B sides and outtakes

Look at this: it's perfently double-sided! Ooow...
You work on an even number of sts, k1, slip next stitch pwise with yarn in front on all rows. I just love it. Add garter borders on the sides and a garter border on botom and top. For the garter border c.o. half the number of sts you will be working on plus the sts for the border, in the first row of the double-sided stockinette work increases instead of slipped sts and in the last row on top k2tog throughout. Lovely, as Jamie Oliver would say.

I will need, I feel the absolute need, to test it out on single rib: single rib borders all around and this double-sided stockinette. Or maybe I ought to combine it with some stitch from Barr's book.

(The full pattern in Italian will appear sometime in the future on Maglia-Uncinetto.it: it's a baby blanket from the 1870's.)

New Year's Knitting

So, here I am, 11;30 am, in Anguillara Sabazia (near Rome) at my friend Consy's place, after a breakfast of espresso and pandoro. I have just started yesterday a new vest to substitute the one my mom felted to death. I am reworking it in a better yarn, a lovely undyed organic Argentinian Merino in a cool dark chocolate hue, plus I am planning a few improvements and design alterations on the basic outline I planned for the first. A few things still bother me like how to avoid that unsightly gap that forms when you bind of in the middle of the row, right there between the last stitch you knitted and the first you bound off.
So I have this huge amount of food from last night's night festive dinner with friends (lots of vegetables so lots of fibers) that awaits its exit and I grab a copy of The Knitter magazine Consy borrowed me and head to the toilet and, while sitting there, BAM! The solution springs into life in the form of a suggestion from the magazine's editorial assistant Jen Storey: knit the last stitch before you bind off twice (front and back) and use the second loop thus formed to wrap the first stitch to be bound off (by passing this loop over the stitch before you bind it off). Ok, this knitterly year seems to be starting on a good, serendipitous, vibe!