January 27, 2007

Bunny, Row Marker and more

This is an angora rabbit. I snagged the pic from a post at KnittingHelp.com forum. I don't know where kblue snagged it from. As I said at the forum, one has to wonder what God/dess was thinking when that rabbit was created!

Here is the row counter I made yesterday with jump rings from the local bead store. It's an off-shoot of the idea here. The red one is the end of the count. In this one I have to decrease on the eighth round. So when I get to the red one, I know it's the decrease round. Then I start over with the other end. Each time I knit a round and go down one link on the chain. The numeric row counters that you turn or click after each row just never got turned or clicked. This one does get moved as I can't keep knitting unless I moved it!

My friend F, asked me list all the groups and forums I hang out at. So here it goes, in no particular order: Knitlist, Knitting Novices, Knittinghelp.com, Get Stitchy, Knitter's Review, and Knittyboard. I gain an enormous amount of information here...and although there is some repetition, like the infamous "Can I take my knitting needles on the airplane?" and "My stockinette scarf is curling, how do I fix it?" there is always some new good information to be gleaned!

My knee is worse again. The false improvement yesterday was just that it'd rested all night and felt better. But during the day, it takes a great effort to stand and get moving. After a minute or so, it's much, much better, but those intial half dozen steps....

Okay, just ran across this link at Knittyboard to a post at Knittymagazine... I haven't tried it yet, but...Let me know if you try it and how it works. I'll do the same.

"I did not think of this myself. It's in Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop (thanks to whoever pointed me at that book...). She says it's a traditional Japanese method.

This may seem hard to follow w/o pictures, but just try it, it's totally worth it.

1) Wind one end of the yarn around the tip of the middle finger of your left hand 3 or 4 times.

2) With palm of LH facing you, and yarn behind middle finger, take yarn around the base of the thumb (behind hand), across heel of hand (in front), and around back of hand, coming out at base of index finger.

3) Take yarn to back between index and middle fingers.

4) Cross back of hand, bring yarn to the front around heel of palm, cross the heel of the hand and go around the back of the thumb.

5) Bring yarn across palm, starting from the V between thumb & index finger, ending up at pinky-side heel of hand.

6) Cross the back of the hand, bringing yarn to base of index finger.

Repeat 3-6 until your skein is all wound onto your hand. Tuck away the end you've been working on. Slip your hand out. You are ready to work from the center with the end that was wrapped around your middle finger."