Machine knit Minnesota StateFair entries

I just realized that I never posted my entries to the Minnesota State Fair in the machine knitting category. Not to brag or anything, but I entered 6 items, got 3 blue ribbons, 2 red and one white (3rd). Only spent about $200 on the yarn and won about $40 for the prizes. Um... I guess one doesn't enter for financial gain. Was some tough competition this year.

Here's my little gnome entered in the toy category. (Blue ribbon, yea!) I bought Alan Dart's Tomten pattern and converted it to machine knit and added my own Norwegian sweater to it. I've made two so far and thought I'd like to make more for Christmas to have sitting around. I kind of fell in love with him.
Reminds me of that children's story of the trolls under the bridge...clip clop...who's that walking over MY bridge? Is it a Scandinavian tale? I used to love hearing it over and over. Strange...
If I get ambitious, I'll post pictures of my other entries.

Machine Knit Lace

September is almost over and I've not posted to my blog once this month. Hopefully I'll reform here sooner or later. I have been knitting, but mostly trying out new things and doing swatches.

I decided that the lace patterns in the Stitchworld manual look a little different than when knitted in person. So, I'm making a notebook. Have just 4 done so far:


I'm working on a lace edged "shawlette" that will have about 4 inches of lace at the bottom. It needs a scalloped edge so I was looking for the most exaggerated scallop I could find. I won't be able to block it very much since the fiber content will be cotton, so I'm thinking the more scallopy the better. I guess I'm leaning toward the last swatch. It's a combination of normal lace and fine lace. In fine lace the stitches are transferred but there is no yarn-over type of hole left behind. That would be the straight stitch up the middle of the motif. Haven't done that before. I am not advanced enough in programming lace into the machine so I'm going with the patterns in Stitchworld II and III. I've learned that the lace holes pull up on the knitting and the stockinette stitches push downward. Some of the lace patterns make a straight edge, some have this natural wave. They're all pretty, though. It's hard to decide!!

The multi-colored swatch is the yarn I'll actually be using. It's pale green, but I plan to paint it with Dylon dye, as I did the swatch. Not sure of the colors I'll use, but something like this.

Some things I've learned about lace: 1) you can't program lace into the Brother 970 machine. You have to enter it as a fairisle pattern and then know when to run the knit carriage 2) If you enter a pattern into DAK and then from DAK to your machine, DAK can screw up things. Since DAK has been told it's a fairisle pattern, it flips it sideways. You have to flip it back to make it work. Your machine might be very unhappy knitting the pattern backwards. Found that out the hard way. 3) Even weight on the knitting is a must.

Mary Anne Oger figured out a way to use the ribber comb to weight her lace knitting evenly across. You cast on with waste yarn, every other needle, push the teeth of the ribber comb up between the stitches, push through the wire and let it drop. Hang the necessary weights, push the other stitches back into working position. Knit a few inches of waste yarn and then do a permanent cast on with the main yarn. It works like a charm. I haven't had dropped stitches since using her method. If you haven't already seen her blog, it's a great resource. Needles to say....

Once I decide on the lace pattern, it won't take long to knit my "shawlette". I've already charted out the shaping. More on my progress later...

18" Doll Clothes

Husband thinks I've gone off the deep end to be making doll clothes. Don't know why I'm doing this, even though there's no grand daughter to knit for, but it's fun. Sometimes you just need a mindless project that goes quickly. There's the urge to knit, but not ready to do something substantial.

This outfit is for the American Girl Doll-sized doll. I nabbed a copy cat at the local Michaels and only paid $10 for her with my 40% off coupon. The skirt pattern is available in an earlier post (June 10, 2009) and it's the same doll. The shell is improvised. I measured the doll, did a 7st x 10row gauge. The only nifty thing I did was to come up with easy edgings for the neck and armholes. I hung the armhole/neck with the RIGHT side facing me, knit 8 rows reducing the tension from 6 to 3 over those rows then bound off. It looks like a garter stitch but is really just reverse stockinette. It rolls a little, but with steaming is presentable. Might even look ok on an adult sweater. Here's the schematic if you want to knit one in your gauge: These dolls have kind of an odd shape---heads are huge so you have to make the neck opening really large. I did a shrug for her in the current issue of Knitwords, if you happen to be a subscriber. It's the same shrug that is in the June 9 post.

Other than this, I haven't done much knitting since the MN State Fair stuff. A friend and I delivered our things plus a friend's items last week. I think there will be a better showing for the Machine Knitting category this year. Stiffer competition too! If you live in the area, be sure to check out our display. It promises to be a good one.

Daughter and boyfriend just left after a week's visit. They saw friends, did a lot of interesting things, helped us around the house. It's always a big adjustment when they leave. Wish they didn't live so far away!!!

The garden is winding down. Nights are already cool to cold and some plants are not happy with that. I have 3 mini tomatoes on the vine. Planted too late this year. You'd think I'd know better after all these years of gardening. With the cooler weather, the urge to take on a bigger knitting project will overtake me I'm sure.

Short 'n Sweet

Hard to keep up with a blog when there are so many summer things to do.

I had a short 'n sweet trip to Colorado to visit my sister. She is a newbie on the Brother KX 350 midgauge, and not having even seen someone knit on one before became a tad frustrated without any help. We managed to slip in some knitting along with trips to Denver to eat at a new restaurant called "Boa" and a great lunch at Chataqua, attendance at her nice church among other things. Here is the sweater we worked on. It's called, oddly enough, "Short 'n Sweet", a pattern by Mary Anne Oger in Knitwords #28. It's a size 4.
It's very feminine and dainty. A bit of a challenge for a beginning knitter, but I always think that taking on a challenge gets you to a higher level faster than just plugging along at the basics all the time.
Here's a closeup of the neck and you can see the neat rope-like edging.


My sister is now finishing up a matching size 8 sweater for her other grand daughter. I hope they appreciate all the love and hard work that went into these sweaters!

Our Machine Knitters Guild of Minnesota members are busy knitting entries to the great Minnesota Get Together (the state fair). We didn't have a lot of items in the machine knitting category last year. Afraid that they'll do away with the machine knitting category, lots of us are knitting up a storm and will enter several items. I have completed a few, but won't be able to show them on the blog for a month or so. Talk about raising your knitting to a new level! Everything and every detail of your knitting is scrutinized, so you have to try hard to do things correctly and neatly. Not so easy. But it's fun and I can't wait to see what my friends are submitting.

Got my copy of Knitwords #50 in the mail yesterday. Check out the website---lots of nice stuff and good articles. http://knitwords.com/ click on current issue


It appears that our Minnesota summer is also going to be remembered as short 'n sweet. The nights are cold and the days are cool, a scarcity of rain. Not so great for the garden. Maybe we'll have a nice mild and extended fall. One can only hope.

Summer has arrived in Minnesota

Sorta. It's been the most cloudy and dreary spring and summer that I can remember. O well, can't complain about what you have zero control over. Seems to be an occupation---complaining about the weather---that humans like to indulge in.

I've been gardening some. This is my main garden. Reduced from days of yore, more manageable for me. Looks probably the best now that it will look, although photos are always disappointing. I struggle with deer, shade and tree roots being so close to the dense woods. My favorite flower---for lots of reasons, is dahlias. Here is one of the first whose tuber was saved from last year. The color is yummy. Upon recommendation from my sister, I bought some SpraynGrow. Haven't used it yet, but hope that does well by my roses (other side of the yard). Hers are out of this world and I don't expect to ever have roses that fine. I'm jealous. I'm thinking the lighter pink one is as close to perfection as is possible. Reminiscent of Georgia O'Keefe.


Have been knitting up a storm too, but can't show pictures yet because the items are going in the MN State Fair.

PS Windows Live Writer crashed my computer, so I'm back to the regular Blogger software. grrrrrrrrrrr is all I'll say. Didn't want to recommend it after all.

Trying Windows Live Writer

This morning I downloaded the Windows Live Writer.  You are supposed to be able to post to your blog from this application.  Always takes a bit to figure things out, but it seems easy.

Here’s a picture of my niece’s daughter wearing a coat I made her out of a recycled sweater.  Looks like she found a piece of something that doesn’t belong. Given that it was about 90 degrees when we tried it on her, she probably wasn’t so happy to be wearing it.

Ok, after a 5 minute trial, I like this so much better than posting from Blogger.  I’m one of those who would rather create a post like you would type in a word processing program.  Don’t need to see the html tags.

I suppose there are lots of other things I can do, but so far so good!  I might even post more often.

If you are interested, here's where to get the program:
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D85741BB5E0BE8AA!1533.entry

18" Doll Skirt

My friend Carol lent me her 18” doll so that I could design a shrug for Knitwords to fit her. (If all goes well, the doll and adult shrugs will be in the next issue.) I decided she looked indecent without a skirt, so I whipped one out. When I give her back she will look dressed. Doesn’t she look cute???? She needs a camisole or something for underneath the shrug, but we’ll leave that for another day. Recognize that pink yarn? I rescued it from the waste yarn bin to make the hearts and match the shrug. (I used it to make the shrug "prototype".)

Here’s how I made the skirt.

Machine: Standard gauge
Yarn: Bramwell 4 ply acrylic; small amounts white and pink (many other yarns can achieve this gauge)
Gauge: 7 st x 10 r at T 7
Other: ½ inch elastic, 10”

Directions:
Over 131 needles, cast on with waste yarn and knit a few rows at T 6 1/2. Change to main yarn and knit 5 rows. Use the lace carriage to transfer every other stitch, making the picot edge. (Or, transfer the stitches by hand.) Leave emptied needles in work. Knit 5 rows T 7 and hang a hem. Change to T 10 and knit one row to seal the hem. RC 000. Change back to T 7 and knit 3 rows. Set up the heart pattern and knit it for 3 rows. Knit plain to RC 40. Decrease the stitches by half, either with the lace carriage or by hand. Take off on waste yarn and rehang over every needle. Knit 11 rows T 7, one row T 10 for a turning row, 12 rows T 7. Hang hem, bind off. Thread the elastic through the waistband and sew ends to make a circle. Seam with main yarn to enclose waistband elastic and the back seam. Hide yarn ends.

Even with change of tensions for the hem, it tends to flip up. Steaming it judiciously helps, but acrylic melts so easily you need to be careful.

I could get into this doll clothes thing. The knitting goes really fast and you don't have to worry about her complaints about color, fit or style. She pretty much smiles through it all.