Stranded
First off, a blog migration update:
Slowly but surely, I’m moving my comments over to my new blog home. I have to do it manually (see my lightbulb moment in my last post). Meanwhile, Wordpress has released their upgrade, and I hope to install that soon, so I don’t want to bother moving the rest of the comments since I’ve just done my pre-upgrade backup . Once I get all the comments moved, I’ll shut down the other blog and redirect any traffic over here. I’m sure happy with my move so far!
And now the knitting:
As far as knitting goes, I’ve been slowly plugging away at my 2nd stranded knitting project. I’m knitting the small leaf hat from Ruth Sorensen’s packet of hat patterns that she put together for the Madrona Fiber Arts annual retreat. I didn’t take her class there – instead, I purchased the patterns at Acorn Street, a local resource for Kauni yarn. My first stranded project was also from this packet – at this time it’s serving as the header for this site. Unfortunately, as my first ever stranded knitting project, it ended up being too small. This is due to the fact that my initial gauge swatch and subsequent calculations were based on flat knit un-stranded stockenette. Unfortunately, my stranded knitting knit in the round, turned out to be much tighter. Although I’m very happy with the way it looks, it doens’t really fit my head. I’ll hang onto it as a sample, but unfortunately will not be able to wear it. See the photo of both below.
I’ve long wanted to learn stranded knitting but only recently felt ready for it. Sure, I’ve been knitting for 4 years, but due to my hobby ADD, I’m not a very prolific or focused knitter, so have stayed at a level of just beyond beginner. Now that I’ve attempted it, I’m hooked. One reason I want to stick with it is the fact that it really is part of my heritage, being of Norwegian (and Viking) descent. I’ve always admired the Scandinavian knit motifs so it’s really fun to know that I can recreate them myself! Now I’m off to continue perusing the “Stranded” group gallery at Ravelry…