Category: Cotton Sandrine

Always on the look out for new and exciting techniques, imagine my surprise when I found myself dusting off something that I learned (but rarely used) the other day.

I’ve reached the point in my Sandrine sweater where I’m now doing body shaping using increases. Now it’s a slippery slope in pattern writing to specify a type (of almost anything). It can open a literal pandora’s box of confusion with the most outspoken rallying around their favorite type and campaigning in my email for its use.

But no matter because I always encourage knitters to use whatever Their Muse directs them, because YOU get to make the call! If you like the particular look of a type of increase, decrease, cast on or bind off, nothing is written in stone on these types of techniques, so full speed ahead, my hearties!

Like many, I’ve been lectured (there is no other word) by complete strangers, even in public (!) about The Proper Way of “Fill-in-the-Technique Blank Here”. There is, in the knitting universe, always a few dedicated Missionistas determined to Convert All to whatever is the perceived “Standard”. Aye, maties, I learned knitting at my Grandmother’s knee as an imp and still throw the yarn around the needle just like when I was 10 (but I’m fast as all get out now!) This has perplexed some who were then “led” to show me the errors of my way. If you’ve been knitting for more than a scarf set, you’ve probably met this person, because, baby, they get around! ;p

Forget them! Do it however it rocks your world!

Usually I like to use some kind of directionally leaning M1 in a shaped area, but this time I’ve abandoned the M1 Family and am all aflame over a plain old Lifted Increase. This was something that was demonstrated during a class I took at Stitches Midwest in 2005 taught by the lovely and talented Margaret Fisher. She showed us how to do many tips and tricks (in fact she just came out with a book based on her popular class yay!) but this one type of increase just stood out for me.

Just a Nice Friendly Increase: I just knit it in on a whim and I’m in love! Now, you CAN make these Lifted Increases left or right leaning, but I don’t see much difference in how they look and am especially lazy as WINTER is still dragging on so I just fly through with right-lifted increases on both sides of the side markers.

This technique leaves a very small footprint and virtually no hole (or bump). When I have some free time, I’m thinking I’ll play with this on a raglan line and see how it looks in a repeated sequence. Hmmm…

>>>>>> Read all posts in this category: Cotton Sandrine.

Even though I hear the birds sweetly trilling outside my springtime window, louder is the call of something darker.

Yeah. The Taxman Cometh and has scattered like the wind reams and reams of papers all over the hut.

Would that I could escape this unholy deadline, but indeed, we all walk together towards that uncompromising line ;p

A little knitting is getting done, though, and it’s at these times I find the repose and peace of the process so calming, such a gift…

Here stands my current Sandrine, like a talisman against the evil of all that paper! I’m several inches down from the body join and have completed the cross-over! Now it’s clear sailing into the calm waters of beautiful Stockinette Stitch. So lovely to have such a loyal and dependable friend when the brain is squeezed elsewhere!!

>>>>>> Read all posts in this category: Cotton Sandrine.

mo’ better weather, mo’ better knitting…

More exciting than being in the audience at a Joaquin Phoenix concert: SPRING Knitting! This combo of bamboo needles and cotton blend yarn is sailing right along. I’m “up” to the underarms and have taken the sleeves off for a time-out while I knit the body of my Sandrine pulli.

I like to use scrap yarn to hold stitches for later. It makes for a flexible and cheap way to have a larger (or smaller) area out of the way while you work on the rest. It easily folds over around under the other parts of the garment. AND there’s something quite satisfying about ignoring all those stitches for awhile because, if you like knitting from the top-down, you know that the stitch count at the underarm can be awesome.

I found myself knitting faster and faster to this mid-finish point, even though my rows were still getting longer and longer, knowing I’d be able to give a ton of those puppies a rest.

Even though we’re almost to St. Patrick’s Day, even though I’ve spotted lots of 3″ high daffodil leaves peaking through the leaves, we’ve gone BRISK again in the air temps here, but by the time it’s time to abandon all parkas, I just might have a new pullover to celebrate! More closet cleaning going on — it seems to just turn into sport at some point — and lots of sweaters that have been sitting in a pile for awhile are being washed and freshened, just waiting for more sunny days.

My hands are getting to that annual point where they ONLY want to touch non-wools. I’m looking for some more cotton blends — a couple of folks have written that the BREEZE yarn has been discontinued (!) so there’s gotta be something out there like it. Anybody have cotton favorites? I’m looking for a light, good-wearing, behaving, DK for hmmm, maybe a little vestage…

>>>>>> Read all posts in this category: Cotton Sandrine.