Author: Rebecca Tyrrell

At The End of My Yarn > Articles by: Rebecca Tyrrell

Socks From The Toe Up

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

Those of you who only knit socks from the cuff down, close your eyes! Or broaden your horizons, whichever suits.

“Once upon a time, I was just a girl who wanted to knit socks. I started knitting socks after I was seduced by the self-striping yarns that first appeared a few years back. Anything that appears to work by magic amuses and entertains me, so I was hooked after my first peek at some sock yarn that knit up into tiger stripes.

I decided then that I wanted to knit my socks from the toe up. The most compelling reason for this is that I have always loathed grafting. Another reason is that it’s ideal when you have a limited quantity of yarn. With a toe-up pattern I can knit until I run out of yarn, thus eliminating any anxiety about having enough to finish the sock. ” Wendy Johnson, Socks From The Toe Up

This book is pretty formulaic, a side effect of choosing only one method of construction, but it’s a joy nonetheless, especially for those times when you really don’t feel like being pushed to your knitting edge by a pair of socks. Wendy starts off with the basics we’ve come to expect, with yarn selection and the necessary techniques for toe-up sock knitting, then we move on to the patterns. After showing us a couple of very basic patterns, we move onto lace socks (her Butterfly Socks are calling my name), textured gansey (knit and purl combinations), cabled, and sportweight yarn socks.

I have to say, it’s nice to see a pattern writer that has to use smaller needles for socks. I sometimes feel like I have to adjust every commercial pattern I use to fit my large gauge, but she works the majority of her patterns on size 0 needles, with an average of 60 stitches at the cast on. I’ve always felt a silly little affinity with Wendy Johnson, mainly stemming from her first book Wendy Knits in which she describes knitting on the metro during her commute into Washington, D.C, which I did all throughout college. I don’t miss much much about that commute, and I definitely don’t miss the metro, but I do miss the knitting time!

Gravity, thou art a harsh mistress

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

The skirt from last time bit the dust. I made it to the scalloped part, telling myself that the fabric wasn’t was dense and heavy as I thought it was, until I tried it on and had to be honest. The pattern has a drawstring waist, but doubling up the yarn to make gauge made for such a heavy finished product that it would have taken suspenders and/or duct tape to keep that thing on me, and I’m not really into that. So, for my Maine vacation knit, I decided to make a striped shirt with one ball of all three colors, instead. Not really using a pattern, just took the gauge I got with sport weight yarn and size 2 (I think) needles, measured around, and got to work. If I have enough yarn when I get done, and I think I will, each ball of Bamboo Pop has about 200 yards, I’ll give it sleeves.

I had this grand idea of smooth, jog-less stripes that blended seamlessly into each color, and genuinely made an effort by slipping the last stitch of the last row of each color, but quickly decided that the striped were thin enough that it wouldn’t make much of a difference in the final product. I’m really much less particular about knits for myself than I am about things I make for other people.

Scrappy Violet Beauregard

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

I booked my plane tickets for my trip to Maine this coming August. I figured since the federal government was kind enough to pay for them since I was fortunate enough to receive a economic stimulus check that now was a good time to go for it. I figure if the country isn’t open by August, we’ve got bigger issues.

Therefore, continuing my silly tradition of making an article of clothing to mark a special occasion, I’m crocheting the Violet Beauregard skirt from The Happy Hooker. This will only be the second time I’ve been to Maine in summer. My father and stepmother live up there, and plane tickets to Maine are cheaper in winter (gee, wonder why?), but since I’m not the one paying for the ticket this time, I figured I’d go for some warm weather for a change.

The original pattern calls for a worsted weight cotton yarn, but I’m looking to use up some stash yarn so I’m doubling up what’s left of a cotton/bamboo sport weight and I’ll mix in the rest of the peachy-pink from the mesh beach cover-up and also see if I can stripe in some odd beige-tan Plymouth Jeannee I bought online for some strange reason. I’m thinking of the Mason-Dixon Knitting theory of using bright, vibrant colors and muted ones together to complement themselves. They call it combining ‘juicy and blah’ if I remember correctly, and you can’t get much more ‘blah’ than tan-beige-slightly-orange-almost-the-color-of-your-skin-but-just-off-enough-to-look-really-odd-if-you-made-it-into-an-article-of-clothing. Stripes against a brighter color might actually work, and if not it’s back to plan A, which is weaving dish towels from it.

I’ll have to line the skirt because I can’t get my gauge tight enough to hide the color of my underthings, but that will make it more likely that I’ll wear it often.

Quick and dirty

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in the mood for instant gratification. The sleeves on my Ruby are coming along well, but I’ve been looking at the stack of yarn ends I use for weaving and decided to work up a quick bag that I tell myself will be for the increasingly large stack of books I’m getting weekly from my local used bookstore, but in all honestly will probably just hang from a door handle.

Sometimes you just need the satisfaction of a quick finished product, you know?

Seasonal knitting

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

After what feels like a thousand false starts on this cardigan, I’m finally seaming up the sides. I still have the sleeves to knit, but I was eager to start piecing it together. My intention is to wear my Ruby to my mother’s wedding, which was originally planned for next month, but was pushed back to September so the venue would be open again. I suppose a wool cardigan makes more sense in September than it does in May, but my thought process was that Ruby was my ‘someday I’ll be good enough to knit that’ sweater, and I decided that someday would be in time for my mother’s wedding. Yeah, I can be a sentimental sap sometimes.

Realizing that it’s still probably going to be quite warm in September got me to thinking about seasonal knitting. Back when I worked at a craft store I noticed that there were hardly ever sales on yarn during the spring and summer, which made me notice that there were apparently knitters who did not knit year-round, or at least the corporate higher-ups who determined the weekly sales advertisement thought people didn’t. I was baffled. What do people do with their free time when it’s warm out, then? I knit year round, and knit anything at any time. Lace shirts in winter, wool cardigans in summer, I knit what I want when I want! Unless I have a commission, and thankfully with the beach cover-up done I don’t currently have one. Which is nice, II’ll admit. It’s like required reading for school. I love to read, but if you tell me what to read, i’ll won’t want to do it. Same with commissions. I love to knit (clearly) and crochet, but the thought that when I get off work I have to work on one specific thing and only that… I’ll do it, but I’ll grumble all the way. But, because I’m a sap and I love to challenge myself, if someone asks me to make them something special I’ll do it. But, it’s nice to be selfish and knit for me right now, even if it’s a wool sweater just in time for summer.

Going full grandma

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

There’s something to be said for hanging out in your house a lot more than you normally do. Yesterday I decided to finally fulfill a long-time ambition to sew a new curtain for my front door. Hush, I like to keep my dreams attainable. The previous curtain was a cute yellow and white small check gingham, but it was looking a bit faded. The new one is a solid bottle green, but it’s a bit boring in comparison, so today I’m knitting a lace border for it. I know, I know. Snooze city, but it makes me happy. I started off with the Wave edging from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, but switched to my usual edging from Victorian Lace Today with some older beads from my jewelry stash for weight because I have the pattern memorized, and it makes for a fast knit. Because, of course, when you need a knit edging for your living room curtain you need it now, right?

I do shudder to think what else in my house will end up with an antiquated lace border by the time all this is through. Certainly my pillows, tea towels, bath towels, the other window curtains, my socks, the dog’s collar….his leash…my lawn mower…

Those who live in mesh houses…

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

…have to be really careful about weaving in yarn ends.

I’m finishing off my co-worker’s beach cover-up as I write this, although with the current health crisis she had to cancel her trip. She’ll get to reschedule. It’s a pinky-peach mesh crochet off-the-shoulder, frilly hem deal which made it an interesting challenge to figure out. You’ll get a picture, I promise, once it’s done and actually on the intended recipient because it looks like a girly fishnet otherwise. At this moment I’m adding an elastic band to the top, not only to keep it in place but also to give it a little substance at the top.

Speaking of health crisis, I got the order today that I am to work from home. Some of my co-workers have been working at home for weeks, but we had a shortage of laptops and tablets available. I have to admit, as much as I love my co-workers, it will be nice to really get some work in without any distractions. I am astounded that the local government felt confident enough in me to trust me with their computer equipment, And excited to save a bunch in gas money. And get my commute time back. I’ll now have three extra hours of productive time a day. I have a stack of unread books to read (which grows larger with every passing Monday due to the book-a-week program my local used bookstore is running while their retail storefront is closed), and two large plastic sweater storage bags of unused yarn to craft with (which will also grow *slightly larger because Webs caught me off guard with one of their promotional emails). And a lot more time to write.

Flashback time!

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

I have really not been up to much at all, recently. Every project I’m working on looks much the same as when I posted about it last. I’m determined that this blog won’t become my diary (for the most part), which does it make it tough to come up with fresh content if I haven’t finished anything recently or binged on more books.

I got to thinking why I became a knitter, then. Working with fiber runs in my family, with my maternal great-grandmother who lived up in the hills of West Virginia keeping me occupied on vacation with making endless finger-crocheted cords. She was a magnificent quilter, too. I particularly recall this quilt that lay on my mother’s old bed at the house(she and my uncle were mostly raised by my great-grandmother), and I would sneak in there and trace the pieces in the patchwork. I can quilt, a little, but that art stuck mostly with my mother. I think, then, that the root of my interest started with crochet. I don’t remember when I first actually held a hook, but I know it was much later.

My maternal grandmother made crocheted afghans that I admired whenever I was at her house in Maryland. Thinking back, the color combinations enthralled me and I would spend hours considering how each color somehow worked with the next color in the next row. I never actually saw her crochet, but she also quilted (pretty sure she made a stained-glass looking cover for the diamond-shaped window in her front door…I wonder where that went when she passed away), and made gorgeously detailed ribbon flowers.

My mom is a talented quilter, although I don’t know if she’d agree with me if you asked her that. I’ve seen her crochet a bit, and I know she can knit, but knitting seems to mostly be my thread in the tapestry of my family’s fiber history.

I had a pretty solid background in crochet (especially when I finally stopped with the finger-crochet chains and learned how to make a solid fabric), but I had a sudden need to knit. That particular bug in my ear happened in high school, but I couldn’t tell you the catalyst for that, to be honest. I started learning with Stitch N’ Bitch, but somehow missed a crucial step in the knit stitch technique and twisted literally all my knit stitches for years. I don’t know many other knitters in real-life so I had no idea I was twisting them until I knit a sweater with a cable straight down the front that insisted on wrapping itself around me like a snake. Once I figured that out, it all started to come together, and I haven’t stopped knitting since. Aside from brief stints of crochet (still the only technique I’ll use for an afghan), and weaving. Speaking of weaving, still working on my most recent bag, but unfortunately due to COVID-19 I won’t be selling them at the gallery this December. They ended up closing for a month and have had to shift all the scheduled shows by a month to make up the time, and the December sale in the Member’s gallery got bumped. Oh, well. Time to put more work in to my Etsy, then.

One-Skein Wonders

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

“Would you believe in a love at first sight? Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time…” I don’t think the Beatles were talking about yarn, but I wasn’t there….

That’s what the core of this book is about. “This book has been created for all those knitters and crocheters who find themselves with just one ball of very special yarn but only a vague idea of what to do with it.” You saw it, you loved it at first glance, you needed it. Very similar to Crochet One-Skein Wonders, One-Skein Wonders 101 Yarn Shop Favorites is a curated collection of patterns by different designers. The sections are divided into yarn weights, from fine crochet thread to bulky yarn. Some of the patterns themselves seem dated now, like the ladder yarn shawl, or the cell phone cozy, but the concept is as relevant as ever.

I’m finding myself especially drawn to a delightful aran-weight cabled hat. I love hats, I love cabled knits, I adore cabled knit hats. There’s something for everyone in this book, if you’re willing to see past the patterns that reflect dated trends.

The Sock Knitter’s Handbook

Posted on by Rebecca Tyrrell

You have no idea how bad I wanted to call this post Love in the Time of Coronavirus, but all I had ready would be another picture of the back of my Ruby, after having messed it up yet again by not reading the directions properly. The back mirrors both fronts only up to a certain point, as it turned out. I did wonder why I was knitting bust increases for the back of a sweater. Only took me about an hour to really think about reading the pattern. Maybe I’ll save that gem of a title for when I’m actually done with the cardigan, instead of posting another suspiciously similar picture of a pile of knitting.

Instead, I give you The Sock Knitter’s Handbook. It’s different from the million other sock books I’ve talked about in that it’s less about the patterns and more about the separate components that make up a sock.

“The humble sock — knitting that we all gladly walk on — offers rich diversity in technique. This little carry-along volume is designed to be a handbook for sock knitters. It offers instructions and alternatives for knitting socks, including casting on and binding off, working heel variations, and knitting toe alternatives. Plus, our stitch dictionary gives you lots of options for decorating your socks.” -Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrott, The Sock Knitter’s Handbook

I have to admit, I’ve never thought about a stitch pattern being ‘decoration’, don’t ask me why. As the introduction states, this book describes in detail different techniques for knitting each part of the sock as they relate to the whole thing. They start with the basic toe-up and top-down approach, then go into detail about each component. This book is especially useful for seeing all the different construction options in a more detailed manner, and to me, considering more deeply the benefits of each option.

This is more of a ‘seeing how the components add up to a whole sock’ book, and less of a pattern book. There is a stitch dictionary for the ‘decoration’, but they are more about adding to a sock instead of the purpose of the knitting. I guess that’s why I never thought about using that term for a stitch pattern on a sock, because I consider the knitting of the sock to be more about how they will look at the end then how they are built. I think this book will expand my horizons quite a bit.