Saturday, December 20, 2008

JLG Christmas Stocking

[Transferred in a lump from tailfeathers blog, so one post has older posts embedded in it.]

Jan's stocking is fini. Whew - only 5 more sleeps until Christmas morning. I was a working on it almost every day during the last two weeks!

The pattern was easy to follow and Meg Swansen's charts were easy to adapt and make larger and easy to read in MS Excel. My Ravelry project here; Meg's pattern here.

If I were going to do another Christmas stocking, I might do a regular, turned heel instead of an afterthought heel. I screwed up the opening for the heel and used a few rows instead of just one for the opening - because I cut one of the floats. She says in the pattern to be careful not to cut the floats, but did I follow instructions?

The foot is large, but not as large as it looks in the photo. I was closer to the foot and the top was angled away when I took the picture, so the foot looks bigger than it is in real life.

Next up: something for me :-)

November 12, 2008

Progress on JLG Christmas Stocking

20081112 Stocking ProgressThe JLG Christmas Stocking is still in progress. I'm done with the top and will begin the foot next. I love reading Meg Swansen's directions - pithy, just like her mom's.

She gives you plenty of information to complete the stocking. The chart is complete and the text is informative. The text is more like a discussion than line-by-line instructions. Makes you think. Makes you look at your knitting and figure things out. Does my number of stitches make sense with what Meg is saying? Why yes it does, and I'm feeling pretty good about this stocking right now.



October 18, 2008

JLG Christmas Stocking

Progression on the Christmas Stocking.

I'm happy with the initials, which I charted while looking at a font I liked in MS Excel. I'm not so happy with the diamonds between the initials.

Knitters' Logic (the ability to continue on assuming that it will all be okay in the end) says blocking will fix the diamonds and all other wonky places in the stocking. We'll see.

I love knitters' logic!

March 20, 2008

JLG's Christmas Stocking & Talking to Meg

Meg Swansen xmas stocking my chart 3

So here's the next chart. The knitting will look squattier in real life. The trees look taller and narrower here because of the column and row dimensions I used in MS Excel. Whatever. It works as a guide.

20080318 Christmas StockingI'm not quite ready to knit the trees yet. I'm up to the point where I knit the second little white repeat at the bottom of the hem. The first time I knit this I tried to keep the seam stitch in green, which was fine on the rows that had both green and white; however, on the rows that had just white, the green seam stitch looks disconnected from its white neighbors because, well because it was disconnected from its white neighbors. So, I screwed up my courage and called Schoolhouse Press to ask what to do about that seam stitch. A nice person answered the phone and when I said why I was calling she put Meg on the phone. Imagine being able to call and talk to a knitting celebrity. Anyway, she had a couple of suggestions:

1) slip the green seam stitch from the row below, or

2) make the seam stitch white for that part of the stocking.

... and she was so nice about it!

March 18, 2008

Christmas Stocking - 253 days to completion

20080318 Christmas Stocking

Here's the progress so far. My hands are like atrophying claws, so I think I'll give it a rest for a bit.

This yarn (have I already said this?) is Jamieson & Smith 2 Ply Jumper Yarn. It's almost impossible to drop a stitch, thank goodness. There are little sproingy barbs all over the yarn that keep it from coming out. If you were going to steek-and-cut something, this would be a good yarn to use - no way it would come unraveled. Even with the sproingy barbs it's not too itchy feeling, but it wouldn't be so good next to the skin I think. Good cardigan yarn. Good xmas stocking yarn.

March 15, 2008

First chart for Eli's Christmas Stocking

Meg Swansen xmas stocking my chart 1

I was having trouble deciding where the repeats were in the chart on the schoolhouse press pattern, but Meg gives very good directions, so I decided my "knitter's choice" would be to place the repeats thusly on the top of the stocking.

(Click image to see bigger.)

March 10, 2008

Finished... or not

20080310 Riverbed 2X2I finished another pair of Cat Bordhi Riverbed socks. This time out of Trecking XXL yarn. The way this yarn feels in my hands, the socks should last forever. The previous pair of Riverbed socks I made was from Ray's nice sock yarn which I like the feel of more.

Anyway, I used Bordhi's master numbers, and created this 2X2 sock. The increases are on the bottom of the foot - can you see about mid-way up the foot from the toe the sock begins to get fatter? That's where the increases are.


20080310 Moebius Scarf on modelI don't much care for this picture, but you take the models where you can find them. In this case just after waking up early during allergy season. This is a moebius scarf (the knitting, not the model). I used Cat Bordhi's magical moebius cast on to cast on enough stitches to fit on a 47" needle (nbr divisible by 4). The first half of the stitches are knit in a traveling rib which travels to the left. The second half of the stitches are knit in a traveling rib which travels to the right. The result (magically) is a scarf in which the rib appears to travel in the same direction over the entire scarf - except that small portion where the the ribs meet and there is a "V" in the rib pattern. Because of the cast on, there is no way to avoid the line in the middle of the scarf, is there?

This was a project I made in a Cat Bordhi class. I might make it again with better yarn and needles which are the right size for the yarn.


20080310 Christmas Stocking YarnLast year Meg Swansen did a Knit along project called Eli's Christmas Stocking. I ordered the yarn from Schoolhouse Press and gave J the yarn with a note that it would be a Christmas stocking by this Thanksgiving.

It has taken me a while to finish charting the "JLG" to got on the stocking and begin to swatch, but finally it is a WIP.

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