Beautiful Spring Jacket At Vanda's Blog

Take a look!  Vanda's Spring Jacket

Vanda and I have exchanged thoughts and patterns, her knitting is impeccable, stylish and elegant.  I enjoy how refined her finishing always is.

From One Blog To Another...Penny Candy Tee

Was reading through Riverside Knitting Blog tonight (Blonde's blog) and ended up clicking on the links as I was admiring Blonde's hand knot socks (Blonde is a great hand and machine knitter).  I ended up at "Yarnings" blog:

PENNY CANDY TEE

Take a look at the great looking Tee's Jennifer has hand knit.  She will also have this pattern on Ravelry.  They are trimmed with lace and knit with sock yarn.  This would be an easy conversion for us machine knitters!

On another note, I could not make it over to Newton's Spring Fling to shop and visit with Diana Sullivan.  Work had it's grip on me and I needed to be here in Las Vegas.  Diana, so sorry I couldn't make the 4 hour drive....I'll surprise you someday!!! 

V-Neck Button Down Vest - The Knit Leader Way

I really like using my knit leader.  If you've got one take it out and get to know it again, it can be your best friend.  Mine is used almost solely for sweaters, vests and similar garments.

Have you ever read through a written pattern and thought this is simple and I can do this?  Then, only to find out somewhere during the project (usually at the end) there were typing errors or you missed something?  Not hard to skip a line when the phone rings, dog has to go out or any other unplanned interruption occurs.  With the knit leader you are simply following a road map row by row, increasing, decreasing and short rowing & etc.  the way you are comfortable with for the results you want.

You are following a drawn pattern one row at a time, if you stop and walk away your place is held for you.  Another nice thing is you can use pre-printed knitting patterns which are similar to sewing patterns.  Caution!  They aren't sewing patterns.  You can use "knit" sewing patterns just eliminate the seam allowance when tracing onto your mylar sheet.

Here, below, is one I just charted out, no tracing of a pattern, instead I traced from two different garments.  Yes you can take a favorite sweater or other item, lay it flat and trace away!

Button Down Vest

I didn't place the edge (center) of the vest on the center line.  This was done intentionally, more on that in another post.  Note how only one half of the project needs to be traced!  The front halves are in the dark blue and the back in orange.  Up the middle is the front band (rectangle) in green which I calculated to be 21 sts wide and 172 cm long.

My friend, Diana Sullivan has a great 2-DVD set she put together on the knit leader, she refers to it as a GPS for machine knitting.  You can check them out and order here:  Diana's Knit Leader Course

Knitting Words

A reader posted a question on my blog post: Electronic Machines Have More Than 555 Built In Patterns

The reader asked how to program in the letters to form words, here is how I do it.

There is no space programmed in between the letters and there is no extra row of plain knitting to indicate you have completed the pattern.  If you are watching the knitting you will see when the letters are finished knitting.  Letters must be programmed in one at atime, you will want to use the letters only in "isolation" knitting.  You can make them double wide and double high.  Words can be programmed in using the isolation setting to form the words.  Remember to test out your programming and see where you need to wrap stitches to avoid holes.

I like using the Garter Carriage for letters, they are subtle, classy and no holes or floats to worry about.