back in town!

oh my goodness! I'm finally back home (sort of). After a stint in wyoming, I went to Portland, OR and San Francisco then flew out to Thailand, where I stayed for a month traveling around Cambodia and Vietnam. Needless to say, I didn't exactly bring a knitting bag with me!

No yarn from Asia, but I did really enjoy all of the weaving that went on there. I'm a total sucker for any textile, and it was incredible to watch workers in Thailand literally unwind the boiled silk worm cocoons to form silk thread, which then then wizzed through a loom. I love watching people do things that they are incredibly practiced at, be it weaving or making noodles.

Last month I knit this sweater for Compatto. It’s from the book Knitting for Him by Martin Storey and Wendy Baker. I used Rowan instead of their recommended yarn, and it worked fine. However, I do have some comments regarding the pattern. First off, the style isn’t good for most young people. In other colors (actually the cool grey and chartreuse used in the book does make it look much more fashionable) it can have a different feeling, but the fit is what is of issue for me. I found that it actually ran a little big. Depicted here in a small would probably fit what I may consider a medium, although perhaps on the smaller end of that. Any skinny guy wouldn’t look good in their small size. The proportions felt a little off to me as well. It’s a bit short, so the whole thing is kind of square. Again, fine for a medium, but anyone who is too tall or too thin would need some fine tuning if this pattern was used. Still, it was easy, although I found the ribbing a little mindless.

I did have a fun time with the details. The small red stripe between the brown and tan is a nice touch, and the pockets were fun to make. You got to knit pocket flaps and then insert them into the fabric of the two fronts as you went, then go back and add the contrast band. I also enjoy finishing, so it was fun to sew those down.

I bought my buttons at F & S in west LA, which is an awesome emporium of fabrics and notions. This was the only place that could match the strangely difficult brown color, although the buttons (five of them) ran at two bucks per, which was a wee bit annoying. Still, it’s pretty much a textile wonderland.

Knitpicks Palette Yarns

I received my order from knitpicks.com!! Even though it took longer than I wanted, I'm very satisfied with my purchase. I ordered 11 balls of yarn and a set of bamboo dp needles for $29.92, including shipping.

Yarn Profile
KnitPicks Palette yarn
Fingering weight
100% Peruvian highlands wool
231 yds/50 gram balls
7-8 st/inch on size 1-3 needles.
$1.29-2.19

The reason I picked the aptly named Palette yarn out is because it came in a huge variety of colors (57!), and I wanted to do a fair isle pair of gloves. I was very satisfied with the texture- sensitive heads may find it scratchy as a hat, but as a glove it is perfectly comfortable. The colors are rich and interesting, and many are dyed so that they look fantastic together. I thought it was a fantastic value for the price, and I plan on ordering again from them in the future, although perhaps not with such a last minute gift!

Knitpicks.com and Wyoming Yarn shop

I ordered yarn from Knit Picks which was incredibly cheap, but is so far taking for ever to get here. I got an email saying it was sent out 8 days ago, and I ordered it 10 days ago. I know I’m in a small town at the moment, but man oh man, it’s annoying.

The local yarn shop in Cody, WY, The Iron Kettle Emporium, is cute and has a helpful staff, but they didn't have the colors of yarn in the weight I needed. The yarns they carry tend to be in a smaller color selection, many of which are tweedy, self striping, or otherwise non-solid. They do sell some local yarn, and I think I’ll have one of those rare moments where I buy yarn without a project in mind. I still have the yarn from last time I did that, but I probably won’t be able to help myself.

Sampler blanket

Well, I've gathered together all of my bits of wool, and am making a sampler patchwork type blanket. Some of it is knit in "log cabin" style, where you pick up and knit along the edges of each new block, but i don't want increasingly long patches, so I'm sewing together a few different ones. I've come across some fun stitches in my Stitchionary that I've been able to test out and display, which is fun. It looks like it works best not to try and connect too many blocks while I'm knitting, as it gets a little bubbly from eyeballing rather than counting my gauge.

Also, I felted some old crap that I've never worn after taking what yarn from it I could. I'm not yet sure what do to with it--it's too thick for adding to my blanket. I forgot to take before and after pictures, so maybe I'll just photo it when I find something cute to do with it

Scrap tips

This may seem obvious, but I realized that in order to ensure that I could evenly stripe my washrags at the beginning and end with a small leftover bit of yarn, all I needed to do was divide the portion in half, one portion for the front and one for the back. I didn't waste any this way and it was stress free.

Alternatively, if one were to be using up a medium or big ball, if you weighed the ball in oz or grams beforehand, you could determine how much you could use for, say, one glove, before you needed to save the other half of the weight for the matching item. A food scale should do the trick.

Warshrags and usefull things

For a couple of weeks, I have had the pleasure of borrowing Mason Dixon Knitting in order to knit a sample for Compatto. I made up the chevron hand towel in Blue Sky Alpaca skinny cotton and organic cotton, using about one and a half skeins of each. The outcome was certainly pretty, creating an almost lacy effect, but for me the jury is still out on whether or not it looks kind of tacky to have a knit hand towel in your powder room. It was also an easy project, using simple increases and decreases, and was something that I could finish over a few lazy days of excessive TV watching.

This brings me to the more important bit. I came across the first pattern in the book, which was for a "warshrag." I am on a constant quest to use up my collection of leftover yarns from various projects. This seemed perfect. So I went through my collection and gathered all of my cotton tidbits (which were for some annoying reason only in blue and green) in order to embark on a dishcloth extravaganza. Animal fiber obviously would felt under kitchen pressures, and synthetics have a tendency to melt. Had I any linen or other plant fibers, I would have included those.

After making two washrags in the slip stitch horizontal rib pattern and using up less yarn than I hoped, I checked out their second washrag pattern. This one, knit in the round from the outside in creates a hexagonal pattern with bobbles on the edge. Cute, but I found that it doesn't lie flat but rather flops around as the outside is too big for the inside. This makes it a dubious option for a potholder, as I don't like things dangling around when I want to take a kettle off the stove. I think that decreasing in four spots instead of six would solve this problem, or increasing the number of plain rows between decreases.

The moral of this story? I like Mason Dixon Knitting. I also think that the dishcloth/washrag is a great idea to use up your old cotton. I think that any stitch that provides texture, such as a waffle, ribs, slip stitch patterns, even cable would be a good option. While it doesn't use up loads of yarn, making up a set of three washcloths could possibly take at least a single ball, which is better than none at all! And in terms of tacky factor, I don't leave my counter wiping rags and such out, so really who cares? It's always nice to use something you've made, even if nobody has to see it (and if it's not exactly couture).

Oh, and I also plan on perhaps embarking on a Mason Dixon inspired bath mat knit in garter out of either strung together cotton, linen, or rag strips, of which for some reason I have many balls.

Hello!

Welcome to my knitting blog! Here's a little space for me to share my knitting projects, patterns, tips, and reviews.

My name is Nora, and I currently live in Los Angeles. I occasionally knit samples for Compatto in Santa Monica, and also obsessively knit for myself and others. The more complicated the pattern, the more satisfying I find it. I'm always trying to find some new technique and ways to use up the giant hoard of yarn that I will probably never throw away, even if it means buying a second home to house it.