Summer Seminar 2020

Most of the live machine knitting seminars have been cancelled, so let's have a virtual seminar! 

I'm excited to use technology to offer a high-value, content-rich Summer Seminar on a "virtual" platform. If you've never attended a seminar, here's a crazy-easy opportunity to see what the excitement is about. You don't have to travel, stay in a hotel, or eat in restaurants. You can spend your time and money knitting, instead!

I'm doing the teaching, four morning sessions of machine knitting demonstrations.  This will be the equivalent of a good weekend seminar, but I am able to add LOTS of features by using technology.

What will I cover? This seminar will include a nice blend of machine knitting basics and fresh new demonstrations. There are four sessions: a hand-tooling session, a joins and edges session, a lace session, and a ribber session. In each session I have a basics section, a variety technique section, and then I'll present a free pattern and show its key techniques. I will be demonstrating on a Brother bulky, a Brother standard gauge, and a Studio mid-gauge machine.

What else do you get?  In addition to the live seminar you will receive:

• Membership in the private Facebook group, Summer Seminar 2020, from your registration date until September 8 (after Labor Day). This group will have all the materials and photos, which I'll be posting from now until the seminar. You can make new MK friends, reconnect with others, and share your progress, projects, and machine knitting tips, challenges and ideas.
• The ability to watch the live sessions again, or watch later, if you miss a class (materials available through September 8).
• My usual detailed seminar handouts in .pdf format.
• Free patterns that are taught in the seminar sessions, also .pdf.
• A 10% limited-time discount coupon code for any of my mail order products. I have never had a sale before, in fact, it is my policy not to run sales.  This is a special one-time event!

When: Four Saturdays, beginning on July 11: 7/11, 7/18, 7/25 and 8/1, from 9:30 a.m. CDT (GMT -5) and running until about 12:30 p.m. John and I will begin a little early to help make sure people are getting access to the seminar. If you can't make some of the dates, no worries! The video will be posted after the session on the Facebook group, and you will have access to all the other materials through the Facebook files.

Where: You'll be home on your device, and John and I will host from my home knitting studio. John's going to help with technical issues and facilitate any Q&A that's necessary for the group experience. I have a lot of content, and you might find it helpful to print the handout for that session ahead of time.  I try to write handouts with enough detail so you very seldom need to take notes.

Pricing: Registration is $50, with early bird pricing of $40 available until June 10.

Requirements to Attend: You will need a Facebook ID and login, a device for viewing the sessions and viewing the electronic files and photos.

Register at:

www.dianaknits.com

Summer Machine Knitting Seminar 2020

May Video - Seaming Garter Stitch

There are plenty of ways to seam garter stitch - but what are the very best ones?  Can we get an beautifully reversible seam?  How about an invisible seam?  How about a very flat seam?

After a whole lot of experimenting - trying out all the methods I could find, then tweaking them - I've made a video to show you what I think are the two best methods:

Not MK - But Amazing

New - I did a quilting video

I locked down rather early, because of some of the reading I'd been doing about this virus that wasn't quite in the general news yet.  We've had a really easy time with lock-down at our house.  John is working part-time from home.  Our kids are fine, our house is comfy, and we try to be sensible and avoid too much news.

Best of all, we both have great hobbies, and we love to work on them. 

After a while, the machine knitting seminars where I was booked to teach cancelled.  I was faithfully working on my next MK project, knitting and filming a rather cool new pattern collection.  I put a whole bunch of my monthly videos up ahead of time.  I did some de-cluttering, but not too much, wouldn't want to go overboard.  I watched other people's how-to videos on some of my favorite subjects (cooking, crafting, sewing, quilting, traveling, and decorating). 

As I cleaned out, I ran across at least a half dozen unfinished quilt projects from over ten years ago!  Let's face it, I just put everything else away when I got so involved with teaching MK back in 2009.  I looked at them, knowing how many quilts I DID finish, and thought about why each one of these sad little orphans ended up on a drawer or basket.

Maybe a project was super fussy and I was just tired of it.  Maybe I was convinced it would be difficult to put together.  Maybe I didn't know what I could make out of a few blocks that I did just to try something new.  By and large, though, I realized it was perfectionism - if I wasn't sure it was going to turn out great, I'd set it aside.   

I looked at them with fresh eyes and decided these projects weren't so bad.  I had been too critical...perfectionism is just another kind of fear, anyway.  I decided to finish each one and find it a home.

I had done practically no hobbies other than machine knitting for over ten years.  Why not take a little vacation from MK and finish these quilt UFOs?  

When you haven't done something in a while, you feel pretty clumsy, but after the first few days, my  skills were improving.  I got up in the wee hours one morning, sorted my old quilting scraps and cuts by color and pressed them.  I love scrappy quilts and the challenge of trying to make something from what I have without going to the stores.  I had a pretty good fabric stash, even spare rotary cutter blades, sewing needles, and lots of neutral thread.

I just wanted to get 'em done on my good old Bernina, and I came up with a fairly simple machine quilting routine.  I put binding on some of them, and on some of the charity ones, I simply made a bag with front, back, and batting, sewed around it, flipped it right side out, top-stitched around the edges and tied the quilt with perle cotton, tugged those knots tight and trimmed them neatly.  As I did those, I thought about my grandma.  As a small girl, I "helped" her tie a Sunbonnet Sue quilt - she was crazy about Sunbonnet Sue and I know she made a whole lot of them.  She used to applique a little boy in overalls, too, but I forget his name.  Do you remember? 

My grandma, who raised seven children in the depression, didn't waste anything.  She used an old blanket for the padding in that quilt.    

On several of my UFOs, I used a very simple, shortcut edge treatment.  I know people have done this forever, but I didn't find anyone teaching it on YouTube.  I bring the backing fabric around to the front to form a self-binding, and I've got a very nifty way to make beautiful mitered corners - fast.  Nope, it's not professional.  It's not something you'd use for a quilt show or competition.  It's practical, though, not too bad for a such a rusty seamstress.

I decided to do a YouTube of this shortcut method:

  

Now, knittin' buddies, I know many of you are quilters.  Got any UFOs to finish?

My quilting binge was a fun diversion for a strange time, but I've got lots of knitting projects and plans to go back to.

Video for April - Brioche Made Easy

My April video is about double-bed work - a simplified machine knitter's Brioche Stitch. You'll knit two rows, change the settings and color, and knit row rows.

This is a useful stitch!  It's extremely wide for the number of needles used, thick, warm, completely reversible and quite flat.  Once you cast on and get a rhythm, this is fast and easy.  Of course, I had to go and do it with Bernat Baby Velvet - now that's a different look and feel!  Have a look.

I know there's a fussier way to do true Brioche stitch (a la Barbara Walker's hand knit explanation), but that takes too much fiddling for me.  I'd like to make a whole blanket out of Brioche stitch, and I probably will.  I think it would look cool to use black or white throughout for color #1 and then use assorted scrappy colors for color #2.   

Give me some help, faithful knitters - Please you go to this video over at YouTube, could you make sure and subscribe, up-vote, and click on the bell to be notified of videos?  YouTube uses all those clicks in their rankings.  I would love for more of my videos, even thought they're about our little-known hobby, to become "recommended" videos.  If we MKing YouTube creators can get more videos "recommended," perhaps we'll get more machine knitters started.

I have done 240 machine knitting videos, beginning in August 2008, and I'm now up over 7 million "views."   I believe I was the first YouTube creators to do free, systematic machine knitting teaching, My goal was and is to popularize machine knitting and teach lots of beginners.  Now there are a number of other MK teachers using YouTube, which also helps reach people. 

I've got plenty of additional MK videos coming.  In fact, I have them planned, filmed and edited through the middle of next year.  Maybe life will change and John and I will travel more, but no matter where we are, pop! here comes another YouTube video near the beginning of the month.

 

Unfortunate but not surprising news, the Monroe machine knitting seminar is also cancelled.  It isn't possible, in the available space, to keep everyone safe from the virus.

While there are not many seminars going on in 2020, I do have some ideas about what we can do instead.  More about that later!  :)

Chicago Seminar Postponed

I was advised last night that the Tech Knitters seminar has been postponed.

Please keep an eye on their website for updates.

Upcoming Seminar - Chicago

As I've stayed home a lot lately, I finished the curriculum for the upcoming Tech Knitters Chicago area machine knitting seminar, May 30 and 31.

Tech Knitters is an amazing group and I am very, very excited about hanging out with old friends and doing a seminar with enthusiastic knitters.

Find out more about Tech Knitters and the upcoming seminar here.

As usual when I do a curriculum overhaul, I start out feeling overwhelmed with thoughts like, "How do I choose new things?  How do I arrange it into the schedule?  How do I avoid doing reruns and still be useful to beginners?  What am I putting in for the most experienced knitters?"

Yikes.  However, getting overwhelmed is not helpful.  What does work for me is to make lists.  I really do have a lot of new stuff, which I list.  Then I reprint the previous table of contents and double-check what I did the previous seminars to avoid re-runs.

[I worked a list for the Monroe Seminar at the same time, since it's in July, and I'll avoid overlap.  Monroe curriculum is not yet finished, but I've got a very good start.  Cathy has three teachers and breaks attendees into groups so you get to see everything every teacher does.  I do less material that way, but still a pretty good chunk of writing, photos and diagrams for that one.  I'll probably blog about that in a next few days as I finish it.]

After I had my Tech Knitters list, I divided it up by beginner/intermediate/advanced and bulky machine/standard machine and ribber/no ribber, and came up with a sequence.

And now I have it - written, formatted, with pictures and everything, and I am HAPPY with my Chicago booklet.

So, what am I doing at Tech Knitters?  Starting off on the main bed, joins and edges, and I've got quite a few new ones that are quite practical, like my Surprise! Join that looks like a braided cable and the cluster edging.  Then I'm doing some hand-tooling (which is good for Chicago because they have an amazing mid-gauge group in the area).  I'm going to teach the hand-tooled lace leaf edge, the feather and fan, the new method seashell stitch, the pinecone popcorns, weaving and intarsia without built-in or special equipment, and a little Entrelac and garter bar.

In Chicago, I decided I really should spent teaching time with a ribber.  I have some cool new demos.  I plan to cover industrial rib, English Rib, English Rib cables, Double English Rib, U-shaped knitting, U-shaped knitting with increases in the middle like I do in one the mitered shawl, Brioche stitch, Half Milano (long stitch), Honeycomb Stitch, and a variety of ribbing finishes.

On the standard machine, I'll do some lace, show how to start lace and short-row lace as well as super easy and striking Bargello Lace and the Ziggy Lace Border.

I have four free bonus patterns picked out for the back of the book.  These are cute patterns worth making more than once.

John is coming!  He'll do some electronic repairs while he is there, particularly FB100 disk drives, E6000 console work, and 970 CB-1 work.

Now for my usual scolding.  Are you fortunate enough to live in an area with a machine knitting group?  If you are, please don't miss out on their meetings and seminars.  If you aren't attending, perhaps you have no idea what you're missing - show up and find out!

New Video for March - Pinecone Popcorns!

Well, happy Spring Forward day.

How about a popcorn that really pops visually?  And easy to knit, too:

Trying to Improve

I've been watching other people's YouTube videos on topics I find interesting, for instance, cooking, decorating, and quilting.  Some of these folks are much younger and some are very gifted designers.

I've been putting up YouTube videos for ten years, and it's very humbling.  It's hard to get a decent video put together, and I often see problems and issues with my work.  YouTube has added a lot of features and innovative people are doing lots of new things.

I want to improve.  Videos have really helped other knitters learn, and they have even helped get other people interested in machine knitting.

Observations, so far, watching these:

1.  They have much better "thumbnails"  than mine.  Those are the little pictures you see when you're choosing a video to watch!  I actually spent several days replacing most of my thumbnails to have a title so you'd have an idea what the video is about.

2.  They have lots of personality!  They talk at that camera like crazy, I mean face to camera for most or all of a video.  They joke, goof off, and edit in short goofy clips from TV shows.  They use lots of new slang and acronyms, which I have to look up.

3.  I'm pretty impressed by some speeded-up videos of crafts with a clock in the background showing how much time the work actually took!  I want to make progress and love to see how long things take to do.

4.  The openly "monetize" the daylights out of their videos because they actually make a living with videos!  Well, having lots of products you can buy to get the same look, or little built-in sponsorship call-outs doesn't bother me much.  If I love their videos I want them to make money. (But oh dear, the un-skippable, repetitious political ads clipped in all through them right now puts me off watching them.)

5.  They're LONG!   Sometimes you have to take extra time to show something complicated, but a lot of these are just overly talky.  I was listening to one the other day, and the woman said she was trying to get it at least ten minutes long!  Here I thought I needed to keep them under 10 minutes as much as possible.  Huh, there is something I don't understand about that.  I wonder how long my viewers want my videos to be.

6.  They use a lot of music and camera tricks.

7.  My absolutely favorite ones are the practical ones with lots of usable tips and ideas.

Hey, do me a favor and tell me how you think I could improve.  What do you like and not like about knitting videos, generally?

What would you like for me to teach?   More courses?  Does anyone want a course that just teaches a particular machine model?  Are my overviews of interesting (and maybe obscure) machines interesting?

Inspiration at Rett Og Vrang

Check out Synnove's retro baby set!

Oh, Synnove, I wish I had this machine knitting pattern!

I think this would be super cute with bright colors for all those sideways stripes, a real update to the look.  The shaping and sizing looks like a math challenge, though.

When An Awfully Stubborn Knitter Meets Awful Yarn

This mystery yarn was given to me a few years ago.  I love the color.  I don't think it shows up in the photo, but it's lavender with little heathery bits of pink.

This big mess is my multiple tries with the yarn.  It was on a cone, so I didn't rewind it.  It was even bagged with a good name brand on it, but as soon as I looked closely at it, I didn't think it was that brand.  I think it was in the wrong bag.

It turned out that it has knots, thin spots, thick chunks, and weak spots. 

I've been working on a nice pattern book idea, and tried two of the patterns with this stuff, thinking most of us have some thin mystery yarn, and using the ribber I could get nice width, pretty patterns, and no edgings needed.  However, when you use the ribber, the work forms between the beds and you don't see trouble right away.


The ball on top of the pile was from unraveling  150-200 rows after finding two big holes in the work.  The yarn had broken.  I rewound that into smaller balls.  I wondered if my stitch design that put too much strain on the yarn - too much weight, too many tucks, etc.  For at least the first three tries, I was sure I was the problem.  For anyone who hasn't seen me at seminar and maybe thinks my knitting goes smoothly, well, that isn't always the case!

The other messy samples are multiple tries that ended with trouble.  It wasn't the machine, or the ribber comb, or the tension, or the pattern I chose.  It was the yarn, a thick spot, breaking, or having a big fat knot.

One of the chunks didn't knit off, it piled on a needle, and now there's a bent needle in my trash can, too.  I didn't see it, hear it, or feel it soon enough.  At that point, I knew there might be breaks but I didn't expect thick sections.

I'm so DONE with that yarn!  Pardon my bad grammar.  This was certainly frustrating enough to mess with my grammar and my decorum, as well.

There is one option: I could carefully rewind the yarn into little balls, feeling it as I go, and cut it every time I find a flaw.  I've done that before, but this particular cone would turn into 20 little balls.
Nope. I am not rewinding it.

I am not giving it to anyone for "practice yarn" or "waste yarn."  Sounds like a way to annoy a friend!  Goodbye, pretty but evil yarn.

Inspiration at Carissa Knits - Very pretty shawl

There is an unusual and pretty shawl at Carissa Knits.  This is hand knitted, but I wanted to share it for inspiration.

Yarn Scale

Mary Anne Oger has a photo of the small scale she uses in her knitting room.

I do the same thing.  I actually have an old Weight Watchers kitchen scale in the knitting room.  It has both grams and ounces. 

Off topic:  I have another, newer food scale in my kitchen, I still weigh and measure my food, I'm still slim, and no, I'm not a Weight Watchers customer.  I had a previous post about slimming down a few years ago.

 I weigh partial cones, allowing a whole ounce for the weight of the cardboard cone.  I weigh partial and unlabeled skeins, as well. 

I often weigh finished projects to see exactly how much yarn I used.  By weighing a finished project and checking the yardage on the label. I can figure the yardage used in the project, which is very useful for working out whether I have enough yarn to make another.

Shopping Game at Harbor Freight

My husband loves to go to Harbor Freight, which is a tool shop with a lot of low-price specials.  It's actually an interesting store.

I entertained myself on our last trip by looking for things that machine knitters want or need.  I found a bunch, too!  I didn't buy all this stuff, since I already had most of these items in my knitting area, but my machine-knitting scavenger hunt kept me occupied. 

I admit it - I like bargains, and I bet you do, too.  I didn't clean up or crop these photos - I wanted you to see the prices and displays.  The prices are low, and we also had a coupon for some free items and a percentage off on the total purchase.

First of all, lights.  They have lots of different flash lights, shop lights, and work lights.  I use a big LED work light in my knitting room as well as a halogen lamp in my knitting room.  I also keep flashlights handy.  On the last trip to Harbor Freight, I picked up one of these pocket-sized LED work lights on special.  It is also a flashlight and has a little hook.  I've already used it - I hung it up near my lap as I was binding off some ribbing where the waste yarn had unraveled.  It is surprisingly bright.

I noticed at a knitting seminar a while back that a cute little flashlight was one of the most popular door prizes.

I didn't photograph screwdrivers, but Harbor Freight has lots of them, including the small cheapo ones that have interchangeable bits.  You might want one of those if you travel with a knitting machine.  Knitting machines have both standard and cross-point screws. 

I keep a big standard screwdriver, small and medium cross-point screwdrivers, and a pair of needle-nose pliers in my knitting room.  These little tools are mine.  I don't raid John's tools.  (BTW, I've had my own small toolbox in the kitchen for most of our marriage.  It was a gift from John that I thought I wouldn't use much, but I actually use it very frequently).

I also didn't photograph "grabbers," you know those gadgets for old folks who need to reach things up high?  I keep one of those in my knitting room!  It's great for getting things off high shelves, but its best use is moving cones of yarn behind my machine or picking up dropped tools.  It's saved me from lots of crawling under machines.




This next item has been mentioned a number of times on this blog and at seminars - we use it to unstick carriage buttons!  For instance, the MC/thread lace buttons get stuck together in the center of Brother carriages quite frequently.  You buy a bottle of penetrating oil like this PB Blaster brand (John really likes Kroil, but you have to get that one online).  You spray it, using one of those spray straws, as far into the mechanism as you can get it.  Then you set the carriage on your kitchen counter and every time you notice it, you punch the buttons.  It can take two or three days, but you almost always can get the buttons working again.

If you can't fix it this way, the next step is soaking the carriage.  However, we've seldom had to soak carriages for this problem alone.  Note on prevention:  Whenever you finish a project, oil your machine.  Move all the buttons and levers.  Move all the buttons and levers on your other machines, while you're thinking about it, and it will eliminate this problem.

Ah, dental picks.  They have an assortment of different picks, and I like them more for circular sock knitting than for my regular knitting machine, but it's nice to see them at Harbor Freight.
t

In another place in the store I found these other picks with nifty little handles.  I'd rather have the chunky handle - wouldn't you? 

Not only do I like to have dental picks in my knitting room, I also like to have tweezers.  I got used to using these long, assorted tweezers when I fixed a few laptops at work. 
















Okay, the next one is a joke!  I have been teased because I am such a clothespin user as I machine knit.  I didn't see any clothespins at Harbor Freight, although they had clothesline.  What I did see were these crazy clamps.  Sure, they had little ones that would work for a yarn weight, the way I use a clothespin, but this one is ridiculous, so I took a picture.

I don't really have an MK use for this thing.












This is a telescoping magnetic grabber.  These are super to have near your sewing machine and your circular sock machine.  I drop those itty bitty sock machine needles quite often. 

Another item I keep near my CSM is a telescoping "dental" mirror.  Sometimes it's nice to see under and inside the CSM.  Harbor Freight carries those, too.

New Video for February

Here's the new February video:



I already blogged about this slipper and how I am sharing the technique video on YouTube now.  This little slipper is a good introduction to English Rib and it's a fast, fast cute little slipper.  I especially like it on the standard gauge made with good sock yarn, as shown in the video.

This slipper is in the Footnotes book, in twelve sizes and two gauges.

Have you subscribed to my YouTube channel?  It's easy and it really helps!  YouTube does mysterious ranking that determines whether it recommends a video.  I want to teach LOTS of people about machine knitting, and for that, the videos need to attract eyeballs.  If you subscribe, if you hit the bell icon so it'll notify you of new videos, if you hit the "thumbs-up" icon, if you comment, then there are more "views."

Machine knitting is not exactly the most searched-upon topic on YouTube!  I have stubbornly put videos up for us few machine knitters for about ten years now.  My videos that also obviously apply to hand knitting, like the "Faster, Flatter Mattress Stitch," get recommended by YouTube and are my most viewed videos.  I appreciate those of you who subscribe and support machine knitting VERY much.

Also, if you subscribe, you can get notified of the new videos and watch them before I allow YouTube to put on advertising.  I always run them a month or more without ads when they first come out.

A Dozen Slippers - Made and Delivered

I was so impressed with Alexandra's accomplishment - 100 pairs of slippers! 

All I needed to make recently was 12 pairs of women's medium slippers, but quickly, for a friend's project.  I told myself to use yarn I already had - no trips to the stores!

I chose the Quick and Cozy English Rib Slipper pattern from Footnotes, which is my fastest slipper pattern.  That pattern is so stretchy that a women's medium will fit just about any lady!  Besides, I was in a hurry, and I could zoom through those.

What yarn to use?  This slipper can be made on a bulky machine, or a standard gauge machine, but requires a ribber.  I could use worsted weight yarn or sock weight.  Even if I chose a yarn that wouldn't make gauge, I knew that with a pinch of math, I could recalculate the stitches and rows and still make it on either of those machines, which are standing ready with ribbers attached.

Here's the video from Footnotes, which I've never shared on YouTube before.  It shows how to make the slipper using sock yarn and a standard gauge machine. 

I wanted them to be fairly thick and sturdy, so they'll last a while, but also reasonably soft.   I wanted them to be a bit feminine.  I kept picking yarn up and then putting it back. 

Eventually, I found some pink sparkly yarn in a drawer.  (There is 'way too much yarn around here.)  This yarn is rather chunky and stiff for a sweater, with enough cotton that it isn't stretchy, yet I knew it would stretch fine knitted in this ribbed pattern.  The yarn was from Newton's Knits a few years ago.  I had been wondering, every time I looked at it, what it wanted to become!

The pattern calls for 4 ounces of yarn.  I round up when I write patterns that only specify a thickness group, because your yarn might have less yards than mine, or you might make small changes.  In this pink yarn, the bulky medium took about 3-1/2 ounces for a pair.   These knit up in 10 minutes or less per slipper.  The sewing takes me another 10-15 minutes, though!  They need a seam at the back of the heel and the top of the foot.  Hide two ends, and you're done. 

Knitting 24 slippers took less than a workday, but I did it in several sessions.  Sewing them up took a few days of indulgent TV time (lately, re-watching "Call the Midwife" on Netflix when I'm doing finishing).

I hadn't made this pattern in years.  I watched my own video to refresh my memory, and it was a good thing, because the seaming method, which I'd forgotten using, was easy and worked great.  You might like to apply these methods to a project like like a hat, that needs gathered at one end.

Once they were assembled, for safety they needed an anti-slip substance on the bottom.  John keeps silicone seal in the garage, where he uses it often, and had a new tube on hand. 

I also stuffed them temporarily, to stretch them open a bit so I wouldn't glue them shut with the silicone seal.  That turned out to not be a problem, though; I ended up putting seal on just the ridges.

Some of the silicone seal I used in the past was runny, therefore, very easy to put on - you just scribble using the cone-shaped applicator.  However,  this one was thick and pasty.  I put nalgene gloves on, squished a blob on my finger and stroked it on each rib in the ball-of-the-foot and heel areas on the bottom of the slippers.  Since my sealant was so thick, it certainly didn't go through and catch the stuffing, which I removed before taking this picture.

The photo shows slippers drying on a trash bag.  The silicone seal gets everywhere, even though I think I'm being careful.  The loose ties you see are just to keep the pairs together.

I think they look like pink, sparkly corn cobs!  They are bigger than they look, because the ribs open up when you slip them on your foot. 

Here are some pictures of them finished.  The sparkle is subtle and doesn't show up in the pix.  Note that is a seam up the top of the foot, blending in and looking like the rest of the ribs.

Here's a shameless plug for my Footnotes book and DVD.  This contains a bunch of other slippers in it, as well, as well as some sew-as-you-go socks.  Everything has 12 sizes and it comes with a very detailed technique DVD.  The slippers are for standard, mid-gauge and bulky flatbed knitting machines. 

I've sold more Footnotes than usual lately.  Usually when that happens, someone has made something very nice using one of the patterns and shared it on the internet.  I don't know what it is - would someone tell me in the comments? 

Awesome Post at Knotty Knits

She's making charity blankets, and they're wonderful!

http://tracykm.blogspot.com/2020/01/charity-blankets.html

Inspiration from Marzipan Knits

I love Dale of Norway designs, and Mar was making a scarf, had a problem at 200 rows, and started over.  She made this adorable doggie sweater from the "bad" piece:

http://marzipanknits.blogspot.com/2020/02/dog-peace.html

Go have a look! 

What a Difference an Edge Makes

I've been making tuck mosaic lately, and made a blanket with hems at the top and bottom but a rather disappointing edge.  It is a great size for a baby blanket, a pretty pattern, and nice colors, but quite unfinished looking.  With tuck mosaic, you change colors every two rows.  Different patterns have assorted tuck stitches across the rows, and you can get this sort of uneven edge.

I'll probably blog about tuck mosiac more later.  It really is an interesting technique, floatless,
interesting on both sides, and wide for the number of needles and yarn thickness.

This very unfinished-looking project sat in a little heap in my knitting room while I went on vacation. 

I got back into the knitting room Monday and spent the day editing videos.  (I put up my monthly videos ahead of time - otherwise, I don't think I'd have one every month.  It is time to do more.  I had some already filmed, got them edited and ready, and am happy with the videos I have for y'all so far.)

Tuesday, I was out in the morning, then came home and did various chores until late afternoon.  I thought, I've got an hour and then I want to cook.  What can I knit in an hour?  My eyes landed on this unfinished blanket.

I started out thinking I'd put a smooth wide I-cord edge up the sides, and I even worked a sample.  It looked okay, but it was slow going and a little tricky to space evenly, with all the tucks confusing what is visible on the back side.

I decided to put a simple worm edging on - just like the one I show on this baby blanket on YouTube. If you go to 19 minutes, 40 seconds, I'm putting the edging on, using 3 stitches and eight rows, which is exactly the edge I put on this blanket. 

On the video, I was careful about what loops I picked up on that blanket, spacing it just right as I made the edge.  On my little mosiac, though, with all the tuck stitches, I simply used the "jab" method and garment tension.  Jab the 3-prong transfer tool in just  after the last place you picked up.  I tried to be about a stitch in from the edge so there were at least 2 loops on top of the tool, which kept my edging along a straight column of stitches - but I didn't always hit that spot.  Any "misses" are not very noticeable because of the edging. 

This went so fast - I was finished in that hour.

I didn't know if I'd get away with "jabbing" - maybe the edge would wrinkle or flare, or the edging would wander in and out along the side - but it looks great.  I haven't blocked it yet, and I'm not sure I'll bother.  The worm edge is awesome in that way.

And I still love the way the worm edge looks, with a nice twisted cord look.  It's especially nice in this project, which was done on the standard gauge machine, because it's small and delicate.

Gift Idea - For those who give socks

I haven't had much time for blogging during the holidays, but I made note of things I thought might be interesting.

I have given socks away at my annual knitting club Christmas party a number of times, and it's always nice to give them to women who appreciate the labor and materials in a truly good pair of socks.

I thought that was just getting boring.  I know they like these socks, but where is the surprise?

I once made a "pamper your feet" basket for a silent auction, and I decided to use that idea again, inexpensively.  I bought everything at Dollar Tree, and I tried to color-coordinate the items to go with two pairs of purple-themed socks I had knitted (in a women's medium, which really seems to fit everybody using my favorite sock pattern, which I teach in The Happy Cranker).

The basket was a white wire basket from Dollar Tree, and I had a small manicure package, a bath bomb, some bath soak in a apothecary jar, some nail polish, and a bath poof included with my purple socks.

I loved it, and it went over well at the party.  Maybe this is an idea you could use to dress up a sock gift!

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