Knitting With Granny LJ

Good morning.

What I  want to talk about  today is a question that popped up a bit ago on my blog comments site.  The writer wanted to know what “earth tones” are when it comes to knitting.  For those who need a refresher on my lack of color skills please refer back to the entry of March 16, 2009. 

I think a case could be made for every color being an “earth tone.”  You can see every color (the ones we earthlings have)  right here on the planet surface, after all.  But what comes to my mind when I think or talk about “earth tones”  are the colors that are browns, beiges, grays, sometimes green (depending on whether the green has a yellow base or a blue base) — the colors that are associated with growing things.

I don’t usually gravitate toward earth tones when shopping for yarn or clothing.  I love blue, and  have, as I get older, developed a love for lavender colors.  When I enter a yarn store, I immediately focus on what I call the jewel colors of yarns:  Reds, blues, lavenders, greens (if they have a blue base), whites (true whites, not the off whites). 

However, since I have been doing the caps I have noticed that a lot of people prefer the colors that I am not particularly fond of — the earth tones.  At the market last weekend, I looked at my inventory and noted that I had a lot of caps that fall into my category of earth tones.  I decided that I may have over-estimated the need for earth tone caps. 

As a result of the weekend show’s Voila! moment, I have begun topping off a jade green beram, and have a lovely plum purple cap ready for double points.  And yesterday I was rummaging my stash and found a lovely skein of garnet red yarn and another in variegated lavenders.

The result of all this:  I am going to be turning out a mess of jewel colored caps for a while.  That is where my heart finds joy in my knitting.  I also have a lovely pale blue with lavender highlights yarn that was hand spun by my spinning friend, Arlene.  And have another skein of rainbow colored yarn that I got from my spinning friend, Kristy. 

Well, knitting friends, the yarns are waving at me and calling.  Have to get going on those jewel tone caps.

Yellow?  I did not mention yellow?  Of all the colors, yellow (except in sunshine) is my least favorite color.  Am not even fond of it in daffodils.  Yellow hits my eyes with a ferocity that makes me uncomfortable just being near it.  I enjoy yellow highlights in a yarn but a stark yellow yarn hurts my eyes so I never work in it.

I suppose that other knitters have a favorite colors, and I would like to hear from some of your about your favorites and how you use them.

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ

Good morning.

Had a great week last week.  The weather has been almost balmy — and is balmy, compared to what is happing in Des Moines (where my eldest son and his family live) and New York City (where my second son and his wife live).  We have had sun shine, not much wind, and tides that are so low, it feels like you could walk to China.  As a result, Karen and I have been getting Parker and Red out for very long wonderful walks. 

I have been knitting my fingers to the quick, though, after the walks.  Karen and I found out that we are juried into a show in March.  This one is in Yachats, at the Commons, and it is over 40 years old.  The organizers have taken trouble to keep the show pretty exclusive.  We sent out the application on a kind of a dare without much hope of getting in to it.  We got notification last week that we are in it.  What a morale boost.

Enough news.  I was recently asked how I make a cap with eyelash yarn.  I do them as inside-out (IO) caps because of the peculiar way I knit.   The IO caps started out as a bit of an accident.  I was working a varigated brown Splash yarn with a coordinating brown Galway.  I had tried to do a cap out of only the Splash and it was pretty floppy and not very good for beach walking.  So with this cap I put it with the sturdier yarn and was knitting away.  Because of the goofy way I knit (I’m self taught, remember?) all the Splash yarn was on the inside of the cap. 

Needless to say, I was pretty grumpy because I thought I would  have to pull all the fibers of the Splash back through to the outside of the cap with a crochet hook.  I had done that on a couple of earlier caps and pretty much resented the time it took to get all those fibers back to the outside.  Well, the brown Splash and Galway cap got  topped.  I put it in the basket of “to be finished” work, and went to work on a new cap. 

When I finally got to doing the finish work, I grabbed up the brown Galway and Splash cap and turned it inside-out  to start working in the ends.  And I had one of those “No DUH!”  moments.  I did not have to pull all the ends of the Splash through.  I just had to finish the cap as if the inside were the outside.  And the 7-point top-off really worked well inside out.  And thus the Inside-Out cap was born.

If you are interested in doing a cap with an eyelash yarn, I would suggest that you do a simple watch cap alternating 2 rows of the eyelash with 2 rows of the base yarn.  The two rows of the base yarn give the cap a sturdiness that the eyelash lacks and the eyelash essentially covers the 2 rows of the base yarn. 

When the cap is knit and topped, do the finish work  on whichever side of the cap has the most eyelash yarn showing. 

I have also found that  making a chemo cap this way is better, too.  When I started chemo caps, I was just making them out of the Chinchilla, a Berroco yarn.   This method  gave them a floppy, almost too soft feel.  Once I discovered the IO cap method, I started using a base yarn for chemo caps, too.  And I am more satisfied with the outcome of the chemo caps with this method, too. 

Try it. I am sure you will like it. 

Happy knitting.  Granny LJ