Finished Object Friday

This is a different sort of finished object post - but after six years of work (albeit with lots of breaks), I am finally a Master Knitter.  I received my pin last Friday night in Manchester at the Knit and Crochet Show.  

It has taken a bit of time to have it sink in that I'm finished.  Maybe because I know there is still so much to learn and so much I can improve in my knitting and designing.  I was truly honored to be asked to join the Masters Committee and I know that will be a learning experience.  I have a couple of designs in progress and am hoping to have finished objects that are truly made from fiber and have patterns to go with them shortly!  

In the meantime, I'm enjoying knitting for the fun of it.  I have three projects going and am swatching for a sweater design. I'm glad to have the time to do it.

Also I'm thankful that i have a great setting to do it in.  We're at the beach and it has been great weather.  Here are a couple of shots I've taken on my morning walks.  Awesome sunrise yesterday.

Seagulls on the beach this morning.

Strange patterns in the sand left by the waves.

 A very unusual shell I found - I have never found one of these before on this beach in 17 years, and this was almost perfect!

Morning Glories on the dunes - a la Georgia O'Keeffe

Have a great day and enjoy all the great fiber items at Tami's.  I know it has been months since I posted there, see my last post to explain why.  I have missed this so much.

A Major Milestone for Level Three!

I have just returned from the post office and mailing off my level three submission.

One very large notebook, a hat in a zip lock bag, and a sweater in tissue paper that got majorly crumpled and torn while trying to find a box big enough at the post office.  Yes, I do have a knack for picking the busiest day of the year for shipping.  They ask you to keep it to under five pounds; I'm at six.  If they are insistent on that rule they shouldn't ask for so much stuff.  Very relieved to have it on its way, before the holidays.  It will probably be three months before I hear back and some amount of redo is guaranteed.  I'm hoping to be done and complete and official by the end of June.

PS - the sweater will be my Friday FO.

Why am I doing this Master Knitter's thing?

Several of you have asked me about the Master's Knitting program.  Honestly I'm not sure sometimes why I am doing it.

I started with the TKGA Basics class five or so years ago.  Even though I had been knitting for twenty years at that point, I found out how little I knew from that class.  I started the Level One of the Master's probably out of arrogance - of course I can breeze through this.  I'm the classic first child, overachiever, straight A student.  Give me a metric and I will kill myself trying to bang it out of the park.  As I have gotten older, I have learned to occasionally ask if the metric actually matters.  But I digress.  I got through Level 1 fairly quickly five years ago.  I was between jobs and had to do my resubmission for corrections while I had already started working again.  That was not a lot of fun, so I put on hold doing Level 2 until last year when I was once again between jobs.

Level 2 is perhaps the most challenging.  I was horrified that I had to resubmit 30% of my swatches.  I wasn't surprised that I had to resubmit the blasted sock.  But I learned a tremendous amount and I can see a huge improvement in my knitting.  After I finished Level 2, I decided to plunge right into Level 3, regardless of all the other things going on in my life.  Same logic as making your kids read and do math during the summer.  I didn't want to lose too much of what I had learned before doing Level 3.

Now my motivation has three major parts.  One I'm so close, I just want to finish and cross it off the list.  Two, I realize how much I am learning and know that I will be a master level when I finish.  I admire craftsmanship of any type and this is a way of honoring that in myself.  The third reason is I would love to be a knitting designer and teacher and I view this as a good springboard to that.

Now that I have met others who are doing it, I see a lot of similar reasons.  Many do it just for the challenge of it and the joy of learning.  You do have to take it with a grain of salt.  It isn't unusual at all to have 20% redo on a submission.  And some of the things that they want you to do, you won't do in the future (mattress stitch over one bar versus two comes to mind - shhh - don't tell them I said that).  I've also met people who don't do it because there is a lot of research and writing (yes you have to write papers and book reports - my fifteen year old gets great joy from proof reading mom's papers.)  If that isn't your thing, don't punish yourself.  It also takes a lot of time when you could be making actual projects, versus these crazy little squares.

But you do learn to look at your knitting in a much more critical (meaning objective, not negative) way.  Yes they do look at every stitch in a swatch to see if it is correctly formed, the tension is right, you followed the directions, etc…  Do you know the difference between a k2tog and SSK?  Can you tell a cast on edge from the bind off edge in a square of stockinette?  Can you measure gauge correctly?  Write a pattern?  And on and on.

In retrospect I am glad that I am doing it though I will be even happier after it is done.  Hopefully that is only a few months away.

Work in Progress Wednesday

How quickly the week goes by.  I will have an exciting finished object this week and the potential for one next week but the works in progress are a little on the boring side right now.

I'm still working away on the swatches.  As Calophi said about my last post, it is a bit unsatisfying to just have a swatch.  We want to make something with it!  Though i'm considering framing my walk in the woods swatch.

These swatches are extra frustrating because the first two have to be redone.  This is my first time doing both entrelac and double knitting.  I think I've got the hang of the mechanics of both now but need to start over in order to get the tension perfect.   I always thought entrelac looked so cool but it is a lot of work!  So much turning.  I tried to teach myself to knit both ways but gave that up as head ache inducing at this point in my life.

Those second two pictures that are a mirror image of each other are the same swatch, just different sides. It really is knitting two layers at one time.  It is a cool technique and I'm thinking away of the things I could make with it.

The last swatch is my intarsia replacement swatch.  It will be a compass rose and it is a perfect design for intarsia.  No mix of intarsia and stranding so it will block well.  It doesn't look like much now but I'm happy with it.

Head over to Tami's to see the other fabulous works in progress!

Oh Well

I'm still slogging through on the Master's Swatches.  Progress has slowed as I have gotten to the harder ones.  I've had three starts on double knitting and have to start again on that.  Two starts on entrelac and have to start over there too.  Intarsia is stumping me the most right now to find the right pattern.  I have always admired Michele Rose Orne's intarsia sweaters and adapted a pattern from her "Walk in the Woods" sweater.  And it turned out okay -

It would be beautiful for a sweater, however…….  I was trying to convince myself that it was okay, but just because I call the colored yarns worsted weight, doesn't make them worsted weight when they are bulky.  Even if Sally Melville says you can bust your stash by mixing different weight yarns and it will look okay (she's right, this looks fine), doesn't mean that the Masters will accept it.  The change in gauge by different yarns is too great.  But it does look good and I'm going to keep it for future inspiration.  Now to find a pattern that will work with with the yarn colors (blue, greys, maroon)  I have in the same weight of yarn.  Suggestions?

But here are some swatches that are on their way to being put in the notebook.  Charted patterns and duplicate stitch.

Finished Object Friday

Right now I don't have a lot of finished objects.  Maybe the lace will be finished next week.  Even at the beach I'm still making progress on the Master Knitter Swatches.  Its a stretch to call them finished because I haven't blocked them but will have to wait until I get home.  All  swatches are made with Paton's Classic Wool and size 7 needles.  The patterns are from Barbara Walker's Treasuries (# 1 and # 2).

First one is French Weave Slip Stitch from B. Walker's Second Treasury.  The trick to slip stitch is to always read the instructions for slipping yarn from current perspective you have.  In other words, hopefully clearer, if it says slip with yarn in front and you are on the wrong side, you still slip the yarn in front as you are working.

Second one is Smocking from B. Walker's first book.  This one gave me a bit of trouble at first until I started measuring the smocked loops.  They are half an inch now and that gave the fabric a more even look.

Third one is Herringbone from the first treasury.  This one I had to knit three times to get right.  First time I was too loose, second time I wasn't using a row counter to keep track - its just a four row pattern but that was my downfall.  Sorry this picture isn't as good as the others.


I'm participating in Tami's Amis Finished Object Friday so go check out all the great objects there as well!  http://tamisamis.blogspot.com/

Finished Object Friday

Okay, i'm new at all this blogging stuff.  I had this post all written and managed to lose it.  Oh well.  That's how you learn.  I found some other knitters who blog on Finished Object Fridays so I'll see if i can do that. The problem is I don't finish things every week.

But at least with doing the Master Knitter, I should have swatches done each week.  Maybe this will keep me motivated.

The first swatch is the tubular bind off and cast off. Many thanks to ChrisKnit for her kind comment on how I did the even number of stitch cast on.  I love both of these techniques, nice and stretchy for ribbing and very nice finished edge.

Second swatch is knit on cast on and suspended bind off.  The trouble with the knit on cast on is that it leaves little holes at the edge - where I have my blocking pins.  It is elastic and you don't have to guess how long a tail to use to cast on but you would have to want those little holes.  Suspended bind off is a good elastic bind off that I'll use if it isn't ribbing - for ribbing, nothing beats the tubular bind off.

So I'm wondering what I have been doing the last quarter of century not experimenting with different techniques.  Never to late to learn to be a thinking knitter.

Master Knitter

A few weeks ago, after 10 months of on and off work, I passed Level 2 of TKGA's Master Hand Knitter program.  Because I am a glutton for punishment, I signed up immediately for Level 3, the final level.

I started the first swatch and was amazed.  I've been knitting for 28 years and had never done a tubular cast on.  How very cool and useful for cuffs and necklines.  But these are very tricky people because every reference I read says this has to be on an uneven number of stitches and of course the directions are for an even number of stitches.   I read all the forums, all the group notes and don't see anyone else stressing about this.

Here's how I solved it.  Since the directions were for 20 stitches, I did the final k2together to make the final number of stitches come out even.  It does leave a bit of a bump where the two stitches are combined. This took me a lot of time to figure out. Now it did cause every row of the ribbing to start with a purl stitch instead of a knit.  When using this technique in real life, I would have an odd number of stitches and that makes seaming much easier and cleaner.  Hopefully this will be the right approach.  I should know in another ten months!


I'll keep blogging about this journey to the masters.  If someone has another approach that works better I would love to hear about it.