A Diversion

My father sent me the link to these wonderful color photos taken in Russia between 1905 and 1915.

This was, of course, before color photography. The photographer developed a clever technique to produce color images from a sequence of black and white photographs taken with red, blue, and green filters, and then presenting them with a special projector which also contained those filters.

It’s a wonderful glimpse of Russia’s pre-Revolution past. The photos are worth viewing just for the beautiful clothing, if nothing else.

Posted in Life | 5 Comments

The Schieffel Shuffle

I hate it when I stumble over the names of knitting patterns. Especially ones I’m working on in public.

“What pattern is that?”

“Uh… Schief… Scheif… mumble mumble… Shawl”

“What?”

“I can spell it for you…”

Obviously I’d never make a good podcaster.

At any rate, I’m working on the Schieffelin Point Shawl*, a lovely new pattern. I saw the one that Susan did, and fell in love with it. Hers was made with the recommended yarn, which was really nice. But as this is the year of the stash, I was determined to find something I already own that would work.

I decided to use some Manos Silk Wool in ‘Hibiscus’, a lovely red with touches of pink and orange. Boy, do I love this color! The yarn is a little heavier than the called-for-Savannah yarn, so I probably should have used a larger needle for more drape, but I wanted it to be the same size as Susan’s–so I stuck with the same needle size. It will be denser and warmer, but I think it will be fine after blocking.

Schieffelin Point shawl

This shawl, like a couple of others I’ve done, starts with a garter-stitch tab. You provisionally cast on a few stitches, knit a few rows, then turn the work to pick up stitches along the garter ridges, and finally work the stitches from the provisional cast-on.

But one thing has mystified me about this process. When you do a provisional cast-on of “X” number of stitches, and later work those stitches downward, you lose one stitch. When you remove the waste yarn, you’ll have “X-1″ stitches, with a half-stitch on each end. Therefore, if you provisionally cast on 3 stitches, there will only be 2 stitches to pick up. I’ve always just sort of faked the extra stitch somewhere if I needed to have a specific number of stitches, but I find it interesting that none of the patterns have addressed that problem – they just tell you to return the “X” number of stitches from the provisional cast-on to the needle and knit them.

How do you deal with the discrepancy? I suppose you could cast on one extra stitch and then decrease one stitch in the next row when working upwards, and then you’d have the correct number of cast-on loops to pick up. Once I took the tail end of the yarn and wove it back into the edge of the knitting to form a full loop, and then picked it up. But usually I just pick up an extra stitch somewhere at the edge.

* I’m guessing that this should be pronounced “SHEE-fuh-lin”. Evidently Schieffelin Point is a place in Maine – anyone know the correct pronunciation?

Posted in Knitting | 5 Comments

The Price of Labor

A month or two ago, my old sewing machine decided that it didn’t want to do zigzag stitches any more. I was pretty sure that it could be fixed with a tune-up, as it’s all mechanical parts – no electronics. But I was reluctant to take it in, because it would probably cost nearly as much as buying a new basic machine, and probably almost as much as I paid for the machine 30 years ago. Besides, I knew it was most likely something my husband could fix.

I don’t use the machine much, and I admit to totally neglecting it maintenance-wise. I think I only lubricated it once in all of those years. Mebbe twice. So we took off the cover and we used the extremely poor illustration in the manual to try to figure out what needed oiling. No joy. It still wouldn’t zig-zag.

But my sweetie sat down with it and played around with the parts. He figured out how it was supposed to work, and what parts should be moving that weren’t. There were some pieces that were supposed to move back and forth, causing the needle to move, but which were stuck open. He got them loose, and I have zigzag again!

But it came at a price. Now that it was fixed, he wanted me to patch the big tear in the knee of his jeans.

I hate those stupid jeans – I was glad to see them wearing out. They’re cargo pants, and I think they look funny on him. But he loves having all of the pockets. If he’d just carry a purse, he wouldn’t have to have all of those pockets.

Plus, I never really knew how to patch jeans. All I ever did was just sew a patch over the top of the hole or rip, zigzagging around the edges of the patch. But that didn’t work well. Neither did the iron-on patches.

I figured I had to try, since he fixed the machine for me. And ’cause I kind of like the guy. So I looked up a bunch of tutorials, and found a video that looked like a good method.

It may not be a work of art, but it’s the best patch I’ve ever done, and it’s functional. And most importantly, it made my sweetie happy.

Posted in Sewing | 6 Comments

FO: Luminescent Lune

The Lune shawl is aptly named, as it looks like the moon when it’s laid flat. The yarn was also aptly named – Luminescence.

Lune shawl

Because of the unusual shape, it lays nicely on the shoulders and stays put. Well, maybe not in the gale-force winds we’ve been having for the past few days, but certainly under normal circumstances.

There are two versions of this shawl – one in plain stockinette, and the other with lace panels. You can also incorporate your own choice of lace pattern if you prefer. Although I didn’t use handspun yarn, it would be perfect for that as you can use up every bit – just keep knitting until you have just enough yarn left for the garter-stitch border and bind-off.

I used a small digital scale to help me figure out when I had about 8 rows of yarn left, as instructed in the pattern, then started the border. I had about 5 yards of yarn left over, but I don’t think that would have been quite enough to finish another row, so it was perfect.

With the stockinette version, once you see how the increases work, you don’t need the instructions, so it’s a good project to take along with you to work on whenever you have some spare time. It’s simple because of the stockinette, but you do have to pay attention to where the increases go… and remember to do them!

Pattern: Lune Shawl, from “Twist & Knit” by Miriam Felton.
Yarn: Luminescence, by Skylark Yarns (DK-weight, alpaca, bamboo, soy), 400 yds
Needle: US 7/4.5mm

Ravelry project notes and more photos here.

Posted in Finished Objects, Knitting | 3 Comments

Blocking

Lune shawl, finished and blocking. The amount of yarn I had leftover might possibly have been enough to squeeze out one more row, but it would have been really close. I was a few inches shy of having 3x the length left. It’s probably a good thing I stopped when I did.

Lune shawl

Posted in Knitting | 7 Comments