Could you use a virtual hug today? Then watch this!
The link leads to an article in the Guardian about a beautiful piece of “sheep art”; “A sheep farmer stuck in lockdown in New South Wales who was unable to attend his aunt’s funeral has honoured her memory with the ultimate tribute: a love heart made from sheep.” Make sure to watch the video. This made me smile.
I have made some progress on my summery Myrtle tee. It is knitted entirely in lace, on US2/2.75mm needles, so the progress has been a bit meandering. Nonetheless, I have finished the body of the top, having shaped the armscyes and neckline, and then used a 3-needle bind-off to knit the front and back together at the shoulders. I think it looks rather pretty.
The yarn is Madelinetosh Merino Light in Pink Clay, Sugar Coat, Librarian’s Dreams, Joshua Tree, and Rocinante. I didn’t buy this yarn for this pattern, but rather am re-purposing the yarn from a kit I purchased to make a shawl (the Scout Shawl – which I blogged about here). The kit contains two full and three partial skeins of yarn (enough of each to knit the shawl) and this means that I have had to struggle with how I utilise the colours in the Myrtle. I ran out of the Joshua Tree (dark green) colour after knitting 4 pattern repeats; thus, you can see that the top repeat and a half utilise only four colours instead of five. I am very shortly to run out of the Rocinante (the terracotta-rose colour) as well; I am hoping that I have enough Rocinante left for one pattern stripe on each sleeve. The only colour I have an abundance of at this point is the Pink Clay, although I do have enough of the Sugar Coat (white) to finish all of the ribbing.
The top is a bit shorter than I would have wished – if I wasn’t worried about running out of yarn I would have added another stripe or two before binding off for the armscyes. And it is a bit on the clingy side as well – having decreased both the stitch count and the needle size after an earlier attempt was turning out too big. However, I am fairly confident that the magic of blocking is going to fix both of these issues. I am still pondering what to do about the sleeve shapings. I plan to knit short sleeves, with two or three bands of horseshoe lace pattern and then some ribbing. However, if you look at the original pattern (by Kate Davies), you will see that the shoulder is dropped, and so the sleeves are formed by picking up around the armscye and then knitting directly in pattern, without any short row shaping to form a sleeve cap. I am afraid that that won’t work here as the shoulders are definitely not dropped. So maybe I will need to angle the first pattern stripe or two with some short rows, to bring down the shoulders? I’m not sure yet how to solve this. But such is the fun of knitting. I like these creative fiddlings one must make to bring it all together, especially when one’s gauge is off, as mine is here.
Below you can see the back. I completely love these colours together, and note that they are outside of my usual palette, which is kind of fun.
I had an email from Loop this week (the lovely London yarn shop from which I bought this yarn kit). It contained the following workshop announcement: “Liz Baltesz will teach you to knit the Scout Shawl on 3 October. If you can knit and purl you can make this!” I had a good giggle over this. I gather I am not the only one that purchased the kit at first glance, having fallen hard for the shawl, and then had the daunting prospect of knitting it sink in. If I hadn’t already re-purposed the kit, I would likely take this course. Not because I couldn’t have figured it out myself (I know that I could) but because sometimes it is nice to have companionship on the journey and someone to pat you on the shoulder and say “there, there”. If any of you London-adjacent readers take the workshop, do let me know how it turns out.
Happy knitting, everyone!
The past few weeks have had some ups and downs, in all aspects of life. Let’s talk here about those of the knitterly variety. You may remember that I took the yarn kit which had been destined as a Scout Shawl, and decided instead to make a summerly riff on Myrtle (blogged here). However, due to some inspired lying by the gauge swatch, I ended up with something big enough for me and a close friend to wear together.
I had knitted this with a US2.5 needle, which is pretty darned small, in a size 3. I decided to go down both by a needle, and by a size, so cast on for a size 2 with a US2 needle. This was problematic because my only US2 needle tips had previously suffered an accident, and hadn’t been replaced. (Note to self: If you leave your needles on the floor, they are bound to be stepped on eventually.)
I knitted all of the ribbing and the first six stripes with a bent needle before my new tips arrived in the post. I had fretted about changing both the needle size and the garment size, without swatching again. But since the swatch was pretty useless the first time, I decided just to take a chance on my gut. You can see that it paid off, as the fit is now much more reasonable:
Myrtle is designed by Kate Davies; here is a Ravelry link to the pattern, and here is a link to Kate’s website.) Below is a close-up to showcase the horseshoe lace stitch:
This second attempt was addictive and I was happily knitting along while re-listening to Shards of Honor, the first in the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. Despite knowing how it ends, I got caught up in the story and kept knitting – this is a definite no-no for someone who suffers from repetitive stress problems to the wrists and hands. I finally stopped when I noticed the swelling in my left wrist. Much too late. I then had to spend the next 4 or 5 days resting my hands.
Yesterday, my hands had recovered slightly, and keen to start listening to Barrayar, I decided to knit a swatch for Caravay (Ravelry link). The pattern suggested a US size 4 needle, and I knew that I would need to go up a size, so I started out with a US5, and then knitted a second swatch with a US6.
The yarn knitted up so nicely, and then really bloomed in the bath. It also dries so quickly. The yarn is Tinde, a DK pelt wool from Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk, in the colour Burgundy. Stunning, isn’t it? (The yarn was provided by the company as part of a prize I won from the sweater’s designer, Linda Marveng.)
I wrote a post a number of years ago about the difficulties of recording information on the swatch – how do you remember after the fact which size needle you knitted it with? I came up with a solution there, which involved writing down all of the information and storing it together with the swatch in a see-through plastic binder pocket; however, I must admit that I don’t often follow through with this system. This morning, I “invented” a new technique for encoding which size needle I knitted each swatch with. (I use the quotes because it’s totally unlikely that others haven’t thought of it, although I don’t think I’ve read of it previously.) See the knots in the yarn at the bottom of the swatches? I put 5 knots in the one knitted with a US5, and 6 knots in the one with a US6. This worked out well. (At least with whole numbers; this could be more problematic with metric sizes.)
I hope your Sunday has more ups than downs.
We have just returned from a short trip to Wales, where it was cool enough for me to wear my newest finished project.
This is the Dyemonds Sweater, designed by Josée Paquin (the link is to Ravelry). It is a very clever design, especially in how the increases on both sides of the raglan shaping are incorporated into the pattern.
I knitted this with Spincycle Dyed in the Wool yarn, in Devilish Grin, purchased from A Yarn Story. I bought five skeins, but only needed four. The background yarn is Quince & Co Chickadee in Crow (black), which I was very happy to use up from stash, having purchased it from Loop in 2017. I had five skeins of the Chickadee as well, and broke into the fifth skein only for the last 6 rows of ribbing on the waist.
I have developed a complicated relationship with the Spincycle yarn. It has produced a striking garment, and it washes and blocks really well. I did have some issues with it, however. First, there is an unsettling degree of difference between skeins (you can see an illustrative photo in this previous post.) Second, Spincycle consists of two different coloured strands plied together, which means that the knitted fabric has sections where two quite distinct colours are plied together, producing a marled effect (as below).
I am not a fan of marls. I would have preferred the yarn to be dyed after plying so that the colour changes moved organically without marling. I realise that this probably puts me at odds with 90% of knitters out there. It also seems very nit-picky since the finished sweater is lovely. Doug can attest, however, that I was continually grumbling while knitting this when I hit a marled section. Many times I thought of cutting out portions of the yarn (as I used to do frequently with Noro), but Doug talked me down from the ledge each time. He was right, but I still found it made the knitting experience uneven.
The diamond pattern is very intuitive and fun to knit, and as there are only two yarns used throughout, there are not so many ends to weave in when the knitting is done. The only tricky part of the pattern is the sleeves, which gave me lots of grief. I blogged about that previously, so if you are knitting this and are having some conceptual problems with the sleeves, I refer you to that post.
I knitted the size 5 with a US4/3.5mm needle. When I finished, there were about 6 inches of negative ease – a lot more than intended. I thought it would take some hard blocking to get it to shape, but in fact the wet fabric eased up quite a bit, so I only had to pin it in place, without needing to stretch. The finished garment has about 1.5 inches of negative ease, which I think looks quite nice. Note that it also grew in length, so if you are in doubt, knit a good size swatch and block first.
The photo above, as well as the second one, were taken at St. David’s Cathedral, which dates to the 12th century. It is a truly gob-smacking cathedral out in the very Western reaches of Wales. It is well worth a trip out there if you find yourself in Wales. The other photos were taken at The Royston, a completely charming and gorgeous B&B, in Llanbrynmair, Powys. We spent a few lovely days there and will definitely be returning.
I really enjoyed this knit (despite the sleeve troubles). Josée Paquin is on a roll lately, designing one great sweater after another. Tomorrow I go back to work after a much needed holiday. But there are still some hours left of my holiday today, so I am off to sit in the garden and pick up my knitting.
Last month, I reported that I had won a prize from Linda Marveng – consisting of my choice of four of Linda’s beautiful sweater designs and the yarn to knit it with, supplied by Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk. Today, the package arrived!
Can you tell how much I love it?
Winning the prize led to a massive dilemma over pattern, followed by an even bigger dilemma over colour. (You can see the four patterns on my post here.) I even put up a poll for readers to choose which sweater they thought I should knit. Here are the results (as of a month ago when I took this photo):
I have to tell you honestly that after many, many hours of discussion with Emma, I had already decided to Knit Caravay, shown below, whether or not it came out top of the poll. But it did in any case! (The decision was always between Caravay and Yaelle. I think Yaelle is the more interesting design. But as Emma said “it’s a striking design but it takes more work to style it right. Caravay you can throw on over anything and look gorgeous!”)
Choosing the colour was harder. We spent many hours looking at the colour tiles on the website. Then, we looked up the yarn on Ravelry. There are 1628 projects loaded on Ravelry which were made with this yarn. Emma and I looked at every single one (!), twice (!!), and ended up picking out four possibilities, before narrowing it down to Burgundy. I should add at this point that I am making this for Emma. If it were for me, I would have picked the Burgundy after 20 minutes thought. But Emma was initially drawn to greys or greens and it took a few weeks for her to decide on the red.
Emma, oh my god, you picked good!!!!!
The yarn is gorgeous and the red is so fantastic – rich, beautiful, colour-saturated, deep burgundy red. It really surpasses all of my expectations. Linda told me it was a good colour! She was right. You can see that the yarn arrived with a printed copy of the pattern, but Linda also gifted me with a digital copy on Ravelry. (As an aside, if you are interested in the hand knitted tank I am wearing in these photos, the pattern is Paid in Full, designed by Deb Hoss; I blogged about it here.)
One of the best parts about receiving yarn in the post is unwrapping it, and getting to feel the yarn. This is a brand new yarn to me, and it feels lovely. I can’t wait to start knitting.
We had a heat wave last week, but it has cooled down today. Not quite enough to model my latest project but I will try to do that later in the week. Keep safe everyone!
I planned to show off my Dyemonds sweater this weekend. I have finished knitting and blocking it, and all I needed was to take some modelled photos. It is a lovely, sunny, 30 degrees in my garden today (86F), so…no photos for you. Who wants to wear wool in the heat? But I will give you a teaser:
These photos were snapped after the knitting was done, but before I had woven in the ends or done the blocking. Because it’s fun, a photo of the reverse side:
Blocking did wonders for this project, and the fit is really good, so keep an eye out for the finished photos.
Instead of standing around in the heat wearing wool and trying to smile while Doug snapped photos, I instead spent the day in the garden, sitting in the shade, and knitting my new project, a Summery Myrtle. As you may recall from my last post, I miscalculated terribly on the gauge, so I ripped it out and started again. I’ve made good progress.
While I was knitting, a ladybird came over to investigate. I was very impressed at the wonderful colour coordination involved.
Having gotten off to a rocky start with this project, I was a bit worried about whether to push ahead. But now that I have ladybird approval, I’m good to go.
I very carefully knitted and blocked a swatch. Truly; I did:
I measured it very carefully. I cast on and knitted like mad. I was using a 3mm needle, and the only one I had was very short – 60cm/24inches. Thus, I was not able to get a good sense of width. (This is my excuse and I am sticking to it!) Meantime, I ordered a longer needle. It arrived in the post yesterday. I tried on the sweater:
EPIC FAIL! (And pretty damned funny!)
This reminds me of a post I wrote in 2015 called The gauge swatch lies! I ended that post with two morals, which still hold true today. “Moral number one: you are never so expert a knitter that you can’t make spectacular screw-ups. Moral number two: the gauge swatch lies!”
Some months ago, I received a newsletter from Loop, with a photo of the just released pattern, Scout Shawl (Ravelry link) by Florence Spurling. I thought it was so beautiful that I pre-ordered a kit for it right then and there. I am not normally so impulsive with yarn purchases, but this one moved directly from eye to brain to wallet faster than you can say “Yes!”
After I pushed the button, I began to think that this was perhaps not a smart purchase. The shawl is knit back-and-forth with fair isle knitting and intartsia. In other words, no steeking, but lots of balls of yarn tangling together and every other row in stranded purling. I wasn’t sure I was up for the challenge.
Then the yarn arrived and it was beautful:
I really wanted to knit with this yarn, but the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to knit Scout. It is gorgeous, true, and knitters are making some beautiful projects from this pattern. And, yes, I actually think I am up to the challenge. I know I could do it. The question is: do I want to?
I have come to the conclusion that knitting is something I do for enjoyment, for creative energy, for serenity, peace, mental balance, for process as much as product, and after this very complicated, very long year, I should knit what I want, when I want. And right now, that isn’t Scout.
But the yarn kept playing around inside my head, and yesterday while watching the Euro quarter-finals, I fooled around with a swatch:
Now, isn’t this lovely? I have long been interested in knitting Kate Davies’ design, Myrtle, show below, but without the mohair, with short sleeves, and in lighter, more summery-colours. Can you picture it?
And this yarn from the Scout kit – Madelinetosh Merino Light in Pink Clay, Sugar Coat, Librarian’s Dreams, Joshua Tree, and Rocinante – makes for a lovely, lacy, summery fabric in this lace pattern.
Now, that I have swatched, I need to knit the ribbing – 300 stitches in k1p1 rib with tiny yarn on tiny needles. If it gets to be too much, I can always switch to my Dyemonds sweater. As you can see, all I have left is the ribbing: 280 stitches of k1p1 rib on slightly less tiny needles:
I think I have plenty of ribbing to keep me occupied!
This morning Doug and I went out for a walk and came upon a field of poppies:
These were blooming wild, and bursting with colour, a lovely pop of red. It reminded me that two years ago yesterday, we came upon a field of gorgeous pale pink poppies, which I blogged about it this post.
Red or pink, wild or cultivated, there’s something magical about a field of poppies.
Remember the Dyemonds tee? The last time I wrote about it was in this post from March 27th, and I had gotten this far:
I had been zipping along on this, and was also writing about how intuitive the pattern was, and how fast it was going. And then… I decided to knit the sleeves. Cue ominous music: Dum-da-dum-dum! This is where things got dicey.
I decided to knit the sleeves at this point for two reasons. First, if one doesn’t save the sleeves for last, one gets all of the messy (or boring) stuff done first, and then sails on to the end of the sweater. Second, I wanted to try to match the colours of the sleeves (more or less) to the body. Due to the nature of the Spincycle yarn (long colour shifts and extreme differences from skein to skein), I wanted to do this early on while I still had enough yarn to do a proper match instead of getting to the end and finding that the only yarn remaining didn’t allow me to match up the sleeves. As an example of the colour matching problem, see here my two remaining skeins of the yarn:
So, I put the sleeve stitches on my trusty DPNs (double pointed needles), picked up the stitches under the arm, and tried to knit the first row. I tried to knit the first row for about 3 hours, pulling it out and starting again, and reading the instructions over and over and over again. I basically hit a conceptual wall. It was a case of Death by Sleeve. I ended up throwing the project into the naughty corner, and proceeded to finish Doug’s beautiful Ursula waistcoat, and knit the Tin Roof tee, before I gave myself a strict talking to, and dragged out the Dyemonds tee for a second attempt at the sleeves. And voila!
Two sleeves! They fit nicely too:
There are two types of problems with the sleeves. The first is conceptual. I had a hard time with the instructions. I am pretty sure this is my fault and not the designer’s, but I really struggled. She utilises two markers: a BOR (beginning of row) and a BOC (beginning of chart), something which I think ended up confusing me. Mostly, however, the problem is that the patterns don’t match at the underarm of the sleeve (which is a natural effect of the pattern and the way that sleeves work), but I couldn’t get my head around it. And, of course, no one ever shows you photos of these things. So, in case you plan to knit one of these, here is a photo of the underpart of the sleeve:
The pattern doesn’t match along the inside seam of the arm, which makes sense because you are decreasing in order to make the sleeve fit. But it also doesn’t match on either side of the underarm, in other words the stitches which you pick up at the underarm, do not flow from the already established pattern of the sweater body. Of course, the pattern does flow from the already established pattern on all of the visible parts of the sleeve, just not at the underarm and inner sleeve. To see this, look at the below photo of the sleeve from the front. The green stitch marker is the same one from the photo above, so it helps you visualise the pattern placing.
See how gorgeous this part of the sleeve is? The pattern integrates beautifully. That’s because all of the messiness is hidden away and never gets seen unless you walk around with your arms above your head, and point to the offending bit saying “Look! It doesn’t match!” For some reason, however, I really had trouble with conceptualising the way the pattern behaved at the underarm. Once I figured it out with the first sleeve, I no longer had this issue on the second sleeve. That, however, brings me to the second problem with the sleeves: doing stranded knitting on double pointed needles is really fiddly and hard to do. This was equally as fiddly on the second sleeve as on the first. So, once I got my head around what I had to do to knit the pattern, I had to get my fingers to sort out what they had to do to actually knit the damn thing! I am telling you, this really was death by sleeve and came close to being frogged. Now, all I have left is easy knitting. So I am hoping that the rest of this tee will move along at a jaunty pace.
The colours in this look very different depending on the light and it’s difficult to capture. Sometimes the oranges and yellows pop and it looks very warm, and sometimes the reds and pinks pop and it is more cool. This photo is pushing the exposure a bit but I like it:
If you are wondering about the results of the poll from earlier in the week, I will report back soon. I think I’ve figured out which sweater kit I will ask for, and am now thinking about colour. I hope you had a lovely weekend!
