Archive For November, 2011
Whew! Thirty days in NaBloPoMo, and thirty blog posts. (If you count this one. Which I will.) What have I learned from this experiment? Posting daily is possible. But it’s not sustainable, not if I want posts with non-trivial knitting content. I mean, really, who wants multiple blog posts that all essentially say, “Nope, still […]
Bizarre
By JC | November 29, 2011
Yesterday I was with some new acquaintances when one of ’em asked me what I did for a living. The long answer would’ve been something like “I teach knitting, and I have a book that’s an extension of the teaching, and I used to tech edit knitting patterns but I quit that to have more […]
One of the reasons I love charts is that they’re a sort of universal language. It doesn’t matter where a chart comes from – a publication written in English, German, Japanese, or whatever – I’m good to go as long as I have an English copy of the key, or a few good swatch photos […]
Yes, yes, I know I’m in the midst of an Estonian shawl, and that I just cast on for a Swirl. But that hasn’t stopped me from contemplating additional mischief, in the form of a scarf or maybe a shawl. See, DH* and I are planning to take some time off together in December. And […]
So I’ve started my next Swirl. The butterfly is leftover tail from the long-tail cast-on. I could’ve used a separate ball for the cast-on tail, except I didn’t feel like winding another skein. (I’m not keen on using the outside and the inside of a center-pull ball – that has too much potential for tangling, […]
As suspected, knitting from the center out gave me exactly the kind of hexipuff I wanted: Vital stats: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock mediumweight and 3.25 mm needles (again, as with hexipuff #1). Pinhole start, kfb increases, k2tog decreases, and pinhole finish. Working 6 increases on 2 of every 3 rounds gave the […]
Thankful
By JC | November 24, 2011
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I’m going to keep this short (and hopefully not too sappy), but let me say that as a knitter I’m grateful for the huge selection of yarn, needles and books available these days; for the breed-specific wools we’re starting to see, and for the people keeping those breeds alive and letting us […]
Mining the NaBlogPoMo site for blog fodder worked so well yesterday, let’s try again today. Let’s tweak the prompt for November 14 and look at the question, “Have you faced fears in your knitting and overcome them?” Honestly… no. I can’t think of any time I’ve been afraid to try something with yarn and needles. […]
In search of blog fodder today, I checked out the NaBloPoMo writing prompts. The one for November 16 caught my eye: “What is the moment that you leave childhood and enter adulthood?” (Some say it’s when you buy a vacuum cleaner.) This is a knitting blog, though, so let’s turn the question around: “What is […]
As promised, a hexipuff photo: Here are the vital stats: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock mediumweight, using 3.25 mm needles. Started with Judy’s Magic Cast-on, increased via paired M1L and M1R, decreased via paired k2tog and ssk, and finished with grafting. You can see it’s a little short and squat, no doubt a […]