Color-stranding

So, I had my hand at color-stranding. I finally made the Swell hat from Knitty.com with the lovely Russian yarn I received from my friend. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, even though I didn't knit it very efficiently. I couldn't get a hang of working with two strands of yarn in one hand, so I just kept dropping and picking up yarn... It wasn't so bad, but it did result in some twisting, which I don't really care about... I didn't find out about trapping the yarn, though, until I was halfway done, so on the bottom part, there are some rather long strands... But, as they say, you live, you learn.

My second attempt at color-stranding was on another hat from Knitty.com: Center Square. I made this for a friend of mine... I actually knit her a hat last year around this time (i.e., when I first started knitting), and it ended up being too big for my head (which is 1.5" bigger than hers). I showed it to her and asked her what she wanted me to do with it. She could keep it as a sofa cozy or I could rip it out and make something new... She chose for the latter... ^^ For this one, I tried a different method. Instead of dropping and picking up the yarn, I knit one continental (in my left hand) and one english (in my right hand). It was much better than my previous attempt, but I had a definite gauge difference (I'm normally a continental knitter--that's how I learned, so my english knitting is very shaky). This resulted in kind of bumpy texture when the hat isn't being worn... Wearing it, though, sort of irons out these bumps.

Finally, I had my first session (but the second session for the course) of the Norwegian circular knitting course. I apparently learned everything that was taught in the first and second sessions. And I learned another method for color-stranding, which I like the most. I found out why I wasn't able to hold both strands in one hand (had to do with the way I wrapped the yarn around my finger) and how to trap the yarn without twisting the yarn. This way, I can just stick to continental knitting, so the gauge is a little more consistent, and it's much faster for me. Now, I just need to figure out how to keep the tension in the yarn and how to keep the strands of yarn from coming together! ^^ It's a nice course, and I'll be making a (very colorful) vest for a good friend of mine who is due in February. She happens to be the one who brought me the Russian yarn used for Swell above! Funny, that!