I hope that the weather change where ever you are has been nice for you be it cooling down or warming up. Here in Eastern Colorado it is still a mix bag. The mornings are cool enough for a shawl or light sweater but you want it gone by lunch. I am very ready for Fall and can't wait for the leaves to begin to fall.
I have finally finished my Sparkling Leaves sweater! There is still no picture of me wearing however because it took a week for it to dry after blocking. I don't have a sweater blocker and didn't see the need until this week. I will be ordering one soon. I didn't have light for a picture last night but will get one this afternoon and post it to IG tomorrow.
Here is the finished sweater folded on my lap. The neck stretched out a bit when I moved the sweater to dry on a chair... It'll be okay until next blocking I think. If not I'll reblock just the collar. If I have to do that I'll have a tutorial here on how to do that.
I have been hard at work on my Journey to the Cape sweater as well as my Bonfire Poncho. I am really enjoying both of them. I don't have any pictures of either of them that you haven't seen yet. The cable pictures from last week are from the sweater and I haven't taken any photos of the poncho in a while. I will do that before joining the to sides this week and share next week.
Both of these pieces have cables and some texture stitches so both are interesting.
This week I also made a small prayer cloth for my best friend, Robbie, who celebrated being clean for a year. Here is a picture of it.
I made the trinity symbol from purl stitches. I wasn't sure how well it would show up on the black but I think it turned out decent in the black and since I charted it free hand. I will probably use this motif again. I filed that chart away in my box of ideas. I will cover in a future post how I try to keep ideas organized so that I can find them later.
So now to get to the point of this post really, charts. I know some of you cringe at that word, just like the word swatch. Ha ha ha! Okay enough of that. Charts really can be your friend, if you take the time to get to know them. They have saved my knitting life again and again.
The most recent save was actually during a test knit, this one. I was struggling with the math of one of the rounds and how the stitches were supposed to work out. I decided to chart it so that in my left handedness I could "see" what was going on. After some experience with charts you will learn to read the chart and it will also help you learn to read your knitting.
I read a knitting chart from left to right on the right side of a piece and from right to left on the wrong side of a piece. A right handed knitter will read the chart the opposite direct for each of those. The idea is that you want to be working the stitches and reading the chart in the same direction. Think of the chart like a fence. A fence has two sides. For the right side, the front you walk down the fence one way, for the wrong side, you will turn your piece around, and walk back down the other side oft he fence, thus seeing a different side. The only time you work from the same direction for both odd and even numbers is when working in the round. Then you will continually walk around a round fenced pen.
Anything that has pictures or letters I have to have a chart to make sure it is correct.
Charts usually take up less space and visually make more sense than word written directions. This is not always the case however. I have worked more than one test knit that prints out at over ten pages and I wondered why didn't they chart this? I soon learned that a chart would take much more space than necessary; either for the empty spaces from the shifting stitches or because there was no true repeat of rows. However on the other end of that I am working that cabled sweater from 6 total pages of directions, because the cables are charted.
Charted cables really are the best way to go with charts, then you know exactly which way each cable is supposed to lean just by looking at the chart. No flipping back to see where the cable needle needs to be, again with some experience.
I use cables for lace, with or with out row or round repeats, as to write lace directions would cause my eyes to cross and I don't think anyone would do lace.
Color work is the most popular for charts, it would be nearly impossible without charts. These are an okay place to start for reading charts, but then you have the 2 colors or more to deal with. Another good place could be something similar that I made like the little pocket prayer cloth above. It is just texture, done all in one color but I did use a chart from both the right and the wrongs sides. If you are interested in it just ask and I'll send you a pdf with directions to get started.
I did successfully start two projects this week. Ri's mitts for Christmas. I have half of a cuff worked. The yarn ended but I'm not sure why but I thought it was a good time to talk to him about length for the cuff. Yesterday he told me he would like it to be twice as long please. So I will finish that this week and start working on the color work.
I also started a new outfit for Dolores, the Sensuous Ewe Caftan. I am hoping to have this finished for her for Utah. I really am enjoying the yarn that came in the kit from Webs. That is one of the biggest reasons I order and make these kits for Dolores, to get to use yarns I probably wouldn't get to use otherwise. I wouldn't order a shawls worth of yarn for myself. I am also working with all different weights, fibers and colors. Helps me get out of the box a little bit.
Next week I'll show you a couple of different ways to work a granny square and talk about differnet reasons and applications for each method.
Until then...
Happy making!
BTW I did get some demo cable videos up on IG if you want to see I'm Azariahs1982
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