As for my own little, rounded life, I'm teaching and writing and knitting, finally. It feels strange after last semester's gallop, but I worked hard during the semester break to create this tiny ocean of quiet time. My online courses are humming along, as are my on-campus courses, and all that is left for me to do is to keep up with the grading -- no small task, as there are things due every week. However, it's better than having to put together lectures and their accompanying PowerPoint presentations three days per week.
Ah, the knitting. Instead of finishing the Jupiter Cardigan (hey, I could do that today!), instead of finishing any of the pile of WIPs in my basket, I started a new one, a knitalong with the Amazing A--.
This is the Hana Scarf, from the most recent issue of Piecework Magazine. The yarn is a tweedy silk laceweight from ITO, a Japanese company (A-- loves Japanese yarns), in the "Grass" color. The picture above shows a pretty faithful representation of the overall color, but when you look at it close-up (below) you can see that it's made up of that pretty light green, plus turquoise and some yellow.
The pattern calls for knitting in some beads at the very beginning and at the end. A-- also sent me a few very pretty square beads to use that exactly match the green. I tried using them, but they're a little big and don't fit the design well, so I dug into my stash and came up with some ordinary size 6 beads.
When I began to use them, I really appreciated how well they go with the yarn! They're a very light amber color with a teal green interior, so they pick up the yellow and the turquoise in the tweedy bits.
You can see that one pattern repeat (out of twenty-one) is on the needles and done. It goes really fast once you get your technology ducks lined up.
Possibly the most exciting part of this project so far is that I a) finally got off my duff and started something new and b) finally got off my duff and assembled a cone box to work with cone yarns. If you use coned yarn right off the cone as you would any balled yarn, you will add twist -- quite a bit of it -- which will adversely affect your yarn. Some commercial balls are wound so that they add twist when you knit from them, making it necessary to periodically have to dangle your project and let the yarn unwind enough to keep working with it. With delicate yarns like this KINU, it's best to just not let it get kinked in the first place. My box, which is nothing more than a cardboard box with a giant knitting needle poked through it, is working beautifully. The only drawback is that you have to find a spot for your box to sit while you're knitting. Eeh, I can live with that. I have a couple of other coned yarns in the stash, and it has been the whole getting off the duff thing that's stopped me from doing something with them. For instance, I have two cones of a stainless steel/silk blend for knitting an edgy, artistic scarf, and some cones for weaving with. Now I have one less excuse for not doing something with them.
Once I had the box sorted and was knitting with it, I started thinking about the cone box itself. If you did it correctly, you could have a cone box that could turn into a project box, and indeed, I keep all the parts in this one when I'm not actively working on the knitting. I could find an attractive box, say, one of those photo storage boxes that are ubiquitous at Michaels, and mount the cone in such a way that you could put the lid on it when you're not knitting (I can close the flaps on my current box). In studying the giant knitting needle that I used to skewer the box and the cone, it occurs to me that I could find a dowel and some finials for the shaft that holds the cone. This would make the box more portable because you wouldn't have that giant metal point sticking out. The present knitting needle is longer than the box, which is what makes it work so well, but it is also too long to just pull out and put in the box for transport. It's a strictly-home-cone-box. If you knew someone who had time and the inclination and a garage full of wood-working tools, you could get them to make you a cone box that you could close and would be a thing of beauty.
For now, though, I'm happy with my cardboard box with holes and a knitting needle.
No comments:
Post a Comment