I am two hours away from completed Christmas knitting.

This is where timing comes in handy – the first took me 5.25 hours, I’m 3.25 hours into this one, therefore I’m reasonably sure that I have about two hours left. Whoo hoo! There are still three things more to go for Christmas, but they’re not knitting, and one of them is actually for me and Brad (our annual Christmas ornament). I would really like to finish the mitten before we leave for Bakersfield either Friday night or Saturday morning, but if not I’ll finish it up Sunday evening. I want Brad to be packing and mailing while I’m in Seattle next week.

Here’s where I get kind of crazy – I’m going to have roving left over. I thought it might be cool to be able to incorporate it into some sort of matching hat (not for this Christmas!), but I would do that with yarn, not roving, because I don’t see why anyone would want a poufy head. The thing is, I don’t spin, and I’m probably the only person in the knitting universe that isn’t really tempted to start. (If I were to do anything else, it would be weaving). I’ll probably have about 20 grams of roving left – so I guess what I want to know is a) would someone spin it for me as some sort of trade? It’s Fleece Artist Merino roving – I know merino is harder to spin, but that’s all I know and b) would I be able to get enough out of 20 grams to maybe duplicate stitch vs to match the mittens, or maybe just work it into the cuff? So is it even worth it?

Okay, lots of questions and comments yesterday, and rather than try to answer them individually, I thought I’d just do it here. First, I have done magic loop – in fact, the other socks I’m working on now, Waving Lace socks, I’m doing with magic loop. I hope to find a favorite method between magic loop, 2 circs, and DPNs. I think I’m beginning to realize that every method is a pain until you have a bit of fabric done – nothing starts elegantly.

On to the tubular cast-on… my reference is The Knitter’s Handbook by Montse Stanley. I highly recommend this book – if you can only have one technical reference in your knitting library, I’d get this one because it’s the most comprehensive. The weird twisty tubular cast-on that I talked about is actually in the current Interweave Knits in addition to the Knitter’s Handbook, as the sock pattern in there uses it. Interweave calls it 1×1 rib cast-on. Miyon and I gave up on that one because we were both having issues with the twisty cast-on being really hard to tell if you twisted it at the join. If you like pretty pictures, Katharina Buss’s Big Book of Knitting has nice illustrations for the yarnover tubular cast-on that I mentioned yesterday (though I think it might be called kitchener). I actually used these instructions for this cast-on up until now, though The Knitter’s Handbook does have it. The tubular cast-on in Nancy Weisman’s Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques is very similar, but instead of yarnovers at the very beginning to increase your stitches, you’re picking up those extra stitches after the first three rows are worked. I’ve never tried this method myself – the yarnover method has worked for me, so I haven’t tried the other way (and there may be more ways, I don’t know). I’m not far enough on my socks to know if the join is weird yet, but I think only working two flat rows of knit 1, slip 1 instead of four might have made it okay. I do love the tubular cast-on, it looks very finished and stretches with the ribbing, but I do get lazy and skip it in places that it would be highly appropriate (like these thrummed mittens, for instance) due to the extra time investment. I’ve used it for sweaters before, and I think that Nancy Weisman is wrong when she says that you shouldn’t use it for 2×2 rib – I’ve done it with excellent results. I’ve also done it with less than great results (Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton), so I think that should be decided on a per-project/yarn basis.

Here’s an article that talks about Nancy Weisman’s way. This is one that uses the yarnover.

Anyway, that’s all I know!

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