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November 2016

Line up the needles, stock up the yarn, it's that time again.

Big Knit One Six

Gift giving season is almost upon us. Everything takes longer to knit than you think it will, so pace yourselves, stretch those shoulders and stick to small pieces if you can. By happy coincidence I happen to have a wide range of free patterns for small knitted oddities available. *hint hint*

Talking of "Big Knits" remember, remember the Innocent Big Knit is taking place until January. Help raise money for Age UK by knitting tiny little hats for bottles of fruit smoothie.

17/11/2016

Confession

The No Sew Advent Calendar pattern is up and ready. There's a hell of a lot of text in the pattern so I'll need to do some error checking over the next few days. I usually try and re-read patterns before I put them up but I wanted to get it published now while there's still a chance it could be knitted for December.

A Photo Forgery

Now for the confession. This photo is a lie. A horrible horrible lie. I knitted it in red and white because I can't help feeling that that is the most Christmassy of all colour combinations. Then I realised that rather a lot of my knits are red and white, and I needed a way to differentiate. I didn't have the time (or the energy) to re-knit so I photoshopped it blue. Hope it looks OK.

12/11/2016

Pocketses

The past week has been all about pockets, and how exactly one can knit lots in a row without having to sew the little bastards together afterwards.

Usually, if I were going to knit a pouch, I would do it in the round. I could even close up one end by combining/ separating stitches from the sides of the tubes. Therefore no sewing is involved in making a single pouch. I quickly discounted this method for my no sew advent calendar because it would still leave me with two loose end per pocket that would need sewing in. 48 ends is too much sewing already.

Combining pouches knitted in the round.

Instead I could use the double knitting technique which forms a double thick fabric on straight needles. I planned out an a system of pouches in my head, that could then be opened out by knitting a button hole type opening into the fabric. I wasn't sure exactly how to do that in double knitting but figured I could work it out later.

I began by thinking that just knitting a chequered fabric would do the trick. It was all going well until I remembered that while horizontal colour changes bind the sides of the fabric together, vertical ones do not. Instead of making each square a pouch I would be getting tall and thin pouches the entire height of the fabric.

Combining pouches knitted in the round.

Options:

  • Abandon the chequered idea. Outline the pouches with thin lines of alternating colours (one stitch red, one stitch white).
  • Do diamond shaped pouches instead. That way all sides would involve colour changes across a row.
  • Add pattern rows between pouches to bind the bottom edge close.

I was quite attached to the cheques by this point and diamonds meant a lot of wasted pouch space. I decided to go with the extra pattern rows idea.

This also gave me a place to put the numbers. My original plan had been to knit the number into front of the pouch by alternating knits and purls. I gave up on that idea because it never works out as neatly as you think it will. Vertical lines are the problem as an upright of purl stitches on a knitted background tends to disappear due to the way the fabric folds around it. I decided just to work the numbers in alternating colours along the bottom of the pouches to hold them closed.

Trouble is, not all numbers are of a size. The number '1' takes up a lot less space than the number '24' so the first pouch has a lot of open space at the bottom. I mentally added in a few lines knitted in double thickness yarn beneath the numbers. This completely closed the pouches, echoed the cast on edge at the bottom of the piece, and became an easy way for me to double the stitch count after casting off half the stitches to make the pouch openings.

Because I was going to have to cast off half the stitches to open the pouches. I couldn't think of a way to do this without separating the stitches out onto two needles so that's what I decided I would have to do. It's not that much effort if you take it one pouch at a time.

Finally, after planning the entire thing based on the double knitting technique, I decided to use a slightly different method to knit the pockets. With double knitting the sides of the fabric are completely separate only if you are careful not to cross the two yarns as you're knitting. If you do make a mistake it's not always obvious until you've knitted quite a few more rows. An alternative double fabric technique is to knit one colour across the row at a time, slipping half the stitches. With this technique it's much easier to see if you've got the yarn on the right side or not.

I'm actually well away in the knitting of my no sew advent calendar. Hopefully I'll have it done over the weekend. The biggest issues I've had so far is that it's turned out rather larger than I had planned. Still, being able to fit a treat size chocolate bar inside each pocket is not a bad thing.

06/11/2016

Advent Upon Us

Yesterday I bought an advent calendar. I know it's a bit early but I buy soon to avoid a repeat of that one year all the shops ran out by December 1st and I was reduced to labelling After Eights in a festive manor. Yes I still have a chocolate calendar, I am an adult, don't judge.

I've thought about knitting a reusable advent calendar for emergencies, but keep getting put off by the idea of sewing up twenty-four little pockets. I hate sewing up so that's always been a deal breaker.

Thinking about it over the past few days I'm wondering if a no-sew advent calendar would be possible in knitting. After all there are several methods of making double fabrics, if I could work out a way to form pouches with buttonhole type openings I wouldn't need to sew anything. Maybe. Probably. It's an idea.