"Unknitting"

I had a lovely week out west.  I took the photo above along the Colorado River outside Moab where we had a picnic.  It was nice vising my old haunts.  I came home to BOXES and BOXES of yarn for the Yarn Tasting.  Some of the sponsors have been incredibly generous sending not only 4 or 5 different yarns to taste but absolutely fabulous yarns for the goody bags.  Anzula sent 80 skeins...enough for every participants.  It does take quite a bit of time to get the yarns ready.  I am particularly enjoying knitting up the swatches.  It has been very informative.  Some of the designs I have proposed for the winter issue will use yarn I have "tasted."  Here are a few of them blocking.  I have four more soaking right now.



STUDENT NEWS
Only one lesson arrived while I was out of town but several arrived during the past week.  All of the work has been just lovely.  Thank you for all of your hard work!


TIP OF THE WEEK
This topic is a special request.  I have a new student who wanted to know how to back up to fix mistakes or how to take out work completely.  If you notice a mistake only a few stitches away it is easy to "unknit".  Just insert the left needle into the stitch below the one you just knit slip it to the left needle and pull the working yarn out.  Continue to do this until you reach the stitch you need to fix.  

When you "unknit" you avoid one of the pitfall of ripping work out.  It is easy to change the mount of the stitch on the needle and unless you are paying attention, the resulting stitch might become twisted.  When you rip work out, you remove the needle and pull on the working yarn until you reach the location you need to fix.  I always put a safety pin at the location first so I don't get carried away.



This works fine with yarns that have some "memory," like worsted wool.  You just put the stitches back on the needle.  When you do this, try to put the stitches back on through the back.  It will make things easier.  It isn't the end of the world if you can't.  The goal is first to get the stitches back on the needle without splitting the yarn.  If you rip out stitches worked in fibers like bamboo, the stitches sometimes collapse.   Lifelines (which I will discuss next week) are the answer for those types of fibers.

Many times the stitches will not be mounted properly on the needle.  This photo shows three stitches which are not properly mounted.  



If you were to knit or purl these stitches through the front, you will twist the stitches.  You can see in the photograph below that twisted stitches stand out.



The video shows how to unknit and how to deal with stitches not properly mounted.  Unknitting

KNITTING SALON
Salon will be on Saturday from 2-4pm.  It will take some effort on my part to clear a path to the dining room!  I am not kidding when I say I have boxes of yarn everywhere.


CURRENT PROJECTS
I finished up the last of the socks as this rather impressionistic photograph suggests.  I really like this stitch pattern.  






I started on my wasp wing tunic.  It will be wider at the bottom and longer than the one I did for Cast On.  The yarn is the Shibui Linen and is actually gray in color.  It looks tan here.