Posts in category 'knitting'
- (https://b-ark.ca/OUKkUS)
That moment when you realize you apparently knit too fast because you overshot the length of the sock you’re working on and now you need to tink a bunch of rows…
- (https://b-ark.ca/SSi_SS)
Well, yet another long blogging hiatus. So what’s so important that I would take the time to author yet another scintillating installment? Why, a knitting project, of course!
- (https://b-ark.ca/AYgsAs)
A little something for the Movember fundraising drive, this is a custom design that I came up with by taking the game graphics and converting them to a pattern.
- (https://b-ark.ca/CSuakk)
Lovely open-work baby blanket I did in the round. I believe this is the first piece I’ve done in this style and it turned out great!
- (https://b-ark.ca/ias_eG)
A piece for the first arrival of a friend and colleague. The yarn colour in this piece is fantastic and the pattern knitted up beautifully!
- (https://b-ark.ca/eEwKg8)
One of my earlier custom designs, this pattern uses basic twisted stitches and eyelets to create a fun little spiral pattern.
- (https://b-ark.ca/_gO604)
Yet another crack at this cable scarf pattern, it knits up thick and chunky and really shows off the shine of this yarn.
- (https://b-ark.ca/6EuYye)
Yet another early sock attempt, this is one of those early pairs that taught me never to use straight merino for socks…
- (https://b-ark.ca/ueAGMm)
This is a bit of an experiment, altering a traditional toe-up toe to create a separate space for the big toe. And it worked out alright!
- (https://b-ark.ca/MQg0UW)
Another crack at this pattern and one of my earlier sock attempts as I got the hang of things.
- (https://b-ark.ca/aQ4__K)
Using Thuja with some gifted Raven Frog yarn, this time Alder Bark, to knit up another pair of warm, comfy, and very fragile socks…
- (https://b-ark.ca/4egkaI)
It’s been a while, but I assume this is my first pair of socks after previously trying and failing to make socks…
- (https://b-ark.ca/EqQiie)
Another cabled scarf using Here and There Cables, this time for my mom!
- (https://b-ark.ca/S_0g0k)
Here and There again, this time for Michelle in a nice creamy yellow!
- (https://b-ark.ca/4QsEuE)
A fairly traditional pattern on this afghan, the yarn lends itself well to this simple cable-and-scallop design.
Intarsia in the Round
Yeah, another knitting post, and so soon, too! Okay, so this is a post all about Intarsia-style colour knitting in the round, as the title might suggest. See, when I was working on my pacman cap, I had this problem: when you knit Intarsia-style, you basically have colour strands for each “section” of the piece. So, if you’re knitting flat and you’re making a black field with a big yellow section, you’d knit with black, switch to yellow, knit across, then switch to a new strand of black and knit to the end of the row. Going back, you’d do the same thing, and each time you change colours, you do a little yarn wrapping trick to make sure there’s no gaps. The result is, on the back, there is no black carried across the yellow section, which is very nice as it means you have to worry less about puckering and tension, etc.
Problem is, suppose you’re knitting in the round. So you knit in black, switch to yellow, knit across, switch back to black, knit around… and then you’re back to the yellow section. Problem: you now have two black strands, and the yellow is way over on the other side of the yellow section. What do you do? What do you do??
Well, in my pacman hat, I basically cheated. When I got to the section of colour, I switched from round knitting to back-and-forth, and when the coloured rows were done, I switched back to knitting in the round. Then, during the finishing stage, I just sewed up the little seam. Pretty simple, really, but it left a bulky little seam there, and a) I hate bulky little seams, and b) I just hate seams.
So, what’s the real answer? Well, I could explain it, but instead, why don’t I leave it to Sara to answer that question? In an explanation that’s much better than anything I could compose, she outlines three different methods for dealing with the issue, one involving carrying strands around the piece, one using gapless short rows, and a third, far more ingenious technique that I really must try some time…
A Long Overdue Knitting Post
Here I am, part of the Men Who Knit webring, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I posted about knitting. “Who cares, no one reads this anyway,” you say? Okay, yeah, you’re right. But who isn’t up for a little linguistic masturbation from time to time, eh? If anything, at least it keeps my writing (read: rambling) skills bright and shiny. And, hey, at least Lenore probably reads this thing occasionally. Right?
Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, knitting. So, yeah, I haven’t posted about knitting in a while, but I figured I’d share a little project I whipped up recently. It’s a hat. Yeah, fine big deal, a hat. But it’s a special hat. Wanna see it? Of course you do! You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t, right? Okay, here it is:
Pretty cool, eh? Cooler yet, I actually designed this thing myself! Though, admittedly, I didn’t actually go through the effort of grabbing the graphics out of the game… a little search for “pacman ghosts” turned up this link, and voila! I was off to the races (oddly, that link is to a website called Sprite Stitch, a, quote, “Video game inspired craft weblog”… apparently I’m not the only one who had this idea). Once I had the graphics, it was a simple matter of charting out the pattern on graph paper, finding some yarn with the colours I needed, and then whipping the thing up.
Of course, charting the pattern did take a bit of effort. The trickiest thing when translating an image into a knitting pattern is altering the images to match your row/stitch gauge. You see, my knit stitches aren’t perfectly square. In fact, they’re a little wider than they are tall. But the images in your average video game are designed to be presented on a display with square pixels. The result is that, if you convert the images directly to a pattern, they come out distorted. So you have to either alter the images to stretch/squish them as necessary, or alter your row/stitch gauge. I opted to alter the images, squishing them horizontally, which was actually a bit challenging, as they’re already very low resolution. But I think the result is pretty nice.
But the question now, is, what next? I’m thinking another classic video game of some kind. One of the Mario Bros. characters, maybe? Or maybe something a little more obscure… Opa Opa, anyone?
- (https://b-ark.ca/IyGaqi)
A custom Pacman graphic design in Intarsia. This thing is a pain to knit, what with all the colour changes, but it looks great!
Some Knitting Projects
Well, I finally have some photos of my latest knitting projects uploaded. First, we have Michelles Scarf, which was actually completed and shipped off months ago, but only now have I gotten to posting a photo:
This is, without question, my favorite piece. The cable pattern is reversible, which is very cool, and the yarn Lenore helped pick out looks really fantastic in pattern (it’s got a glossy, satin-ey finish… very nice, given it’s just off-the-shelf stuff from Michael’s). It was also a heck of a lot of fun to put together (I really love cabling).
Secondly, we have Abigails Baby Blanket, which I just recently completed. It’s a pretty simple pattern, just a nice shell-and-cable deal, but it looks great in the green yarn Lenore, again, helped pick out:
‘course, with all the work on NetHackDS, I’ve had little time to pick up the needles lately. Which is unfortunate, as I really need to begin working on a project for our now-quite-pregnant receptionist. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be done… you know… a couple months after the baby is born. Ish.
Pants Suits For Everyone!
Some of you may remember my entry about the infamous Knitted Pants Suit. I still consider this one of my all-time favorite knitted items, and for the longest time, I bemoaned the lack of a pattern from which I could replicate this masterful work of art. Well, a while back, I decided to send a private message to the poster of the entry where I first encountered this gem (the second link in the aforementioned blog entry), in the hopes that I might acquire the pattern and perhaps create one of my own… you know, to wear around the house, or for one of those wild nights out for which Lenore and I are truly infamous.
Well, as it happens, not a week or two later, I got a response from the individual in question. Yes, he did have the pattern. And yes, he would get me a copy! And so it was that I came into possession of three PDFs which will enable me to create my very own knitted pants suit.
Of course, it would seem unfair to keep this pattern to myself (it’s bad enough I’ve held on to it this long without sharing it with the world), and so I offer it up here (yes, I realize this is copyright infringement, but I just hope Brunswick will understand). Heck, maybe myself and any other interested knitters could each create our own renditions of this masterpiece, that we may then compare our interpretations, and, in the process, enrich the world with the knitted pants suits that it so woefully lacks.