Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Workshop

My DVD arrived safely. I've been watching it over the last week - mostly when I should be doing something else. Just as I should now, come to think of it! Anyway, I'm pleased with it and glad I bought it. It's on odd little programme though. Because it is billed as a TV series, I was kind of expecting something glossy and edited - this is very, very, very homemade. If Elizabeth drops a needle, we hear it clatter to the floor. If Elizabeth forgets what she is saying, she stares at the screen until a little voice off camera reminds her of what she should be doing and saying. If the phone rings, they don't re shoot. A cat wanders into shot. 'Good heavens! A cet!' says EZ. This is disconcerting at first - but the nice thing about it is that we see Elizabeth get her sums wrong, lose her crotchet hook and tangle her yarn. Even knitting goddesses goof off!

I knew EZ was born in the UK, but I was also expecting an American, so it was a surprise to find that she was of the British genus 'posh, brain-the-size-of-the-universe and slightly batty'. Think two fat ladies and the kind of people you meet at pony club camp and guides. Think Lady Bracknell and head teachers. Think piercing cut-glass accent. 'We're going to make a het,' she announces. 'Pay attention.'

The het is the only garment you get clear instructions for - you need the book for the other garments, and that's not easy to find in the UK. I might have a better look sometime. I must be able to find one. Anyway, I still think the DVD is worth it, because having got used to the low production values and over the shock of the persona, it's easy to see why this DVD still sells. The content is knitting gold.

I think the main difference is in the approach. It is not a how-to exactly, I think only beginners who are very confident and good at numbers and picking up motor skills could start knitting with only this DVD. It's more a case of how to approach how to knit - a whole step back into philosophy. There are six hours of TV and lots of the iconic garments are shown. She talks about the percentage system and encourages you to set about figuring out your own knitting, while showing you lots of examples of inspiring knits. I'm very pleased with it, but not being that accomplished with working out my own numbers, I've already ordered my next DVD, Meg Swanson's Lupine Cardigan, which talks you through the entire garment.

I do think the instructional DVDs are worth it. How much is the yarn for one garment? How bitter is failure? If I could afford it, I'd have them all now!

Butterfly Wings

Look what a difference needle size makes. These are the arm openings on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket. I'm putting I-Cord around the openings and also using the three-needle I-cord cast off across the shoulders. (As the name implies, that's having live stitches on two needles and using the third needle to work I-cord - tricky, but not impossible.) I didn't want the trim to look baggy and ethnic, so I overcompensated with 3.5 mm needles for the I-cord. It did look neat, but it pulled in the armhole too much. This could be a useful trick to remember if I ever make a sleeveless vest with baggy armholes. I frogged it, steamed the yarn to get out the kinks because I didn't want a knot and finished the garment using 4.5 mm needles. It actually fits me! And there are no major errors in it!! Definitely time to do that modest but triumphant jig. Do I like it, though? Ah, yes, slight problem there. It's an odd little beast, this butterfly jacket. I'll get Andy to take some pictures of the back and you'll see what I mean. It's quite cute, but the 'wings' leave a very open bit on the back - it might work in summer, but leaves an odd draughty spot in winter.

Rowan haven't replied re my reversing shaping query on Cloud. Maybe my email went astray. Maybe the knitting guru is on leave. Maybe they are not speaking to me because I haven't bought the yarn yet. I suddenly remembered how nice knitters on Ravelry were and fired off an email to a knitter who'd finished a beautiful Cloud. I had an answer the same day. How cool is that? I'm going to try the left front again tonight.

Incidentally, I drove myself nuts last night trying to post some photographs on Ravelry. They use Flickr, and Blogger use another system. I once managed to log in and create a Flickr account, but it wouldn't let me back in. It wants me to use my Yahoo ID, but my computer will only show a dialogue box with my broadband ID showing. I did link the relevant post to each garment. Until Ravelry add a bit that lets you upload easily from your computer, that will have to do.

Butterfly or Sea Creature?

This is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly Jacket - I hope! The two fronts have just been united and I'm knitting up the back. I'm not keen on the yarn - it's a big ball of Robin I bought from the market when I first started knitting. I prefer vintage thrift shop finds to cheap acrylic, and don't buy new acrylic now but it doesn't matter. Some deep pessimism tells me that this is going to be a test garment rather than something I'll actually wear, so it won't matter any more than it mattered that I knit a 50's 'Ladies Jacket' in vile green Robin double knit yarn. It would have been unwearable whatever it was knitted in.

The Genius of Elizabeth Zimmerman

I spent all night knitting and re knitting this little collar - how smart Elizabeth Zimmerman must have been to invent it. I had DVD instructions and it took me forever to get it. Part of the re knitting was due to the fact that I'm working in Portuguese for the first time, so I kept making messy stitches which had to be redone, but the structure of the collar honestly made no sense to me at all - and even now, with a successful swatch under my belt, I'm baffled by how it works.

The edge of the collar looks a bit ragged because there are two cast offs on the edge - the one at the top and bottom is the Portuguese cast off demonstrated by Andrea Wong on her DVD, and I think it looks better than the section in the centre.

I chose to put a line of purl (an option demonstrated on the DVD) along the line where the collar joins the shoulders in the end. I thought it looked neater than the wobble of the increases - not everyone's increases will wobble like mine, of course. It took me a while to realise that as I was purling, and Meg Swanson's instructions were for knit, I had to reverse the increases to make them work.

So, finally, after hours of tussling and re knitting, I had a great little collar. And I don't think it will suit the butterfly bolero - too angular in shape. Andy agreed, but then he said: 'You could round the edges of the collar.' And he's right. I could. But not this time round. I've enough to be going on with.

Frustration!!

I've posted another Nostalgia shot rather than try to photograph the tangle I'm currently in. This sweater is an Icelandic Lopi sweater. They are very quick and easy to knit, yet look rather impressive - and they used to be cheap. The local market had a stall that used to feature bin bags full of yarn and crates full of cones left over from the mills - thinking about it now, I wonder how Icelandic wool got into the mix? I used to buy piles of odd balls and make sweaters for everyone, whether they wanted them or not! The one in the photograph was either knitted in Japan, or knitted while on a trip to America. I know that's 2-day stopover in San Francisco in the background of the photo. My American boyfriend took me on a ski trip to Colorado - and we had a day trip to Aspen which was just about the most glamorous place I'd ever been too. For some reason my response to being in a place that had a plane park bigger than the car park was to urgently need to buy wool. We went to a delicious yarn store in Aspen with snow on the roof and fairy lights all down the street - I clearly remember enjoying the American-style service, so different from the UK's grudging sales staff, and I remember buying a pile of Lopi, but after all this time, I can't remember which colour yarn I bought there. I made a Lopi for the BF as well - he really liked it because he was so tall he'd never had a sweater with long sleeves before - the advantage of custom knitting.

Well, that's enough pleasant nostalgia - back to painful reality. I simply cannot get the shaping for the right slope of the last side of Cloud Three. I can't parallel park either. It's the same kind of skill. I cannot do decreases in double rib without clear directions. Something in my head simply won't translate P2tog tbl at end of row for the left slope to what you need to do for the right slope. The pattern simply says: 'reverse shaping for right side'. What do I reverse? Work at the beginning of the row not the end? Is P2 tog the opposite of P2 tog dbl? Or is it K2tog tbl? Or simply K2 tog? I would have thought that I'd tried every available combination over the last couple of days. It's a problem because you have to shape on both sides of the work - so I need to know what you do at the beginning and end of the row for both sides and it's just not working. I admit defeat. I'm going to email Rowan for help and knit lace for a bit instead. Although I can knit the lace now, I still need to be alone in the house so I might start my next project while I'm waiting to hear back from Rowan - Elizabeth Zimmerman's Butterfly in Portuguese knitting - so of course it will be the Portuguese Butterfly.

A Wearable Ribwarmer

I am not however, ready to dance the 'modest but triumphant jig' recommended by Elizabeth Zimmerman as being the way to celebrate finishing because it doesn't quite fit. I can wear it, but it's a little too small to fit properly over a winter layer. Never mind. It will fit someone and this is a huge step forward in my knitting!

I followed the instructions on the DVD and knit it in one piece. You start at the neck with a provisional cast on, knit one front, then pick up from the provisional cast on and knit the second front, then flip it over and join both halves and knit up the back. You then pick up stitches at the shoulder and use the I-cord cast off. I trimmed the armholes with the I-cord as well. Because I'd followed Meg Swanson's instructions for shaping the armholes, they looked a bit messy and the I-cord covered that up.

So, following on from my earlier ramblings about practice and expertise, I plan to make a few more rib warmers to see what I can learn.

Ribwarmer DVD Arrives

And plays, thank goodness, so that plunge into technology worked out after all. Was it worth it? You bet! I love this DVD. Andy winced when he saw the receipt, but it runs I hour 45 minutes in total. I already watched it twice, which is around 3 hours fun, and for sure I'll watch it another 6 times or so at least, not to mention checking back for odd techniques, so in terms of cost per hour, it's not expensive at all. No, really! Knitting costs practically nothing, right?

I like this DVD because it is completely different from the Lucy Neatby DVDs, but just as good in its own way. Lucy shows you lots of single techniques in great detail. Meg tells you a little of the history around the ribwarmer, including one knit by Elizabeth Zimmerman herself, and a copy of the magazine it first appeared in. Then she shows you lots of variations on a single garment and encourages you to make your own choices and change your mind as you go - which is very empowering. She demonstrates making a child's ribwarmer in detail, then how you can adapt it to a longer length, or make a very pretty bolero version called the butterfly jacket. (The basic patterns are included inside the DVD case.) Also she shows lots of variations: a collar, a sports vent, a seamless version, I-cord trimming, a braided edge. She also shows you how to measure and size the garment and how to shape it a bit more - if you want to. Then she runs over all the techniques she uses. Pretty good value for money, I'd say. I plan to make a good few ribwarmers in the near future and have fun with it.

The techniques Meg shows for garter stitch would have been handy to know for my simple garter stitch jacket, but too late now! I picked it up again and solved the short row mystery - it turned out to be a matter of terminology. If you are knitting short rows, every row is 2 rows, so do you count one each time you do 2 rows, which add up to one complete short row? Or do you count 2, because after all, you knit one way, turn around and knit back, which adds up to 2 rows?Different patterns refer to it differently. Once I understood this, I knit the second sleeve with no problems. BUT I wanted to try grafting the seam. I knit the extra flap in bright yellow so I could a) have something to hold and b) use the waste yarn as a guide, but oh, dear, I didn't go back and watch Lucy again before I started and I carefully grafted two hills together, so there's a ridge on the right side and a double valley on the wrong side. DOH!

I decided not to undo it all. Instead I frogged the mistake sleeve back to where I'd gone wrong, finished it and sewed the seam so it looked pretty much like the other one. Job over! All I have to do now is sew it up and crotchet the trimming.

Those handy techniques Meg demonstrates on the DVD will apply to all garter stitch garments, and she really explains things in a way that helps me to understand. She doesn't say: 'At this point, put the yarn left and then right', She says: 'if you put the yarn left this happens, then if you put the yarn right that happens, and it's up to you which effect you want'. Although I'm not a huge fan of the ethnic knitted look, I will definitely get all the DVDs and knit my way through them, just because of how much I'll learn.

One thing that fascinated me: she knits Continental, but right down at the bottom of her needle! And I just spent two months learning to knit at the tips! After some thought I realised that she mustn't have any problems because she'll use her needles like that consistently - my stitches were altering all the time, probably because I wasn't aware which part of the needle I was using at any one time, so I knit differently in different chairs, or with different needles or even as the piece I was working on changed size. It just goes to show that there is no right or wrong in knitting, but, as Lucy said when she demonstrated the knitting at the tips technique: if you're not getting the results you want, you might want to consider something new. An added bonus is that I do believe that it's faster to knit at the tips - I'm sure I've sped up a bit since I got the hang it.

Last week I ordered some highlighter tape from the Woolly Workshop - I promised myself not to start the next cabled shrug until it arrived. It's so hard to wait though. Yesterday I dropped the shop an email just asking how my order was progressing. The shop owner rang up and said: but you cancelled it as soon as I sent the confirmation email. I said: oh no I didn't! She said: oh yes you did. Very odd. We dug deeper and an explanation emerged. I had put the wrong email address on my form - the one at work has no numbers in it and I sometimes mix them up. So, the shop had emailed a Louise Armstrong with no numbers in her BT email account - and this Louise Armstrong must knit, because instead of emailing back to say she'd never ordered anything from a knitting shop in her life, she replied to say that the order was from a year ago and she didn't need it now so please could she have a refund!! Anyway, my order is on its way and I'll be able to start shrug number two at last. But first I must finish the simple garter stitch jacket and the ribwarmer I couldn't resist starting last night.

Another Test Cloud

There's only 8 balls, which makes me nervous, but I can always make the sleeves a bit shorter if necessary.

The lady in the hospice shop asked me if I was a dealer today. Oh dear. I certainly never leave without buying something! All in a good cause, of course!

http://www.kcgtrading.com/index.php Today I joined the Knitting and Crotchet Guild - members get a 10% discount, and I'm going to be spending a lot on DVDs. I buy more and more from them because they always have what I want in stock - so why ring anywhere else?

I've ordered a DVD on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Ribwarmer - I hour and 45 minutes instruction - surely by the end of that I can make a ribwarmer? I had a go at one last year - the construction made my head ache and it turned out far too big. It was a pretty colour though, so I gave it to my mum, who wears it in winter.

I can't remember where I saw this comment now, but it's been depressing me all week - somebody on a blog or on Ravelry said that they had tried out Continental knitting and it had taken them a few hours to get the hang of it. A few HOURS? It took me months! It was like learning to knit all over again. Me hunched muttering over messy little swatches. Needles clattering to the floor. Knitting hurled across the room. The first thing I made was a monkey from Tracey Chapman's stuffed toys book. There was a typo in the pattern which didn't help! But I finally got him finished and the next small person to come to the house fell for 'Practice Monkey' in a big way. We chose buttons for his eyes and away he went.

It also took me several months to get used to knitting at the tips of the needles as Lucy Neatby suggests. Tangerine Alef didn't turn out too badly, other than uneven sleeves, but I ruined my first Turbulence U-necked sweater because I knitted too close to the tips. Oh well. As long as I get there in the end. I want to be faster and neater so changes have to be made. I wish I could make them in a few hours, though. It's like there's a knitting world where people pick up new skills and achieve effortlessly, and there's my world which is all damn and blast it!

Norwegian Mittens

Found another disaster to photograph. These are supposed to be Elizabeth Zimmerman's Norwegian mittens. I'm only not throwing them out because the grey yarn is wool from an Irish rare breed sheep and there's only one ball. When I do learn to knit (I'm still saying when! That's a triumph of hope over experience) I might need that grey to finish the perfect pair of mittens that I will knit one day.

I was brain dead on Friday night so I knit at the sleeves of Turbulence while watching TV rather than going back to the cable.

And this morning I made myself set in the sleeves of Tangerine Nightmare. I hate that garment! It was worth setting in the sleeves as an exercise because I can see that the fully fashioned edges are a disaster! For my next test Alef, I will make the sloping decreases, left or right as the side of the garment dictates, but I will make them at the very edge of the fabric.

I made a start on sewing on the button bands, but I'd had enough. I will do them, though, because the only way to make a good Alef is to practice, practice, practice!

I know what I'd really like - a plain pattern for Rowan's Classic Kid that uses three buttons. Then I'd never have to knit another Alef in my life!