Elizabeth was the first to arrive and showed me the awesome progress on her dog afghan. The amount of work that she has put on this afghan is inspiring and impressive. When I looked at all the dogs sewn together, it made me stop and think about all the steps involved in making this blanket: the individual dogs ~ intarsia, weaving in ends, working out the borders, encountering a yarn shortage, emergency steeking (of sorts), and ultimately a border around the border. Wow just doesn’t cover it. There were customers of Cosi coming up to her and complimenting her on the blanket.
Danielle finished her Plymouth Italia Fingerpaints scarf in one week! She made an interesting point about beginners and starting out with a scarf. (She herself started out with a sweater, so she has a good point of reference.) When a beginner makes a scarf, they finish relatively quickly and are happy and motivated to move on to another project. Sometimes when a new knitter starts out with something larger, they don’t get that same feeling and the project can move more slowly.
Personally, I have never felt that a new knitter needs to begin with a scarf. I’ve always felt that if a new knitter is really inspired by a project, that’s the way to go. Maybe this is because I began with a sweater. Back in the day when I learned to knit, you jumped right into a sweater. I don’t think I made a scarf until about 5 years ago.
Now Danielle is onto knitting an infant roll brim hat in Blue Sky Organic Cotton, in colors pale blue and stone. There’s a blanket to follow in the same yarn and colors. This yarn is so soft, it’s perfect for a baby.
Mary and Robin learned short rows today. Mary was working on turning the heel on her second sock (no sss ~ second sock syndrome for Mary) and Robin was working on the instep of baby booties.
Working short rows is a technique that enables a knitter to work curves or angles into otherwise flat knitting. This is done by working part of a row (designated by the pattern) and then turning the work like you’ve finished a row and working across that row to a point designated by the pattern. These two steps are repeated until the desired shape is achieved. So for Mary it is the curve of the heel and for Robin it is the shape of the bootie instep.
We talked about the KAL and Mary mentioned a yarn she liked from the Yarndex search I linked (in a recent post – see knitalong in the categories). Well, the name she called it came out a little jumbly. It took a moment and Elizabeth and I had to channel Mary and think in “Mary” ~ we realized she was referring to Tahki Capri Print. It’s a really pretty variegated ribbon. I’ve been leaning toward using the Loop d’ Loop Fern yarn and know this yarn is tempting.
