theraineysisters knitting and so much more

I think I have a form of mental disorder.  My younger DD calls it FOMO.  Fear of missing out.  She and I also suffer from FORO (fear of running out – like my obsessive fear of not having enough half and half for my coffee 🙂 ).

What am I FOMO’ing about now?  Nakia’s Infinity Scarf from the movie blockbuster, Black Panther.  Have I seen the film?  No.  But I will once I get going on my scarf!!

Here is what did it for me.  You know how there is knitting in a movie and everyone on Ravelry goes crazy and starts a million discussion threads about reverse engineering the knitted item?  Well, in this case, a bunch of people also directly contacted Ruth Carter, the costume designer for Black Panther, and asked for the pattern for the infinity scarf worn by Lupita Nyong’o.  She contacted Jeff Gillies.  He is the person who actually made the scarf for the movie (with a knitting machine).  He kept detailed notes and was able to recreate the design, and then offered it free on Ravelry.   He used real knitting yarns like Noro Silk Garden, Malabrigo Mechita, and Madelinetosh Merino Light, so now there is a run on all of these yarns.  One has been discontinued, but I was able to snag them all with one acceptable substitute for a zillion dollars!

The colors aren’t even my colors 😉 , but my FOMO has settled down.  The yarns will take a while to arrive because some are back ordered.  I don’t care.  I have them ordered.  I can relax now…until another case of FOMO strikes!!

PS to Alison: I am excited to start on this, but the yarn hunt is still a work in progress!  I have two of the four yarns in my possession, and one more should arrive today.  The last missing link wasn’t going to ship until March 28, but I found a different source and hopefully it should arrive this week!  When I get all of the yarns, I will post a picture.

Just missing the Tosh Merino Light Plaid Blanket…it is ordered and hopefully on its way!

We tried yesterday to post our tip of the week on The Rainey Sisters Ravelry Group.  It just would not work!  The middle half would not show up.  So, here it is:

March 4, 2018 Tip of the Week
In our counting rows Tip of the Week video, we used the lifted increase.  We received some questions about that so we thought we could add it as this week’s tip.  It is always nice to have several tools in your knitting toolbox so you can use the best technique for the situation.

Lifted Increase:  These increases knit into the left or right leg (left leg of st –> V <– right leg of st) of the stitch in the row below.  They are easy to do and fairly invisible.  Like all increases, they can create some stitch distortion, but when spread out as in sleeve increases, it is minimal.  To reduce distortion, do not lift the yarn onto the needle, but simply knit the stitch in place.  We call the right leg lifted increase RLI, and the left leg is called LLI.

RLI:
Knit to the position of the next increase.  The right leg we will use is shown with a marker in the picture below.  Lift the right leg of the stitch in the row below, place it on the lefthand needle, and knit it like a regular stitch.  Then knit the stitch that is was next in line to be knit.  One stitch increased.

LLI:
The left leg of the stitch below can only be reached after knitting the next stitch on the needle.  This appears to place it one row lower than the RLI, BUT it really is in the same row as the stitch used to create an RLI.  The marker in the picture below is placed on the left leg of the stitch we are going to use BEFORE we knit the next stitch on the needle.  If you have trouble finding this when you are first trying to use this increase, keep the marker in place until you complete the inc.   Lift the left leg up and then knit it through the back loop because of the way it is positioned.  You do not want to twist the stitch.  One stitch increased.

The following pictures show the increases in the same direction they were worked (“right side up”  shown with up arrow) and also “upside down” shown with down arrow.  The really cool thing about these increases is that they look like k2tog and ssk decreases from the other direction!  This means that topdown sweaters with increases will look like regular decreases when being worn – crazy!

There are of course many youtube videos and other sources for information about these increases.

PS to Robin F. — Knitting terms are not always consistent, but we tend to think of a knitted make one “m1” (left or right) as lifting the running thread between two sts and knitting it with a twist (see PS2 for more).  This increase causes stitch distortion to the sts on either side AND to the sts above it in the next row.  To avoid this, you can do a YO in place of the m1 and twist it on the following row.  Of course, repeating m1’s stacked row after row (as in raglan shaping) can be a pretty design element.

PS2 to Shiphrah99:  You are right — left and right m1’s are determined by how you seat the running thread (RT) on the needle.  A right slanting m1 is made by lifting the RT with the left needle tip from back to front and knitting the st.  A left slant is created by lifting the RT from front to back and knitting it through the back loop.  The lifted increases we are showing are another type of increase.

The Weekender Designer Meet and Greet!!  Last evening I met Andrea Mowry, designer of The Weekender and Find Your Fade fame.  She is absolutely darling and of course very talented!!  I thought everyone would be wearing her Weekender but I was the only one.  Many were wearing fade shawls.

I will be taking her advanced brioche class tomorrow, so in preparation I did some brioche knitting this week to try to get back into the swing of it.  I have done brioche in the past but it’s been a while!!

Homegrown Brioche Hat

I used Malabrigo Worsted (feels like cashmere, honestly!!) and just kind of did my own thing.  The pom came from an Etsy shop that I had seen advertised on Instagram: Threadheadknits1.  This is the large pom and it is HUGE!!  Jena loved it!  I did use the button “Tip of the Week,” of course!

Jena now has a set of hats:

PS to Nell: The leather tags are of my own making, with help from friend Kim.  I created the design and she printed them on leather with a special printer they have at home!

We are in full Birkie prep mode and a lot of snow fell last evening!  It is a beautiful, snowy-white, sunny day!!  More expected tomorrow on race day (??!!).

Last evening I got a bee in my bonnet to fix a shawl that I made quite a while ago: Lehigh by Melanie Berg.   Beautiful shawl!

Mine turned out ginormous!  Ten feet wide!  It was like wearing a 10 foot boa constrictor around my neck – or body!  I loved the look of the shawl but it was TOO MUCH of a good thing!   So I decided to take off the top few inches.  The new width is 82 inches.  I did not keep the tassels on the ends as they were so heavy they felt like I was being pelted with baseballs!!!

It will go very well with my gray wool coat and many other things, so it is OUT OF THE CLOSET so to speak! 🙂

Wish us luck at the Birkie!  Last year it was cancelled due to no snow and this year there is a ton of new snow — be careful what you wish for, though this is 1000 times better!!

And you still have time to knit up a 2018 Winter Games Hat in time for the closing ceremonies on Sunday…and even if you don’t finish, it is a darn cute hat!!

We have posted this week’s Tip of the Week in our Ravelry Group!!

Today is Surly’s birthday.  Yay!!  Happy Birthday, Surly!!  What a tumultuous few months she has had.  She started out last July visiting Colorado and her daughter and son-in-law.  An idea that had been percolating went into full boil: should we move to Boulder?  They decided to do so, and thus began a saga of semi-epic proportions.

Sally is now on the verge of moving into her new Colorado home.  They leave a stunning home in our nation’s capitol to move into a sleek, modern “Colorado-style” house with views of the foothills.  Being in three different houses in as many months can be very stressful, but Sally has been able to reconnect with family in a way that makes it worthwhile.

So, the gift that Sally gets this month is to close on her old life home and start anew.  That is quite a gift at our age and very exciting.  Happy birthday wishes as you settle into your new life!!  It takes courage to change and shows a youthful spirit!!  🙂

Many of you have joined our Ravelry group called, with much creativity,  The Rainey Sisters.  Each week we share our Tip of the Week.  This week’s tip is about how we use waste yarn to count rows when doing things like increases or decreases on a sleeve.  Because it is easy to do but difficult to describe, Susan prepared a very professional :cough: :cough: video:

Also, Susan’s FREE 2018 Winter Games Hat pattern is going gang busters on Ravelry.  Click on over and check it out!!

PS to Susan: I am wearing my Funky Grandpa!!

PS2 to Kate: Throwers rock, so nannie-nannie-boo-boo to pickers!!

The Olympics have started and the opening ceremonies are tonight!  I just heard from StevenBe — famous Glitter Knitter — that his shop is putting together hat kits for people who want to create their own Olympic souvenir and symbol of support for our Team USA athletes!!

Time to get this party started!!  Find the FREE hat pattern here:  2018 Winter Games Hat.  Can be worn with or without a pom…

This addendum to my previous post was longer than the post, so I decided to start a new post!!  Phyddy asked, “What is invisible stranding?”

Invisible Stranding is the term I coined to describe a technique for carrying stranded floats across any number of stitches without catching them.  It is a machine knitting technique that has been adapted to hand knitting.  I wrote up a pattern, called It’s Not About the Hat, to share this technique with others.  The pattern includes a series of videos that demonstrate all the steps, and the tricks I have learned along the way.  Invisible stranding is perfect for projects with long floats.  Here are some examples:

Mother Goose Hat

Rose and Lily

And the reason I dove into invisible stranding with both feet: Dale of Norway 10903.  There were places in the chart where you had to carry a dark color across 30+ sts of cream!

This technique is a game changer and removes any obstacles to stranded knitting.  It opens up all sorts of possibilities!!

Can you stand another freebie??  I just finished a hat for my husband to wear during the 2018 Birkebeiner.  The race occurs right when the Winter Games wrap up, so it is very festive and exciting!  This year a local female skier, Jessie Diggins, is on the US team.  Last season, Diggins became the most decorated U.S. cross-country skier, male or female, in world championship history.  So we are really looking forward to seeing how she does!

I reverse engineered the hat from photographs and wrote it up as a pattern — though others beat me to it!  I used invisible stranding to do the red on the diamond motif, which was very annoying to say the least!  Duplicate stitch may be a better way to go!