Tubular Cast On, Part 2

I spent the early part of the week in Zanesville.  On Monday we had a meeting about conference in San Diego in July.  I am very excited.  We have lots of fun things planned.  The Yarn Tasting will be even bigger and better than last year.  Stay tuned.

On Tuesday we had the photo shoot for the Spring issue.  It was a very windy and sunny day.  Luckily, the cold front hadn't moved in yet or we would have had a miserable time.  This photo more or less sums up the day.  We were avoiding the sun like vampires.  (The garment is a linen top...very cute.)  The model is Julia who is a dream to work with.  Sadie and Susan, the stylist are trying to provide some shade.




STUDENT NEWS
Very few lessons arrived which was fortunate since I was gone several days.  I spent the better part of the week working on a curriculum we are planning to announce soon.  I'm excited about it!  More to follow...


TIP OF THE WEEK
I've decided to do just one more tip about tubular cast ons.  There are quite a few techniques out there.  I've even done one myself where you use Judy's Magic Cast On (most frequently used for toe up socks).  Tubular cast ons are basically double knitting for a few rows.  In this technique you cast on directly to the needle all of the stitches you need.  (If you remember, when you use the crochet chain method, you have a chain stitch for half the number of stitches plus one.)  It is basically the same cast on you use for a provisional cast on.  



If you look closely, you can see that some of the stitches look sort of like knit stitches and the others purl stitches.  When you turn the work, you knit the "knit" stitches and slip the "purl" stitches with the yarn in front.  You knit the selvedge stitches.  You turn the work and work several rows (from 2-4 depending on how rounded you want the cast on) 



If you are working in the round, you don't need the selvedge stitches and you have to reverse which stitches you slip and work on each round.  I used this technique on a watch cap (photo below) I am working on.  You have to be very careful not to twist the first round.  It is essential to use much smaller needles for the cast on as you can wind up with a lot of slack at the end.  I worked only two rounds of the slipped stitches as I didn't want it very rounded.  Here is the video:  Tubular Cast On Part 2




SALON
Salon will be on Saturday from 1:30-3:20.  If you need an incentive to come out in this cold weather, I picked up some Goumas chocolates in Granville which I am going to share!


CURRENT PROJECTS
I thought I'd share one more photo from the shoot.  This is the jacket I did a few months ago.  

My nephew wants a hat for Christmas and black is the color choice.  I used a skein of Berocco Ultra Alpaca.  I didn't notice until I had worked about 5" that I was using Size 5 needles instead of Size 6.  Oh well, he lives in Utah and a dense, warm hat will work.  I used my pattern for the Confident Beginner pattern.  

My niece wants a scarf.  The yarn is a DK Madelinetosh and it is yummy.  I have a skein left and if I have time, I will make a hat as well.  I'd like to use the sawtooth edge as well.

I had enough Seahawk Green to make a hat.  This yarn isn't the easiest to work with and after several experiments I determined a simple watch cap would be the best thing to do.