New Dale Kits page added for out-of-print goodies

One of the many out-of-print Dale designs available in kit form

At the top of this page, on the far right, you’ll see a new “Dale Kits” tab.  Click it and you’ll land on a new page here on the Two Strands blog where I’m building the long, and growing, list of glorious Dale goodies in my library that are available for DofN’s wonderful out-of-print free pattern service.  There’s a lot to show you, so it will be a work in progress for quite a while.  But feel free to check it out, peruse the Ravely links and don’t hesitate with the questions / comments.  Have fun!

 

 

Two New Knitting Classes – Stranded Mittens and Circular Booties

I had a wonderful time teaching the Fair Isle Hat class at Keep Me In Stitches a few weeks ago.  In fact, I think everybody had a lot of fun, for I’m now signed up to teach two more classes there:

The first one will be a stranded mittens class, centered around my Chrysanthemum Mittens design.

Ladies' Chrysanthemum Mittens

Skills covered will include:
Circular knitting
Chart reading
Stranded swatching
Stranded braids
Stranded purling
Stranded knitting
Mitten shaping
and, of course, any questions that pop up along the way.

There will be two sessions, with 3 weekly classes in each:
Wednesday 1-3pm: January 18th, January 25th & February 1st, OR…
Saturday 1-3pm: January 21st, January 28th & February 4th.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The second upcoming class will center around my recent “Booties for a Special Day” design:

Booties for a Special Day, a knitting design by Mary Ann Stephens for Kidsknits.com

Skills covered will include:
Circular knitting (see Note, below)
Hemming as you knit
Basic lace knitting
Bootie shaping, with picking up sts and with decreasing
Decorative and symmetrical decreasing
I-cord
and, of course, any questions that pop up along the way.

Note: While it’s possible to knit these booties on circulars, I think dpns make the layout of this project easier to manage.

Booties for a Special Day, circularly knit with no internal seams

(You can also see more info about this design on my Kidsknits.com site, here.  But, remember – if you’re planning to come to either class, our host, the sweet-as-can-be Rebecca at Keep Me In Stitches, will get you set up with yarn through her store.)

Again, there will be two sessions, with 3 weekly classes in either session:
Wednesday 1-3pm: February 29th (Now really, how often do you get to take a knitting class on 2/29?! ), March 7th & March 14th, OR…
Saturday 1-3pm: March 3rd, March 10th & March 17th.

To sign up, call Rebecca at Keep Me In Stitches, 631 724-8111

Hope to see you there!

Perfect Mitten Blockers, on the Cheap

Right about now, I’d guess quite a few of you are finishing up Mitten #2, and you’re looking forward to that sparkling moment when you present your beautiful work to a (hopefully deserving and endlessly appreciative) special someone.  Before you wrap those dear mittens up and hand them over,  don’t make the common mistake of skimping on blocking – it’s a simple step that can really elevate even problematic knitting from “homemade” to “exquisite”.  If you’re wondering “How the heck do I block mittens?”, step right this way!

Homemade blockers for exquisite mittens

Okay, they’re not exactly fancy, but I’ve used the above homemade blockers to give the finishing touch to every mitten of mine that you’ve seen over the last several years and they’ve worked out perfectly.  I just cut 2 identical mitten shapes out of corrugated cardboard, sandwich them together with packaging tape (which has the side benefit of being waterproof), wash my mittens, blot any excess water out of them and then let them dry overnight with one of these blockers tucked inside.  I usually want about an 8″ circumference mitten, so I draw an outline with a width that’s just slightly narrower than half that amount, i.e., about 3  7/8″. (Remember, the thickness of the 2 layers of cardboard will contribute to the circumference, too.)

Check circumference before taping

The length is not crucial. In fact, if you have a straight, Latvian-style mitten, like Amaryllis, it won’t even matter if your blocker extends out below the cuff.  (See blockers on the far right.) If you’re doing something with tapered cuffs, like my new Zinnia Mittens, it’s easy-peasy to just trim the sides a bit near the bottom to get a custom fit.  (See blockers on the left.) I haven’t had to worry about blocking the points at the top of my mittens – any fiddling needed there can usually be taken care of simply with a few pokes from a dpn.  But you could definitely use pointed tops on your blockers, if you prefer. As you can see, sometimes I think a pointed thumb blocker comes in handy.

Once you’re happy with your cardboard shapes, be certain to cover every bit of cardboard with packing tape, so that your blockers are waterproof and will last for years.

Happy blocking!

Zinnia Mittens, Twist Collective Winter 2011

Yippee, the new Twist Collective is out!  There are so many beautiful designs in this issue! I’m honored to have my Zinnia mittens among them:

"Zinnia", my knitting design for Twist Collective Winter 2011

"Zinnia", front and back, knit for Twist Collective in Tunney's O-Wool Classic 2-ply

"Zinnia" mittens knit in Dale of Norway Baby Ull yarn

The links:

Zinnia on Twist Collective, main pattern page

Zinnia on Twist Collective, detail page

Zinnia on Ravelry

Baby Ull yarn for Zinnia on Kidsknits.com (get 2 balls of the background color, 1 of the motif color)

Snowbird Hat

Snowbird Hat

My Snowbird Hat, knit in Dale of Norway’s Hubro, a tremendously soft, chunky 100% wool yarn which knits up in a blink.  The PDF for this design is sold through Ravelry.

Link to class at KMIS

The details for my stranded knitting class are now up on the “Keep Me In Stitches” (don’t you just love that name?!) shop’s website.  (Wow, those people are good!) Click that link and scroll down the page, just a bit, and you’ll get the full scoop.  See ya there!

I’ll be teaching a class for my Vogue Knitting hat

Fair Isle Hat from VK Fall 2011

I’ll be teaching a class for my Vogue Knitting Fair Isle Hat #08 this November / December with the wonderful folks at Keep Me in Stitches, here on Long Island. They’re setting up the details (they do all sorts of great things over there ), so if you’re interested, contact them through their website, or email them at: info AT kmisyarns DOT com or call them at 631-724-8111 for details.

Hope to see you there!

Mary Ann

Creating Knitting Pattern PDFs

I’m often asked “What special software packages do you use to create your knitting pattern PDFs?” and the apparently surprising answer is “Nothing special, really!”  Ninety-nine percent of my work is done in Microsoft Excel (for charts) and Word (for text). (I’m using the 2010 versions of each, with Windows 7.) If you’re already familiar with the basics of using Word for your documents and Excel for your spreadsheets, follow along and you’ll soon see that you really have some of the best “knitting software” possible, right at your fingertips.

Shrink your Excel column widths to about “2″ and format your cell borders with a solid line and you’ve got instant graph paper (“How to” notes, at the end of this post).

Fill in your cells with the colors &/or symbols that represent your swatches; then copy, cut and paste to your heart’s content.

If you do lace, cables or twisted stitches, I do suggest adding a knitting font package to your Excel setup, so that you can seamlessly add knitting symbols to your charts, just as easily as inserting any other symbols from the pull-downs in Excel.  Now that’s gonna set you back some… a whole $6!  Well worth it! (No affiliation, but I’m very happy with it.)  ETA: Actually, this knitting font set is nice, too, and it’s free (to individuals), too!

I used to use PhotoShop, to hide my inept photography skills and my crimes against Aestheticism.  Still do, once in a blue moon.  But, if you have Microsoft Office 2010 running, you already have some great, built-in utilities at your fingertips for refining digital images for use in patterns.

PDFs, or “portable document format” files, have become the standard vehicle for transmitting knitting patterns, and countless other documents, on-line so that they remain unchanged. Prior to updating to the 2010 version of Word, I did use a separate utility for converting my Word document files into fixed, final pdf format.  You can find such utilities for free on-line.  However, it’s far nicer  – and way easier – to avoid the unnecessary uploading and download required for having a 3rd party format your PDFs. If you’ve updated to Microsoft Word 2010, I think you’ll be very pleased to find that converting a Word document to a PDF is as simple as saving your file. This will work beautifully, not only for creating knitting pattern PDFs, but for saving any sort of document that can be shared but must stay unchanged – everything from recipes, where you really don’t want that “1 tsp salt” to inadvertently become “10 tsp salt”, to financial and legal documents.   Here are all the details you’ll need for converting your Word files into fixed and transmittable PDFs:

Rather than the standard “Save” command, use the “Save As” command. Click on the arrow at the far right of the “Save as type” bar near the bottom (the bar will default to “Word Document”, but you’ll be changing that option) and scroll down to “PDF”; click on PDF and you’ll see that the file type has changed from “Word Document” to “PDF”. Now, just click “Save” and you’re all done!

Excel notes:

You can fiddle with that column width size, if you’d like, to get proportions equal to your knitting gauge.  To set your column size, just drag your mouse across the letters at the top of the columns to highlight the area you want to format, right-click your mouse, click on “Column Width”, type in 2 and hit return (or click “OK”.)  Right-click and select the “Format Cells” menu. You’ll see the “Border” tab near the top; it will get you into options for darkening the gridlines for your graph paper (be sure to select a solid line option you like and then apply it by clicking on both the “Outline” and the “Inside” little windows.)  The “Fill” tab will offer you a palette of colors &/or patterns for your chartwork.  Click on “More Colors” if you’d like to customize your palette further.  (Someday, we’ll have to talk about all the fun you can have getting really carried away with setting up customized color themes through the “Page Layout” / “Color” options at the top left of the main menu. ) Use the Insert / symbols commands to place those knitting font symbols wherever your heart desires.

There are, of course, many more details you can get into for managing charts within Excel, but these are the basics that you’ll need to get started.  Happy Charting!

Snow Day Hat…

…or “How I Survived A Sweltering September With One Easy Project”:

Snow Day Hat

And all it took was 2 balls of Dale of Norway Freestyle yarn (plus a lot of wishful thinking.)

Are you starting to “Think Snow”, too?  Here’s the PDF, for sale on Ravelry.

 

Dale Book NR 235: “Julevott Adventkalender”

Dale of Norway's Book 235 IN NORWEGIAN ONLY!!

That’s Dale of Norway’s Book NR 235 and it’s in stock (for now) at Kidsknits.com.  It includes instructions for several winter and Christmastime gifts to knit, such as hats, mittens, scarves, afghans, ornaments, etc., including the “Julevott Adventkalender” (mini-Christmas mitten advent calendar) you see on its cover.

All of the other Dale books we carry include knitting instructions in English, but this one does NOT.  This one is only available in Norwegian and if you’re lucky enough to speak Norwegian, great, you’re all set.  However, even if you can’t tell your “garn” from your “pinne”, you’ll still be able to make the mini-mittens, for all of the mittens’ charts are included in the book and they’re really pretty universal.  (Plus, if you have questions, you know where to find me!)