Author Archives: Patti_is_knittinginflashes

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About Patti_is_knittinginflashes

Living and crafting between the hot flashes

Three vs four

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Don’t cut the pizza into eight slices, we can’t eat that many.  Cut it into six.

Same amount.  Just different portions.

That goes for knitting.  At least for me.

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Knitting in the round can be fiddly so the fewer needles to deal with the better for me.  I’ve not mastered using the two circular needle technique.  I prefer to use three double-pointed needles instead of four.  Same amount of stitches, just different portions.

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Fewer needles means fewer interruptions when changing from one needle to the next.

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What do you do?

Casting off another way

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Casting off or binding off essentially means to take the knitted stitches off the needles resulting with a finished edge.

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Depending on what I’m knitting determines the bind off I use.  Sometimes this results in a TIGHT clean edge that does not stretch enough to go over heels, heads, or any other body part.

There are many other ways to bind off and I’m not going to go into those techniques but I will show you what was recommended on the Drinker’s Mitts.

Elizabeth Zimmermann’s sewn bind off:  Cut off a length of yarn about 3 times as long as the knitting and thread it onto a yarn needle. ( Seriously, the yarn should be at least three times as long as the knitting edge you want to bind off.  Don’t skimp on this!)

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*Insert the needle into the first 2 stitches on the knitting needle as if to purl and draw the yarn through.

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Reinsert the needle into the first stitch on the knitting needle as if to knit, draw the yarn through and slip the stitch off.*

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Repeat from * to *.

This leaves a cast on row that looks very similar to a long tail cast on.  It is stretchy and looks even.

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I still need to block these mitts and as soon as I have the other one finished, I will block them…and hope the wonky stitches relax and even out.

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Drinker’s mitts

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Progress on the Drinker’s Mitts…  I tried and tried and tried a total of three times to do the twisted rib and finally gave up.  My fingers aren’t as nimble as they used to be so I just did a K1P1 rib instead.

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My friend wanted these with a red background thus changed the pink drink (strawberry daiquiri?) to a margarita.  I don’t think she will mind.

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I hope my wonky stitches relax once these are blocked.

Wired

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Last month I mentioned that I wanted to fasten hardware cloth to the area under our deck to keep out furry little animals and snakes.

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Repairing the chewed wiring for our deck lights cost us a pretty penny and we want to avoid that problem again.

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This part was done several years ago.  It was cool enough yesterday to finish this side.

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The ground was as hard as cement as we haven’t had much rain lately.

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The rocky soil (if you can call what we have “soil”) and the slope of the ground meant the hardware cloth had to be cut to different heights.  Plus we had a mechanical failure with the heavy-duty staple gun but Mr. Aitch fixed it.

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This side shouldn’t be as difficult as the ground is relatively even.  I want to scrub this section first and will be much easier to clean before the hardware cloth goes on.  Then all of this will be painted black so that it disappears.

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