This is more of a note to myself, but this week we hosted a Professional Finishing Techniques workshop and the teacher demonstrated a new cast on method, ideal for ribbing. She called it an invisible cast on, but I found this article on knitty.com that refers to it as a tubular cast on, so that’s what I will call it.
She recommends using cotton for the waste yarn as it undoes easily.
It looks really neat and I will certainly try it sometime soon.
I wasn’t really in the mood to read last night when I went to bed. I’m finding that the novel I’m reading, The Secret River, is great in places, but slow in others and I’ve hit one of those slow patches. So I decided to download some podcasts and listen to one. Now normally I can’t listen to music before I go to sleep – it only makes me more awake and stimulates my brain so that I have lyrics and melodies running around my head instead of drifting off to sleep. However I thought that a knitting blog might be quite relaxing so gave one a try.
The one I listened to last night was Episode 45 of Cast On. I can’t remember how I came across this one because I’d actually downloaded a while ago and it was just sat in iTunes unlistened to. I copied it to my iPod and then went to bed.
Brenda Dayne’s (An American, living in Wales as far as I can tell) voice is quite soothing and she spoke very naturally to her audience, so it was indeed relaxing and not something that was going to keep me awake long after I’d finished listening. The music too was some nice easy listening acoustic songs. The whole show was very professional. I do wonder whether she has a background in broadcasting or journalism? But what did Brenda podcast about?
Well there was an interview with a knitwear designer, news about a project in the US that would be grateful for any yarn that you want to clear out from your stash, and some personal thoughts. The two things that really stood out for me though were a very touching story from another knitter about her memories of a lost sweater and her mother, and Brenda’s critique of an interview with Tracy Ullman in the Guardian.
All in all, I enjoyed my first knitting podcast and will certainly try some others as well as subscribing to Cast On.
Vic's Knits 