Yarn Shopping

Shopping in general should be a joyous occasion, something fun and maybe even a little challenging. Most people look forward to shopping trips; they make out lists, plan the order they'll visit stores in, warn the credit card company to expect excessive use on the account....but no where in this scenario are shoppers stressed about their spending sprees. This used to be the case for me as well until very recently when I discovered the awesomeness that is yarn shopping on the Internet.



I would prefer to walk into a local yarn shop and experience the yarn in person. I like to get my hands on the yarn to see if I like how it feels and smells (yes smells, you heard me right). You don't really get this on the Internet but what you do get is a mind-boggling selection of yarn. Enter the stress factor! Which one will work for my project? Which fiber is going to hold up the best? Where can I get the best color? Will the sweater look better in variegated or solid yarn? The list goes on and on. STRESS!


I'm going to start a project of knitting four winter hats for a friend's children; they live in a warm climate so wool is out of the question. We talked it over and decided on cotton; still warm but not overly so. I figured it would be no problem to find cotton yarn or a cotton blend in the colors she choose. Oh how wrong I was! Who knew there were so many different types of cotton yarn out there? Some are imported, some only come in variegated colors or in large 16 ounce cones. Some brands only had two or three of the colors I needed while others got close but not quite close enough. Stress, stress, stress I tell you. In the end I found and ordered what I needed but this got me wondering if a wool hat in Louisiana was such a bad idea after all just so I could use that go-to Cascade 220 that comes in any color one could ever imagine.



I suppose in the end I just have to look at yarn shopping as another great adventure!

Blocking Part 2 (and Seaming)

The saga continues, you may remember from my last post that I was blocking sweater pieces for the first time. I greatly underestimated how long it takes for wool to dry; it ended up being almost 48 hours in this case. You may also remember that I had blocked these pieces out on the end of my bed which meant some very tricky and oh-so-careful moving that first night. I can now see the value of a blocking board-PORTABILITY!

Here are some pictures of the pieces once they were dry, there is still a little curl to the edges but not nearly as bad as before I started.

Once the blocking was done the real fun began. I started seaming the pieces together to finish the sweater. My big mistake here was starting this step in the project late at night and I made one (well two actually) big mistake. In my over excitement at actually completing this large project I sewed the sleeves shut! Take a moment to laugh, I did too. So now I must tear the sleeves out and re-seam them. Not a large task but one I'm putting off a bit. I have till Christmas after all and so many other projects to get done in the Christmas season. Here is a picture of my almost finished sweater.

Blocking Part 1

My first big adventure in knitting was taking on a sweater for my daughter. Finally something that is not square or rectangular! With this new project I'm learning a lot about natural fibers (totally in love but that's another post) and how to knit with them. Now that I've got the pieces knitted up I find out that I have to block them and realize that I have no idea how to go about this. Thank goodness for the Internet! I found this wonderful tutorial on Knitty on how to block garments. It talks mainly about wool but does give some advice on other fibers as well and sends you in the right direction if you really want to become an expert on the subject.



So back to the sweater; after many weeks of calling my sister-in-law and bugging her about what a certain step in the pattern really wanted me to do I have four pieces for my daughters sweater. Now comes the easy part (well maybe) of blocking and seaming. The sweater is made of 100% Alpaca and the article in Knitty suggests dry pinning and then spritzing before reshaping. Like a rebel though I decided to go the wet blocking method, please don't call the knitting police on me. I decided on the wet blocking for two reasons, 1) I live with a toddler and I'm pretty sure something was spilled on a few of the pieces during the last several weeks; they needed washing, 2) I'm a fairly tight knitter and realized that the pieces might be on the smallish side so I wasn't worried about stretching.



After washing the pieces by hand in cool water and baby shampoo, I rinsed them and patted most of the moisture out with a bath towel. I took the damp towels and laid them out on the end of my bed and proceeded to pin the pieces out flat.

Another option, besides using your bed our couch, would be to make a blocking board. These would be convenient in many ways, most of which they're somewhat portable and you can move them around. Right now I'm praying these will be dry by the time I decide to go to be tonight, I'm not sure what I'll do if they don't. So now we wait.............

The adventure begins!

Technically my adventures in knitting, crocheting, and yarn craft in general begin a long time ago, the real adventure is sharing these stories with all of you. My first attempt at learning to knit happened around 10 years old; my Mom taught me to cast on but my young attention span didn't really last past that one lesson. Fast-forward about 15 years, I'm in college and very board one night so I make the trek to the 24 hour WalMart and bout "I Taught Myself Knitting" form Boye.

All in all this was a good tutorial; it came with all the supplies I would need to really get into knitting, it taught all the basics of knitting, purling, increasing, ect. with directions and illustrations for both lefties and righties, and even included a few patterns to practice your new skills on. I did not become a master knitter after reading this book, the main problem was trying to teach myself to knit left-handed while the rest of the knitting world seems to be right-handed (more on that later). No matter how I tried all I seemed able to produce was a purl stitch, needless to say the advanced knitting concepts of increases, decreases, cables, and all those other embellishments that make projects exciting we soon lost on me. I proceeded to "knit" many project in various square and rectangular shapes in garter stitch. The family members I gifted these early attempts on were obviously thrilled.

Fast-forward a few more years and about a million scarves later; my then future Sister-in-Law (who successfully taught herself to knit) informs me of what I'm doing wrong and attempts to teach me the correct way to achieve a knit stitch. I say "attempts" because she of course knits right-handed and silly me decided to go lefty on this adventure. After many lessons, quires, and practice she finally succeeds in teaching me a correct knit and purl stitch, though I'm painfully slow in my attempts. It is at this point that I grow somewhat board of my squares and rectangles, even though I've finally mastered a decent stockinette stitch, and head off to the trusty craft section of my local WalMart to purchase the sister to my first tutorial; "I Taught Myself Crochet" from Boye.

This tutorial, like its knitting companion, comes with everything you need to teach yourself to crochet. This time around I was much more successful with my attempts at learning to crochet, though I still seem to be stuck on square and rectangular objects. This started a three year crochet rut and my poor knitting needles languished in my knitting basket.

In September of 2008 I finally found some balance in my yarn crafting. I stumbled on a wonderful web site, knittinghelp.com that was finally able to show me some of the more complex techniques like cables, every increase and decrease under the sun, and all the forms of circular knitting. After viewing the videos on this site I gained a new-found joy of knitting AND crochet which led me to search out more online knitting help.

This brings you up to date; from here on out my posts will be about new projects I'm challenging myself with, helpful blogs or podcast I've come across, and my favorite knitting related websites I find.

Happy Knitting!