1 Zimmerman, 2 Zimmerman, 3 Zimmerman, a full house of Zimmerman

Today, not much knitting, a little post about the blanket edging, and some free stuff from work, but today its pretty much all about EZ.

ok, so I am a die-hard Zimmer-fan, a few years ago I discovered EZ, and her books. So after reading the first one, the Almanac, I succumbed and bought all the other ones I could find. A complete set - I had

• Knitters almanc
• Knitting workshop
• Knitting without tears
• Knitting around

My favorites were knitting workshop and the almanac. I reveled in the fact I had the complete EZ set, or so I thought.
Then earlier this year I discovered a new Zimmer-book, one that I didn't have. The regular newletters, the wool gatherings all collected up and published. But after nearly 8 years of continuous child care costs, my once economically robust pockets were far to shallow to buy it right away. Then this birthday - Bear asked if he could buy me a book, and the missing Zimmerman was requested. While away - Bear not only ordered the book, but discovered 2 dvd's which he thought I might like. So now I have a full house of Zimmerman.

I was a little surprised at first with the dvd's, I was worried that ten hours of watching an old lady knit (I know - she is THE old lady of knitting, but still an old lady talking about her knitting!), would be to much. That much as a fan of her writing, the act of watching paint dry, sorry knitting would be altogether to much. Well we watched an hour of the knitting glossary on saturday night, and am I hooked. Yes I know - thats like admitting reading a dictionary or encyclopedia is fun, I am a knitting geek, and what is worse I can think of at least 2 knit buddies who will want to borrow the dvd's. I just thought of my ez joke, when I get old I'll have a Zimmer-frame!

She is as current and dry and informative and practical in videos as in the books. And I watched 2.5 hours of the knitting workshop dvd on sunday morning and actually got to the bottom of the ironing pile! Well past all the stuff that you don't like or need so pretend to leave for the next ironing session. Who knew - watching knitting would be fun, and productive! And learning, did I learn new things, the finer points of knitting, things like how to actually do that hanging cast off, that the drawings make look like a regular cast off. How to do a Latvian braided cast on. Oh, and that my so called 'finish' purl is how EZ purled, but not at all how her daughter Meg purls. And I only got up to the C's. Just think whats left to discover!




Ok - so thats enough about new books and watching knitting videos, here is the edge on the baby blanket. I could only get one more ball of yarn in the same colour and batch, so the moss stitch edge isa little shy of 5cm. I though long and hard about the cast off edge and had planned a ribbed cast off, you know - k1,*p1, pass knit stitch over, k1, pass purl stitch over* repeat. But then tried a 3 stitch i-cord bind off, I thought it might be to bulky but no it wasn't. I cast on 3 extra stitches, *k2, ssk, slip 3 back onto left hand needle* - repeat. And it is perfect! Perfect I tell you, just perfect. The i-cord repeats the slight bump of the facings enclosing the steeks, and it is far more resolved than an ordinary bind off. I just hope I have enough yarn to go around ... cross fingers with me please. I have put an extra 3 rows of i-cord with no ssk in the corner, and that seems to make a nice sharpish point.

And here is the close up of the i-cord, and what I now realise is not moss stitch, but seed stitch. Moss stitch has the knits and purls repeated for two rows, and seed stitch they reverse every row.


And these, well they were used at work, to hold things for the knitting machines. And were about to be put in the skip as rubbish. How could I let that happen. These have a lovely 1950's "popular mechanics quality", all solid mdf and practial drawer and shelf storage-ness, with big solid castors. I asked if i could have them, promised to pay and was told just to take them. And so they are now installed in the kids rooms as portable toy storage. Look we have baby doll with her bath and bed bits together with a wooden house building system called woody click underneath. And Toby has construction toys of various types, Thunderbirds, transformers, lego, bionicals, kinex, and mobilo - all the building sets a boy of 8 could want in one place and so portable.

I had intended these storage units to be passed on to my Dad, who is a retired mechanic. So 'retired' in fact that he has collected around 12 vintage rotary hoes, and 5 vintage tractors, and built several large barn/garages to house them. I thought he would have much use for these, but then the kids saw them and there was no giving them away. Especially when they realised they could sit in them and have 'rides' around the house. Still the theory is that they can easily cart toys to either lounge and just as easily tidy up. Theories, so nice theories - they give us hope.