Knitting Madonna

Knitting Madonna

After that, knitting neeles entered the dark ages as far as the history books are concerned, but that’s often the way with stuff done mostly by women. Not a lot of historic mention was made of say the whisk or the clothespeg. Doesn’t mean they weren’t popular, but you didn’t bring them into battle with you. Usually. By the 1300s knitting was HOT in Europe. Even the Virgin Mary is pictured knitting baby Jesus a sweater. Not socks, alas. Maybe they didn’t wear socks in the holy land? Anyway, these pictures of knitting Madonna (now that would’ve been a great name for a blog!) are from the early 14th century.

In the Elizabethan era was a big thing among men, apparently. They even had their own guilds.

In the 17th and 18th centuries Scotland had a booming hand knitting industry. Fishermen needed warm, thick sweaters and the slightly oily texture was a bit water resistant as well. Whole families knitted all manner of garments, leading to the development of the famous Fair Isle and Aran (cable stitch) patterns. The sad background to Fair Isle stitch is that mothers and wives knitted those special cables to be able to identify their husbands and sons if they had drowned at sea.

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Me, knitting

I’ve tried the Kitchener Stitch. It’s ok, but to be honest, I thought it was a bit messy. If you don’t have any equipment such as tapestry needles and/or no patience and/or no talent, this might work for you: My Mum’s Stitch!

My mum learned this in school as a tiny girl with lovely blond curls, knitting under the beady eye of her horrible teacher. Teach did a good job though, because my mum can still remember!

Here’s what you do: make sure you have decreased the toe as far as you want and you’re ready to start grafting.

• Turn the sock inside out.
• Make sure you have an even number of stitches and simply knit them together! It’s easy as pie (especially when you see the video
• If you haven’t got an equal number of stitches, simply knit two together.

And then to wrap it up:

• Knit one stitch,
• knit another one and slip the first one over the second one, off the needle (again, once you see the video you’ll get what I mean).
• Keep doing it, ’til you reach the end.

My first two Ipodsocks!

I love knitting so much, I’ve actually joined several knitting groups & blogs and I find myself discussing the virtues of different types of yarn. Wow.
There is one thing about knitting that really pisses me off though and that’s the lingo. I just don’t get the abbreviations. Yo? Bo? stst?

Anyway, long live the internet, because, off course, there are on line resources for this!

Bo means Bind off and it even has an instructional video on just that! Here’s the link to KnittingHelp.com

Anyway, I’ve been experimenting with Christmas (and other) presents that I might knit and I am ridiculously satisfied with the results! Both these Ipod socks were knitted on circulars. The bigger one is my own pattern, I thought it might be fun to have a little flap. It needs a button, but I don’t have one, and it’ll take a week or so to get them in the mail, so bear with me!

Flap

Here’s what I did for the Ipod sock with flap:

• You start with one stitch, knit it, add a stitch, knit both,
• add another on the other side of the first stitch,
• knit ‘m all, and so forth, til you have the approx width of your Ipod/mp3player/phone/camera/whatever.
• Knit about 4 more rows, so you get a nice long flap. I knitted it, but on second thoughts maybe st st might have been nicer.
• Then you act like you’re knitting a sock: cast on the number of stitches you have times two (so if you’re up to 12 stitches, cast on another 12), divide over circulars so they are all connected and knit away! For this I did use st st, but you might wanna throw in a couple of cables just for fun.
• Knit til it’s big enough for the appliance of your choice (rather too big than too small!), seem together (I don’t use the Kitchener Stitch any more but something I call my mum’s seem: turn the sock/cozy/whatever inside out and knit the stitches on both needles together. You end up with one needle with stitches, bo, turn the sock/etc the right way out and it’s great!)

Et voila: you’re ready for Christmas!

My next project is to learn how to crochet, I think it might be fun to make the edges on the little flap a little more elaborate, so I’ll get round to that as soon as my crochet needles make it up my Spanish mountain!

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Britney

I read Britney Spears is planing to give up nail biting in 2009. Once I started looking for it, I noticed that it’s almost impossible to find a pic of Britney’s nails! So I just picked one of her looking sweet. After all the terrible shots of her earlier this year, I guess she’s ready to start afresh, and will a full head of hair!

Made me think though, about new year’s resolutions. I never really make any other than ‘have more fun’

I had this friend who always planned to ‘drink more’. I like that, among all those folks trying to quit smoking (gave up 7 years ago) or lose weight (I’m quite happy about the way I look). Still, it’s a good idea to make a plan. Most of the ones I came up with semed to have something to do with knitting though. How crazy is that? A year ago I couldn’t knit to save my life. Just goes to show what a difference a year can make.

So here’s my to do list/resolutions for next year:

- knit a tea cosy

- knit a cardigan

- learn crochet

- check the gauge (I never do, but I should. I know)

-finish writing my book

- be nice and don’t hold grudges

- finally finish War & Peace

- speak Spanish fluently (I’m getting there)
So how about you? Any life altering plans? Or any reslutions at all?

More knitting:

• Liz’s Real eaZy Cable Pattern
• Knitting a Dainty Laptop Bag on two circulars
• An Ipod Sock on 2 circs

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Tea Cosy

Who’d ‘ve thunk I’d ever be writing about fun stuff to knit for Christmas? Certainly not anyone I went to school with. Anyway, I’ve been knitting my nice socks for a while now and I’ve been on the prowl for another, small, but fun, easy and useful project. A pillow case, a tea cosy or, and this is, I think, a good one for Christmas: a cellphone cosy!

I’d never given it much thought before, but obviously, you don’t have to knit only for teapots, there are lots of things that would like to be snugly bundled up somehow and cell phones and laptops and camera’s are such ugly things, in general, that having something soft and, in my case, obviously homemade wrapped around them will make them that much more fun.

So I will be starting on a camera cosy for my mum (shhh don’t tell her, it’s for Sinterklaas!) but I will give you a list of projects I hope to be starting later this month and that might inspire you to do the same! Go on, even if it looks terrible, it’s always fun to get something homemade, right? And the great thing about the mobile phone cosy: everybody’s got a mobile phone!

Cute Ipod sock with cord!

• Mobile phone cosy or here
• Beer cosy
• Ipod cosy that looks like a squid
• Ipod sock (easier! If you’re a beginner, go for this one!) and
• one that looks like the one you buy, with the little pouch for your headphones and
• here’s one (see pic) I particularly like with a cord
• Tea cup cosy
• I also really liked this inhaler cosy, makes it look much nicer!
• and, of course, the good ol’ tea cosy

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Eazy Cable Scarf

Christmas may be behind us but winter’s not over by a long shot out here in the mountains! Which means nice cosy afternoons by the fire and I was looking for a nice pattern for a scarf I wanted to knit for my mum. Something with cables, but also something I could knit without too many markers and difficult twists&turns. Or light for that matter, because we run on solar energy here way up in La Alpujarra and when there’s no sun, like today, there’s not a lot of energy either!

After scouring the web, i found lots and lots of lovely patterns I hope to try, one day, but I couldn’t find a nice ‘n easy cable scarf. So here’s my own: Liz’s EAZY Cable Scarf for Cosy Winter Afternoons by the Fire.

I used bamboo circular needles, but you really don’t need ‘m since you only need two needles to knit a scarf, mine are 10mm. I used Sirdar Denim Chunky in Lilac Frost, I think you’d need about 2x 50 gram balls for a nice scarf. Gauge, as the real knitters say: it’s a scarf so who cares!

co 28 stitches,

row 1 knit
row 2 purl
row 3 knit
row 4 purl*

Now for the cables:

Row 5: knit 5, purl 2, then cross 3 R: put 3 stitches on your cable needle and hold to the back of your work. Knit next three stitches, then k the 3 stitches on the cable needle. P 2, cross 3 R, P 2, knit 5.

Row 6-8: knit the knits, purl the purls

row 9: repeat row 5-8.
Knit on until you’re satisfied, end with 4 rows of St st***

Et voíla, a cable scarf!

More knitting:

• Grafting the toe, the easy way
• Knitting a dainty little laptop bag
• An Ipod sock on two circulars

*If you like, you can also start with some ribbing, in that case knit 1, purl 1 for 4 rows.
** I don’t have a cable needle, so I use a 4.5 mm circ. Works ok for me!
*** Or ribbing if you started with that!

Laptop sock with flap

I’ve been looking for a cute laptopbag for my dainty little laptop for ages and there don’t seem to be any, so you’ll get stuck with huge, black, padded monstrosities. Have no fear, help is near! In the form of a home knit, cute&dainty laptop sock. Keep your laptop safe from scratches.

If you’re in a hurry, you can easily knit this without the little flap. Somehow I like flaps, but they’re not necessary at all if you knit your laptop sock snug enough. Flaps are cute though and they allow you to knit a bit larger and maybe even put in your cables or mouse.

Start knitting the flap:

• measure your laptop approx, (I planned on sliding my laptop in sideways, thought it’d be safer & snugger)
• cast on roughly the amount of stitches, rather too many than too few! You can always decrease, but increasing usually means starting over. Not a bad thing per se, but you might want to get it right in one go.
• Knit in stocking stitch for 3 to 4 rows, then make two button holes. Don’t know how to make button holes? Don’t worry! It’s easy.
• Determine where you want your button holes to go, I put mine at about 4 stitches from both sides, so you knit 4 stitches and then you make the button hole: Bind off the required number of stitches (slip stitch from left to right and pull the one before that over the slipped stitch) and continue in pattern across the row. (Remember that it takes two stitches to bind off the first stitch.) Count your stitches at the end of the row, subtracting the number you were told to bind off.
• More on buttonholes at Howstuffworks.com, and it’s a fun site anyway.
• Knit about 10 more rows to finish the flap. (if you want a bigger flap then knit boldly on!)Knitting the laptop tube on two circulars:

• Then add ten more stitches, or rather, the amount of stitches you’ve already been knitting times two. In my case, I have a cute, tiny laptop, so ten stitches extra were enough, but you might need more!

• Divide them over your two circulars, connect all the stitches so you’re knitting a sock tube. Not sure how to knit a sock tube on two circs? Here’s how
• Knit til your tube is slightly longer than the width of your laptop (if, like me, you plan on sliding your laptop in sideways)
• Turn inside out and graft the toe. You can use the Kitchener Stitch or the wale-to-wale seem, or whatever rocks your particular boat.
• Buy two nice big buttons, sow ‘em on
• et voila! You have a snug little laptop bag, you’ll the envy of everybody in the bar!

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