Tag Archives: intarsia

1 Up

27 Sep

Meet my new favorite mittens. I’m a total geek so these were right up my alley. And a little less intimidating to begin than a weighted companion cube.

ImagePattern: Mushroom mittens

Designed by Kamilla Svanlund

Yarn: Nalle from Novita (DK/8 ply, 100 g = 260 m)

Needles: 3 mm

*****

Once again I chickened out and didn’t do the intarsia. It just never works out for me. I have no idea what I should do differently to make it work. Every time  intarsia is used in a pattern I’m working on, I do try it, but I haven’t gotten any better at it. So I guess practise usually makes perfect.

This time my inability to do intarsia wasn’t a problem because the mushroom motif was small enough for me to sew it on. I did it before starting the decreases to make the needlework easier. Doing this creates a thicker fabric but I actually kind of like how it feels to the back of the hand.

Image

But I do have one problem with these mittens, and it’s a problem I have with most mittens that have some sort of image on the back of the hand.

It’s that the motif is placed dead center of the mitten, which means that when the mitten is worn it actually looks like the motif is off-center! The thumb always pulls the fabric to the side. Then I have to look at asymmetrical mushroom placement.

I should just move the motif a little to the side when knitting something like this. Problem solved.

In all other regards it’s a great pattern (fun and quick) and the mushroom is perfect 🙂

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The lonely sock

3 May

So I guess I’m still at that point where I can write this much about knitting socks.

I have many lonely socks and mittens. It simply takes ages for me to start knitting another one of something I just knitted. I’m not even that anxious to use any of the pairless socks, so there’s no insentive to knit the other one. The whole point of knitting for me is getting to create something new, learning new techniques, the excitement of facing new challenges and of not knowing what’s coming next. If you’ve already knitted one sock, you know what’s coming pretty well.

I try to combat this by making each one in the pair similar enough to make them a pair but different in some small way to keep it interesting.

This morning I finished this sock

Square sock
Square sock

Pattern: My own

Yarn: Wool by Novita

Needles: 2,5 mm

It’s the first toe-up sock I’ve knitted without a pattern and also the first colorwork I’ve come up with on my own. I came up with it as I went along, which of course resulted in some irregularities in the pattern, but I don’t really care. I just wanted to see if I could knit colorwork in the round and still get a strechy fabric. Turns out I can.

I didn’t write anything down, which is a huuuge mistake. When I eventually get to knitting another one of these, I’ll have to use this one as reference. Well, at least it won’t be a question of being bored with doing the same thing again because I won’t remember what I did the first time around.

I will probably reverse the colours in the other sock. That should eliminate some of the repetitiveness. Also, this sock took up a lot more green yarn than it did black, and I might just run out of green if I don’t reverse the colors.

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