Mar 21
OK, so you know I don't like to use the "m" word when it comes to knitting, because KNITTING is not actually MAGIC.
But a few weeks ago, in my "what-I-want-to-knit-this-year" list, I mentioned a yarn-usage technique that is often known as the "magic ball". Because this isn't actually a knitting technique so much as it is a clever way to use yarn, I decided I can more-or-less live with the "m" word in this case.
Hey, I finally put together a list for What I Want to Knit This Year!
Yeah, well, so what if it's mid-February?
This idea has been kind of nagging at me for a month or so — but what finally prompted me to get it down on paper was an incident last week, when Linda asked, "So what are you knitting for fun?" — after seeing what I was knitting on for work — and I had to say, "Nothing." That, my friends, is a sad state of affairs, and one I thought I ought to rectify. I've gotten started on it, as you can see to the right, although that item happens to be the very last one on the list. You'll have to read ALL THE WAY THROUGH if you want to know what that noise is all about.
Dec 1
OK, OK, I admit that in the last post on this subject, I didn't spell out every little detail about exactly how I was going to finish this bad boy off… but then there would be no suspense left for the big surprise ending.
A few posts back, 
I mentioned that I seem to have developed not so much a New Year's Resolution, as an End-Of-Year Resolution: to finish up the last few remaining UFO's in my knitting pile. And so, I've been battling with this one.
Sep 29
And it's MINE! Yay!
This yarn comes from "Plum Crazy Ranch", and I bought it within 30 minutes of arriving at OFFF on Saturday morning. The creator said she'd had it hanging up for a year and a half — which at first I thought meant, no one had bought it for a year and a half, which I could not believe — and then she continued, "but I decided I could finally part with it."
Feb 8
It’s kind of a long story, but what the heck — you’ve got some time to kill, right? I’ll valiantly try to keep it short.
A decade ago, plus or minus, my brother and I were back in Iowa, helping my mom as she attempted to continue living in her apartment. As part of the job, we went out to get her some new housewares. And on the way back to the apartment, we stopped at an estate sale.
Dec 27
The "Z" here refers to NEW ZEALAND!! Yes, here I am on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Ah, the magic of modern air travel. Here is how bad it was getting back home in PDX just before we left.
Dec 17
Here is what it looks like from my office window and my backyard these days:
And here is the yoke to my top-down raglan sweater so far.
With all this snow, and everything being cancelled, you might think I’d have gotten a bit more knitting done, wouldn’t you?
Oct 19
Last Friday was our first top-down sweater knitalong class, and I’m so tickled with my Friday knitters, I just have to tell you.
I’ve got seven — count ‘em, SEVEN — knitters who are going to knit a top-down sweater along with me!! It will be a project extending over a few months, so watch this space for some pictures of FO’s in about March or so. (Although we’ll probably get some pics along the way, too, I suspect.)
Sep 9
Ya know, it’s hard to blog when the things you are doing are (a) things that you can’t write about or (b) boring.
In the second category lately are many administrative things, like setting up fall class schedules and working on websites. The good news is, the Polar Bear Patterns site is coming along nicely — well, at least it’s functional. There are still a few things to work out — mainly I’ve been having issues figuring out just how to glom everything I do into one place. It’s harder than it sounds: patterns, classes, general knitting, etc. At least, it’s harder for me than it sounds like it ought to be. I’ve been doing everything myself up to now, but I’m thinking I may soon need some professional help. (And I’ll need someone to work on my websites too — ba-dum bump!)
Wow! Here we are at the end of the UFOlympics, and the decathlon results are in…
… and I made it!
Continue reading "UFOlympics! the tenth and eleventh events"
Aug 7
Hoo boy, it's been a while since I posted a good, solid, technical article.
(Just in case you are wondering — yes, this does mean that my personal UFOlympics are sort of at a standstill. I've spent a lot of time working on #5, the Rowan vest: trying to figure out how to trim out the armholes without adding too much bulk. I've tried about 4 different things so far, and I really thought I had it nailed on the last attempt, but not quite. So I'm ignoring it for now. More about all that later.)
Jun 10
If you think waaaaay back, you might remember a few issues I had while trying to make some felted slippers for myself.
Of course, these were not just your garden variety felted slippers. No, I had to make it harder than that. My goal was to replicate my dearly beloved, but quite elderly, pink furry bunny slippers: Hip and Hop.
Mar 24
Over the weekend, I had a touch of "the depression" *.
Specifically, I had the knitting depression.
I didn’t have a single decent current project, the UFOs were one big pile o’ crap, I hated everything in my hotlist **.
Mar 17
As part of "fun weekend", DH and I went and visited a place on the other side of the river, called "SCRAP".
SCRAP — The School and Community Reuse Action Project – is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our mission is to promote creative reuse and environmentally sustainable behavior by providing educational programs and affordable materials to the community.
Wow, what a difference a couple of weeks makes! Here’s what’s happened since we last saw our friend, the Nutcracker sweater…
Bodice knitting: finished.
FI panel: about a million ends woven in.
Mar 4
Hey, you can’t say I don’t have persistence.
This little gem has literally taken me something like 5 years to finish.
To be fair, there was more than the usual amount of knitting involved. I did knit the entire thing once, and then reknit the top half; but then I got to cheating and for the third attempt I knit the main parts on a machine.
Or to put it another way, the Turn of the Screw. Emphasis squarely on the word "screw".
Because get ready, kids — here’s where it all falls apart. Or at least it gets a whole lot more complicated. Turns out I picked a real doozy to start off the Playing Lessons with…! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Continue reading "Nutcracker Sweet, Part 5 – the fit of the bodice"
Jan 3
Well, I said I was working on my pile of UFO’s. Two more are completed, hooray! I swear to you I got them done by Dec 31, even if I haven’t managed to blog about them until Jan 3. Blogging does NOT COUNT as part of finishing.
So, after a second trip to the LYS, here’s what the yarn collection looks like. The Rowan “kid classic” is in the middle, flanked by all the Berroco “Ultra Alpaca” and some Nashua “Kid Mohair” on the bottom and the left. (The printed color swatches of the Cascade 220 used in the original design are also shown in the picture, sort of.)
Continue reading "Nutcracker Sweet, Part 2 – more yarn subs & gauge"
OK, I found my next exciting project. #29 from the recent VK Hol 2007. This sweater is so freakin’ sassy, I can’t believe it. Faux fur & satin pockets!
Actually, I like almost every sweater in this layout, which is a refreshing change – in the past couple of years I’ve spent more time going through my old back issues looking for exciting stuff to knit, than the current issues.
Oct 15
Last Friday, I made another attempt at a pair of felted slippers for myself. (For those of you keeping score, DH has a pair already that he wears & loves – made in 2004.)
Oct 10
This past summer, I learned a term from my woodworking brother that I think deserves wider attention in the knitting world.
He was reading an article on “pine", I think — and just what kind of a nut would read an article about “pine", I ask you – give me an article about “MOHAIR” any day — anyway, it referred to the intriguing concept of "shop aging."
Oct 9
This year, while DH was off at the Sasquatch festival over Memorial Day weekend, I decided to clean out my closet. I hadn’t done a thorough job of this in about 6 years, during which time:
Oct 4
Many of my knitting friends know that I love, love, LOVE old knitting books. Old VKs are a fave, but I’ll thumb through just about anything. (And I have the overflowing bookshelf in my studio to prove it.) Often you can find a stitch pattern, a silhouette, or a detail that will spark an idea. Looking at vintage styles is a great way to train your eye to distinguish between short-lived trends and enduring classics. Most knitters I know don’t want to knit a sweater that will be out of style next year. After all that work, they want something that will be wearable for a while. If you can open a 40-year-old book and spot something that still looks good, you have a pretty good idea that it will look good for another 40 years! Vogue Knitting used to have a feature in every issue called “Then and Now", which was by far the best thing in the magazine. They would take an old style from a vintage issue and make up a modern version, using current yarns and colors. Occasionally they modified the fit a bit, but mostly the copy was true to the original. Unfortunately, and unfathomably, they stopped doing it. It became hit-or-miss in the mid-to-late nineties, and by now has apparently been given up completely. I have no idea why on earth they discontinued this feature! Now I can only count myself lucky that I learned this concept early in my knitting career. 
Here’s my latest vintage knit – a skimpy black vest, made in my fave fiber (mohair) – along with the modern ad that had me looking around for skimpy vests.
Compare my version to the original vintage pattern pic. And just in case anyone else wants to find it, here is the cover of the vintage Spinnerin book it is in.
Interesting note: the vintage directions do not result in the somewhat odd sleeves shown in the vintage picture. (I guess typos in knitting patterns have been around as long as there have been patterns.) You would have to cast on some extra sts at the armholes to get the silhouette shown, and the instructions don’t call for that at all. I knitted the armholes according to the directions, although I modified the original instructions to knit it all in one piece, eliminating the side seams. Great stuff!
Sep 30
You may have noticed – I like green.
Just about any shade of green really, even the ugly ones – with the possible exception of really light minty green. See, I’m a natural redhead, and it’s something I just can’t help. One of my personal slogans is,
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