I Think the Magical Yarn Babies Have Taken Residence in My Stash, However (The VogueKnitting Live 2016 Debrief)

Another year, another VogueKnitting Live debrief. Luckily, nothing else was going on this year behind the scenes.  That also means I have no excuse for purchasing a package and spending over $100 dollars to go and spend more money. Oh well. 

In General
This year was a lot saner than last year.  Well, not in the amount of yarn I bought, but in what they were offering.  I don't know if it's because I spend all of Sunday attending class and lecture and was distracted but both all the pretties and other people on Saturday and therefore missed the crazier stuff (well, OK, crazier than this thing:

), but it still seemed like what they were offering was rather tame. 

The Class and Lecture
So, because it turns out that with VogueKnitting's price increases this year, it only cost me around $10 more to buy a class/lecture/marketplace package than buying the marketplace and class al la carte, I did so. It doesn't help that the package is called the Times Square Day Tripper Package. Because that's exactly what you want to be doing as a native New Yorker, going to Times Square.  On a weekend.  Where all the tourists and wonky, shady characters are.  I might still be a bit sour that VogueKnitting moved to a hotel smack in the middle of Times Square, meaning I have to go through there on a weekend, but anyway...

The Lecture
I signed up for the lecture called Knit to Flatter by Amy Herzog.  Now, lectures always feel a little stunted to me, but that's simply because they're only a hour long, and most of the people giving them are used to classes.  This has nothing to do with this lecture in particular, by the way, it's just something I've noticed from the past two lectures after taking a lecture and a class back to back for the first time.

However, this lecture was semi-interactive and funny, and made some good points.  It turns out what she was discussing (how to make a sweater that you would wear 'out to lunch with a non-knitter') is something I've already done, however, her point about fabric behavior being crucial was something I don't think I fully appreciated before.  Also, the statement that (and I'm sure I'm paraphrasing a bit here) 'the yarn's not growing [when you block it]. It's not making magical yarn babies' will forever be in my vocabulary (it was also used in the context of pilling, as in 'when the sweater pills, it's not making magical yarn babies, that's material from your sweater'.  I knew that, but that way of putting it is still funny).

The Class
First off, all the really interesting classes this year seemed to be scheduled for Friday, which kind of sucks.  Even if I could have taken off of work (I couldn't have this year anyway because I was too busy in company-approved training on how to build iPhone apps), I wouldn't have.  However, I did find a Sunday class similar to one I spotted on a Friday date at first, and that was Seams Like Surgery by John Brinegar.

The good news is that the class was good.  It was well-taught and led, we laughed at jokes and, for me, I learned some decorative seams as well as how to better due mattress stitch.  It turns out I've been doing it pretty well, but his way of thinking about the instructions really helps with porting the technique away from stockinette.  I was immediately able to seam a garter stitch item much better afterward despite that not technically being taught.  While I will say I probably could have learned most of the material off of the Internet, I still don't regret taking the class.

Fashion Shows and the Panels
Honestly, I didn't catch too many fashion shows this year, and absolutely none of the panels.  Actually, I don't think they had any traditional panels this year.  The had events like participating in extreme knitting! (no thanks; I like my needles smaller than I am) and...I don't remember.  Anyway, I did catch part of one, and two other fashion shows and they were pretty meh.  Nothing too crazy.  Nothing standard or overly practical either (after all, this is a fashion show and when is fashion not overly artistic over practical), but nothing that made me go WTF?!?

If anyone from VogueKnitting is reading this, let it be known: I like the WTF?!? stuff; the best part of what makes VogueKnitting VogueKnitting was making fun of some of the stuff considered fashion.

Anyway, there was a couple of questionable items, including a really bulky garter stitch cardigan (what is it with rug-looking cartigans?):

And a very bulky, very glowing, hot pink shawl-scarf:

Otherwise it was your standard sparkly shawls and batwing sweaters that make the model look like they have short stubby arms, and as normal items that you're going to get that meet current trends. Oh well.

Purchases
Beyond my quickly-becoming-normal behavior of 'buy all the yarn for all projects I want to do now and then some!, in the early hours of being there Saturday this is the exchange I had with my mom over text:

Me: LOL I found self-striping yarn that looks like watermelon
Mom: Interesting.  Are you at Vogue?
Me: Yes.
Me: Want something?
Mom: Yarn for the baby blanket pattern you sent
At this point, I'm thinking 'this is the wrong place to look for yarn for a baby blanket', but this is my mom, so...
Me: Ok, will look.

So I got stuck running around the marketplace, desperately trying to find a DK like yarn that had enough quantities to make a baby blanket.  Now, there's two things about VogueKnitting that I don't know if my mom gets: 1) it's mostly mid to upper range yarn that is the type to not have dye lots and be hand-painted (oh, and good luck finding one that can be washed) and 2) there's usually limited quantities at shows.

At one point, I asked my mom what her budget for this was, because I was finding really nice superwash yarn where the vendor had multiple skeins, but it was all at least $25 dollars a pop. Her answer was '$100 or so', so that cut those out. I ended up having to get three different colors of Malabrigo Rios at the Knitty City booth of all places (I try not to spend all my money at the local yarn shop booths; I can go to them here if I want and there's other vendors you can't get anywhere else attending, but sometimes they have the right stuff when you want it), because there wasn't enough of any of the colors I liked. 

I ended up sending her another pattern to consider that used three colors as well. I also ended up buying her a present:

Because the joke is funny alone, it's even funnier when carried by a crocheting dietitian.

Oh, and despite this being the wrong place to buy yarn for a baby blanket, I also bought yarn for a baby blanket.  Mine costs a bit more than $100 dollars, but it was perfect and superwash, and came in bigger skeins so I didn't need as many of them and my yarn budget gives up.

Conclusion
All in all, I had fun.  Sure, the fashion shows are getting boring and their free non-marketplace offerings were slim this year, but the class and lecture made up for that (despite having to pay extra for those). I really need to stop buying all the yarn, though, despite the fact that I did need a bit of it this year as I didn't have anything suitable in my stash.  And I am using it now, so this isn't a 'shove in there and leave it for two years' situation.  Well, maybe the yarn I bought for myself with no pattern in mind will be that, but half of it won't.

We'll see what next year brings.

Beats the Record

I finally finished my longest running project:

Recognize this?  No? That's the blanket I made out of all the garter stitch log cabin squares that I started back in January...of 2012.

Yeah.  Then again, I could have had it done months ago.  It's not that the blanket took forever, its that things don't get done if you don't work on them part that took forever. The squares, since I picked them up and put them down a lot, took a good two years on their own.  The border took a year, technically.  If you remember, I sewed up the blanket during the Olympics last year and almost finished the border a few months later.  But I ran out of black yarn.  So, to avoid buying more, I borrowed some.  Except it was Red Heart. Which, by the way, doesn't work too well as Red Heart is a lot thicker than Simply Soft.  So while the blanket was techically done, it flared out at one of the ends due to the other yarn.  So it again sat there, with a plan to get more Simply Soft and re-knit the last ten rows. 

I finally got the yarn about four or so months ago, and then it took me until last month to finally go 'this isn't staying here any longer on my couch like this' and do it.

Just in time for me to have to use it because throat infections suck. So, it's useful, at least?

Knitting by Structure, Part 2: All About Stitches

Introduction

As I stated in my series introductory post, the first step in learning how to knit by stitch structure is actually learning what stitch structure is.  After all, you need to know what you're aiming for before you learn how to do it.

Now, this isn't going to be an in-depth look at knitted fabric and how stitches behave in it.  I'll touch upon a few high-level items there, but that's not what we're really concerned about at the moment. What the student needs to get out of this is two things:

1. A basic understanding on how yarn becomes stitches becomes knitted fabric, and
2. The parts of a stitch, both active and in the fabric. 

For many people, a deeper understand will come with time and practice, so if you don't quite get it, it may be helpful to continue on and re-visit once you've gotten to the point where you have needles and yarn in your hand (or have knitted a thing or two after learning this, if you're already a knitter).

Fabric and Stitches

Simply put, knitted fabric is just a series of interlocked loops called stitches. This is easier pictured than described, so here's a diagram I found on Wikipedia (click to go to source):

Now, this happens to be the knit side of a piece of stockinette fabric, but it all works similarly (though looks different) so I'll ignore that for now.  Typical hand knitted fabric is produced by holding a set of 'active' or 'live' stitches on a needle, and using another needle to pull a piece of yarn (that is as continuous as you can make it) though the active stitch, creating a new active stitch.  You then drop the old active stitch and repeat the process on the next one.  What this does is what the red line above symbolizes: creates a row of stitches that is in reality a part of a piece of yarn looped through another part of the yarn to create a fabric.  These stitches remain active until you either create a new stitch through that stitch, or you complete a process called binding off.  To get the first set of active stitches, you complete a process called casting on.  Binding off and casting on are things you'll have to learn, but they're out of scope here.  The only thing you'll need to recognize with casting on is that it'll create a series of loops that you'll treat as normal stitches.


There are two major actions in hand knitting that one uses to produce a stitch, and unfortunately they're also called stitches (you'll find that there's a lot of things call stitches in knitting.  They are not all the same thing).  The knit stitch, as shown above, is when the working yarn is pulled through from the back to the front of the active stitch.  The purl stitch, on the other hand, is when the working yarn is pulled through the front of the stitch to the back..  You might notice something here, which is basically these actions are opposite sides of the same coin.  If you perform the action of a knit stitch on one side of the fabric, the stitch is a purl on the other side.  If you purl it, its a knit stitch on the other side.

And this is pretty much the whole basis of knitting.  Everything else is variation.  For example, I mentioned that the diagram showed a piece of stockinette fabric (which is also called stockinette stitch...yeah, I know).  Here's a real-life picture of it:

 Look at the diagram and/or the picture. Can you figure out how the stitches build to create that?  Basically, stockinette is just where you perform the knit action into another knit stitch for all the stitches (or a purl into a purl stitch, if that's what's facing you).  This causes all the knit sides of the stitch to face one way and the purl sides to face the other way.

Another common fabric type is called garter stitch, and it's the opposite of stockinette in a way.  Garter is produced by knitting into a purl stitch and vice versa, which creates rows of stitches that alternate which side is facing where:

Anything more complicated fabric type than this is the same way.  It's just an action creating a stitch where the knit and purl sides face specific directions in a repeated manner that creates a specific looking fabric. And even if you get away from that statement with, say, cables or decreases or some such, you'll still be preforming the same action in the end to complete them.  You either knit, or you purl.  You may switch direction and work through different loops, work through two or more stitches (or something that isn't a stitch), swap the order of the active loops, or whatever.  You still either pull the yarn through back to front, or front to back in the end.

Actually, there is one exception here.  It's call a yarn-over.  All a yarn-over is is an active stitch you created out of thin air with the working yarn by creating a loop without pulling it through anything.  It's works the same way as any other active stitch, and has the same parts.  Don't worry about it though until you get to increases or lace. 

 

The Anatomy of a Stitch

Every stitch you create, whether it's a knit or purl stitch, has four specific parts.  Let's take a stitch from that diagram above, shall we?

The first two parts are that the stitch has a front and a back.  The front of the stitch is the face of the stitch facing you (no matter what side of the fabric you are on...this is important.  The front of the stitch is not always its knit side) when it is lying flat within the fabric and open.  The back, of course, is the opposite side.

The second part is what we call the legs of the stitch.  The legs are the sides of the loop:

Well that's not the best quality there....but you get the point

They are named based on the front of the stitch, that is, the right leg is the leg of the stitch to the right when you are looking at the front of the stitch.  Same for left.

When the stitch is active, one of these legs is also called the working leg.  The working leg is the leg used to orient the needle you're putting the new stitches on. This has to do with the fact that when the stitch is active (that is, it's on a needle), the stitch doesn't lay flat and there's a needle going through the stitch.

To use an active stitch, we must guide the other needle on one side of the stitch or the other due to the holding needle.  The side used is the side with the working leg (in mechanical instructions, it's usually termed in terms like 'going x to y direction through the z side of the stitch').

This sounds complicated but it's not.  The rule to identifying the front side of the stitch and the working leg is thus: The working leg of the stitch is always the one closest to the needle tip, and the front of the stitch is always the side tilting towards you.  In this format, this does not rely on stitch orientation or style or stitch type.  For the sake of working a stitch, this also holds true if the active stitch below is twisted; that is, the stitch legs are crossed and therefore the faces of the twisted stitch is flipped in relation to what was shown above.  This is because that statement isn't in relation to the stitch itself, but the knitter working the stitch.

 

Wait, What's Stitch Orientation Mean?

I'll cover this a bit better in the next post as it's related to knitting styles, but the stitch orientation is simply the way the active stitch is sitting on the needle.  Different styles produce different orientations, but there are two main ones in use.  The important part about stitch orientation that you need to know is this: stitch orientation is dictated by what direction you wrap the yarn around the needle before pulling it through the stitch.  That's it. 

While most mechanical knitting instructions and patterns presume a certain stitch orientation, the whole point of this is that it doesn't.  So don't worry about orientation for now.

Conclusion

So there you have it; the basics of how stitches work and how they create knitted fabric.  If you don't take anything else away from this post before moving on, remember this:

1. Stitches are loops and they have a front and back as well as a left and right leg.
2. Fabric is created by pulling yarn through a previously created stitch in a specific manner.
3. These manners of creating a new stitch are called 'knit stitch' and 'purl stitch' (or knitting and purling).
4. A knit stitch and a purl stitch are opposite sides of the same 'stitch'.
5. Active stitches are the ones on the needle that have not had a stitch pulled through them yet.
6. On an active stitch, one of these legs is called the working leg.  It is used to guide the other needle.
7. Stitch anatomy for all future instructions is based on the knitter's perspective, not the stitch's or fabric's.
8. The working leg of an active stitch is always the one closer to the needle tip and the front is always tilted towards the knitter.
9. Orientation is dictated by the direction you wrap your yarn to create a stitch.

Don't worry if it doesn't make complete sense now, especially if you've never knitted before; once we get to the actual knitting instructions, it'll come together. 

Learn to Knit Instruction Review: Craft Yarn Council's Learning Center

So, what's a web-savvy person going to do when they wish to learn how to knit or crochet?  Search for instructions on the web, of course!  So, my first set of guides are going to be focused on the result of googling for basic instructional guides on how to knit and how to crochet.

To start, I googled 'learn to knit', and got the below site as the first result (no wonder, as one of it's URLs is 'learntoknit.com').  Though the site covers both knitting and crocheting, since I started with learning to knit, this review will focus on the knitting guide first.

The Guide
Name: Craft Yarn Council's Learning Center
URL: http://www.craftyarncouncil.com/learn-home.html, though both www.learntoknit.com and www.learntocrochet.com resolve to the same page as well.
Contains: Guides on learning how to knit and crochet (along with some generic information about both). For the purposes of this review, we're staying in the Learn section of the site.  They have other instructional pages as well.

Summary
If you want to learn to knit well, run far, far away from this site.  The Craft Yarn Council's instructions for learning to knit breaks almost every rule for a good guide, including having incorrect information.  

Detailed Review
I can't say I've heard of this organization before, but the page you start on makes them seem like a good site to learn from.  If you're really curious, you can click on their About link in the top menu bar and see that they're an organization representing different yarn crafting companies (and the companies are listed). Hm, they sure have the resources to put together a good guide, right?

Which makes me kind of confused as to why their knitting guides aren't good at all, at least content-wise.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Since the first page is just a generic 'welcome to our guide' page, we can go over to the left hand menu list and click 'Getting Started'.  Even though that's the second link, I don't  care so much about 'Knit vs. Crochet', I want to learn to knit.

Doing that gets you to this page.  It's pretty basic and lacking in much detail, but I guess it's good enough for what it is.  It covers the very basics of  yarn weight, crochet hooks, and knitting needles...pretty good information to keep in mind, though it would be better if they mentioned how to match the needle size to the yarn weight.

From here, we can either click a link on the new left-hand menu, which lists all the guides for knitting and crochet.  I'm not 100% thrilled with the mixing of the two crafts, but it's not horrible navigation.  Also, they conveniently give you a link to both the 'Basic Knit Instructions' and 'Basic Crochet Instructions' on the top of this page, for which the first link takes you to the first link on the left hand side.

The title of this page is 'Learn Knit Stitch (Garter Stitch)'.  Which would be fine if they meant that they're going to teach the user the knit stitch in order to produce something in garter stitch.  But that's not the case.  The first sentence on this page states:

"The basic knit instructions below will show you how to cast on and to make a knit stitch, also known as garter stitch."

Um, no.  The knit stitch is not 'also known as the garter stitch'.  Knitting every row on a flat piece of work produces garter stitch.  But so does alternating rows of knitting and purling in the round. It the set of knit and sometimes purl stitches that make garter stitch.  Incorrect information on the first instructional page; not a good sign.

They then state that they're going to use an afghan square pattern to teach you how to cast-on and do the knit stitch.  First, why is the cast-on instructions on the knit stitch page?  It doesn't make navigating for reference easy at all.  As for learning in the framework of a project, I have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, it is nice to try to get something good out of your first efforts.  On the other hand, trying to have brand-new knitters make something as the first thing they do is a set up for failure to teach and learn, unless the learner can take from the instructions that maybe the first couple of squares they'll do will be practice, and he/she will know to go on after they get a good square.  Also, this doesn't teach towards flexibility in skill.  Not the worst set-up, though.

What I really have an issue with here is the instructions for what you need.  Do they think they'd get useable squares out of a pattern that tells the learning knitter to get whatever worsted weight yarn they feel like and a pair of US8 needles?  This would have been the perfect place to introduce the concept of gauge and different types of fibers.  You could even tell the learner not to worry about it until they wanted to make a good square even.  But whatever.  The learner has the materials, now what?

Let's learn to cast-on!  To do so, let's learn a version of the Knitted Cast-On without telling you it's a version of the Knitted Cast-On.  It's the only cast-on ever, until you need a different one.  Strike two.

Of course, after only teaching the only way to cast on is teaching the only way to do the knit stitch.  Just like the instructions (which aren't bad) for the 'cast-on' used English style, they're teaching English style knit stitch (which, again, the instructions themselves aren't bad).  Without even stating that it's a style.  Why does it seem like all the guides teach English style as 'the' knitting style?  I don't get it.

So the learner gets done with their first row of knitting.  Yay.  Now here comes this lovely gem:

"Now measure your work. It should be about 7" wide. If it is too wide, start over and cast on fewer stitches; if it is too narrow, start over and cast on more stitches."

What?  No!  You NEVER measure a piece of knitting that's that close to the needle unless you're only looking for a rough estimate of width.  Your measurement WILL be wrong because having the stitches on the needle spaces them out differently than in the fabric alone. Who's bright idea was it to put this line in here?  Also, telling someone who just knit their first row to make sure it's the proper width and rip it out and guess how many more or less stitches to put on to get the right width is really, really bad thing to do.  How are they supposed to guess how many more or less stitches to put on?  If you were worried about the width, maybe you should have talked about gauge and had the leaner practice on a swatch, huh?  That way, they would know how many to cast-on in the first place and they would have some practice with knitting already.  But no, they just now have a frustrated leaner constantly ripping out their work because they're too busy guessing things. Hell, you don't ask a experienced knitter to do that if you don't have to.

So anyway, we get past that, knit the square, and get to the binding off instructions (which also aren't knit instructions, but if the cast-on's here, might as well through in the bind-off as well). The instructions are straightforward and detail the most common bind-off.  Unlike cast-on's and knit stitches, I don't really expect guides to cover alternate bind-offs, because they're pretty situation specific, and 9 times out of 10 you'll only need the standard bind-off (I don't even know if it has an actual name).  Acknowledgement of other bind-offs would be nice, but hey, they couldn't even cover any other standard cast-on so that's to be expected.

It also would be nice if there was a link on the bottom of the page that went to the purl page, but nope, got to scroll up to the left-hand menu bar to get there.

The funny thing here is that on this page, they acknowledge that garter stitch is the product of knit stitches instead of the knit stitch itself (by comparing purling every row to it, which, of course, is another way to get garter stitch).  The actual instructions here are simple and, other than maybe numbering the actual steps, is perfectly good.  Other than the fact that, again, they only show English style but call it 'how to purl', but that was to be expected at this point.

The last three pages in this guide cover increases, decreases, and the yarn over.  Unlike the rest of this guide, they're actually decent.  Both the increase and decrease guide covers two different ways of doing so, and even state that there are many other ways, but here are two of them.  The instructions are pretty clear (which is about the only consistently good thing about this guide), and they even mention the idea of the increases/decreases slanting one way or the other. The only issue I see is that on the increase page, the left-hand menu bar disappears, so I have to go back to the last page to get to another page in the guide.

In conclusion, I don't recommend this guide.  Despite no issue with the descriptions of the steps themselves, the guide itself, and especially the knit stitch page, is set up to confuse at best, and frustrate at worse.  There are factual errors and oversimplifications, and a couple of basic topics are not covered (like gauge and matching needle size to yarn size).  It may have some use for a quick 'how do I decrease again' type question, but that kind of information can be found in many places, most likely easier to find than this site.

In Which I Learn the Importance of Researching Before Pattern Writing, and Get Addicted to Garter Stitch

So, my plans once again get made, and the fall into the dust.  I should be working on either the baby sweater to be made with my new yarn, or the crazy cable blanket, but I'm not.  Actually, I've managed to start another project in the meantime:

This is from a pattern in 60 Quick Baby Knits called "Log Cabin Afghan", except that I'm altering it.  The square is actually supposed to have two more blocks of color going around it, but I decided I didn't want to do that and stopped early (yes, I know that means more squares will have to be done.  But it also balances out color usage).  That, and since I'm using whatever yarn I have right now, which is mainly Caron Simply Soft with some Berocco Vintage for the middle square, the squares aren't all going to be the same color (though I haven't decided what to repeat or not yet, still thinking about it.  Also, I do not kid myself that at some point, more yarn will have to be bought to finish this).  As well, despite the pattern source, I doubt it's going to any baby.  My color scheme of worsted weight yarn in my stash isn't exactly baby friendly.  Thirdly, I really should learn to read patterns carefully before starting them.  You see the pile of center squares?  That's because I didn't realize that you didn't bind off on the first square, but kept knitting, and then turned.  I'm having to undo the bind off and then continue for all those squares because someone didn't follow instructions.

You would think I would have been driven mad by all the garter stitch done in those squares (and hell, I'm not even a big fan of garter stitch as a look), but I'm oddly addicted to it right now.  I guess my mind just needs something not complicated.  I've had better weeks.  At least it'll be a better project to work on during the Super Bowl.

In other news, I was pretty much done with the baby hat pattern I posted just now last week, except that then I actually bothered Googling 'Mistake Rib'.  You see, I learned a 1x1 version of mistake rib that wasn't reversible, leading me to decide to make a 'brim up' and a 'brim down' version of the pattern.  Then I found out that proper mistake rib is a reversible pattern.  Oops.  I could have saved my ass from having to do two hats (though doing the second hat reveled some other math-related mistakes in my pattern, so it still wasn't a waste of time).  However, changing it now would dictate a completely different pattern, as the math doesn't work out with my current stitch count.  So I apologize for that.  I could have made it easier, and I didn't.  I really should do my research before embarking on pattern writing wild goose chases.  It's because of this that I almost didn't post the pattern, thinking that it shows that I'm a bit of an idiot.  But I put a descent amount of work into it, so I decided to post it anyway.

However, between the pattern below, the squares, and some idea sketching for the baby sweater (which I'm most likely not going to use, but anyway), I haven't had time to do much else.  It's odd. I've gotten a lot done, yet it seems like I haven't done anything.  Oye.

Depressing post is depressing.  Will have to post later when I'm in a better mood.