Persistent Knitter

So I have been knitting. Not a lot, but some.  My parents were here visiting for Thanksgiving, and I took advantage of the opportunity to try Bjerk on my mom. It fits perfectly.  SHe even agreed to model it with only one sleeve for the blog:

The length is just right - the sleeve (which i had to knit a bit longer than the pattern called for) is just the right length. Here it’s only basted in; I still have to sew it in for real.  I was hoping that I’d be able to finish it so she could take it back with her, but alas, being sick for the past 3 weeks hasn’t let me feel like doing much knitting. (Not to mention all the work involved in cooking a turkey and associated other food.  Mmm.. pumpkin pie sounds good. Time for lunch!)

Being on "vacation" means I get to spend my spare time (as much spare time as I have when you have two small children, a husband with a bad back and a thanksgiving to prepare for) working on whatever.  For the last few days, that whatever has been Knit Visualizer coding (yes, I do this for fun. I am insane. I know this about myself).  I now present to you, the coolest Print Preview screen ever:

You can choose to view the whole thing, not chopped up by pages, or go into this more advanced (and memory intensive) print preview mode. You can view all the pages at once by using the first zooming factor. You can automatically squish more onto each page by scaling the whole thing down.  (Preview reflects new changes immediately of course).   You can also make changes to your page setup, paper size, margins, landscape/portrait. All the stuff you’d expect from an application that lets you print!

Why is this such a big deal you ask?  Well, alot of craft-oriented software doesn’t bother to do this. There is one quilting design program (I won’t name names, and it’s been forever since I used it, so maybe they’ve fixed it) that gives you a print options dialog, and just checkboxes for some categories of things to include. You have no idea how many pages it will spool to your printer, what the details of that information will be, what font size it will use.  I felt like I was playing the lottery when I hit "Print".  I hovered over the printer ready to hit the OFF button if it looked like it was going to be possessed by the evil quilting software.

The simpler version of print preview (which you’ll have to go through to get to this fancier version) lets you specify which elements to show on the screen. Here I’ve chosen the Title, Source, Chart and Legend.  Each page has a header that contains the page number (out of total #) and the location of the chart on disk.

Not a lot of progress, but I did cast on my first mitten yesterday at my knitting group:

The yarn is pretty thick; and I’m using size 3.0mm DPNs. I tried larger, but my gauge was coming out too big. I’m still not sure if the mittens will fit, but my friend Judy (the expert) says if they are too big, you can always felt them a little bit! Since the yarn is not superwash that should work out OK.

Occasionally my mom sends me pictures of her stuff. Here’s one:

Here’s what she says about it:

She’s got an awesome setup with a whole room dedicated to weaving and other fiber endeavors. Three guesses on how long it took her to convert my old room this way after I went to college!

Thanks for sharing mom, I love to see what you’re working on!

What did the UPS man bring me today?  A box containing these:

Well that’s all and good, but wait til you see the COLORS:

Charcoal grey with white, and a Raspberry with White.  I had to order online and didn’t really have a color card. I think they will make great looking mittens! Two of my winter-ish coats are red with black or red with white so these should go nicely. It’s gotten really cold here lately, so I really need to get cracking on these.

When I expressed concern that I’m not so good doing fair isle on DPNs, my friend Ingrid said "it gets easier with practice".  Here’s hoping she’s right!

Kim over at her string or nothing blog, has written up some amazing lessons on learning how to create charts from knitting patterns.  I highly recommend you check them out starting here with Charting 101.  I was curious how Knit Visualizer would handle the same task in Charting 105, as this is exactly what I wrote it to deal with. So, I started it up, and plugged in the Porcupine Stitch pattern. 

Here’s my result:

One difference between my chart here and Kim’s is that the program isn’t quite finished yet (but it’s really really close for those of you who are anxiously waiting it’s release), and doesn’t always know what the fancier decreases should be on the wrong sides. 2 seconds later and I had those manually fixed.  (I’m working on getting all those silly things finished up.I need to go through my stitch dictionary and confirm descriptions, instructions and wrong side versions of each stitch).

In general, what are braids good for?  Here are some thoughts my friends and I had:

* You can make thin flat braids, and use it as an embellishment/stabalizer for a cardigan sweater (think like the Dale patterns use a ribbon along the edges).

* You can trim gloves with it (it does have some stretch give to it, so it wouldn’t be bad on a cuff). A lot of the non-ribbing cuffed gloves would work well with it.

* If you like to make bags, you could make a much thicker version (adding more strands per bobbin or having more bobbins for a more complex pattern) and use a braid as the handle, or trim along the top/pockets with a thinner braid

* You can use them as the draw strings on knitting pouches/bags.  I have several knitting pouches and they just use boring off the shelf black cord.

* You could use a thin one as a draw string on a hood if you made a cardigan with a hood that way (never seen a knitting pattern like this, but I’m sure it exists somewhere)

* A belt for a sweater for a child, threaded through eyelets made in the waist

* bootie ties (although I’m pretty much against booties in general, as they don’t tend to stay on)

* Home decorating uses; tiebacks for curtains, edging for pillows, and so on

* Make short braids as pulls on backpack zippers; for kids and or yourself.

* Flat braids as bookmarks (I’ve done card weaving to make bookmarks before, same type of principle)

* Making Chinese knots (http://www.chineseknotting.org/)

* Xmas ornaments out of shapes made from braids (no idea how, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?)

Not sure how often I’ll be making braids; but I think a project in the near future might contain one.  I’d love to hear any ideas you might have on what to use them for.

Step 1, yarn:

Step 2:
Measure warp length, using the overkill method of a warping board. I made the warp length just under 2 yards:

A closeup:

Step 3:
Make ties on left side (this is the beginning of the braid, and will become a tassel), and take warp off board.

Step 4: Prepare Marudai

…. time passes …. (not much; only a few hours)

And we have Step 5:

The last picture is horrible; sorry. I’ve included my first sample from class - a purple and white sprial braid just doing clockwise and counter clockwise.  Here’s a closeup of the new braid:

That green is a hard one to photograph. I admit the background I chose here is not helping any.  You can see how the green is framing the two other colors which alternate back and forth in a speckled like fashion.

I still need to steam or wash the braid and block it. It’s a bit lumpy from the tension of the center weight.  I still need to finish off the ends - secure it, and cut the tassels.  That’s about 5-10 mins of work once I find my tapestry needle.

I’ve only made one braid so far, but there are hundreds of patterns to try in the two books that I bought. It was an absolute necessity that I buy some yarn to experiment with.   I was overwhelmed by the choices of Pearl Cotton on cones (they wind off any amount that you want for you). I literally stood there stunned for a few minutes.  After a while, I started picking up a color here and there, looking at it, holding it with others.  Finally, two appealed to me, and then a third popped out.

The colors here aren’t quite accurate - the green looks more yellow to me here than it is in real life. (That’s the one that popped out at me).  I can imagine many ways that these will look good together. I got about 1ounce of each to play around with.  After all, I don’t know what I’m going to do with the braids, except make them

I wanted to let you know  that The Knit Foundry (finally) has online ordering available.  Tell your friends, tell their friends and so on…  the link?
http://www.knitfoundry.com/products.html

Thanks!