What I'm Watching As I Knit- The 4400 Season 3

Okay, here's the thing about The 4400 : It's not very good. The acting is wooden, at best, the plot is more than faintly ridiculous, not a bit of it is believable. But I keep renting the discs because I want to know what happens next. Makes no sense, but there it is.

I've just started Season 3 (spoiler- if you don't want to know the basics, stop reading now): Isabelle grew up, instantly, into a beautiful naked girl, Lily (who has the worst hairdo on TV) is ageing at an even faster rate, Garret Dillahunt (whose new short hair may be as frightening as Lily's do) used to seem faintly creepy but benign, but now may be as evil as Francis Wollcott, and Shawn is still a terrible actor.

But I keep watching as I knit (working on the fingering weight sample for the steek workshop doll sweater).

East River Glove Progress

I didn't have much time to work on this today, but I did get past the thumb gusset. I love how these are coming out (and I do think that it'll be a glove, not a mitten).

Workshop Work

I'm sort of proud of myself- I don't have to teach my two new workshops for another week and a half (see link at the side of the page for NCFF), and I actually did not wait until the last minute to start getting ready. I spent most of the day thinking through the process, and doing sample knitting for the introduction to steeking class, where students will take this...

And turn it into this. Or at least that's the plan. Class members have to bring a small knitted tube to class, and I'll (theoretically) walk them through sewing and cutting the steeks, picking up stitches for sleeves and bands, and finishing a doll-size sweater. I know that 4 hours won't be enough for everyone to finish, but I hope to give them enough info to continue on their own (along with handouts). I think it'll be fun (if anyone signs up for the class, that is). (by the way- the little sweater hasn't been blocked yet. It should be nice and straight by class time. I used Cascade 220 Quatro yarns.)

Dakota Dreams- East River Gloves or Mittens

I tinkered with the graphs for my East River sweater (the one I hope will eventually be part of a Dakota Dreams series of patterns) to adapt them to a 64 st glove (with 32 sts for the back, 32 for the front). It wasn't too difficult (I seem to design in 32 st increments) though I did flip the motifs and add a few extra *dots* to keep the long stretches of one color to a minimum (something I realized I needed in my sweater but it was too late to add extras once the first full repeats had been knit).

I'm using Rowanspun 4 ply yarns (unfortunately discontinued, but I bought a lot of it when I was knitting my sweater, so I need to use it up anyhow)- 6 colors. The palm and thumb gusset pattern is just an every-other-stitch repeat, nothing fancy. This is a very light yarn, finer than many fingering weight yarns (I knitted my entire sweater on size 2 needles). I really love the tweedy flecks of color (which show up pretty well in these scans). This yarn makes a lovely, light fabric. It's loose during knitting, but it blooms nicely after washing.

I am pretty sure these will be gloves (I have the finger graph done already), but I'm leaving the option open for mittens if I don't feel like doing fingers. I had intended to make a fold-up cuff (like the other Fair Isle gloves), but I forgot and started the little wheat border at the wrong end, so these will have a Fair Isle border, then the ribbing, then the hand, which will look nice too (I'm willing to rip when I need to, but there's nothing inherently wrong with this version, so I just adjusted my notion of what the finished gloves will look like).

I have finished the wheat border on the cuff, and am about halfway through the thistle border. Above that will be the pheasants.

Finished Gloves

I love these gloves- they fit well, they were fun to knit (well, as fun as stranding 23 sts in the round can be), and I think they'll be very warm this winter. There's a little *loose* spot in the rounds where there is no stranding between the hand and the fingers, but it doesn't show when the gloves are on. This is a nice pattern, and I think I'll start another pair right away- using graphs from my Dakota Dreams sweater (including the pheasant motif in my blog header) and Rowanspun 4 ply yarns.

Stats on these gloves: Knit Picks Essential yarns- 2 balls Coral, 1 Ball Plum Tweed, size 2 needles, 64 sts.

Here's a pic of the cuff unfolded- I like the double thickness at the wrist- extra warmth.

Old Stuff

Since I'm working on the mate to the Fair Isle gloves, and likely won't finish today, here's a couple of projects from last Christmas.

For my granddaugter- an intarsia project using up bits and pieces of sock yarns (mostly Knit picks- some hand dyed from another project, most left overs from socks). It turned out really well, but way big for her. She'll probably wear it when she's twelve. I just played with the design- using a different *wave* on each piece, and changing colors whenever the yarn ran out on a bobbin. The inside back of the body was a mess while I was knitting it- I should have taken a picture of it, with a new yarn every 10 sts for about 200 sts.

I knitted this set from Knit Picks Elegance (I think- alpaca and silk) for my daughter in law. It's an original design but I don't think I took notes when I made it so I have no idea how many stitches in any of the pieces (I think I used size 5 needles though). I'll include the chart, in case anyone wants to adapt it to a different project. (Okay, and I've tried to edit this post 10 times, but I can't get rid of the weird formatting at the side- sorry for the oddness).

The thing about fingers...

...is that you just can't hurry. They're too small, the stranding too awkward, and the process too cramped to do anything but knit slowly. There's a beauty in slow knitting, the stitch-by-stitch progression as the pattern develops. But for a knitknitknitknitknit person like me, used to knitting a sock in an evening, spending all day working on 4- 3" tubes is a change.

However, the work is totally worth the result. This glove is not only pretty, it's soft and comfy and it's not too bulky for actual wear. Now I have to cast on the mate.