A WordPress Site

Restingmotion

  • Silk Ribbon

    I Love knitting with ribbon.  You can use large needles and still get a fabric that is light and still quite wearable unlike knitting with bulky or superbuldy wool or cotton, which just turns out huge an heavy and usually unflattering as well.  Sometimes I need a project that goes quickly and yet is wearable and flattering.  How many heavy bulky sweaters does anyone need after all?

    One of my knitting acquaintances feels very strongly that real knitters only knit wool and perhaps cotton or linen, although she hates linen,  and only knit cables and colorwork to add design interest eschewing novelty yarns.  Now I love all those things, cables, intarsia, novelty yarns (at least sometimes).  I love doing color work although it is not as portable as, lets say, a ribbon sweater.  And I love knitting beautiful wool, silk, cotton or linen sweaters on small needles.  I find the finer guages are much easier to wear in this overheated world that I, at least, tend to live in.  But I also love simple shapes out of interesting yarns.  Does that make me not a real knitter?  Perhaps.

    One nice Friday earlier in the year, when Colorful Stitches had their sale, I felt like going up to Lenox.  George felt like going too, which was nice as we made a day of it, stopping for lunch in Hudson and meandering around.  I am very fortunate to have a husband who enjoys the occasional wander through a yarn store.   When we arrived, I immediately started looking at the Rowan yarns and some others which were on sale.  George was taken by a ribbon sweater on display knit in a silk ribbon (not on sale).  He was so enthused I sent him on a mission to find out about the yarn and see if there was any he liked so I could make one (for me of course).  He found this yarn, April2005_003_1 which is a beautiful combination of blues and purples and so it went into the basket.

    I started knitting on the way home.  Unfortunately I did not get much time to work on it the next week or two.  I finished the sweater when we went to Washingto DC for four days the end of February, business trip for George, fun for me.  Who can ask for more, museums, knitting, nice dinners.  hmm…

    And here is the final result revealed:

    April2005_002_1 I Adore this sweater.  The color is wonderful.  It fits closely without being to revealing.  It is light enough that I can wear it under a jacket with a suit but it also looks gret with casual pants or a skirt.  Oh, almost instant gratification is sometimes a wonderful thing!

  • Blanket Finished

    I am posting a photo of a blanket I finally finished at the end of February. I had been waiting for a sunny day to take the photo.    Ignore that little glare of sun in the lower right corner.

    I can’t believe that I lost three months of my life on this, although I am happy to have done it.  George so often finds blankets excessively heavy and when I saw this light merino wool and camel hair brushed yarn I immediately thought of  a blanket.  For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the yarn; I am not good about keeping that kind of record, perhaps a good reason to keep a knitting log.   Due to constraints of colors available and timing, as I naively thought this could be a Christmas present, (I saw the yarn 1 week before Thanksgiving), I knitted individual squares which I planned to join in strips.  It still took me too long and I pretty much put most of my life on hold to knit this.  Most of the strips were knitted by Christmas but I hadn’t joined them together yet.  I ran out of the main yarn and used the original border yarn to double crochet the squares into strips and then together.  On Christmas day it was arrayed on the floor but not fully assembled yet and I needed to purchase new border yarn as I was rapidly running out of the supply.

    Blanket_001_2 It is big enough for both of us on a queen size bed, roughly 88 x 92 inches.  I would never have finished if I had to knit 84 inch long rows, but in planning I forget to think about how I would put it together.  Sitting on the floor and crochetting, then weaving in ends, then sewing on the border was endless tedium.  In fact knitting a 2 inch wide border was not fascinating either, I looked forward to the corners and that little bit of shaping provided by the miter.

    In the end, I love the blanket, it is beautiful and warm and light and just invites snuggling.  George thinks it is gorgeous which is gratifying except that he wanted to leave it on the floor so that everyone can see it.  No way I want people traipsing over this lovingly but loosely knit blanket.

  • Stolen Moments

    For once, using the kitchen island as my cutting table paid off as I sureptitously used tracing paper and copied the stitching lines to my new cardigan as I made breakfast this morning. 

    I cut a new cardigan last night, using Nancy Erickson’s 1960 pattern and a beautiful pumpkin-rust colored wool jersey, which although nice, is not one of my better colors.  I have made this pattern before, but not recently.  I did lay out my newly altered top pattern underneath it and decided that I don’t need major alterations although this may be wishful thinking.  Since I used to cut on the cutting line and not mark stitching lines, I just cut the pattern as is, after making a few alterations to accomodate the changes in my figure over the past couple of years.  MISTAKE.

    Since I have been doing more pattern alteration and learning to redesign patterns to accomodate my my twisted, rodded and fused body, (no issues here) I have been cutting off the seam allowances on patterns and drawing the stitching lines directly on the fabric.  This has been a great improvement in ease of alteration and even sewing although I would occasionally grumble about the time it took.  This time I didn’t do that but almost immediately regretted it.  I decided that I like seeing the stiching lines, they were good reference points.  I also learned that tracing them after the fact, using a tracing wheel and tracing paper is a pain and not necessarily very accurate unless one is VERY CAREFUL.  Last night I was too tired and went to bed figuring that I would just sew blind, based on seam allowances, as I used to do.

    This morning I saw the neatly stacked pattern pieces on the island and thought, "aha! I can do this while I cook breakfast".  Luckily George asked for hot cereal, a menu that I can easily work around.  I put the water on to boil, traced a couple of pieces, added the cereal and stirred, did more tracing, and so on.  By the time the dear wandered down for breakfast everything was stacked back up just as I left it last night and I was putting the cereal on the table.  He was none the wiser except for noting that the cereal was a little thicker than usual.  Was I distracted or what??

    Hopefully I can sew this up today, but even if I don’t manage that, at least I managed to sneak in a little sewing time.