Tuesday, April 24, 2012

To Knit, or not to Knit, that is the question

To knit, or not to knit, that is the question that plagues my mind. (with many apologies to the Bard for butchering his prose...)

I love to work with yarn.  I have taught myself to crochet and to knit basic items.  I love the way that knit baby caps look with their little top knots and rolling brims.  But I am much better at crocheting.  I am doing intermediate works such as these Christening gowns below:

Double Love Knot Dress
Tiny Blossom Dress
 These will be available on my Etsy site:  Giggles, Kisses and Love

 But I just love the way that the little knit cap look with the jacquard pattern Bernat yarns.   You can only see the patterns if you knit the yarn like below: 


 So I practiced and practiced.  Frogged and frogged again.  Tried circular knitting needles and DPN needles.   The circular needs stretched to little hats too much.  Never mind frogging, I just cut the yarn and started again.

I also tried Magic Loop method of knitting.  Worked well until I would put it down and it would end up turning itself inside out and I ended up purling the knits because it was facing the wrong way.  Sigh.  Cut yarn and try again.

At first, I was leary of knitting with DPNS. I thought that it would be akin to knitting with a porcupine. The biggest help was switching from metal needles to bamboo needles. The bamboo prevents the stitches from slipping off as easily.

Knit cap with DPNs(Double-pointed needles)
 But as scary as it looks to knit with five needles, the improvement was worth it.  I have four caps completed.
Four knitted caps

But caps are not really special unless they come with a set of matching booties.  And there I ran into another problem.  Finding a cute but easy knitted bootie pattern.  I have tons of cute crochet booties patterns but knit was not going well.

Bleh....not pleased......
Off to my crochet patterns.  Decided on "My Angel Booties" pattern from The Lovely Crow, leaving out the embellishments.  Very quick and rewarding pattern, especially to donate to charity.

My Angel Booties with knit cap
So for now, I am knitting the caps so that the patterns show up and it has the lovely rolled brims but will stay with the crochet booties, unless someone can give me a cute knit pattern.  And is able to convince me that it is worth the switch.




No comments:

Post a Comment