twisted stitches, sister

holey incomplete stitches, batman!

gasp! dropped stitches

hey, what's that purl stitch doing there?!

I made all these swatches for a "correcting mistakes" class at the store last night. What fun it was to make all these mistakes on purpose! Class was fun too. First, the students would watch me drop a stitch and let out a little gasp. And then they'd watch as I fixed it. There'd be a long silence where each one would try to do the same thing with their own swatch and then someone would burst out with: "Cooool!" By George, I think she's got it.

I brought in Vogue Knitting as a visual aid, since it has such a nice section on correcting mistakes. But for detail and pictures, I still think Theresa's Knitty article can't be beat. Any other resources out there on knitting boo-boos that you all would recommend?

While swatching my new Debbie Bliss cotton angora yarn (for my mom's Jess sweater, which looks to be about eight or nine thousand miles of stockinette stitch), I decided I should try to retrain my hand to hold the yarn differently. I've become accustomed to holding the tension on the yarn by wrapping it around my pinky finger. Not a problem, but each time I knit a stitch I seem to lift my pinky in some weird teacup ettiquette reflex moment.

a knitting no-no

It's bad form, is inefficient and surely strains my wrist, but it's not a huge problem unless I am doing a lot of knitting. This strange pinky flip was definitely the source of some hand troubles I had last year after knitting my tiny-gauged funky vest and giant melvilla poncho. Now, preparing for some full-time knitting on mom's sweater, I want to nip that little problem in the bud! So I'm practicing holding the tension on my ring finger now.

better?

As long as I keep my pinky straight in line with the ring finger and move them together, it stays rather relaxed and I don't feel any cramping. I'm sure that by the time I'm done with mom's sweater, it'll feel like I've been knitting like this for years.

And who else has been playing with yarn?

two boys with two balls of yarn running in two directions - priceless

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Okay, wanna hear another story of twinsanity? So, remember B's booboo from last week? Well, he's been getting fun finger soaks and yummy pink medicine several times a day, and someone - one guess who - has been very jealous! First, S was so upset that he didn't get to go to the doctor with B last week, that he actually did more screaming than his brother. Then there's the fact that they love medicine so much that we've had to give S a dropperful of water, which we call "pretend medicine", each night so he doesn't feel left out. To top it off, daddy makes soak time so entertaining by reading Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go book with them, that B acutally reminds us when it's time and S keeps asking for his own bowl of water. So here's what happens next. Not to be outdone by his twin brother, S manages to wake up yesterday morning with the same nail infection, on his toe, not his finger, but, let's say it together, I-dentical. One trip to the doctor later and he's got his own bottle of the same pink medicine and a schedule of fun toe soaks. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he'd willed his toe infection into existence in order to get the same stuff as B! Oh well, same treatment, same schedule, heck, it actually makes our life a lot easier.

you're soaking in it!

Since I was already feeling miserable over the weekend, I decided to tackle that rather unsatisfactory ribbing on my sooty mango. If you recall the problem was with my tension while knitting continental and switching between knit and purl stitches. I tried Stacy's suggestion of twisting the first purl stitch after switching from knit to purl and had some definite improvement, but a faint line still developed at the left of each rib. So, it was off with the ribbing! I've done this before and it worked well, so as far as I'm concerned it's ALWAYS and option!

A few pics from the sofa: I threaded the needle through the stitches right above the ribbing, snipped the edge stitch below the row now on the needle, and pulled the yarn through each stitch to unravel. Here's the ribbing completely separated, then a quick check of the pattern (read it backwards!) and begin reknitting the ribbing in the other direction. And with the other hand!! And now I've got some respectable ribbing I'd be happy to wear.

I'm still getting kicked around a little by my cold, but boy do I feel better!

It's too hot. Inside. At night. Between having almost no desire to knit in this heat and trying to keep myself from casting on for tank girl six, I'm really in off mode here.

So today, by request, some pictures of how to work the half-twisted decrease that I learned at the Granite State Knit-In and posted about a few weeks ago. I'm not very good spatially and so can't work out what it would look like if you slipped the stitches back to the left needle before knitting them together. I'm pretty much a do-what-you-understand kind of gal, so I just do it like that.

Now I've got to put down this knitting and run through the fountain a few times with the boys!

First off today I thought I'd share a bit of what I saw and learned at the Granite State Knit-In on Saturday. I only took one picture (come on, you've seen ladies knit before!), which was from the Show and Tell portion of the afternoon. Several women came up and showed their fabulous lace and intarsia sweaters. Very impressive. But I got such a kick out of these women who all knitted the same hat and came up as a huge group that I had to take a picture. Funny!

Nancy Thomas, from Lion Brand, was the speaker. I wish I'd thought to tell her about how much we knitbloggers and Knitty readers are enjoying the Cotton Ease (and ask for a few more neutral, sophisticated colors, perhaps). She brought many examples of exquisite knitting from her trips to Bolivia and Peru and talked about her experiences in the professional knitting world. She also brought some free patterns for people to take home and I must say I am impressed at how Lion Brand is really trying to offer hip and young patterns and yarns. It's not just your grandma's yarn anymore!

I took a couple of brief classes and saw a demonstration of some cable techniques, like cabling without a needle (not so scary if you don't have too many stitches in the cable). In another class, I learned a new decrease (new to me, at least), which is the exact complement to a K2tog decrease. You have to try it, if you're looking for matching decreases for raglan shaping or something like that! What you do is slip the first stitch knitwise and the next purlwise. Then knit the two together, by inserting the left needle into the stitches from the right. I know, it seems weird, but here's the result (new decrease on the left and K2tog on the right). Cool, huh?

And at the very end of the day, I won some yarn in the big raffle: 10 balls of Classic Elite's Spotlight cotton in a sort of pale blue/green/gray color. It's very soft! I couldn't help pulling out one ball so I can start swatching. Like they always say - if life gives you yarn, make a sweater!

Finally, speaking of making sweaters, people are still joining the knitalongs. I'm really excited that so many of us are getting together to knit and share our progress. Everyone is still welcome, so if you're interested, just let me know. And speaking of Knitty, until I was perusing the new issue (and old archives) yesterday, I had totally forgotten that the cover pattern two issues ago is a sweater very similar to the Becky sweater. If there is anyone out there who wanted to join the wannabe knitalong but had trouble finding the old Phildar pattern, check out Marc. And be sure to check out the new Knitty anyway. 'Cause Knitty rules!

Like Deb, my Pagan tank is all done except for the borders around the armholes and neck, which I haven't done yet because I'm too annoyed by them. From looking at the picture, I thought that there might be something different going on at the edges that made them look a little more like a cast on edge than the typical bind off. But after reading the pattern (yes, I know I should have read first!), I see it's just regular old bind off, which I frankly don't like very much. So I'm in search of a way to get what I was picturing before, something that looks more like the yarn just wrapped slanted around the edge. There's got to be neater ways to finish off a neck/armhole.

Those of you who are done, what did you do? Did you like it? Any one else have any thoughts?? I don't crochet, so anything too crochet-y would be too hard for me, I fear. What is a tank girl to do (on the edges of her handknit tank)?

Still collecting info on darning socks (see yesterday). I realize that darning socks is a lost art, but doesn't anyone darn sox out there? I wonder if he could help?

Lisa shared this great link in the comments yesterday:

Stocking Web Darning from Once Upon a Pattern

And here are a couple of other clear explanations that I found through Google:

How to Darn a Sock from About.com

Darn Those Socks! from HJS Studio

I think I'm going to try the duplicate stitching as explained in the last link. Now I just need to slip on my best civil war era gown and I'm ready!

Oh no! A little hole has formed in one of the first socks that I made. I love these socks. Darning tips, anyone?

Elizabeth is still waiting (see yesterday), but the Dale sweater now has sleeves. Yippee! I wasn't sure of the exact seaming method that I should use, but I managed to copy Wendy and Flor's pictures well enough, I think. Here's the inside just after the sleeve was added and here's a picture after the little facing was sewn over the steek. I just love the little steek facing that Dale has you make. All that brutal cutting covered up so neatly: "Nothing to see here! Move along, folks." So here is the sweater now, getting closer and closer to being done.

I'm itching to start the next one!

I did it! I cut my first steeks. After finishing up the knitting on the body of the Dale sweater, I was really excited about cutting the steeks open and seeing how the neck would turn out. I also have one sewing class under my belt, which means that I knew how to thread my machine and run a line of stitches. I figure that and a bit of chutzpa is all you really need, right? OK, that, chutzpa and Geane's Knit a Norgi page by your side. So I pulled out the Bernina for its inaugural run.

Wanna see?

As you can see from the pictures, I first went to work on my old swatch from the steek workshop I took in November. I put the first sewing lines to the test with a lot of picking and pulling and decided to try making the machine stitches a bit smaller. The second steek withstood my abuse much better. So, off I went. Back neck steek on the block. Two, uh make that three, lines of machine stitching on either side and then snip down the middle. Not too bad, really. The front neck steek was a little scarier. It was quite a bit longer and came down to one single stitch for the center of the v-neck. I was worried about missing the opening and sewing (or worse, cutting!) into that stitch and below. But nerves of steel and a constant refrain of 'I can knit this again' got us both through unscathed.

Now, I need to recouperate before I can even begin to think about doing the armholes. We'll see how the steeks hold up to lying around in the project bag for a few days. If they survive that, I'll consider it.

Yesterday I mentioned that I had to put the bugs on hold because my circular needle was too long to keep knitting in the round after taking off the neck stitches (and adding a small neck steek). Shortly after buying a new needle today, I stumbled upon Marilyn's, aka the Knitting Curmudgeon's, latest blog entry describing a technique that could solve the problem, by pulling a so-called magic loop of circ cable out of the round of knitting and just pretending that the needle is shorter. Marilyn does a good job summing up the pros and cons of the technique, so check out her thoughts.

Then later today, Michelle, aka another knitting blogger, mentioned the same technique in my comments and posted some pictures of it in progress on her blog. How helpful (and handy, as Marilyn would say!).

The idea looks pretty cool. I'm almost disappointed that I was able to get the needle that I needed! I think I will try it out when I start the sleeves of the second Dale sweater, since I found it difficult to deal with the two-color knitting and the basic double-pointed five-needle fumbling all at the same time. I'd love to be able to avoid that in the future. I had thought about those teeny little Clover needles, but can you really use those with adult sized fingers??

Anyway, thanks to you bloggers out there for being so gosh-durned knowledgeable and sharing your experiences. And since this is my blog and it's all about sharing my experiences, here now (brought to you by new size one, 16" Crystal Palace bamboo circs) my funny kangaroo pouch developing over the back neck steek.

I got some encouragement and tips from the helpful folks at my LYS to do the neck steek kangaroo-style. So here's the body with the steek begun! And a close-up of the steek. I didn't mark where the steek stitches began so I accidentally shifted them after a few rows, but I'm not going back. And I think I should have done the edge stitches right before and after the steek stitches in the background color instead of doing the pattern there, but I'm not going back. I think that once I pick up stitches and do the neckband, it will look fine. That is, after I CUT it!!

It's so freaky looking that I just can't wait to cut it open to see how the neck comes out. It's a brilliant solution. Apparently I can sew and cut right down the middle of the steek stitches and don't have to worry about any of my machine sewing lines showing or messing up the nice neck shaping. And there's no way I could leave it like this, so no chickening out of the cutting part! Of course, I also have to cut the sleeve openings on the sides and that does seem more like I messing up a finished garment. Better read over Flor's tips again before doing that!

As for the knitting, I think I have finally totally gotten the hang of the two-color knitting. The little dudes and the first four rows of bugs are kinda lumpy, but this last row of bugs is coming out perfectly flat. For unknown reasons, the tension with my left hand has suddenly made a dramatic improvement. (Blush. Curtsey.)

I picked up my Dale bug sweater and realized that I hadn't posted a picture of the progress I'd made before my in-laws arrived. Well let me do that right now:

I'm pretty excited about having gotten so far. The bugs are kinda lumpy, but I just keep telling myself that pressing it will make everything look perfect (or at least good enough for my first fair-isle).

I'm just one row of vw's away from starting the neck steek. I don't want to cast off stitches in the middle for the neck and then have to do the two-handed, two-color thing back and forth, so I've decided to do some sort of steek here. But I'm not 100% sure what sort of steek I should make (it's supposed to be a v-neck, by the way). I was thinking I'd just cast off the center stitch and then cast on new stitches above to make a little kangaroo pouch thing, like Elizabeth Zimmerman and Alice Starmore suggest, and like Wendy did with Luskentyre and Rosendal. But I've also seen people just knit a shapeless tube, use the machine sewing line to "create" the neck shape and then cut out the extra knitted fabric (described here). I think this is the way the Philosopher's Wool people do it. And the woman who taught the steek class I took had done this Dale sweater that way.

What to do? All the decisions in this steeking deal seem so frighteningly final!

Q: "What about those Dale sweaters?"

You didn't miss anything, I haven't worked on the bugs in a while. Shameful, I know. I put the first one down to focus on Christmas gifts. The mutssjaals are the last of the gifts, so I hope to be able to continue with the bugs in January. I'm now planning to have them (I have to make two, of course) done for the boys' birthday in July.

Q: "Are you continuing to knit continental?"

I haven't done too much continental knitting recently because I was knitting tiny stuff on double-pointed needles under deadline (holiday gifts). I did knit the Kureyon hat continental though, since I didn't want it to be one of those tight hair-mussing sort of hats. When I get to greensleeves, I plan to knit that continental (I did the swatch that way). Ditto for the brown buttah for my husband.

Q: "Can we see more pictures of the boys?"

OK, no one asked, but I'll throw some in anyway. Here they are with their blankies (the first things I knitted for them!) when they were feeling a little under the weather recently. And here's my favorite blankie picture of them all.

Q: "What no update on the mutssjaals, or whatever it is you're calling them?"

You've seen through me. I pretty much took a non-knitting day yesterday, so no news to report on the baby hat/scarf. But I'm gonna go check out Becky's site now to see if she's started hers. So join me!

If you are a beginner and are thinking of starting your own pair of socks (tiger or otherwise), Terri has a great tutorial with pictures on her site called Socks 101. And if you're new to circular knitting, the only trick is to be sure that the stitches aren't twisted when you join them to form your circle.

First, cast on the required number of stitches. Then make sure they are all straight so that the cast-on edge is a perfect row below the needles (this is to prevent twisting the first round and making a mobius strip!). To test this, line up all the stitches - loop above, cast-on edge below - and if you see the cast-on edge trying to wrap around the needle flip it around, so it makes a straight line at the bottom. Now you can divide the stitches over how ever many needles you'll be using (I like to use four) by slipping a fraction (in my case, 1/4) of the stitches from one end purlwise on to one needle and then the next fraction to another needle, etc. Essentially, all you will be doing is instead of turning the last needle to work back and forth, just moving it over to the first needle, making a circle (square or triangle, depending on how many needles you are using), and knitting the very first stitch with the yarn, as if it were all the same row.

But first, check again to be sure that the cast-on edge is not twisted and make sure that your yarn is coming from the right side ready to join the two front needles. (I had the yarn on the left, so I just flipped my square over, so it's going in the right direction). Then pick up the needles. Just focus on those front two, the rest should come along with you. Insert the working needle, knit the first stitch and voila, they're joined! Terri's got pics of all these steps on the first page of her site using three needles. And here's a page with some pictures to help, just in case you find yourself knitting on the inside of the circle. It happens.

Of course, if you are a KnitNet reader, you may want to disregard all of my "amateur enthusiast" advice. Rant coming soon!

Finished the tiger hat for my nephew! All drunk from my recent knitting successes, I threw caution to the wind and just did the intarsia knitting with no bobbins and let the ends hang all over the place. Wild! The Opal tiger socks are next. And to inspire me to keep finishing off the odds and ends, today we present an internet tiger sock tour.

Of course, we must begin with Wendy. She made hers at the beginning of the year. Next, we have Stephanie of stephknits. It looks like she finished hers earlier this fall. Inga from Der kleine Sockhaus and Erin, aka tree, just finished theirs. Valerie of Valerie's blog has both socks on the needles. And Melissa from loose ends has a pair still just as virtual as mine!

And look, I didn't even mention this once!

I'm finishing up the crazy continental. At the Knitsmiths (our local knitting group) yesterday I picked up and knit the neckband. The neck turned out to be more of a boat neck than a crew neck. I think that has to do with the number fudging I did and how close-fitting the sweater is around my shoulders. I like it though and the neckband finishes it off nicely, I think. I've really enjoyed sort of designing this sweater on my own and figuring out what I want it to look like and seeing how it worked out. I feel confident that my next sweater (the green cables I swatched for) will fit even better.

I also managed to deal with the other finishing issue: cutting off the bottom few centimeters of the back, which I decided early on was too long. I cut an edge stitch right above where I wanted the new ribbing to start, threaded a smaller needle into last row of stitches before the cut to keep 'em in place, and picked out the stitches below them all the way across. Fun! Now I've got this crazy strip of ribbing as a souvenir, I guess. Or a headband. "Oh, very Bjorn Borg," said Julia! I reknit the ribbing and am using EZ's cast-on cast-off method to make a nice cast-off edge.

Yesterday we also got to see the amazing Dale pillow that Emily just finished. It is so beautiful, it's like you gotta redecorate the rest of your house now beautiful. Seeing it really makes me want to get well so I can get back to the Dale sweater I put aside right before I got this never-ending, now-relapsing cold. Now that the crazy continental is almost finished, it's calling to me. "Come back. Fair-isle is fun, remember!"

Steeking class was lots of fun. We watched the instructor cut the steeks on a Dale baby sweater (one I really want to make now, by the way!). Then we went to it, sewing and cutting our own swatches. I cut a placket opening on the Lorna's Laces swatch above. Wanna look at the back? Then I picked up stitches for a front band. And just like that, it looks all better. Now look at the the back. But wait, there's more! I also made a swatch with some mercerised cotton (Dale Kolibri left over from the knitted lederhosen). I cut an armhole opening into it and then sewed the other corner in as if it were a sleeve, making Frankenswatch! If you're feeling brave, check out the back of this one!

I have to say, I really enjoyed the steeking. Of course, they were only (s)crap stockinette swatches. But once I had machine sewed around the steek area, I didn't really have a problem cutting into them. I may wash the frankenswatches a few times, just to convince myself that the stitching will hold and those loose ends will stay put. Still, I feel like I'm ready and, more importantly, willing to do it for real.

So, now that I've survived steeking 101 and finished knitting the sleeves of the first Dale baby sweater, I'm ready to start knitting the body. Wish me luck!

Steek class is tonight! Here's a homework swatch still in one piece.

In addition to making a few swatches for the class, I knitted a bit more of the Dale sleeve and am almost done. I should be able to finish it today (during the boys' naptime). I wanted to have it finished before the class, so I can start knitting the body as soon I'm sure that I will be able to cut it! I'll be picking up some bamboo circs at the LYS to use for knitting the body. Like Kathy I'm having some slippage issues with the two-handed technique on the metal needles I normally use. I'm knitting very high up on the tips of the needles and the stitches want to jump right off the end. And I don't feel very confident about recovering dropped stitches in the middle of fair-isle color work.

Frankly, with the all over fair-isle pattern on the body and then the steeks, I'm starting to get a little scared!

Found a little bit of time yesterday to work on the Dale sweater. I'm about half way done with the second sleeve now. I'm really looking forward to starting the body, not only because it will be a lot more fair-isle work than the sleeves, but also because I won't have to do it on double pointed needles (grrr!) and I won't have to do a lot of increases (boooh!).

I am very happy with how the sleeves are coming out overall, but one thing that is bothering me are the increases. They just look bad in some places, especially where I was doing the pattern. I'm still learning all the knitting secrets like when to use which increases (for some reason the decreases seem more intuitive to me), so I thought I could try out some different methods on this sweater. I usually use a knit-into-the-stitch-below increase, which someone at Knitsmiths showed me and called an invisible increase. This method always looked good in regular stockinette before, but this time some of the "invisible" increases were coming out visible, even unsightly! Well, over the weekend I received my back issues of Interweave Knits and one of them had a very helpful article by Ann Budd on increases. So I switched to what she called a raised increase -- and what I've elsewhere seen as just make one -- that is, picking up the bar between the stitches and knitting it twisted. I had hoped this would really neaten up the increases, but the new increases kinda looked the same just a bit more bumpy. So I went back to my original method. Elizabeth Zimmerman suggests doing the same increase I was originally doing, but twisting the stitch picked up from the row before. I tried that too once or twice and it seemed to pull the color from the previous row up too much for my liking. Hrrmpf.

So, I think I've messed with the increase line enough on this sleeve! Maybe on the next set of sleeves (got two sweaters to knit, you know!) I'll try EZ's loop method from Knitting without Tears.

Do you all have a preferred method for increasing?

I'm getting a lot out of my most recent knitting book purchase, Sweater Design in Plain English. Maggie is my new hero. I feel like I am finally getting some tips that are going to help me make better sweaters. As we have seen, I can make yarn into a sweater, but I can't always make it fit. What I need is a way to tell when a pattern is going to produce something that isn't going to fit me well and then the way to adjust it so that it does. Well, this book explains how to take measurements correctly and how to convert those measurements into armhole depth and raglan shaping and bust darts, whatever you might need. Exactly what I was looking for!

What I really really like about this book is that Maggie doesn't just give us some formula to use, but rather explains what is happening. There's a chapter about how different stitches and stitch patterns "act", ie, how they change your gauge, how they stretch with wear, when/where it is best to use them. And the whole last half of the book goes through a series of patterns which are less for making than they are for learning. They take you through the planning process of progressively more complex sweaters involving more and more shaping and leading up to top-down, in the round sweaters. She makes the process so clear that I am actually starting to believe that I could design a sweater. Of course, I have no orignial ideas, so I'll be sticking to published patterns, but I hope to feel more confident about tweaking them so I can use the yarn I want or make them to the exact size I need.

Empowered with my new knowledge, I immediately set off to take some proper measurements and check out the crazy continental. I'm just winging the pattern for the sweater by mathing up a pattern from A Season's Tale for different gauged yarn. Since I'm just learning continental, I'm worried about my gauge and the shaping, so I wanted to check what I've already done against a good set of measurements. Well, it checks out okay so far. I'll be making the front about 4cm shorter than the back (since it will be too long, as I suspected), but otherwise the width and armhole openings look like they could work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

And here's the front of the crazy continental after some weekend knitting. I'm really happy with how how the tension is improving. It's almost as even as my right-handed knitting now. Lookie!

The two-color two-handed knitting class was last night and it was great! I didn't really believe people when they said, 'you will love doing fair-isle', but they weren't lying. It is so cool! Boy am I glad that I took the continental knitting class first and practiced so much on the crazy contintental. I felt comfortable holding and working with the yarn in both hands and was able to focus on the stranding techinque. I think I had the most trouble with just keeping track of where I was in the pattern! So, I still need to practice to get my tension even, but otherwise I'm pretty proud of my little swatch.

I can't wait to start the dale duo!

Made some progress on the crazy continental since my last post. I've just begun the raglan shaping. I think my tension is becoming more even, but I wouldn't swear by it. And I'm still not knitting really "cleanly", I mean like you see in instructional photos. The left index finger seems to have the most to learn and while it's still building up strength and experience I'm cheating a little with occasional help from other fingers and a lot of wrist movement. But I think I can catch a glimpse of the promised continent.

And in a brief excursion back to American knitting, I decided that I just had to pick up Elizabeth and finish the front before I set her aside any longer. I don't want those stitches sitting on the needles to get too stretched out. I just finished it this evening (see here) and will work a bit on the crazy continental and the dale swatch before I come back to redo the sleeves. That requires more ripping and washing, so I need to psyche myself up for it anyway.

Wow, this continental knitting is really cool! It's starting to feel like actual knitting and not like some strange and frustrating hand exercise. I'm not getting quite the same speed as I have with my right hand yet, but that's mostly because I haven't quite worked out how to let the yarn slide over my fingers from the skein. Either I pull too much and the yarn just falls off my index finger or too little and I end up with insanely tight stitches. But hey, I've only been a continental knitter for two days here!

So, once I get the hang of this, will I ever want to go back? I'll have to go back to complete the projects that were already in progress. But after that, I'm not sure. What have your experiences been with learning a new technique like this? At the Knit Out, Kaffe Fassett said that Elizabeth Zimmerman once told him to buy some circular needles and it would change his life. He said, "I did and it did." Has anyone found learning continental knitting to be a revelation like this, sort of opening a door and making many other things possible? Or is it the case that you can't teach an old knitter new tricks?

Look ma, I'm doing it continental style! The continental knitting class I took last night was very good. After a couple of hours, I actually felt like I was getting the hang of using my left hand. And I can see how it can be a much faster method. Since you're knitting from right to left, when you hold the yarn on the left it's just sitting there waiting to be picked up and knit in. It's so much more efficient than dropping the needles and swooping the yarn around. I'm not saying that I can do it, but I can see why it would be faster, theoretically. I have to try it a lot more to see if it is practically speaking any better for me. We made little sampler swatches in the class, trying out knit, purl, seed and rib stitch. Here's my silly little swatch (looks like knitting, right?). I want to get in some real practice though before my next class next week (two-handed two-color knitting), so I've decided to put all my other projects aside for the moment and start another one, done just with the continental method. Good excuse, don'tcha think?!

As we guessed from the last entry, I'm pretty much a self-taught knitter, learning from books and the odd yarn-store workshop here and there. And, of course, the internet. I've found lots of sites that have been very helpful in improving my knitting and I just thought I'd share today.

Common Threads Fiber Arts Store has great on-line knitting classes that are probably all anyone would ever need. And for free, there are some specific techniques animated at Dnt, Inc.. There are also a lot of clear instructions for techniques like duplicate stitch, I-cords, picking up stitches and seaming at Borealis Sweaterscapes. They've got an excellent page about short-row shaping and wrapping that I think has finally cleared up for me how to use short rows for smooth neck/shoulder decreases. And they've also got a page about intarsia, in case you want to see how it's really done! And be sure to check out Flor's page too for all kinds of helpful instructions, pictures, and links!

Tonight I'm going to a class at my local knitting store, a good yarn. I signed up for three classes this fall and am so excited that they're finally starting. They are all just one night workshops (with the twins I can't swing too many nights out) but I've gotten a lot out of the ones I've taken before. Tonight is Continental Knitting, which I am taking in order to force myself to learn to use my left hand. When I started knitting I had this horrible claw thing going on trying to keep tension on the yarn. Now that I've gotten down how to hold the yarn comfortably in my right hand, I am less than thrilled at the idea of starting over with the other hand! But I have to learn because my next projects are Dale of Norway sweaters for the boys. Thus, the second class I signed up for is Two-Color Stranded Knitting. Then, finally, the last class is on the real scary stuff, Steeking. Can't wait!

While working on the little tiger hat yesterday I thought about how indimidated I used to be by the idea of intarsia knitting. Well, to anyone out there who would like to try it but is afraid, "Look, if I can do it, you can!" In case some visual aids would help, here's how I'm doing it. Now, I'm no expert here, but that's my point. I've got no idea if what I'm doing is right, but it seems to work. And since I'm semi-successfully fudging my way through it, so can you.

And here's the piece finished.

Here's how I spent the boys' naptime yesterday.

In other news, I got my first chance since Knit Out to do "the kipping". Since I stay at home with the boys, I really don't have much opportunity to knit in public and they're way too young for me to be able to knit when we're out (at the playground, for example). But yesterday the car needed to be brought to the dealership for servicing and I had to ride the subway back home. Perfect opportunity! I brought my stripey baby sock with me and turned the heel during the ride. It was very pleasant and no one seemed freaked out by my knitting, but I have to admit that I did a very bad job on the heel. I'd like to blame it on the subway, but I just haven't got the hang of the short row heel yet. I keep taking a break between finished socks and forgetting how it was that I did it last time. Needless to say, I was too vain to rip everything out in the train, so I just kept knitting the heel all wrong. Well, I didn't have anything else to do. Now I can go frog it too!

Right now I can't handle the thought that I will probably go back and frog quite a bit of Elizabeth I , so I'm on to something entirely different: socks! These will be for the boys. I have quite a bit of yarn left over from their vests, which I recently finished (see this year's finished projects), and have decided to make them a couple of pairs of matching socks out of the leftovers.

Ahhhh, socks. What a pleasure. Small, simple, no massive gauge or sizing concerns. Just cast on the right number, knit to a goodly length and make a toe. To keep it interesting I am going to try doing short-row heels for the first time. I prefer the look of short-row heels to heel flaps and not having to pick up is a plus, but we'll see how they come out.

I found a clear pattern at Children in Common charity knitting site and got this far. Then I tried the heel, hated it and got back to here again, then tried it again, hated it and here I am again! Finally, after finding some tips here at Wool Works, I got around the heel. And voila!

Now I just have this one to finish and then seven more!