Sunday, September 30, 2007

Left Handed Trials

I started knitting using my left hand to hold the yarn, so I can eventually knit faster. Once my tension started to improve, it did seem easier to switch between knit and purl stitches. When I first started, my tension was horrible, so the knitting looked really uneven. Here is an example. It looks more puffy and uneven in real life, so I'll have to redo both fronts of the cardigan. It's Bianca's Jacket from Fall 2006 Interweave Knits, and I'm using Lion brand Cotton Ease. I actually redid the back too, because my tension was off, which is frustrating. But, I picked this project because it had so much stockinette, and wanted to practice using my left hand. I want to do more fair isle knitting, but it always bugged me that my left hand felt so awkward. Other than that, I've been knitting socks. Single socks only. It's so hard to start knitting the mate, after already doing the project. I don't understand how some people say it takes them only about 3 or 4 days to knit a pair of socks. It seems like it's been taking me months to knit just one sock.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Thousands of Quilted Triangles


Quilt square
Originally uploaded by sphilange.
I've been working on this quilt for months now. I decided I don't like sewing up triangles, so it took me a long time to work on this quilt. Now, it's almost finished, and I just having the actual quilting part. My sewing machine won't do free motion quilting, so I usually just outline the squares. Some of the areas don't work out as well, but so far, this is the most complicated quilt I've made. This is one example square. On the next quilt, I've decided just to do a sampler quilt of all different squares. It's less tedious and I think it would be interesting to try to fit all the different squares together.