle. This means the extra cable length comes out at one end of the hat and the needles at the other. When you finish all the stitching you should be situated with the needle points at the back of the hat. The hat should be right sides together, so you will probably turn it inside out.
2.    Align the needles side by side in your left hand if you knit right handed, points to the right.
3.    Take a third needle and insert it as if to knit through the last loop on each needle and knit them together, pulling the knitted loops off the two needles.

Insert the third needle as if to knit through both of the last loops on the right needles.

4.    Put the new loop back on the needle nearest you. It doesn’t matter if it is slipped knit-wise or purl-wise.

Slip the new loop back on one of the left needles. Alternate!

5.    Insert the working third needle (which is now empty) knit wise through the last two loops (which include the new loop you just made) on the near needle and then through the last loop on the far needle and knit all three together, sliding the three off the two needles, leaving you the new loop on the right needle.

Knit through 1 plus 2 loops together until done.

6.    IMPORTANT: On the next stitch slip the new loop onto the far needle instead of the near needle and knit the three together – the new loop and the two old loops, one from each needle. Keep alternating this way, putting the new loop on the alternate needle each time so that the seam is symmetrical.
7.    Repeat from #3 until done.
8.    When done, weave in the ends.

The finished seam bind-off when done stockinette side facing stockinette side.

I was pleased with how this turned out on the hat seam. It produced a cord-like ridge in a groove on the top/right side of the fabric, which is fine for the hat as it’s supposed to have a groove there. On the inside of the hat, which is all purl, the seam is not particularly visible.

The seam bind-off from inside the hat when done as described here. It's nearly invisbile, but test it yourself.

I don’t know what the stockinette side would look like if I had done the seam wrong sides facing. Maybe I will try that on the next version of the hat, or a swatch. I want the groove, and if it’s smooth like the purl side on this one that won’t work for this project.

I’ll have another post with pics the denim wool Glengarry mentioned in this article. I will make the pattern available someday soon.

Related articles:

• Sylvie’s Summer Cotton Poncho… (bohemianknitter.blogspot.com)
• The Importance of Knitting Gauge (knitting-patterns-techniques.suite101.com)
• Circular needles, cat help and gloves and questions, oh my. (crazyauntpurl.com)
• Dads and Grads Who Knit (timesunion.com)

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 sport weight, 45% lambswool. 40% modal, 10% nylon and 5% cashmere. I hunted up an extra large one to get the most yarn. It weighs 495 grams. The yarn is a mix of light and dark gray called Iron Heather, so it has a tweedy look. It has all the right kinds of seams – not serged.

And of course, Max my cat has to become involved in every knitting project.

The only odd thing is that it has a design on the front in intarsia, but that shouldn’t be a problem to unravel around.

The intarsia desing reminds me of a turtle for some reason.

Outside the sweater you can see Max approving of the cashmere content. Inside the sweater you can see the intarsia work. It didn't say it was this hand knitted. Do they have machines that can do intarsia?

I will give you an update when I get around to taking this sweater apart and unraveling it.

(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 the sweater search that I don’t care for.

1. I don’t want to spend an hour pawing through hundreds of used sweaters. My time is worth more. On top of that I partially reinjured my mostly healed sprained finger sliding sweaters around on over-burdened racks.
2. Many of the sweaters are not solids, so you can’t get long runs of yarn out of them.
3. Some of them are sewn from cut steeks and can’t be unraveled in continuous strands.
4. Precious few haven’t been partially felted. I don’t know if Savers is washing these or the previous owners are the monster yarn murderers. Even one short wash will make the strands look very second hand, and I don’t want a new garment to look pre-owned from the get go. Also, a bit of felting will make it harder to pull out the stitches.
5. Some have stains. Do I want to spend $X on dry cleaning it before I cannibalize it? Not unless it’s a great looking yarn. Great looking yarn is very rare in situation.
6. Few of them are colors I want to work with. Do I really need that much DK weight, red yarn in 60% lambswool, 20% acrylic and 20% angora rabbit? It was almost the only one I found that wasn’t partially felted and had any potential. Do I know anyone who wants a bunch of socks made from this? I certainly don’t.

In the end I went up to the check out with a smallish, woman’s sweater in a bulky roving-type yarn that was dark gray and black mix. It was 20 percent alpaca, 70 percent wool and 10 percent acrylic, with cotton embroidery and the right kind of seams. I thought I could maybe get some yarn for a decent hat and scarf out of it. I waited a rather long time in line, observing the checker struggle four times trying to get the card swiper to work for a customer ahead of me, as well as other complications with the people in line. Having had this time to reflect on the whole, slummy experience, I turned around, put the sweater back where I found it and left empty-handed but with an armful of awareness.

Recycling yarn is more akin to hand-me-down-ism than you realize. You don’t have much of a choice. You have to decide if you want to make anything from what you do find that is decent. Do you like the color and the yarn? Will anyone else. It was kind of depressing to think I might get stuck with some yarn I don’t love and am not inspired by, and then drag myself through a project I know I’m going to want to give away, knowing it’s not just a gift, it’s getting rid of the stuff. I don’t want to give that kind of vibe to others, and I don’t want to keep it, a souvenir of the dismal fate of so many sweaters and a disappointing search.

You may have much better luck and spirit about yarn recycling that I do. To me though, after what I saw today, it’s more akin to picking at a trash heap than finding treasure. I want to feel better about the process of finding the yarn and its condition. I also prefer not to feel like I’m knitting in a compromise due to poverty. I can afford yarn, and even if I make the effort buy it cheaper online, at least it’s not what to me would feel like reclaimed junk.

Be sure to see part 2 of this topic at this link

You can get some great things at thrift stores. My favorite chair and a marble topped occasional table came from there, and a couple of vests I have. And I did have one super sweater find a couple of years ago, before I ever considered knitting: a fair isle sweater in 100% alpaca, NEW, in colors I love, for just $7. It is one of my cherished possessions. Here it is:

The suggested retail for this brand of 100% alpaca sweater was $150 for a solid color, and this one is multicolor fair isle. Maybe $250?

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.

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.