For this flashback, let’s go back to a post written in October 2013, called At least something got done around here. The title refers to my having finally finished the Viajante Shawl, designed by Martina Behm, and the post has lots of photos of the finished project.
I realise now that I wrote this post just two weeks after starting my Executive MBA programme (as a student). How long ago that seems now. Since then, I have finished the degree, become a faculty member at the business school, and spent a few years running the MBA programme. But this post takes me back to that time when I had just become an empty-nester, and when I was thinking about all of the studying that I should have been doing while writing a post instead! (Shh! Don’t tell my students!)
The Viajante Shawl is lovely, but has a strange shape and can be difficult to wear. This led to some fairly funny photos:
The shawl took a long time to knit, and I wrote quite a few posts about it at the time. You may want to check out this one, which is about winding all of that yarn by hand while on holiday in Lebanon, or this one, which shows Emma posing in the shawl on holiday in Sicily. Emma wears it with much more style than I ever could, so I gave the shawl to her. Unfortunately, it’s now in the bottom of a drawer waiting for me to mend a hole.
Best wishes to all. I hope that you are enjoying these blasts from the past. Let me know if you are tiring of them. Keep well!
I hadn’t planned on posting today, but I wanted to do a very quick post to show you these lovely embroideries by 21-year old artist Victoria Rose Richards. These are taken from a pictorial article in the Guardian from a few days ago, which you can find here. Aren’t they beautiful?
Photograph: Image copyright of Victoria Rose Richards
If you click on the link, you will find more examples, as well as a link to Ms. Richards’ Instagram account. Do check them out; they will make you happy.
Photograph: Image copyright of Victoria Rose Richards
I find her work stunning. I also think, in this time of physical distancing and upheaval, it is soul-soothing to be reminded how beautfiul our earth is.
I was speaking with Emma about how I was feeling under pressure to write a post, while at the same time distracted by a crazy amount of work. And she said “You need to use ‘Teeny, tiny hat’ as a Lockdown Flashback!” Maybe that is because the post starts with this diagramme:
Ha ha! It turns out that not only am I relating right now to that, but I am also really feeling the “head thunk” part of the post. Thank you, Emma, I’ll play along: This Lockdown Flashback takes us back to Teeny, tiny hat, written in February of 2016. The post shows what happens when you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing. In this case: a VERY small hat.
In case you are wondering, I re-knitted the hat and it came out beautifully. You can see it here.
I am trying to do a bit of experimenting with my knitting while in lockdown – exploring colour and texture. I am working on three projects now – that might be a record for me in recent years. Each of them is very different from the others and explores either texture, colour, or both in interesting ways. To support getting these projects off the ground, I’ve been knitting swatches.
When I look at this photo, I have the song from Sesame Street running through my head (“One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong; can you guess which thing is not like the others, before I finish my song?”) Depending on how your brain works, you probably would pick either the top right swatch (no colourwork) or the bottom middle swatch (sharp, bright colours instead of muted neutrals). But each project is exploring texture or colour or both. The swatch on the top right might look as if it doesn’t belong to this set, but the project – a pullover, Hatcher – has a strong cabled detail running up front and back. Here is a photo of it in progress:
I think these cables look fabulous in this yarn – very precise and architectural but also with a beautiful flow to them. This pattern needs a uniform colour – if it was made with a variegated yarn the cables would lose their strength and integrity.
The swatch for the shawl, Koko, really stands out in the swatch photo; not only does it have a 3D texture but I am using a very bright, sharp, nautical colour scheme. If you are going to knit this, you must resign yourself to the fact that the knitting is going to roll. The very nature of the stitch pattern which creates the 3D fabric, is going to roll in on itself, until it gets blocked. Here is a photo when I was just a few inches into the project; you can see that it is basically rolled into a tube.
I’ve knit on this some more since this photo was taken, and the rolling is still happening. I don’t see it stopping, although I imagine it will get better as the sheer weight of the knitted fabric pulls it down a bit.
The third project is really pushing me, for my plan is to adopt a colourwork pattern from a cowl pattern (this one) and create a button-down fair isle vest for Doug. As I have never knitted a garment entirely in colourwork (and have only steeked once, for Leah’s Lord of the Rings pillow), this will push both my knitting skills and my pattern maths skills, as I wing it without a pattern. But before I can get going with it, I have to decide on which colours to use.
This is really an intellectual exercise, as the stitch pattern as written utilises 5 colours and I have 8 colours which I am fooling around with. This makes for seemingly endless options, but I am also constrained by various aspects of the pattern, such as using colours which have enough contrast in each of the “bands” of colourwork. It is quite interesting to try to work within this set of yarns. This is the first swatch I knitted, where I was more concerned with the gauge for knitting in the round; I used bits of the pattern in various colour combinations but didn’t follow the full pattern repeat.
I then knitted up this swatch, where I used a bit more contrast, and also brought in the light brown shade (to contrast with the charcoal):
But this one didn’t really grab me. And Doug commented: “Hmm, I need to get a pipe.” So, I ended up with this swatch which includes a full repeat of the pattern:
Here I used the medium grey for the two stockinette rows which separate the pattern rows. It makes the whole thing seem quite a bit darker, but I kind of like it. I knitted the ribbing in the dark brown, but am not really happy with that. So, I am now thinking of using the colours from this last swatch but knitting the ribbing in the medium grey.
However, when I sent these photos to Emma, she suggested three other combinations for me to swatch. Sigh….
For those of you experiencing lockdowns of various intensities, I hope that you are all surviving the experience and trying to keep your spirits up. Keep well!
I have been doing some experimenting with colours, knitting swatches of the same pattern in different combinations of colours (more on this in my next post). Thinking about how colours play against each other, and how different a colour can look depending on whether it is background or foreground, reminded me of this old post, Double feature, from April 2014.
In it I shared some photos which juxtaposed two very special colourwork projects which I had knitted, each using stranded knitting but in strikingly different graphic styles. I used the same yarn for both projects – yellow on purple for the Tolkien-inspired pillow and purple on yellow for the comic book inspired mitts. Links to both projects can be found in the linked post.
This photo makes me smile. I think I could use a little “Bam!” and some “Pow!” as well right about now.
Today I will flash back to a post entitled Why I knit, from August of 2014. This post shows off a gorgeous cardigan which I made for my daughter Leah. It turned out to be a lovely combination of pattern and yarn and personality, resulting in the perfect sweater for Leah.
When I look back at all of the garments I’ve knitted in the past decade or two (or three or four) this one stands out as one of those that just clicked. Everything about it made me happy. I hope that reading the post makes you happy too.
Living in lockdown is strange. Thinking about the future is scary. I hope that you are finding some solace in knitting, or in other creative pursuits. Take care of yourself!
These are very difficult and strange times for many of us, and in times like these we recognise the importance of being resilient. Thinking about resilience and knitting brought to mind a post I wrote in September 2017 titled Failure, resilience, and knitting. I think you might like it and so bring it to you today as a Lockdown Flashback.
That post had no photo associated with it. Since the Lockdown Flashback posts include a photo from the original post, I had to improvise. But, hey, I’m resilient that way. The above photo, of me sitting and knitting on a secluded stretch of beach in British Columbia, seems appropriate to this topic (it was included in the post called Holiday from May of 2019).
I also apologise for not posting yesterday. I tried to, but my internet was acting up and Doug made me a nice dinner, and I decided that being resilient also means posting when I want to.
For this Lockdown Flashback, let’s travel back to a post I wrote in April of 2013. This post shows a lovely pullover I knit for myself – the design is called Livvy and the yarn is Lush Worsted, thus the post was titled Lush Livvy. (I promise it’s not lascivious.) I particularly like this project because I made quite a few modifications to the pattern to make it a much more suitable sweater for me – both in terms of fit and style.
In the post, I talk about how I identified the features I liked about the pattern, and also those that wouldn’t work on me, and the mods I made to make just the perfect sweater for me. If you ever wish that you could modify a pattern and worry about whether you are up to the task, this is a good post for you.
It’s hard to believe that I wrote the post seven years ago this week. Things were different back then, but thankfully many things are still the same. For one thing, I am still knitting. And still writing this blog.
It looks as if our lockdown here in the UK will be extended for another three weeks. Doug and I started isolating on the 11th of March – we are both able to work remotely during this crisis – so its been more than 5 weeks now. We are still talking to each other, which I guess is a good sign.
I started this blog in October of 2011. That’s a long time to be blogging, and an awful lot of posts. For today’s Lockdown Flashback, I take you back to the last day of 2011 when I wrote the post Capping off the Year. This post shows off the just-finished Peerie Flooers hat by Kate Davies, my first foray into knitting fair isle. I love this photo of all of the threads waiting to be woven in:
Please note that I am now a better fair isle knitter and the reverse side of my recent fair isle hats look way neater than this. 🙂 That is one of the things that I like about having this blog – it is a record, and I can see how I’ve grown and learned new things. I look back at these early posts with some fondness. I was still trying to figure out this blogging thing (with a lot of help from Emma) and having a lot of fun.
If you are interested in the pullover I am wearing in the post, I wrote a nice Wearability Wednesday post about it in October of 2012 called Fuzzy and Blue.
I’m in the mood for some armchair travelling (since the real thing is not on the agenda). Perhaps you are, too? This Lockdown Flashback takes us back to June of 2016, when I reported on a lovely Sojourn in Sicily.
From hiking up Mt Etna, to wandering the streets of Noto for the Flower Festival, this was a grand adventure. Add in great food, lovely wine, and hanging out with friends; what more could one ask for. “Knitting?” you say. Well, yes, there was knitting as well.
Where are you going for your armchair travels? Somewhere great, I hope. Don’t forget to pack your knitting.
