Mossy Cottage Knits

well, it's over 100 degrees daily in this little corner of hell (why, yes, i am quite grumpy today) so i am suddenly consumed by the desire to knit an afghan- just proves the perversity of the human spirit doesn't it???

i think good words for your pillow are bold and handsome- and quite a novel idea for the hat fancier as well-

stay happy-

Oh, Barb, I would never survive in Texas! But I suppose it's human nature to never be satisfied with the weather. For TMK and me, when it's hot, it's too hot; when it's cold, it's too cold; and don't even get me started on the rain. ;-)

We don't melt in Texas. There's no time to melt. We walk outside, spontaneously combust, then go on about our business and ignore the bonfire that is raging about us. You simply haven't lived until you've seen a poor, defenseless, woodland creature step out of the shade and instatly turn to burnt cinders. And yet, people still consider Texans friendly. It just goes to show you, we're not right in the head.

The pillow is looking fab, dahling.

Oh, Ryan dear, did you ever get that email I sent or should I grab my Texas issued shotgun and head for Earthlink's corporate headquarters and have a chat with them? hehe

Hope everyone has a great day!!

Yep, got the message, StalkerAngie. Will be responding later today. Glad you enjoyed the yarn! I had fun. Need more?

Hey, Ryan, are all your blog readers Texans? Just wanted you to know I'm working on that sock and it looks good. Thanks again for all your wise suggestions.

Hope cooler weather is upon all of us soon. Send some down if you recieve some. Sharing is what blogs are all about and that includes cool weather too.

Pam

Hey, everyone, say "hi" to Pam, a new-ish Dear Reader that I've been corresponding with off-line recently, and who is knitting the Dublin Bay sock. Pam, I dunno; I do seem to have an inordinate number of people from Texas who read the blog, but to balance things out I also have a reader from Estonia/Sweden (born in the one, now lives in the other)!

You weren't kidding about the Embezzler's OCD tendancies. I'm not sure I could shop like that, even if it was one someone else's dime!

I like the "Pillow on Head" picture - it really does show off the colors & how they interact with each other (& your noggin, too). I fall into the "likes it as is" camp on that one.

Quick Q re: fair isle: I'm somewhat of a FI newbie & I'm struggling with maintaining even tension between the two hands. I'm finding that stitches that are on rows above contrast-color rows are occasionally distorted, almost to the point of looking like slipped sts. Have you had that problem? How have you dealt with 'em?

Oh and, Pam, I'm in Floriduh (or Flarida if you're from New Yawk), not Texas.

I thought I was going to die on Sunday. It was my birthday, and a friend of mine went with me to the Pow Wow at Discovery Park. We got there early (11am or so), and stayed until just after the Grand Entrance. I thought I was going to heat stroke out by 1:30, and my friend was getting rather crispy looking, so we left. Note to self: attend the Pow Wow at the Tacoma Dome in November instead, when it's inside, climate controlled, and there are seats rather than aluminum bleachers on which to toast your buns. ;)

In knitting news, I treated myself to a birthday present on eBay, and purchased some cashmere yarn and a pattern. It'll make a nice lacy shawl, and I can't wait for the yarn to land in my mailbox. I've just started on lace, with a simple scarf pattern, and I'm finding it fascinating and really quite lovely to knit. Hopefully I'll get a WIP photo up at some point.

Gardening news? Let's not talk about that.

Glad to see you're doing so well! The pillow is gorgeous, and you're a fabulous read. As always! :)

Hi, Perclexed!! So good to hear from you. As our seed-grown garden has continued to grow, I must admit I have thought about you and how your great gardening experiments were going.

If you were hot at the Pow-Wow, you may not want to look at the weather report for this weekend... Can you say 90's?

Samina, I don't know the answer to your question, although it sounds as if you're just holding your yarn too loose on the row where you're having the problem. Janine, if you're out there, do you have an idea what is going on with Samina's knitting?

Newbies to the nortwest might not know that the last weekend in July and the first weekend in August are statistically most likely to be the driest and warmest weekends of the year... My mother quoted this often because my birthday is at the end of July and my sister's (one year later) in mid-August--Mom swears those were the two hottest driest summers in history, recorded or otherwise.

So, Samina, let's figure out what's going on with your stitches. It for sure sounds like you have some tensioning difficulties--It IS hard for beginners to get the tension right. I know my initial attempts had the distortion you are talking about. One of my teachers (Sandy Blue) suggested that I use a much smaller needle than the size 3 or 4 often suggested. This helped me tighten up the stitches while keeping the floats loose, a hard concept for me to get, frankly. It's counterintuitive, but I found I was much more successful aiming for a gauge of 7-8 stitches per inch than 6 stitches per inch. I hate to admit it, but I now use a size 1 or even a size 0 needle to get the gauge others need a size 3 or 4. If this is your story, don't despair: It's still the same number of stitches!!!

The problem of tightening up the stitch while leaving the float loose enough can also be addressed by aggressively pulling your just-completed knitting to the right whenever you change colors--hold it there while you make your new stitch. This movement gives you the solid base to tension your new stitch against, at the same time assuring a long-enough float.

I still frequently have distorted stitches at the start of my work, before the knitting is well established and its weight helps stabilize things. Before blocking I just reach behind and tighten the offending stitches a bit by pulling on the yarn.

The pattern you are knitting can have an effect as well. Try a sample with a very traditional Fair Isle pattern with a strong diagonal element to learn good tensioning.

Also, pay close attention to which hand is carrying the offending stitches. If you look at the back of your knitting, you will see that one of the colors is carried above the other. The stitch that comes from underneath is ever so slightly larger than the stitch that runs above. Usually the larger stitch is the one carried in the left hand (see Ann Feitelson's Art of Fair Isle Knitting--she's got good photos of this effect). This isn't a mistake, it's just how it is. Knitters usually take advantage of this fact by using the left hand for the pattern stitches (this is also why we never switch hands half way through a project). Take a look at what is going on with your distorted stitches and figure out which hand is involved. Then you'll be able to correct the tension in that hand.

Let me know if this is making any sense!

Wow, Janine! Thank you so much for writing such a detailed response. I read every word and, even though I don't have exactly the same tensioning problems Samina reports, I suspect there are still lots of places in my pillow where my stitches could use some "finessing."

I did notice that if I have to weave a color in in back because of a long section of same-color stitches, in the place where the weaving takes place, the "active" yarn usually makes a big, loose stitch if I'm not careful because it's "held back" by the secondary yarn.

By the way, a million thanks for showing me how to weave "on the fly." I can do it perfectly if I have to weave the left-hand yarn over the right-hand yarn but not vice versa, but even that one changes makes a huge difference.

Ah, Ryan, it's so nice that your blog comments just conveniently happen to address FI technique, since I'm just about to hit the stranded section of a sweater I've started in honor of the Tour de France and then the Olympics.

Long ago I offered to bring you some Brazilwood chips in exchange for a tour de garden. I've just moved (bought a house in Lake City), but as soon as I find those wood chips, I'd still like to come visit someday. I could use some gardening advice too, since my new house came with a garden with some mysterious plants in it.

Melinda

Melinda, we are neighbors now!!! Depending on where you live in Lake City, you are probably one to two miles, or maybe even less, from each of our houses.

The invitation is now more open than ever, girl! As for your garden, I'm sure TMK would be glad to help you identify the mystery plants. That's just her sort of thing.

A Fair Isle sweater for the Olympics--that's all the wonderful things in the world all rolled into one.

Hi Janine,

Thanks for the feedback. I think that you're right - I have gone down a couple of needle sizes to get gauge & I have tried to tighten up the stitches by tugging on them. My fear, though, is that by tugging on the stitches, I'm going to tighten up my floats & get the damn thing to pucker.

I'm actually working on the Cheryl Oberle vest on the cover of her Folk Vests book. I got the kit from her at Christmas & am now working up the courage to tackle it. (Her yarn's incredible, by the way.) I'm carrying the black in my right hand & the varigated in my left hand. It seems to be that the black sts are distorted, though, not the colored ones. It would figure that I'd even goof things up backwards!

Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Ryan, for brokering this exchange! You're a doll.

Good luck, Samina! I bought one of Cheryl's kits a while ago myself--what a talented designer and colorist.

The technique that should keep your floats from being too tight is the habit of pulling HARD on the stitches on the right hand needle and KEEPING them in the pulled position while you make your stitch with the new color. This maneuver takes a bit of practice, but I promise it'll become second nature (it's so second nature to me now that I wasn't aware I was doing it until I tried to work with a new Feral knitter). Good luck!

Janine, by "pulling hard," do you mean the "spreading the right-hand stitches out on the right-hand needle" thing?

Yeah, that's what I mean--but the part that doesn't usually get spelled out is that you need to hold the right-hand needle (RH) stitches in the pulled-out position while you make the next stitch. I've watched many people do the pulling out maneuver and then drop the RH stitches when they start to make the next stitch with the new color. Two things then happen: The RH stitches immediately revert to their cosy ways and the knitter loses the counterforce she is tensioning against. It's under these conditions that newbies begin to despair of getting a reasonably formed stitch while trying to keep the float loose.

So how the hell do you pull the RH stitches, keep a hold of them, support the needle, AND form a stitch? Upon examination, I seem to use the ring finger and pinkie of my right hand to hold the RH stitches and use my forefinger to make the stitch (if it's coming from the right hand yarn)and seem to support the needle with my middle finger. That must be why it's easier for me once the knitting is established: the knitting itself supports the needle to some degree.

Of course, thousands of people knit two-color stranded patterns--and I bet we all handle this stuff differently!