Doing The Continental: Why I've Changed The Way I Knit

Unsurprisingly, there is more than one way to knit.  All you are really after is pulling a loop of yarn through another loop that's on a needle, after all.  Everyone holds their needles and yarn differently and so everyone knits in their own way, but you can divide it broadly in to two camps: those who hold their yarn in their right hand and those who hold it in their left hand.

My Mum taught me to knit in the same way as her, with the yarn in our right hands.  This is known as the English or throwing method, but for me I've always found this slow.  I have very small fingers and so when I make a stitch I have to take my right hand off the needle, wrap the yarn and then put my hand back in place to finish off the stitch.  Don't get me wrong, when I got going I could knit at quite a speed, but the hand movements made everything seem laborious and actually took up a lot of room.  I frequently elbowed people when I knitted on buses or trains, and I always felt that there was probably an easier way.

I have some friends here in Pisa who knit with the yarn in their left hand, or the Continental or picking method.  Here's a handy YouTube video to show the 2 different methods: http://youtu.be/_Iu_6gxt7t0

I had given it a try once or twice before but invariably gave up because I couldn't keep the yarn in my hand properly or I got thumb cramp.  One of the reasons I decided I would at least learn to crochet is because the technique involves holding the yarn in your left hand under a bit of tension, and so if I could manage that then perhaps I could manage to do it and hold a pair of needles at the same time.  I needed to find the right project though - something that would take more than a few hours, but not months, and something with a variety of stitches in so I could get the hang of all of them.  The Ishbel shawl I made last month was an ideal project, plus the fact that I was knitting it in such a nice yarn (Malabrigo sock) that it was never going to be a completely unpleasant experience.

I have to say that it took me a little while to get going knitting with the yarn in my other hand, but now there is no stopping me!  A few projects later and I'm not switching back to the English way!  Knitting stockinette is so much faster and ribbing has been so much easier because I don't have to drop one needle to move the wool from back to front and vice versa: just a little flick of the left index finger and the yarn is all ready and in the correct position.  Plus no more elbowing people.  I can happily knit in plane, trains and buses now without needing any extra elbow room!

So here I am, in praise of The Continental :)

More FOs

Just a quick post with some photos of a couple of recent FOs.

First of all, an Ishbel Shawl from Ysolda Teague which I meant to send to my Gran before I left London, but sort-of forgot... oops.  Here it is blocking in the sun:

It was knitted with a lovely skein of Malabrigo sock yarn and is so soft and smooshy.  It was my first project knitting continental style (with the yarn in my left hand).  I'm really pleased and it went quite well. Once again though, the watchword was 'LIFELINES'!

And second of all here's a gorgeous glove and neck-warmer set I made for my sister's birthday.  The pattern is called Cafe au Lait mitts (which is free on Ravelry) and I used the stitch pattern to make the neck-warmer.  This used up the skein of yarn almost perfectly.  It was another one of Flamboyance Yarns' beautifully hand-dyed skeins, this time a DK yarn called Rufford.  It knit up really beautifully and was very happy with the results.

Knit Nation

Last weekend saw the giant bus of fun that is Knit Nation roll back into London once again.  It was a three-day knitting spectacular with classes, a marketplace and a great night of bingo on the Saturday.  I really did have an excellent time.

Let's deal with the sensible stuff first: my class.  It was Knitting With Colour by Susanna Hansson which took place all day on Saturday.  It was £100 and I really had to think a lot before I booked, but I got so much out of it that I'm really pleased I treated myself (there was a lot of treating myself last weekend).

The topics covered in class were intarsia, fair isle knitting, and slip-stitch knitting.  Intarsia was first and it was my least favourite to be honest.  I'm sure one day I will make myself or my Dad an argyle sweater or something and be grateful for the notes and resources Susanna provided.  But I'm not going to hurry that day forward to be totally honest.  Here's my intarsia swatch.  The two yarns were slightly different thicknesses which is part of the reason why it doesn't look great, but the main reason was that I found it very difficult to lock the stitches together at just the right tension when changing colour.

Next was fair isle.  This was definitely my favourite part of the session and the skill I really wanted to learn.  I would love to be able to knit a hat or some fair isle detailing on a jumper because it's one of the iconic knitting styles.  Pre-Susanna, I was too petrified to even have a go.  As you can see from my swatch I started fairly badly, but by the end it was looking quite good.  I have to point out that by the end, I was also on the wine and playing bingo which is why the pattern slipped a bit... Oops.

You can see that at the bottom the floats between the blue and beige stitches are too tight.  Susanna had a great trick to get round this: turn the work inside out.  This means the floats are carried around the outside of the work and so when you turn it the right way out they're a little looser and don't pull the fabric.  Brilliant!

Finally we worked on slip stitch knitting which is quite similar to the brioche work I did on some mitts earlier this year, but it was also really interesting to work with colour.  Susanna pointed out that this is a great way to use variegated yarns in combination with a (semi-)solid or even another variegated skein.  This swatch I did the same slip stitch pattern, but I just changed which colour was the dominant one after the first repeat of the pattern (yes I did have to choose the bright pink skein... duh).  As you can see, with the first repeat, the variegated yarn is the dominant colour and then you just get these sudden flashes of pink.  The second time round, you have the pink as the dominant colour but these great multi-colour flecks from the slipped stitches with the other yarn.  Fabulous!

The class really gave me some ideas of things I'd like to do.  I really enjoyed the colour aspect of the slip-stitch knitting and I'd love to combine that with some of the stitches in my brioche book.  Plus I picked up a really lovely fair isle pattern from P-Hop (incidentally a great charity you should all check out) for a hat that I might think about having a go at when I've diminished the stash slightly...

That's the other thing that I treated myself to last week.  A lot of stash.  Oops.  Well I say stash... I know what I want to make with all of them.  I think.  And I've already started one project.  Let's take you through some photos of (some of) the things I bought.

I've seen this yarn before, but I finally got to have a feel and absolutely loved it, especially in this purple colour.  My Knit Picks City Tweed has already been put to good use to make a Saville Row Cardigan.  I'm sure there'll be more on that in another post.  I'm working the sleeves at the moment.

I also picked up my pattern, yarn and project bag for the gorgeous collaboration London In Stitches by The Bothered Owl, The Knitting Goddess and One Hand Knits.  The South Kensington Shawl design will be a suitable memorial of my trip to London this summer as I seem to have spent far too much time trooping from South Ken tube station up Exhibition Road to something-or-other!  I also picked up some of the Bothered Owl stitch markers with a cake theme.  Every girl needs a battenburg cake stitch marker, right?

I also picked up a couple of gorgeous skeins from Sweet Clement which I am going to use to make a lovely shrug I've had my eye on for a little while.  I just love this colour!

Some other things that I haven't photographed were a couple of books (which I really needed), some cute shell buttons and a skein of Manos del Uruguay which I have plans for.  Plus I sort of bounced on Julie Tilly Flop and bought some of her cards, a tea towel and a print for my wall....

Finally, the great thing about the weekend was meeting up with loads of fabulous knitters.  There are so many people I know only via stalking them on Twitter, Ravelry or their podcasts so it was really wonderful to put even more names to faces :)

Stitched Science - The Big Event

I had such a wonderful time at Stitched Science last weekend at the Science Museum in London.  For some reason, I volunteered to help everyone set-up and get ready, plus pack away.  It took me until Wednesday to recover!  But it was all worth it for an absolutely fabulous two days last weekend when the visitors were in the museum!

It was slightly surreal to see my work which I mostly just giggled at in proper showcases in a proper museum.  As well as the Bunsen I blogged about previously, I also managed to knock together a telescope + accompanying dome.  And when I say knock together I really mean knock together.  I think the thing was basically help up more by pipecleaners, cardboard and my enthusiasm than anything else.

I would not recommend taking any data on this!

I want to say thank you to Lauren and Natali at Stitch London for letting me be part of their wonderful event, plus all the lovely knitters I know via Twitter and/or Ravelry who I met face-to-face for the first time, often with their kids in tow too.

I did take some photos of the event, but to be honest, the best pictures are over on the Stitch London blog and their Stitch Up.  Definitely check out the photos of the individual pieces that people sent in and are posted on the Stitch Up feed.  Some of them really are works of art, especially Jenny at World of Woolcraft's pieces which were so creative and a real fusion of art and science!

I really did have so much fun and I really hope I get to do an event like this again soon, combining the two things I love the most - science and knitting!  Hurrah!

World Wide Knit In Public Day 2011

Knittable had a wonderful day yesterday starting at Francesca's Bottega della Lana in Viareggio.  The new shop looks fabulous and we all enjoyed knitting while drinking prosecco!  Grazie mille a tutti!

Viareggio

Knitters at large

We started off knitting outside, but the day was so windy, especially since Viareggio is on the coast and gets the sea breeze too, that we ended up on some tables inside the shop with the doors open.  Everyone was working on their own projects and having a good nose about some of the wonderful yarn.  I really had to be a very good girl and not buy anything, especially with Knit Nation coming up!

I had my own project to work on - a little yarnstorm at the Leaning Tower based on Whodunnknit's Flutterguy pattern which was created for Stitch London's Stitch Crawl last weekend.  It's a fabulously easy pattern and a great excuse to break out the colourful acrylic and use up some of the pipecleaners I have left over from another project (more on that in another blog post).  I hatched up 3 little guys to set free in the afternoon when the location shifted back to Pisa and we took up position between the cathedral and the Leaning Tower.

Three flutterguys getting set to brave the journey back to Pisa

Get out of my prosecco!

So here we have the final 3 flutterguys making a bid for freedom in the strong breeze.  Nestled at the foot of the Tower I hope they amused a few of the tourists.

It was so breezy we kept losing the googly eyes!  Poor pink and blue flutterguys ended up blind!

Stitched Science

I would like to draw attention to something that Stitch London are up to in conjunction with the Science Museum in London for an event in June.  Basically they are combining stitching and science into one weekend of awesomeness.  I am desperate to be there!!  They are looking for volunteers to stitch anything inspired by science.  I thought I'd share my first contribution since I was lucky enough to be in London last week to drop it off with Deadly Knitshade.

Crocheted chemistry set anyone?

Of course, I have an astronomy-related idea up my sleeve as well, but I've got a couple of things I want to finish before I start on that!  For more information on how to join in check out here!

Tropical Orchid Thief Scarf

 Time to show off another finished object.  This is my interpretation of Ysolda's Orchid Thief Shawlette pattern from Brave New Knits.  It's the first pattern of Ysolda's I've knitted, my first time working totally from a chart and it's definitely the most challenging lace pattern I've done so far.

This was such a learning experience.  I can't tell you how much I learned about knitting!  Firstly, life lines life lines life lines.  These, for the uninitiated, are when you weave a bit of plain cotton thread through your knitting at a point you're happy with.  The extra loops from yarn overs, knit 3 stitches together, slipped stitches etc make it difficult to unpick lace if you've gone wrong as I found to my cost.  Taking the time to place the life lines every 10 rows or so, or at the end of every chart repeat means that if you go wrong you can just rip back to that point and it will be easy to pick up every stitch because there'll be a little bit of cotton threaded through it.

The second thing I realised is that chart knitting is nowhere near as scary or confusing as I thought it was.  Once you've learned what all the symbols mean and got to grips with what's repeated when it's actually not as traumatising as I had got the impression it would be.  I had charts 3 and 4 as electronic copies from the errata to the pattern and it was easy to align the line I was working on with the bottom of window on the computer.  This made is very easy to follow and not get lost.  As you progress, you just scroll up the screen one line at a time.

Another thing I realised is how important it is to read the pattern and understand how the row before links to the row you're knitting.  It's very easy to go wrong by forgetting a simple yarn over or not passing a slipped stitch over another.  If you're aware that when you reach a certain point you should be seeing the effect of that on the row below it's so much quicker to fix than unpicking hundreds of stitches.

Finally, at least for now, I learned how important blocking is.  Normally I'm quite lazy about this sort of thing and I'll just run things over with a steam iron to open everything up, but this scarf really needed a proper soak and then pinning out.  I was so pleased with the effect it might even induce me to do it more often!

But enough of the waffling... Here's the finished object.  It's knitted with the Kismet yarn from  Flamboyance Yarns.  This is a 4ply 100% blue-faced Leicester wool and the colourway is called Fourth Dimension.  I absolutely fell in love with the colours when I first saw this yarn and I wanted to use it for something special, rather than just another pair of socks that no one will see.  I toyed with the idea of making a hat for a while, but that would have left a lot of yarn still to use, so I was pleased when I found the Orchid Thief Shawlette which uses almost the whole thing.  Actually there was a point with about 7 rows to go when I was worried I wasn't going to have enough, but it worked our perfectly.

I love it.  I hope you do too!