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Green Onion Grumble

Green onion grumble. Isn't that the loveliest weirdest phrase? Austin knitter Latifa ran one of the Korean pages from Wednesday through Babelfish and posted the results in the comments on Thursday. Green onion grumble is my favorite, although I'm also smitten with The Nose of Magic. Thanks Latifa!

Today's green onion grumble is over crochet. I think I've found a reason that I must learn how to do it:

Isn't that splendid? The bag is knit, and the colorful raised additions are crochet. You can see the whole bag (with its amazing price tag) at the Peruvian Connection website.

Also at Peruvian Connection is a knit called the Arroyo Kimono. Very beautiful knitting. However! If you read the catalog blurb you'll see that it is knit in a technique called Floatless Jacquard. We looked it up, and found this explanation, but we are not satisfied. If machine knitters can create floatless faux-Fair Isle and Jacquard, why can't handknitters? Do we have any machine knitters as readers? Could you please enlighten us? Or, if you are a handknitter who knows how to do floatless-knitting that is not intarsia, but that is more than two colors in a row, well, hip us to that, dude, okay? Mosaic knitting is only done with two or three colors a row, I think. Can you do mosaic knitting with multiple colors in a row? How difficult would that be? Or, does the catalog description simply indicate that this is a machine-knit sweater? Dear me. The lengths to which I go to avoid thinking about what's in the news.

For the Cat Lovers, Since it's Friday

This is an interesting project and enjoyable to look at. Perhaps you'd like to add your cat to the mix.

Pups

Della suffered very dramatically through Good Canine Citizen class Thursday night. Dachshunds are very dramatic (and that's an understatement if there ever was one). Cousin Dyna, on the other hand, almost passed her Level 2 tests! She's only four months old, but she was sitting like a champ. Della sits like a champ, too, but only so she can turn her back on the rest of the dogs. Still, she's a sweet pup, and sends you a virtual slurp.

We wish you a merry Friday and a happy weekend! Cheers!

Words Words Words

Thanks for the input on the crochet/or/knit sweaters yesterday; I'm still a bit undecided about the first one. Please see the Wednesday comments for Cyndilou and Kim's helpful links. Cyndilou pointed out that the woman astride the crochet hook is actually riding a tool for Locker Hooking. It sounds painful, but it's actually a way to use up scraps and bits of fabric that you might otherwise discard. A locker hooking implement looks like a crochet hook, but it has an eye on the opposite end of the hook. You thread your rags, bones, scraps, what have you, and off you go, happily recycling.

So many things to learn! And so many things to recycle.

Adult Surprise Jacket

No, there's not a lot of progress; it's been an exceptionally busy week, editorially-speaking. But the sun was out for a bit in the afternoon, so I wanted to show you how nicely stripey it is. The Noro Kureyon used on a single piece of continuous knitting, as this design is, makes marvelous long skinny stripes.

Nice, isn't it! A close-up? Why, yes! We have one!

Sweet. I like it.

Bears

Our knit-blogger pal in Germany, Christine, sent me some photos yesterday of some new bears she had made. Scroll down for the one named Monty; he's knit, I think, and he's very furry and cute, as are the others. Christine was knitting Teddy Bears out of eyelash yarn a while back; remember the pink one? Bears are special, aren't they. I don't have one, because of my jealous dachshunds, and I don't remember having one as a child. But my son cherished his (and may still). Thanks, Christine!

Pups

Thursday! Della's school day! And she hasn't realized it yet!

Little Jack knows he can take it easy, relieved of the burden of being a Good Canine Citizen. In the meantime, Della waves her tail like a proud dachshund flag, the equivalent to a dachshund-good-hair-day.

We hope you are having a good hair day. Happy Knitting!

We Have Questions

I found a fun knitting site to surf Tuesday, but we have questions. First! Who is this woman and why is she riding a crochet hook?

Actually, this is the cover of a book that seems to be one of a series of needlecraft books. In this one she appears to be teaching cats how to do embroidery.

You can see these plus a shelf-full of other interesting-looking books here. How we wish we were multilingual!

The main part of the site shows what is called knit-school, but tell me, is this knit? Or crochet? Or this, for that matter—knit or crochet? I like them both. The photos says knit-school, but I've never seen knitting like it. Some days I'd like to know a bit more about crochet structure, at least enough to recognize it.

If you click on the little knit- and crochet-stitch squares to the right side home page, you'll see wonderful clickable symbol charts for how-to illustrations for knit and crochet basic stitches.

Cool.

Personal Knitting Content

My wrists were a little sore yesterday, so I switched over to the Adult Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann. You may recall that I'm knitting mine in a (discontinued shade of) Noro Kureyon. I've got a couple of inches knit now, and the general impression I'm getting from the random stripes is that it's going to be a wonderful-beautiful jacket! Yeah! My thanks again to Terri for the terrific idea. By the way, you should go look at the cute photos of Terri and her mom and dad :-)

Pups

Another rainy day. We're glad we enjoyed the sunshine while it was abundant.

We hope your day is sunny and sweet. Cheers, and happy knitting.

Energized Single

I remain very energized about my weekend class with Carol Rhodes and my new skills at Tvåändsstickning. I feel so lucky to have had such a wonderful instructor—there's really something to be said about excellent instruction from a master knitter. It's invigorating to work with a pro, and my knitting truly feels different to me at this point; it feels new again, and accompanied by a sense of discovery and expansion. Very exciting stuff! I'm eager to refine my spinning ability so that I can spin my own z-singles. In the meantime, I undulate along with my Knitted-Stitch cardigan by Meg Swansen. Aren't the big stitches groovy-wavy-looking at this point? It's a genuine delight to knit—entertaining as well as soothing.

Not a lot of progress, because my brain is still jumping around over two-end knitting. But some progress. Say, if you want to look at a LOT of progress, go see Françoise's Poetry in Stitches and Cromarty. Wow! Everytime I visit Françoise's blog, I am astonished at how quickly and beautifully she completes her projects. Knit on, Françoise!

I don't have the exact words at hand, but Elizabeth Zimmermann wrote in one of her books that you could always learn something new in knitting. (Even while paraphrasing,) I agree. Isn't it wonderful to have a hobby in which you can always be learning? New tips! New tricks! New techniques!

Bring it!

Pups

The pups had a pleasant surprise Monday afternoon; not only was their Geoffrey here, but also Cousin Dyna! Dyna, like most young pups, is extremely excited about everything, and it's loads of fun watching her interact with her cousins. Mike, Jack, and Della try very hard to be dignified and aloof, but they are fascinated with her and her four-month-old energy, and very quickly get worn out from trying to keep up with her.

Tuesday! Mikey says Relax. Time Out.
Happy knitting!

Revisiting Tvåändsstickning

I went to a workshop on Saturday on Tvåändsstickning , or Two-End Knitting, and I expect I'm going to become quite obsessive over this old Scandinavian technique. Carol Rhodes, translator of the newly revised and released Two-End Knitting (ISBN 0-942018-23-0), was the instructor of this fascinating skill, and I can't say enough nice things about her. She teaches around the country and turns up at SOAR frequently, so if you get the chance, you'll very much enjoy a class with her.

We started our workshop with a tutorial on winding our Z-spun Swedish wool on a nostepinde. Achieving the desired egg-shaped ball of wool is a matter of angling the yarn as you wind on.

Why Z-spun wool? Z-spun wool is spun counter-clockwise and then plied clockwise. As you knit with an end from inside and outside your egg-shaped wool, the yarn will twist more and more. With Z-spun wool, the wool begins to un-ply itself, resulting, believe it or not, in fewer tangles. While you can use an S-spun yarn, as you knit two-ended with it, it's going to twist itself in the direction of its ply, getting tighter and tighter, and creating a heap of twisted, tangled wool.

We knit a sampler, and Carol had Swedish wool and New Zealand wool for us to use. (Both were Z-spun; the New Zealand yarn is known in the US as Mora, and you can get it at our hero Nancy Bush's store, Wooly West.)

Here's my sampler, which contains all the stitches you need to know to do two-end knitting, but which you can't really see because the wool is white and my camera focus isn't very crisp.

I'm sure you can see my Purl Braid in green and white, but (going up) the hook stitches, chain stitches, deep knit stitches, deep purl stitches, and regular stitches are very hard to make out. I wish you could see my beautiful two-color cast on— it was gratifying lovely, and I know I'll be using it on gloves! It's known as (the famous) Cast On No. 1.

Luckily, Carol brought samples. Here you can see a little of everything two-end:

and

Knitting with two-ends yields a different fabric; it's very tight, and the stitches are slightly flattened and skewed. You know you are doing it correctly when you turn your work inside out and observe pronounced horizontal lines rather than purl bumps. You can also tell you are on the right track when your wool ends are twisted like barber poles and peppermint sticks. One of the remarkable refinements made by the author of Two-End Knitting is using two colors to work the hook and chain stitches; that's what makes those spectacular labyrinth-looking pieces.

Of the group of about 10 knitters I was knitting with, approximately half thought the tangling part made this knitting too labor-intensive. About one-quarter of the group thought it was interesting as a historical artifact, and the other quarter of the group was wildly enthusiastic and couldn't wait to get home and try out every pattern in the book and make deep-knit two-color hats, mittens, and gloves. (I imagine you know which group I was in!)

This is an exceptionally interesting traditional technique; I'm pleased all over again with my copy of the book. Anne-Maj Ling reports that an example of two end knitting (a glove) found in 1984 dated the glove to pre-1680. Her instructions are exceptionally clear, and the designs take an old idea to fresh new heights. I admire that kind of knitting spirit and want to support it.

Bagatelle has a mini-lesson on basic two-end knitting (and one on detangling your wool). Nanette has also investigated this style of knitting, and you can see her description with photos here. Fascinating.

One last thing: Carol Rhodes advises using a loosely-spun yarn like Heilo if you are going to go the S-spun route rather than the traditional and less-tangly Z-spun way.

Pups

Ho! Monday. Della says Try to Keep a Low Profile.

Easy for her to say, right? Cheers!