Sunday, August 02, 2009

Small Wins


At the West An Tir War over July 4th weekend I took a class in patterned knitting from Christian . I have knitted a bit as a child and a few years ago picked it back up. I don't do a lot, but have been trying to advance my skills with small steps and classes. Christian agreed that I could do the intermediate patterns so here is the result.

It still needs to have the different yarn ends worked in, the drawstring braided and put in, the handle woven and attached, and the tassels put on the bottom BUT the knitting is done! I'm addicted! It was lots of fun and quite transportable. I could do small portions at a time, which with my current schedule is very important.

Lessons learned with this project:
- when casting on go over 2 sets of needles - the ones you are using and another which is removed but makes for a bigger stitch to start
- small balls of yarn work well - use a half hitch to hold the ball so not too much is running around. Using this method, I could and did have 5 different yarns running around the bag. It also allowed me to let them untwist/tangle as needed.
- how to do a simple bind off
- how to do a 3 needle bind off -- the instructions, photos and video from knittinghelp.com were great! Having started with the enlarged stitches, it was easy to insert the needles into the starting stitches and do the bind off for the bottom.

Knitting will not take over my life, but I am a fiber geek and letting myself play with fiber makes me happy.

1 comment:

Chris Laning said...

Nice work!