Knitting With Granny LJ

Good morning.

I have been asked about taking out stitches that are on circular needles.  Taking out stitches in a knitted work is tricky.  When I first started knitting I would discover a mistake and say a few rude things to the project I was working on and tear the whole thing out and start again.  I really do not like starting things over.  But I was still tearing out projects that I discovered a mistake in when I started shopping at Yarn for All Seasons.

Dodie, my friend and mentor, taught me how to tink.  It is as important as learning to knit and purl.  It is easy and a skill that every knitter, in my opinion, should have.

Tinking:

Examine the piece you are working on and find the problem.  The problem is, of course, what needs to be taken out and reknit.  I usually mark the problem with a stitch marker.  If the candidate for thinking is in the same row you may want to skip the marker.  If it is several rows back, trust me, mark the place.

Put the point of the left hand needle in the stitch below the row you had been working on.  Pull the stitch onto the left hand needle and slip the upper stitch (the one on the right hand needle) off and pull the yarn so that the upper stitch is gone.  

Because the word  “purl”  comes out “lrup”  I use  the word tinking for taking out both knitting and purling. 

The one thing to remember is to get those lower row stitches back onto the left needle in the same direction they were knit or purled onto the right needle.  Otherwise, when you get to replacing the stitches, they are difficult to re-knit or re-purl.   And those re-knit/re-purled stitches  are visible in the finished work.  I have done that frequently in my early knitting days and have ended up taking  out work that I wanted to avoid taking out by the tinking.  Some of my more frustrating knitting moments. 

So that is tinking.  I work on circular needles, as I have said before, and switch to double point needles for topping off.  I have tinked on the double points, too.  And the method is the same as on the circular. 

Until I learned to tink, I was seriously considering crocheting my caps because crochet is so easy to pull out and redo.  But thanks to Dodie, I can now tink my projects, if necessary, as well as I can knit  or purl them in the first place. 

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning:

I was talking with Karen this morning before she took off to open Shorebirds.  She said I use words that  nobody knows but me. 

The example she cited was “the weather was mizzling.”  I have to confess I did not think I made the word up. Here on the Oregon Coast, we get a lot of mizzling weather.  That is weather that is a little more than a mist and less than a drizzle.  Mizzle.  Of course, maybe the Oregon Coast is the only place where mizzling exists.

That conversation plus some questions on this site got me to thinking.  What about “tinking.’”  It is a word my friend and knitting instructor, Dodie, taught me. 

When I first started knitting, I lived in terror of making a knitting error.  That meant taking out the whole body of the work I had done and starting over at casting on.  For reasons that I really do not understand, “starting all over again”  is something I hate doing.  One of my early projects was a white turtle neck sweater for my brother, John.  I did Ok.  Got the front and the back done and was well into the first sleeve when I moved to LaGrande for my first post-college job.  So the sweater was buried in the middle of the things I moved. 

My brother was then working in eastern  Washington.  He called and asked how the sweater was coming along. 

I smiled and said, “Just fine.” 

Then he asked the fatal quesion:  “When will it be done?” 

“Soon.”  I answered. 

The next weekend, I hauled the sweater and the pattern out of its box and drove a hasty trip to Milton-Freewater to ask a knitting aunt to get me figured out.  It took her about 10 minutes of some sort of counting and she knew what I needed to know.  I, of course, thought she was brilliant and went back to LaGrande  to finish the sweater.

What I did not know then — but do now — is tinking.  Dodie taught me tinking.  It is knitting backward.   You place the left needle point into the body of the stitch that is just below the stitch on the  right needle.  Then slip the top loop off the right hand needle, and you have tinked one stitch. 

This technique works just as well for purling.  I tried to call it lrup, but that doesn’t work too well.  So I call it all tinking.  I am sure Dodie would agree with me.

Why is tinking important?  You can back up several stitches or even several rows, and correct a dropped stitch or a color mistake or whatever needs correcting and all WITHOUT taking out the whole project and beginning again. 

I was very grateful to my knitting aunt to get me straightened out on that sleeve.  But, if either she or I had known about tinking,  all I would have had to do was to tink down to the place where the decreases for the shoulder began and restart the shoulder. 

Hope you never have to tink.   But if you do, it sure beats tearing the project out and starting again. 

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning:

Yesterday was a picture taking day.  Karen wanted some pictures of Parker and Red wearing Easter bunny ears.  Red is very much  above such things, but he was willing to sit and pose with the ears on his head.  He was not happy and looked it, but endured it because of the treats.  Parker thought he was totally cool having the ears on and getting the treats.  Then Parker posed for some cap pictures, too.  He also got treats for that bit of work.  Red wanted the treats, but not the posing part.  I guess that when you get older you can be a little grumpy if you want to.

After the photo shoot, I came home and sat and knit all day.  Am still working on the Mano and mohair cap.  I discovered this morning that I will be spending today tinking the work that I did yesterday on it.  I was looking at it before breakfast and it has a place on the back where I change from the Mano to mohair that is weird.  Am not sure how it got to be that way, but I will be spending the day to tink it out and redo it.

Other than that, things are perking along pretty well.  Karen and I talked about the Wednesday market that is going to be in Waldport this year.  We are going to use her car.  I will work the space with my caps and her art work and cards and she will be at Shorebirds.  I do enjoy doing the markets.  It gives me a chance to talk to people about knitting and other things.  I meet new people and some of them even buy a cap.  I am not excited about working outside for the market because of the weather.   But Karen and I decided this morning, that if the weather is too rotten, I’ll just lock up the car and go to Shorebirds for the rest of the day.  I think that will work just fine.

Good grief.  I  hear the boys out back yelling at me.  I know that they are yellling at me because Parker flings himself at my back door as he yells.  Need to go see what they want. 

 Have a great day. Good knitting, Granny LJ

Good morning.

Had errands to run the last couple of days.  But getting out in this weather is wonderful.  It is a bit  breezy and there is some chilliness, but the sun is out and things warm up toward the end of the day.  This is such a great place to live.

I worked on the contest cap both days, when I was not running around.  I decided that I could not carry the thing in my little hip pouch otherwise I would be tinking and tinking and would never get the cap finished. 

The Noro yarn I chose to do the cap in is a much thinner weight than the Lamb’s Pride I did the prototype in.  I got about 4 inches done of the body of the cap and the design was fading into the colors.  I was using size 6 needles, which is what I use for most of the caps I make.  So I took it all out again  (this must be about the 5th or 6th time) and cast it onto size 4 needles.  Now I have about 3 inches done and the pattern is more distinct than when I was using the size 6 needles.  The pattern is not as intense as I would like it, but I am pleased with the outcome so far.

I will be doing the top off on this cap like  the one I did on the prototype cap.  Usually, I do a simple 7-point top off.  Just stop  the pattern and switch to all knitting on my double point needles.  With the prototype, I marked  the 7 points and just continued the pattern through the top of the cap and  doing the K2tog at each point.  It is a good top in the prototype.  Very visually interesting.  I hope that the top off will be as good on the Noro cap.  Will have to wait and see, I guess.

Well, I have a day at home today, and I want  to get knitting on the contest cap, and make up for lost time.  There is a market in Yachats this weekend.  I opted to not do it for a lot of reasons, but right now I am glad that I can sit here and knit the contest cap.  Am anxious to see how it turns out. 

Have a great day.  Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

My  cold has really gone the way of all good colds — far away, that is.   It is nice because my brain does not have to decide whether to breathe or knit because I can do both simultaneously, again.  

Worked on the olive green EB yesterday.  Had to tink about 4 rows or so because the yarn ply is not very tight and so if I am not careful, I can knit only part of a loop of yarn and that makes a mess that needs to be tinked immediately or tinked several rows down the line, depending on when I catch the error.  But this is such a lovely yarn and the EB is going to be so striking that I am willing to put up with problems of working with the yarn. 

And now that the cold has wandered out to sea or where ever it is that terrible colds go when they go away, I have to get back to the caps that are on the table, too.  I have almost nothing ready for finish work to go out at Shorebirds for this month. 

So one project looming today will be rooting around on the “in-progress” table and seeing what needs to be done to what and getting going on some of those “whats.”  I can think of at least 4 caps that are ready to top off.  The sunshine cap is ready for finish work.  The mushroom cap is hiding under some other work on the table.  And so it should.  The silly thing has given me more irritation than good work since I started doing the white bobbles on what is going to be the cap of the mushroom shape.  Maybe if I let it sit about a week longer it will be less of a problem.  If not, I may just take it out and start again. 

But my major chore for the day is getting that olive green  EB done and ready for finish work.  And get some others cast on.  I finally figured out that on the needles I am using (straights) I can cast on at least two and  possibly three EBs and work them simultaneously. 

Guess I need to go to work on that EB before it ends up like the mushroom cap — hiding on my work table.

Have a great day.  Good knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

Well, we are having our day or two of winter right now.  I will bet that the people who walked past all my caps, at the market, are, right now, wishing for one of them. 

We don’t really get winter here on the coast.  We get rain, usually.  But a cold front wandered in and now we have cold and ice on everything.  There is even snow up the Alsea River at Tidewater.  Mostly a winter here is rain, and rain and then some more rain.  Last winter,  by this time,  we had had a major storm blow through with the  necesssary  power outages and leaky roofs. 

While the weather was working up to this cold, yesterday, I sat and knit.   I worked some on the new, pink EB, but mis-knit on one row and did not find it until I was about 4 rows further along.  So I had to tink those rows and find the error and correct it.  I don’t mind tinking on a cap because the caps are done on circular needles.  But tinking on straights is a real challenge.  It’s that business of trying to figure out which side to tink on.  I finally figured it out and tinked those 4 rows and then did a knit row to see if I had really gotten to the mis-knit place.   I had.  Then I put the EB down on my works-in-progress table, and went to work on the cap from Saturday.

That project is going along well.  I thought I would not have enough of the red  background  yarn to do the whole cap.  I am almost done with the fuzzy yarn  skein,  and it looks like I won’t have to figure out how to get it topped in another color yarn.  I think it is going to be a very striking looking cap and,  so far,  am pleased with it. 

I really miss having another knitter close at hand.   When I first started on the caps, if  I struck problem, I could  take the work to my yarn shop and the owner of the shop would look over what I was doing, figure out what I needed to do and then I would do it.  Sort of like a high wire walker has a net down below,  just in case.  Now, when I hit a snag on something, I usually end up tinking or just tearing the whole thing out and starting again. 

What  is tinking, you ask.  Tinking is knitting backward.  Both the skill and the name. And, truthfully,   I am almost as fast at tinking as I am at knitting.  Have had a lot of practice at it.  It is a highly difficult skill and can only be learned with diligent practice because if you tink the purl stitches like  you tink the knit stitches,  the tinked purl stitches get smaller and reknitting that area is not a great deal of fun. But on the whole, tinking can be a time-saver, at least for someone like me who is well-practiced in skill.  Otherwise, the whole project has to be ripped out and started again. 

Well, I am hoping whoever knit this winter weather here on the coast will decide to tink it out and we can have some normal winter weather starting about 5 minutes ago. 

Happy knitting and tinking.  Granny LJ