Magic looping

I am continuing with my magic loop project.  I am making this (and I can make a plug for a fellow blogger) http://100percentmadebyme.blogspot.com/2012/12/ballet-shrug-free-pattern.html.  I am going to have to modify the sleeves some because my wrist is certainly not the same width as my upper arm.  Even with the stretchyness of stockinette, I am quite sure I will need more room, so I will be doing some increases as I get farther along.

Part of what I love about magic loop now, given that I have to figure out where and when to put in increases is the fact that I can put the piece onto the long cable and try it on easier, by far, than I ever could with DPNs.  So that part is really nice.  I know I wont lose stitches and I can get the item to fit me exactly how I want it to without having to guess.

I admit, there is a learning curve.  It isn't so much that it is difficult to use magic loop, I just have to remember where I am in the work and where I need to move the active stitches so that I am not just going back and forth over the same side.  Basically I just have to pay attention to what I am doing and where my yarn is coming from.  It is not difficult, I just have to pay attention.  Getting the yarn where I want it after moving my stitches is also a trick that I am still working on.

Overall I like the technique.  I think once I get used to working with it I wont have many long-term difficulties.  As long as I am paying attention to what and where I am knitting it is turning out great so far!

I really enjoy learning new techniques, especially when they work!  I will have to work on thumb gussets more, since they didn't turn out how I wanted.  But this, so far, is going really well for me!  I will get a picture up of this, but it will probably be after the weekend.  Family stuff going on that will keep me super busy!

New projects, new techniques!

Sorry it has been so very long!  This month has gotten out of hand for me!  Weddings and birthdays and job stuff and everything!

So, lets just jump right in!  I have gone a couple of times to knit night, which has been FABULOUS!  Last week I finished up a fingerless glove for my niece, and over the weekend I managed to finish the second one.  I had never done thumb gussets before this.  They turned out alright.  I am trying not to beat myself up over them too much.  I have holes where they connect to the main body of the glove.  I do have some yarn still connected to the piece to sew those up a bit.  I know that it is normal to have some hole between the two, but these are excessive.

These have not been washed or blocked.  I am hoping that that will help some with the curling and the small sizing problems that exist.  I used DK weight superwash wool, so I think they are going to turn out just fine.  Overall I really like the pattern.  I did modify it and only did 7 rows of increases rather than the 9 called for because with 9 rows of increase the end of the gloves that fits around my arm seemed too lose.  So 7 rows did the trick and seems to have worked quite well.  The way she has the increases done - by lifting the bar between stitches, does leave a hole.  I decided I was alright with it because it does add a decorative element to it.  I'm not positive I will use it in the future, though.  We'll have to see.

I did these completely on sharp DPNs.  For that reason they took me a while.  It was less the difficulty of using them rather than the fact that I felt it was quite annoying to use them - if that makes sense.  They also hurt my fingers after a while because I knit so tightly that I sometimes have to work to push the stitches off the needles.  I think I am going to make my next pair using magic loop.

Speaking of magic loop, I randomly decided to try it last night.  I was looking for a nice one-skein pattern and I found one that I have been wanting to make.  But, it called for the same size DPNs that I had used to make the gloves.  I was tired of them so I set the pattern aside.  Then it dawned on me that this was the perfect pattern, because it is few stitches but a long stockinette pattern, to try the magic loop on.  I have only gotten about 2 inches into the pattern, and there is a small learning curve to doing magic loop, but so far the stitching looks uniform and nice and it doesn't hurt my fingers nearly as much!  It is fabulous!  I think I will use this for most of my small circular items in the future - hopefully it will make them go much quicker for me because I don't procrastinate!

The pattern for the fingerless gloves I found pretty soon after I started knitting last fall.  I decided I wanted to make them for my older sister for Christmas.  I started the pattern but I did not finish the first glove until a month ago, when I decided I had to finish these red glove for my niece because she would be visiting from across the country.  So, I might try to do the next glove in this same magic loop, we'll have to see!

Mindless projects

I have been making even more wine bottle carriers, I have 3.5 left to do.  Then I think I am going to quit these for a while.  I haven't worked anymore on the baby blanket, though I think I will soon.  Same with my niece's fingerless gloves.  I just haven't been feeling like actually thinking about or focusing on counting.  So I have been doing the super easy no-counting-needed wine bottle carriers.

Do you have a favorite pattern that you turn to when you don't want to think?  When you just want to feel like you are accomplishing something but don't want to work on a new pattern, or count, or whatever the case may be?  If so, list it here!  I'm interested, and I am sure others are, too!

Hooray for completion!

So, I finally finished my little shrug!  I ended up having to frog an entire row because it was just too big.  I also attached the arms slightly differently because it was still too big around my arms.  I think if I were to do it again I would stop the increases at the end of the rows earlier.  I think that that would solve the problem, but I didn't want to rip out 5 or 6 rows and have to redo it all.

The other night I was also working on the baby blanket that I am knitting.  I did screw up pretty big time on that, but I don't know how, and don't want to, frog back to that to get it to work correctly.  Luckily it is just a repeating pattern so when I have finished this section I can get back on track without a problem.  It will just have to live with being rather imperfect.  It will annoy me forever, I am sure,  but I highly doubt that most people will even notice unless I point it out.   So, I won't point it out, except maybe on here! Perhaps someone can tell me if this mess up is fixable or not.

I am also working on fingerless gloves for my older niece.  I promised them back at Christmas, and I am finally getting around to making them for her before she comes out for my sister's wedding.

A super cute basketweave-type pattern on the front.  And on the back just plain stockinette:

As you can see I am using DPNs to make them.  I am not a huge fan, and I might eventually try this in a magic loop.  The needles in this just seem to always be in the way, and I have sharps, so they often hurt my fingers after a bit.  It would be interesting to see if the magic loop makes this an easier pattern for me to complete and finish.  

Ah, such a slacker!

I have been slacking on here!  I finished my shrug, but right now I am feeling too lazy to go take a picture of it.  I am also working on a pair of fingerless gloves for my niece that I promised her at Christmas, oopsie!

Hooks and stuff!

So, I currently have on needles or hooks the following projects: house slippers (crochet), a shoulder shrug (crochet), a baby blanket (knit), fingerless gloves (knit), a wine bottle carrier (knit), and a washcloth (crochet). I think that this might be the fewest projects I have had in the works in a while, which is kinda sad.

On the other hand, I like that I can go from one project to another when I get bored or frustrated with one.  I can also go back and forth between knitting and crochet, again for the same reason.  Even within items that are all crochet or all knit they are very different projects, again giving me a lot of variety.

For instance, the house slippers are made using an J sized crochet hook, the teal colored one.  

As you can see it is larger than the hook next to it.  In comparison the shoulder shrug uses an H hook, considerably smaller (the smaller pictured hook in gold).  That means that even though I am making similar movements they are different because the size of the hook dictates the size of the loops and how much movement I have to do to make it all work.  These patterns also use different stitches.  The slippers are using almost exclusively a half double crochet (hdc) whereas the shoulder shrug uses a double crochet (dc).

The different sized hooks make different sized stitches.  The larger, naturally, make larger stitches which can be beneficial for a large item or one where you want larger holes for whatever reason.  Crochet hooks range massively in size.  The finest (which I didn't take a picture of) are used for lace and other very small scale items.  The larger ones are used for clothing items and larger items.

Here you can see the difference in sizes.  These are kind of the "normal" or most commonly used sizes for most people.  The gold one, the "H" hook is probably the most used hook just because it makes stitches that are a nice size for a lot of different projects.  However, they go well beyond this size.

It is hard to see just how much bigger the bottom hook is, but it is significantly larger.  That is an "S" sized hook - I have used it to crochet a border with 4 strands of yarn on a throw blanket.  The other two between the full metal hooks and the S hook are "L" and "M" hooks.  I have used each a few times, sometimes for a starting chain because I tend to chain too tightly (which often is what starts a piece of crochet work)!  

Patterns will almost always indicate which size hook that you should use to achieve the same look as the item in the pattern.  However, depending on each person some people crochet tighter/smaller stitches with the same sized hook than others.  So you have to check your "gauge" which is how many stitches you have per inch.  I tend to have rather tight/small stitches so I often have to use a hook of a slightly larger size to achieve the same desired look.  

When I first started all I purchased was a size "H" hook.  Once I realized that I really liked crocheting I went ahead and bought a basic set which included all of the hooks from sizes "D" to "J".  I got most of the others from thrift stores as single items because it is, naturally  significantly cheaper.  I will show off my knitting needles some other time, almost all of which I purchased exclusively at thrift stores.

In the meantime, hopefully that helps some (like my brother) who doesn't understand it when I say that I used an "S" hook to make big stitches so it went quickly.  

Knit night!

So, I have to tell you about the knitting group that I have.  They are all fabulous, wonderful ladies and I haven't been able to see them since January because I had school on knitting night.  It should have been a crime!  Alas.  Tomorrow will be my first night back since that, yay!

When I run into snags I can always go to them and ask for help and someone is always willing to show me or help me.  I admit, I got super lucky with accidentally finding this group.  I was about to head down to my dads, an hour and a half away from me, and I stopped into this store one Thursday evening around 5.  A couple of ladies were knitting on a couch there, and there were other chairs.  I asked if I could sit down and I was told absolutely.  I pulled out some stuff that I had been working on - at this point I had only been knitting for 2 or 3 weeks.  I had read about some people who were yarn snobs and who had big problems with others using acrylic yarn.  So, though I am not usually a nervous person, I nervously asked if it was going to be a problem for me to use acrylic yarn.  I said that I had purchased it and my needles at the thrift store, but I didn't want to be shunned.  Rather than that the most fabulous woman got up and said oh here, have these and she gave me about 7 skeins of yarn - cotton, wool, some acrylics, etc.  She had apparently won them (correct me if I am wrong, my dear) and she very sweetly and graciously told me to use them well.

Since that point I became a regular at the shop on Thursday nights.  I have gotten lots of help on things that I wasn't sure how to do - knitting in the round, puff stitches, and the like.  I have to say that, aside from the fact that I was quickly obsessed with knitting and crocheting, these ladies have kept me interested and seeing their fun projects and their skill is really inspiring.  They told me how some of the things that I had done, even prior to joining, were well beyond what most beginners do.  Needless to say that was a nice ego boost.  I didn't know that some of the things I had done were hard because I had taught myself through online videos and so I didn't know what was supposed to be hard or not.

There are certainly still many, MANY things that I haven't tried or that I don't do well.  I am still scared of socks and the flap thingie or whatever.  I haven't yet tried any blouses or sweaters in large part because shifting from the main body of the piece to an arm worries me. Anything that has that type of shift from knitting in one direction to another scares me. I have only just begun to use decorative yarn overs for the baby blanket I am slowly working on.  So far they have turned out really well and the blanket is going to be super cute when I finish it.  Though I have a fingerless glove made I have not yet pulled out the knitted in waste yarn to start making the finger gusset.  I have also not mastered the skills of changing yarn colors or skeins with non-wool yarns, though I kind of make due.  There are other techniques I want to try that I just haven't found a pattern to use them on.  But, all of these things will come with time, I know.  I try to focus on one new skill at a time, become comfortable with it, and then move on to something else.  I am sure that by the end of this baby blanket I will be fine with knitting yarn overs and the particular decrease that this blanket calls for.

In each of the new skills that I learn there are plenty of mistakes.  But as soon as I realize what I was doing wrong I can generally figure out what is wrong and how to fix it.  I generally don't bother going and fixing it, for a number of reasons (in the baby blanket I am worried about the yarn overs getting lost and the decreases being too difficult to get back together) but I usually figure it out after only a few rows and then the rest of the piece is just fine.  My anal side really doesn't like the mistakes, but I am learning to accept them and, because I do learn and I don't make that same mistake again, I just accept that that is part of hand knitting.

So, even with my OCD tendencies I can accept the fact that I am a beginning knitter, that I will and do make mistakes because I then learn from those mistakes and I don't make them again.  And I really like that.  It keeps my brain functioning without having to read 3 entire books in a week, ha!