Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Continental method of knitting

I'm trying to teach myself continental style. In doing so I'm learning new things about how I throw. Turns out I never really kept tension in my working yarn. I would just pinch it between my index finger and thumb and allow them to slide along the working yarn. I would also use the index finger on my left hand to 'push' the right needle through the loop and my left thumb to push up the next stitch and the other six fingers would hold the needles. I'm having a really hard time with the tension part of knitting, turns out I have no idea how to do it even though I've been knitting (well if I do say so myself) for over six years now.


I decided that the baby-bib-o-love would be a perfect project to teach myself since I thought garter stitch was more forgiving for BAD gauge. And bad gauge is what I have right now, my loops are either crazy big or really tight. I think that I'm just going to have to come to terms with having very lose gauge when knitting continental since the really tight stitches are when I try to fix it. I'm pretty sure I will always have to drop a few needle sizes, but we will see. I'm only 8 garter ridges into the first bib and I plan on making several for practice.


Now come the whole reason I'm making myself even do this (my left index finger is in pain already). I just discovered how reasonable the kits at knitpicks are, and bought 2 fair isle ones. I've aways thought about trying this out but always thought that it was too expensive for my college student budget, but I found a crazy cute hat and mitten kit for only $18 and a really nice vest one for $19. The mitten one is on back order and so I don't know how long it will take to get here but I have to start learning this now. I'm really scared that my gauge with each hand will be too different and my stranding will look like crap.


Here is the shawl I made back in June, I already gave it away but here are the pictures (taken the day it was gifted)



I knit it in dreamy angora wool blend and used Lucinda Shells Shawl from Beyond Wool by Candace Strick. Knit this strait from the pattern, just used a size larger needle and only the angora instead of angora and linen together. This is also the first project I have ever blocked and wow, I am now on board blocking things. The yarn really came alive after being washed, like ten times softer than before. But the best part about this shawl, guess how much it cost...

a grand total of $5!!!. I finally used the method of recycling yarn. I went to goodwill with a type of yarn in mind. The most important key to recycling yarn is to get a sweater that is not in your size. I also bought two other sweaters that day to recycle, both of which moved from my knitting stash right to my wardrobe without being re-knitted. Also an important key to picking out the recycling sweater I found from laughing purple goldfish. Scroll down to the seams to look out for. I have really taken a liking to wool and now know what all the fuss is about. I'm going to try and not buy anymore acrylic yarn but recycle wool. The other best part about this shawl is that I only used 1/2 of the original sweater so I can make one for myself too. I found it was more time effective to not wind it into a ball but to knit as you unravel the old sweater. This also allows for less tangles and would be an interesting sock blank if I find a white sweater in a stronger yarn, no way would I use this angora for socks.