Wendy Knits

And it’s supposed to get a bit cooler today. But not by much. It’s 5:00 a.m. and 71 degrees.

Lucy is waiting patiently.

Those of you with snow who offered to send me some? Bring it on! Lucy would appreciate it.

Booga Bag Update

I’ve finished the bottom of my bag and started the sides. As you’ll recall from yesterday, I cast on 60 stitches and did 40 rows. I picked up 19 stitches on each of the short sides, and 60 stitches on the cast on side. That gives us a total of 158 stitches around, for those of you keeping score.

In my comments yesterday, Vanessa suggested doing an i-cord loop for a button to use as a closure. Pure brilliance! I haven’t done an i-cord finish on my previous bags, but I will on this one, and incorporate her great suggestion.

(And Janet, yes, I am using size 10.5 needles. Check my sidebar for my current works in progress and you’ll see that I always list the needle size I’m using.)

Teaching Knitters

In yesterday’s comments, speaking about teaching new knitters, Purl said:

I find that the biggest challenge is how to get them over the hurdle of their first dropped stitch(es). Any ideas?

What I’ve done in the past when teaching coworkers to knit is to tell them to practice on their own, and if they drop a stitch or something looks not quite right to stop there and bring it to me the next day. Then I can scrutinize the work and tell them what happened, and show them how to fix it.

This works very well when you are teaching someone you see every day. And it’s not long before they start figuring out and fixing their own errors.

Amphora!

Dorothy asked:

What gauge does the Hebridean knit to? Could you substitute it for the 2-ply jumper weight that Starmore uses in many of her patterns? I love the colors in the Smith & Jamieson Shetland, but it is rather coarse – is the Hebredian softer?

The Hebridean is slightly heavier than jumperwieght shetland, so some modification is needed. Not a whole lot — it might just be a matter of knitting one size smaller with Hebridean than with jumperweight and adjusting the length slightly. My gauge with the 2-ply Hebridean is 7 st/inch on a 3.25mm needle. My gauge for shetland jumpweight is closer to 8 st/inch on a 3.25mm needle.

And it is softer than shetland — significantly so. If feels lovely to work with and to wear.

Time to head off to work . . .

On Friday I brought my PiS sweater to work for show ‘n tell (my boss always asks about my knitting progress) and when I was showing it, I think I attracted another potential knitter in my office! Woo-hoo!

In addition to the lovely young lady who is raring to hop on the knitting bandwagon (and I’ve already got her addicted to Noro Kureyon, thank you very much), another woman came over to my office this morning and expressed an interest in knitting.

So I think knitting class ought to start up sooner rather than later. As soon as things start to (hopefully) slow down towards the holidays.

Thanks for all your compliments about my FO! We did do a PiS photo shoot over the weekend, so the photos are available on the Official Leaf Sweater Page. I can’t bring myself to title the page “PiS Sweater.”

No, I didn’t get dressed up and wear matching cowboy boots. It was 80 degrees over the weekend and I was not comfy with dressing up and stuffing myself into a wool sweater, so I just threw it on over jeans.

Lucy was a big help.

I also finished a Booga Bag in Kureyon color #89.

I’m starting a new one in color 55 for me, and am making it about twice the size of the ones I’ve made.

I also got started on Amphora. Here is the bottom border done, with a bit of the body pattern started. Pretty colors, eh?

No, not stress from work . . . knitting gauge.

Yesterday Dorothy asked:

A question about Starmore designs – do you ever have trouble getting gauge? I don’t consider myself a particularly loose knitter, but I sometimes have to go down 3 needle sizes to get her gauge. This has discouraged me from doing any of her FI’s because I just don’t look forward to knitting an entire sweater on size 0 needles – it hurts my hands! Even a size 1 or 2 makes a huge difference. Anyone else have the same problem?

Personally, I’ve never had trouble getting gauge on Starmore designs. Particularly on fair isles. I don’t think Starmore fair isle gauge is any tighter than is normal for a fair isle.

In my admittedly limited experience, fair isles are knitted on size 3.0mm or 3.25mm needles with a gauge of 7 or 8 stitches to the inch using shetland jumperweight wool. I think that’s fairly standard for fair isles, is it not?

Using the Virtualyarns two-ply Hebridean wool, the pattern for Amphora calls for a gauge of 7 sts/inch using 3.25mm needles. A gauge easily gotten without knitting particularly tightly. At least for me.

And Speaking of Tension . . .

I got home from work last night 14 hours after leaving home in the morning. So pardon my brevity. And lack of photos.

But I’ll tell you — I’m this close (picture me holding my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart) to finishing PiS. So with any luck, there’ll be an FO report tomorrow.

Time to leave for work. Wait, wasn’t I just there?