Monday, March 2, 2009

EEKS!

How time flies. I kept thinking, I need to post something, but last week was a bit scatty and, obviously, I never got to it.

Part of the problem is that I’ve been at the end of several projects you’ve already heard quite enough about so didn’t want to post about them. I’ve had a sweater that you haven’t seen but I’m thinking about submitting it for publication so can’t show you that (although I am wearing it today and it looks loverly!). I’ve been spinning (a lot) but once you’ve seen one picture of a singles, you’ve seen them all. I’ll post about that when I’ve got the plying done (which I’m close to getting to).

Now I did find some
Galway (I think it’s color 164) at a local yarn shop and I love Galway. It was one of the first real wool yarns I ever worked with and I’ve loved it ever since. This is in a royal blue which drew me right in so I broke down and started a Gansey with it. Sometime last year I finally broke down and got Beth Brown-Reinsel’s Gansey book and I’ve wanted to get one made for ages. (By the way, Beth is the teacher from whose class I made the Danish sweater.) Since I’ve only got about 10 rows of garter stitch done, I’ve spared you pictures but I’ll get something posted when I get a little further along.

One of the things I’ve been trying to learn is about knitting sleeves from the top down. The sleeves for the sweater I’ve just finished were done this way and I had to rip out and redo about 4 times before I had the number of stitches right. So along comes Beth, wonderful teacher that she is, and says, “Here’s the easiest way to do it. Measure the circumference of the sleeve, leaving out the bound off edge at the bottom, and use your stitch gauge to determine how many stitches you need for that distance.

I mean, how simple is that? How logical is that? How did I not know that? Everyone should know that. Does every knitter in the universe know that? Is it just me or is that a perfectly simple and logical thing to know and why didn’t I know that? Why did I not know that deep in my knitterly bones? Duh.

Anyway, now I know that. For my Gansey I will know that and will use it, oh my knitting hero.

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