Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Struggling with the technical terms

Gosh, Barbara, thanks for being impressed with my soccer scarf! I'm very flattered.

Let's see if I can answer your questions. I'm not very good at the technical terms.

1) I used Cascade 220, a Peruvian Highland wool yarn. Um, it says it's worsted (is all yarn worsted?).

2) I used No. 7 bamboo needles (I love bamboo needles--I wish there was some way they could make circular needles in bamboo.)

3) I don't honestly know if the scarf's intarsia because I don't know exactly what that means. If you explain it to me, I'll tell you whether that's how I did it.

4) Designing the scarf was great fun. There are these amazing (free!) websites where you can put your gauge in and they generate knitting graph paper that fits your exact specifications. You print it out and mark in all your little X's to form the right shapes. Of course, the first few letters took a bit of "tinking" (all right, there was even some frogging) before I got the hang of it. I also had to figure out how to twist the yarns together when I changed colors so that they were firmly anchored (is that the intarsia part maybe?).

I had one thought about your felting problem (and I can see it clearly is a problem in the photo). As your washing machine ages, it loses its ability to heat the water to high temperatures. (I think I could draw a parallel to my own body here but I'm resisting.) Maybe that's why your stitches aren't disappearing?

Okay, back to knitting that @#$%$#$ border!

2 Comments:

Blogger Nancy Herkness said...

Oh wow, Jean, thanks for letting me know about the bamboo needles. I guess my knitting shop doesn't carry them. I'll have to make a request that they reconsider.

Glad you like the scarf!

11:34 PM  
Blogger LauraP said...

I am in awe of anyone who can knit from a charted pattern. My attempts have been pathetic messes.

2:12 PM  

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