Confessions of an Addicted Knitter

It's official; I am addicted to knitting.  At the beginning of this school year, I began bringing my knitting to work.  While the kids are doing their seat work, I walk around the class knitting and helping them out.  Next, I started knitting during meetings.   No big deal there as I can knit and follow the conversations easily.  My problems really started when I began knitting during my plan time, "Oh, I can get to that grading later on.  I'll just knit a few more rows."  I just can't seem to get enough knitting in during my day (or spinning).  It is now at the point where I have to leave my knitting at home so that I can do my job.  What's worse, is that I resent the fact that I have to work and can't pursue my fiber fun.  Maybe I should seek therapy.  

As for my knitting adventures, I'm still stuck in this doily thing.  Actually, I'm thinking about taking my doily concepts and turning them into round shawls.  I'm seriously wanting to do the whole design thing.  I do a ton of knitting and ripping, playing with different stitches and the ripping again.  I'm loving it.

All this practice is actually starting to pay off.  I'm really beginning to understand how to change from stocking stitch to lace.  Making the transition between the two, and having it look good, has been a challenge.

Here is my latest.  It will eventually become a shawl. 

This is just the center motif; however, I am very happy with the transition from stocking stitch to lace.  Adding the next motif is going to be interesting.  I know what I want to do but having the translate to a nicely knitted piece is a different story. 

Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be able to show the finished product.

Doilies and More!

I'm still stuck on this doily craze.  I am really enjoying playing with the pattern.  Just a few changes in the pattern results in a totally different design.  Here is a modification of of my first design.  To change the center motif, all I did was change the number of pattern repeats and the direction of the decreases. 

I am fairly pleased with how it turned out.  However, there are a few design pieces that I added in that will be removed on the next go round.  These guys here:

I have also been busy spinning this weekend.  My two ply yarns have never impressed me; so, I decided to try my hand at three ply.  OMG!  What a difference three plies makes. 

I can hardly wait to make something with this yarn.  I have about 550 yards at this point.  To really do anything I'll need about 2000 yards.  After I get enough, I'm going to use dye it various shades of purple.  Maybe that will be my task for this next weekend.

Doily Craze III

Well, I have definitely gotten the bug about doilies.  I have spent the past few weeks starting doilies and working about the first 30+ rounds of different patterns to see how they are constructed.  There are lots of little wadded up doily centers about the house.  It resembles the home for coasters in rehab.
Anyway, I decided to jump in and make my own.  Yes, that's correct, design my own doily.  I started of simple with a spiral pattern.  Nothing else but YO, K, YO, K2 K2tog, then YO, K, YO, K3 K2tog, building upon itself.  Well, by row 19 I was really bored.  So, I reversed the direction and added a SSK at the beginning of my motif.  That worked out well but since things were now shrinking in my motif I had to add something in to fill the gap and help the doily grow.
Well, here it is.  I don't know what row I stopped on.  I think somewhere in the 30s.

Since I'm just playing around, I used some left over Baby Ull that I had laying around.
I'm not sure what pattern to add next.  My brain is more focused on how to change the star and make it do different things.  I may just stop here and keep this as an idea and go back and play with the center.  I'm thinking that I would like to see things more curvy and swirly.  I don't know if it can be done but I'm going to give it a go.
All and all, I'm very happy with my first ever knitting design.  Now i just need to transfer the chart from paper to electronic.  I think that will be my project for this weekend.

Doily Craze Continues!

Well, the Hunnicutt Doily design team is hitting several road blocks.  What I thought would be an easy process is turning out to be much more difficult.

Coming up with a pretty design was the easy part.  Translating that to stitches is more difficult.  The problem lies in what look I'm trying to achieve.   For example, I really like the look of a leaf shape outlined in yarn-overs and then that bordered by a single twisted knit stitch.  Well, I'm finding that you can't put in another yarn-over motif next to it.  Or if you can, I haven't figure out a way to make it look good.

Anyway, I have taken to knitting several small sections from various doilies to become familiar with their construction.  I'm hoping that this will help me figure out the best motifs for different geometric designs.

Pictures to come!