Thursday, October 4, 2012

New Techniques Just in Time for Christmas

I have been having some issues with my knitting lately. I had startititus for a little bit, but fought the urge by planning a Birthday Party for my two year old. Then I kept it at bay by being involved with my church's Sunday School Kick Off planning and execution. 

Now though, my fall is stretched out ahead of me and Christmas lies in wait like a hungry lion ready to make me panic. To counter act that I have kicked my Christmas knitting into high gear. 

The first thing I cast on was a pair of socks for my hubs. I had knit most of the leg when I decided to try it on. It was way too small. As I examined my failure I noticed something in my stockinette stitch that really bugged me: ladders. When I use my dpn's I always make sure that I tighten up my stitches, so why did I have ladders? In desperation I googled "no ladders dpn" and found this life saving video. 


I had never tried it before, it never occurred to me, but it works! I knit a few rows of the sock and was happy to see no ladders! I jumped for joy! (The sock is still in my knitting bag waiting to be rewound, or burned, I can't decide which)

Gleefully I am knitting a pair of mittens for Stomper, and with this new technique there are no ladders. Cue the choir! 

One of the blogs I read is Unravelling. She does amazing things with string! She also makes mistakes when she cabling, shock! I had this issue back when I was knitting a sweater for Stomper this summer, I miscrossed my cables. I had almost finished and lo and behold a cable miss-crossed. So I would sit and frog and cry and frog and cry, but I persisted and paid attention so it only happened maybe twice. I wish I had known about laddering back. So much nicer than ripping it all out. You can read all about it in her blog post. Basically you rip out the errant portion, and just that bit, the rest of the work stays put. Then you cleverly re-knit it right! Time consuming and tedious, but not as bad as re-knitting six inches.

Hot off the needles (photos can be expected for Sundays Project Update) is a hat for Stomper. On the needles are mittens knit from some of the same yarn and then next up I will knit at least one sock for the hubby for Christmas. The object is to knit at least one sock for each of the intended recipients so that I can have at least something under the tree for them.




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