Flagel Knitting Files

The U.S. has Sunday, Monday and occasionally Thursday Night Football, Canada has Hockey Night in Canada and on Friday, November 1, there will be Knitting Night in Norway. That evening there will be an approximate 5 hours of live television broadcast plus an additional 4 hours of pre-game show.  All this to show the Norwegian attempt to set a Guinness world record of shear to sweater.  That will include shearing a sheep, spinning the wool and finally knitting a sweater.  Australia has held this record since 2004 by getting all of this done in 4 hours, 51 minutes and 14 second.  The Norwegian team includes (as all teams of this type do) 1 sheep shearer and 7 wool artists.  Here's a Canadian website (do scroll down to International Back to Back Wool Challenge) that describes the competition.  I do know completing in less than 5 hours is incredibly fast knitting, spinning and shearing.  Check out the times of the winners in the last couple of years; ove...

On Saturday I saw Stephanie Pearl-McPhee speak at Knit City in Vancouver.  She calls herself a knitting humourist and she certainly lived up to that.  I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  There were somewhere between 150-200  knitters in an auditorium laughing just as much as me.  It was great to have so many like-minded individuals together in one place. Last night I couldn't sleep as I ran her comments through my mind.  I know at some point I will write more about them, but for today I want to summarize a serious portion of Stephanie's comments.   These are all her comments solely I'm merely reporting the ideas and reiterating what she said only she does it with so much more humour.  (You can thank me later.) "It's not your grandmother's knitting."  The headlines seem to say this all the time.  Funny thing is, it is exactly the same as my grandmother's knitting.  Knitting is wrapping yarn around a pair of sticks an...

I know, what an arrogant statement especially from a Canadian slash Midwestern American, but those who know me also know such a statement is rare for me.  Nonetheless, this week I did impress myself. On October 19  I wrote about the Continental knitting workshop I took in the post called:   Pickers and Throwers.  So it is now as I write less than one week since I learned a new way to knit, six days to be exact I'm impressed.  Those six days have been spent practicing the new style of knitting, in fact, it's the only style used.  And on one point Judy, the instructor for the Continental workshop, was wrong; I have fallen in love with this new style far short of a month in time. The movement is different so I'm not using that throwing motion to create a stitch.  Instead a much more refined picking technique is used, which leads to much less stiffness/soreness after a couple of hours of knitting. I do have the knit stitch down, not to the point...

I know there's only a handful of days before Halloween, but how about knitting up a few of these free, fast and furious projects before the big day. Mochimochi has put out a pattern to make these cute little bits of candy corn.  It would be pretty simple to knit up an entire handful of these treats before Halloween and the bonus, you can use some of that excess scrap yarn as well. Or how about a tiny spooky ghost, or as it is name a Dr. Who Jelly Baby ?  (I had to look this reference up, but yes, there are jelly babies associated with Dr. Who.)  Again a couple of these would be very easy to do, and it appears they would be best done in orange to be true to Dr. Who.  I, on the other hand, might make a few in white and just rename them. Want to truly disappoint neighborhood  kids who stop by to trick or treat?  Well you can start by handing them this chocolate candy bar .  I envision more than a few sad kids faces and perhaps some smil...

Fall is certainly in the air here in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.  The trees are turning colours and many are dropping leaves.  Today I saw the mama raccoon and her babies walking into work and they are fattening up for winter as well.  Yes, it won't be long before the nights get especially chilly and winter coats will be coming out. So my thoughts turn to pumpkins, gourds as well as golden orange and red leaves.  Although we've already celebrated Thanksgiving here above the 49th parallel, those of you below it have time to secure something like this for your Thanksgiving festivities. How about a cornucopia filled with lovely fall coloured Madelinetosh yarns? This is available from Jimmy Beans Wool for a short time.  The vivid burnt orange and muted millet yellow paired with the light gray/maroon and peachy/off-white variegated yarns all look stunning in this horn of plenty. So if you have a knitter you want to give a wonderful thank you gift to...

Call me crazy, but this doesn't sound like a very good idea.  Apparently David Babcock, a professor of graphic design at the University of Central Missouri, thinks it is perfectly fine.  I'm in awe since I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. On Saturday, October 19, 2013, David Babcock broke the Guinness World Record for Longest Scarf Knitted while Running in the Kansas City Marathon (that's 26.2 miles or 42.2 km).  There are no typos in that sentence, he was able to knit a 12-foot 3/4 inch (about 3.7 meters) scarf in the 5 hours, 48 minutes and 27 seconds it took him to run the race.  (At least I think that's right since several sources said the scarf was 12 feet, 13/4 inches, which means 12 feet 3 1/4 inches.  Your guess is as good as mine on this one.)  It was a long scarf. Babcock says he started running and knitting about three years ago and because both can become tedious he decided to combine them.  (Sure do two tedious thing...

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee said this in her book, At Knit's End : People who knit have long been trying to convince people who don't that they can knit and listen at the same time.  Studies have shown that people often show increased focus and even demonstrate greater recollection while knitting. Conversely, with some people, knitting is the only thing that gets us through listening to them . It all started with this check-engine light not flashing but staying on constantly in my car last week during my Fiber Run.  I stopped, pulled out the manual and found out short of flashing, it meant there was an error in the computer.  So I did drive home and called my mechanic to set up an appointment yesterday before the knitting class. There I bumped into someone who tested Stephanie's statement.  As usual I brought knitting to keep me occupied while the car was getting fixed.  Generally the waiting area is empty, but yesterday all the chairs were full once ...

If one would like to start a knitting version of a bar fight, ask which is the right way to knit, Continental (pickers) or English (throwers).  There are few who are neutral about their answer. I learned how to knit using the English motion and have been using that style of knitting for decades.  Take a quick peek at this video  it shows the amount of movement, especially in the right hand and arm.  See how the right hand is used to throw the working yarn around the needle.  This style of knitting can cause arm and shoulder pain if one knits for long lengths of time.  It is nonetheless a style of knitting used by millions of knitters. There is evidence suggesting the use of the Continental style of knitting is easier on the arm and hand, faster and allows for more even tension.  Here's a video so you can see it in action. Note how the stitch is picked from the working yarn.  Additionally did you see how little overall movement there is in the...

The West Desert Hood  went with me to Port Orchard, it is what I knit on for two hours at the port. When the knitting of this cowl began it was clear the amount of dark gray yarn on hand would be cutting it very close to the amount needed.  Little did I know then I'd be cutting to under 17 inches or 43 cm close.  Don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy creating  waste yarn, by this is cutting it far too close for comfort. The entirety of leftover yarn there on the counter To get to this point of only a small amount of extra yarn, there was a need to manipulate the work.  The cowl begins with a 5 row border of ribbing or in my case 5 rows of the seed/moss stitch.  As the end of my yarn supply neared there were only 2 rows of the border completed leaving choices to be made: Leave it with 5 rows at the cast on and only 1 row at the cast off (there needed to be enough yarn to cast off). Take the entire project apart and start over again making adjustments...

My adventure on Sunday morning started out leisurely.  Des Moines is an easy one hour drive to Port Orchard and the shop there didn't open until noon.  So I slept in, ate a light breakfast at the motel and hit the road about 10:30. The autumn views of water and turning leaves on the way couldn't be captured because I was driving, but beauty abounded.  I like to think of it as eye candy. This painting captures the colours, the burning off of the morning fog and represents well what I saw. Port Orchard is a city of 12,000 tucked into a quiet cove of Puget Sound.  It has a well kept port with natural beauty.   Off of Hwy 16 one takes SW Bay Street to get into the heart of the city.  This street is tree lined and the homes are well maintained. It seemed to be the perfect type of setting for any one of Debbie Macomber's books.  I now better understand some of her inspirations and motivations; Port Orchard appears to offer that type of idyllic setting...

Did I mention this past weekend was a three-day one for those of us living in Canada?  Well it was.  And since I was alone and wanted to do something for me, I decided a fiber run would be appropriate.  This of course involves no swift feet, but rather driving to a new place in search of my fiber of choice--yarn. I had it in my head I really wanted to see Port Orchard, Washington, the home of the prolific writer, Debbie Macomber .  Without the benefit of really looking at a map or discussing it appropriately ahead of time, I thought it would work into our Olympic Peninsula trip taken earlier this fall.  But a drive to Port Orchard would have easily added 2.5 to 3 hours to a trip when we didn't have that much extra time to add.  So this weekend's plan developed out of a need to find a way to get there. This weekend's trip started on Saturday at 7 am in order to avoid the long line ups at the border, unfortunately many others decided to use the same...

On Friday I received a gift from Chris.  I'm the one staying on and he's the one moving on.  It is unclear to me how it is that I deserve this gift. This wonderful pattern book includes hats to make an elephant, pig, fox, monkey, frog, penguin, cat, chicken, cow, mouse, rabbit, dog, panda, lion and koala.  The hats are sized for both adults and children, causing a small light bulb to go off in my head.  But for once I'll keep it to myself. On Friday evening Dack and I were talking about a perfectly terrible t-shirt I brought to him from Australia.  It was in yellow with a monkey face on it in brown. One could locate him from quite a distance.  So together we cooked up one of our crazy ideas.  It is great to have another collaborate with me in quirkiness. The shirt looks something like this only the shirt is yellow not brown Chris, thank you very much for thinking of me when you found this book of patterns.  I know I'll have lots of fun...

Last night was knit night again, and we three got together again.  Last week was the big laughing party and this knit night was 1) much more productive in terms of knitting and 2) fueled with orange pekoe tea.  Thus the not so wild knit and purls reference. Pam was knitting a False Creek cowl  made with a lovely chunky Malabrigo yarn in a natural colour.  She told us she was staying until she finished it; sort of a warning the night might be late for Tena since we were at her home.  In reality Pam completed the project within an hour of arriving and let me take some photos of it.  Here's both the close-up view and a photo of how it might look when worn.  (The buttons were borrowed from Tena for this shoot.)  Beautiful isn't it? Pam's work has inspired me to locate my failed attempt at this cowl. (Somehow I've misplaced it; a Freudian move I believe.  Question is, am I the one being Freudian or is it that mischievous cowl? )   ...