Tag Archives: knitting

Meet Lulu

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Introducing Lulu, a very stylish bunny.

Bunny

She and her wardrobe (and work) have been keeping me busy for the past few weeks. She came from the pattern by Julie Williams, called “Bunny Girl in Dotty Dress” and is headed to a silent auction fundraiser for The Casey Young Foundation on April 5th.

She was a lot of fun to knit and only a deadline stopped me from knitting more dresses from her dress pattern collection, “Seasonal Dresses” .

Every bunny needs a place to store her dresses and a cozy spot to rest between tea parties. Lulu has a custom painted wooden box lined with original printed fabric.Bunny_box

Lulu and her fabulous wardrobe can be yours!
On Saturday, April 5th, she will be up for a silent auction at a wonderful event in Brooklyn, NY to raise money for “The Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood Program”. You can purchase tickets for the event here.

I hope you can make it to the fun event, and good luck with the bidding!

A lesson learned… maybe

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IMG_5707That’s right folks, a mere 4 months from when I started my “Yellow Wall Cardigan”, I have finally bound off, blocked and sewn on the buttons – just in time for the 78 degree weather that is hitting New York. As my devoted readers may remember, this sweater caused me not a little bit of angst back in November. And, evidently, the trauma of unraveling over 2 skeins worth of sweater on my first attempt at knitting this design was not enough of a lesson in checking gauge.  On Sunday I found myself unraveling another project for the very same reason. This time it was my lovely “Eggplant Lace Pullover”.

So, that is why I now present to you the gauge swatch for my next project. A nice sized 7″x 6.5″, carefully blocked swatch of Knit Picks’ Shine Sport Yarn in colors (from top down) White, Platinum, Robot, and Wallaby.

swatch.1

This will be for the “Gradient Pullover” that was featured in the Spring issue of knit.wear. Instead of the pinks that the designer used, I’m envisioning a cotton sweater in neutral tones, perfect as an extra layer on summer evenings. The swatch is serving the dual purpose of helping me decide what three colors I want to use.

swatch.2

I think I’ve decided on my color combination, but the gauge is still a little big.

I don’t think I’ll bother with another swatch, I’ll just cast on for the sweater on a smaller needle and that should give me the right gauge.

I’m sure it will be fine.

Knitting Heartache or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gauge

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Eldred

After a Thanksgiving full of food, family and friends, Mark and I retreated up to our little blue cottage on Friday afternoon to digest.  Saturday morning we woke up to a gray sky and snowflakes half-heartedly swirling about the yard.  We ventured out into the cold to pick up our mail at our little post office and get some groceries and then headed home where we settled in for the day. After some careful consideration of our Netflix options, I made a cup of mint tea, picked up my knitting and we pressed play on “The Return of the Pink Panther”.

For the past four weeks I’ve been knitting happily away on a new cardigan for myself,  “Yellow Wall Cardigan”. I replaced the recommended yarn with a very nice tweedy yarn, Rustic Tweed by Queensland Collection, and I was loving the result, although I occasionally wondered if the stitches were tight enough. Now, it’s drummed into all knitters from the second they pick up their first size 10 needles and ball of acrylic yarn that before they start a project, CHECK YOUR GAUGE! Because every knitter has her/his own specific tension on how they hold their yarn, the number of stitches per inch that each knitter achieves with the same size needle and the same yarn can vary greatly. And, if you use a different yarn from the one recommended in the pattern, it’s doubly important to do a proper swatch.  For example, if you are knitting a sweater with a, let’s just say, 37″ width at the chest and the pattern requires, let’s just say, 24 stitches per inch, and you are knitting 22 stitches per inch, it would change the width of the sweater to 40″. That’s right, three inches, a full size larger – you see where I’m going with this?

For some reason, many knitters are notoriously bad gauge swatchers, most of us are so excited to start a project that we either do a half-assed swatch or just plunge in with the courage of our convictions, however misguided they are. So, four weeks ago I decided to go with a half-assed swatch  – which I haven’t steamed or blocked, also recommended – and I plunged in. Along the way, a little voice in my head suggested that I should double check my gauge, which I decide to completely ignore because, I think to myself, “I did a swatch, it’s totally fine!”. It’s not until this gray, cold Saturday with Inspector Clouseau wrestling with an industrial vacuum in the background , that I decide to double check the gauge on my knitting.

I’ll save you the strain on your eyes and tell you: the gauge on my sweater is 22  stitches per inch.

I think it would be physically painful for me to tell you exactly how far along on the sweater I was when I made this discovery.

All I can say is that I had started my third skein of yarn.