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.

A Tax on my Knitting

The postie dropped a card through the letterbox on Saturday morning. My DVD had arrived, but I had to pay £11.97 and drive to the sorting office in the rain to collect it. Obviously I spluttered and fumed, but there was no way out. For some obscure reason, although the DVD cost $20 dollars and the pin $2.50, Andrea had put a value of $40 on the packet, and so I was into taxable territory. The Post Office then charge £8 to collect it. I consulted Google, and it seems that the old £18 threshold has been abolished and even tiny purchases are being hit - so there was no point in even trying to argue - and sometimes I think you have to admit that you are beaten. I'm glad I read that, because taking the receipt and trying to get out of it would have only done my head in. So, it turned out to be an expensive exercise all round! If you are going to order a DVD (or anything) from abroad, ask the retailer to put the exact value on the packet, and better be ready to pay tax and a handling charge if you use Royal Mail.

Was it worth it? Well, the extra expense and hassle kind of puts an unfair burden on any purchase: This had better be good - look how much it cost me! But even leaving that aside, I think the DVD is going to be worth it. Andrea Wong calls this Portuguese Style knitting, but I think of it as Greek. Years ago, a mate and I caught the Magic Bus to Athens and took a ferry to Crete and lived in the caves near Matala for a month. All the ladies in the Cretan village where we stayed knitted like this - with the yarn flowing over their shoulders and their thumbs shuttling back and forth so fast you couldn't see what they were doing. They made huge soft jumpers for the tourists - and because it was April and cold at night, I bought one, I think! Memory is so unreliable. I know I bought a pair of soft green cotton trousers to keep my legs warm, and I think I bought a grey jumper with a lot of garter stitch in it, but I can't be sure. Keep a blog, everyone!

Whatever name you give this knitting, it is interesting and completely different in style. For a start, the purl stitch is the easy one. I found it much easier to get the hang of the movements than when I learned Continental knitting - although my tension is still all over the place and I can see it will take a lot of practice before I can knit neatly this way. The knit stitch is much more difficult. In a few weeks time, I am going to make a couple more ribwarmers, and I could do one all in knit and one all in purl using this technique, just to get the hang of it. I think it may be easier on the hands because the pin (or your neck) tensions the yarn.

Andrea Wong's DVD is good value. She shows you the knit and the purl, cast on and cast off, increase and decrease, single rib, knitting backwards, knitting with two colours and a few other tips as well, so it pretty much covers the technique, which is good. I'm not sure about the pin - you have to be wearing something you don't mind sticking a pin in, and I'm not sure yet what I think about the feel of the yarn running though it. Still, I'll play around with it this week. I think the using the purl for garter stitch might be quicker than using Continental for garter stitch, and anything quick, I approve of.

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.

Happy Birthday to Me!

This is my favourite card. Andy knows me so well! The other thing I got for my birthday, with a gift card from work and some supermarket vouchers, is a DVD player. What's that to do with knitting? Read on!

Americans have wonderful resources - including knitting DVDs. Elizabeth Zimmerman's TV series is available. You can buy DVDs where Meg Swanson talks you through all the stages in a lace shawl or a fair isle vest. You can buy the Knitting Daily TV series which features the authors of your favourite books and knitters you'd love to meet. You can buy a DVD by Andrea Wong showing you how to do Portuguese knitting, which is even faster than Continental, so I hear. You can buy them, but if you are British you cannot play them without a head-aching plunge into the world of technology.

I tried contacting the knitters, and they would reply sweetly and pass me onto their tech guys. This never helped, because the techie guys speak another language and assume you have a level of knowledge and gadgetry that would, if you were so inclined, enable you to launch a small satellite, but really doesn't apply to the average knitter.

Next I tried hunting on the Internet for information and Lo! After a several months determination, all was revealed. If you are in the UK and you wish to play DVDs from the USA, here is the situation as I understand it:

The producers of DVDs divide up the world into regions and make DVDs which will only play on equipment set for that region. This is, they say, to combat piracy, but personally I suspect that all it does it make life difficult for innocent British people who want to watch American DVDs. Anyway, to continue with the solution:

DVD players are made so they can play anything and be sold anywhere, but because of this anti-piracy thing, before the unit leaves the factory, it is set to play one region only. But, and this is the important bit, it has the CAPACITY to play any disc from any region. Enter the clever and generous people who make up the Internet community. If there is a way to make your machine play a disc from any region they will post the solution on the Internet. This is called a hack. Type in the model number of your model and the word 'hack' and see if there is an answer.

If your machine is new, then applying a hack will invalidate your guarantee - so do not do this with new and expensive equipment. Instead, head for your local supermarket/favourite bargain shop and look for a cheap DVD player that advertises it will 'play it all'. Then check on the Internet to see if a hack is available, and if it is, buy the machine (mine is a very neat Phillips machine that was under £30) take it home, apply the hack and BINGO! You can play American knitting DVDs in your own home at last.

Today I sent off for Andrea Wong's DVD at last. I may or may not take to Portuguese knitting - but at least I can explore the option now.