Away for awhile.

Life is a bit hectic this summer, and I'm not finding much time to blog right now. I'm not sewing much either, and my knitting is progressing so slowly that I don't have much to talk about. Rather than try to blog and just not getting around to it each week I'm taking a break for the time being.

But I'll leave you with something I did sew, even if it's from a long time ago. I made this dress for my niece Madison when she was about 18-20 months old. According to the pattern it was the right size. But she was able to wear it for the first time when I saw her at my mother's house 2 weeks ago, now that she is going to be 5 in a few months. She is quite small for her age, but I think that the pattern was a bit off, too!

The fabric is a print of vintage little girl paper dolls and dresses and is perfect for Madi. She's at the age where everything must be pink (or purple if need be). It's a cotton print I bought at Poppy Fabrics, which is a clue as to how long ago I made this. I added a few vintage buttons at the front neck, and it's as cute as can be on her.

Hope everbody has a great summer, and I'll talk to you again in the near future.

Not much going on.

I know this makes for a very boring post, but I've not made much progress on either of my knitting projects, haven't sewn anything, or done anything else of a creative nature.

I'm still finding that I am pretty much out of energy by the end of the work week and a 2-day weekend isn't nearly enough to fully recharge my batteries. So, I'm not doing as much knitting as I used to. But I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things as time goes by.

In lieu of anything more exciting to talk about, I will leave you with photos of the yarn I purchased while on vacation. The teal is for me, and the charcoal tweed is for TW. He wanted a vest with some detail on it, like a small cable around a v-neck and down the fronts and the wool tweed will be perfect for him. Not sure yet what the teal wool/silk will be, but as I only have 7 balls it will probably be some sort of vest-like thing as well. TBD later!

A great trip.

Our trip to Montana was wonderful! In spite of driving through rain, hail, and snow on the drive there we had good weather while actually in the Glacier National Park vicinity. Montana is a beautiful state and we definitely will want to go back sometime.

My planned knitting project was perfect for the trip. It was simple enough to not need undue attention and the yarn has been a real treat to knit on. I neglected to take pictures while actually on the trip, but I've been using it as my ferry commute knitting and have made good progress since getting home.

To make the knitting more interesting and to eliminate any seams in this very textured yarn I decided to knit the vest from the shoulders down to the hem all in one piece. This will allow me to adjust the fit as well as to avoid seams. The white bits in the photo are from the provisional crocheted cast-on, where I started each shoulder separately and knit down to the armholes. Once the two fronts and the back were done they were all joined together into one piece for the body. I'm increasing a bit at the side "seams" (where the orange markers are) and increasing every other right-side row to create the wedge shaped center fronts.

While in Montana I stopped in Knits 'n Needles, the local yarn shop in Whitefish, the town where our hotel was. What a terrific little shop! Lots of charm, lots of great yarns, and a very friendly and helpful owner, Aimee. She had good sample garments scattered around, as well, which I can now prove to be a huge help in selling yarn. As I was poking around, Thomas spotted a sample child's vest made from a soft wool tweed (Berocco's Blackstone Tweed) and immediately asked me if I could make him a new vest suing this yarn. He's never looked at any yarn by itself and visualized what he might want from it, but seeing it already knitted up into a garment similar to what he'd want made all the difference. He picked out a beautiful deep charcoal grey colour with an almost purple undertone and tan, rust, and light grey flecks. I found for myself a beautiful deep teal silk and wool blend that glows like a jewel. It's from a yarn company I hadn't heard of before called Yarns Northwest. I really love souvenir yarn, and this time we got his and hers yarns!

Just getting started

Considering that I'm quite eager to get some new projects underway, I'm going about it in a rather lackadaisical manner. I've been diddling with yarn and needles for these two projects for some time and while progress is discernible it's on the subtle side, shall we say.

The first project is Sandrine by Bonnie Marie Burns of Chic Knits. It's a pullover sweater with a pretty wrap bodice in a rib stitch, and a plain lower body. I'm using a bamboo/cotton blend yarn in a deim blue from elan.com called Bamboo Fusion. I like the contrast between the shiny bamboo strands and the matte cotton ones, but the yarn splits like crazy and so I eliminated all of the possible uses that included complex stitch work such a lace or cables. Simple ribbing and stockinette stitch I can handle so Sandrine is turning out to be a good choice for this yarn.

Sandrine is knit from the top down without any seams, which I really enjoyed while making my Spring Peasy so will try the technique again, this time in the round as there is no center front opening. The pattern also includes a wrap cardigan view which looks very nice in photos I've seen of it. So far, I've managed to get a gauge swatch done and the cast-on plus 2 rows of the neckline. Not much but at least it's now on the needles.

Secondly, I'm trying out some ideas for a project to take on vacation next week. For me, vacation knitting should be easy, uncomplicated, big enough to last for the trip without being too big to fit into a suitcase, and enjoyable to work on. At Stitches West last March I bought a couple of skeins of this wonderful silk/wool blend with an interesting thick/thin texture. It's called Ellie from Brooks Farm Fiber. The yarn changes very dramatically in diameter from very thin to really thick but overall works up at about a worsted weight gauge or a little bigger. The fabric alternates between very airy and light and quite dense. The colour isn't good in either photo; it's actually a vibrant deep blue/violet.


I had intended to make a vest out of it and have been searching for some time for the shape and style I wanted. After a lot of perusing of my knitting books and magazines I finally found the right combination of simple but interesting styling and yarn requirements in Vogue Knitting's spring/summer 2009 issue. It's style #11 and if all you look at is the photo you might never look twice. The neckline of the garment is edged with a very fluffy feather boa that hides everything in it's path, and in true Vogue Knitting form, the model is clutching the front of the garment with her had so there's no possible way to tell what this thing actually looks like. Only by looking at the line drawing could I see there was a very nice vest lurking under all the frou-frou.

The front pieces of the vest are shaped almost in a wedge form at the front edge and fall in folds from the neckline. In Vogue's version the wedges are sewn together along the center front line to make the vest more of a pullover tunic. I don't know if I'll do that or just let the fronts hang; it will have to wait until I'm done. I'm still tweaking withe the gauge to get it right. The vest is so simple that it's easily adjusted if my gauge is off but I want to like how the fabric looks.

So I will be off to Glacier National Park on my annual road trip with TW. I'll definitely not be blogging next week and may not the next one either, but I'll be back in June for sure. See you then!

Springing forward

Given the blustery, showery weather today it seems more like February than May, but it's still spring in my mind no matter what the weather. So I have finally finished my first sweater project for the season. While it's quite a simple pattern it took a very (for me) long time to complete; I've been working on it sinch early March. No particular reason for the long time; I just didn't work on it as furiously as I usually work on my knitting projects. I've needed to slow down a bit as of late so it just means everything takes a little longer than it used to. But it's done, I've worn it, and I love it.

The pattern is called Peasy (I assume because its easy-peasy to make). The little vine lace at the neck is very simple - an 8-stitch repeat over 4 rows - and is a nice touch on a simple shape. I changed the sleeves slightly by adding more of the lace at the hems. It's the first top-down, all in one piece sweater I've ever made. This technique is nice because you can try on the sweater as you go, and now before you're done that it really fits. Always good knowledge to have!

I used 6 balls of Silky Wool yarn colour #9 Verdigris. I've made at least 4 sweaters from this yarn in various colours and will happily use it again. With 50% wool and 50% raw silk it's light, soft, and gently warm without being too heavy and bulky. As I bought this yarn on my Christmas trip to Mendocino with Thomas it counts as both special occassion and souvenier yarn so it's extra special. :-)

Speaking of special, aren't the buttons beautiful? They're vintage buttons of unknown age that I've had for many years, and they were perfect with the yarn. If it's not clear from the picture they contain a little scene of a bluebird feeding a baby bird in it's nest on the branch of a tree. I'm so glad to fianlly have found a good use for them.

Hats continued.....

I finished another of the Piper hats for a Sew Group friend; this one for Judy L. I've made a bizillion of these hats by now,and this one really takes the cake. Judy's choice of colours was great, and the sunflower ornament is fantastic. It will get mailed to her this week, and I'm pretty confident that she'll love it.

For the knitters out there, here are the details:

Pattern: Piper from Twist Collective
Yarn: Summer Tweed from Rowan (cotton/silk blend)
Sunflower: purchased at Knitterly; it's by a company called Grayson that makes leather purse handles and other hardware for handbags (sorry; couldn't find a link for this one)

Spring clothes

As it finally feels like spring is here some spring sewing is in order. I few years ago I had a wonderful linen tee shirt and linen vest combo that I half lived in during the warm seasons and wanted to revive the idea for this year.

I had a head start with a long sleeved linen top I made last year out of a window pane checked linen from my stash, using Textile Studio's Marseilles Shirt. To complete the look I made a vest using Simplicity 2539.



The pattern has been on my to-make list for some time but got a real push when I saw the version made by my friend Ellen at Sew Group's annual retreat to Bodega Bay. She'd made some major mods to the back but I was able to try it on and get a sense of the look and size. We agreed that it ran on the small side so that was helpful to know in advance.

Also at Bodega Bay, Lynn gave me some very large scraps of a gorgeous deep blue-violet linen left over from a project she had started. With a little fiddling and some creative choices of grain lines here and there I was able to squeeze the vest out of the linen pieces much to my delight.

I didn't need to make many changes in the vest pattern. I cut a size 12 for the neck/armholes and tapered out to a 14 fro the rest and didn't need to adjust a thing. The pattern already has a center back seam so I just curved it in toward the neck a small amount. Darts are built into the curved front seams (the pockets are also set into this seam) so I didn't add anything there. The length was good too.

The whole ensemble looks a bit baggy on Jezebel, my lovely vintage mannequin, but as she has a figure that would make a Barbie doll feel large it's not to be wondered at. I am very, very happy with the finished vest and the overall look over the linen top. I'll definitely make more of both pieces for the summer.

A Banner Day

TW and I have been collaborating on a fun project - we're making 4 banners for the California College of the Arts to use in their Commencement ceremony in early May. We're both alumni, as well as TW being a professor there, so it makes for a special project for both of us.

There's one banner for each school within the College - Fine Arts; Design; Architecture; and Humanities & Sciences. They'll hang from an "L" shaped pole and will be carried in front of the groups of graduating seniors from each of the schools in the Commencement procession.

Plain fabric is being screen printed by TW, and then sewn into the banners by me. We found a drapery lining fabric that's coated on one side with a lightweight insulation layer that makes a surprisingly perfect choice for the project. It's sews easily, but it's quite opaque and has a nice drape to it. The bottom hem of each banner will have gold fringe across it to give some extra weight to them, and grommets along one side will be used to attache the banner to the vertical pole to keep it from swaying too much.

We did a bunch of scribbling and figuring; it took some time to figure out what sort of poles we would make and how the banners would hang from the poles, etc. (We're doing the fabrication for that part, too.)




Once we had the design and the materials, TW cut the panels and printed them, first with the seal of the College in gold, and then with black for the lettering. Meanwhile, I made a life-size sample banner to work out the construction kinks.





As of tonight we've gotten all the printing done and the sample banner is done. TW will get the poles from an aluminium supply tomorrow and get them assembled and painted over the next week, and I'll do the actual banner sewing next weekend. It's great fun to collaborate with my sweetheart!

Good friends

Today was a great day spent with good friends. Patricia hosted an afternoon of sewing, knitting, and whatever else we wished to bring along, and for me, offered an opportunity to hand deliver hats I had knitted for Michelle and Lynn ( I had made one for Patricia earlier). So here we are! For some odd reason it hadn't occurred to me to bring my own hat so the hatmaker is the hatless one here.

The pattern is called Piper, and is from the Fall 2009 issue of Twist Collective, an online knitting magazine. If you haven't looked at it before I do recommend it. The patterns are available by purchase for download and feature a wide range of current knitwear designers. By being available for purchase pattern by pattern the designers earn more from their designs than if they were published in a print magazine.

Today's hat recipients chose their own yarns while on our Sewing Group trip to Bodega Bay in March. We stopped in Petaluma for a visit to Knitterly to give everyone a chance to pick their preferred colours and textures.

For her hat, Michelle chose Rowan Yarns "Calmer" for the main colour, and a deep purple-grey chenille called "Touch Me" from Muench Yarns for the trim, and a gorgeous vintage looking button in black and a touch of gold.

Lynn chose two Rowan Yarns for her hat; "Summer Tweed" in a brilliant turquoise with yellow and pink flecks, with LenPur in a solid turquoise for the trim. Her button was a large, contemporary ceramic button with mutlicolour stripes.

What I love about this hat is that every time I make it, always in a different mix of yarns, it always looks different, and always looks great on the wearer. This is a real winner of a knitting pattern, and is easy and fun to knit to boot.

Kathy was also at today's get-together, not being a hat person, chose to remain hatless. She worked hard at cross-stitching this afternoon. Patricia made a wonderful lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, Kathy and Margaret brought delicious salads, and 2nd Kathy brought tzatziki and pita bread (I can still taste the garlic!) and Lynn and I brought desserts. No one went hungry, needless to say. Except Freya, Patricia's German Shepherd.

Back at it again.

Wow, it's been a while! I've been dealing with a serious illness over the past year but am now feeling better and am excited to be posting again. It's good to be back.

I'm planning on expanding my blogging to include more than knitting to include a wider range of my creative endeavors of all sorts; mostly, but not exclusively, focusing on textiles. So my first post is about a project that is combines crochet and sewing, old and new, past and present.

My great-Aunt Jessie was an avid crocheter and churned out acres of lace tablecloths, ruffled doilies, kleenex covers, and what have you in her long life. I treasure the crochet pattern book, published in 1942, which she left to me and that included her beloved pineapple-patterned round lace tablecloth.

My mother and I both have a number of pieces of her beautiful lace crochet, and mom recently gave me this cotton crochet tote bag that Jessie had made to see if I would use it. It had been lined it with some beige twill cotton, and was stiffened in the bottom with a piece of Masonite. The thing weighed a ton and was a bit on the dull side, but the crochet was in excellent condition and had plenty of potential to be made into something more chic.

So I rummaged through my stash of fabrics and notions and found some black wood oval purse handles and some solid black cotton. Hmm, here's a good start. What if I backed the crochet with the black cotton to really set off the lace and replaced the crochted handles with the black wooden ones? A good start.

But a black lined bag is impossible to find things in, especially once they fall to the bottom of the bag, so back to the stash I went and found an ivory and black cotton print that had the right blend of contemporary chic and old-fashioned charm. Now we're talking!

So using the old beige lining as a pattern, I made a whole new tote bag of solid black on the outside, the print of the inside, along with a handy zippered pocket. I stiffened the whole thing with some scraps of primed artist's canvas that where lying around the studio, using a double layer in the botton to keep it flat and sturdy. Loops of the solid black attached the handles.

Once everything was constructed I slipped the crochet over the outside of the bag and stitched it around the top. Voila! A beautiful new bag that both honors my aunt's skills and suits my own sense of style.

Taking a Break

The Kneedler will be taking a hiatus for a while; there might be occasional posts over the next few months but not on any sort of regular basis. Have a wonderful summer, and I'll look forward to starting up again in the fall. Happy knitting!

Sunny Days

Well, it has been a while since my last post! Times has certainly gotten away with me for a bit, so I'm just now getting around to posting about my Easter knitting. The Spring issue of Twist Collective (and for any one who is not familiar with this new online knitting publication, do take a look.) had a pattern for an adorable set of sunflower dolls, and I immediately wanted to make the girl doll for my niece, Madi. I had been recently gifted with a skein of the brightest yellow wool I have ever seen, along with a green and yellow skein of Koigu hand dyed yarn, and had the green left over from the dinosaurs I had made for her at Christmas, so all I needed was a skein of cream and I was off.

It's a simple pattern to knit, if a bit fiddly, but then knitted toys usually end up being that way. It's knit on size 2 US needles with Cascade 220, which makes for a very dense fabric that really keeps the polyfill stuffing from poking through. I did buy Cascade 220 in cream for the doll's skin tone, but all of the other colours were assorted other brands of knitted worsted. I ran out of the yellow and therefore couldn't do a double row of flower petals around the head as specified, but it really didn't matter. I also had to substitute another yarn for the dress and used the skein of Koigu in yellows and greens which did the trick. I made the dress much more full in the skirt than in the pattern and added a few rounds of eyelets near the hemline to make it more girly.

The only other changes I made (that I can remember by now!) are a picot bind-off around the edge of the cap and for the hem of the dress in place of the picot folded-up hem in the pattern. I also drew a more sophisticated face than the pattern used which suited me much better. I used a light brown worsted wool that I split into single plies to do the embroidery.

Bodega Bay and beyond

Bodega Bay was wonderful. It always is, but this year it was more special than ever, for me at least. This year the trip was not about the shopping on the way, or the sewing projects I would make or the amount of knitting I would complete, but about being with my friends. This year is posing some major challenges for m e personally and to just being there with so many people who I love and respect meant everything to me. Ladies, you are all the best and I can't tell you how much of a difference all your love, support, and words of kindness, encouragement and wisdom make. You are all the best friends I have, and many of you I have known longer than any other people in my life outside of my family. Thank you so much for being there and sharing your time with me. You are all the best.

( I did take pictures of Bodega Bay, due to technical difficulties with my new phone/camera and a new computer, they absolutely refuse to upload into this post. This also explains in part the extreme tardiness of my post-Bodega Bay -post!)

But of course, I did shop on the drive up! I couldn't resist this gorgeous red Silky Wool by Elsbeth Lavold, found at Yarns on First in downtown Napa. I hadn't seen this particular shade before, and felt a huge urge to wrap myself in the gorgeous, rich, warm colour. I bought all 9 skeins that the store had and am thinking of making another cardigan with it.

Later on I found this fun purple heathered cotton, spun from 75% recycled cotton with 25% acrylic. I usually don't mind acrylic when blended with cotton, whereas I loath it when blended with wool. There are little flecks of red-violet mixed in with the purple that gives the colour a lot of life. This was from Knitterly in Petaluma, and they had lots of gorgeous shades in this yarn. But I bought all of the purple - all 10 skeins! I'm not sure yet, but I think this will become Pam Allen's Come Together from Twist Collective.

I did get a lot of sewing done while there. I didn't take photos of my sewing projects, as everything I made was in natural coloured linen and would just look like a bunch of beige clothes in photos. But I got a good start on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan by starting on a sleeve to double check the gauge as I went. I have since finished the first sleeve up to the armhole, and it's now residing on a string holder until the rest of the sweater is ready. The cardigan is knitted in one piece to the armholes, and the sleeves in the round, to the yoke, and then all the pieces are joined together. I must say, I really love this yarn!

Bodega Bay is coming up!

Anyone who's known me for a while knows that one of the big events of my year is the annual retreat to Bodega Bay with my Sew Group. We've been making this trip every year for over 15 years now, and it's truly the high point of my year. This year's trip is next weekend, and a small group of us is going up a day early this year to have a whole extra day. The timing couldn't be better. Life has gotten a whole lot more complicated on the last few days and a long weekend in a beautiful place with my wonderful friends is a dream come true.

So, this will be a boringly picture-less blog post as all I have to talk about is what I am going to knit on over the BB weekend. I'll also not be posting next Sunday as usual as I won't be back from the trip until Monday sometime but I'll catch up when I can.

So what are my knitting projects going to be? (And of course, determining what my projects will be is one of the most critical pieces of planning that goes into each year's trip.) I've got 3 projects lined up, not with any idea of finishing any one of them but it's always possible a project just won't work out the way I planned so I always need a back-up.

A fairly quick project (I hope) will be the Krista Tee from White Lies Designs. I'm using a nice ivory shade of Cascade Sierra (80% pima cotton/20% merino wool) and the swatch is drying as we speak. I'm probably going to make the lace borders on the sleeves and body a little deeper butotherwise think I'll be making this one right by the pattern.

I'm also excited to finally be starting the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits. I saw another Ravelry member Llyrmoon's version done in Elsbeth Lavold's Silky Wool yarn, and it looked great. As this is already one of my favourite yarns anyway I have been planning on using it for this sweater; just which colour? I ended up choosing a beautiful periwinkle blue - yes, the same periwinkle I used in my Moderne Log Cabin Blanket a while back. That blanket has been such a deep source of comfort for me, n an almost spiritual way, and that convinced me that now was the time too make this sweater n this yarn, and to stick to my favourite colour. I'm in need of a little portable comfort right now and I think this sweater will carry me through the summer in the best way imaginable.

Lastly, I am planning another knitted toy for my niece, Madi. Twist Collective's spring 2009 issue had this adorable Sunflower doll and I had almost all of the necessary colours in my stash, so how could I resist? I'll probably gussy up the dress on the doll a bit to make it more interesting but I love the petals on the head.

So, it looks like I won't be bored at BB. Not that that has ever happened.

It's finished!

The Alpaca Striped Fringe Scarf is finally, finally done. It is soft, beautiful, oh so warm, and I love it. It has been a very lengthy project (I started it on Christmas Eve and just finished it this weekend) I really enjoyed it and only started getting tired of it on the very last few inches of the intarsia portion. The fringes on the second half flew by and then the knitting was over at last.

I gave it a good soak in Eucalan and warm water, spread it out on some towels on the floor to dry, the floor being the only place bug enough for the whole length of it. And now it's really, really done.

The only downside to this scarf was that I failed in my goal of using up al of the yarn. I weighed and measured each ball after I finished and found that I used just a little more than half of the yarn. I think I can feel a hat coming on to finally finish up all the yarn............

Finishing things

With lots of rainy weather and and a damp chill in the air over the past week or so it has felt like a great time to finish things and to work on long-neglected or protracted projects. I have accordingly spent the last few days concentrating on projects that were close to being done but just needed a bit of a push to get them over that last hump.



The Delft Pillow is the most noticeable product of my self-imposed industriousness, and it is in fact now completely done. I even had an old pillow form lying about that turned out to be the correct size. The pillow came out much smaller than I expected - it's only about 13" square including the i-cord around the edge, but it's still big enough to be a respectable pillow. Aside from using cotton and linen for the yarns, my biggest change from the pattern was to make the back sections overlap by a couple inches; otherwise no matter how many buttons are on it once the pillow form goes inside it will gap terribly if there isn't some sort of overlap. I added an i-cord border and crocheted loops and buttons.

I've also made considerable progress on the Alpaca Fringed Scarf, and while it isn't exactly finished it's a lot closer to it than it was last time I blogged about it. The solid, unfringed center section is now at 46" with a goal of 50". The trick is to use up as much of the yarn as I can while still leaving enough for the fringed section at the end. I know the light apricot colour is the smallest ball, due to a small error in initially making that stripe 16 stitches wide instead of 14 stitches. I weighed that ball after finishing the fringed piece at the beginning and know that I need about 7 grams of yarn to make a comparably long fringe for the end, and I've got 23 grams left right now. So I'm going to keep going on the solid portion until I'm down to 7 grams on that one colour. The fringed section goes pretty fast as each stripe is 14 stitches (or 16, in the case of the light apricot!) so once I reach the fringe I'm going to be so close to done I can taste it. And it's about time; I wouldn't say I'm sick of this project yet because it's been the right thing for me to be working on as of late, but I am definitely getting pretty ready to finish this baby up.

After a long delay....

....the Delft Pillow is nearly done! Over the holidays I got to within striking distance of the end of the charted design, but for a variety of reasons ended up putting the project aside worked on simpler projects for a while. Just yesterday I pulled it out again to see how far I really did have to go to finish it and was so close I sat down and got going again right on the spot. I finished the charted portion of the pattern this morning and am now on the final stretch. I have just commenced the devilishly difficult 3-needle-i-cord-bind-off (if you count the dpn that is used to move stitches around it could be considered a 4-needle bind off, I suppose) but as this marks the end of the journey I shan't mind it a bit, or at least as much as I would have if this was the beginning.

This has been a challenging project for several reasons. The charted design is part of it; it's not something that can be memorized like a traditional Fair Isle type of stranded design, but with the help of my magnetic chart minder from Knit Picks it wasn't too bad to follow. It still wasn't exactly TV-watching knitting, but was manageable in quiet times and even on my commute. The bigger problem was my choice of yarns. Using inelastic fibres - cotton and linen - made for very hard-on-the-hands knitting, especially the linen. I used Euroflax sport weight, doubled, and the fibrous strands were easy to drop or split, in addition to the lack of elasticity. Also, the unique method of knitting the icord around the edge of the pillow required either 2 circular needles, or a Magic Loop variation (I used the latter). I found this to add a significant additional annoyance factor to the knitting which slowed me down a lot.

While the knitting was definitely a challenge for all these reasons, the finished product is turning out very well, and I'm happy with it in spite of its difficultness (is that a word? It fits what I mean so I'm using it anyway). While I can't promise to make this again anytime soon - and using wool would definitely have made it easier - I am very pleased with it and more importantly, I am quite sure my mom will be happy to have it on her couch at long last.

In the bag

While I really am still knitting on my Striped Fringe scarf, the progress is so incrementally slow that if I blogged about it again it would be hard to prove that any progress had indeed been made. I am still enjoying it, and the simplicity of it suits my pace these days, but to blog about it again at this point seems pointless - agreed?

So what have I done that might be of any interest to my friends out there? Well, I did a little sewing just before the end of the year so please let me present a new knitting bag!

Someone in my Sew Group (sadly I can't recall who it was) made this bag and it was so obviously perfect for a knitting bag that I promptly ordered the pattern - the Birdie Sling from Amy Butler. I had an oddball assortment of decorator fabrics and quilting cottons all in some combination of yellow, blue and white. I've been collecting them thinking that some day I'll have that blue and yellow Giverney-style kitchen I keep dreaming of. It's still possible that that will happen but I decided not to wait for it, and just go ahead and use my fabric stash for this bag.

The pleats in the bag body give it a full shape that will hold oodles of yarn and/or a big project. The pattern doesn't include a fastener, but I added a magnetic snap on the inside to hold it closed (they're very easy to put in).

I had to shorten the strap due to fabric constraints, which I did in the center of the strap, but the next time I make this bag I'll shorten it at the end that attaches to the bag. The strap flares from a wide bottom to a much narrower area where your hand would got to carry the bag. By shortening it at the top I ended up with a much larger area of the really wide part,which gets in the way a bit in getting into the bag, but otherwise I really liked the pattern.

I added piping on a lot of the seams and a pocket on one outside edge. There are two roomy interior pockets, one of which is large enough to hold a knitting magazine, for example.


I had so much fun making the bag that I added a small zippered bag with a clear vinyl pocket on one side to hold knitting gadgets (sorry, it's from a long-discontinued pattern).

Catching up on the New Year

The New Year's knitting has gotten off to a slow start but things are getting back to what passes for normal at Chez The Kneedler. At least I now have evidence that I have really been knitting, at least a little bit. I've been slowly working away on the Striped Fringe scarf that I blogged about a couple of posts ago, and while it is indeed slow going (size 1 needles/1 x1 rib) it's the perfect project for my somewhat slow state of mind these days.

The centre solid section is now about 20" long (the fringes are around 16") and if I follow the pattern the centre will be 50" before I start the fringes on the other end. After holding the scarf as is up to myself, I think I might prefer the centre to be more like 60" but we'll see how well my patience and yarn hold out. I don't want it to be skimpy in length but I also don't want it to drag the ground when I wear it. I also want to navigate the tricky waters of using up as much of the yarn as possible, without running short on the fringes. I fortunately had the presence of mind to weigh several of the balls after finishing the fringes to give me an idea of how many grams I need to leave after finishing the centre section.

The centre section is worked in intarsia, the very idea of which often gives knitters a queasy feeling. The secret to a safe and sane intarsia experience involves two simple steps. If your yarn balls (and centre-pull balls are critical here) are held in an orderly fashion in some way that doesn't allow them won't move around half the battle is won. For this scarf, I have a small bag that is shallow, long and narrow with a zippered top and it fits the bill perfectly. Depending on your project and the number of yarns you are dealing with, , a large ziplock bag or even a shoebox with a lid will work. For the shoebox, punch a hole in the lid for each yarn and thread them through the holes. Needless to say, this method requires that the threading be done before you cast on, not after - and yes, this is the voice of experience talking here.

The second tip is to always turn your work from right to wrong side in a clockwise fashion, and then from wrong to right side counter-clockwise (if you're a lefty it might be necessary to reverse this order, depending on how you knit). These two steps really work wonders on those nasty intarsia yarn tangles.

Granted, this doesn't eliminate all tangles, especially for one as prone as I am to reversing left/right as much as I am, but it's a simple matter to occasionally spread out my knitting, carefully pick up one ball at a time, and unweaving them through the other yarn strands to straighten everything out again. Sometimes it only takes doing this with 2 or 3 of the balls before all the yarns are once again happily in order.