Studio Marlowe

So, I know, I haven’t updated much in the past month or so.  There are a couple of reasons. I was working on some projects that I couldn’t blog about, so there was that.  And I have also decided it’s time to buckle down and make some progress on the PhD, so there is less time for knitting/blogging.  But, I’m still alive and I’ve even knit some stuff!  For now, let’s reveal that I finished a mitt:

I’m teaching a class on these and the first one was last Thursday.  It was a pretty small class which I think was probably better for now.  Overall it was pretty fun and (I think, no major disasters).

Okay, I’m off to catch up on housecleaning now but I’ll try to blog sometime again in the next month

The first half of the second set of Crispin mitts (that’s a mouthful, no?) is almost ready for blocking:

I’ll be teaching a colorwork class using these mitts as the project in May/June, so once I’m done with the second mitt they’ll probably be residing at Loop and Leaf as a sample for a little while.  But next winter I will be breaking them out on a daily basis when the bike ride starts getting chilly again.  They’ll be a nice warm layer between me and the cool morning wind.

Another inch on the latest pair of mitts:

Just a few more rows before working the placement for the thumb.  I’ve also used this reknit as an opportunity to rework the Crispin pattern.  Some of the changes are just cosmetic (I’m working on moving all my patterns over to this new look, you can get a look on the new PDF for the garter mesh wrap–let me know what you think!), but I’m also putting out two versions of the pattern now, a “traditional” and a “tabular” format.  The traditional format has all of the instructions for different sizes written in the traditional bracketed manner, i.e. CO 1(2,3,4,5,6) sts.  The tabular format replaces the brackets with a blank and a letter reference, i.e. CO ____ A sts.  A table at the end of the pattern shows the numbers that correspond to each letter for your size.  Simply highlight the column that corresponds to your size, and then fill in the blanks before you begin knitting.  This format allows you to create a custom single sized pattern and (hopefully) reduces problems with keeping track of which numbers are for your size.

In the case of Crispin, there are only a few sizes, so I expect most people don’t find keeping track of their particular set of numbers is a huge problem, but the small number of sizes made it an easy one for me to test drive the idea on.  If people like it, I’ll be working on including it in all my multi-sized patterns.  For patterns with a lot of sizes, I’m thinking it will make things much easier for the knitter and probably also cut the size of the pattern down a little.

Continuing in the general vein of project duplication, I cast on for a second pair of Crispin mitts the other day:

These ones are for me, a little hand protection on morning bike rides.  The yarn is the same as for the first pair (Shetland Spindrift), but this time in just two colors instead of four.  The two color version is nice if you don’t want to have quite so many ends to weave in, or if you don’t want to purchase 4+ balls of yarn for a single pair of mitts.  These two colors are left over from the Manus gloves I knit my brother last year.  I did, right after I cast on, wonder what I was thinking, starting a new project with black 1×1 ribbing so soon after finishing a pair of socks with miles of the stuff.  At least in this case it’s only a few inches of ribbing instead of a few feet’s worth.