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My Graduation show!

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This is a top I made in school, hand painted fabric, and reversible. Quite lovely! I have no idea where it is though. I had a lot of fun making it!

Pi? Pi? Pi?

Pi is nearly done, it really got going this last week and I decided that I will finish it before the end of the month for sure. Then all hell breaks loose on it. The edging isn't turning out how I think it should. I have tinked, frogged and tested all sorts on it. The pattern suggests the row before the bind off to do K1, YO the whole row then bind off purlwise with a bigger needle. I had never done this and was a bit skeptical about it. I usually do a knitted bind off on shawls like THIS one where you either in knit or purl you k2 then knit those two through the back and repeat. I think this gives a very nice edge that is also stretchy enough to block out the points nicely. After doing K1, YO the whole row (and the shawl now has 1152 stitches) I tested a few things and none looked all that nice. I have removed that row and will try doing it the way I would normally do it. My idea is knit this last row, purl one row and then do a knitted bind off (avoiding purling the bind off). Then the fun begins....blocking!

What do you do when a project doesn't work out as you expect?

Ruffled Skirt

Knitted Ruffled Skirt in Bernat Mosaic, Optimistic

I'm loving how this skirt is progressing. I'm into the stockinette body of the skirt now, and the striping looks lovely, I'm not sure what you can tell from the photo but its really turning out well. The ruffles at the 60 degree angle look just right! I can't wait to wear it :) It will look great year round.

Did you try out the ruffles from yesterday? Do you prefer bell ruffles or gathered ruffles?

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This is a tiny sock, made for a tiny sock exchante. It was very cute!

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These are two patterns I am the proudest of, of my older work. My newer stuff is improving as well!

Knitting Ruffles

I simply love knitted ruffles. My favorite is the bell ruffle. I learned this from Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the edge, and for my most recent ruffle modified it a bit to fit my needs. Its pretty easy to do so.

Pardon the messy pic!

The yarn shown is Bernat Mosaic in Optimistic, with size 8US needles.

The steps I took for this ruffle, were to SWATCH first. And wash the swatch. I decided how many stitches wide I wanted the bottom of the "bell" and how many stitch apart each bell should be. I decided on a 15 stitch wide st st bell with 9 rev st st between each bell. This made a pretty wide bell on the ruffle, but I wanted it to be over the top. The bell itself decreases down to 1 stitch, plus the 9 between stitches, this gives 10 stitches that lead into the actual item. Using this, and measurements and gauge, find the number of repeats needed to fit the desired size.

After finding the number of repeats, multiply that number by the bottom of bell plus between number, to get the cast on. Et voila! You are set up for starting a bell ruffle.

This particular ruffle is decreased every 3rd row, to give it a taller profile. Most are decreased every other row. For more information on how to make the bell ruffle, see Nicky Epstein's book!

What is your favorite decorative knitting technique?

A Small Slice of Pi

At the end of last year I started planning out which shawls I would make for the 12 shawls in 2012 challenge. I had many ideas for smaller shawls but still needed to come up with ideas for 2 larger shawl using at least 500 meters of yarn. Last year I struggled a bit with this part of the challenge and only came up with one large shawl. Part of the process of choosing which shawl to make I also like to figure out who I am making it for. Many of the shawls that were made last year were given away, I kept only a couple for myself, I actually like giving my work away that makes it worth doing. The larger shawls I felt needed to be special gifts for special people in my life. So I came up with the idea that I would knit a shawl for the girl who would be the one for my little brother. Little did I know he had actually found "the one" when I started planning this.

The yarn had to be lush and the pattern had to be special. I started looking through my favourites on Ravelry and then through the shawl patterns not in my favourites. I needed one to use at least 500 meters of yarn and I wanted it to be laceweight. Ravelry really has a good system for searches I could add to it which size yarn, how much yarn, needles size, and could even search within certain groups. Most shawl patterns you can usually use which ever size yarn you want and a lot also let you customize the amount of repeats that are done to make them bigger. I ended up picking a shawl that was one of the first I had favourited when I started using Ravelry.

This shawl was designed by someone that wished to honour a great knitting icon - Elizabeth Zimmermann for the anniversary of her 100th birthday. I think I had always known about EZ since I was a child. My mother was always watching PBS crafting and cooking programs and I am certain that she watched her shows while I was young. I fell in love with Sasha dolls which were always shown on her shows. I have this vague recollection of the program. My mother also had a number of her books (these are my books now - thanks Mom), and I had tried reading them but the stories intertwined in the patterns confused me at the time.

EZ's birthday is August 9 and so is my brother's birthday. I knew this was the one I should do. The shawl pattern includes hearts and to me that means love. The shawl is designed on the numbers 8, 9 and 10 for EZ's birthday using EZ's Pi shawl design from Knitter's Almanac. There are also vines in the shawl between the hearts. I estimate that this shawl will be around 60 inches and use about 900 meters of yarn. About half way through the shawl the amount of stitches is 576.

I started the shawl on Jan 1, 2012 as my first shawl of the year. The yarn I chose is Manos del Uruguay's Lace in a cream colour. This yarn is 70% Alpaca, 25% Silk, 5% Cashmere, 2 ply lace weight. It is very soft, loosely plied. As of today I have 13 rows left, my plan is to finish it before the end of the month so it will be the shawl for June.

How has EZ inspired you in your knitting?

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A little bit of owlie intarsia goodness.

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Red velvet waffles. Lovely!

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For more makeup photos, visit www.whitneychristmas.com

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Very scanty monokini I made last year. I loved making it though. I don't remember the yarn I used but it was stretchy. This is the first summer in years I haven't done crochet bikinis. 

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Picture taken yesterday of my new haircolor!

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Me, circa 10th grade. Loved that top!

Getting the boogie woogie going

Mom bought me two Craftsy.com classes last night, and I'm looking forward to taking them. Here are the links. Lace Shawl Design and How to Say It: Pattern Writing for Knitters I'm really looking forward to working on them and improving my skills! So far, I have started Pattern Writing and printed the papers for it-its like a book! Lots of information, very well worth the cost!

I plan to work on A New Leaf today, as well as possibly start my embroidery project, I need to make a basic sketch for it though. I may do the nude figure embroidery too. But I am running short of things to embroider on so not sure about all that.

What are you working on? When was the last time you took a class related to craft?

I want to start by thanking Whitney for allowing me to be a contributor to her blog.

I'm not much of a writer but I love textiles so hopefully I will still be able to let my love for these arts show.

I am a SAHM with a 4 year old and husband and we live in Sweden.
I usually have a million projects going at once. Right now I am mainly knitting. I am working on 12 shawls in 2012 (3 on the needles - 5 done), a pair of socks, a sweater for Biscuit and a few other little projects. I also spin, weave, make bobbinlace, sew and crochet when forced. I recently started dabbling in circular sock knitting machines.

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Grandma's House. This is a photo of a painting I did that just kind of ended up reminiscent of the farm my grandma had!

And now introducing....

Miss Knitted Kharpern to my blog! We are going to start blogging together, we're both artists and crafters and love to share our knowledge.