Friday, January 28, 2011

A Chemo Cap for a dear friend

Went through the stash last night and found the ball of white "Oh, My!".  Or at least that's what I think it is.  It's definately all acrylic or poly something, very white, extreemly Soft.  Wound it up into a center pull ball (by hand) and placed the ball inside a "yarn bra?" to keep it from unwinding too fast.  Remembering from working with this before, it is sooooo slick it unwinds itself and gets horibly tangled.
I started off using 2 circular needles of the same size because I had them and couldn't find the double pins the right size and the metal double pins tend to fall out with yarn this "slick" anyway.
Cast on 7 stitches by holding both needles parallel and looping the yarn around each alternately. 
(Note: look up what the name of this technique is, learned it from a sock knitter.) 
Why 7? 
8 sections in a cap is too flat topped for my taste because it increases too fast.  6 sections is too pointy, IMHO.  And, Because it's a spiritually significant number.
1:  Join the round without twisting.    (Actually, that's not quite a right description of what is done, but it's what all the patterns say to do.)  Place a marker at the join and that will be the beginning (and end) of each round.
2:  K all  (there should be something in here about knitting in the front or the back, because doing it the wrong way will "unloop" the cast on stitch and leave a hole)
3: Knit in front AND back of each stitch.
4: K all
5: *K1, K in front and back*, repeat 6 more times = 21 stitches
6: K all
7: *K2, K in front and back*, repeat 6 more times = 28 stitches
..

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Scientific Method? AND Knitting?

Where will be posted what each experimental step is as we go along "unventing" some knitting as Elizabeth Zimmerman might say