It’s amazing how a couple of hours you didn’t expect to have can be so productive. I was able to leave work a little early today (because next week the craziness begins again) and I came home and proceeded to get tons of stuff done.
The Ponchette
I actually finished the Ponchette last night and love it. It came out exactly how I’d hoped it would. What makes this fun is that I used a yarn that was different from what the pattern called for and decided to just keep knitting until the 3 skeins were finished. Finishing the 3 skeins made it exactly the right size. I had an idea about finishing it with some shells but I didn’t like the way it came out so I’ve now taken them off. The changes I made are: (1) I did it in stockinette instead of the garter; (2) I changed the yarn; and (3) I added a mock ribbing at the top by working over the first 5 stitches 2 rows of stockinette and 2 rows of garter, giving that top edge a little definition.
Necklace
I found these crystals and locket at a couple of local craft stores and I finally got the idea of how to put them together using these chain links. I like the muted colors together with the silver.
Pin for Portuguese knitting
I gave a little (rave) review of a video about knitting in the Portuguese style. It showed carrying the yarn either around the back of the neck or through a special pin that gets attached to the top of the left shoulder. I told some folks that I was going to try to make my own pin and that I would post about it once I tried it out. So here goes:
I used a Darice 2¼” Coiless Safety Pin in nickel and a Darice Brass 2” Eye Pin in nickel.
First I used my small needle nose plyers to bend it in half.
Then I began making a loop with the straight end and fed it through the eye and closed the loop.
I used a small dowl to fold the eye pin over. This is where the yarn will feed through. Once I had all the ends tucked in and the eye of the pin perpendicular to the fold, I fed the large coiless safety pin through the eye. Easy peasy, right?
Cool. Now I’m going to use it.
One is to say, I’m writing this from the wonderful land of Texas! Home to let my mother spoil me for my birthday!! It was so comforting to see all the Texas license plates and Whataburgers and wild flowers on the side of the road. It’ll always feel like home and for some weird reason I’ve been so homesick lately.
Another is about a dvd and a couple of movies I watched this weekend.
Several months ago, I heard about Portuguese style knitting. Being the lover of any new piece of information, I started poking around to see what I could find about it. There were a couple of videos on YouTube but not great quality. In my research I found a Yahoo Group called knitting with crochet hook. The description talked about knitting with “the amazing needle” and “Portuguese knitting.” Sounded interesting so I joined up and began reading the input of some very creative folks and learned a little bit more. I believe it was on this group that I heard about Andrea Wong who is a Portuguese lady living in Ohio who does a lot of teaching and teaches how to knit in the Portuguese style with regular needles. Oh yeah, the Portuguese needles, the best I can understand, are pointed at one end and have a crochet-type hook at the other end (please forgive me if this isn’t correct).
On Andrea’s web site she has an instructional dvd as well as the shoulder pin used to help tension the yarn in this style. I ordered the dvd but never had time to watch it until this weekend. What a wonderful resource – every new knitter should have this video. I thought it would just be about the knit/purl stitches for the Portuguese style. It’s so much more than that. She also covers increases, decreases, a variety of cast ons and bind offs. She has different techniques and tips. Wonderful! The explanations she gives are very simple and clear and the video shots of her working the stitches is very clear and she actually repeats the movements enough that you really get a sense of what she’s doing and lets you follow along.
With her instructions, I found it extremely easy to pick up how to work the stitches and how to combine them for ribbing, etc. The purl stitch is the easiest you’ll ever come across. If you have any wrist problems, you definitely want to check this style out because there’s no throwing, there’s not twisting. It’s all done with a flick of the thumb! For anyone who has seen Donna Druchunas’ book, Ethnic Knits, this is very, very similar to the Andean style Donna talks about. Must have been a conquistadorian export. Donna’s got a great bag pattern in her book using the Andean style along with a very cool bind off edging.
I found fascinating (and she’s not paying me to say any of this!!) her demonstration of how easy it is to knit with beads in this style AND how much easier to do color work. She’s actually combined the Portuguese and the Continental styles to make color work a breeze. One strand is tensioned off the pin on your shoulder (or yarn around your neck – although this can be a little uncomfortable unless you’ve got some material under the strand) and is knit in the Portuguese style. The other color is held in the left hand and is worked as for Continental knitting. How clever is that! I’m totally going to use that next time I do my Danish Skrå-Trøyer sweater (ha!!).
Speaking of Danish, let me just mention two movies I saw this weekend that I highly recommend – both great for a good cry:
Danish movie called Kinamand. After a man’s wife leaves him, he begins eating each night at the Chinese Restaurant across the road (on first night he orders a Number 1, second night a Number 2, etc. through the whole movie). It’s through the friendships he makes here that he finds things happening to him and in him that he never could have imagined.
French moved called Sequins. A young girl who’s found herself pregnant, decides to follow her passion – embroidery (but what I know as Tambour embroidery). She begins working with a lady in her village that had at one time worked with the large fashion houses in Paris. Her son has recently been killed in a motorcycle accident and the two of them find reasons for life in their journey together. (Sounds really saccharine, I know but it’s the most succinct way I could think to describe it.)
The Ponchette
Necklace
