Fitting a curve into a rectangle

Well, this Mariner's logo is giving me more of a problem than I thought. I think the main problem is that it's a very curvy logo - some sort of script/italicized font - and I'm trying to keep the curves and I just don't have enought "stitches/pixels" for the "resolution" I want. Here's what I mean:




I think I will abandon the idea of duplicate stitch on this. So, what will (hopefully) give me the curves? Well, plain old fashioned hand embroidery would do the trick, I'm sure, if I were any good at it. But I'm not. So I think I'm going to try surface or tambour crochet. I am more at home with a crochet hook, and I think that I'll be able to reproduce the curves I need as well as the thickness of the lines.

The other challenge - transferring this design to the knitted fabric. Here's my attempt:


I'm basically using a piece of thin white yarn and a large needle to "trace" the design onto the sweater. Then I'll rip the paper off (gently, of course), and using the white yarn line as a guide, reproduce the design with yellow yarn in the surface crochet.

Well, that's the idea anyway. Stay tuned to see if it works or not!

Another FO

From the teeny tiny little swatch photo in my first blog entry, to the completed Ruana (okay, not quite, I have some ends to weave in that are evident in the photo, but the knitting's done).

I hope to get the pattern written up and available over the next few weeks. Check Ciobair for updates.

And although there is a knitting machine in the background of this hastily staged photo, this was all 100% hand knit. Entrelac is just not worth it on the machine, in my opinion.

Okay, I think my blogging is getting caught up - I have a couple of new projects on the go (because something has to backfill the void left by the completed ones, of course!) that I'll be talking about soon.

#1 Hockey Hound Sweater Progress

To make up for lost time, I'm "multi-blogging" today. I met with Jed, #1 Hockey Hound, last night, for his "final fitting". We're ready to sew up the seams and duplicate stitch that bad boy Mariners logo to the derriere.

Here's the pre-finishing view:



That's a paper mock-up of the Mariners logo, by the way.

Big Cables is a Wrap....

Well, of course, it's actually a sweater, but it's done! And actually it's been done for a week or so, I just haven't had time to photograph and blog it.

I don't understand why I can't get my camera to pick up the cables - this photo makes it look like a plain blue sweater. It's probably more operator error than camera I suppose.

I found another error in the pattern as well - when decreasing for the sleeve cap, the pattern notes that you should be at RC156 before casting off the remaining few stitches. That's true if you're doing the smallest size, but in fact, if you are doing the largest size, you should be at RC162, and I didn't bother doing the math on the other sizes, but the RC for the second largest size is probably not right either.

I did e-mail the magazine about the first error, with regard to the neck decreasing, but they weren't really open to hearing about it, let's put it that way, so I'm not going to bother reporting the second error.

All in all a nice, simple, comfortable sweater that I would definitely make again.

End of 05-06 Minor Hockey season

• 1 tournament (SEDMHA)
• 2 kids
• 3 days
• 5 meals out
• 8 games
• 500 kilometres (give or take 100) (gas @ $1.13.9 per litre), and
• lots of friends, fun and laughter

= the end of another successful year of hockey!

Going to the dogs.....

I have finally started Jed the Hound Dog's hockey sweater. Am squeezing work in on this between looooong hours at the office (accountant=tax season=say no more). Here's what I'm aiming for:


That says "Mariners #1 Hockey Hound". I'm rethinking having that on the side though, and will probably centre it on the back. It'll be duplicate stitched on, I'm not fussing with fairisle for lettering.

I scanned my son's baseball cap in order to trace the letters to get just the right "font", which I cannot seem to identify otherwise on multiple font sites I've visited on the internet. This is what the lettering will look like:











And finally, here's how I make a pattern (for my own use).

I don't know if you can really see anything there, but that's basically what I knit from. I really like the visual, I really dislike patterns with lots of words and no pictures or schematics. The paper is, by the way, wood workers "workshop" paper for figuring out wood working projects, and as you can see it has measurements around the sides in imperial and metric. I got it from Lee Valley Tools. Never underestimate the inventory of non-knitting retail outlets to still provide items useful to knitting (Canadian Tire, Staples, Home Depot, etc).

That's it for today.

Laura's Camouflage Socks - Off the Hook(s)!

I'm still having flash issues with the camera, so these look more grey camou than green camou in the photo, but here they are anyway. No, the toes aren't going to be white - that's waste yarn for taking the socks off the machine. I'll make it go away when I graft the toes and weave in all the ends.

I have to say that Bernat Sox yarn is just a little bit too thin for my mid-gauge machine - the socks look okay but the gauge is a bit looser than I would like for a sock. We'll see how well they wear for Laura.

That's it for me today.

Happy Birthday to Me

I'm hard at work churning out income tax returns (day job = accountant), but taking one moment of unabashed self-indulgence to wish myself a happy birthday. No plans other than to not work tonight (a big deal this time of year) and cozy up to the TV with my twelve year old son and watch the Habs humiliate the Leafs.

The big cable sweater is almost ready to be photographed - just sewing up the seams. Knit a camouflage-coloured sock on the machine early this morning for my daughter (photo hopefully to follow - weird happenings with the "flash" on the camera this morning). Plan to knit the mate while supper's in the oven tonight (yes, I am cooking supper on my birthday, but it's OK - I have no plans to do dishes).

Then I absolutely plan to start Jed the Hound's hockey sweater!

Big Cables continued....

I took my in-process sweater to our machine knitting guild meeting in Truro yesterday and we had a great discussion around the neck decreasing (they agree with me), and we also learned a great new way to do pockets (thanks Marg!).

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a close up. Hopefully you can see my little stitch counts in this photo - definitely "11 to 10".

'Nuff said. The next time I "blog" this sweater it will be a picture of the finished item!

Big Cables progress

I've finished the front of the "Knit Big or Go Home" sweater in the current issue of Knitwords and I'm really pleased with the results so far. The cables are a bit hard to see in this photograph because I am photographically challenged and cannot figure out how to turn off the flash on my digital camera. I did try to darken the contrast a bit, but I don't think that really helped. Just get your nose up close to the screen and squint, and you may start to see the cables going up the middle.

This is a nice, simple (visually, and in execution) design with nice vertical lines (alway a good thing). I think I found a mistake in the pattern though, which caused some frustration when I divided for the neck.

The pattern calls for dividing the two "cable strands" to each follow up the side of the neck. Each cable strand is made up of eight cable stitches and then one tuck rib that's latched up by hand. Of course, once you divide for the neck, you need to start decreasing in order to shape the neck. The pattern calls for a "9 to 8" decrease, meaning that you move the stitch on the 9th needle to the 8th needle. But if you do this, when you get to the shoulder and drop the 9th stitch in order to latch it up for the tuck rib, the tuck rib won't follow beside the cable.

I guess just trust me when I say that the only way to get that tuck rib to follow immediately beside the 8 cable stitches, and still achieve the neck shaping, is to leave those 8 cable stitches and 1 tuck rib stitch totally undisturbed, and do the decrease as "11 to 10", or the eleventh stitch from the neck edge onto the tenth. I can say that this is the voice of experience from ripping out the neck four times because I didn't listen to my own intuition.

The yarn, by the way, is some I have had lounging in my stash for awhile - 100% wool, royal blue, single ply, that's all I know. A little bit coarse off the cone, but it should soften up once it's blocked and even more when it's been "broken in".

Two sleeves to go on this one and then it's on to Jed the Hound's hockey sweater!

Tournament Results

They played their hearts out, and lost 2-1, but we're all very proud of their efforts and their second place finish!

Championship game today

Just a quick update to my last post - a win and a loss on Sunday brings my son's team to the championship game this morning at 10:45 - very exciting! More later.....

Hockey Tournament results Day 1

Yesterday was a great day for my son's Pee Wee AA hockey team - they won both of their games and currently sit in first place out of six teams with a guaranteed spot in the semi-final game of the Joe Lamontagne tournament.

I must confess I leave the knitting needles in the car (not at home, mind you, just in the car) for these games and devote my full attention to the ice. So today is another full day of hockey with two games this afternoon, leading into a possible championship game tomorrow morning.

Pre-game yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting Jed the Hound Dog for a sizing appointment. Jed will be the (I hope!) proud recipient of a custom knit Eastern Shore Mariners Hockey Hound dog sweater. Now that we have size worked out, I'm ready to draft the pattern, and I look forward to "blogging" my progress. I think this will be machine knit, but I'm not 100% decided on that yet, so check back often as I work my way through this cool project (and for more hockey results!).

At the rink....

Socks, socks and more socks. I spend a lot of time with the kids at the rink (lots of rinks, lots of hours, lots of hockey). And so I always have a portable rink knitting project or PRKP on the go. All the new wonderful self-striping sock yarns are just the ticket - plain knit and let them do their thing. Here is the current PRKP.

If you haven't tried knitting socks on two circulars a la Cat Bordhi I highly recommend it. I was a "dyed in the wool" five needle sock knitter who resisted the two circular needle idea forever. Now I knit everything circularly this way - glove fingers, tops of hats, doll legs and arms, etc etc.

Enough blogging for today - two rinks, two hockey games, and a pair of socks call my name...

On the machine....

I usually have something on the machine "in progress", and today it is the "Knit Big or Go Home" sweater in the current issue of Knitwords. This is a nice pattern - extra "short rows" to deal with crossing the huge 6 x 6 cable. Since I don't have a 6 prong transfer tool, I used a double pointed needle as suggested in the accompanying article in the same issue, and it worked great. It's still a bit "tense" crossing that many stitches, but so far I'm pleased with the results.

There are very few "crossings" too, because of the scale of the cable - I think just five or six altogether. I'll post pictures of the finished item soon!

Exploring Entrelac

And exploring blogging too, I guess you could say, as this is my "maiden" blog post. I like the idea of a journal, particularly one that chronicles my favourite hobbies (with some kid stuff thrown in here and there, and whatever else I feel like), so exploring blogging seemed a neat thing to do.

So, without further adieu - I've been exploring entrelac these days - hand knit, machine knit, crocheted. On the needles at the moment is some beautiful hand dyed Fleece Artist yarn dyed in colours strikingly similar to the Nova Scotia tartan. I like this. It's just a swatch at the moment, but it has potential, so stay tuned.

I've been a hand knitter for a very long time, and more recently have started exploring machine knitting. I tend to turn to machine knitting when I want some plain, boring stocking stitch done faster than I can hand knit it, or if there is a technique that can be accomplished with the machine that can't be accomplished (or at least not as easily) on my hand needles. I have an electronic Studio mid-gauge machine, and it knits hand knitting yarns (the main component of my stash) like a dream.

So I tried entrelac, and here are two samples - can you tell which was hand knit and which was machine knit (answer below)?

Answer: Picture on the left is machine knit. And for this particular technique, there is no advantage to machine knitting. It takes just as long on the machine to pick up all those stitches (if not longer, in fact), and I think I can do it more neatly and consistently by hand.

So my next stop was crocheted entrelac - which is actually done using the technique of "Tunisian Crochet". Now, I've always found crochet faster than knitting, but this is definitely something that has some possibilities! Forgive the yarn colours in the sample - it's just left over yarn swatched for technique only.

There are some tricks to this, and some kinks to work out. You can see from the photo that it produces a lot of ends (although they can be dealt with in crochet fairly easily as you work). With Tunisian crochet, which to me is like a hybrid mix of crochet and knitting together, you end up with a fabric that "sort of" has a knit side and a purl side. When you're knitting entrelac, all of your squares have the knit side on the same side (unless you wanted to deliberately change that, I suppose). With crochet, because of the way you flip the just-completed square, you end up with a row of "knit side facing" (the gold squares in the sample) and then a row of "purl side facing" (the purple squares in the sample). I imagine that's a simple matter of flipping the squares in some other fashion - it will just take some experimentation. So stay tuned as I continue to play.

I think that's enough for a "maiden blog". More soon....!