Learning new things.....

I am a sponge. Whenever I have dove head first into a craft - which has been often throughout my life, though never as completely as the current knitting obsession - I can't get enough. I want to read about it, try new things with it, and basically wrap myself up in it.

For past few years I've been completely obsessed with knitting. Needles, yarn, patterns - you name it I've bought and used it. This may have something to do with the fact that this is the first knitting phase that I learned you could buy knitting supplies somewhere other than a big box craft store. The difference in quality is astounding and once you've found the good stuff, you'll never want to go back!

So much of knitting is old hat for me, I learned the basics from my mom and the knitting magazines she had when I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old. Knit, purl, rib, decrease, increase, I've got it. But the great thing I've found is that there are always new and different ways to do some of the same things. There are books out now completely dedicated to hundreds of different ways to cast on and bind off, hundreds!

I took a chance to try something new while I was knitting on my current project (Ease). I had found information about the tubular bind off and decided I could use it on the bottom hem of this sweater. It is not a quick process. At all.

Okay, I take that back. It wouldn't have been nearly so time consuming if I hadn't decided to try this out on a hem that consisted of 200 stitches. I tend to jump into things instead of trying them out on somethings small and safe. It's a sickness, but I'm dealing with it.

Back to the bind off - it is worth it. This is the blog post by TECHknitter which explains it step by step. (If you check out that post, poke around on her blog for other topics, she's a knitting savant with a gift for explaining things to the rest of us). So, I sat down and went to work. The set up rows went pretty quickly, the separating of the stitches was a bit tedious, but I kept at it. The kitchenering took an entire episode of Downton Abbey. Still worth it.

After the 4 setup rows, the sts are separated onto two separate needles

A neat edge. Or non-edge almost, it's like the knitting just wraps over the bottom.

As you can see from the pictures, I change from 'daytime yoga pants' to 'sleeping yoga pants'. I love these pants.