Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Level One, Here We Come!

Wow, lots of knitters doing Masters Level One!
I’ve been so busy knitting other things, that I only have two swatches done. And I'm only doing Level 1, not II. But Kathy, I agree with you, it seems pretty straightforward. There’s a Masters Group in Anchorage that meets on the first Saturday of each month, for people who are working on one or another level. One of the women who passed Level 1 donated her Level 1 notebook to the Guild library, which is great to have as a resource. I’ve been to two meetings, have looked through the notebook, and have had my swatches critiqued by the people who passed Level 1, so I’m feeling much more comfortable about knitting the swatches. A trick that I learned about checking your tension, on stockinette stitch, is to hold your swatch up to the window or a light, and look at the back of your work. If you can see “gulleys” between rows, your tension is not even, and your swatch will probably not pass muster. In my case, my purling is looser than my knitting, but I found that knitting “Eastern European” style takes care of it – purling by catching the yarn going down, rather than up, if that makes sense. It twists the stitch a little, so that when knitting back, the stitches must be knit through the back to look flat. Not great if one is decreasing and doing SSK, as you have to untwist the stitches first, then knit them together, but it has helped solve my tension problems. I guess I’d better start working on more swatches!

I finished my chemo cap, and hope someone at Cancer Connection finds it to their liking! Kathy, I’ll send it to you in the next couple of days. I had hoped to post a photo, but don't see the icon for adding a photo, today. Hmmm...

If people are looking for a project to follow chemo caps, we might consider knitting something for Lisa in Albuquerque, Team Alaska’s “honorary” Alaskan, as she’s expecting, with her new family addition due in August!

2 comments:

Ketchikan Choc said...

Linda,

Thank you for the suggestion of holding our swatches up to the light to check for evenness. I have trouble with uneven tension and so have knit sweaters with multi-colors or a variety of stitch patterns to hide the unevenness. Now I guess that I will have to learn to knit evenly.

Anonymous said...

Linda,

It must have been your talk of argyle socks that through me off. (Isn't that a level II requirement?)

Anyway, I'm excited that we're all working on this. As soon as I can, I'm going to be scrutinizing my swatches for even-ness ..

I've just started a chemo cap. (So I don't think there's a huge rush.) You can mail them to me at:

Kathy Yurman
8007 Magnolia Court
Juneau, AK 99801