FO: teensy sweater #2!

voila!  i feel like this little sweater brought me all the way from beginner knitter to intermediate in one leap and i lurve how it came out.  the doll gets to try it on next week.  hopefully, it will not be too big or too wonky.

Research Friday: Tapestry Crochet

several years ago, i picked up one of these guatemalan hackysacks at a cool world trade store and it ended up a perennial christmas ornament on my tree. i love the super-bright colours and tight stitches that are typical of guatemalan crochet craft. in some ways, it is like amigurumi since it is essentially spirals of single crochet, but what i found out recently is just how the colour changes are done!

dr. carol ventura is essentially the johnny appleseed of tapestry crochet! she came upon the techniques while serving in the peace corp and has published several books, videos and a website rich with demos, free patterns and examples of tapestry crochet from around the globe. she also teaches where ever she travels, spreading the technique to people who can then use the craft to enhance their incomes. :)

tapestry crochet is essentially a form of crochet colourwork in which several different colours are carried at once until they are needed. unlike fair isle knitting, the thread does not float along the backside of the piece, but is actually crocheted over so it travels along hidden inside the row. both sides of the piece show off the pattern. it works up easily in the round, which is why you see it most often in hackysacks, kippots, bowls and bags.



carol also shows techniques to do flat tapestry crochet that lead to a nice smooth picture. crochet has a slanted quality due to the stitch that force designers to incorporate sharp right angle triangles. carol has some free graphs available for people to work out their designs that will give them a good idea of what they can expect within these limitations.

i would love to what else could be done sculpturally with tapestry crochet that would take it beyond the traditional caps and bags. carol ventura has moved into flat portraiture as has jo hamilton and xenobia bailey makes those awesome urban crowns.

where else could this go?

i think it might be time to pull out my sketchbook! :)

First Forays into Stranded Knitting

trying out stranded colourwork by doing continental style knitting with the green yarn and english with the blue! actually, it is not hard at all. i watched eunny's demo and just had at it.

to keep my eye focused on one line of the pattern grid at a time, i cut a skinny window in a 3x5 note card and slide it down as i go . "crimson and clover" is the name of this pattern and i found it in vogue knitting stitchionary 3.

next time, i will try steeking to see how that works. :)

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also on the needles:

i accidentally cut a hole in some of my yarn while struggling to sew my nautie's head on his shell. argh. i'll need to tear out about 2 inches and re-knit, but i am really quite close to finishing him. (he has lots of tickly tentacles!)

i am also working on an amigurumi version of noah, our parakeet. unfortunately, the pattern i bought offline has not worked out to my satisfaction so far. i will need to tweak it--tweak it good!

i also learned how to do the tubular cast-on required by the fingerless glove pattern i mentioned a few posts ago. i used this video by interweave. i think i will start them tonight!

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using double-pointed needles

pictured above is my fourth (and so far, successful) attempt at taming multiple needles to do my bidding. i have five rows behaving nicely as the knit stitches jump from point to point around the needles. this is a new skill for me and practice for the amigurumi nautilus i mentioned in my last post. i still need to learn how to make the i-cord and practice m1.

thank heaven for youtube how-to videos! here is the double-pointed needle video i watched in order to learn how to do this.

also: i-cord video and m1

look, ma! cables!

my first cable effort!
this a bit of the cabled neck warmer by tidewaterK.

my other practice piece is this is the easy cabled dishcloth pattern by ginabean (aka dishcloth #3). little front and back cables, switching this way and that. i am trying out different cable needles to see which is easiest. so far, i don't like any of them terribly much. i would like to track down a wooden one and give that a go.

back to the needles

last week, during the recent sleet-fest, i had a little accident in which i managed to bend a tire rim and wrench my right wrist on the steering wheel. unfortunately, i hold my crochet hook in that hand, so i decided to give crochet a rest and revisit the long-abandoned knitting needles.

my friend, mair, suggested to me that as a crocheter, i might enjoy the continental style of knitting where you hold your yarn in your left hand and kind of pick at loops with your right needle. it didn't take too long to learn and i love it!

continental purling, however, is a scrabbly, low-down and dirty affair, where i have abandoned all hope of holding my hands like the pretty pictures and just kind of wrangle the loops over and through like i'm busy hot-wiring a car.

this week i am going to give my knit and purl skills a good stretch of simple practice looking to improve my consistency. at this point, my knit stitches are loose and the purls are tight--but i haven't dropped a stitch in 20 rows and i think that might be my new record.

WIP: amazing divine hat

My latest WIP is this spiraling Divine Hat designed by Sarah Arnold. I had to learn 2 new stitches for this pattern: front post double crochet (fpdc) and back post double crochet (bpdc). Front post double crochet makes those lovely ridges stand out--a bit like cable knitting!

The "Amazing" yarn looks a bit fuzzier and more muted than this picture above, not quite so rainbow bright. It is not the most froggable yarn ever, and you should know, I frog and rework about about 30% of every project!