Pink Lace Tank Nearly Complete!

photo by tenukihandcrafts

It's been a while my last post, but I have been busy. I fitted the cover on my dress form; received comments on Lesson 2 of my knitting course; and nearly finished my pink lace tank. I tried out my watercolor crayons and painted an overhead picture of a garden; took some more photos. Expanded my journaling, which has, in past, focused on writing. I've SARK-ified it with photos, clips from magazines, doodles, rubber stamps, stickers. No photos of the latest journaling efforts yet, but I'll get a few pages up soon.

I started knitting a tote bag made from Soysilk yarn. Yarn made from soy! It's varigated and the color is “Parrot.” Blue, teal, yellow, purple, you know, parrot. It's as soft as silken tofu, and, like, totally tubular, dude.

But I digress. As you can see from the picture, the tank is blocked and sewn. I now have only to figure out how to crochet the neck and armholes. My previous forays into crochet have been less than impressive. A little practice is in order before I finish the tank.

It may or may not be evident from the photo, but my purls are looser than my knits. The tell tale sign are vertical lines in the knitting. This has been a long-standing problem, that I've tried to remedy by: knitting exclusively in the round; tightening my yarn (in my left hand, 'cuz I'm a picker) when purling; and, slowed WAY down in order to purl as tightly as possible. Blocking helps a little. Very little. It's still noticeable. So what's a gal to do? Knitting in the round is great, but it takes some effort re-engineer a sweater designed to be knit back and forth. At some point, one must face knitting back and forth. Other dodges to avoid fixing tension: knit in varigated yarn and chunky yarn.

With a vast arsenal of the knitting books at my disposal, I found no advice on how to fix my hinky tension. I thought I was the only one with this problem. Barbara is the knitting instructor for my TKGA correspondence course. When I received her comments from Lesson 1, she pointed out the difference between my knits and purls and offered a suggestion. I'm going to share this tip with you, my friend, because we're all in this together: use a needle one size smaller for the looser stitch.

I'm a skeptical gal and had to see the difference for myself. The second swatch of Lesson 2 was an 8 row pattern repeat using decreases. The point of the swatch was to use 3 decreases, one in each repeat. I used the same size needles for the first repeat and 1 size smaller needle for the second and third repeats. It works like a charm! Not only did my purls tighten up, but my knits were not as tight as they had been when using the same size needles. Thanks, Barbara!

Lesson 3, the final lesson for this course, has arrived. I want to get one side of the tote finished before I start it. I'm so excited about my even tension, I want to see it on a larger knit piece before I begin the Lesson 3 swatches.

Here's another reason to make those swatches: to try out different types of decreases. But that's a post for another day.