Bella Knitting

Knit Time

Laura  

I'm excited. The World Cup starts this weekend! This gives me lots of opportunity to knit and an excuse to do it for long periods of time. It's a big deal for me since I've only just started knitting again after a two-year health hiatus. It's a joy to pick out some yarn, find fun colors and put my designer's hat back on. There's a lot tumbling around in my little brain just waiting to pop onto needles since I've been doing quite a bit of knit-think during this time and can't wait to share.

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So if you haven't deleted us off your blog list (and who could blame you) stay tuned.  I'll be able to show you how this World Cup inspired design turned out later this summer. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve to put to the test too. 

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p.s. if you live in the San Diego area I'm looking for guinea-knitters to take a (free) class I'm putting together. It's based on some new techniques. Some experience required but not too much. Interested (and have some friends too) send me an e-mail at laura@bellaknitting.com. :)

  

Channeling Creativity: Pumpkin Decorating

While knitting is still out of the picture for now, I am pleased to say that some small bits of creativity are sneaking their way back in to my brain.

I love this sophisticated version of pumpkin decorating. A bit of soldering wire, a pair of needle nose pliers and a twist of the wrist and you're all set to go.

A few tips:
- There are a few weights of wire. I like the thinner better.
- The tail of the spiral shape only needs to be about an inch long.
- Don't try to make the holes with the wire, it will bend. A very thin screw driver works well.
- Add some beads for fun. I went for the all silver look here.

And the best part ... do not throw them away. You can use these decorations year after year.

Toe Up Sock Experiment

Laura

Like Sarah, I’ve been playing with some sock ideas, playing with cuff designs, cast ons, bind offs, sometimes working cuff down and sometimes toe up with variations that will appeal to both experienced sock knitters and those looking to become sock knitters.

A lot of toe up sock patterns use a basic Make 1 increase, a less intimidating that a short row toe for many knitters. While I can appreciate the simplicity of this design I’ve never been a fan of using a series of Make 1 increases because in spite of every effort to work the previous knit stitches loosely I find when I work these stitches they are much tighter than their neighbors. And so I decided to try an experiment; working two sock toes (on two circulars using the fabulous Magic Cast on by Judy Becker from Knitty) with just a quick variation in the increase instructions as follows:

Make One Increases:
1.    knit round
2.    [k1, m1r, k to last st, m1L, k1] repeat on other needle

Yarn Over Make One Increase:
1.    k1, yo, k to last st, yo, k1
2.    knit across making sure to twist the yarn overs so the loop is closed.

The difference being an extra length of yarn is added on the prior row via a yarn over so the stitches are not pulled too tightly. And yes, the stitches can be worked leaning to the right and left based on which way the yarn over is worked.

I’m sure some of you may have tried working an increase with a yarn over before, Sarah illustrated the increase here, but I thought that comparing the results of these two types of increasing might prove helpful. Look, the shape of the toe is less distorted in every way:
•    The sides do not bow out
•    the base is not pulled up into a curve
•    the top is flatter
•    and the swatch is a bit wider since it is not constrained by the tight increase.

I have fun with this little experiment, next time I will be more careful working the Yarn Over Make One increases with the correct slant and I think a reverse Star Toe could be interesting.

A Plethera of Braided Color

Laura

School art projects are often times very 'interesting'. At least in my house where artistic talent seems to have passed us by. Give me some yarn and I can play for hours, give me colored pencils or paint and my attempts at art work will look like a kindergartener's first project, therefore,  what can I possibly expect from my gene-challenged children?

And so like many supportive parents faced with questionable school projects, we slap on impressed smiles, show our real enthusiasm and carefully pick appropriate adjectives; ones like interesting, creative, imaginative and impressive being careful not to use specific descriptions (like 'that's a fabulous dog honey" only to find out it was an elephant) or to use overly effusive praise that will only have them applying for art scholarships or trying out for American Idol in years to come. 

So imagine my surprise when I found myself coveting my son's art project the other day. No drawing involved in this project thank goodness just seven vibrant colors of yarn. Maybe I am the only one who has not seen this Japanese Braid but I just love this alternative to an i-cord or one of those funky knitting bobbin gadgets.

• Start with a cardboard circle about 3 inches in diameter.
• Cut eight slits to hold the yarn and a hole in the center.
• Cut lengths of seven colors of yarn at least a yard long
• Tie a slip knit at the end, drop it though the hole and attach yarn to circle slits.
• Starting at the blank spot, count three strands to the right (counterclockwise) and move than color clockwise to the empty spot. In this case the yellow will move between the orange and pink.
• Count three more strands from the new empty spot and move that yarn over. Here the green will go where the yellow used to be.
• Again and again making sure you pull the cord down as you go for even tension.

The result is a multi-colored intricately braided cord that is super easy to make. We've been taking turns while we watch TV. It's fun, hypnotic and great for all ages. Perfect party favor or carry along entertainment for parents with easily bored little ones. I may leave a few in the car in a zip lock bag.

Just look at how those colors all intertwine!

Remember those color palettes I told you about the other day?  How about digging through your stash looking for some of those fabulous combinations?  I think you'd have a lot of fun and you just might end up with a new purse strap, pillow trim, sweater edge, or curtain tie, towel trim, plant hanger, hair ribbon, belt  ... the possibilities are all there waiting for you to discover.

Design in Progress: Heritage Sock Yarn

Sarah

I was really excited when Laura said she was going to start carrying the Cascade Heritage sock yarns a while back. I mean, who doesn't love sock yarn? It sent my mind reeling with design ideas, although for me, nothing really firms up until I have the yarn on the needles. You can buy the yarn a la carte from Bella Knitting here; the color card is here.

I've been working on a sock pattern in the yarn using the "Forest" colorway (#5619) and I figured that since I now have some experience with the yarn, I should share some of my thoughts on working with it.

First off, the yarn has four plies, so it has a nice roundness to it, creating tidy, even stitches. I'm using a multicolor, and I was pleased with the way the colors stack up -- the colors don't pool in big blobs, but I've got a zippy little almost-stripe thing going on. Of course, these variegations are all pretty much in the same color family, so you'll get a different result with a shade like Londonberry, which combines green and purple hues for greater contrast. Overall, I think that the way the colors shift as you knit suggests that this yarn will work great in a pattern which makes the stitches move. That's what I'm doing, anyway, but the design isn't ready for the big reveal just yet. To give you an idea of what I mean, look at Cookie A's Monkey sock pattern -- the increases and decreases create a pleasing movement in the fabric which shows off yarns like these quite nicely.

I know that I haven't seen this yarn in any of my LYS yet, so you may not have had a chance to see it in person. If I were to compare it with other yarns in my stash which you may be familiar with, I'd say it is most like Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and the Regia Design Line Kaffe Fassett yarn by Schachenmayer Nomotta. Both of those are constructed of 4 plies as well. Based on what's in my stash, it looks like the Regia yarn may have the most loosely-spun plies and the Lorna's Laces the most tightly spun, but I think I'd need a microscope to be certain. The Heritage sock yarn certainly seems to be of comparable quality, will stand up to a machine wash and tumble dry, and is definitely a good deal at $16.50 for a 100 gram, 437 yard skein -- enough to make a pair.

Playing with Colors

Laura

After my foray in to the many gardens in the San Francisco area I had colors on my mind. The amazing potential in the variety of colors that can be combined by Mother Nature and by designers - be they working with yarn, fabric, paints or computers. One of my favorite little tools on my Mac is a Widget by Color Schemers.

The site has a Color Scheme Gallery with hundreds and hundreds of color schemes with amazing names like:

- Cold Shoulder,
- Grab that Dog,
- Mermaid on the Rocks
- Sunny Spot in Dark Forest,
- Mean Girls,
- Pepperoni Pizza and
- Sad but True.

I enjoy looking at the names as much as I do the color combinations! These designers are very imaginative, makes me want to rename some of our projects!

Under their products tab you'll find two free downloads. One for Mac Users and one for Windows.  The Widget shown above is for the Mac Dashboard. It has thousands of inspirational color ideas - many of which I would never have thought of but really like.  I would love to design a sweater using all the colors in some of my favorite palettes. The hex color values are included above.

Windows users aren't left out either. ColorPix is little app that let's you grab the color values and screen coordinates at any pixel on your screen. Then it  translates any screen color into RGB, HEX, HSB and CMYK color values.

I have not tried this one but it certainly looks fun.

And there is one more free tool to tell you about.  Their online color selector allows you to enter the RGB or Hex number for any color you want. The selector will lay out a series of coordinating colors then you can lighten or darken the entire palette. Great for selecting yarns, web colors or even paints like it did for my new living and dining rooms that are adjacent to each other.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Sarah

I have a problem. I do not have enough storage space. Some would say I have "too much yarn" but that kind of comment only comes from people who don't knit, and therefore do not understand the Urge To Stash. I also have too many books, but for some reason, when people find out you own a ton of books they think it makes you intellectual, and when people find out you own a ton of yarn they usually think you are a little off your rocker.

Anyway, I decided that I should be displaying some of my sock yarn where I can see it (and admire it and pet it and maybe hug it a little, when no one is looking), so I took down a bunch of books from the bookshelf in the bedroom, boxed them up, and put a bunch of pretty skeins of sock yarn up instead. The books went into hibernation in the garage, where several other boxfuls await the day when we finally buy some more bookshelves. Which, to be honest, probably won't happen until we move to a bigger place. We have a lot of books.

This didn't solve the storage problem, of course, but periodically shuffling everything around at least makes me feel a little better. My long-term plan is to win the lottery (I didn't say it was a good plan) and invest in yarn and yarn storage. A dry olympic-sized swimming pool would do nicely, don't you think? I mean, what knitter doesn't occasionally fantasize about swimming through an enormous stash, like Scrooge McDuck swimming through his gigantic pile of coins?

Natures Colors

Laura

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. It's the time of year when the days are noticeably longer, the kids start a count down for the number of school days left (we have twelve and a half to be very precise), and even gardeners in northern states (and most of our friends in Canada) can plant their annuals with out worry of frost.

We spent quite a bit of time outside touring San Francisco with visiting family. I was drawn again and again to the color of the gardens. The riot of colors is in full bloom in this part of the world but I was charmed mostly this weekend by the soft and subtle colors of nature. The gorgeous grasses swaying gently in the breeze, the variety of texture and shades of similar colors.



In a coincidence similar to Sarah and Ingrid's I opened these photos from Leslie when I came back from a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge. Love the subtle colors. I've added the three photos Leslie sent to our Log Cabin Flickr page. Good job Leslie! Thanks for sharing.

Crafty Minds Think Alike

Sarah

A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through the crafty section of the bookstore after picking up a new Dr. Seuss book for Measure (he has quite the library) and came across this little gem: Cute Dolls by Aranzi Aronzo. The book is filled with patterns for cute little stuffed animals, and I couldn't resist -- they all look like they'll be pretty simple, quick sewing projects. I set the book aside until I could plan a trip to the fabric shop (because although I have a small fabric stash, nothing was just right for any of these projects. You know how it is.)

Apparently, crafty minds think alike, because the other day, Measure and I came home to find a package addressed to him waiting on our front porch. What was inside? An adorable monkey, made by our good friend Ingrid from a Cute Dolls pattern! Measure loves his new friend Mr. Munky, so we're working on a cute softie from the book to send to Ingrid's daughter. I won't say which one -- I don't want to ruin the surprise!

Book Review: lace & eyelets

Laura

Never in the 320 blog entries Sarah and I have written have we ever written a negative post. I’m afraid I have to break that streak in the interest of preventing anyone else from buying this book and wasting your money like I did.  I should have trusted the other knitter’s reviews on Amazon, but no, I a lover of all knitting books and collector of all Stitchionaries thought I just couldn’t go wrong with a book based on the Harmony Guides and with such a pretty cover. So  wrong. Let’s see, where to start….

Most complaints had to do with the lack of charts, a draw back but not a crime. The authors seemed confused, who was the target audience for this lace book. They must have decided that first time, “I’ve never held a knitting needle in my hand” knitters-to-be were a target market since they included instructions on how cast on and ‘the knit stitch’ in the beginning. Really? They also included inane knitting “tips” like “stitch markers are your friends”.  I guess they needed to fill up the tons of white space on the page. All of these, while annoying, are still not that criminal. But I’m not done yet.

Let us now move on to the total lack of consistency. Want to yarn over? You will have to read through instructions that say yf, yb, yfon, yfrn, yo, yon, yrn with a glossary hidden in the back after the graph paper (huh?).  They must have used multiple photographers as well. Some photos are so close you can not tell what the pattern will look like and there are shadows under the eyelets that make some of the patterns extremely difficult to see.

But wait there’s more! There are instructions to wrap the yarn (why with seven different yarn over instructions do I now need to wrap yarn too?! Then there's knit and purl "twisted" as opposed to "KB1" which means knit into back of next stitch, as opposed to tbl. And don't forget to "draw sl st over".  Confusing but I do understand this is an update of a classic, and so there is more.

Imagine my surprise when I started to look at the pattern for Lacy Diagonals on page 145 and the pattern is for the WRONG stitch altogether.  That's right the photo and the directions do NOT match. I decided to look online to see if it was listed in their errata. This was the final shocker (and the thing that made me decide to post) there are two compact pages of errors! egad!! They list almost 200 pages of incorrect use of yarn over vs. yarn forward (quell surprise) and 16 patterns will multiple errors  - not including the one I found where the entire pattern is mismatched.

I could go on (OK, I will I just have to vent!)

•    the difficulty seeing some of the dark colors and the washed out look of the lighter flesh colors
•    the total lack of organization so that similar stitches are spread through out the book,
•    missing instructions (Vertical Slit Cables; rows 6 to 13 have no stitch instructions at all and certainly could use a how to with such an unusual method to work. Is this the same book that thought we needed instructions on how to cast on?)
•    Similar stitch patterns (Mesh and Staggered Eyelets, and a few of the zig zags) that just fill space

While I like Erika Knight she let this one get by her and so did Interweave. I really think they owe us an apology.

OK, I feel better now. Thanks. I think I'll go look at some Barbara Walker then I will be at peace with the knitting universe. But I must leave you with this last bit of wisdom from page 166:

"As a beginner, avoid working with novelty and fuzzy yarns as they can make stitches difficult to see." What, do experienced knitters some how suddenly decide to use fuzzy yarn when knitting lace?  I may need a glass of wine after that one.

Follow up below ...