New Knit Stitch a Week: Diamond seed

Teaching myself one new knit stitch a week, from the Complete Guide to Needlework book, c. 1979. This stitch was a fairly straightforward, easy knit. The first time through I had to make a point of remembering how to repeat the pattern. Very cute.

Once again, that lime green Baby Llama doesn't show up the seed texture as well. Still nice.

Using size 6 needles I cast on -
left: 24 stitches Elsebeth Lavold Baby Llama in Lime Juice
right: 16 stitches Wool of the Andes in Thyme

Multiple of 8 stitches.
Row 1: *P1, K7*
Row 2 and 8: *K1, P5, K1, P1*
Row 3 and 7: *K2, P1, K3, P1, K1*
Row 4 and 6: *P2, K1, P1, K1, P3*
Row 5: *K4, P1, K3*

Stitching Saturday: the Magical Kingdom of Instagram

So, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and joined Instagram. It was pretty much kicking and screaming, since I'm an awful perfectionist and the idea of my barely-cleaned up cameraphone images floating around in the ether has never appealed to me.

But Feeling Stitchy needed an Instagram account to host our newest blogger, so I sucked it up and created one. :)

Could have sworn I posted my finish for the June 2012 stitchalong, but I never did! Here's my finish, finally. :) Fabulous pattern by @corvus_tristis.

A photo posted by Feeling Stitchy (@feelingstitchyish) on Mar 10, 2015 at 9:01am PDT

And then I discovered the magic of Instagram - it's kind of what Flickr was, or was trying to be, back in the day.

Since it allows photos only from your phone, there's a feeling of immediacy and candidness that isn't always on Flickr. Also, most photos look great when they're small! No need to over-preen for them.

Knowing it's just gonna be square helps if you've got little to no sense of composition, like myself. Just make it fit, and you're done!

It really helped me just get stuff posted - knowing I could snap, make it fit, fix the brightness and click go, helped me post this project that has been sitting around unphotographed for ages, because I'm such a darned perfectionist about the photos:

Guess what else I found? A finished pillow made from a lovely family tree pattern by @cozyblue. :)

A photo posted by Feeling Stitchy (@feelingstitchyish) on Mar 10, 2015 at 9:28am PDT

I think for now I won't create my own account, but it will be a great quick way to get book and review images posted for Feeling Stitchy.

How many of you are on Instagram? Love it or hate it?

Flashback Friday: Older projects

Sometimes it's such a drag getting my projects photographed and uploaded - I love this family tree pillow, stitched from a lovely pattern by Cozyblue, but it was all I could do to take some pics and upload them. So here it is finally, about 3 months after I finished it.

I snapped the pic above with my cameraphone and applied an Instagram-y filter to it, using the new Flickr app for uploading from phones.

Our house is so dark, and it's rare to get the lighting right. I'm still getting used to my fancy camera, which is great at some things, and harder to get used to for others.

For detailed shots, I still prefer point and shoots and my cameraphone. I've used my cameraphone on all my New Knit Stitch of the Week posts.



Like this June 2012 stitchalong finish - that I snapped a photo of with my cameraphone. The quality is not perfect, but I love the crispness of the detail. I snapped a photo of it already, years ago with my last point-and-shoot, but this pic shows the details a little better.

More about these two pics, tomorrow! :)

New Knit Stitch a Week: Oblique Seed stitch

Teaching myself one new knit stitch a week from the Complete Guide to Needlework book, c. 1979.

This stitch was fairly easy to keep track of and execute, and the texture is nice and bobbly. It curled more on the brown wool than on the cotton blend yarn, for whatever reason.

I cast on 20 stitches, using size 6 needles:
left: cotton blend yarn (?) from my stash
right: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Brown Sugar

Row 1: *K4, P1*
Row 2: *P1, K1, P3*
Row 3: *K2, P1, K2*
Row 4: *P3, K1, P1*
Row 5: *P1, K4*
Row 6: *K1, P4*
Row 7: *K3, P1, K1*
Row 8: *P2, K1, P2*
Row 9: *K1, P1, K3*
Row 10: *P4, K1*