Hi there! This week I have more than just swatches.
I have part of a mitten. I was having some issues with this, initial pattern choice not matching the amount of yarn for the project, then the rookie mistake (after knitting for almost 39 years, since age 7) of not taking gauge into consideration. But once I got that figured out, I got this far in an evening. I have about another 3/4 of an inch to go before I start the top decreases. For the specs, the pattern is from The Knitters Handy Book of Patterns, which is an excellent resource. This pair happens to be knitting up in the 6 stitches to the inch gauge for a 7 inch hand circumference. The cuff is on a US4 (3.5 mm) needle and the remainder is on a US6 (4 mm) needle. The yarn is from Webs, and it's Valley Superwash in Crimson. Love this yarn; the yardage is decent for the price, and it's really soft. Plus it's wool that doesn't have to be hand washed. Hoping to have these finished by next knitting blog day.
And now for swatches!
February 5: Contrary Fisherman's Rib. This one was a challenge at first because it calls for knitting in the stitch below. I had to hunt down a couple of YouTube videos to see the correct technique for that, but once I got it down, this one flew along. One of the things I like about this pattern is that it has the ease of garter stitch (i.e., I didn't purl a single stitch on this swatch) but doesn't look like garter. It is, however, kind of wide and squat, and it's a thick fabric that feels very light. Due to the air-trapping insulating qualities, this would be great for mittens, hats, or sweaters in very cold conditions.
February 6: Mock Wavy Cable Rib: There was a pattern last week, from February 4, that uses a very similar technique for a different look. It's a mock cable because you rearrange the twisting stitches while knitting them and not before knitting them, either by knitting into the second stitch on the left hand needle and then into the first stitch, or by knitting 2 together and then knitting into the first stitch of that K2tog again before removing from the needle. It's actually easier than it sounds and the technique is used for a lot of traveling stitch patterns, so I'm glad I learned it.
February 7: Slipped Rib 1. Absolutely not a rib stitch. This is essentially stockinette with some visual interest (every other stitch on the knit side is slipped with the yarn in front, forming the bars that look sort of like purl stitches). Easy enough to work and not bad to look at, but the fabric has very little stretch to it, making its usefulness limited, at least to me.
February 8: Feather Openwork. OK, this calendar has a pretty extensive of stitch patterns that are similar to this. After a while, they all kind of start to look alike to me, and they're kind of boring both to knit and to write about.
February 9: Feather and Fan. You'll notice I didn't try to make this swatch square. That's mostly because this is a very traditional knitted afghan stitch pattern, and if you're knitting an afghan, you'd leave the ripples in the edges. That's what the fabric wants to do, and no sane person is going to pin an entire afghan into square corners and 4 straight sides after it's washed. It's also because I do realize that there's absolutely no way I'm going to incorporate all these swatches into another larger project. Some of them, absolutely, but for some of these swatches, their destiny is to be knitted, photographed, blogged, and then put away never to be seen again (see February 8 swatch for an example). This one may serve as inspiration if I want to knit a feather and fan afghan someday, but I'm not going to try to force this swatch into a sampler.
February 10: Pillar Openwork. Those pillars are supposed to be straight, but as I learned from the TechKnitter if you put too much twist into yarn by continually winding from center to center and then pulling from the center (this makes sense if you have a ball winder), sometimes you knit parallelograms when you intend to knit squares. I partially blocked this into submission, but if it gets wet again, it'll revert back to is parallelogram ways. Which is fine, because this is another boring openwork pattern.
February 11: Little Fountain Pattern. A nice lace pattern, open but not too open. Another that would work for a cardigan. It is another one of the patterns in this calendar where the increases and the decreases for the lace are worked on different rows, maddening for me because I prefer that the stitch count is the same on every row (I'm a counter), but the technique can give some interesting effects.
Strictly FYI: It was slightly overcast and not raining this morning, so I took the blocking board outside and photographed the swatches in natural light with no flash. Something I need to keep up, because the color is true, and I think the stitches show up well when you click on the pictures to embiggen them.
That's all for this week. Hope to see you next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel, different Bat swatches, and (fingers crossed) completed mittens.
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