{"id":1649,"date":"2014-07-19T20:57:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T20:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annetarsia.com\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2014-07-19T20:57:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-19T20:57:36","slug":"reasons-to-knit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/2014\/07\/reasons-to-knit\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons to knit"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a big topic, but I have been thinking a lot about this lately. \u00a0As busy as I am, why do I feel that a day is lacking if I don’t get any time to knit? \u00a0Also, if I am only knitting to meet a deadline or fulfill a committment, it doesn’t seem to “count”. \u00a0At one point, I was getting tired and depressed, and my daughter pointed out that although I was knitting a lot, none of it was purely for fun. \u00a0So I made a resolution to always have some type of “personal knitting” on the needles. That was a few years ago, and just having that project available to work on has made all the difference in maintaining the sheer enjoyment that I get from the craft.<\/p>\n

Now that “Annetarsia Knits” finally feels Done, and my teaching schedule doesn’t gear up for a few weeks, Bill and I have been making an effort to get off the grid a bit. \u00a0We can’t leave the office for very long, so a real vacation isn’t in the cards. \u00a0But we have been taking some long weekends. \u00a0This is one of them, and we are in Sunriver. \u00a0I have two knitting projects with me, and neither one of them is Annetarsia. \u00a0It isn’t that I don’t love to knit Annetarsia, but there isn’t an immediate challenge or purpose to knitting it, and I like to challenge myself, and\/or have a purpose to my knitting.<\/p>\n

So I am working in the Diagonal Ribbons vest that I started a few weeks ago.<\/a>\u00a0 I have almost finished the back. \u00a0It started at the corner at the bottom right, so you can see that I’m about 75% done, and it is finally looking like a square. \u00a0The stockinette stripes are knit with stainless steel, which is slow. The sock yarn is easier to work with, but those stripes are linen stitch, which is slow. \u00a0You get the picture, this is a slow knit! \u00a0But the result is a very cool fabric.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1336\"<\/a> \"IMG_1802<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"10532139_10152518844374284_5111740150625555743_o\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I am also starting a new project. \u00a0I don’t know if you remember when I knit Chelsea’s shawl last year, which was a fundraiser for the Chelsea’s Light Foundation<\/a>. \u00a0That post was here.<\/a>\u00a0 Dream in color has teamed with the foundation for another knitting project to honor Chelsea and raise funds for scholarships and to fight for legislation to protect young people from predators. \u00a0I relate to Chelsea as a knitter and a runner, and I relate to her family as a mother, so the foundation is something that I support with my whole heart.<\/p>\n

Last year I got my kit for Chelsea’s shawl at For Yarn’s Sake,<\/a> so when I was there last week I picked up a kit for this years project, Chelsea’s cowl. \u00a0The pattern used is the Rivington Cowl,<\/a> which was donated by designer Kirsten Kapur for this fundraiser. Dream in Color<\/a>\u00a0supplies the yarn for the kit, and there are 2 colorways available. \u00a0I was drawn to the blue colorway, and chose that one. \u00a0But when I saw the one that Julia was knitting, in the brown colorway, I almost changed my mind, it was so pretty. \u00a0You really can’t go wrong. \u00a0Check out For Yarn’s Sake<\/a> to order from their online store, if your LYS doesn’t have the kits.<\/p>\n

To start the cowl, you have to cast on 252 sts. \u00a0Anyone else dread casting on a whole lot of sts? \u00a0This is how I did it, this time. \u00a0252 divides easily into groups of 25 sts. \u00a0So I cast on 25 sts, put a hash mark on a piece of paper, and repeated until I had 10 hash marks. \u00a0Then I cast on 2 extra sts and was done! \u00a0Also, I like long-tail cast on, but didn’t want to figure out yarn gauge for how much I needed. \u00a0So, I tied the blue and cream yarns together, and did the cast on with the cream on the bottom. \u00a0This made a pretty line right at the base of the garter stitch edging. \u00a0Cool, huh?<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1337\"<\/a> \"IMG_1338\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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By the way, “Annetarsia Knits” seems to be a hit. \u00a0I am getting such nice e-mails from folks on how much they like the book, and I’m so happy that the content is resonating with knitters. \u00a0And, THIS happened. \u00a0http:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/knitting\/index.ssf\/2014\/07\/portland_knitter_anne_berk_tam.html<\/p>\n

“Annetarsia Knits”<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0made the Oregonian! \u00a0This was a thrill for everyone who worked so hard on the book. \u00a0Don’t forget that we are having a party on Friday, Aug. 1, at Twisted<\/a>. Join us after work – meet local people who participated in making the book, and enjoy refreshments by knitter\/chef Deb Accuardi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Have a great weekend, and try to knit something just because you want to!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a big topic, but I have been thinking a lot about this lately. \u00a0As busy as I am, why do I feel that a day is lacking if I don’t get any time to knit? \u00a0Also, if I am only knitting to meet a deadline or fulfill a committment, it doesn’t seem to […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1663,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}