{"id":4321,"date":"2021-04-28T10:07:37","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T17:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annetarsia.com\/?p=4321"},"modified":"2021-04-28T11:21:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T18:21:59","slug":"gramercy-park-kal-time-to-cast-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/2021\/04\/gramercy-park-kal-time-to-cast-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Gramercy Park KAL – time to Cast On!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll be honest.\u00a0 The reason I signed up for the Gramercy Park Video KAL<\/a> was that Patty Lyons, the designer, mentioned a super-stretchy CO method for lace.\u00a0 I am a sucker for learning new ways to cast-on for projects. The fiddlier, the better.\u00a0 When I swatch new yarn just to see what it looks like and how I like it, I will go to my library and look up a new, obscure cast-on to try out.\u00a0 Yes, I’m that person.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, we played “cats in the cradle” games with string, at recess, and I absolutely loved those, so I think that casting on is a pretty obvious next step.\u00a0 What is interesting, though, is that I have a TERRIBLE memory for cast-on methods.\u00a0 This is why I don’t teach on the subject.\u00a0 Every single time I use one, I have to look it up.\u00a0 I’ve probably done Judy’s Magic Cast-on 500 times, and I still need to look at the instructions. Sure, for JMCO it only takes a glance, and it comes back to me.\u00a0 But, still!\u00a0 The only cast-ons I have truly memorized are long-tail (in knit version, or knit\/purl version. Go, me!), knitted cast-on, cable cast-on, and e-wrap.\u00a0 Those were the early ones I learned, and they stuck.<\/p>\n

For my Gramercy Park swatches, I used the German Twisted Cast-on, which is super stretchy.\u00a0 After doing 4 swatches, I had it memorized, but I know from past experience that this is temporary.\u00a0 I’ll need to look it up again, next time!\u00a0 It’s a good one, though, and my swatches look great.<\/p>\n

Patty teaches a 2-needle cast on for this project, and it is the fussiest, fiddliest cast-on I’ve done in a long time.\u00a0 I love it!\u00a0 I won’t lie, it took me about an hour to cast on for the back.\u00a0 But, I had to find the right needles to use, and that took some time.\u00a0 One needle is the size you knit the first few rows with (I’m using size 5 US), and the other is tiny, size 1 US.\u00a0 She suggests using straight needles, so I started with dpn’s.\u00a0 I rapidly discovered that those would be too short for the 129 sts I was casting on.\u00a0 This resulted in a search for my long straight needles.\u00a0 When I started over, things went pretty well because I had gotten some practice in, with the dpn’s.\u00a0 The Valley Granville cotton has a lot of plies, so I had to be very careful not to split the yarn.\u00a0 The cast-on looks very tight on the needle, so the stitches were hard to count.\u00a0 Hence, the slow progress.<\/p>\n

When I was finally satisfied that I had the correct number of sts on the needles, and pulled out the size 1, I purled all sts onto the size 5 circular I will be using for the first section of the sweater, and it stretched out like a cat in the warm sunshine.\u00a0 Then, I set the knitting aside, and went to bed without putting the knitting away.\u00a0 That was a mistake.\u00a0 When I returned home from work the next day, I found a mess.\u00a0 One of the cats that live in our home had thought the cast-on was pretty cool, too, and had apparently carried through most of the house to play with.<\/p>\n

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It was an absolute mess.\u00a0 I had ordered extra yarn from Webs, and thought about junking the knotted, tangled mess.\u00a0 Some of the soft cotton yarn was actually chewed up.\u00a0 But, I am a pretty good yarn wrangler, so I set about trying to save the skein.\u00a0 I did have to cut it in a few places (the chewed bits), but as you can see, I was able to wind up most of it over the next hour.\u00a0 On the plus side, my understanding husband took over the making of dinner, as he completely understood my priorities in this emergency!<\/p>\n

After order was restored to the universe, I started working the chart, and made it to the waist shaping before heading to bed.\u00a0 Patty teaches how to map the pattern, which means you don’t have to refer to the written directions very often.\u00a0 This is pretty cool, and I love the idea.\u00a0 Here are photos of the WIP, with the blocked swatch above it.\u00a0 As you can see, the German Twisted Cast-on worked well for my swatch.\u00a0 This photo isn’t really fair, because the knitting on the needles is worked with a larger needle to enlarge the sweater slightly around the hips, and it isn’t blocked, so doesn’t lay quite flat.\u00a0 I like the edging on both, but there is no doubt that on the needles, the 2-needle cast-on was much more stretchy.<\/p>\n

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I’m not going to show you the cast-on in progress, because no spoilers!\u00a0 If you want to join in the fun, sign up at Gramercy Park Video KAL<\/a> and check out Patty’s very thorough video lesson.\u00a0 It is worth the price of the whole class.\u00a0 I can’t even imagine writing up instructions for this.\u00a0 Nope, not going there.\u00a0 It is a really great cast-on though, and I will refer back to the video every single time I use it, guaranteed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll be honest.\u00a0 The reason I signed up for the Gramercy Park Video KAL was that Patty Lyons, the designer, mentioned a super-stretchy CO method for lace.\u00a0 I am a sucker for learning new ways to cast-on for projects. The fiddlier, the better.\u00a0 When I swatch new yarn just to see what it looks like […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,13],"tags":[332,334,328,329,333],"class_list":["post-4321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-blog","category-classes","tag-2-needle-cast-on","tag-cast-on","tag-gramercy-park","tag-patty-lyons","tag-valley-granville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321","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=4321"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4329,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4321\/revisions\/4329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartonriveryarn.com\/annetarsia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}