A little catch up

I know it might feel like I've been ignoring the blog but I actually have not. I've been knitting like a mad woman and to keep myself on track and not knitting while on the computer I've switched to knitting while riding my stationary recumbent bike.

A few of my friends at knit night have been wondering how I do it. How do I listen to a book on tape, knit and ride a bike? Well its simple. I've trained myself to knit while doing other things to the point that simple knitting can be as easy as breathing for me. Also, it took me a while but I have finally mastered the purl stitch without looking and this makes knitting rib a lot easier. These two things have made it so I can be in a dark theater and knit a plain sock, or read a book while knitting the ribbing of a hat.

When biking I always choose something simple that has to get done but I might find boring to do while I listen to Harry Potter. Since I've had 3 Gryffindor scarves to knit since mid October I've had plenty of things to keep my hands busy while I ride (it also keeps me from getting off the bike since I find riding it fairly boring). Here is a picture of the last scarf:

Its not blocked

It's my own pattern for a house scarf that is knit in 1x1 rib so that it looks like knit on both sides but takes up half the yarn then one of your fancy tube scarves that you see in Charmed Knits.

Using size US8 needles I cast on 35 stitches in the main color (in this case red) and then knit 1x1 ribbing till it reaches 3" on an odd row (I average 19 rows). I then count how many rows it took for me to reach 3" and then change colors and knit 1x1 rib that many rows. I then keep changing colors and knitting 3" stripes till I have 19(21) stripes total then cast off.

Using a hardbound book (I used my copy of Cara Black's Murder in the Palais Royal) I made the fringe for the edges with the plan for 7 tassels in the red on each side and 6 in the gold with 7 strands per tassel (for those of you that hate math it means you need 98 stands of the red and 84 strands of the gold).

It's a rather quick pattern and I found that to knit a scarf it takes 64 miles or about 6.5 hours on my bike. The weaving in of ends takes about an hour then about 30 mins for the fringe. You can also block it if you would like.

I've also been spinning like a mad woman and decided to bring my spinning wheel to knit night and spun up some lovely blue wool alpaca I had dyed:

The color transitions are just stunning

I'm wearing my reunion cowl

The picture above does not do it justice, but I've found that when I take pictures at knit night the lighting is just so yellow that even editing the photos does not help all that much.

I'll share pictures of the finished yarn on Friday and I have a new pattern out that I hope you'll love!