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Saturday October 20, 2007

Carmel by the Sea

To breakfast, (and for most of the morning truth to tell), I wore what I now think of as my very luxurious Rowan bedjacket (Carolina - magazine 39) - a good opportunity to show off, I thought, - and our group of knitters did not disappoint with their nice comments. The seminar this morning was on shadow knitting; this is a method of knitting stripes in a combination of plain and purl stitches such that, when viewed at an angle, a "secret" pattern can be seen. There are entire books devoted to the subject, but I preferred the more abstract cushion covers over any form of clothing. We had a choice of what to knit - I did the "piano keys" scarf, and Alison chose the "DNA" scarf.

ShadowKnitting.jpg

For lunch we adjourned to the Forge in the Forest - which is neither a forge nor in a forest - but does (as they advertise) love dogs - the dogs provided some unwanted distraction for our group. I think knitters are mainly cat people.... it seems inevitable.

ItalianWool.jpg After lunch, we went en masse to the woolshop, "Knitting by the Sea", conveniently situated across the road from the restaurant. I bought some wonderful Italian wool - wildly rich in colour and now definitely destined to be Pattern of the Month for December... I was also captivated by some buttons they had in a set of four with the playing card suits on them (heart, club, diamond, spade). This inspires in me some sort of memory - these card or gambling motifs are very fifties, James Bond etc and I think there a lot of retro patterns featuring them. Whether I find anything suitable is another matter; both Alison and I are agreed that any motif in the knitting should be very low key. I was so enamoured of Hollis' merino knitting wool which we used this morning that I plan to buy a cardigan's worth in black perhaps to use on such a project with these buttons....

Alison and I then spent the afternoon chilling out - buying patent cold remedies (Alison), buying sun glasses, (me), and sunning ourselves on a handy bench in the town.

Me_and_Alison.jpg

In the evening it was back to work with the "short rows" clinic.

ShortRows.jpg

We tried 3 methods of essentially wrapping the stitches when knitting back on a short row (such as you might do, say,when turning a heel on a sock). I preferred the conventional method that I am used to, and the second method produced the same result with a slightly different technique. The third Japanese method seemed overly complicated for very little benefit - but some of the group thought it was less visible on the right side of the work (but much more visible from the wrong side). The continental knitters had some difficulty in getting the stitches twisted into the right orientation - but any short row pattern will inevitably be slower to knit than just whizzing away with plain stitches.

ShortRows2.jpg

Note: this isn't Alison's new design for a knee warmer, it's the three methods of short row knitting. Can't really see a difference can you?

Posted by Christina at 9:52 PM. Category: Holiday USA

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