Double the fish, double the fun!

Now I have twice as many fish than I had last week. Thirty-two fish to be exact and if I can follow my plan I should have 160 fish when I am all said and done. I'm having so much fun knitting these fish and my tessellated fish blanket is coming along nicely. Please note that the Bits and Bobs Yahoo group grew so fast because of the fish-a-long that they started a group just for the fish.

My boys I might add have been giving me grief because of the mess I have made in our living room. They have been complaining because they have no place to sit. When I'm picking out the colors for the fish I spread everything out and leave it that way while I'm knitting my row of fishes. Not only does that make a mess but the fact that I have all my yarn pulled out as well. Cleaned up a bit today and now I just have one basket for yarn and one basket for fish. They haven't noticed yet!

Look what my dear Oregonian sister sent me for my birthday!
Beautiful hand spun yarn (90% lamb's wool and 10% mohair). She is very talented and spins yarn from her own lambs, goats and angora rabbits. Now I have to figure out what to make with this gorgeous yarn. I have in my stash 3 other skeins that she sent me, pink, and 2 shades of natural brown. I have been waiting for the perfect pattern for those skeins, too. I really want to knit something very special.

Last, but not least Deb, better known as knottykitty has nominated me as a...
....thanks, Deb I am very honored :) Knottykitty blog is always filled with interesting knitting tales and very cute kitties. Make sure you check out her blog and see for yourself why she rocks! One of my duties as a Rockin' Girl Blogger is to nominate 5 more Rockin' Girl bloggers. This is a very difficult task...I think all knitting bloggers deserve an award...at least the ones I read regularly.

Drum roll please...here they are:

• Allison is a knitting blogger who posts pictures of her knitting, but ALWAYS mixes her knitting with beautiful flowers. All winter long she would brighten my day on those cold winter days.
• CeElle has an amazing, very colorful blog. She has quite the flair for the graphic arts and it shows in her colorful knitting.
• Rohanknitter is a homeschooling mom of 3 boys who lives on a farm in the Midwest. Her blog is wonderful glimpse of life on a farm. She actually has time to knits, craft and blog in addition to all she does on the farm!
  
• Violiknit a.k.a. Sophia is a violin playing knitter. She always finds the cutest patterns and has interesting tidbits about her life as professional musician.
• Vyvyan always has a new pattern to share with her readers. She writes incredible patterns and is a source of inspiration for me!
  

Again, I wish I could nominate you all as Rockin' Girl Bloggers!
Happy weekend and happy knitting :)

Success...two strips done, eighteen to go!

Last night I attached my first two strips of my tessellated fish blanket (fish-a-long) using Cathy's method:
Here's a closeup of the braided crochet seaming. Very easy by the way :)
I have another prayer shawl to show you that I've neglected to show you earlier:
Not very exciting, knitted using AC Moore mill ends "camouflage" alternating with black, a good shawl for a man. I finished this awhile ago. My next one is almost finished, so that give you an idea of how long it's been.

happy knitting :)

Tessellated Fish Testing 1, 2, 3

I've been working on finding the best way to attach my tessellated fishes (fish-a long) together without sewing. I think it's a good idea to knit the fish in strips. To do this you knit two fish, but do not bind off. (You will needle multiple sets of needles to do this.) Then with right sides facing do a 3 needle bind off. You now have two fish, tail to tail. You can then pick up the stitches at the mouth of the fish and continue on ...

I have learned a few things in knitting the fish and this one point is very important. When knitting your fish you HAVE to make sure you knit the slipped stitch very loose. Almost to the point of an exaggerated looseness if you get my drift. The fish will not lay flat if you knit too tight. This was difficult for me. As you can see my test fish are pretty much rejects, but they were good for me to test out the joining. Now that I have shown you my results they will end up in the frog pond.


The first thing I tried was knitting them together...picking up the slipped stitches on the side and bind off. If you want to see closer details, just click on the photo for a closeup.






It's ok, but it did leave a ridge on the back, which I'm not crazy about. You can see in this photo how much the fish is buckling. The fish I am now knitting are nice and loose and flat!






The next thing I tried was knitting the fish and attaching it at the same time by picking up a stitch at the end of every row of the fish.







The back is nice and flat. Not bad at all...I rather liked the way this turned out.




Then the last technique I tried was Cathy's (Bits and Bobs ) braided crochet. Cathy's blanket is what led me to the fish-a-long! I can't tell or show you how to do this. If you are interested be sure and join the Bits and Bobs group!
Why do I like this one? A chain forms in between the ridges of the slipped stitches. Here I made the chain in blue -same color as one of the fish, but on my future blanket I'm planning on using a contrasting color. I think it will look similar to this. Note this blanket is the original tessellated fish blanket (Fish Blanket from Knitter's Magazine issue 51 (Summer 1998)). I'm using Knitting Arrow's pattern.



This is the back...nice and flat with no ridges. This is definitely how I'm going to put my fish together!



Now, back to work. I'm really having a hard time keeping up with emails and blog visiting. Please be patient with me....I'm working on it. I really thought once the boys were out of school I'd have more time...now that's another story!

Happy knitting and fishing :)