Tiarasaurus Knits (and gardens)

When work calms down again, I'd like to peruse this list of the top 100 books from TNNA.

In the meantime, I'll keep dreaming.

Last weekend I took a class in Continental knitting. I thought the class was great, and learned the basics of knitting in a new way. Though it feels awkward, I know that with practice, this technique could be a much faster way to knit. It would be especially more efficient on projects that involve a lot of ribbing, such as Tubey, or the wrist warmers that are in my queue.

But somehow, it's put a major mental block on my knitting. I was just getting the hang of doing all sorts of things the other way. And I'm loathe to take so many steps back, even if eventually they'll lead to giant steps forward.

So I'm on a bit of a hiatus right now.

Hopefully, I'll snap out of it soon.

I need a $120 bath robe like the proverbial fish needs a bicycle. Nevertheless, I think these leopard, giraffe, and zebra robes I saw in a magazine I picked up in Dulles airport today are wonderful!



This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with knitting. But neither did my day today.

I've been trying to decide whether to attend the Stitches West event in Santa Clara this coming weekend. I'd like to go see what all the hype is about. But I've also got a lot to do around the house that weekend. And I was trying not to buy any more yarn for a while.

If I don't make it this weekend, maybe I can go to the Spring TKGA Conference in Oakland instead. It's April 20-23. More info is here.

You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer.
You are through those knitting growing pains and feeling more adventurous. You can follow a standard pattern if it's not too complicated and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've started to experiment with different fibers and you might be eyeing a book with a cool technique you've never tried. Perhaps you prefer to stick to other people's patterns but you are trying to challenge yourself more. Regardless of your preference, you are continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as well you should since your non-knitting friends are probably dropping some serious hints, these days.
http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
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My quantitative side got the better of me, and I whipped out my calculator to see how many stitches were involved in this sweater. I'm making the medium size. The cross-back portion is 60 stitches per row, 6 rows per inch, and 21.5 inches long. 6 * 21.5 * 60 = 7,740. Each sleeve is supposed to be 20 inches from the join. I'm not planning to do the increases below the elbow, so I'll assume that they stay constant at 60 stitches per row. So sleeves are 2 * 60 * 6 * 20 = 14,400. The body will be 184 stitches around and 18.5 inches long, so that's another 184 * 6 * 18.5 = 20,424. Grand total: 42,564 stitches in a hypothetical Tubey!

At 8.5 inches of the back, I'm around 3,060 stitches, or 7% done. I'm flying to the East Coast for a business meeting this week, so hopefully I'll get a lot of knitting done on the plane.

I did something strange knitting on my BART ride home yesterday, and it took most of last night to fix it. I finally gave up on tink-ing and just unraveled to a row below where the problems were. After a productive morning commute today (finished 7 whole rows!) the back shrug portion is now 8.5 inches long. I'll have to post a photo soon.

I have noticed a couple of imperfections in the yarn. In one spot, it looks like one of the four plied strands must have broken, and was tied back together in a knot. In another spot, it's puffy and fuzzy and about 3 times the normal thickness of the yarn, as if two ends were spliced by finger felting. I wonder if this is normal, or if my first ball of cashmerino aran is just a bad one? Neither is too noticeable in the finished knitting, because I tried to manipulate the yarn so that the imperfections show up on the wrong (purl) side.

More progress on the bear hood: Both I-cord ties are attached and ends woven in; Inner ear pieces have ends woven in and are attached to the outer ear pieces. Outer ear pieces have ends woven in. Just need to position and attach the ears to the bonnet.

Tubey's back now measures 7 out of 21 inches before I start working the sleeve in the round.

As I previously reported, I had my doubts about the crochet cast-on. I don't doubt that it works. Rather, I doubted that I was doing it right. So I knit a smaller test swatch and discovered that the way I was knitting probably wouldn't work.

Then I unraveled the 15 stitches I'd painstakingly cast on and started again. This time I just picked up loops along the crochet chain. Then on my second pass I knit the first stitch into each of those loops. That seemed to work on my test swatch, so off I knit.

I've got about 3 inches done on the "shrug" portion of the back. Since I'm making the medium size, I've got 18.5 inches to go before I begin knitting in the round to form the sleeve. I'll try to post a photo over the weekend. . .

The photo above is from The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art And, unfortunately, the artist, Karen Norberg, did not make a pattern, according to another blogger who stumbled upon this treasure first. And if you look closely in the photo above, you'll see that the pink u-shape in the center is actually a zipper. Here's another view when it's zipped together:

Progress on two fronts last night:

First, I've now completed the first 5 repeats of the heart pattern on the Hearts scarf. Since I totally disregarded the yarn specified in the instructions and just cast on using some burgundy chenille in my stash, my scarf is coming out quite different. It's narrower, and will require more repeats than the pattern calls for. My current plan is to knit 12 repeats of the pattern for each half and then probably 6-12 inches of stockinette stitch bordered by the two stitch border that runs along the rest of the pattern. So I'll estimate 300 total rows of knitting. That means I'm 1/6 done!

Second, I swatched for gauge for Tubey. Using the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran called for in the pattern, and size 7 needles (instead of size 8 as specified in the pattern), I was able to achieve the indicated guage. And this yarn is really great to work with after wrestling with the chenille for the scarf project.

Now I'm working my way through figuring out the crochet chain provisional cast-on. I checked out several sources online that I found by doing a google search for "knit provisional cast on crochet". The instructions at The Knitting Fiend made the most sense to me, and her diagram made it clear where the stitches should go.

After creating my crochet chain with waste yarn, I've been using the crochet hook as my left hand knitting needle. With the crochet hook, I pick up my sweater yarn through the crochet chain back loop. Then I use the size G crochet hook in my left hand and my size 7 knitting needle in my right hand to knit the first stitch. That's my interpretation of "pick up and knit". It's a laborious process. I've only cast on 15 of the required 60 stitches so far. And I still don't fully *trust* that the unraveling of the chain to reveal live stitches with which to knit the other direction for the second sleeve will work. I think I'll make a test swatch with about 10 stitches tonight and see how that part works before I invest any more time in this method that I'm so unfamiliar with.