Grafting continued...

I wanted to acknowledge Lucy Neatby by way of the "Ruthless Knitter" who described the technique of using waste yarn as a guide to graft. Neatby's DVD Knitting Essentials 2 covers this approach. I have not seen this tutorial, but got the information from the Ruthless Knitting blog, which has great photographs of a lace shawl project undergoing the grafting process. Thank you, Ruthless Knitter and Lucy Neatby!

Grafting Lace

I struggle with the notion of symmetry. If a scarf--my favorite project to knit--has an obvious repeating pattern, to my eye, it looks better if the ends are approximately the same. I've been advised to block both ends until they look alike, but there is a fair amount of distortion to one end and I'm never sure how permanent the block will be. So I was quite pleased to see that others on the web had tried to graft a lace scarf at center. Well, here's my freshman attempt at it. Actually, I redid it plenty. It is a lace pattern with one row of knit between the fancy yarn overs and knit-2-togethers. Not ideal. I was wondering if feather-and-fan would work better since there are more knitted rows, but I think the distortion will still be there. In any case, I will definitely try this method next: knit the last row with a similar weight yarn but in a different color. Then when grafting, follow that yarn when weaving the two ends together. It has been discussed on several sites and those knitters were pleased with the results. I also found that tension is crucial, and I had some problems by grafting "cold." Although I was able to adjust the stitches manually. And, perhaps, this will look a whole lot better once I block the scarf. Let's hope so....

Teddy Bear Party

The boys have buds! I missed the Mother Bear shipment by a day. So my boys were the only bears in the shop (Cast Away Yarn) for a while. But when I was in there the other day, they had some new friends. It’s a Teddy Bear Party while waiting for the next ship to Africa. (And, yes, I’m working on getting the gauge right for the next bears.)

Great Summer Trip

We took a whirlwind vacation through California in early June. It was a crazy-ball-of-unraveled-yarn kind of trip. Our first stop was at Universal Studios in LA (many pics with plushies and furries), followed by an awe-inspiring layover at Yosemite, a digression to the ghost town of Bodie and Mono Lake on the way to Lake Tahoe. Such breath-taking scenery! Discovered a wonderful little yarn shop The Wool Tree on Harrison Ave. in South Lake Tahoe. It’s amazing how one can become so attuned to yarn shops that “one” can pick them out of strip malls even when the shops are set back from the street and partially hidden by parked cars. I picked up a set of needles and some fancy yarn to knit with while “the boys” played Frisbee golf at a local course.

It’s also good to know that in Tahoe I have the Wool Tree and in Reno there’s Jimmy Beans Wool. We didn’t stop in Reno this time, but Jimmy Beans is a dynamo shop. Their website is a resource center with web tutorials, free patterns, catalog, etc. I was able to order yarn—Colinette’s Parisienne—for a project. When I called to see what the yarn was like a very helpful person compared the hanks and described them. No surprises when they arrived a couple of days later.