I'm Knitting!!!!

Congratulations Tia Mary , on coming back to knitting there are now some wonderful books that have only stitiches in a form of a Stitich-[diction]ary

which are great fun to have ,,, mirjam

Whaaaat ? OMG!!!!

when you are confident, take a look at intarsial knitting etc and newer ways to finish seams - knitting was never like this in your - or my granny's time.

Can you explain to MOI just *what* intarsial knitting is? I've seen it in catalogues describing sweaters but don't really have any idea what it is. I know I can look it up in the dictionary but it's much more fun to find out here :-). I have a *very* old kit I bought from Herrschners for a kid sweater with a kitty on the front. I bought the knitting kit just so I could have the cat design -- LOL. Of course, it was on sale so I paid about $10 for it and I did get a bunch of acrylic yarn, too. I'm hoping that I will be able to knit myself the sweater with that design even tho' it might be a small design. I'd be happy with a big rectangle for the front, the back and the arms. Putting the pieces together is no problem either. Now that I have gotten my feet wet, I should be able to get that sweater done AND the crochet afghan made up or blocks with a kitty in the center of each one :-). CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Funny--I had the impulse last week to get out some knitting, and our manager, when I mentioned it, said she had a dream where I was knitting. I am not a good knitter--slow and labourious--but I enjoy the simple process of looping a string around itself and making a fabric. Sheena's right--there are lots of marvelous books out there with really cool ways of doing projects. There seem to be a lot of sock knitting books right now (Sheena knits great socks--I was the lucky recipient of a pair) with different ways of attacking sock knitting, so it seems to me there must be a way that works for nearly anyone!

Dawne

Colorwork. Blocks of one color in a field of another. Flowers, cats, aliens, hearts, vertical stripes, etc. Not quite Fair Isle -- which, iirc, is only two colors per row, almost always geometric, and the color not being used to knit with is carried across the back of the work. In intarsia, each instance of a color has its own bobbin/butterfly/ball of yarn, and you need to twist the yarn when you change colors or you'll get holes in your knitting.

jenn

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@newsguy.com

Now I want an angora mirror warmer!! What--you didn't knit fuzzy dice??

Dawne

The boyfriend I knit the mirror warmer for wanted fuzzy dice and I was going to do that for him. Fortunately (for MOI) we broke up before I spent any money or more angora :-))). Don't forget about Lucylle, the "other" woman in DH's life. She is a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback 2+2 painted Windsor White with an Aqua & two tone Turquoise interior! I already have the heathered aqua fuzzy yarn to make a mirror warmer and

*that* might be a good project to take with me when I go on the cruise with my DSis next week! CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

You could wrap it round the Plastic Jesus on your dashboard lol

ME TOO!!

I started knitting again this past November. I've made 3 scarves, 2 helmet liners and a pair of glomittens for the troops and a baby blanket. I think I may try socks next.

I haven't touched my cross stitch for months! I'm definitely in knitting mode!

Mary Lou

Actually, while I do own a plastic Jesus, he's not on the dashboard. I have a magnetic Mary (white with Ukrainian embroidery decals on her robe).

"Oh, I don't care if it's dark and scary 'Cause I've got Magnetic Mary Riding on the dashboard of my car!!"

Dawne

Short answer: intarsia is patchwork.

You change yarns at intervals to knit patches of colors. There are various tricks to avoid knitting separate pieces of fabric -- one is to make all design lines diagonal, so that simply dropping one yarn and picking up another does the trick.

[answering other posts in the thread]

Fair Isle is one style of stranded knitting. Stranded knitting is sometimes called "double knitting" because the strands running behind the stitches make the fabric almost twice as thick -- I sometimes strand two ends of the same yarn to make thick heels for socks -- but I avoid saying "double knitting" because it also means many other things.

In stranded knitting, unused colors are stranded behind the stitches. This makes it advisable to use only two colors per row, and to avoid having more than three consecutive stitches of the same color. If you can control yarn with either hand, stranding with one yarn in each hand feels faster than plain knitting. (But label the balls "left" and "right" and never, never switch -- it's worse than mixed directions in cross stitch.)

There is also "woven knitting" in which a yarn is caught behind the stitches by knitting one stitch over the woven yarn and the next under the woven yarn. When the weaving on each row is offset one stitch from the row below, weaving makes a pretty honeycomb effect on the purl side. The weaving yarn can be swapped with the knitting yarn to make the same patterns you might work in intarsia.

It isn't advisable to try to weave patterns meant for stranding because frequent yarn swaps make weaving untidy, but weaving is a good way to pad solid-color rows in stranded patterns.

Joy Beeson

My postcard was a picture of a Japanese garden. We were taught how to weave the ends in of each colour.

There is a sample of the work I did on my web site under Other Crafts. addy in sig.line

It was my first attempt so no way perfect. Hugs Shirley

As a "fine" Irish girl with TWELVE years of Catholic school under my belt I learned the words as follows......

I don't care if it rains or freezes 'Long as I got my plastic Jesus Stuck to the dashboard of my card And the weather, it can get contrary Long as I got my plastic Mary Stuck to the dashboard of my car. There were more verses but those are the only two I can remember. Poor Granny used to have conniption fits whenever we would sing the song -- LOL! CiaoMeow >^;;^<

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at

Color me very jealous just for the chance to learn anything under KF - his use of color is amazing.

Cheryl

Who has to get off the computer and do errands before the snow flies

Here you can refresh your memory !

- and I won't get into why the reference to Dawne rotflmao - and what is it TM says also pmp ?

And Jenn answered:

Huh. How 'bout that! I've done both types and never knew there was a name for them! Great explanation, btw, Jenn!

Back in the 70s I knit 4 or 5 bulky sweaters from Herrschners that had pics on them...Star Wars' X-wing fighter for my nephew, a horse (Appaloosa, of course!) for me, a pheasant for DH and a camping scene (THE worst...had about 18 balls dangling from the back of that one!) for my dad. Oh, and a fawn for DS, who never got to wear it cuz I was going to line it and never did. Now I can give it to my DGD when she gets old enough! :)

Now, *that* is a shocker!!! :) You can make it for Raechel!

I have a baby afghan pattern from back in the late 70s that is done in blocks of fillet using dbl crochet and blocks of afghan stitch, on which you cs different animals. I was going to use a soft yellow boucle (Pound of love) but, after trying out a swatch, I don't think I'll be able to see the individual stitches well enough to do the cs on it. Oh, gee, darn...I'll have to have more s.e.x.!!! lol

Joan

PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at