Finally learning stranded or Fair Isle Knitting

Meet Miriam Tegels, the world's fastest knitter.

Knit Picks put together a video with Miriam's tips on how to be a speedy knitter.

I am not what you call a fast knitter and I don't necessarily aspire to be a speed knitter but who wouldn't love to pick up the pace, especially on those long boring stretches of stockinette?  I've always been told that the Continental method is a faster knitting style, but I've knit so many years as a thrower that my attempts to hold the yarn in my left hand have left much to be desired, and I eventually branded myself as having an untrainable lefty.  And I believed that this seriously impaired my ability to knit Fair Isle patterns. 

I have, however, really longed to be able to strand, or knit with two colors in the same row.  Particularly after I saw Bev, a speedy two-handed knitter at my LYS, churning out gorgeous Norwegian mittens, stranding away with both hands.  Check out some of her mittens here.  And then, "KnittingMaryB", my knitting sister-in-law, made this hat for my nephew and posted it on Ravelry:  Ian's Skull Cap.  It's a great winter hat for hip young guys and another beautiful example of well-done stranding.   

My first few attempts at stranded knitting were exercises in frustration. The front of the fabric came out puckery and uneven and the back was a tangled mess.  Since then when I come across a pattern that I love which requires stranded knitting, I pass them with a sigh.

Bev's Norwegian mittens and Mary's beautifully knit Skull Cap were the pushes I needed to give this stranded knitting thing one more go.  I found two patterns that caught my eye, one requiring changing the strands for every single stitch and changing colors every few rows--go big or go home, right?  I got some yarn out of my stash, put on a nice calming CD and sat cross-legged on my bed (one of my favorite knitting spots) and started out with new determination. 

I tried holding the yarn in just my right hand, switching the yarns after every stitch, carefully lifting up and over each time making sure I wasn't pulling the tension to tight, and then straightening. It didn't look half bad, actually pretty darn good, I thought. I was making progress. But I won't tell you how long it took me to get through one row of 60 stitches. This knitter strands with the right hand only--phenomenal! Didn't work for me though!


Here a KnitsPicks video on stranded knitting.  Makes it look so simple!

I knew I had to get my left hand going or it was no Fair Isle for me.  I put one color yarn in my left hand and one in my right.  I let all the past efforts and go and decided I was going to do what felt most comfortable and natural to my fingers.  Finally after all these years of knitting my brain waves coincided with my left fingers and it clicked. 

Here are my first samples of (successful) stranded knitting:

 

No more passing by those Fair Isle sweaters and Norwegian mittens which I had left for all the other knitters out there to enjoy!  I just walked through the wardrobe door into knitters Narnia....I am a happy knitter.   Who knows, maybe next I'll be knitting Continental with some of those speedsters out there!

Here's one more helpful video featuring how Eunny Jang manages stranding.  She is one of my favorite knitters when it comes to explaining things in a simple way.  Her calm competence makes whatever knitting technnique she is demonstrating seem very manageable. 

Happy Knitting,

Josey

Needle Holders and project bags

Two blogs ago I shared the pattern for the wonderful dishtowel tote my sister made as Christmas presents for her crafting friends and family members (like lucky me!). This time I am featuring the talents of my sister-in-law Mary. How grateful I am that my brother married a crafter! It makes holidays and get-togethers so much fun and we never lack for things to do or talk about. Thanks to Mary each family in our clan has accumulated over the years a large collection of her cross-stitch Christmas treasures--beautiful angels and Santa's made with such detail that she uses magnifiers to gather her beads for the embellishments. Here is the Christmas' treasure she made for our family this year:

Mary has an eye and skill for detail work and her neatness amazes me.  When not in her cross-stitching mode she makes beautiful jewlery with silver, beads and crystals.  Mary took up knitting again after a number of years focusing on her other crafts and it is no surprise that her knitting shows the same skill.  She was intrigued by the sock knitting that I was doing while we were all home for the holidays and, while there, bought supplies to make her first pair of socks.  Check them out on Ravelry under "KnittingMaryB."  You won't believe they are her first pair. 

She recently sent me pics of needle cases she made using the instructions from the blog but making her own adjustments.   I love how they came out.  I think she saved quite a bit of time and effort by buying quilted fabric which eliminates the need for making your own with batting.  And I love her button closures.

Aren't they well done?  And check out the project bags she made.  That's the perfect size bucket bag.  I am in the mood for making some more now--A knitter can never have too many project bags! 

Happy knitting, Josey

Perfect Project Tote made of Dish Towels

Hi Knitters,
Today I was using a tote that my sister gave me for a Christmas gift last year and I realized that it is too cute and too handy not to share with everyone.  We have several crafty family members and one of my favorite things about our Christmas get-togethers is seeing the creative work my family has done over the year.  My sister made me this adorable tote out of two dish towels, which means that much of your seaming is already done, a few seams here and there and you have a tote.
 

The instructions for this project are here at this Better Homes and Gardens Website.  It's the perfect size tote for socks and scarves and maybe even a small sweater.  A seam down the middle on the outside makes two deep pockets on each side to stuff your notions, needles, or crochet hooks.  I can't think of any crafter who wouldn't find an immediate use for such a cute bag.  The website instructions refer to it as a purse but I guess my knitterly mind translates everything into project purposes.  My sister substituted a fun hand-carved button for the felted flower, a big time-saver.  She did give a few helpful hints if you want to make one.  It took some hunting on her part to find the right size purse handles.  The handles need to be at least 8" across to accomodate the sewing.  She did eventually find some at one of the super Joanns.  Most of the handles out there seem to be smaller. 

I have quite a few towels that I have collected over the years just because I thought they were pretty but when I got them home thought they were too nice to put to use in the kitchen.  This is a perfect project to put them to use. 

Happy Knitting (and sewing),  Josey  

Noro Squares

Hi friends,

I am still knitting my Noro squares.  In fact, I am currently out of yarn and can't wait to get over to GYC to get a couple more colorways.   Each skein is a wonderful surprize, you really can't even guess at the final look until you have knit the last pattern multiple.  I am still not exactly sure what the final form of all these squares will be.  I am still thinking of framing them as artwork for my walls, but also picturing pillows, purses, and totes.  Each skein is just $9 which seems so reasonable in light of the incredibly rich and deep dye work.  One skein knits up easily on size 8 needles in an afternoon.  And there is just enough yarn left over to knit a little heart.  I want to knit a square in every color Noro makes but there are so many it is already getting tricky to keep track of the dye lots.  I have the dye numbers in my phone memopad with a description of each color but it's already getting a  little tricky to match my descriptions with the finished squares.  And I have dozens of colorways to go.

Here's my progress so far.  Happy knitting, Josey

Slipcover for tattered ottoman

Hi Knitters,

I have gone two days without knitting -- very unusual for me.  We had an upholstery emergency in our den. 
My husband and I spend the great majority of out time in an upstairs den, a small room with an angled ceiling over our garage.  Its kind of cold in the winter and hot in the summer but it's our favorite place to be and the furniture is well used.  This is what our poor ottoman looked like a few days ago.  I could have sworn that just a few weeks ago it was only a tiny worn spot and don't know how and when it ripped wide open like that.  And it's such a shame with the sides of it still looking spanking new.  I didn't have any left-over fabric from my red and white toile period but on a recent trip to Joann's for notions I found this fabric in their 40% off bin.  It seemed to tie in with the motley assortment in our den and I bought a yard each which turned out to be just enough.
I am by no means an experienced upholsterer and I wasn't interested in spending a great deal of time on this project. I knew ahead of time that I wasn't going to drive myself crazy trying to match up patterns and stripes.  I just jumped in pretty confident I couldn't make it look any worse.  I took it step by step, sewed where I had too, and used fusible hem tape every where else.  I finished it this afternoon and am pretty satisfied. The hems are slightly askew and the stripes don't match up exactly but at least the stuffing is contained.  The dark fabric will take additional wear that the red and white toile could not and from standing distance it looks pretty darn good.  The whole project took two evenings and cost less than $20. Thank you, Joanns, for your wonderful sales every few weeks.

Now I can get back to my knitting. Except, now the sofa fabric is looking pretty shabby -- and not shabby chic.  Well, at least there's no stuffing showing yet.