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by Kelley on July 1, 2010
Here is the absolute beginning of my Gail Shawl! What an ugly tangled looking mess! I couldn't resist showing it to you, though because I wanted any potential lace knitters to see that everyone's lace looks bad when it is on the needles. Particularly the first few inches because the knit fabric is so light, it can't show its' own structure. |
Category Archives: Inspiration
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by Knit Picks Staff on June 16, 2010
I love non traditional holidays. Even if they are celebrating things that I do all of the time. But it's fun to make pie on Pi Day (3/14), watch the Star Wars movies on May the Fourth (be with you), and I definitely celebrate World Wide Knit in Public Day! Most of my friends are knitters (or become knitters after we become friends), so I'm always knitting on a project if I have a spare moment. But my friend Lee and I decided to go to a coffee shop and knit in public--on purpose! |
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by Kelley on June 10, 2010
June 12th through June 20th is World Wide Knitting in Public Week! Yippee! It’s like a huge knitting party! You can look up your town, or maybe one close by, to see where your local knitting friends will be gathering. Some knitters get started right at the beginning of the week or you may find a organized gathering on the second weekend. If you have never participated in KIP day, you are in for a real treat! First, you will probably meet several new knitting friends. Second, you get to share the joys of knitting with people you may be able to convert into fiber addicts. Third, the one I think is the most importantly, it may just be the first step in your becoming comfortable knitting-in-public regularly! Just think about it! You may just start whipping out a knitting project during dinner out with friends, symphony concerts, lectures - sound like someone you know? |
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by Knit Picks Staff on June 1, 2010
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I am one of the photographers here at KnitPicks and since I have started working here I have been verrrry slowly learning how to knit. When I heard about the dye along I thought great! an excuse to not only pick up my needles again but I can try out a new craft, dyeing. I have only tie-dyed so I really had no idea what I was doing. After a couple of talks with the girls around here and reading through the very helpful book Natural Dyeing I decided to try my hand at some plant dyeing. My goal was to use only plants/flowers that I gathered from around my house but the loooong rainy May we have been having nixed that idea. |
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by Alison on June 1, 2010
Thanks to everybody for following along with (and participating in) our sock blank dyealong! We'll be posting our finished projects over the next several weeks, and you'll be able to see how our sock blank dye jobs translate to actual stitches. Just a reminder, you can still enter to win a $50 gift card by emailing a photo of your own dyed sock blank - here are the details. I'm a big fan of the Jacquard acid dyes, and I use them all the time at home. Instead of dyeing sock blanks or Bare yarn, though, I usually tend to dye a lot of roving and loose fiber for spinning my own yarn. For one of my first attempts, I tried dyeing the roving by handpainting it with foam brushes, wrapping it in plastic wrap, then steaming on the stovetop. I chose a basic rainbow color palette (since I was just starting the whole dyeing thing) and this is what I got: (That's my cat Eddie, mashing up my nice fluffy roving.) I spun the roving in color order, and once I had two bobbins full I plyed them together in roughly the same order so that the colors would blend and kind of "smash" into each other. I knit the yarn up into a basic linen-stitch scarf, and this is what I got: |
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by Kelley on May 26, 2010
When we went to Mexico a few weeks ago, I wanted to have something simple to knit. It was a short trip and I just wanted to listen to audible books and quietly knit. I didn’t have time to order any yarn so I scrounged through the office stash. I found four balls of Felici Paradise. I cast on a pair of toe-up socks while waiting to board the plane. As I knit on the plane I realized that, purely by accident, I had chosen colors that perfectly matched the setting of my vacation. Beachy colors! I found myself more drawn to knitting those socks than any other vacation project I’ve every dragged along with me! What an interesting thought. What if I took the time to match my travel projects to the destination? When we were in Ireland last summer I took along my Aran ... |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 26, 2010
Hi all, Thought you might like to know that we just put the 50 gram balls of Essential Kettle Dyed sock yarn on sale for $3.39 per ball. We are clearing out of our stock of 50 gram balls because the new 100 gram balls are here. Don’t worry – we will continue to carry Essential Kettle Dyed sock yarn, just in a larger put-up to help avoid potential differences within dye lots. The hand-made nature of kettle dyeing can result in differences in color intensity between balls from the same dye lot. Larger skeins will help reduce that. For the 50 gram balls, our warehouse staff are doing their best to choose skeins that look similar to each other (similar lightness or darkness) if you order two or more of the same color. ... |
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by Kelley on May 26, 2010
I am so pleased that the four colors for The Moderne Baby Blanket are working well together. I’m using Swish Worsted in Delft Heather, Copper, Merlot Heather and Camel Heather. I still have lots knitting! I did enjoy knitting Delilia’s Log Cabin blanket from the same book, Mason Dixon Knitting, but I didn’t enjoy having it being the result of three failed attempts at a regular Moderne Baby Blanket. My inability to pull together four feminine colors that looked good together gave me a huge pile of yarns to use for the Log Cabin. I just love having such a soothing, garter stitch project at hand. Bob’s youngest son, Jon, is in town for two weeks. Then he will be shipping out to Iraq with a small group of Marines. I don’t think I would be able to knit on ... |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 26, 2010
I finished my first lace project! I was inspired by Franklin Habit’s Night Cap on Knitty. So Alison helped me alter the pattern to make a scarf, knitting straight instead of in the round and helped me choose yarn and needle size. Alison said to show off the beautiful pattern I should choose a yarn with sheen. She also said I could get away with a worsted, so I chose Shine. Here’s where the problem came in. I found some Shine in my stash that I had received from our stash swap party. The color was Sea Scape. I happily started knitting away. I came to the end of my second ball and went to order more, only to discover that we haven’t carried that color since 2007. Oops. After asking advice from a couple people ... |
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by Kelley on May 26, 2010
This week’s podcast features a chat with Wendy Bernard. She is the author of Custom Knits and she writes for her blog – Knit and Tonic. I checked out Wendy’s blog yesterday and look what she is making!! They are Temari Balls! You can visit Temari.com for more details! I am really fighting this temptation! < |
