Month: August 2020

Little Socks

I have gone overboard once again. To increase my concentration, which has mostly deserted me, I am trying to work on projects that require attention. But now that’s all I have to work on. What am I going to do when my mind clouds over and I’m done with this concentration business?

I am working on 2 lace projects. One is the Tail End of my 3-Act Play scarf.

The concentration needed to follow my own pattern exactly is hard. I’m not very good at following directions (which is why I write patterns instead of following them) so this is a struggle.

Secondly I’m trying to imagine I’m a newish intermediate knitter trying this pattern out. How can I make this as easy to follow as possible? This takes some mind altering as I try to convince myself that I don’t know what this pattern is about when it was me that thought the whole thing up in the first place. You can see that this is a form of mind gymnastics that cannot be maintained for long.

So I’m knitting socks for my new grandson. Tiny socks that make me smile just to look at them.

I recently recommended our Need A Sock book by Brenda Harris and Cabin Fever (Cabin Fever is me and my sister Lyn) to a new sock knitter so I thought I should take a look through it again and knit my socks from there. I’m still extremely happy with how it takes a knitter through the process, one step at a time, using double pointed needles, my favourite method. Good job, Brenda.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/cabin-fever-need-a-sock

I think I will knit little Max some ribbed socks next. The first socks used 19g of fingering wool so now I know what to do with all those little balls of yarn I have in my stash.

Cheers and hoping your stash is still holding up, Deb

Any Gauge and Gauge-Free patterns by Deb

Cabin Fever No-Sew patterns by Deb & Lyn

Deb on instgram

Working row+Comfort row

Working row + comfort row OR work on every row. Where do you stand on this important question? Do you like a comfort row, worked quite often in purl, where you don’t have to think about a stitch pattern? I do but sometimes it’s not the best way to go.

Right now I’m knitting lace and boy, I am really appreciating the comfort row. I have to concentrate and count as I work across the row, glancing at the chart over and over again since I don’t seem to be able to hold too much in my small brain these days. Since I’m working garter lace my comfort row is a knit row and I sigh in gratitude every time.

But when I was working the Bias Centre in garter stitch I was happy to do a little bit on every row. It gives the garter stitch, not structure exactly, but some way to tell where I was. I especially, in the case of garter stitch, like to work the decreases or increases at the beginning of the row as opposed to the end.

I don’t know if you find this but garter stitch sort of numbs me out, especially on long rows of it. About 5 stitches in my mind is off on another tangent and not paying any attention to what I’m doing. I find myself turning and starting the next row, paying close attention to whatever is required, before I realize that maybe I was supposed to do something at the end of that last row. Wait, did I miss something?? Tink back and finish up correctly. This is where a strategically placed marker comes in very handy. A very large marker that you can’t miss is a must, just like tying a string on your finger. Hmm I wonder why that string is there? I know there was something I was trying not to forget!

This little guy is our comfort these days. His family made it up to the camp (called a cottage if you’re in the south but here in the north it’s called a camp). Max is the 7th generation to come here. Right now we have 4 generations of my own family in residence, plus cousins and aunts and uncles too, over 6 camp properties (all social distancing but pretty easy since we spend all our time outside).

My daughter (who is feeling pretty good right now) and her little boy.
Max and daddy, ready for bed, at least Max is.

I’ll stop now with the Nana pics. We are overjoyed that they made it up. Another baby that can grow up here, just like Morgan and her brother did, me and my sisters did and my father before me. Makes me feel hopeful for the future.

Cheers, and I hope you are working some magic with your knitting whether you have a comfort row or not,

Deb

Gauge-Free and Any Gauge patterns by Deb

Cabin Fever No-Sew patterns by Deb & Lyn

Unable to Focus, knitting to the rescue

My concentration has deserted me. I can’t seem to focus. My head seems to be buzzing rather uselessly. When I can’t read a page of a book without my mind wondering off I know I’m in trouble. Reading is my canary in the mine. Uh-oh, this is not good.

How to get it back?

I’ve turned to sudoko puzzles. I been doing several every day for the last week. Today I am celebrating because yesterday my 21st EASY puzzle was error-free. Yay. Today the 22nd puzzle was also totally correct. Double yay. I decided to stop there and enjoy this victory over my squirrel brain.

My second focus project is to tackle something hard: Brioche. I have not taken to this stitch at all. I have taken 3 different classes. I thought I had really made a breakthrough during the last Basic Brioche class I took last fall, thanks Sheila. I got home and tried a  new project, lasted for one inch before throwing it down, disgusted with myself. I don’t know why this technique has me totally stymied.

This pattern, Presage by Hunter Hammersen, caught my attention and with some trepidation I started it.DSC_7874-a_copy_small2

I can learn, I can learn, I can learn. I’m telling myself that I’m working on improving my concentration rather than the technique itself. Ha, ha, right!

Voila! Hey, not too bad. At the beginning I kept finding stitches where the yarn over was missing.  Obviously more concentration was needed. I know how to correct this now, in fact, I’m pretty good at it.20200815_130724

And when your brain says you should stop … you should stop NOW. Ask me how I know! A very hard lesson learned.

How are you maintaining your focus?

Cheers, Deb

Gauge-Free and Any Gauge patterns by Deb

Cabin Fever No-Sew patterns by Deb & Lyn

 

 

Test knitting the 3-Act Play

I don’t know how many times I need to knit this scarf to get the pattern written but I’m now on scarf #3. I am calling it the 3-Act PLAY. I have included different stitch patterns so I hope knitters will have some fun playing with them. I have had lots of fun with them.

It starts with Act I and 3 triangles. Act II is the central straight bias section and Act III is the scalloped tail end.

3-Act Play scarf schematic Aug.9

It’s going to be written as a simple garter stitch scarf. Ok, not exactly simple but there will be lots of garter stitch knitting. I unraveled another shawl and knit right off of it, changing colours as I came to them in the shawl. The knitting is a little kinky (not that way!!) but I like it anyway.

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I’m test knitting now and getting more of the details into the pattern. I am working the first 3 triangles, each in different Eyelet pattern and in one colour.

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Here’s a close up. Right Side: knit. Wrong Side: [YO, P2tog]. I love how different these eyelets look.

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Next up … eyelets worked knitwise in the usual manner just to see how they differ. So far so good. Cheers, Deb

Gauge-Free and Any Gauge patterns by Deb

Cabin Fever No-Sew patterns by Deb & Lyn

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