Sunday, January 31, 2010

Glitten Help



The Peace Leaf Glitten pattern that I've posted has a few strange steps, so I'm going to attempt to clarify them with some visual aids (ooooaaaaa).

The pattern for this walk thru can be found here.

In the "Mitten Flap" section (pg3), you need to carefully remove the waste yarn that you've knit across the palm of the glitten.  When you've done this you should have 20 stithes on the bottom and 19 stitches on the top.  This is what that should look like:


Then the instructions say to knit a 1x1 rib for the flap using the "top" needle, that would be this one:


Then you have to CO 20 stitches and knit them with the "bottom" needle in the round.  Leave a nice long tail when you CO for reasons that shall become apparent in a little bit.  In this pic, I have used a Cabled cast on, and then knit across the 20 stitches on the needle.  Then all you have to do is distribute the stitches on your DNPs and knit in the round.


Once you start working on the fingers it helps to put the stitches that you are not using on a given finger onto waste yarn with the ends of the waste yarn at the side that is next to the finger you are working on.  This way, when you are ready to move onto the next finger, you can take 5 stitches from each end of the waste yarn and have the right stitches without doing any shuffling.  


Ok.  The last weird bit.  Once you finished the fingers and the thumb, you need to attach the edge of the finger part to the rest of the mitten.  I would suggest weaving in all the ends EXCEPT the long tail I told you to leave earlier.  Getting all the ends out of the way makes it easier to see what's going on.  The tail is going to be used to sew the edge on to the inside of the glittens.  The first step is to turn the top part of the glitten inside out.
Then you place the loose edge of the finger part against it and use the a tapestry needle and the long tail to sew across the edge.

TADA!  That's it!  Hopefully that clarifies things :)



Friday, January 29, 2010

"Peace Leaf" Glittens!



Someone requested my pattern for my Ganja Glittens, or "Peace Leaf" Glittens on Ravelry, so I figured I finally give pattern designing a shot.  The idea behind this leaf motif is that I wanted to make something for my brother that he and his friends would get a kick out of, but I didn't want it to be glaringly obvious when you look at them.  I'm offering the pattern as a free download on Ravelry.

It's a quite bit more complicated then I first thought it would be.  I finally figured out how to get my spreadsheet program to behave itself so I could create the charts, but apparently that was just the beginning of my troubles. The original glittens were made over a year ago.  It was the first pattern I had ever designed and the first pattern I had ever did stranding on.  I think it came out pretty good considering, but the problem is my notes were pretty cryptic.  At the time, I'm pretty sure I was just making it up as I went along.

On top of having difficulties remembering what I had originally done, there were some parts of the glitten that are just very hard to describe how to do.  Hopefully it's clear enough, but if anyone is making any attempt at these are can't figure something out, by all means message me, it's probably some silly mistake that I made writing them up.

I also have been looking for the best way to my the pdf of my pattern available.  If anyone can help me out and knows a better way then how I've done it please let me know.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

First Blog Post


So, I have finally decided, after admiring all the pretty knitting blogs that I frequent, that I am finally going to take the plunge myself.  I suppose that I'll try to maintain this as primarily a knitting blog and a step towards designing my own pieces, but I'm sure some of my non-knitting life will seep in.  So here we go...


Right now I have several projects on the needles, including a half finished hat that I am attempting to design, but I am refusing to allow myself to work on any of them until after I've taken the LSATs.  I tend to be the type of knitter that MUST finish a project once I've started it, to the detriment of everything else that might be going on in my life.  Being that the LSATs are about 75% of how you get into law school, and knitting accomplishments are about, well, zero, I have had to painfully triage my daily activities to not include my "slightly" unhealthy addiction.

In order to fill the void with something fiber related, I have busied my spare moment unraveling sweaters for future knitting use.  It makes me feel like I've accomplished something knitting related, and when I need to stop to study, it is far easier to walk away from a half unraveled sweater then from a half finished hat, (just...a...few...more...rows!)  Here is a 100% wool XXL mens sweater that I have just finished pulling apart and hanked up:



It still needs of washed to remove the kinkiness, and I'm thinking about trying my hand at dyeing!  That should be a new adventure, but the beautiful world of internet knitters seems to have endless resources on how to do this.  (Methinks I foresee a future post.)

For any out there who doubt the ability of mere reclaimed thrift store sweaters to produce FOs as pretty as store bought yarn, allow me to enlighten you:









The beautiful thing about reclaimed yarn, is not only the whole tree hugging, carbon footprint, anti-consumption part of it, (though that is a nice plus,)  but also the money saving side.  All the pieces above are made of 100% natural fibers.  That amount and quality of yarn would have been out of the question on my miniscule college student budget.  I don't mind using acrylics for projects that warrant them (like baby clothes or things for people that I know will not have the patience to hand wash them), but if I can throw down 5 bucks at a thrift store, spend a couple hours taking it a part, and get several skeins of 100% merino, why not!

If anyone is interesting in reclaiming thrift store sweaters, Dawn Prickett's "My Virtual Insanity" blog has the best tutorial I've found, and it is defiantly better then anything I could come up with:  Recycling Sweaters For Yarn.