K2P2

Starting wrap for the K2P2 stitch.

E-wrap pegs 1&2 bottom row
E-wrap pegs 1&2 top row
E-wrap pegs 3&4 bottom row
E-wrap pegs 3&4 top row
Continue in pattern

Notice the gap between each two sets of pegs bottom and top rows? This gap is what prevents the stitches from laying back to back and forces the piece into a single knit piece where the purls lay between the two knit stitches.

The smaller the gauged looms will tighen up this stitch into a more ribbed look. I don't have a really small gauged loom to show you this. So you will have to experiment on your own.

Wrap the following rows for the K2P2 following the same path as the first row. Each row is wrapped in the same direction as the one before.

Before beginning the K2P2 with no twist set a base row in whatever is your favorite cast on. You can use the figure eight, the long tail or the lucet or another of your choice.

This wrap goes around two pegs at the two and two pegs at the bottom at one wrapping.

This is the K2P2 wrap that I have seen a couple of places. I don't much like this one on the large gauged boards as it leaves much longer strands between the stitches and it looked funny when I was swatching it.



This could be ok on a smaller gauged board but I didn't try it as I didn't have a board empty to do so and my smallest gauged boards are 1/2". If you have something smaller give it a try and let me know how it works out.

It is wrapped with two pegs on the bottom then skipping two pegs.
Example:
Bottom row wrap pegs 1&2,
top row skip pegs 1&2 wrap pegs 3&4,
bottom row, skip pegs 3&4 wrap pegs 5&6
top row skip pegs 5&6 wrap pegs 7&8

Mason's K2P2 baby ghan.

I first started experimenting with the K2P2 stitch when I got a little better on the double rake looms. I picked up a drawn diagram from the yahoo group frame_knitting. The drawing is done free hand by Lynn Carpenter. There are several stitches on Lynn's drawing and they are very easy to follow.



The previous K2P1 stitch instructions came about by looking at the K2P2. It stood to reason that if I skipped wrapping a peg on the purl row I would have only one purl. Duh, yes that makes sense. So I played with it and am still playing with it while I make another baby ghan.

Now as you play with this stitch you will notice that while on one side you have a K2P1, on the other side you are going to have the opposite. So this will not look the same on both sides. Each side will be slightly different but just as pretty.

Ok now go have fun playing. These are not hard stitches to wrap and they will give you more options on using your double rake.

Knit 2 Purl 1

The Knit 2 Purl 1 with the twist is done with the e-wrapped stitch. You wrap two pegs on the knit row, then go to the purl row wrap skip one peg e-wrap the next peg. This will give a slight slant to the look of the stitch.

I like this one better the the next stitch.

I turned the loom upside down to take this picture. As you see the knit row is at the top of the loom and the purl at the bottom. I actually find it easier to wrap the K2P1 with the knit row at the bottom of the loom.

Here you have the pegs for the knit row wrapped with out the twist of the e-wrap. In order to do this one you simply wrap around both of the pegs that are on the knit row, then go to the one peg that will be the purl and wrap around it. Do not e-wrap, just go straight around the peg.



Here is a side view of the non-twisted wrap. You can see at the top of the picture how the two knit pegs are wrapped. Again I turned the loom upside down to take the picture. I wrap with the knit row at the bottom and the purl row at the top. Do what is easiest for you.

Today, Just a little talk, or more likely rambling

A long time ago, many, many years now, a friend passed away. In her leaving she left a lot of yarn, some partially finished projects and some finished. In those finished projects were such as these. These are decorative potholders. These are not the kind that you use in the kitchen around a hot stove. They would not hold up for that. My friend made them for decoration. To hang on the wall or to use as pass the hot bowl at the table.

It took me a few hours to figure this one out but figure it out I did. I made so many of them, in so many different colors. I added little table dollies to sets as presents and tiny little coasters. I really loved doing these, but haven't done any for years now. These are some that I still have hanging around. They are a double thickness made all in one row. It's pretty neat.

I picked up my criss cross waffle afghan again tonight to work on it. Bummer first row a mistake again. I just couldn't believe it. I am not tired, well not like I was. I had a lazy morning and a little time at work that amounted to not a lot of stress or reason to make the mistake I saw.

Ah then it dawned on me, I didn't make a mistake in wrapping that row. That row was perfect, but the row before had a dropped stitch. There is was plain as day, and I had been missing it. I am so lucky that the stitch was just sitting there, right where it had fallen several nights ago. I just unwrapped the row and picked that little stitch up to place him right back where she belonged (have to vary that he and she, I didn't ask so don't want to insult, ROFLO). Anyway it is back in place and I am rows beyond that little fiasco. All that frogging "my mistakes" and it wasn't even the right mistake I was trying to fix. Ugh! Yuck! Yell! Scream! Now I feel better.

It's a bummer

that my cute butterfly chair has bit the dust. Well, it did so a few months ago, but I am still unhappy about it. I loved this chair now it is gone. I don't think I will ever do another quite like this one.

I am still working on that criss cross baby ghan. I am doing two rows of blue then two rows of variegated blue. Each time I put the two blue rows on last night I had to frog them. I guess I must have been too tired to be working on this one so I put it away and took out the K2P1 I have on a straight board loom. That one went along just fine. It is easy to wrap and knit off and I really like how it is looking.

Well, things have been pretty slow. It has been raining and raining for a couple of days and I have been extremely lazy because of it. I did manage to get to storage to pick up some books I have been wanting to read. The hubby went with me to keep me from lifting heavy boxes and straining my wrist which has been hurting bunches lately. Now I just have to get time to do some reading.

Criss Cross Baby Ghan

This is what I am working on right now. Boy is this one hard to wrap on the S loom. This is a 36" S loom from CinDWood Crafts, the yarn is a red heart baby soft one strand two different colors. The pattern is the criss cross that makes the waffle look.

The problem is not the wrapping for the two different rows but rather that on the curves the pegs for the inner curve come really close to each other while on the outer curve the pegs are really far apart. This makes the wrapping a bit harder to accomplish. I keep messing up and skipping two pegs rather then one and then I have to unwrap to get it right. That makes for a much slower process of wrapping for this one.

Other then the wrapping, you probably want to know about that one strand of baby yarn to wrap with. The criss cross forms a waffle pattern that with two strands of worsted on a large gauged loom is very thick. This is the pattern I am considering using to make that coat pattern from knittingboard.com. It would make a very nice thick coat and very decorative also. With the one strand of baby yarn the patter still shows the waffle pattern but is very lacy and open in the weave. Now since this ghan is for a summer baby, due at the beginning of July now, a light weight ghan is what I am after and I do think this will do if I don't blow that wrapping. I just need to take great care with it. As you can see it is barely out the bottom of the loom so you really cannot see much of the pattern yet. I figure about a week till there is enough to get a really good picture of the pattern.

A cat with a cat. Oh the picture of the cat chair isn't so great but I had to get one with this cat in it. He is a big cat but not as big as he is now. He was about a year old in this picture and now he is several years old and much, much bigger. In fact he is our largest cat weighing in at over 20lbs. Not the biggest ever, but no small guy either.

His name is Morty and he has lately started to be a pain to me. He is my husbands cat and he sleeps with him, us and is so spoiled that it makes the little I spoiled my children seem like they were not one bit spoiled. This cat gets special food (under the guise of dietary, to slim him up, which it hasn't), sits on the hubbys lap to eat out of a bowl placed on the chest. He even gets his water that way. Talk about a rotten cat. He will pout on those nights that the hubby is so tired all he wants is sleep and refuses to play the nightly game. Oh those down turned ears and that look while Morty sits on the edge of the bedroom chair crying with such a pity me sound. Yes, spoiled.

Now we come to why he is such a pain to me. Morty has decided that there should only be two people in the bed, himself and my husband. So for the last couple of nights, after I am asleep, he proceeds to try to muscle me out of bed. He even attacked my foot night one night. Oh this is so not going over very well. I am a mover and I never stay in one spot at night. So when I move a bit Morty jumps, yes jumps into the spot I just vacated and then uses his feet, all four of them, to push on me. Oh this is not fun, but sometimes funny, as I get up and throw him to the other side of the bed, but he is back in seconds. If I get up, I come back to find him spread out across the entire center area where I lay. Boy can that cat spread.

This is not going to happen. I told the hubby if he wants to keep his cat in the room at night he will have to control him or out he goes. I was there first and I will be there in the end. I am much more stuborn then any old cat, and I am also meaner. ROFLOL Humm, maybe taking pictures of him made him think he is the star, but it doesn't matter to me, it's my bed and I intend to keep my place in it, spoiled cat or no.

Well, I started a baby ghan on a CinDWood 36" S loom in the criss cross stitch that makes the waffle look. It is barely out the bottom of the loom so it is hard to see much of it, but I think it is going to work ok as long as I don't blow the wrapping of this pattern. It is much more difficult to wrap this stitch on the board because of the curving of the loom and the variance in the pegs. Some pegs are close and some further apart and that make wrapping these two rows very difficult, but not impossible. I keep getting to the end of a row and finding that I am not finishing up right. Then it is pull the row to see where the mistake was. It is usually where the pegs come the closest to each other, I will skip two pegs instead of one for the wrap, and that throws the whole thing off.

Still if I can keep going catching those wrong wrapped rows before knit off I will just have to take a little longer in the finish time for this one, not that I worry about being fast, I don't. I am using one strand of a baby yarn in that criss cross wrap and am getting a very lacy looking piece. I like so far how it looks. It will be a very summer type of ghan and since the baby is due in July this is good.

No pictures yet, there isn't even enough out the bottom of the board to take one that you could see, but in a week or so there could be. It just depends on how much time I get to work on it. Not much today I can say. I have some stuff for work to do so that I am ready for payday tomorrow and not have to put a rush job on tomorrow morning. Yes I know it's mothers day but I am a mother, I can do what I want today, can't I? Then there is that sweaping and mopping that I need to do. Yuck, the things I hate the most I need to just do to get out of the way, now. Then later can be a better day.

A little slow

Things are a little slow for me right now, so I though this little turtle was the prefect picture to present here. I am still feeling rather worn from being sick and I just don't feel like doing much of anything.
** this is an update as I just noticed that I forgot to say that this turtle pattern is from Mary Meyer. I am not sure where it might be located on the net but that is where I got it from. Mark is a tatter of such talent that one would wish to be like him. His turtle here is just a tiny example of the work he does. Check the web to find more on Mark and his wonderful books that you can purchase.

I hear all the time how people got injuried, had surgery, or just been sick and they love sitting back just forgetting everything in the extra time to craft. Why not me? When I am not feeling well I just want to sleep. I certainly do not want to craft. That is the furthest thing in my mind.

Over a period of days I thought well others do it so why not give it a try. I brought my knitting looms to the bed and attempted to sit and knit. No way. I couldn't concentrate, the lite brezze though the window made me drowsy, and I wound up slipping back into a restful sleep. So much for the effort. Each time I tried it, I failed. Ah doomed to sleeping and healing faster. No rest for the wicked as they say(well not the resting while crafting type of rest, just that heavy sleep it off kind). I can't remember being wicked but I must have been.

I am starting to watch the mailman's comings now. I ordered three extra fine gauged sock looms from DA and they should be here anytime now, but that mailman isn't being kind enough to get put them in my mailbox. I know he is hiding them in the back of that mail truck just watching me looking for them. The box is nailed down so I cannot pick it up to shake it. So I am doomed to not knowing if there is a pocket that things can hide in till they are ready to present themselves. Ah well, any day now those new looms will decide to come out of hiding. Besides, I have no energy to work on looms anyway, so what's the big deal. Those new looms probably know I will look at them, carress them and then have to put them away for awile. So they are taking an extended vacation before getting here.

Well, off to work. I have bunches to accomplish today and not one urge to get to it.

The Ugly Swatch

Yes, the ugly swatch. So ugly not even it's mother could love it and I don't. I was working on this one off and on while I was starting to get sick. Now I am not quite sure just what I did wrong to make this come out so badly but here it is in all it's awful self.

Not a sight for human eyes, but the poor little thing cannot help what I did too it. Just pitty it and I will try to do better to it's brother or sister sometime in the future.

Waffle, Stockinette, E-wrapped Stockinette

Ok three more swatches. As you can see I put the names on the swatch so you don't have to guess which is which. The waffle or criss cross stitch gave me such fits. Frogged it over and over till I finally got it, and then only because Bety explained a tip she has for remembering what row you have just finished. I just kept loosing my place, oh and yes I was marking down the rows, I still got lost. ROFLOL

Now the Stockinette stitch is really nice. I have used that one a lot, but the e-wrapped stockinette swatch was the first time I have wrapped using that. For that e-wrapped stockinette you have that very nice slight slant to the stitches that is seen in all e-wrapped single rake projects. I like it. I think it adds a level of interest to the way the swatch looks.

I have one more swatch where I tried the purl as it is done on a single rake. I will get a scan later, but I have to say right now, I don't like it. Not one little bit do I like it. It is the ugliest thing I have done on a board.

Busy, Busy

I need to make a new one of these. I think I would redesign it a bit but not by much. This one has done me well for many years. It is just done using scraps of polycord but given that our shower has limited space and not one shelf for things like shampoos and other stuff this has been very handy. It came from a pattern for making a piece that holds toilet tissue but I added extra pockets for other stuff and rings for razors. Next time I would change the side strips that hold the bottles in making them wider or more of them. I would also add additional cords to make the whole piece a bit wider then it is right now. It works quite well and it was a great use of all those scraps I built up from doing plant hangers. Well, this was just for show and tell anyway, I don't have time to do one soon.

Sorry, haven't had time to update. I was working on a project that was a tester, fun huh, for an internet friend and work has consumed a lot of time this past week.

I did get back to those swatches I have been making, Bety having gotten me started. I don't have scans yet but I have done an e-wrap stockinette, a stockinette, and I started one that is almost finished that is coming out really different. This last one, still being on the board, is a knit and purl as you would do the knit and purl on the round looms.

I say it is different but I am not quite sure yet I even like it. It really does look different then anything I have knitted on a board. I found that to do this as I wanted I had to fudge the wrapping at the beginning of the swatch. I think this is what started the look it now has. I will have to do another, not fudging to see what happens with it.

No more work has been done on the reversible colored swatch. I have been letting it sit so that what I have done to try to fix the messy sides will fade in memory and maybe I can come up with some new ideas on how to straighten that problem.

Today is payday so work on any knitting is out of the question. I always seem to have way to much in front of me to worry about anything else. I do not need employees of the business upset because I am busy with what I think is important. It's bad enough that one growls at me because I cannot always fit the time he thinks that check should be available. Gee I get checks out hours before we use to get them, I work at making sure that they are available with a lot of banking time for the day left over. I hate it when I keep getting that "Well at my last job they...." Well, that was a different employer, a different city, heck even a different state, and I am not going to mix and match to suit anyone, but there is always this little threat hanging around me of if I don't.... Get then I will.... Well you get the picture. What's up with that. I am only doing what I have to do to get to where I need to be so that you can get to where you want to be as soon as that to be can be. End of gripe. ROFLOL

I wanted to get pictures of the two more swatches I have done, actually scans as they show up better, but just didn't have the time over the weekend. It was beautiful and besides the test I was doing there was so much else to do. I even had to take a trip to Walmart yesterday. There is always those things needed to do yard work that you didn't think of till it was time to do it. So that trip got most of that. We got new inhose sprayers, a pump sprayer, weed and grass killer, bug killer (the ants in the valley have been so terrible over the last several years), stuff for the pool, gee chlorine has been getting more an more expensive. We need a new hand weed whacker, but the hubby wants to check for one that would be an attachment for his chain pole chain saw. He has a big one on wheels but it whacks the trees too hard and takes the bark right off, so a smaller is needed. We don't want to hurt the trees. It is so sad to see them bleed by our misconduct. LOL, can you tell we love our trees. I am always so sad when one dies. Boy, I forgot to get the spray to kill of bees nests. Spring is only beginning and we already have several in trees and on the house. Mustn't let them get to big those creatures get very nasty when disturbed and with grands running around all summer that is not nice.

No I didn't get yarn or other stash goodies. I actually avoided that area. No telling what could have caught my eye. As it was a wind chime did catch my eye. It was only $20 and is 55"L x 7.5" W x 7.5" D. This is bigger then any I have gotten so far. Most of mine are little ones all over the cedar tree outside my bedroom window. This one also has a bronze finish. We hung it up right away next to the largest other aluminum wind chime I have, over on the plum tree, close but not right next to the bedroom window. When the breeze started last evening (we get one of these almost every night during the spring, and summer) the sound of these two chimes just accented each other so wonderfully. I need another. Someone needs to tell the kids that mothers day is not all that far away and these are not all that expensive. Maybe they would take a hint.