A good friend's high-school age daughter loves novelty scarves. I made her a Spontaneous Scarf which she loved and wore to school but I felt bad because it was itchy. So here's my second attempt to make something for her using two yarns I bought on sale at Webs. I broke a circular needle while knitting it but was lucky in yardage. I had about 3 inches of yarn left over from the skein of Mosaic FX after binding off.











GARTER LACE SCARF



Materials: 1 skein Cascada Lana d'Oro worsted weight alpaca/wool, color Colonial Blue

1 skein Mosaic FX rail ribbon yarn, color 4624, Far from Heaven (Mosaic FX yardage is 78 yards and I was really close to needing a second skein)



Size 9 (US) circular needle, as long as you can find



Gauge - unimportant



Finished Size: 3 inches wide by 40 inches long - this is sized for a petite sized girl - if you are making this for an adult add at least a foot. You can cast on any multiple of 2.



Construction Notes: This scarf is knit lengthwise with two yarns held together. Because I hate adding fringe, I cut the yarns after each row so the fringe is built in. Knot the yarns together at either end as you go so it doesn't unravel. If you prefer to add fringe later, just keep knitting and don't cut.



With both yarns held together, cast on 110 stitches LOOSELY. Cut both yarns, leaving a 5-inch tail. Attach both yarns again , leaving a 5-inch tail.



Row 1: (WS) Knit across row, cutting yarns, leaving a 5-inch tail.

Row 2: (RS) Knit across row, cutting yarns, leaving a 5-inch tail.

Row 3: Knit across row, cutting yarns, leaving a 5-inch tail.

Row 4: K1, *YO, K2TOG;, repeat from * across row, end K1. Cut yarns, leaving a 5-inch tail.



Repeat rows 1-4 two more times. Repeat rows 1-3. Bind off LOOSELY, leaving a 5-inch tail.



Now do whatever you want with the fringe. I did single knots and then tied the fringe together about 1 1/2 inches from the top.(Copyright Nanette J. Blanchard, 2004)

COLOR JOGS









These photos show how the hat patterns look before working in the ends on both the inside and the outside of the hat. When you knit circularly your patterns do NOT line up at the end of the row. Think of the stripes on a barber pole or a candy cane - they're actually spirals. If you look at the photo, especially the stripes, you can see the spot where the stripes don't meet. This is called the color jog and is the bane of many a knitter.



There are several techniques used to assist knitters avoid the awful jog. The best article I've seen on the subject is called "The Jogless Jog" by Meg Swansen in the winter 1996 issue of Knitter's Magazine. She details four techniques for four different circumstances: unconnected motifs, speckles, connected motifs, alternate color stripes, and solid stripes of two or more rounds. Vogue Knitting also did a short article on the subject in their winter issue a few years ago.



It really does vary on the specific pattern and on how successful the end result looks. There is no one perfect solution and some can be quite complicated, involving moving the end of the row over each row. If you're doing a complicated, not-easily-memorized chart, this particular jogless jog technique can drive you over the edge. I personally do not believe there is a perfect solution and I think most of the solutions are visible.



Judy Gibson has her own take on this situation HERE. She first shows you what one of the Meg Swansen jogless jog technique looks like and then shows you her own method of dealing with it. My method has one thing in common with Judy's. It involves breaking the yarns as much as possible. Yes, I know there are more ends to weave in which can be time-consuming. Even if there was no problem with jogs, I think carrying unused yarns upward too many rows can cause holes or lumps or tension problems.



For my method you simply cut the yarn when you are done with a particular color. Then look at the back of the work in the photo above. You'll see for each color of yarn you have a yarn tail coming from the right side and one coming from the left. Take the tail coming from the right side and work it in down over on the left side in the same color stitches. You're taking the yarn tail, crossing it over and working it diagonally to make the stripe line up. For the tail coming from the left side, work it

up over on the right side in the same color stitches. Here are photos of the inside and outside of the hat after the ends are worked in using this method. I've used the reverse stockinette stitch method of weaving in the yarn ends (I've discussed this here before) which is pretty invisible on the inside of a garment.









As you can see you can still tell where the jog is if you look at the 2-row stripes but it isn't terribly noticeable overall. Sometimes you can alter the pattern design a bit to avoid the jog by adding a one-stitch column of the background color between the pattern. Or add a vertical column between patterns in the contrast color. Just one column of one or two stitches done in the same color can offset any color jog pretty well.



Another solution I use is to simply knit one or two edge stitches in the same color to make a vertical stripe as shown in underside of the Dale of Norway Ringblomst sleeve here. This method seems to look best if you use the darker color yarn for the edge stitches.







I'm taking a few days off to finish the booklet. I'll be back Monday.

Here is the beginner's color knitting hat I'm using for the book. (I'm also including a three-color Norwegian Star hat.) This bright hat is knit without shaping with Cascade 220 and a circular needle with a three needle bind-off (although you can just sew a seam if you prefer) and will have two tassels on the top sides, making it look like a jester's hat when worn. It can also be turned upside down and used as a bag with some I-cord straps.







This photo shows it before blocking and weaving in the ends. As you can see my knitting tension was worse around the hot pink pattern on the bottom. It is hard to always say which patterns are going to cause knitting tension problems but in general patterns with more of a vertical focus, like vertical stripes, offer me the most tension challenges. These tension problems will all block out fortunately.



Here is a scan of the inside of the hat showing the difference between the horizontal stripes and the color pattern parts which have floats.







Tomorrow I'll show how to work in the ends on this hat and also talk about some of the ways I deal with color jogs in knitting patterns.

I'm hard at work on the stranded color knitting booklet. I hope to finish the first draft by the end of this weekend so I'll have time to order a copy and fix anything and offer it for sale to benefit our rescue group by June 15. I also want to add some more bunny photos to the products in our Cafepress store and completely move our rabbit rescue web site to Earthlink this week.



Again, please let me know if any of you have any photos of one or two-handed color knitting I can use for the booklet.



My current knitting is the Birch Leaf lace socks from A Gathering of Lace. Guess who is the designer? Yes, I'm doing another Nancy Bush pattern. I'll have them to show you this week some time.





FUN QUOTES



My all-time favorite quote is "Creative minds have always been known to survive

any kind of bad training" by Anna Freud.



My second favorite quote is, "Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm" by Winston Churchill.



Here are a few more quotes I like:



"What do you take me for, an idiot?" - General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy



"The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." George S. Patton



"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright



"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity." Edwin H. Land



"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?" - Bumper Sticker



"Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well." Denis Waitley



"What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years." Stephen B. Leacock



"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)



"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)



"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

I totally forgot I even had to update the blog today.



Brandy asked about the type of yarn I used for the scarf shown on Friday. It was a mixture of various hand-spun Kool-Aid dyed yarns. I keep all the weird and exotic yarns in a bag and use them for scarves. This scarf was done in all garter stitch. Cast on enough stitches to make the scarf as long as you like. Knit each row and cut the yarn at the end of the row and start another yarn. Leave about 8 inches of yarn ends at the end of the row for your fringe. This is a great project with all sorts of various yarn odds and ends you have leftover from other projects.



Here we have Peaches the rabbit investigating some yarn that escaped the yarn closet.

A while back we had another electricity outage and here is the result. I did it by candlelight which explains the er, unusual, er, color combination. It is for the House Rabbit Society rabbit shelter in Denver to sell though and they keep asking for more scarves. Someone will like it.



They are planning on sending me a huge amount of both angora and short-hair bunny fur from the rescued bunnies in June. I will then spin it up into something serviceable and use some of it in projects for them to sell. I may order some fun novelty yarns and add small amounts of my handspun rabbit yarn for more scarves. I'm looking forward to it and hope Peaches won't go crazy smelling all those other rabbits in her house.

Here are Helgi's Mittens from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia. My gauge was way off so these are child's mittens instead of women's size. Fortunately I have a lot of young girls on my gift list. I used size 1 dpns and Nature Spun Fingering Weight yarn. I changed the thumb pattern.



I was playing around with different ways to knit with these mittens. I think if you're a one-handed stranded knitter then knitting Continental is pretty easy. You simply strand the first yarn around your left index finger and the second yarn around your left middle finger. Then you simply pick whichever yarn you need as you're knitting.



You can also use a strickfingerhut or knitting thimble for knitting this way. The strickfingerhut helps you hold the yarns more tautly to make picking easier.



Right handed knitting with only one hand is more complicated. To do it I put the first yarn over my index finger and under my middle finger and over my ring finger. The second yarn goes under my index finger, over my middle finger, under my ring finger and over my pinky. Stranding the yarns over two fingers allows you to tension a bit better. To knit either use your index finger to throw the yarn around the needle or your middle finger depending on which yarn you need for that stitch.



No matter what method you choose it is going to involve a bit of re-training your fingers and feeling a bit awkward at first. When I taught myself two-handed knitting I picked a small project and did it entirely that way. By the time I finished I felt comfortable with the new method.

I've received some excellent questions on stranded color knitting and will include that info in the booklet.



I am putting out a call for .jpgs clearly showing different methods of two-handed two-color knitting and one-handed two-color knitting. If any of you have digital cameras and can do this next to a white wall for best contrast, that would be perfect.



If you can help me with a photo I'll acknowledge you and your blog or web site in the booklet, send you a free copy of the booklet, and put your name in gratitude on our rabbit rescue web site.



If any of you can come up with clear photos showing how you catch long floats while color knitting, I'll do all the above plus send you 4 skeins Cascade Lana D'Oro alpaca/wool yarn in the Colonial Blue color.



Please contact me at nanetteblanchard at earthlink dot net before you send the photos to let me know to expect them. The photos need to be your property and need to be clear, large enough to see well, and in .jpg or .png format. The photos will be in black & white in the booklet. Any photos would need to be emailed to me before the end of the month.



Melise asked to see exactly how I strand the yarn through my fingers for tensioning which is shown in the photo below. I notice that the Philosopher's Wool book does it a bit differently - the strands of yarn go over the index finger the same way but come back up over the pinky, not the ring finger.









Lisa said she wanted to see info about catching floats. I will describe how to do this in the booklet but am not sure I can get photos or diagrams. In the meantime, those interested should go HERE to see some detailed photos on how to do it.



Chris and Laura asked how I knit one color. You're right Chris - I still hold the right needle like a pencil and knit English (throwing). Laura, I think I get decent tension but occasionally I'll still have problems, usually when I'm using bamboo needles.



Wendy asked about the whole foreground/background/which color in which hand controversy. The standard line is that you should hold the background color in your right hand (this yarn will supposedly be held above the other) and the foreground/contrast color in your left hand in two-handed knitting. Then some knitting authors (like Joyce Williams in Latvian Dreams) came out and said no - this doesn't always work this way. Some knitters will carry the right hand yarn below the other yarn so who knows??



The best explanation I've read is that if you are normally a right-handed English (throwing) knitter that when you switch to two-handed knitting the stitches from your left needle/hand will be looser and therefore LARGER and more prominent. So you should hold the contrast/foreground color in your left hand This makes perfect sense and is quite obvious when I look at my own knitting. Whatever you do - just be consistent about holding the yarns so your knitting looks even.

I'm still having problems with the blog. Now even when the page loads it says "Can't Find Server" on the top bar. I've contacted Blogger help to see if they can fix it.



I have been working on a little booklet on how to knit stranded colorwork. It will be offered through our same Cafepress shop for my local nonprofit pet rabbit rescue group with all proceeds going to them. I figure it will be about 30 or 40 pages long. I want to make sure it sells for less than $10 so I will opt for the least expensive binding option. I'm not sure how many patterns will be included but I know I will include an easy hat (no shaping) for beginning color knitters and a Norwegian hat design.



I am trying very hard to collect all the information I can on the subject of two color knitting and will have a big list of recommended reading and web sites.



Please let me know if there is anything you'd like to know about stranded colorwork. So far I have mini-chapters on choosing colors, yarn substitutions, jogless jogs, holding the yarns, tension problems, blocking, weaving in the ends, and dealing with charts.



I hope to have this finished and ready for sale by June 15.









Here is a scan I managed to take of my two color knitting method for the book. It is in black and white because I can't use color photos in Cafepress books. As you can see I hold the right hand needle like a pencil. I strand the yarns over my index fingers, then over my fourth fingers as well for tensioning.

Sorry this blog is taking so long to load. I just shrunk today's photos to see if that will help. I don't know if the problem is the new Blogger software, my new computer, or my recent switch from Netscape back to Internet Explorer.















These are the New England socks from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road knit with size 0 dpns. I'm not sure the scans do them justice but they really are wonderful to wear. They remind me of kilt hose. I made two changes in the pattern. I've done Nancy Bush's Double Start cast on previously so instead I did the long-tail cast with the yarn for the thumb part of the cast on doubled. You get a nice braided look and the extra thickness makes it quite decorative.







I had to do one less diamond pattern on the socks because I was worried I'd run out of yarn. I used Pingouin's Laine Nylon sock yarn which was discontinued a few years ago. When you wash an item made with Laine Nylon, it becomes really soft and lovely and any tension problems just magically disappear. If I do this pattern again I will lengthen the heel flap and do a wedge toe. I like the star toe but I think the wedge toe would look better with this design.

Let me know if any of you have any additional remedies for tension problems.



TENSION PROBLEMS



Tension problems occur when your knitting stitches are uneven - some stitches are too tight or too loose. Tension problems can be affected by the yarn used, the needles used, the pattern used, your emotional state and probably even the phase of the moon. I seriously doubt there is a knitter alive who hasn't experienced this occasionally. If you always knit the same sort of project with the same yarns and needles you may rarely notice it. Adventurous knitters who try different fibers and needles and stitch and color patterns will notice this more often.



Fortunately many tension problems can be blocked out, especially if you knit with a nice elastic wool. But if your knitting often looks like something the cat chewed on, you may want to develop some ways to deal with this phenomenon when you notice it. Paying attention to your knitting and learning how to knit more loosely or more tightly in certain situations can go a long way.

The first thing I do when I notice tension problems in a knitting project is to change needles - not the size but the type. You'd be surprised at how often this helps. Sometimes I think a specific combination of yarn and needle type can cause tension problems.



COLORWORK Often the first time a knitter notices tension problems is when he/she starts learning to knit with more than one color. I'm convinced this is one of the biggest reasons new knitters shy away from color knitting. I admit that learning to strand evenly while knitting with more than one color can be a learning process. Often knitters carry the yarn not in use too tightly and the work ends up puckering. If this is happening to you, try stretching out the stitches on the left-hand needle before knitting with the yarn you've been carrying along. Some times weaving the yarn in on the back of the work will help and some times it will make tension problems worse if you're doing some sort of picture knitting.



RIBBING The easiest way to tell if an item is machine knit is by examining the ribbing. Hand knitters just can't achieve the same level of evenness in ribbing that a machine can. Most knitters purl more loosely than they knit. One article I read said that tension problems in ribbing are because the knitter doesn't pull the yarn in front fully before purling.



PURL STITCHES NEXT TO CABLES If you look at Vogue Knitting or the Harmony stitch guides you can often see examples of loose purl stitches next to cables. Try tightening the second purl stitch on either side of the cable. Tightening the second stitch works better for me than tightening the purl stitch immediately following or preceding a cable. Some people also try purling the stitch next to the cable through the back loop (and correcting it/untwisting it on the next row).



DPNS & LADDERS Ladders are the vertical column of loose stitches that can occur at the beginning of each needle when you are using dpns. I can generally avoid ladders by using 5 dpns instead of 4 - I think this balances out the knitting. If you have tried the usual remedy of knitting the second stitch of a new needle more tightly without results you can simply move the needle joins over several stitches every few rows. At least this way you won't have long columns of uneven stitches - they'll be more randomly placed.



Some knitters also get some relief from ladders by changing the way they knit the first stitch on each dpn. Instead of knitting with the left hand needle above the right hand needle, try knitting with the left hand needle below the right hand needle.



I am working on Helgi's Mittens from Folk Knitting in Estonia that has a color pattern of squares and the needle change occurs right at the square change in the pattern. This made the ladders more noticeable. Switching back to only 4 dpns solved the problem and the ladders were less noticeable.



If you still can't solve your ladder problem with dpns then switch to two circulars.



GLOVE FINGERS I recently noticed that whenever I worked glove fingers in several colors I had a ridge at each needle join. It wasn't loose stitches which caused ladders - it was too tight stitches. I realized that when I'm knitting glove fingers with two colors that I'm constantly worried the dpn will drop so I pull too tightly with the unused color when I change needles. This is a simple problem that can be solved just by realizing what you're doing and not doing it anymore.



I am finishing up some wonderful socks but they're not quite ready to be scanned so here's another photo of Peaches instead.

QUESTIONS







Does anyone know what type of knitting needles are pictured here? They're some sort of plastic composite material and the entire circular seems to be the same material. They also have nice long tapered needle ends. I inherited these from my grandmother and would love to find more.



Also has anyone ever tried one of those Sock of the Month clubs? I'm thinking of trying the Red Bird Knits SOTM club because they include sock patterns that I like and don't seem to use much self-patterning sock yarn. My second choice is the SOTM club from Joslyn's Fiber Farm although that one doesn't allow you to cancel at any time.



FUNNY STORY



DH and I regularly play Jeopardy together. This week Jeopardy is doing a special Power Players series. All the contestants are Washington, D.C. journalists, newsmakers or politicians. Most have advanced college degrees and have written books.



If you know Jeopardy you know that any time they have "celebrities" playing the questions get a lot easier and this is certainly the case for the Power Players series. The Power Players have been getting so many of the questions wrong that they leave most of the questions still on the board.



Yesterday none of the Power Players knew that Monticello was Thomas Jefferson's home. Then they were asked what type of "global" worm was a food for the moles destroying your garden and lawn.



One woman (who hosts a business/financial show on CNBC) answered "computer worms." That still makes me laugh.

There are some fun things happening in the blog world. First of all, Joanne is hosting a contest for the wackiest knitting pattern photo you can find. The men's orange knitted pantsuit is seriously disturbing.



I found a fun blog ring for Nordic Knit Blogs - all of the bloggers must live in Nordic countries and some of the blogs are even in English.



For a nice way to spend some time, check out the Shetland Museum's web site. The page here has a few photos of actual textiles but if you click on Photos, then Subjects at the top then click the icon to the left of subjects and choose knitting you'll find an amazing 800 photo archive showing knitting as part of Shetland life and lots of woolly boards. Grab a cup of tea and check it out!



Our pet photo today shows Peaches the rabbit glaring at a certain feline who has the audacity to eat her hay.

I continue to maintain my perfect record of NEVER felting anything that will fit my feet. sigh These are the Striped Slipper Socks from Knit One Felt One by Kathleen Taylor done in Cascade 220. I made the largest size, then put them in the washing machine in a hot water wash. I took them out and they'd only felted slightly. The pattern says it should take two washes. During the second wash they felted so much as to only fit a small child.

Here are the Huron Mountain socks from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road done in Wildfoote - Blue Flannel and Little Lilac - and size 1 dpns. I added a pattern before the toe so they'd fit my large size 9 feet.



The new computer is nice but I'm still a bit behind on email and answering blog comments. Also, my CompuServe email address is now officially gone. Use the Earthlink address below the tagboard on the right. For the three of you who won prizes last week, I will get them mailed off on Monday. Sorry about the delay!

MINI-VACATION



I will be back on Sunday with a new computer and lots of FOs to show. I also want to write up a blurb on knitting tension problems and avoiding ladders on dpns next week.



In the meantime, here are photos of my favorite project in the last year - the Aran Sandal Socks from Socks, Socks, Socks in some beautiful handspun Cormo.

The winner of the Blackberry Ridge hat and mitten kit is Audrey Chamberlain.



The winner of the Emu Superwash DK is Donna of Knit One Purl Too.



The other winner of the Emu Superwash DK is Deb White in Ontario.



Congratulations and thanks to all who entered. You all did a great job answering the questions!



Please email me your snail mail addresses and I'll get these off to you pronto.



My very old computer is starting to make really bad noises. Anyway, if I fail to update the blog this week you'll know why. Now I'm off to look at computers online.