charity knitting so i'm going to get everybody together on february fourteenth which of course is valentine's day and i thought that would be appropriate for an event called share the love it's going to be at soul koski fine art gallery and you can get more information from me if you e mail me at sheri still koski you off to dot com we're going to sit around together and then it and my two favorite charities are afghans for afghans and for patients who are undergoing chemo all have all kinds of free patterns will also have some free will donated by a passionate hand axe there's a limited quantity of will which is appropriate for using for the projects for afghans for afghans so it's going to start a will probably go to hold out for in the afternoon if you need any and the additional information about it or directions to the gallery i'd love for you to join me that day we're going to be having some chocolate and all the things that you would expect for valentine's day but i thought it was a great day for us to get together and do some charity and getting together is always a lot of fun with other knitters so i hope that you'll join me that day email me and i'll give you some more information today we're going to cover a lot of information i'm hoping to get to at all today if we don't we'll just roll it into the next segment but we're going to be talking about color right now color work is absolutely you in general is huge but i'm seeing more and more and more color work in the patterns that are coming out so i want to talk with you a little bit about that today because there are some things that can make that easier and some things that i can talk with you about to take some of the stress out of doing color work  one of the things that i like to do with color work is use you aren't in my color work and sometimes that will alleviate changing the colors as many times as the pattern will c myriad of shades and then they are worked in to these projects that or you can see this is a baby how to try to get that with oh there we go so that i think has either nine or twelve colors in it that was you know kind of more and that i wanted to deal with the with the weaving in and what have you so what i did was i looked at the graphs and when you're doing color work that's what you're going to be working with is the graphs and they're generally going to break that down into a section and this is what a section of that graph looks like and wait until your camera can pick that up a little bit and then what i did in my mind was that i just broke that down into a background color and a contrast color so what you see on that graph as blue i decided to use black and men all the contrast in colors i just used it's not necessarily a hand but it's similar it's a self striping soft yarn and what happens with that then is that your color changes with the contrast without changing colors yarn is doing it own so that makes it a great deal easier to work with then to keep track of you know which shade to change to and you're probably changing about every three or four rows on that with the number of color changes that there are so just did that with the two colors and you still get some color change to it it's not as elaborate as if i had worked on it with nine or twelve colors but it is a great deal easier another project that i did that way that i could only bring your pictures of because it's a project that i did for monet and she wears it a great deal and as you know she's in college now but i did get some really great pictures of it is a hat i did for her did the same thing that this features a yarn that is exceptional for this kind of work and it's put up by a company called noro and a lot of you who have knitted for a long time will know the noro name they are sort of the top producer of the multi coloured yarns that have very long colorways to them here you can see her face that is what i thought the house looks really great on her so and i brought in the remainder of the ball and you can see how noro has these very long color changes to them here sort of gold goes to the rose and then the green and then sort of a  can see how that produces those longer color changes than some of the other self stripping yarns are going to have shorter segments and give you quicker color changes with the noro you're going to get a little more effect so it's just a matter of preference for you what kind of effect you want to go with you want to shorter color change or as i said with the noro you're going yards and yards and yards between color changes and really kind of changing it up and you can see in that picture again that it literally looks as though i've used color after caller after caller and i can't here we go so you know that really is that really is sort of the top of the law and as far as doing this kind of work now let me show you what that project looked like in the original directions and you can get an idea of how you really changing the way something looks to suit your personal preferences i liked the style of this but i didn't necessarily like those color changes this is a pattern that i got from  crochet today which is a web site you can get that information from if you e mail and it is from it is from the public television emitting program that some of you are now going to be able to get  if you if you tune in to your local public or excuse me your national public station so that's the baby had and the one that i did for monet another technique that you'll find a great deal in color work is because we like to use color work in the round where you're getting around and around and around so that you don't have to face the task of reading the graph from the back figuring out how you're going to  ll and change colors at the same time a lot of your patterns are going to call for you to do those in the round and if you do something in the round then if you're doing something more than the have or a saw then you are presented with the problem of you know how am i going to put in a sleeve or hell am i going to make this a cord again that has to open all the way up the front or what have you so sometimes you're going to be presented with this challenge we don't see a problem will say challenge of what am i going to do with that and there's a technique called steve's and it's something that i had not worked with but i challenged myself on your behalf to work with this a little bit and come up with the best way of doing it and something that i was comfortable with and so i wanted to present that to you today the way that i want to doing this was that i did some reading about it i've looked in the technique sections of some of my knitting books and i also checked on to  which is a really great website i've recommended to you before they have a lot of great yarns available but they also have to torrijos and those are things that you can check out for a lot of death in different techniques i checked out their sticks tech tutorials scuse me in order to sort of put together what i felt was best as far as doing a study and if it is simply put cutting into your knitting and that generally is not something that most of us want to do very badly but i can tell you it was a lot less painless than i thought that it might be what i'm going to recommend that you do is two things i i would recommend that you use one or predominantly wall in the project that you're going to be doing color work in and a lot of the projects are planned that way because well really is terribly appropriate for these techniques because of the way that the fibers will cling to each other even without felting which we've talked about here on the show will tend to cling to itself those little fibers will catch on to each other almost act like velcro and really grab on to each other and not let go which is what we want when we're doing some of this work you can see on the back of this that you carry of course we've done color work on here before and you carry the colors on the back so those are sort of overlapping each other very neatly but there is a little bit you can see the space in between obviously barrow for some blocks stitches the peach color is the one that is floating across the back and you want to keep those nice and smooth i did steam this a little bit just to flatten this out  f you know that it's nice to stitch definition and everything's flying very smoothly and when you work generally speaking you're going to be adding about eight stitches that is just what we in the sewing world would call a seam allowance so i just sort of made this up as i want a long this is just a sample just a swatch to work with and that's the second recommendation that i would tell you to do work with  and do a sample that way if you cut it you're not happy with it you don't like doing this you decide you don't want to do the project you haven't invested a great deal and you haven't dusted a great deal of your time on either so working on a swatch is really a great way to get yourself started with this technique as well as any new technique that you might be trying so these eight stitches are just done net one piece knit one block knit one piece and then on the next row switch those  those fires really have the opportunity to be making contact with each other the black ones the peach ones the black ones peach once so that they're really grabbing onto each other pretty tightly some places will tell you that you do not have to stitch into this at all if you were using one hundred percent wall fibers i was a little cautious about that and i felt that i wanted to reinforce this which is what most places are going to tell you to reinforce if you're using something that isn't  hundred percent wall i chose to reinforce that even though this happens to be so what you would do then is to obviously i've used a color of thread appropriate for here on the show when you're doing this yourself if you're going to be reinforcing choose a color of sewing thread that's going to match your project i did it so that we had a lot of contrast and you could see what i was doing so i've done most of this but i left just the remainder of the second line of stitching i'm going to turn this inside out and i'm going to put my reading glasses on so i can see it really well too i'm going to try to hold this though that we can get as much of this technique as we can i guess we'll go this way to camera  you can see that i have already back stitched one and that is lance stitch on either side of the middle here is the middle of those eight stitches and my stitching on the back is one stitch to the left and one sticks to the right of that and this is the back stitch those of you who have done some sewing it's one of the simplest stitches there is in so doing so you might be familiar with it you can see i've already done this entire line and i've done this line down to here when you back stitch you come in to the stitch previous and out and with those stitches you are actually going to pierce each one of those strands of yarn will go into the block one here and out through this one and i actually go through each strain and ok so now i'm going to go into the and back where it came out before into the block now this takes a little time and i actually did it twice so that i could catch from both sides i did it from the front and from the back and that's one of those things that if you're doing a project like this you know say a sweater or what have you a bigger project you know the finishing is never in my opinion the fun part of a project but it's the do or die i mean it's the part that's going to make this project look either really fabulous or really not so fabulous so i think taking the time to do these kinds of things is really very important if you put that much time into the knitting and a coworker sweater really is going to be a great deal of time you really want to take the time to finish it very well welcome back after the break we'll finally go ahead and cut into this steak and you can see how easy that is i'm six hundred twenty six thousand investors that's how many people s i p c has helped since nine hundred seventy five hundred five million dollars over a half a billion dollars that's how much s i p c has made available from its reserves to help investors over fifteen billion dollars that's how much as sipc has made it possible for investors to recover what is a side p c it's a securities investor protection corporation and investors first line of defense in the unlikely event that a brokerage firm fails it doesn't happen very often but when it does s i p c is there for real people like me and me and me and you welcome back we're ready to cut into this stick as we were at the break i want to head and i nodded off that sewing thread i finished up that little bit of backstitch saying as we were at the break so i did before the familiarize myself with doing that so that my hands didn't shake too badly in front of you while i'm doing it now but it is actually not as bad as you might imagine it to be my advice would be to use a very small very sharp pair of scissors you know i do a great deal of sewing as well and in the sewing world we often say small jobs small scissors and what we mean by that is if you're cutting something tiny if you're cutting something you don't want to get out your big you know sewing shears that have a four inch or five inch blade you want to do something that is small then you use smaller scissors and then you don't get ahead of yourself and cut further than you mean to so i have very these probably i don't know inch and a half blade on them very sharp and what i'm going to do is i'm going to put a little tension on that middle spot member we stitched one knitted stitch away from that middle spot and i am going to literally cut one piece of yarn at a time one strand of yarn at a time i don't want to get ahead of myself so i'm going to put my scissors in and there's that peach and because we're going between two stitches those strands of yarn on the back are just floating on the back there's a black one you can see if i put just the tiniest bit of tension on that it pulls it apart and that's so that i can see each one of those strands and i'm not getting ahead of myself i'm just sliding that blade right in underneath one strand of a time now if you're doing something as big as the sleeve opening or the front of a cord again or you know whatever  openings you might have on a garment that you would be doing this with obviously this is going to take you a little time i wouldn't recommend this as the project that you try to watch the super bowl at the same time or you know do this while you babysitting the neighbor's children or you know whatever this would be something that i would probably sit down and do if i wasn't doing it with you here i would sit down and do this at a time that i could probably concentrate pretty well and didn't think that i would have too many interruptions but as you can see it's not as it's not as stressful as we might have thought if we hadn't been doing it on this watch but there again i do recommend you know that you  same wall that you would be using for your project try it out see how those fibers look into each other maybe you would decide that you didn't need to do that back stitching on your project to me i'd rather backstitch it and not have any problems with the finished project and to not have done that and then what are you going to do if something comes apart so to me it was worth the worth the extra effort to go ahead and do that now when you do this obviously now you have a cut and you can see there's a little bit about what i didn't get but you can see that those are really pretty stable i mean they're not coming apart i mean there are loose ends there you can see their cut ends but they are not unraveling and that is due in part to those will fibers catching onto each other now what would you do with this beyond th obviously that cutting edge is not going to be something that you want to see visible in your finished garment most of the time what's going to happen is that this is going to become essentially a seam allowance you know this would if this was the body of the sweater in the sleeve would be sun in at this edge this would be turned to the back as part of the seam allowance and not visible if it's a cardigan same thing sometimes if it's something where the edges going to show more like a cardigan you can go ahead and head and hand stitch some grow grain ribbon or something to that extent on the inside so that this is not going to show when the cardigan is perhaps open you know when you're out and about and what have you if it were a sleeve scuse me probably not so much you could just leave that be and let it excuse may be a part of the seam allowance and no one's going to see it unless you have the sweater off so that's the way that you would deal with that another way that i like to do some edging this might be appropriate on something like this i've also used it on some other garments and it's something that we had never done here on the show so i brought that  to show you today as well is a crocheted elizabeth zimmerman who you know i love just love and adore and have her books and watch her videos and all of those things really did not believe that crocheting had any garment but that's probably one of the few things that i disagree with her on because i think single crochet is one of the most attractive edgings that you can do on a project i have a little knitted jacket here that i did for myself that has just a little photo pocket flap and then the edgings are all done in a single crochet so let me show you how that would be done i'm going to use the same swatch that i used before and there again i brought in a high contrast color this is not at all what i would be putting on this actually these colors are not something i would probably put together other than i knew that they would photograph well for you here so color theory is something that we will get into another time but this is really just for contrast so that you can see what we're doing so i brought in some extra ball and i brought in a close shave hawk and on your bobby and generally speaking it's going to give you the size curse a hook that would be appropriate for the yarn that you were using and because we already have our base we don't need to do a chain stitch the way we would be doing if we were just doing our crochet project but on and knitted piece of fabric if we come in to that edge and i never ever pick up just one strand because that always no matter what you're doing picking up stitches in any situation one strand tends to stretch out and give you a little hole so i picked up two strands on that edge and i pull up one stitch through that edge with micro shade hawk i'm going to go into the next little space pull up another so now i have two with single curse a that's what you're going to be doing is always having those two stitches on the needle and then pulling through so now i have one on my needle i made the second  up through that edge there again always taking more than one string and and pulling through now this is sort of a cell fit so i got one  there this is sort of self n it's saying it's not like knitting where we would have to bind it off this essentially is a little linked chain along that edge it gives you a nice knee finish on any edge in fact i used it on monet's had as well pull that picture back up again because of the earflaps and the way that was structured there was an edge on that of course with stock in that that's going to roll so the finishing on that is just one row of single crochet around that entire project and you can see on the one then goes into a braided i'm not even quite sure what you would call that tie that hangs down on that but that is a single single crochet just around the edging on that it's like i said it's very convenient because there's nothing more that you have to do to it they have had just one row of it the jacket had several r it i actually incorporated that into the button and created the buttonholes with single crochet which was probably the easiest easiest easiest buttonhole you're ever going to have on a knitted garment is to do a single crochet now if let's just say that this is the and where i'm going and we're going to do more of a band like we have on the jacket i would change more on and turn and that's pretty much a given encouraged at the edge you're always going to do a chain want to turn then i'm going to come back and i'm just going to do again what we did before which is to always have those two loops on the needle and pull through and i'm going to work back in the other direction there is sort you know because we're reversing as we go so it's a little bit like quarter stitch in that regard like i said this is one of my favorite things to do because it's very easy it's also very quick i find crochet to be a great deal quicker to accomplish than knitting of course knitting is my first love but there is in my mind some good uses to curve say i very rarely do a crocheted anything that's entirely crochet but for borders and these kinds of things and small projects because it's so finishing it's really really you know we were talking about before and i should caution you that if you're doing something with a hand side and not using it in color work one of the things that we learn the hard way is that with hand dyed planning is very very important  if you're doing something that is all i hand died i would recommend that you lay those yarns out before they are well and in the balls look at those colors because with hand died there's going to be more of a variation in those colors than there would be back and find a point where i could remit but the variations in the color sometimes will cool and you would need to to switch off balls to two rows of each of your balls but if you lay them out and look out them and play on them that's much easier to do before you have started your knitting and even before you the balls so that would be a caution for you if you're planning on using those hand by themself i hope you'll come back next time i have a great show planned for you that time we're going to be talking about ordinary things some of the things that are not knitting related that i use when i knit that make my life much easier when i'm doing my knitting projects i'm sherry so koski please email me for any information you need from this so and until then i want to to knit on