A Miscellany of Knitting
© Suzanne Griffith
It's October, my favorite month, and here in the northwest part of the Northern Hemisphere, the clouds have rolled in, and the rains have begun. It feels like home again, and it's a good time to stay inside, keep warm and dry, and work on my knitting.
Both of the sites I'm reviewing this month have lots of bells and whistles: great graphics, pop-up boxes, and avant garde programming. You will need a fairly new system and Netscape or Explorer version 4 or higher to view them well. I like to be inclusive in the sites I recommend, but once in a while I think high-tech is worth the trouble and expense.
If you like to knit from kits, here is a great site for you: GarnNet is a clever and original site from Sweden. The company's "Design Tool" allows you to design your own sweater without doing any math or using any graph paper. You can choose sweaters and vests for men, women, and children and pick out different stitch patterns, motifs, colors, and yarns. The process is a lot of fun. You can also buy patterns already designed as well as yarns and needles. I've found the owner of this site a pleasure to work with, and GarnNet's prices (in US dollars) are reasonable.
For those of you who don't have a great local yarn store as I do, try gotyarn. This site offers designer yarns with quantity discounts, and their excellent photos let you see what you're getting. Click on "Berroco" to see a swatch of variegated "Chinchilla," the yarn recommended for chemo caps. There are several kits on this site for sweaters, jackets, and vests in luxury yarns, and they include sizing for women of substance, not unlike myself.
Chemo caps: Sometimes we can use our knitting to bring comfort to friends, family, and strangers in need. Making warm caps for patients who have lost their hair as a side effect of chemotherapy is one way to help. I've found three chemo caps on the Internet. Two are on Barbara Breiter's about.com site: One Ball Really Easy Instant Chemo Cap, by Joan Fernbach and Top Down Chemo Cap, by Jo Chandler. Janet Szabo has designed another pattern: the chemo toque.
All three of these patterns are great, in my opinion. The first two are simple and straightforward. My only caution on any of these would be to make sure the ribbing is stretchy enough when you bind off on the top-down pattern. I'm knitting the "really easy instant" one now, and I just finished the Chemo Toque. The toque is slightly more sophisticated than the others, with a garter stitch band on the bottom that I like -- this pattern took full advantage of the tapestry effect of the variegated Chinchilla. Unlike the other two patterns, though, the toque takes a little over one skein of yarn to finish, so you might want to plan to make two caps with three balls of yarn, or even three caps with four balls. Other yarns can be used, of course, but Chinchilla is an excellent choice because of its softness and texture.
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