just another raveller

My sister Christina has pointed out that my last post was a full month ago. And where haven't I been these few weeks? I feel as though I've hardly sat down until today, when I decided that enough is enough and I put my feet up. I started the month with a visit to the Federal Building in Buffalo to be fingerprinted for my new green card. I learned that your fingerprints can actually wear off. Some of mine are almost gone. The officer taking my prints paused and regarded me with great satisfaction. "That's from work," she said. It didn't occur to me in time to say that it was probably caused by knitting needles. Books don't rub off your finger prints, tho if they could... From there, we went on to tour the Frank Lloyd Wright House at GrayCliff on Lake Erie. We cruised through Cattaragus county , stopping only for Tim Horton's. We flew past the Zoar Valley which I really want to visit one of these days to it's waterfalls and old growth trees. Finall...

I have interpreted the completion of the GS Catharina as a of license to start a whole host of new projects. The Swing Jacket is brought out only when mindless knitting is on the menu. It won't take long to finish it and the cold weather will motivate me soon enough. My logic may be bit shaky here, but knitting oughta be fun, right? Here is some of what I have been up to. As mentioned in my last post, I started with playing with mosaic knitting , trying to take the technique beyond its usual geometric, crafty look. I used two pale shades of Berocco Seduce, a fine linen/microfibre yarn. One is off white and the other is a variegated blue/gray. I knit a 12' x 4.5" rectangle. I shaped one end of into a flap and sewed up the sides. The resulting fabric feels like a good linen suit jacket. Here's a close-up. You can kinda, sorta see the mosaic pattern. Click. Click. It's held shut by a snap underneath the button. You get to pore over your button collection for this proj...

The book : Mosaic Knitting by Barbara Walker. A stitch dictionary of charted designs for mosaic knitting . I have only used this technique in small projects such as little bags to carry things inside another bag, ipod cases, glasses cases, etc. You could knit a variety of squares and sew them together. The yarn : Berocco Seduce . 4% Rayon, 25% Linen, 17% Silk, 11% Nylon. A stiff and shiny yarn with no memory. I looked at it for months before biuying 2 skeins to try it out. It's kind of like knitting with a stiff flax. The needles: 2mm / zero US. Warning: knitting stiff yarn with small needles can result in a headache, but otherwise, the result is good. There must be some yoga exercise for this. I was warned that this yarn could be frustrating because it doesn't wind well and won't stay in a ball. I don't remember where I saw this in practice, but it came to mind that capturing the balls of yarn immediately after winding in footlets would work and did it ever! It's ...