BETTER than a Tattoo!

My niece recently got a tattoo on her back, and my husband asked "Why did you put it in a place you can never see?"  Well, of course, she knows it is there, and that is enough!

My most recent knitting included some details that really did not make them any better, and in fact, might not even be seen...but I LIKE THEM like a tattoo.  I do not have a tattoo, and will never get one, but my knitting hidden details is BETTER than a Tattoo...because it can be different every day!

I knit Nevis Delicato, a duster-like accent piece that goes over another new knit shell Emerald Staghorn Tank.  Both have my tattoos.

Nevis Delicato has a long lace panel, and another lace medallion, on the back. Not very obvious, as the yarn is busy.  But I enjoyed adding the lace to make the knitting process less boring (nothing is more tedious than knitting laceweight yarn in stockinette in a LONG garment!).  And I like that when the lace motifs are noticed, they are a surprise!  And they are on the back, so I won't be looking at them all day (but I know they are there).

The Emerald Staghorn Tank shell has a deep square neck on both the front and back, with the cable detail down center front.  But rather than repeat it on the back, or leave the back in plain stockinette as most people would do...I did an unplanned traveling cable. Seriously unplanned, I started it with no concept of what it would become.  Every round, made a new decision.  This made the knitting FUN, and the outcome completely unknown!  In addition, working top-down, the resulting cable pattern turned upside down became...A BIRD?  I'm not sure.





Now, my back cable will never been seen when worn under Nevis Delicato...but I'll know it's there.  And when the weather gets hot and I take of the duster...surprise, it's my tattoo!

Three Things I Learned This Week that Improved my Knitting

Every once in awhile, I will learn some super simple little thing...that just blows me away in how it improves my skill or knitting results. So, I might get blown away too easily...

I purchased a book "Knitting Off The Axis" by Mathew Gnagy.  And there on page 9 was his discussion about working cables.  And he speaks of a little thing that always annoyed me, and also made me wonder if I was doing something wrong. How did he know I was baffled by this?

He writes, "Quite often, left-leaning cables don't look as nice as right-leaning ones. It seems that the leftmost stitch tends to stretch disporportionately in a left-leaning cable."  And then he writes the magical CURE..."I find that I can conquer this problem if I work the final two stitches of the cable without removing these stitches from the left needle until both stitches have been worked."

I am doing this right now on a project, and now I'm getting these crisp and lovely crossings to make a mother proud!

My second wonderful new thing learned, came from watching a video available on Craftsy.com, a class on Short Row Shaping by Carol Feller.  As she's discussing techniques, she mentions that you need to tighten stitches as you work the wraps and turns.  WOW...I mean, that's so simple, and while my tension was always even, just the little extra "tug" makes a huge improvement in hiding the turning points!

She also assured "me" that you can't hide them completely...after all, we are shifting from one row to 3 at that point.


Now, maybe those two new things I learned were supposed to be part of my initial education.  Long lost in the fog of information overload?  Or never mentioned?  But they are here now, etched in my mind...but lest I forget, I will always have this blog to remind me!

And the THIRD wonderful thing learned, is something shared by a friend on Ravelry that she found.  A guaranteed, no fuss, fool-proof, PROVISIONAL CAST ON.  I've been in the habit of avoiding provisional cast-ons like the plague, hiding under the bed, rationalizing that any other method would be preferred to that one.  Well, Knitting At Noon has a fabulous video that allows the crochet chain to be made at the same time as creating the pickup loops to begin knitting right away. Brilliant!  Not only brilliant at the set up, but rips right away as promised!

Charting...another Form of Art

I'm have SO MUCH FUN making computerized charts for knitting!

One of my favorite sources for lace, cables, textured stitch patterns, stuff like that...is Barbara Walker's "A Treasury of Knitting Patterns" and her "A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns". Barbara researched and assembled samples of hundreds (thousands?) of motifs, and includes black-and-white photos along with written instructions row-by-row.  I find those written instructions hard to follow, and impossible to picture. Trying to keep straight a line like "YO, SSK, K1, K1-tbl, YO, K2tg, K1tbl"...I mean, it's all messed up if you miss just one K1!  So, I've handwritten my own charts on graph paper in the past, in order to work them out.  But now I am using my favorite photo-editing Paint Shop Pro software in a new way...to make these charts.

In addition to making a knitting pattern infinitely easier to follow, my charts are SO BEAUTIFUL ON THEIR OWN! It reminds me of my early days in website designing (1999). Back then, I learned to code html pages, and the impact of seeing blocks of text and pictures lining up in artistic fashion just blew me away. Change a few codes, and everything can be arranged differently. Change a color, change a size. It was a WOW experience.  Really, designing web pages became an art form for me...and I stopped making jewelry, which was my favorite artistic expression at the time.  Oops, tempted to digress here, stop/stop.

Look at these charts, and don't you agree that they are intrinsically beautiful? So now I have another artform along with knitting (oh yeah, still designing web pages).