Knitting With Granny LJ

Good morning

I wish you all a great Christmas Day and a wonderful New Year.

Happy Knitting.   Granny LJ

Good morning.

One of the many reasons I started doing this Blog is because I am pretty housebound these days. I have what my friend, Dodie, and I call CBS (Creaky Body Syndrome).  I don’t drive any more so I don’t keep up with friends as well as I used to and I can’t get to a yarn shop and get new yarns and/or talk about yarns and knitting with folks the way I used to be able to.

Since I have been doing the Blog, I have had some responses that have been from friends and/or related to knitting.  However, I have also gotten a vast number of messages that run real high to the letters X, Y, Z and assorted numbers.  Those I have no trouble recognizing as something I don’t want to mess with.  So I drop them in the spam box.   Some of the responses also have the names of medications along with the X, Y, and Z combinations.  These, also, go away. 

But lately, I have received a few that look like they could be from folks who really are interested in what I write about and how I knit the caps and yarns and patterns and all the knitting things.  However, the messages that they leave are short and really not very enlightening and could be spam fishing expeditions. 

A woman I worked with at the hospital was cruising the internet on her home computer and got bit by something that stayed on her computer even after she logged off the internet and shut down the computer  and then unplugged it.  She had to take the computer to one of the computer places in Newport and get the hard drive cleaned off by an expert. 

A little later, after I was doing transcription at home, the daughter of one of the other transcriptionists working from home downloaded some sort a virus that the transcriptionist imparted to the whole system at the hospital.  Made a terrible mess of the hospital computers.  Luckily we had a man running the computer department who knew his stuff and was able to clean out the virus. 

So  — long story short, I am really reluctant to open these spam looking messages.  I do not need to  have some alien from cyberspace painting Red X’s on my computer’s hard drive or some such other thing.

I would love to hear from other knitters though.  And write about the knitting that they are doing or want to do, or plan to do.  I would love to talk yarns and caps or whatever about knitting with you.   But if you are just prospecting for something you will be marked as spam and deleted. 

On the knitting end of things, I have another cap on double point needles and have freed up a circular needle to be able to cast on another cap today.  Am very excited about the plan I have for this new cap. 

Happy knitting.   Have a good day.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

When I wrote yesterday’s Blog entry, I only  mentioned 1 place to be able to find kid cap patterns.  I did that partially because I did not think things through very well and partially because I figured that anyone who would be looking at my site for kid cap patterns would not, probably, have access to a yarn store.  And yarn stores are full of patterns for kids — from the infant up through most of childhood.  And once a kid gets to be a teenager, then they have, pretty much, an adult body.  So please excuse the failure to suggest  your local yarn stores as source of patterns for kids.  Also, now that I think about it, most yarn catalogs I get have patterns for kid caps and other kid clothing, as well.

On to topic 2:  Topping off.

I do a 7-point top off.  And have for most of my capping career.  I do this top off because I like the way it looks and because I hope that it will bring good luck to the person who wears a cap that I made. 

Directions for a 7-point top off:

1.     Count the stitches on the needle.  Remember, too, that I work on circular needles. I count and put markers at the end of each set of 50 stitches. 

2.      Divide the total stitch count by 7.  And a  set stitch  marker at each 7 stitch repeat.  If the stitch count is not evenly divisble  by 7, I fudge and add or decrease the number of stitches necessary to make a count divisible by 7.

3.      Then I switch to double point needles.  The first needle holds 2 sets of the top-off count.  The second needle holds the second 2 sets of the count.  The third needle holds the last 3 of the top off spaces.

4.       I use loops of yarn  to mark off the stitch where the K2tog is to be for each top pattern section.

5.      A handy tip:  When I first started using this top-off method the seams at the beginning of each change of the needles was floppier than the other top off seams.  To make them all beautiful with no sloppy seams, be sure to pull the last K2tog of the needle very tight before starting to knit the next section of top off area.

6.      Work around  doing a K2tog at every marker until the total stitch count is 5.  Two of the double pointed needles should have only one stitch and the third needle should have 3 stitches. 

7.     Move the remaining stitches to one double point needle and the work an I-cord to bring all the areas together in a nice closure.  The length of the I-cord depends on what you want to do with the top.  I leave a pretty short I-cord — maybe 3 or 4 repeats — and pull the I-cord back through the top of the cap when I do the finish work.  If I want to make kind of a nubbin at that point, I pull the I-cord to the top of the cap and just pull the tail of the I-cord through to the underside.   Work in the ends as necessary. 

I don’t do bobbles of yarn on the top of my caps.  For some reason I have a thing about those bobbles.  Other people like the yarn bobbles.  If you do like them then make a bobble and attach it to the top of the cap.

Also, Ann Budd has written a book, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, published by Interweave Press, in 2003, which is a great resource if you are doing caps and other projects.  Also, Interweave Knits magazine, spring 2002, has an article about tams by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts which I have found very helpful in my  knitting efforts.

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

I have been asked about making kid caps.  I have made some, by accident, in the early days of my capping career. 

I have to admit, though, I am a bit of a Johnny-one-note when it comes to knitting.  Especially as I get older.  I make caps basically for adult women.  As I noted above, early in my cap making days, I did not know the depth of a cap for a woman and made quite a few that would work very well on kid’s  head.  And some of them actually ended up on kid’s heads.

I thought that I might make kid caps later on, maybe, after I had explored the possibilities of a cap for an adult woman.   I have several caps from those days that have ended up on my head for one reason or another.  The practical aspect of wearing my own caps is obvious.  I can see for myself what works and what does not.  As a result of wearing my own work, I have fixed  some of the flaws of the earliest caps.

I got started making the Guy Caps because a tourist shop in Yachats commissioned me to make 5 guy caps in guy colors.  So I have kept making them and keep a few in my inventory like the Inside-Out caps.  And some of my Guy Caps have actually found a home on a woman’s head.   

However, I have not started making kid caps.  When I ask myself “Why not?” I come up with several immediate answers.

1.     There are lots of people who enjoy doing kid caps, including the bigger cap making companies. 

2.     Though it would be a great way to use up yarn scraps, I really have no desire, at this time in my capping career to knit down  that path.  And I have a great idea for using my yarn left-overs that I will begin on after the Christmas season is done.

Those are the two major reasons.  My goal has been since I started capping to make a warm, usable cap for women who love to walk on the beach as much as I do.  A cap that is usable AND beautiful. 

So unless I make a kid cap by accident again, I probably won’t get into doing kid caps.  However, I did stumble onto an internet site called comfykid.com.  They have lots of kid cap patterns.  I have not purchased a patttern from them, but the site has pictures of  some really neat caps for the younger person in your life.

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

Well, we survived Thanksgiving.  Karen and I eat at the Moose Lodge and she shoots photos of the gathering and makes the pictures into a wonderful memory book for the lodge.  The food was good and so was the company.  Also, eating at the lodge means NO leftovers to tempt me. However, I did eat a piece of pumpkin pie with canned whipped cream on it.  Weight Watchers is tomorrow and I get to see then what damage that piece of pie did to my weight numbers.

Speaking of numbers, I have, this week, been struggling with numbers.  I was told by someone that what I do is a hobby.  I really thought of myself as a person who makes and sells quality hand knit beach walking caps.  So I called a friend and talked to her about her “cap business.”  She assured me that Uncle does not count a home business as a “business”  until you have an income of more than $10,000 a year.  Anything under $10,000 is considered a hobby. 

Well, I worked on the numbers of my  knitting and this is what I found out:

1. I can do 4 or 5 caps a month, if I work a half-time day of 4 hours.  That is just knitting and does not count bookkeeping efforts, finish work, tagging and other assorted tasks to get the caps ready for sale.  Or the time at the sale, showing and selling my work.
2. At that rate of creation, I make between 48 and 60 caps a year. 
3. If I sold all the caps in a year, I would make about  $1600 to $1900 a year. 

Those numbers are hardly princely.  And I guess the case could be made that I am doing a hobby and why bother with dealing with the numbers. 

Why bother doing the caps, at all?  Good question.  It is clear that I am not going to get very rich making these caps.  But making money is not the only perk in what I do. 

I love buying the yarn and envisioning what the yarn will look like made up into a really good beach walk cap. I am excited when I try a new pattern for a cap or a new stitch, or make an  old stitch look different somehow.  I love watching the cap grow in my hands.  I love running next door and showing Karen how a certain cap turned out.  And most of all, I love seeing a cap I created on the head of another person. 

No, I am not doing anything great like making the world safe for democracy or spending a couple of years in the Peace Corps or any mega-gifts to the world like that.  But I really think that what I do has value to me and to the head that wears it. 

So now that I have crunched some numbers and learned that what I do is a hobby and not a business, I think I will go spend the rest of the day knitting on a pale, olive green cap that is all ripply with a knit and purl pattern and looks a lot like sea weed in a tide pool. 

Have a good day.  Happy numbers crunching.  But most of all happy knitting.  Granny LJ