SOOO much knitting . . . SOOO little blogging

It's been almost two weeks since I posted and WOW have I been doing a lot of knitting. First of all, I finally cast off the Branching Out Scarf. I love this pattern, but I watched way too much TV and made way too many mistakes to have knit this bad boy out of mohair. If you're not willing to pay attention, then BACK AWAY FROM THE MOHAIR! Here's she is getting a little sun in the garden














Speaking of the garden, all was well in our little bucolic wonderland. Our lettuce was tasty, our zucchini coming in nicely, many tomatoes were on the vine and then . . .

These all over. Eating holes in our rose pedals, in our rose leaves, in our sedum, our basil, our tomatoes! What the devil were they??? Thanks to the wonders of the internet we were able to identify them as Katydids.

So now we know what they are all we have to do is follow the remedies outlined in all the clever gardening web pages. Here are the suggestions culled from all over the net.

1) Release toads (on our roof garden in Brooklyn)
2) Let the field mice eat them
my FAVORITE

3) see if you can borrow some chickens for a few days.

Any gardeners out there know a remedy that doesn't involve releasing mammals or foul onto our roof???

Last Saturday I took my first session of Machine Knitting at FIT. It was really hard and frustrating to get the hang of. The weird thing about knitting on a machine is, it's the cast on and cast off that takes all the time. The knitting is nothing! Our teachers were so patient and knowledgeable. Here's the class room


And some random yarn pics (who could resist when faced with shelves and shelves of yarn!)

























Here's the machine we worked on. It's a Brother 850















Despite all the frustrations of the first day . . . ripping out and starting again, and learning a whole new language, I still knit two sleeves (at a 9 st/inch gauge) in one day. CRAZY


The cuffs of the sleeve and sweater bottom look just like K1 P1 rib, but it's a mock rib. It's just a tube of stockinette knit on every other needle.


There's one thing the machine doesn't do for you . . . finishing (UggggggH). Still gotta do that the old fashioned way. We took home our sleeves to seam them up. The next session was going to be the sweater body.

In the week between the machine classes, I was quite happy to pick up my needles again. I finished the cutey little Debbie Bliss Bolero. It was a fast little knit (although the machine knitting teacher was quick to point out I could "knock that out in a few hours")







I truly adored working with the Rowan Purelife Cotton. This is the softest, dreamiest cotton I've ever worked with. And the subtle color variations are really pretty.

Yesterday was the second session of Machine Knitting. We made the front & back of the sweater. Here it is just waiting for finishing

Today was the final day and we learned increases and decreases, we made silly little leaves and flowers, and I practiced de-knitting, and dropping and picking up stitches.

Then it was time to take the tour of the Dr. Suess like knitting lab. There we saw whozitz and what nots, dodads and thingamgigs.

Strande and wonderful machines that did strange and wonderful things. Here are a few of my favorites.







Here is the industrial machine that can knit whole garments (seams and all). Our teacher had made a piece of lace that took her 10 hours on the machine, then after programming the computer on the industrial machine, it kicks in out in about 15 min


Here's a video of the machine in action and then a picture of the lace panel as it comes out of the machine




Here are a couple of insane looking sock knitting machines



Finally it was back to the classroom, where I sat and did my finishing while listening to the teacher tell us about the different machines. If I do every buy one, it will be the Brother 260 bulky. I will NEVER put down my needles, buy I could see myself doing a combination. For instance, I could have put the bodice of the Feather and Fan cardigan on the machine and used the machine to knit the miles of stockinette at the end.

Here I am wearing my two day sweater with my teachers


It looks a lot better on David (who I made it for)





After all that time with machines, I rode the subway home, picked up my needles and knit all the way home.