Tag: featured

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Garter Tab Explained With YO at the Beginning of a Row

Iris Rose

I have been busy designing the new shawl for you this week. Most triangular shawls start with a garter tab. Say what, you say? Yes, the dreaded garter tab, it really does take some mental maneuvering to work out the process. I have compounded that “huh?” factor by adding the slipped stitch edge on the outside of the border.

So, because I read a lot of discussion about the garter tab, here is brief tutorial, with photos, on how I make the tab to start any triangular shawl. This is not the only way, I am sure, but it is the way I, personally, have had most success with. I like a four stitch garter edge as I like the look of the yarn over slipped stitch edge with a wider border.

Start with a long tail cast on of four stitches. The tail will be on the outside edge when you are finished and will be used to hide the join with a looping stitch later so leave about six inches or 10 centimetres.

Turn your work and, with the working yarn in front, slip the first stitch purlwise. Knit the next stitch by bringing the working yarn over the right needle and knit the second stitch that you cast on. It will look like you now have three stitches on your right needle.

 

Knit the next two stitches and turn. It appears that you have five stitches on your needle. Knit the first three stitches and then knit the slipped stitch and the yarn over (remember you brought the working yarn from the front and over the right needle) together. You will have four stitches on your needle again.

 

Continue to work these two rows three more times and the first row once more for a total of nine rows not counting your cast on. You will have a braided edge started on the outside edge and should be at the inside edge where you will pick up the stitches for the shawl body.

 

 

Pick up three stitches, one in each of three bars that you see across the garter edge. Don’t work into the knots or you will have bumps or a seam show on the inside of your shawl. You will have the slipped stitch with yarn over at the beginning, three stitches across the rest of the row and now three stitches along the side of the tab.

Pick up four stitches across the bottom of your cast on row. You should have eleven stitches on your needle if you count the slip, yarn over at the beginning as one. Four at the beginning, three on the side, and four at the end.

Turn your work and, with the yarn in front, slip the first stitch purlwise, knit three stitches, purl three stitches, knit three and knit the slipped stitch and yarn over together. You purled the centre three stitches as this is the wrong side of your work and we are assuming that the shawl will be knit in stocking stitch or lace.

Place your markers on the next row, right side. Yarn in front, slip the first stitch purlwise, knit three, place marker, yarn over, knit one, yarn over, place marker (centre spine), knit one, place marker, yarn over, knit one, yarn over, place marker, knit three, knit the slipped stitch and the yarn over together. You can see that picking up the bars on the side of the garter tab instead of the knots leave you with a nice bump free join on the wrong side of your work.  I always like to use a different colour for the first right side marker so that I always know which are the right and wrong sides.

 

 

And there you have it. The yarn overs between the markers will increase your triangle by four stitches every two rows. You can make the garter tab longer (two rows for every extra stitch in the centre) and work more stitches to start if you want a Faroese shaped shawl with a wide centre spine. Make sure that you have the number of stitches for the spine plus two for your two side wings.

Next week part one of the shawl. Have a great week and happiness for all of you.

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Yet Another One?

Iris Rose

I find myself too driven lately. I know that I am a competitive person, yes, I can hear you who know me well sarcastically say, really?

I have been concentrating so much on design and creation to try to develop my business that I have lost a bit of the joy of just making. Well, I rebelled against myself this week and decided to take back the joy of creation, to hell with the consequences. That is really a sad/funny statement because, although I keep on pugging, I sometimes feel like I am standing still.

 

I love knitting shawls. I really love knitting shawls but had stopped as I have so many of them. Enter rebellion and, voila, another shawl is being born. Too bad, so sad competitive, compulsive me. You will just have to put up with yet another one.

Anyway, enough whining and let’s have a look at my mini rebellion. I have a stash of many, many, many skeins of yarn that I bought on an ebay binge a few years ago. I really have to use them or lose them so that I have room for something new or at least room to move in my craft cave.

These skeins are labelled as silk, wool, and cashmere. I would happily bet that they are made up of bamboo, cotton and acrylic but they are very soft and very pretty. I am not sure of the colours together. I may dump the brighter green but am waiting to see what my brain puts out in the way of a pattern after the yellow bit.

I actually remembered to write down what I am doing so that, if it ends up being as pretty as I hope it will be, I can share the pattern.

Thanks for listening and I hope that you have a happy week ahead.

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Pattern Buying

Iris Rose

What it is about patterns that turn us into collectors? Is it the beautiful photos of lovely yarn made into something that best shows off the reason why we couldn’t resist buying the yarn to begin with? Is it maybe that we just like to consider the possibilities of new projects or do we like to connect with other crafters by participating in their work?

I look at patterns almost daily and use them as a source to know what finished projects are trending in order to keep my own work relevant. A number of years ago I would download and print whatever caught my fancy until I had an enormous pile of patterns that I knew I would never make. Talk about a tree waster! I have wised up a little since and just download those that I know I will make and have the stash to use for the item. I still have a big digital library but am gradually going through and ruthlessly deleting.

Having said all that, I still lust after the new and beautiful and do treat myself to the maybe someday stuff once in a while.

One of my favourite places to find patterns is garnstudio.com. This is the Drops website and, although the patterns are translated from another language, there is a large selection of patterns for all types of knitting and crocheting. My only caution is that you read through the pattern completely and make sure that you understand it all before you start. This will save you some heartache later, experience talking here.

There is, of course, Ravelry too, a great place to buy and store all the lovelies. When I need some inspiration, browsing here almost always gets me started. Most of what I buy are toy patterns with the occasional, I can’t live without, shawl thrown in.

Have fun looking for that special, I have to make it, pattern and I hope that you have or can find the perfect yarn to go with it.
See you next week and I wish you a fun week filled with pleasant company.

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Cardigans

Iris Rose

I missed you last week. Did you miss me? I lost my temper last week about a couple of things and just didn’t want to spew hate out to the world. I am over one thing but still mad about the other, the one I can write about and hopefully amuse you with.

I have been working on three cardigans at once. Crazy normal, eh? FYI, eh is Canada speak for don’t you agree. I machine knit, on my standard gauge, a pretty black cardigan that FITS!!! And is almost done except for the final blocking and sewing on the buttons. It has been in this state since last weekend and I keep playing a computer game or checking out Facebook or reading or, or, you know how this finishes.

I machine knit a cardigan with Hobbii Twister yarn on my midgauge that I was really excited about finishing. I didn’t machine knit the bands as I don’t have a ribber for this plastic bed machine. I opted for garter stitch bands which turned out great until I knit the neck band. Oops! My decreases on the second side of the neck front somehow became undone in a very messy way. It looks like the stitches dropped on every second needle, but I didn’t see this until after it was all put together. I fixed up the stitches and knit a doubled band to cover the repair. It worked but….. The band looks terrible. I was just going to leave it, but I know that I will never wear it and it FITS!!!! Guess what I am doing this weekend.

The one I had a temper tantrum about is a hand knit top down cardigan that I started a couple of months ago and has been languishing in my basket. I question my sanity in choosing a top down pattern. Why did I think that this was a good idea? I keep getting mixed up on which side the button holes go on even though I got the first one right. Every so often I panic that they are on the wrong side and have to turn my work around and visualize the finished piece. It is making me crazy. I have no way of knowing if it will fit and panic about that. Yes, I did make a swatch, but this is going to be named my doubting cardi.  This guy says everything will be okay.

I have knit kid’s sweaters this way and love the no sew part. An adult size though is a whole nother story. To top it off, I was just about half way down the body and found a mistake twenty-six rows back. I ripped it back, knit about ten rows and back it went into time out. Hence the mad. I have put my temper back into its place and hope, no I will, have more for next week.

Have a great week and happy crafting.  Kindness to you all.

Knitting, Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

To Err Is Human

Iris Rose

I didn’t get my ordered yarn in time to finish my Twister cardigan. I should be able to pick it up tomorrow and, hopefully, get to work on it this weekend.

I am working a craft sale tomorrow with the Springbank Creative Arts Club at Amica Aspen, 10 Aspenshire Drive SW, Calgary. If you are in the neighbourhood, please drop in a say hi. There is no admission fee and parking is free!

Maybe I need to reassess my completion date for the cardigan. I just may need an extra day or two.

Do you ever make mistakes in your crafting? Dumb question, I know, we all do. I am talking about those real doozies that make you want to cry but are so obvious that you have to laugh first.

I machine knit a basic black cardigan this week, an item that my wardrobe is lacking. I finished all of the pieces, carefully blocked them and laid them out to sew together. I thread my needle and, what, what is wrong with this picture? I forgot to reset the stitch size on the second front piece after knitting the ribbing! Good thing is I have a bunch of the yarn left. Bad thing is that the yarn is acrylic and, after a light steam blocking, this piece can’t be frogged.

I sat down yesterday and knit the correct size.

I published a blog on my old website about fixing a mistake in a lace sweater that I hand knitted. I made the back longer than the front with one too many repeats of the lace. I managed to save it after carefully picking up the stitches and unraveling the extra repeats then grafting it back together to finish it to the right size.

I think that there is some good information in this post and I hope that you will scroll back through time and have another look at it.

I knit myself a really lovely cardigan in a beautiful yarn. I joined the shoulders with a three needle bind off, knit the band around the front and neck and sewed in the sleeves. I pinned the sides together for seaming and, much to my great distress and using every curse word that I know, I found that I had repeated the first lace pattern at the beginning (bottom) of the back piece twice and only once on the fronts. I got ready to toss it into the garbage or at least a corner to gather dust but I just liked it too much to not try to repair it.

I have removed the bottom of a sweater before and reknit it down to increase the length but only in stocking stitch and never with this pretty a yarn.

I gathered my courage and here’s what I did. I left the sweater sewn as far as I had gone because who wants to undo hand sewn sweater seams. That almost never works out for me.
I used a contrast colour in a pale yellow so that I could still see it but not have any bright or dark fibres left when I removed it and, picking up one side of every stitch, threaded a life line through my knit stitches two rows above the last lace repeat that I wanted to keep. I then place two life lines one row apart on the two rows below the first row of garter stitch that bordered the lace pattern.


Next, I took a very deep breath and cut between the life lines. Yes, I cut the bottom of the back off. Working on the bottom piece, I picked out all of the little bits from cutting and, carefully ripped back to a couple of rows above my life line. I picked up the stitches with a circular needle, made sure that my count was correct and unknit back to the last knit row that ended the one lace repeat that I should have stopped at the first time around. I used a contrast waste yarn and worked two rows in stocking stitch then cast off to hold all of the stitches securely.


Putting that piece aside, I then used my circular needle and picked up one side of the bottom loop of each stitch between the two life lines on the top piece of the back. I used two life lines here as I wasn’t sure how the loops would hold when I picked up the bottom of each stitch. I then ripped back to the needle, used waste yarn and worked the same two rows of stocking stitch and cast off.


Now, to put the two pieces back together, I worked from the wrong side with a really long length of yarn (because I didn’t want to have to try to join in the middle) and grafted the loops from the bottom to the loops from the top piece. I checked to make sure that all of the stitches were included and ripped out the waste yarn from both pieces.
Success! My lovely sweater knit with the lovely yarn was now repaired and the fronts matched the back.

 

Thank you for reading and I hope that you have a great week filled with yarny goodness. Drop in to the sale if you can.