The Knitting Fiend

X-and-Diamond is a simple knit purl combination suitable for ganseys. If you are working on your first design project, this would like nice placed across the chest of a man’s sweater, or as border just after the ribbing.

I’ll be alternating this pattern with “Welted Leaf Pattern” when knitting Jim’s sweater.

I was supposed to cast on last night, but we got too rowdy with the inlaws. Maybe today? The family is threatening to make me watch a Bears game; I can get a lot of knitting done during that!

The knitting chart for this stitch pattern is shown to the right.

I bet you’re wondering how I’m creating these nice clear charts? I bought “Stitch Visualizer ” yesterday. The program is available for both Mac and PC from Knit Foundry. I’m finding it very easy to use, but also joined the Knit Visualizer Users Group, which is run by Nancy Walsh who wrote Stitch Visualizer. I’m sure if I run into any problems, she can answer them!

Jim’s going to have a cardigan soon!

I picked up some blue “Chaco” brand yarn, which, according to the vendor at the fiber fest is “just like” Plymouth Galway. In fact, it’s spun by the same manufacturer.

Do I believe the vendor? Well, actually, I do. The yarn does look like Galway, it knits up like Galway. Yarn mills often do sell the same yarn under various labels.

I do know the yarn cost about 1/2 what I would have paid for Galway. So is it “just like Galway?” I guess we’ll see over time.

In any case, I knit a swatch using “Welted Leaf Pattern” and “X – and – Diamond Border” in Barbara Walker’s “A Treasury of Knitting”.

I plan to design a drop sleeve pullover using these yarns, and I’ll be illustrating the steps as I go along!

If I happen to find any thing to write Haiku’s about I will, but for better or worse, knitting designs have gotten less awful recently. So I’m having trouble finding inspiration!

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Knit Blogging Tip.
From now on, when I write a blogging tip of general interest over at my blogging blog, I’ll post a link here.

Blogging tips for the week: To increase links to your blog, get a better page rank and encourage traffic, advise your friends to try coComment. I discuss coComment at my blog.

I set up a knitting group at coComment. I’m not entirely sure how those groups work, but there weren’t any for knitting. I think having could might help us track collect all the comments tagged “knitting” and help us track conversations at a variety of knitting blogs. Worth a try anyway!

Obviously, I’ve been in a knitting and knit blogging slump. But winter is approaching and I finished my “Floridays Shawl”, which I cast on in June. Obviously, this is a pathetically slow rate of progress. But, fear not, I think I may have found something I find fun: Post casts.

For some reason, in the past, I have never been tempted to turn the little dial on my camera to the little “movie” recorder. On Saturday I did. I discovered I could take movies. I filmed on very, very bad one and deleted it.

Then, I broke filming into clips and recorded a fairly bad set of clips. Rather than try for perfection, I decided I’d teach myself how to actually finish a video and show it at my blog. So, I imported the pretty bad clips to my mac and edited in “IMovie”. Then I uploaded to YouTube. Now, the worlds can see my pretty bad podcast.

I could bore you by listing everything wrong with the quality– but I made so many mistakes, the list would be pretty boring.

So instead, I bring you a relatively poor quality podcast showing me blocking my “Floridays Shawl!”

Now that I’ve figured this out, I’ll probably show streaming periodically, and also provide links to things associated with the steps in the podcast (when the links are available.) That way, knitters can benefit from the things that are best shown on video and also from the things that are best show as stills.

Later this week, I’ll try to collect the links for the various stitches. The shawl is easy, and the general idea can be used to create your own shawl in your own yarn. The one thing you really need is a yardage estimator so you have enough yarn. So, I’ll get that together… some time!

Hope you like the video!

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Details for shawl:

1. Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr : 5,040 yds./lb. – 1 lb. cones. 50% fine grade Merino wool, 50% Chinese Tussah silk.
   Jagger recommends dry clean only; hand wash.
2. Twisted Long stitches: I haven’t written a tutorial!
3. Eyelets: How to Knit an Eyelet Row
4. Bind off: Picot Edge Bindoff