Jogless Alert!

I interrupt my blog posts with this important news:

There's a NEW jogless technic.  And I want to share it before I lose it, or you lose it.  It's from TECHknitting, which I have as a favorite blog (to the right), and you can find this fascinating-for-knitters-knitting-in-the-round-with-colors read right HERE (click). 

You're welcome!

See for yourself--no jogs
(and yes, you are looking at some
round-ends!)

Pants Saga

Chilly, damp weather is on the way... in Bergen.  A little girl needs WOOL!

This will be the fourth (or fifth) pair of warm pants.  But it turned into a saga of yarn!  (If I was clever, I would compose a rhyme...)

It started with... "I need wool, superwash wool, in girly colors, of a certain weight..."  Normally, a knitter would have a look around the LYS, however, there exists none within 50 miles.  (sigh)  That just makes me dumpster dive into my stash, and there, sitting in my living room is a big BIG BIG bowl of yarn. (You know what I mean, Denise/Kay/Jennifer/Jenny. It's been there for years.) Fingering weight (used double), various colors, and I decide to use it up. (This yarn was purchased for a sweater, but I lost the pattern and didn't find it until 3 years later. In the meantime, the size became obsolete, and I got fed up with trying to locate it and used some of it for other projects: Here, here and here.  (Seven projects in all; see below for Ravelry link.)

But without knowing how much I needed (exactly), I started out using two colors at a time. 

And then another color combination, and...

Another combination.  Now I knew how much, but not really crazy about mirroring my original, so...

I ripped it back and ... made a new combination!

This one I like! It's a keeper.

8 projects  (In Ravelry)

 Patterned pullover 4.6 skeins = 979.8 yards, 230 grams

 Turkish Socks 0.25 skeins = 53.3 yards, 12 grams

 Child's Redbird Pullover 5 skeins = 1065 yards, 250 grams

 Bonnet for Fiona 0.92 skeins = 196 yards, 46 grams

 Little cow mittens 0.12 skeins = 25.6 yards, 6 grams

 ELF cap 1.3 skeins = 276.9 yards, 65 grams

 Removeable sole socks 0.7 skeins = 149.1 yards, 35 grams

 Wool pants

Much to do... Too much to do!

Crazy busy.  Taking on an extra job which more than doubled my expectations.  That would satisfy me, however, in a delusional moment I said YES to playing an organ/trumpet concert!  And it's right around the corner now!  In Gallup, NM, at a tiny church which I haven't seen (only pictures), music that I recently tallied at 76 minutes.
The plan:  To cut out a few pieces, and make one of them an encore... Wishful thinking!  No intermission, to cut down on escapees!  Teehee....

Meanwhile, knitting is hit and miss, but I've REALLY got to try to follow a pattern.  It would be nice, and relaxing, but I don't seem to get fussed about ripping things out and starting again.  Which is good, because I think I've done that multiple times with every project this year!

I'm especially happy with this:

It looks great under my maroon jacket, and better with a scoop neck top underneath it.  Anyone else? I get SOOOOO excited upon finishing something that I just pop it on, and snap a picture, and never go back for a better one. Well, that's just me.

I, also, finished a beautiful top using my coveted "Byzantine" colorway in Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light---YUM!  Love the yarn - love the color, alas, a bit small for me, so it will be passed on.

In both of these tops, I changed the lace pattern...
The stripy one needed something that I could use with the stripe width, and the Byzantine needed less openwork.
I must say, the Knitter's Stitch Bible has been sitting on my shelf for years, and these two are the first stitches I've taken from it!  And it works!!

OK!  So now I'm late for everything today, but nothing that's serious-- I'm off to "Clean the Scene", annual Geocaching Earth Day Clean up at the local reservoir... and a cache or two.

Happy Spring!  No snow here!

(By the way, check out my updated page "Finished".)

How much?

Remember how I listed all of the knitting I would take with me to the mountains?
Well, I certainly didn't live up to my expectations... I put the finishing touches on ONE item,.... after I got home.
What got in the way?
Beautiful weather, monstrous mountains, inviting geocaches, thin air, comfy hotel, and lazy days.  Those first three items were confined to 6 hours of sunlight a day... the sun didn't shine until it cleared the mountain (a 14,000 ft'er) at its peak about 9:15 AM and disappeared behind another peak... (I wondered how it could be so exact, and not go down at a lower elevation or valley...) at 3: 20 PM.
Somehow, I/we wiled away the hours days and I "only" accomplished one project, but it's a good one!
I used leftover yarn from a pullover (in February):

And made this:

It may be a bit on the short side... but we'll see in a few weeks, when it gets modeled.
I used a Norwegian pattern for both of these and Dale of Norway "Falk" yarn.  (Click to enlarge.)
Ahhhhh.  A week of R&K.  I could get used to that!

One Sock

Started in March, just to look at those pretty stripes... Had a bright blue toe to begin with, so I frogged it.  Started again with fewer stitches and a neutral colored toe.  Boring. Then a fellow blogger posted her finished socks with the neatest little curvy stitch pattern, still showing off the stripes, and I frogged back, this time leaving the toe.

Yay!! I love yarn.  It forgave me - twice!  One sock in 4 months...

In spite of myself...

Even though I try to thwart all attempts at finishing projects, I'm inching "that" much closer to the final stage of Hello, Kitty, Pants!  The face and ends are left:

Our little girl is growing so these are 65 cm/25-1/2 inches long.  I hope they will fit in the Fall.  Extenders can be knitted upon request!
All of those stripes means I had some snarly messes because I resisted cutting the yarn.  I tried to make the stripes as jogless as I could.  As I started the second round of a new color, I slipped the first stitch.  Technically, it should make that inseam about 20 rows shorter than all the other stitches, but it seems to give/stretch and work!

Sometimes cutting the yarn couldn't be avoided...  and in the middle of the leg (as opposed to the seam) I was able to cut one thread instead of two.  (FYI:  Knitted with double strand of fingering weight; DROPS Baby Merino)
With several pairs of socks, and a sweater and a shawl all in progress, I'm now more tempted to finish this off... Knitted ears and bow are next.

Fixed and Finished

Two weeks ago I wrote about fixing something that you've knitted.  At the time, I was consumed with my errors, and I didn't have a way to include pictures.  Today, I have the means to post photos, AND it's finished!  And not JUST finished, but last week finished.

I told you, she likes that pose!
Here's the stripe problem, front and back. These go with the blog about fixing (see February 13, 2012)

Quite an original pattern, with the false sleeves.  I started with orange cuffs, but they were sub-standard so I cut them off and knitted purple (larger) cuffs as an afterthought.

 This became my Egypt-sitting-on-the-beach project since I was determined that at least ONE of my projects would be purchased, knitted, completed and delivered without crossing the Atlantic several times!

The pattern:
From DaleGarn mini 2-8 år (years) nr 184

The pattern is "Sweater" 18407 designed by Kari Haugen.

The yarn: Falk by Dale of Norway/Dalegarn, Sport / 5 ply, 100% Wool, 116 yards / 50 grams

It was a joy to knit, and went so fast!  I've been knitting on 1's and 2's... Bigger needles!  Yay! 

Jogless Stripes

It seems "we" don't use stripes, as in alternating colored yarns, enough to keep methods in the brain.  After yet another discussion, I thought I'd share this that just came to my attention from Knitting Daily today.

Here's a great method for working stripes in the round and avoiding the jog.  Jogless Stripes: When knitting stripes in the round, one of the downfalls is the jump in color where one round transitions to the next. Knit one round in the new color. At the beginning of the next round, insert the right needle tip into the left leg of the stitch in the row below the first stitch of the round (old color stitch) and place this stitch on the left-hand needle (figure 1). Knit this stitch together with the first stitch of the next round to raise the color of the previous round to the height of the new round (figure 2). Do this at the beginning of every round that involves a color change.

          

Figure 1		Figure 2

Here's the full Knitting Daily Blog on the subject, plus patterns.

So simple it's hard to believe it can be forgotten!! LOL

I DO believe that these things go in spurts:  I'll go a year or more and not make stripes with separate yarns, then it seems I'm doing it ALL the time.
I thought I was doing it correctly by slipping the stitch but this proves it's not so nice.

And  here's my attempt at fixing it.

I have two other stripes I "could" fix farther down. We'll see how I feel when I get around to that point again...

       

          

Back by popular request:

Here's a link to that infamous video we keep referring to:
It's Eunny Jang demonstrating how to do jogless stripes, and amazing everyone with her speed knitting. (This time I'm going to label it properly so it SHOULD turn up in my search blog feature.)

I'm working on "jog-less" cupcakes;  I've really got it down now. Last night at Knit Nite, someone commented that it shouldn't be possible to work on colorwork and talk, too.  True, but this being technically my 5th mitten in cupcakes, it works.  Works so well in fact that I knitted too far, and had to pull out 2 rows.
  I'm leaving off the riff-raff edge stitches which don't line up (because of the above mentioned "jog") and making it purely cupcakes.