Wednesday, April 29, 2009

FO: Lace Easter Egg dishcloth

This was the speediest, easiest lace I've ever done! It's 37 sts wide and only 50 rows, only 17 of which are pattern. No chart, but it's really short and not that hard to follow. Just a word of caution: in this pattern, m1 means to do the increase AND knit the following stitch. I've never seen m1 instructions include knitting the following stitch before.

Pattern: Easter Egg Washcloth Pattern, by Obsidian Kitten.
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton, variegated pastels.
Needle: Size 7, KnitPicks Options.

I love it! My only misgiving was because it's stockinette, it doesn't have those lovely bumps for scrubbing. But it's in use right now and it's very nice.

The photo would have been better if I'd blocked it, but it's a dishcloth. I refuse to block dishcloths.

Modeled shot (the model seems a bit tired of this game):
DSCF0003

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

FO: Easter Egg "Circles" dishcloth

I saw this dishcloth somewhere on the Internet, where someone had made one in a variegated yarn, and said something to the effect of "Tee hee! The circles look like Easter Eggs!" and I instantly had the urge to make one for Easter.

I cast on earlier that week, and The Sweetie said I was crazy for trying to finish it by Easter. But lo and behold, TLD took a long nap in the car and I ended up finishing this and knitting most of a second Easter dishcloth (forthcoming blog post).

Pattern: Circle Cloth
Yarn: Lion Cotton for the variegated, Sugar 'n' Creme for the solid green.
Needles: Size 7, KnitPicks Options

It's pretty heavily textured with the reverse-stockinette framing stockinette. We'll see if it's a good scrubber or unwieldly thick. But it is happy and Eastery.

Modeled shot:
DSCF0006

Friday, April 24, 2009

FO: Gloveless Finger


Gloveless Finger
Originally uploaded by knitswithasilentk
Sit back and hear this tale of foolishness followed by pointlessness.

My DH had a nonstick roasting pan. When the coating started flaking off, I objected to continuing to use it, and threw it out. We had intended to replace it, but couldn't find a good, cheap roasting pan. We have an expensive, non-non-stick pan, suitable for turkeys and standing rib roasts, but nothing for we-just-want-to-have-some-roasted-veggies. In the meantime, our Pyrex(R) baking dish stood in, and for most things, it did just fine.

But we wanted to make this roasted pork recipe, where the pork roast is cooked at 500 degrees, and then you pour in apples tossed with oil and lemon juice (or something) and they roast and melt into the pork fat. Yum!

Yeah, can you see where this led? We took at 500 degree glass dish out of the oven and poured cold apples into it. My husband credits his escape from grave injury to the cracking sound the pan made just before it exploded, throwing shards of glass everywhere in the kitchen.

In cleaning up the mess, he managed to get a splinter of glass in his middle fingertip. For a few weeks, he tried to pretend there wasn't a splinter, but soon enough he was living in fear of sudden pains in his fingertip while typing (he's a computer science professor - typing is part of his career). So he went to the doctor to get the splinter out.

His doctor very professionally pointed out that sometimes these exploratory surgeries don't really find things, especially things like infinitesimal (but sharp) bits of glass. Anyway, he dug around and made a hash out of DH's finger, found nothing, and stitched it up. DH came home via the pharmacy and bought a bunch of fingertip band-aids and rubber fingertip covers. He was instructed to keep the stitches clean.

Bah, I said, you don't need those rubber fingertip covers. It'll get sweaty and gnarly. I'll knit you a fingertip cover. It'll protect it, remind you to go easy on your finger, provide cushioning, and it'll breathe while keeping most of the dirt out of it. DH dutifully put a band-aid over the fingertip, and covered it with this, the first bit of knitting I have done for DH which actually fit him.

He loved it. He wore it for a week until the stitches came out. He showed it to the nurses when he got the stitches removed. At one point, he misplaced it (while replacing the band-aid) and searched for it for 30 minutes. He couldn't live without it.

Ah, finally, a successful knitting project for my dear, sweet, Sweetie.

Here's a closeup:

Gloveless Finger, closeup

Oh, yeah. He thinks there's still a sliver of glass in his finger. But he'll wait for it to make its own way out this time. (It's not stabbing him regularly, so the rooting around in there did change it for the better.)

Pattern: Gloveless finger - it's a tube with decreases at one hand, essentially a glove finger, without the glove. 16 stitches around, ribbing and then stockinette.
Yarn: KnitPicks Risata.
Needles: Size 0, Brittany birch dpns.

Risata has some elastic in it, so it would stretch. It's also machine-washable. And it fit, uh, like a glove!

Monday, April 20, 2009

FO: Pinwheel Dishcloth


DSCF0121
Originally uploaded by knitswithasilentk
This was another really fast dishcloth. It uses short rows to make the curved triangle shapes. I alternated the variegated yarn I had leftover from Grandmother's Favorite with some solid blue I had from dishrag tag.

Yarn: Creme de la Creme, blue, yellow, white variegated; Sugar 'n' Cream, blue.
Needles: Size 6, Knitpicks Options
Pattern: Pinwheel dishcloth (pdf), from 1870 pearl.

It only took me 3 days to knit!

A modeled shot (doesn't it look like a yarmulke?):

DSCF0125

Friday, April 17, 2009

FO: Chinese Waves dishcloth


DSCF0016
Originally uploaded by knitswithasilentk
This was a fun and easy dishcloth knit, although it made a really large dishcloth. Mine turned out about 10" square. In the future I'd make it smaller. But the texture does make a nice scrubby cloth.

Pattern: Chinese Waves
Needle: Size 8, KnitPicks Options
Yarn: Peaches 'n' Creme in Cream, received in Dishrag Tag

Thanks to my wonderful dishrag modeler! I've decided to make all of my finished dishcloth shots modeled.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Still here Tuesday


DSCF0065
Originally uploaded by knitswithasilentk
I was going to make this a photo-less entry, but I hate it when there are no photos, so I went into my photo archive and found this, a beautiful pizza The Sweetie made. The dough is made via a no-knead method, and sparked a recent flurry of homemade breadmaking, from the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day book. This pizza, the recipe that started it all, is from the King Arthur Flour company's blog, Baker's Banter. We made the potato, brie, and carmelized shallot (we didn't have the time to carmelize the onion, but shallots carmelize quickly in a pan), and it was so good we made it 2 or 3 more times that week!




I'm working on a Circle Dishcloth. Somewhere out there, I saw someone's who had said hers looked like Easter eggs, and I got it in my head to make one by Easter.

  • I cast on Saturday, with the 46 stitches recommended. I knit the first two rows (purl, knit), then got tired and went to sleep.

  • Sunday, I decided that I would prefer the eggs to stick out in reverse-stockinette, and be framed in stockinette, so I marked up the pattern swapping purls for knits. To reverse the rows I'd already knit, I knit another row.

  • Edited to add: I started on the colors, with the reversing of knit and purl, and when the green purl bumps stuck out against the smooth stockinette, I realized that "just swapping knits and purls" won't work. I should follow the pattern, and if I want it reversed, I can figure it out with another cloth.

  • I then looked at how wide it was and decided it was way too wide for a dishcloth. It was about 16"! I subtracted 6 from 46, got 40, still too wide. Subtracted 6 again, got 34, that looked about right. Ripped.

  • Cast one with 34 stitches. Re-read the pattern. "k4, (sl2, k4), k4" is 6n + 8, which 34 is not. Double check math. Change to 38 stitches. Rip.

  • Cast on 38, knit 3 rows (I'd figured out that the pattern writer used long-tail cast-on and omitted a row of knitting, but I always use knitted cast on so I needed another row), and started pattern with contrast color. Got to end of row, where I had just knit 4 and had 4 stitches left. I'm short 2 stitches to slip before ending with knit 4.

  • Redo the math. How can it be that 46 is the right number, and 38, is not a good number, when 38 is 6n + 8 or 6(n+1) + 2 (that is, the other pattern row is "k1, (sl 2, k4), k1")?

  • Rip anyway, stick with "subtract a multiple of 6" to make a smaller cloth. Cast on 34. Knit first 3 rows. Switch to contrast color. Make it across the row with the right count. Think, yay, I'm finally making progress! Make it to the 8th row of the CC and notice how the cloth has shrunk. It's now just larger than a sponge. That's why the stitch count was so generous to begin with. Rip.

  • Cast on with 46, as the pattern suggests, and resolve to FOLLOW IT. Mutter about stupid 6n + 2, 6n + 8, 46 is not either of those.

The next day I figured out the math problem. The pattern says "K4, (sl 2, k4), ending with k4". In my opinion, "ending with k4" is not necessary to say, but if you read it as reassurance instead of an additional instruction after the repeated part, then we get 6n + 4, which 46 is, thus making the math work out.

I'm so glad the world works now.