It turns out that when you work charts the right way, they turn out correctly. I should know that, right?

This hat is nowhere near perfect. The original chart was square, which of course lead to a hat that was too short. The distortion isn’t too bad, but it will look better next time. I’ve also improved the shaping to be more gradual.

I’ll tackle the southern hemisphere soon. It should be easier - the Mediterranean was a pain!

I’ve been wanting to knit a pair of hats, the southern and northern hemispheres.  I found some Queensland Collection Kathmandu DK tweed that looked perfect.  The colors are perfectly earthy.  I found a map of the world, played around in Illustrator, and made a map 100 stitches wide.

My first problem was placing all the shaping along the edges, which looks great on a map, but would make for a funky hat.

So I adjusted everything to be a projection map, and decided to start work at the north pole. Here’s North America:

Does it look a little weird? Take a look Asia:

That doesn’t look right. Europe?

Darn it. Darn it! I get to rip out all this glorious intarsia and decide if I want to flip the chart or work from the bottom up. Sigh….

I’m working on a new sock pattern, and used a stitch pattern from one of the new Harmony Guides. The book calls for a double decrease worked by slipping one stitch, then knitting two together, and then passing the slipped stitch over. It gets the job done, but I just wasn’t happy with the look. So I did some poking around and found a different double decrease in an old Knitty article.

The original increase was flat, but looked sloppy with that long loop. The new decrease creates a high ridge line that pulls the look together wonderfully. To work this decrease, I slipped two stitches at the same time, knitwise. Then I knit the next stitch, and passed the two stitches two slipped stitches over the one I had just knit.

You can see that the first two “scales” were done with the old decrease, and the rest with the new and improved method. I probably should have ripped it back and done the entire sock in the new method, but I wanted to be able to show the difference in decreases.

And the sock?

Gorgeous. Pattern forthcoming. Any ideas for a name?

The first issue of Knotions just went live, and I am so excited!  Knotions’s tag line is “Knit Smarter”, which is my constant goal with my knitting.  The patterns are gorgeous, and I can’t wait to dive into them.

But to be honest what I am really excited about is my pattern, the Child’s Saddle Yoked Sweater.  I am so proud of my very first published pattern.  Jody has been great about “refining” some of my bad ideas to make a great pattern.

You can see all the details at knotions and on Ravelry. I hope you enjoy!

A few months ago Grumperina did some fabulous tutorials on spiral knitting. Her socks inspired me to play around with some stash yarn and make a baby sweater.  I used one ball of Swish DK in Moss and three in Nutmeg.  The effect isn’t nearly as bold as the original socks, but with more colors you could easily make this sweater as bright as you like!

The key to spiral knitting is that you use all four balls of yarn at once, and each color builds on the next, so that there is never a “jog” in the knitting at the end of the round.  As I worked this sweater I couldn’t help but imagine my yarns chasing each other round and round, but never catching up until the very end, and so of course the classic nursery rhyme “popped” into my head!

Monkey Chased the Weasel is worked from the top down, primarily in the round.  The hems are worked in garter stitch, and the end result is that this entire sweater is constructed using only the knit stitch (and a few decreases).  No purling required!

Any DK weight yarn can be used, in two-four colors.  Using more colors does not increase the difficulty at all, so have fun with color!  You will need between 100 and 200 yds of each color, depending on the size you choose.

Monkey Chased the Weasel is available for download from the sidebar. Just click the picture to get more information.

These socks were born from a flip through Barbara Walker’s Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns, the one with all the cables.  This cable pattern jumped out at me and told me right where to place some increases so that it would fit Cat Bordhi’s sockitechtures from her New Pathways for Sock Knitters book.

This was a rare pattern that just came together perfectly the first time.  The cables pulled in the leg just so, the increases were just enough to make it hug my ankle, and the heel ate up the right number of stitches to make the foot fit like a dream.

Jaime France test knit these socks for me, and she provided the pictures of the noro socks you see here.  Jaime is madmamaknitting on Ravelry, and has a blog.

The socks have had a great reception on Ravelry, with over 100 “hearts” in less than 24 hours.

The pattern is available on Ravelry, on the “Patterns for Sale” page here, and at my Etsy store.  The pattern is written with charts alone.  If you want the pattern but hate charts, let me know.  If there is enough demand I will write out the directions as well.

I decided a few weeks ago that I am just not going to be able to maintain this as a regular blog for two reasons.  For one, I just don’t have the time to write as well as I’d like to as often as I’d like to.  And more importantly, I am hesitant to show off most of my knitting because I rarely know if I plan to self-publish or send out the pattern.

I do have some knitting for you today, though, in the form of my newest socks.  I got the idea for these socks the first time I flipped through Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters.  I took the idea in the Coriolis pattern, and used a cable as the coriolis band.  It took some tweaking to get the band to twist around the ankle correctly, and work out the gauge since the cable pulls in the sock more than expected.  But the rest of the sock is worked in ribbing, which helps balance out the pattern.

The socks pictured here were test knitted by Miki Ballard, and these are her excellent pictures.  The pattern is for sale for $4 on the “Patterns for Sale” link, or on Ravelry or Etsy.

Life has gotten in the way of the blog recently.  In the past few weeks we have lost a car, gained a swamp cooler, witnessed Jameson start pulling himself up, and had way too much stress with my husband’s job.  If you’re a praying person, please pray for the family of this officer.

But I have been knitting, and finished the top-down sleeveless tee.

I am working on writing up the pattern.  It’s obviously a very basic piece, but the construction is unique and makes it very easy to customize to fit.  I want to offer the pattern in a large range of sizes, and so the grading is giving me a little trouble, but I’m nearly done with that.

The pattern is going to be written so that you can simply follow it step-by-step and get a good result, or follow along and make small changes based on how it fits as you work and get a great result.  The pattern should be finished in a week or so.

The really great thing about this shirt is that the sleeves — set in sleeves, mind you, were knit at the same time as the body.  No seaming, no matching.  If you’re like me and love to knit stockinette in the round, this sweater will just fly by for you.  I finished in 11 days, and that includes ripping out the sleeve hems once and the neck twice.  It’s a quick knit despite the fine gauge.

After my last post on the ambigiuty about how large to make the yoke in my sweater, I posted a similar question in the Top Down Sweaters group on Ravelry.  Sidney quickly responded with a quote directly from the  book:

She says “Work both the back and front sections until the length of the piece at the arm edge is just one-third of the distance around the armhole, but no more.” Italics hers. Your outer edge is her arm edge, right?

I had read the page at least three times and yet somehow kept missing those key words, “arm edge”.  And so I quickly made my yoke the appropriate 6″ along the arm edge, which just happened to take me right to the bottom of my neck opening as well.

I then picked up stitches around the arm edges, and have been working in the round ever since.  I love being able to try it on as I go and know that it is going to fit, and fit well!  The sholder area seems a little boxy, but I think blocking, along with the weight of the sweater, will take care of that.  When I write up the pattern I wil l make the top of the shoulder a tad smoother just in case.

I really love the look of the sholder “seam”.  This is a little blurry, but you can see how pretty those increases are.

Now I have to start deciding if I am going to do any short rows at the bust, and what type of waist shaping I want to use.  And how long the sleeves should be, and what kind of edging for the neck….  Oh the possibilities!

I checked out this book from our library again, and I think I’m going to have to buy it.  I just love it, because Barbara Walker seems to love knitting in the round just as much as I do.

I was poking around the set-in sleeve chapter, and discovered that you can do a simultaneous set-in sleeve.  In the round!  Yoke and sleeves all at once, but it’s not a raglan!

So I am trying to design a t-shirt using this method, but I already am a tad confused.  I think this is going to be a multiple frogging project.  The yoke starts with short rows to shape the shoulders, and you are supposed to pick up stitches and work in the round when the piece measures 1/3 of your total needed length.  But the piece is at least two inches thicker in the middle than at the edges, where I would be picking up the stitches.  So where to I measure?  The middle or the edges?

A few people on Ravelry seem to have done this type of sweater, so I’m going to ask them what they did.  I hope I can make this work!