machine knitting midgauge standard bulky machknit knit machine-knit patterns

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Winter has arrived!


Our first snow of the season and it's a doozy. It's thick and heavy due to the relatively warm temps. We were supposed to have knit club this morning, but the roads are too treacherous.

There is one among us who is in 7th heaven, however. Hard to get her to come back into the house. She makes me laugh. She sticks her nose down into the snow and runs! Just like a mini snow plow.


It's a good day to snuggle in and knit.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

William Morris is hanging around my neck...


I am a cowl convert. It seems if your neck is warm, so goes the rest of you. There was a time when I couldn't stand the extra heat, but now am finding I need it.

I was inspired by this cowl from Berroco's free patterns. If you'd like to see the original pattern, you can find it here:
http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/winterfloral/winterfloral_1.html
I liked the concept but not the design. I found a William Morris wall paper I liked, converted it to knit stitches in DesignaKnit and knit the cowl on my Brother 970.
It's a rectangle 28" wide by 18" tall. I doubled it over so that the height is 9", and I positioned the seam at the bottom. Some of the images you convert to knit patterns have long floats between motifs and, although they might be lovely, are not very practical. The nice thing about this method of making the cowl is that all the long floats are enclosed when you seam it. Steaming takes care of smoothing it out. Just for added interest, I put a small red stripe on each end. Both ends have 2 x 2 ribbing; one side has 3 button holes. Found some vintage-looking buttons for it. The yarn is Forsell's Pure New Wool, T 7, 7 st x 9 rows=1". Very soft and warm. You could easily make it with your own design or one that is built into your machine subbing your own gauge. Really simple and fast.
Closeup of the back side:

Nice, eh?

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Free machine knitting patterns linked to posts

Suddenly the file storage site I've been using, which has been happily free for a couple of years, is sending out something foul. My Norton's antivirus says it's an attack site. Who would know the reason why???? So I spent some time linking all my free patterns back to individual posts about them and included the patterns there rather than having you download pdf's. I sure don't want to be responsible for someone getting hi-jacked or infected with a virus.

So much for free stuff. I keep thinking there is no free lunch...

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Men's Garter Carriage Scarf


Katherine sent me a picture of her Men's Garter Carriage Scarf. (This pattern, with the errors fixed, was mentioned in my last post.) It's beautiful! And, her husband likes it. Not an easy accomplishment.

At our guild's "knit-in" last weekend, I concentrated on knitting hats toward my birthday goal. Only got 3 done. At this rate, it's going to take a while...
I did the pattern for the midgauge earflap hat and the one for the beanie that are available here on my blog. Scroll down on the right side. These were knit on my portable KX 350, so any midgauge machine should work fine. I used 2 strands of a thinner acrylic yarn. And you can't tell that either of those cones has gotten any smaller!



Looks like teal is the color of the day.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Correction to garter carriage scarf pattern

Friend Katherine was kind enough to write me and tell me the free garter carriage men's scarf pattern had some errors in it. So, if you downloaded it previously, you may want to download the corrected version. Scroll down towareds the bottom right side and click on the drawing of the DAK file. Whew! What was I thinking? I actually did make it a couple of times and never noticed the errors. I think because the stitches are tiny, they are easy to miss. Excuses, excuses. Hopefully it's error-free now.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Name change

Ok, changed the name on Ravelry to "Dangling Daisies" and will obliterate all references to you-know-what on the blog.

Correspondence regarding name of toddler hat...

Hi Mar,
You might want to change the name of the toddler hat…
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dingleberry
din·gle·ber·ry (dnggl-br)
n. Vulgar Slang

A piece of dried feces caught in the hair around the anus.

An incompetent, foolish, or stupid person.

I didn’t have a clue what it meant as slang either until someone pointed it out to me.

BTW, it is really cute!
Justina

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Yikes!
I guess I will change the name. I just thought it sounded cute. Maybe not. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Was blissfully unaware.
Mar

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Any suggestions? Dangling Dandylions? Downward Daisies? Swinging Snapdragons?