The very last class of the summer is Monday evening, August 25th from 6-9 p.m. with Karida. She is teaching my beanie hat pattern, shown here. In this three hour class, you will learn to work in the round and decrease. Worked with super chunky yarn, many students finish this hat in the three hour class. Sign up online and grab your supplies this weekend:
1 ball Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky
US#11 circular 16″
US#11 double points
I think I knitted about then of these last year for holiday gifts..quick, easy, cute and made from very soft cashmere blend yarn. You can’t go wrong!
Join me tomorrow night for the Knit-a-Gogo Knitalong at Cheesetique on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Alexandria, VA (right in the heart of Del Ray). There is parking behind the building and on the street. I will be there at 6 p.m. We are not reserving the entire place and space is limited so come early or let me know that you plan to be there and I will try to hold a spot.
So, for those of you meeting up on the third Thursday of September at Cheesetique…(for the Knit-a-Gogo Knitalong) you will be able to seam the left and right, back and arms of the sweater before starting your hood. Be sure to have them blocked and ready to go. Once we seam the shoulders, we can set in the sleeves and then seam up the sides.
I have half of the sweater seamed up (I needed a break from web stuff yesterday) and I started in on the hood, hoping that I would have enough yarn. With one entire ball left (to work the ribbed button hole edging), I have completed the hood. (What a relief! I didn’t really want to have to beat up Stephanie and steal another ball of yarn)
The directions say to bind off the hood stitches and seam up or to use the three needle bind off to seam it up. I decided that I hate seams on hoods and that I would graft the two sides together. (I think this was in part because I ate an apple fritter from Starbucks, an iced latte, and then a key lime cheesecake in the last five hours)
Then I realized that if I were knitting another row, it would be the cable row for the cable that runs up the front edges of the hood. So THEN I decided that I would work the cable while grafting it. WHAT?! Who let me use knitting needles today? Get me away from the yarn. So here I am grafting my hood. I hate grafting. We know this.
And…
It worked.
It totally friggin worked. Course, the cables don’t come together the way they should but that is because the pattern has each side twisting a different way, but oh well, it is still waaay cuter than having a seam!
Do NOT ask me to do this again in September. I will refuse
I am having a love affair with this sweater. Jennifer Hansen (aka Stitch Diva) is a god. I am not sure that I can pull it off..its long, and I am short. It accentuates the shoulders, and I have really wide shoulders. But I LOVE this sweater. Someone please knit this sweater so that I can live vicariously through you.
If you have taken my beginner knitting class, you know that I do harp about posture while knitting. Beginner knitters (and even a few advanced) are notoriously tense, putting a great deal of stress on their hands, arms, neck and shoulders, not to mention the needles and yarn. Experienced knitters tend to get repetitive stress injuries because they become obsessed and can’t stop knitting even when their body is telling them that they should. (I don’t know anyone like that. Not at all)
When you are new to knitting or even if you aren’t, it is important to be aware of your posture. Try to keep your knitting project as close to eye level as possible and use a pillow to prop up your arms if you need to. (it helps to not have to look at your knitting at all, but we know this takes some serious experience). Do that “yoga shoulder roll thingy” where you roll your shoulders back. Stop frequently and roll your head around, up and down and from left to right to help loosen up the upper back and neck muscles.
If you are experiencing pain in your hands or elbows, stop knitting! Take a break and try out a few exercises. One of my students makes a few hilarious figures with her hands: crap claw, fist, duck bill, and something else that I can’t remember. These will all help to stretch out the fingers and loosen up the joints.
Lastly, choose good tools. Your knitting needles can do a great deal for your comfort, particularly on large projects. If you are using silk or other slick yarns, don’t use metal needles. You will tend to tense up, trying to keep the stitches from flying off of the needles when a birch or bamboo needle would do the trick. If you are knitting a blanket or other heavy large project, use circular needles instead of long straight needles. Those giant metal Boye needles that grandma gave you are out of fashion for a reason! The weight that they put on your wrists is unnecessary. Use a circular instead, and the weight of the project will fall in your lap and below your hands rather than pulling down on your wrists and hands from the sides.
My final words of wisdom: don’t commit yourself to knitting all of your holiday gifts. This will land you in physical therapy by January and its just not worth it. In the end, only about 20% of your relatives will really appreciate the gesture anyway
I must confess that last night I cheated on the knitting world. My first passion and love and I cheated. I had this other life ya know, and it called to me and I couldn’t resist… Most of you don’t know about my other love. I have another addiction almost as bad as the fiber one. But only because it is so much more expensive. I have a scooter problem. Yes, a scooter problem. I have owned several, including a vintage Vespa smallframe named Mario (seen here in orange). I went to “scooter rallies” on the weekends and rode with folks from across the country. I did all kinds of crazy things in the name of scooter love. But then Mario went to live with a friend, and I was without a scooter for a little while. I had only time for one love…and that was knitting. Then I bought this black one (who needs a name, by the way)…and I love it too. I commute on it almost every day and it gets over 75 mpg!
Last night, my scooter family invited me to go on a ride with them to Rock Creek Park and despite the fact that it was late night at Knit Happens, I couldn’t resist the temptation and I went.
I am so sorry to have cheated on you, my dear dear knitting. I swear I do still love you more.
I saw some requests for a finishing party for the Central Park Hoodie. I wonder if we could just commission someone to finish all of them for us:) I hate finishing! Well…I hate it but I can teach it. Shall we use September’s Third Thursday event for finishing? Can you all be done by then? Bring your central park hoodie or any other project that you need to finish and we will put the pieces together. Your pieces should be:
-blocked (and dry)
-leave the tails hanging out, as we might use them for seaming*
*by the way, when you cast on for the sleeves of the CPH, be sure to leave a tail that is at least as long as the sleeve will be, so that you can use it to seam up the sleeve…just a little trick that eliminates lots of extra tails
Bring:
-darning needle
-extra yarn for seaming
-all of the pieces, of course
- your pattern
-some sort of cutting instrument, teeth work as well
-tape measure, preferably one that is cute and will be a conversation starter
Anyways, let me know if you can be finished by that date or will have something to bring that will need some finishing. I know if you look hard enough, there is probably a really ugly acrylic sweater in your closet that you never finished…
So everyone keeps asking me why there are only two classes on the site right now. I swear, can’t get a break ’round here. Crazy knitters…
Anyways, the FALL semester (a season that has not technically started yet) will be posted early next week. Lets say, Monday, August 18th. In the meantime, you might see me pouring over a laptop trying to figure out the best way to describe entrelac in a class description.
Because I am offering all of the Knit Happens location classes, the fall line up will be huge and amazing. But have no fear, you will be able to filter through classes based on location, teacher, etc. AND, I am excited to announce that we will offer crochet classes! (ok, so most of you know that I absolutely hate crochet. But what Olga does with crochet is fairly amazing and so it is allowed. If you plan to produce granny squares, I will not, under any circumstances, refrain from making fun of you).
So a sneak preview of what is to come this semester:
An avid sock knitter will tell you that sock yarn “doesn’t count.” What they mean by this is that you can purchase as much sock yarn as possible, but it doesn’t count as stash yarn. It is just there. This is our way of not feeling guilty about owning more sock yarn than can ever be made into socks. My hilarious students Martha and Michelle have taken to using sock yarn as payment for classes with me. The fact that this does occasionally happen says two very amazing things about sock addicted folks: 1. If Michelle and Martha have sock yarn that they are willing to part with, clearly they are impulse buying and have too much to keep at home or hide from husbands. 2. If I am taking said yarn in exchange for knitting classes, I have less sense than they do.
Anyways, so now that we know I have a problem, lets examine what happens when I walk into late night at Knit Happens and someone mentions that the Dream in Color arrived. I ended up going home with two hanks of it! Don’t mind the blurry photo, in my frenzy my hands weren’t able to stay steady enough to hold the iphone.
So the third ball, the one in the middle, that is a hank of Wollmeise sock yarn that I took as payment from either Michelle or Martha…who knows. I started knitting something non sock like with it in an effort to work through my sock stash with something other than socks. The pattern is Woodland Shawl by Nikol Lohr and I was able to quickly memorize it. I love it! But the Woolmeise was too variegated and despite my love for the colorway, it just wasn’t working. Soooooo, my justification for buying TWO hanks of the Dream in Color was that I could use one of them for the Woodland Shawl, which, coincidentally, I am using for a private retreat this weekend.
The very last class of the summer is Monday evening, August 25th from 6-9 p.m. with Karida. She is teaching my beanie hat pattern, shown here. In this three hour class, you will learn to work in the round and decrease. Worked with super chunky yarn, many students finish this hat in the three hour class. Sign up online and grab your supplies this weekend:
I have half of the sweater seamed up (I needed a break from web stuff yesterday) and I started in on the hood, hoping that I would have enough yarn. With one entire ball left (to work the ribbed button hole edging), I have completed the hood. (What a relief! I didn’t really want to have to beat up Stephanie and steal another ball of yarn)
I must confess that last night I cheated on the knitting world. My first passion and love and I cheated. I had this other life ya know, and it called to me and I couldn’t resist… Most of you don’t know about my other love. I have another addiction almost as bad as the fiber one. But only because it is so much more expensive. I have a scooter problem. Yes, a scooter problem. I have owned several, including a vintage Vespa smallframe named Mario (seen here in orange). I went to “scooter rallies” on the weekends and rode with folks from across the country. I did all kinds of crazy things in the name of scooter love. But then Mario went to live with a friend, and I was without a scooter for a little while. I had only time for one love…and that was knitting. Then I bought this black one (who needs a name, by the way)…and I love it too. I commute on it almost every day and it gets over 75 mpg!
Last night, my scooter family invited me to go on a ride with them to Rock Creek Park and despite the fact that it was late night at Knit Happens, I couldn’t resist the temptation and I went.
An avid sock knitter will tell you that sock yarn “doesn’t count.” What they mean by this is that you can purchase as much sock yarn as possible, but it doesn’t count as stash yarn. It is just there. This is our way of not feeling guilty about owning more sock yarn than can ever be made into socks. My hilarious students Martha and Michelle have taken to using sock yarn as payment for classes with me. The fact that this does occasionally happen says two very amazing things about sock addicted folks: 1. If Michelle and Martha have sock yarn that they are willing to part with, clearly they are impulse buying and have too much to keep at home or hide from husbands. 2. If I am taking said yarn in exchange for knitting classes, I have less sense than they do.
So the third ball, the one in the middle, that is a hank of 
