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Mary Jane Mucklestone

Hand Knitting Blog & Knitting Patterns

technique

All Thumbs

January 16, 2012 by Mary Jane 24 Comments

Ah the beautiful Afterthought Thumb on my Muckle Mitts! Technically this isn’t an afterthought, since we did think about it by knitting waste yarn into the spot where we’ll make the thumb later, See my  last post “Waste Yarn, What Yarn?”. When I learned this thumb, I found picking up the stitches around the waste yarn confusing.

So let’s go through it step by step.

[Above] Here we see the 8 stitches of waste yarn knit in between Rnd 11 and Rnd 12 of the chart.

Using one of  my smaller needles I’ve picked up four stitches  above the waste yarn, picking up the Right Hand leg of each  stitch. Picking up the Right Hand leg of the stitch will mount the stitch correctly on the needle, handy when we get around to knitting it.

[Above] Here’s a close up, see the outlines of the Right Hand leg of the stitch…now of course the point of the needle is obscuring the next stitch that we need to pick up…the difficult thing about still photos..but the turquoise outlines indicate the Right Hand leg of the stitches we will pick up.

Note: It is not the end of the world if you don’t get the correct leg of the stitch, you’ll be able to compensate when you knit it later. The worst thing that can happen is that the stitch will be twisted, which won’t really matter in the great scheme of life.

[Above] Now  I’ve got all 8 stitches positioned on the needle.

Picking up stitches below waste yarn on afterthought thumb

[Above] I’ll leave that needle in place and pick up 8 stitches from below the waste yarn. Again, I’m picking up the Right Hand leg of each stitch, so they will all be positioned correctly for knitting. I’ve got 3 stitches on the needle and I’m just picking up the 4th stitch with the tip of the needle.

Afterthought Thumb with all stitches picked up

[Above] Ok – 8 stitches each on both needles. Next we”ll remove the waste yarn

Afterthought thumb removing waste yarn

[Above] To remove the waste yarn un-pick the orange stitches….sort of slide the orange yarn out. I use another needle to kind of yank it gently out. Like chimpanzees use a stick to get ants from an anthill…a little like that anyway

Afterthought thumb with waste yarn removed

[Above] Here we go, the waste yarn is all the way out, leaving a gaping hole, but hello, all the stitches are safe and secure…even those wonky looking chartreuse ones. As frightening as they look they are fine, we’ll deal with them later.

stitches on needle with waste yarn removed closeup

[Above] Here are those scary stitches up close. The reason the chartreuse ones look so weird, is because the yarn we see at this point is both the stitch and the float. Don’t think about it too much or your head will ache, just trust me – when we knit them everything will be perfect.

[Above] Now we need to put the lower stitches on two needles so we can begin knitting. We’ll name our needles: Needle #1 Lower Right, Needle #2 Lower Left, Needle #3 Up Top. Time to knit!

[Above Left] Using my Main Color yarn, in this case Natural White, I’ve knit across Needle #1 and just finished knitting across Needle #2.

Needle #2 is in such a crazy perpendicular arrangement to facilitate the next step…

At the corner here, between Needle #2 and Needle #3  we’ll pick up a stitch. Insert the tip of your working needle under a stitch or two of the body of the mitt, in the corner between Needle #2 and Needle #3 – knit a stitch onto Needle #2. Sometimes I find it easier to use a spare needle  as shown, to knit this “picked up stitch, and then place the stitch back on needle #2.

[Above Right] We now have 5 stitches on Needle #2.

Afterthought thumb picking knitting first round

[Above] Time to knit Needle #3. We’ve turned the work,  Needle #3 is on the bottom of the picture now. I’ve knit the first stitch..but…Horrors! The next stitch to knit looks so messy!

picking up wonky looking stitches on afterthought thumb

[Above] Not to fear,  just knit that wonky Contrast Color stitch. See the new stitch on the Right Hand Needle? It’s fine and dandy.

[Above] I’ve knit all the way across Needle #3. See? Not wonky. Pretty pretty!

[Above] Now, pick up the corner stitch between Needle#3 and Needle #1,  just like you did before. If you’re using an auxiliary needle, make sure the stitch goes back onto needle #3.

We have 4 stitches on Needle #1, 5 stitches on Needle #2 and 9 stitches on Needle #3 for a total of 18 stitches.

afterthought thumb first round completed

[Above] Okey Dokey! I’ve knit all the way around the thumb opening once. We’re looking at our thumb right side up again, with Needle #3 at the top.

  • Beginning ribbing of afterthought thumb
  • afterthought thumb finished

[ Above Left] Now it is time to begin ribbing. We’ll work a K1 P1 rib for 5 rounds and then cast off in the rib pattern.

[ Above Right] Done – Ta da!

That wasn’t so hard now was it? Just knit it is my suggestion, don’t think about it too much before hand and you’ll be fine. Too much thinking and worrying is paralyzing and damn it – your hands are getting cold!

Muckle Mitts

Want a tutorial for eliminating holes in the corners of your afterthought thumb? Read:

Holes! Horrors!!!

Filed Under: Knitting Tagged With: afterthought thumb, knitting, technique

New Skills from Peru

June 15, 2010 by Mary Jane 16 Comments

I’ve been practicing my newly learned skills. On the left is the beginnings of a intarsia colorwork hat made with a corded join. We’re viewing it from the public side. It is actually made by purling from the inside. There are practical reasons for this, working from the “wrong side”  it is easier to control all the little bobbins, and make sure they are properly twisted when encountering a new color. It is also easier to wrap every stitch if you’re obsessed enough to desire this elegant interior. I vacillate between making everything super tidy and amazing with every stitch twisted, to the slightly quicker stranding, which is pretty in its own way.

On the right we see a some grutas, or lumps….like you’d find in your oatmeal…only these will be soon be found adorning a sweet and cheerful baby hat.  I’m making strands of grutas, a fairly new development in gruta technique. What at first seems tedious, quickly becomes habit forming. Practice at your niece’s soccer game, and you’ll be surprised how quickly your ribbons of grutas grow!

…now that I wrote that, maybe they were called grumitas, which I have written in my chicken-scratch notes in another place. When I look up in Google translator, I find bultitos for little lumps…any one out there know? In Quechua or Spanish?

Update!

reader Trudy says:

“I just looked up in my big Spanish dictionary – gruta is a “cavern or grotto”, grumo is translated as “lump” – as in a lump in sauce, or a clot 9(of blood), or cluster or bunch (of grapes). So I think it might be grumo – and the diminutive would be grumito(s)”

So you Spanish speakers and Andean textile experts can have a laugh on me…taking about making stranded grottos…which sounds kind of nice, really, like the hotsprings outside of San Miguel de Allende, that are linked pools from deep and cold following streams to warmer, all the way up to the final hot pool that is ….yes!…in a grotto. La Gruta…that must have been the source of my mistake.

Extra! I found I noted down “kurpa” when Phetra from Pitumarca was teaching me the knitted in variety…

Extra! Extra! Cindy found the translation for “kurpa”

Runasimi (Quechua) – English
kurpa
adj. crisp
[Sikllalla Runasimi]

s. a flat clod of earth; clump; clump of earth; sphere; bullet; ball; clod of dirt; dirt clod
[Sikllalla Runasimi, Qosqo]

ta da!

I’m test-driving a workshop in these techniques this week in Boston.

I’ll also be informally demonstrating grutas at the Maine Fiber Arts booth at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens at this weekends Garden Fair: The Maine Gardeners and Artisan’s Festival. The festival will feature garden luminaries Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, woo hoo! I’ll be there Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

Costal Maine Botanical Gardens
132 Botanical Garden Drive, Boothbay, Maine
GARDEN FAIR     Friday-Sunday • June 18, 19 & 20 • 9-5

Filed Under: Knitting Tagged With: Andean, bobbles, colorwork, corded join, grutas, Peru, technique

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Happy Fair Isle Friday! Kuvvel is a cowl with a tw Happy Fair Isle Friday! Kuvvel is a cowl with a twist! Knit as a tube, given a turn and grafted together. I love testing out different color combinations. The two swatches on the left are simply rearrangements of the same 5 colors as the original. The monochromatic swatch on the right uses 4 shades of @woolfolk_yarn Tynd. The possibilities are endless! I even have a swatch that used glitter yarn, but it’s so hard to photograph! Which one do you like best? Have a great weekend friends - have some fun! Swipe for an example 😂
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Photo: @gretarybus 
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Repost from @vogueknittingmagazine
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