Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy Knitting 2009

Ring in the New Year with 2 days of Knitting !!

Friday Jan. 2 we are meeting at STUDIO KNIT IN MEDINA
for sit, knit and chat then dinner at House of Hunan.
Saturday Jan. 3 KNIT IN starting at 10:30 AM and pot luck lunch at Mo's house in Shaker Heights.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Obi Jacket by Liz Tekus


From FINE POINTS on Larchmere in Cleveland....

Here is my yarn for the OBI Jacket :


What an amazing assortment, pre-arranged in a kit.

The base yarn is ERDAL CHANINETTE 100% rayon, held together knit on size 9 needles.... .I can't wait to get started !!


Berroco Sprite
NORO Sakura
Tahki Hand Dyed Cotton Classic
NORO Ganpi Abaka Tape
Fiesta Rayon Boucle
Katia Rumba Mix
Adelie d'anny blatt
Lang Opal Color












Friday, December 19, 2008

MAINE MORNING MITTS



Fingerless mitts pattern from
"The Knitter's Book of Yarn"......FREE PATTERN can be found :

HERE

YARN: Rae Jaspe Wool - 2 skeins = 176.0 yards (160.9m)

Purchased at

Notes:

Beautiful yarn. It worked out well to find the matching color sequence with the second mitt so that the two would match. I used size 8 double pointed needles (pattern calls for 7’s which I don’t have)
and it turned out fine.
Very quick knit and makes a great gift !!

Friday, December 12, 2008

GARN STUDIO FREE PATTERNS


Check out


CHRISTMAS 2008 CALENDAR

with a New Free Pattern added every day.
Not just for Christmas, great patterns and ideas for everyone !!



Sunday, December 07, 2008

GWEN BORTNER WORKSHOP

"CREATE A MASTERPIECE FROM LEFT OVER YARNS"
My knitting guild recently brought Gwen Bortner, owner and designer of


We all spread out our stash balls of yarn then we went around and made a "magic ball", borrowing from everyone's stash. We were told to make the lengths "RANDOM" and as we began to knit, we learned that

SHORTER lengths were BETTER.




My magic ball :


ALL ABOUT COLOR:

Gwen explained the following highlights:


1. It's easier to see color against BLACK.

2. Equal proportions are not always good and are in fact NOT good.

3. The PROPORTION of the colors is the KEY.

4. Black goes with anything.... or use a nearly black deep navy or deep brown.


HANDPAINTED YARNS:

these people really know color and will usually have the proportion right. Unwind it, look at the distribution of color lengths, the proportions.

Take a look at
LAURA BRYANT of PRISM YARNS one of the best with color in the knitting world.

HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR STASH:

Gwen says organize single balls by COLOR.

Using mulitple colors and don't know which to use next or when to switch???

ROLL A DICE, use a
RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR, try to be RANDOM.


TO KNOT OR NOT ??

I learned it's best NOT to knot, but rather work with both ends for several stitches then trim the ends. This saves having to weave in the ends as well and samples showed that you cannot tell where this was done.


Look at your piece at ARM'S LENGTH to really see
how it looks.

We went over various patterns including

"FUN WITH STRIPES", "SLIP STITCH", "BRICK", and "MOSIAC".

Gwen's 3 swatches pictured here were all made from the same MAGIC BALL of yarn (with black added to the first on the left) and each looks so totally different !



If you ever have the opportunity to take a class from GWEN, I highly recommend it. She is fun, down to earth, creative, and practical. Her only rule in class is "NO RIPPING OUT", we're here to practice and learn.

Also stay tuned for her book on ENTRELAC soon to be published.