A previous knitting effort - entrlac
This is my first diary for WAYWO, so I hope it is acceptable.
I am currently working on two items: knee-high socks and a quilt made of a bunch of t-shirts.
I knit continental style. I never learned how to knit American style because I was kind of taught by my grandmother who was from Bessarabia before she moved to Canada. However, it didn’t seem to be working, so I changed the way I knitted continental.
I knitted the socks with a heel flap because I didn’t want to get confused with a short-row heel. I knitted on double-pointed needles and went from the cuff down (rather than toe up — can’t seem to figure out how to do that yet).
The hardest part of the whole thing is the grafting (Kitchner stitch) at the toe to end the whole shebang. Especially with the fingering yarn I am using. It is Peruvian Highland Wool in a Blue Note Heather Palette. It is mostly blue with green and red intertwined.
Here is the one sock I have finished and the second one just beginning. It looks like it takes forever because the yarn is so fine, but it goes very quickly.
One sock finished, one sock started.
Double pointed needles make knitting in a circle very easy and there is no need to track where the beginning is until you get close to 12” (or whatever length you want). As in all patterns, I follow the pattern as much as possible, since I am not a designer or planner of patterns.
So if I am watching TV or doing otherwise mindless activities, I knit around and around and around and . . . well, you get the picture. It is easy to knit when there aren’t any counts or cables or lacy stitches to worry about.
Another thing I am working on is a quilt made of my t-shirts from the various races I have either run or worked at. Of course, I don’t run, I walked 5K, but since I can barely walk any more, I probably won’t be getting more of them.
Front to the top with t-shirts cut to be the quilt squares
Close up of a couple of shirts used. I have a couple more from this race (Bad Bass) in Hayward, CA.
Close up of t-shirt from rafting company. Love the saying (and I have ridden a Class V stream).
The thing about working with t-shirts is they stretch all over the place, so as you can see from the back of the top, each t-shirt required stabilizer so it stayed the same size as I worked on it. There is a learning curve with this, since you think you want it one size, cut it and then realize that that isn’t the same size for everything (since there was stretch during the cutout of the t-shirts).
Stabilizer on the back of each of the t-shirts
The thing is bigger than any flat surface in my trailer, so I will be building it (putting it all together with backing and batting) on the pool table at the RV park where I am currently located. I don’t have a long-arm or even a lot of space to actually stitch it all together so I will have to make sure, by the use of a whole army of safety pins, that it isn’t going to shift as I work on it. My machine does have a couple of decorative quilting stitches I can use, so I’m kind of excited about that part.
Here is my sewing area:
Yes, that is my entire sewing area.
Schedule
January 5 — open
January 12 — open
January 19 — open
January 26 — open
February 5 — open
Do you knit? crochet? sew? make jewelry? do metal (or other) sculpting? build furniture? create with your hands and heart?
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