Show and Tell: Christmas Present in August

I'm really trying lately to finish works in progress, so that I can move on to my new and exciting ones without guilt. Yesterday I finally gave my brother and sister-in-law their Christmas present: a Seahawks - Patriots toaster cozy. Yep, a toaster cozy.

My sister-in-law is from Massachusetts and is  a lifelong Pats fan. My brother and I are lifelong Seahawks fans. (He had a Steve Largent poster on his childhood bedroom wall; Jim Zorn was one of my earliest celebrity crushes.) Here's the Patriots side:

I was prescient, was I not? Because it looks like a Super Bowl XLIX-inspired present, but I conceived the project and bought the yarn in December 2013, when we hadn't yet experienced the awesomeness that was Super Bowl XLVIII. I started making the cozy last October, when the Hawks had just lost to the Rams and we worried whether they would make the playoffs, let alone play in the next Super Bowl.

I made this using the intarsia technique, with Caron Simply Soft acrylic yarn. NEVER AGAIN. The yarn is nice and soft, and it had a great shade of bright green for the Hawk's eye. However, being acrylic, it does not stick to itself at all. Stickiness is a good quality when you're doing intarsia and changing colors in the middle of a row! It was hard, very hard, to make it look good. But I'm stubborn.

The intarsia piece is knitted in one wide, short piece. I learned to do it from YouTube videos -- specifically Staci Perry's and Arenda Holladay's videos. They are my go-to knitting teachers.

I created the color chart in Microsoft Excel from two free charts I found online. That part was really fun. I learned how to do it from this ChemKnits blog post. I believe the Patriots chart I used was also from that blog. The Seahawk logo chart I used is here. I love how knitters are willing to share their hard work with each other! Because I wanted the Patriot and the Hawk to be face-to-face, I reversed the Hawk logo.

Construction was simple. I knitted the intarsia as one wide, short piece. I think the cast-on was around 170 stitches. The intarsia piece goes from the back left corner of the toaster around the front, to the back right corner. The top and back are made from a single piece of stockinette. I seamed the two pieces together using mattress stitch.

I used a steek in this project -- steeking being yet another absolutely insane thing to try to do with acrylic yarn. I knitted the top/back piece in the round and then cut it to lay flat. That's how much I hated purling then. (I've worked on it.) The steek was perfectly fine. I used the crochet method, with a very sticky wool yarn. I don't think it would have held if I had not had that fine, crazy sticky yarn  to keep the acrylic safe from fraying.

My yarn sense was not as developed when I bought the yarn for this project. If I had really thought about it before starting, I would have realized that I had made a bad yarn decision. This cozy would have been just as functional and way more enjoyable to make if I had used wool. But my brother seems to love it, so WIN FOREVER!!!

Process to the Rescue!

Yes, it's been eight months since I last posted! I've been knitting, but mainly of the "I hate this project but I'm going to finish it if it kills me" variety. I've also been doing a lot of hand-wringing about improving my tension, and procrastinating on the Basics swatches as a result. This morning I figured it all out.

Tension problem

Arenda's main criticism of my Lesson One swatches (and she was incredibly gentle and kind about it) was that my tension was not consistent on the ends of rows, particularly the beginning of purl rows. I've wanted to fix that, and yet I haven't been doing it. This morning I realized that I should knit swatches in bed at night. That's how I got into knitting in the first place: nightly knitting to fight anxiety and insomnia! So that's what I'll do. Bonus: I will fall asleep more easily!

The Problem of the Long-Ignored Project

Kalahari Tote in progress

The project is the gorgeous "Kalahari Tote" by Vivian Hoxbro, which I've had on needles ("working on it" is inaccurate) for more than two years. Having posted about how I'm a process rather than a project knitter, it's strange that I didn't think of changing the process, until today.

This piece is knit using mitered squares, with many stripe-based color changes that render a sort of mixed chevron pattern. Because some of the colors are dark and the yarn is fingering weight, I find it hard to read the work. So there is a lot of counting, which I always avoid if I possibly can.

Here's the problem: there's no easy way of using a stitch marker to mark the center stitches in mitered squares, because the marker travels one stitch to the left (from the RS perspective) on each repeat.

Making these squares is simple. You start with an odd number of stitches on your needles. On the right side, you slip the first stitch to make a nice selvedge and knit to the middle three stitches. With those three stitches, you do a Sl-K2tog-PSSO double decrease. You knit to the last stitch and purl. Turn. On the wrong side, slip the first stitch, knit to the last stitch, purl. Turn. Repeat. So on every RS, you are decreasing by two. You always have an odd number of stitches.

I did some experimental squares with scrap yarn, to figure out how I could use a stitch marker to mark the center three stitches.

My first square was pretty frustrating; I ended up having to count anyway. The marker started right before the center three stitches. On the next repeat, the marker was between the slipped stitch and the K2tog stitches. On the repeat after that, the marker was -- most annoyingly -- between the K2tog stitches. At that point it was obvious that this process was no easier.

I realized that if I placed the marker before the slipped stitch, and then on every WS row I corrected its position, the process was easy and meditative.  Here's a video showing what I did for the second square:

So on every WS I knitted to the marker, scooped it off with my hand and held it, knitted one more stitch, and then slipped the marker onto the right needle. The marker now stayed in its position relative to the double decrease: on the RS, it will always be before the stitch to be slipped.

I tried this trick both with a piece of yarn and a clippy marker. The clippy marker was better. The yarn marker, while slightly easier to grab and hold, tended to get worked into the garter stitch and had to be coaxed out. You could use a smooth ring marker, but it might be hard to grab and hold on the WS.

It's a good day when you solve two knitting problems and a life problem!

Knitting news and progress 

In Basics, I've just finished Lesson 2 Swatch 5. I'll block swatches 1-5 and answer the questions before I move on to the last three swatches. My goal is to start the Masters in September. I still have a bit of finishing work to do on my brother and sister-in-law's Christmas present. My new rule is never to do a present using acrylic yarn ever again. It's so hard to make the finishing work look nice!  I'm also working on a chemo cap for a friend who is fighting cancer. It's of Paton's Silk Bamboo, which should be smooth and soft and absorbent for her. Still trying to finish the Kalahari Tote -- someday. Someday.

A friend started a monthly knitting group. At the first meeting, I got to teach someone to knit! I really love that!

My most exciting knitting and project news is that I will be knitting a project from Viking Patterns for Knitting by Elsebeth Lavold (newly published in paperback) and reviewing the book for a local weekly newspaper! I'm so excited!

A new knitting adventure and buttonhole frustration

My new knitting adventure
You probably thought my "new knitting adventure" is this blog, right? Nah. The new knitting adventure upon which I embarked is signing up for Arenda Holladay's "Basics, Basics, Basics" correspondence course through The Knitting Guild Association (TKGA). Many people in the TKGA Ravelry group have advised that this course is a great way to prepare for TKGA's Master Knitter Level 1.

I've been considering the master knitter certification for about a year now. I first started thinking about it last November, when a friend and I held a Sip & Stitch party for an awesome group of ladies, and I had so much fun helping them, explaining why some things worked and some didn't, showing how to recognize mistakes. I had a high from that afternoon for a couple of weeks. That was when I realized that knitting speaks to my heart.

This morning I woke up determined to do the master knitter certification process. Since I'm a self-taught knitter, though, I think it's important for me to do the Basics course first. I want to make sure there's not a problem with my knitting that I haven't noticed. I've always wondered, for example, whether my tension is good. It seems like I should know one way or the other, but I don't. Also, the correspondence course is similar to the MKC process, so it would be a nice preview.

So... looking forward to getting started on that. Because, you know, I have almost no knitting to do. Only four projects on needles right now, and haven't started all of my planned Christmas presents. :-/

Buttonhole frustration
Almost finished with my sister-in-law's birthday present. It's only been a month since her birthday. (What?) It's been a while since I've made something with buttonholes, and I messed them up today. I kept starting with the wrong stitch for the bind-off, and that was frustrating. It probably didn't help that I was doing this while watching the Seahawks lose to the Rams. (I'm chalking that up to the readjustments they're making on offense AND special teams after Harvin's trade the day before yesterday. Repeat is still on the table.) I did finally get the buttonholes right (thanks to Staci Perry's buttonhole video) but I don't like the way they look:

As you can see, the edges of the one on the left in the picture, especially, are really sloppy. I should totally rip the button band back and start over, but I'm not feeling like it today. Maybe tomorrow. When the work is laying flat, the garter stitch of the button band camouflages the uneven edge stitches. I know that is a terrible attitude for somebody who aspires to be a master knitter. I watched Arenda's one-row buttonhole tutorial and I will probably re-do the band using that technique, to see if it looks better. This is a synthetic yarn, so wonky stitches will not tighten up in blocking. That said, the photo makes the whole thing look worse than it actually is. The seed stitch looks great in person and terrible in the photo. Looking at that photo, I'm also thinking that garter stitch is the wrong choice for the button band. It's not quite a clean enough differentiation from the seed stitch. Maybe I'll try it in stockinette.

I'll post a picture of the project after I've given her the present. This might get posted on Facebook. I think she'll like it.

A few notes on this blog
I am really writing this blog for myself: to keep track of questions, problems, things that worked and didn't, etc., to improve my learning process. I have never liked journaling, and I find blogging much easier. "Knitki" is a Russian-English play on words. Because I'm a Russian-loving nerd. The word "nitki" in Russian means "threads". I added the silent K because, well, knit.