So Much Knitting News!

Good Afternoon,

The first week of "EZ's" A-B-C-SJ, went quite well.  Still have more sign ups to accommodate.  The yarn choices were wonderful, colorful, and a host of other "ful ending words".  There were 2 students last Wednesday and 4 on Saturday. 

Now for the other exciting news!  I just came back from the Post Office and mailed off my submission to Interweave Knits Sockupied 2013.   I spent an hour or so getting together the paper work, filling out the form, and typing up the submission.  I did knit a full size sock instead of just a swatch. 

The sock design is a sport type sock (short) like you would wear with gym or running shoes.  The sock features 2 X 2 ribs, a small short row section after the ribbing that elevates the back of the heel slightly which helps prevent that "slide down into your shoe syndrome".  The heel shaping is short rows as well.  Then, down the foot to the beginning of the toe box.  I like to leave this a little wider than many socks allow for.  The reason being, there is plenty of room to wiggle those piggies inside your shoe.

The best part is the yarn.  I used Cascade "Fixation" which is 98.3% Cotton and 1.7% Elastic.  This is a wonderful material to use especially for my targeted market for Interweave.  The submission is for the Diabetic community as well as for those who have difficulty with edema in the lower extremities.  The yarn having elastic, will stretch without cutting into the circulatory system of the lower legs.  The wider toe box, as mentioned above, is roomy and will not pinch or irritate sensitive toes.  And as all you knitters know, the toes are completed with Kitchener Stitch.  No seams.  When I was wearing commercial socks, I would have to turn them inside out to put the seam on the outside and away from  my skin.  This seaming technique does away with this problem. 

I had to do a sketch.  I do not sketch....very bad.  So I did my best and then wrote all the dimensions for the finished sock.  I wish that I could draw better, but one of my daughters has that talent, not me.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't an automatic disqualify. 

Sorry I didn't have a blog post yesterday, but was just to tired and  I was afraid it would be gibberish.  I only had an hour of sleep Sunday before going to work at 12:00 am Monday morning.  I beg forgiveness.

I had to watch the boys this morning, and my daughter was telling me that they had their first "slap boxing episode" recently. They stood facing each other and in little boy aggression, they were open hand slapping at each other (32 months and 15 months).  I had all I could do to not chuckle the visual in my mind's eye was so funny.  Tis only the beginning.

Have a wonderful rest of the day and Happy Knitting!

P.S.  My You And Me Knit Fan Page is up, though not completed.  Take a moment to stop by and "Like" my page.  Thanks!

Playing With Lace

Good Morning!

The day is now sunny and the breeze is blowing away the rain clouds of yesterday and last night.  My buddy JT is having a morning snack of crackers while sitting with me at the table.  He has his hands over his ears complaining that the train whistle is too loud.  Poor boy!

Because of the time of year, lace is in the forefront of many knitters' to do list, the perfect summer knitting.  I must say, I'm in the same boat.  I have always used a commercial lace pattern to knit from mostly due to my thinking that lace is to difficult to chart.  I do prefer charts to the written word. 

I was reading a craftsy.com class schedule and found a class advertised as Lace Shawl Design with Miriam Felton.  After watching the class preview, I think that this will take away my hesitation. Now I can pick up my needles and start swatching with the yarn I just purchased just for this purpose from Craftsy as well.  It is a beautiful single ply 50% Merino and 50% Silk in a simply luscious Raspberry color.  It was an incredible bargain too!  The deal was two skeins of this beautiful lace weight for $18.40 and shipping is free!  I just got it yesterday and it is definitely Yummy!

The project on the needles is lace but this one is a free form lace.  It was in my Summer 2001 Interweave Knits Magazine.  I don't know about you, but I will put a sticky note a page that peaks my interest, and then due to so many projects on going, the magazine is set aside.  I came across it again on the knittingdaily.com web site galleries.  What splendid timing!

I had some "Pashmina Cashmere" that I received from a dear friend who was sharing her stash.  In this stash were a few balls of Pashmina left over from one of her projects.  Perfect!  So, I took the elements from this gorgeous sweater "Coral Cardigan" by Nancy Eiseman and charted up my own  "Scribble Lace." 

Out came the graph paper and I started charting some basic lace stitches.  No two rounds are the same and that is what gives it a "coral" look to it.  I took the needle size up a little bigger to make my stitches more open.  I am very happy with the outcome. 

So put your Brave on, click on the links above and try your hand at some lace stitches.  You will be surprised at how easy it really is.  The trick is marking your place and graph paper and counting your stitches to make sure you have the correct number.  Have fun with this, I certainly am.

As a side note, my website is coming along.  Feel free to stop by for a look,  youandmeknit.com. 
Follow my blog on my site by clicking the Fiber Space button or go to knitnanny10@blogspot.com.

Happy Knitting!

To Knit or Un-Knit!

Good Morning!

It's another cloudy and soon to be rainy day here in New York. Our laws are lush with green and mushrooms.  Wish we could share the wealth with some of our drier states.

Yesterday I had mentioned that I had taken a class this past Saturday.  Always a fun thing to do if you can attend one, not only for the learning in the class, but all the great tips that you can glean from other knitters.

I have been knitting for a very long time and I picked up two knitting terms that just hit my funny bone. They are perfectly descriptive and relevant and whoever came up with them must have an extremely creative mind.

The first one involves ribbing.  SSHH!  If you know the answer to this please don't tell!  Anyway, there are so many ribbing styles:

• 1 X 1
• 2 X 2
• Twisted
• 3 X 3
• And on and on, almost as many as you can imagine

The word of the day was "Frogging." Yep!  "Frogging" ----> Ribbing ----> "Ribbit!  Ribbit!"  Okay, maybe it wasn't that funny, but my morning class had a good laugh.  Guess we were still tired.

The next one is relevant to ripping. I know that every one of us rips, some more than others, but just the same, we all do it. There is an up side to ripping that I must share because it sometimes helps to know that there is a positive result from the negative. If you look at ripping, or un-knitting, as a learning tool, especially as a newer knitter, it may take some of the frustration away.

I define ripping as taking your knitting off the needle, pulling out the offending rows and then picking up the live stitches again.  These are a few techniques one can learn from ripping:

• Above all, this teaches Bravery!
• You also learn how to pick up the loose stitches, and get them back on the needle.
• There might also be a few stitches that come un-done which will have to be worked back up again.
• And then there are the twisted stitches.  My main focus when picking up stitches is to get them on the needle.  That means that some of them are straight and some twisted.  Learning the difference between the two comes easily this way, believe it or not.

The other type of ripping, is un-knitting.  This method un-knits one stitch at a time, and is mostly used when you only have a few stitches to undo.  Sometimes it is also used when working a more complicated pattern and need to keep more careful track as you "back up."

What is knit backward?  TINK!  So...now when you have to rip or un-knit, you can use the term TINK!

Have fun with your Frogging and Tinking!