Both girls came home for the holiday, and Leah brought home a hand-knitted piece for me to wash. (Yes, Leah does her own laundry – she lives 4700 miles away! But this is a special piece and she wanted to consult with the expert. The expert took it to the dry cleaners.) Long-term readers may remember that I knitted her a Tolkien-themed pillow for her 19th birthday. She brought home the case (minus the pillow), after five years of wear and tear, and it still looks pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself:
Knitted into the pillow using stranded knitting is the inscription from the One Ring, written in the Black Speech of Mordor using Tengwar, the transcription system developed by Tolkien for the languages of Middle Earth. (Yes, this is a super-geeky thing to do.) I blogged about this project extensively at the time and you can see all of the posts, in reverse order, with this tag link. These posts include information on the conception, knitting, steeking, fretting (first steek!), learning, sewing, and fun that went into the project. They also include great photos, like this one which shows me holding the pillow while wearing a pair of mitts I knit with the same yarn in the reverse colours (purple on yellow instead of yellow on purple):
Don’t you just love the transposition of the Batman-esque mitts and the Tolkien medieval-esque pillow? I have to say that I love this project. It was such a great experience to knit and I think it looks pretty freaking fantastic as well. Even if you’ve never heard of the One Ring to Rule Them All, it’s pretty cool.
Here is another photo from one of the earlier posts, which shows the project immediately pre-steek:
This last photo leads me into the reflection behind this post. Despite the glorious final project, I was pretty crap at stranded knitting then. (It was only my second stranded project, with the Peerie Flooers hat being the first.) The difference between the stranded portions of the knitting and the stockinette portion in between the two lines of script is dramatic. The background (purple) bits are smooth for the stockinette and very uneven and puckered for the stranded portions.
Of course the above picture is before blocking, which fixed a lot of the issues you can see, but blocking cannot fix everything. (Gasp! Yes, blocking is essentially a miracle technique for fixing almost everything. Note the use of “almost”.) In this close-up photo, taken just a few weeks ago, you can see that, even after blocking, the different tensions are obvious:
Despite the fact that I didn’t continue to work on the technique again until just recently, I have gotten significantly better at stranded knitting, particularly with respect to tensioning. My two recent attempts at stranded knitting, the Bousta Beanie hat and especially the Cascade hat, demonstrate that, despite some remaining problems, I have managed to fix the tensioning issues with two-handed stranding. I am still slow.
I’m working on a bit of stranded knitting this weekend, having finally reached the yoke of the Tensho pullover. I hope your knitting weekend is a good one!
That is an excellent pillow case. But where do you find such an extra-long pillow?
Hi Gretchen. I talked about this in one of the posts on the tagged link. I said: “You can probably not help but notice that this pillow is huge. It is defintiely not a standard size pillow. I spent a long time searching for a pillow the right size to fit this case, and finally found one here. This is a duck feather and down bolster pillow measuring 51x100cm (20″ x 39″).”
I love the pillowcase and the bam! pow! mitts! How fun!
Thanks! They were both gifted, so I don’t see them very often. It was nice to have another look at the pillow.
That is a super-cool pillow! Lucky daughter! I did the Bam Pow mitts too – the are so much fun to wear 🙂
Thanks. I just looked up the mitts on Ravelry (they are called Fighting Words for anyone interested) and there are over 1200 projects recorded! That is a super popular pattern. I might knit another pair – this time for myself – some day.
They are pretty cool, and work up quickly! I used Madeline Tosh Unicorn Tails – two each of the two colors worked perfectly. If you want to get fancy with them!
Beautiful pillow, and how nice that your daughter has kept it looking so well, definitely a knitworthy person. The batman mittens took me straight back to having dinner after school and watching the old batman and robin tv show.
I used to do that too! I loved that show! It is so retro now. And yes, both my daughters are truly knit-worthy.
I thought you said you were not good at stranded knitting? Hello? This pillow case is amazing. Yeah, even if the tension isn’t perfectly balanced, the result is pretty phenomenal. It’s great to see how well preserved it is after five years.
Well, technically I still need a lot of practice. And this pillow was the only time I have ever steeked. But even I must admit that it is a totally cool project and I am quite proud of it. This is my year for stranded knitting!
oh WOW—may I share this with other? via a reblog?
I’m pleased you like this. It was a big project and I really love it. I must say that I am not a particular fan of reblogging and never use it here.
‘Nough said. May your word-of-mouth grow by leaps and bounds.