Knitting again

[Edit 5/10/06: Click here for pictures.]

After not having worked on a knitting project for a couple months, this weeekend I picked up the needles again, or rather, had the needles sawn in two and then started knitting.

I had bought a lace knitting book, Kunststrik II by Sonja Esbensen at Velona's sometime back. But trying to cast on and knit eight stitches with size 30 thread distributed on four size 000 (1.5 mm) slippery steel 8" double-pointed needles was impossible for me.

So, unable to located 000 needles in a shorter length, I ordered another set of 8" needles and brought them to Berg Hardware, a wonderful old-time hardware store where they still price everything with handwritten tags. They cut the needles into 3.5 and 4.5 inch lengths. The ends are a little rough but worked OK for getting the circular pattern started until I could manipulate the full-sized needles.

Lesson learned, however—the needles should be the same brand. The Inox needles I had cut are slightly thicker than the 8" Addi needles, enough to see a difference in the tension.

(This project won't be finished because the thread I used is too heavy for these needles. But it was enough to show me 1) the shorter needles help to get circular lace patterns started and 2) I can figure out Danish patterns!)

Emboldened by my adventure, when I read about Annie's project for Kerstin's family, I thought I'd like to try making a square knitted from the center outwards on four needles. I found a pattern, Beeton's Flower, in Knitting Counterpanes by Mary Walker Phillips (which is available for a very reasonable price at this moment via the Amazon link—the book is out of print). The square knitted up very quickly on size 4 (3.5 mm) needles with sport-weight yarn compared to the earlier lace knitting experiment.