ICADs on a Grid

Daisy Yellow showed a bunch of ICADs today and several of them were done on those index cards with the quarter inch grid instead of lines, so I thought I would show you the ones I've done on those same cards. Well, not the same cards, but, you know, ones like them.

My mom and I ate at a Chinese restaurant and I decided to put my fortune on the above card. Then I filled each square with a different image, though some of the "differences" are only because of the orientation of the design. Of course, there is an alien in there, too.
This one is from a technique I learned here, here and here. I used the grid to lay out the starting dots, then after I had drawn the knot, I used correction tape to sort of cover the grid lines. I kind of like that they aren't covered up completely.


These were all inspired by quilts. I like the way the blue lines work in these.

I Am Not So Much a Knitter

I am a crocheter, but many years ago I finally learned to knit because I saw an article on continental knitting and I was able to do that without it hurting my hands too much. Once I got used to the movements, it didn't hurt at all. Mostly what I knit are dishcloths and most of those are for Christmas presents and for a long time I only knit the classic, ubiquitous, garter stitch on the diagonal dishcloth.
Somewhere along the line I found a very similar pattern, but with only 3 stitches cast on and the yarn over increase done after just the first stitch in each row. It seemed to be a little more symmetrical for me and so I stuck with that.
Then just this last year I decided all on my own to just do a single decrease at the beginning of each row instead on the usual decrease, yarn over, decrease that I had been doing all along. It meant I didn't get that little eyelet edging on the second half, but for me it was worth it to avoid the distortion I would always get on the second, decreasing half of the dishcloth.
Well, didn't that just open a whole world of crazy, because this year I am knitting seed stitch dishcloths. Okay, it's not real-knitter-crazy, but for me this is a big step.



The two at the bottom are from a pattern by Chris Williamson, but I can't find a way to get to it on her website. I originally got it from a yahoo group I'm in called holidaymysterygifts, but the patterns there are only available for a short period of time. New ones every month, though.

Anyway, I was looking for the pattern and came across Devin's Dishcloth which is the one on the needles above. I really like the garter stitch banding around the seed stitch center, especially in the solid color I am using here. I did change the pattern a tiny bit by casting on an odd number of stitches and beginning and ending each row of the center seed stitch section with a purl stitch. I tried it as the pattern is written but ended up with the border being one stitch wider on one side.

I know this is probably the knitting equivalent of crossing the street by yourself, but to me it a big step forward.

ICAD

In July I stumbled on Daisy Yellow and her index card a day challenge. By that time I had already missed the sign-up deadline for her three month summer challenge, but I thought it was such a great idea that I wanted to participate anyway. So, I started on my own that very day.

Now she has a new month at a time challenge and I managed to get myself sign-up in a timely way. Since I am official now, it seemed like a good idea to show some of the cards I have done. Since I am terrible at posting things, it took me this long to do that.

Last night I was trimming some paper and thought these skinny little strips of paper would look interesting on an index card. I was going to add some bits of red to be flowers but I liked the way the "grass" looked so much I decided to stop.



These are some other scraps that I had, and I thought I would use them, too, on another card. Yes, the rules allow making more than one card a day. Since the first one was card 58, this one is 58.1.



The first card from yesterday reminded me of this one I did about a week earlier with still more thin little bits of paper trimmings. I had had the idea as I was going to bed the night before to wrap a string around an index card and this seemed to be the right card to do that with.

The Color Of. . .

Look at the beautiful things you can do here on The Color Of. . . (via daisy yellow):

These are only a few of the images I did there. Go try it yourself. Now.