Lap blanket attempt

About two weeks ago, I started a lap blanket using a double-bed tuck pattern on my Passap Duomatic 80. Things were going along fairly well, and I love the texture created by the tuck pattern. This is what it looked like about halfway through (assuming a 36″ long lap blanket):

Nice, huh? It doesn’t curl, either, so it’s perfect for quick projects.

Anyway, it was going well until pushers moved and I didn’t notice it. On the right side of the front bed, pushers moved out of working position a few at a time, gradually forming a big messed up spot on the edge of the blanket. Curses!

Not sure if you can see it in the photo (sorry, my camera’s in its death throes), but there’s no saving it. I’m going to frog it and try again, this time watching the pushers after every row to make sure they don’t make a run for it.

Casquette (cabled newsboy cap)

Wow, I just found this draft sitting around in my blog dashboard. Oops! It’s been several months now since I finished Casquette (hat picture and pattern down on the 8th row of that page). It’s a free Japanese pattern from Clover Japan and quite easy to follow once you figure out the brim. The brim is knit as a big stockinette tube, and at first I couldn’t see how that shape would possibly yield the hat shape in the pattern photo. It’s only at the end when you sew the brim into place that it looks right.

I couldn’t take a good picture of myself wearing it (trust me, I tried), so I used the glass head. Very handy, that glass head.

Anyway, the knitting took only about two evenings to complete, but then I let it sit for months before sewing the brim in. I used a piece of flexible plastic from an office folder and it’s working nicely. I followed the pattern dutifully except that I left off the pompom shown in the pattern. Not a pompom type of woman, that’s all. Oh, and I added an extra pattern repeat to make it large enough to fit my huge noggin.

Recent crochet projects

My great-grandmother (hi, Momo!) taught me how to crochet when I was 5 or 6. I loved sitting right next to her watching her hands and then trying to copy it. Recently, though, I’ve had the knitting bug much more than the crochet bug, so I haven’t been crocheting all that often. Until about two weeks ago, that is! I’ve been especially interested in learning how to crochet from charts/diagrams, and with the plethora of cute Japanese patterns that use them, I’ve got a queue a mile long.

Here are the things I’ve crocheted the last two weeks or so:

pattern: Honobono Baby Shoes by Clover Japan
yarn: some unknown cashmere/ramie blend I got from unraveling a thrift shop sweater

pattern: Hana Hana Cotton Summer Bag by Pierrot
yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease, in slate blue and gray; I used one strand of each color held together

pattern: Pretty-colored Bag by Clover Japan (several patterns on that page – it’s the green bag)
yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (the rest of the slate blue stuff)

Right now I’ve got this cute lace slouch hat (another Japanese crochet pattern) in progress, but it’s slow-going. Once I finish packing up my apartment, I should have a bit more time. Perhaps I’ll crochet this on the plane.

Finally some time for Passap tinkering

I didn’t mean to abandon my blog, but I’ve been really busy with grad school. The past few months, I’ve barely had time to knit or crochet, much less try to learn how to use my Passap Duomatic 80. This past week, though, I’ve been playing around with it (when I should be packing up my apartment!).

Thanks to lots of encouragement and advice from folks who’ve posted here on my blog and over at Ravelry, I’ve had some success with the machine. Thanks, everyone!

Here’s my first finished product, a scarf that I knit for a charity drive (organized by the Knitters for Obama group on Ravelry; to be donated to homeless veterans charities). I used four skeins of Lion Brand Magic Stripes in the Denim Stripes colorway, purchased for $1.50 per skein at Big Lots.

It’s a simple fisherman’s rib scarf (lock settings EX/EX), done over 40 needles and for about 1300 rows. I love this machine now! Still can’t get the pushers to move, but I suspect that’s because a deep cleaning is in order.

A day or two before that, I sat down with my clunky old Corona machine to whip up a shopping bag:

This was done with less than half a cone of kitchen cotton and Eileen Montgomery’s Drop Stitch Mesh Bag pattern. Because the pattern is for a mid-gauge machine and my Corona is bulky (8mm, actually), I knit a few more rows. I think that was a mistake, because now it’s enormous! Oh well. I’ll likely use it as a laundry bag or a carry all for bigger items I might have to tote around.

Now I’m eager to play around more with my Passap, but I’m in the midst of moving and have to pack it up very soon. Figures! I look forward to learning more about it later on.

Baby wrap sweater

In January, I started a wrap sweater for my soon-to-be-born nephew, but never seamed it up. This past weekend, I did all the seams and wove in all the ends. Looks like it needs to be re-blocked, though:

Even though I already blocked all the pieces, they’re curling like nobody’s business. (Maybe because I left them untouched in a bag for nearly two months? Nah…)

• pattern: Crossover Top by Glenda Overmann
• size: 3 months
• yarn: Regia 4-ply Color, “Rainbow”
• machine: Brother KH-860

The only things left to do are to put on some kind of border and make some ties. Crab stitch crochet around all the edges? Garter stitch? Not decided yet, but I think the ties will just be i-cord. Gotta finish it soon, though, or the kid won’t get it on time!

Error in newsletter version of Susitna pattern

It’s come to my attention that the version of my pattern Susitna that appears in the Oct/Nov 2007 issue of the Machine Knitters Guild of Pennsylvania newsletter contains a very unfortunate typo. The diagram as they rendered it shows exactly what you should NOT do. If you follow the instructions there, you’ll just get a big mess of tangled yarn.

I asked MKGOP to send out a correction so that people won’t be frustrated by a pattern that doesn’t work, but to my knowledge, they haven’t done so. Click here to download my original PDF version, which shows the correct needle placement.

Here’s the mistake: at the beginning, where the needle arrangement is shown, the MKGOP version shows the needles lined up (i.e., the needles on the main bed are directly over the needles on the ribber bed). This will not work! If you do it this way, the entire bag will unravel, and all your work will be for nothing.

Instead, the needles on the ribber bed need to be between the needles on the main bed, as shown in the original version of the pattern. This is what the diagram should look like:

My apologies for this, but I have no control over MKGOP’s newsletter and its formatting. I was under the impression that they were just going to provide a link to the original pattern, not paste my entire pattern into their newsletter, but apparently there was a miscommunication.

If you have any questions about the pattern, please do let me know. Likewise, if you spot any more typos, either in the MKGOP version or in my original, please give a holler.