Category Archives: Finished Projects

‘Piping hot’ is piping hot

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The moment I saw the Piping Hot design by Lily Kate, I knew I had to make it. The colours are amazing and the piping is such a great feature. It’s classic, but fun. I saw the pattern and purchased the yarn instantly – not my usual MO. And now it’s done!

I started this way back in October. It’s kind of been a long haul. The start of the sweater is fiddly; it takes some concentration to get the shoulders right and to get used to managing the bobbins. There are a lot of things to pay attention to right at the start. But the results are worth it. I love the way the piping looks.

Lily Kate suggests sizing down if you are between sizes, and I am happy that I followed her advice, as the fit at the shoulder is really important to getting it to drape properly. You can see from the back that the fit is good.

I often moan here about bad timing with finishing sweaters in the wrong season. Here it is, June, and I am just finishing a long-sleeved DK sweater. However, this year, it is a masterstroke in timing, as the weather has been total crap! See, a knitter can always find a silver lining to cold, grey skies.

I followed the instructions pretty much exactly. I added about 2 inches/5cm to the sleeves, and I also spaced out the sleeve decreases a bit (decreasing once every 5 rows, instead of once every 4 rows as instructed). Once you join in the round at the underarms, all of the fiddly bits are done, and then it is an easy knit.

This is my first time using this yarn, and it is lovely. It is so soft, and it blooms beautifully once it is washed. I am really hoping that it keeps its shape and doesn’t pill, because I want to use this yarn again and again. It comes in such great, bright colours too; right in my wheelhouse.

You may not be surprised to find out that this bright red and pink sweater matches most of my wardrobe! Fancy that!

This really feels like a sweatshirt; soft, comfortable, warm, roomy. But it has so much more style than a sweatshirt.

It took eight months to knit this sweater. Eight months is a long time. But, during that time, I wrote a book (!) and had a second bout of covid, so I have no complaints about the timeline. I imagine that if you want to knit this one, it will fly off your needles.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Whose hat is it anyway?

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Today I took my new hat out for a spin.

Who would imagine that this is what it looks like once its been knitted and blocked?

Does this look like a hat to you? There is no opening in which to put one’s head. But then, you tuck one half into the other, and voila! You either end up with a white hat with a blue brim, or you can turn it inside out and you have a blue hat with a white brim. Magic!

It really is a lovely hat, and the wool is soft and bouncy. I used the pattern A.N.T. (A New Take) by Aimee DeBaun, with a couple of skeins of wool from stash, which I had purchased in Copenhagen a few years ago.

It has a very nice crown:

Since the hat is a double layer of wool, and the brim is a quadruple layer of wool, it is very warm and cozy.

But wait, what can this be?

Someone has nicked my hat! And he is brazenly wearing it! He looks rather pleased with himself, no? I hesitate to say it, but…..it looks great on him!

Whose hat is it anyway?

Strawberry out of season

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I braved a cold and windy day to take some photos of my newest top – once again, a summer top in time for winter. This is the Anker Tee designed by PetiteKnit.

I usually fall for a pattern and then search for the right yarn. In this case the yarn – Isager Trio 2 – came first. I was intrigued by the yarn content – 50% linen/flax, 30% cotton, 20% Tencel/Lyocell. The last is a fibre derived from trees, so essentially paper. I wanted to know how it would behave. I thought it would have a good drape and that the fabric would breathe. I thought that having a bit of paper fibre blended with linen sounded cool. All of this was intriguing enough to consider it, but the thing that really sold me was this gorgeous red shade, aptly called Strawberry.

I cast on for a size 5, to give zero ease. But I decided pretty quickly that the yarn was stretchy and what I really wanted was something between a size 4 and 5 to create a bit of negative ease. My row gauge was a bit off too, and I managed to fix both of these issues by making fewer sets of raglan increases. Basically, I cast on the number of stitches for size 5, followed the instructions for making the bands of ribbing with the associated increases, and then ignored the rest of the instructions and just knit it to suit me. I do this frequently with top-down knits – once I get the yoke in, the rest is usually organic and I just improvise.

I didn’t take notes, so I am not sure exactly what I did. I did put in a couple sets of waist decreases and corresponding hip increases. I ended up with about 2 inches of negative ease. The yoke pattern is lovely; it’s a really clever design, and it seems to suit nearly every body type.

I gave it a good soak, poured a cup of white spirit vinegar in the rinse water to stop the colour bleeding, rolled it in a towel to soak up excess water and then laid it out on a towel to dry. I didn’t need to pin it to shape, as the size was perfect as is and it came out of the bath looking just right. The ribbing, especially in this blended yarn, looked a bit wonky before the bath, but really smoothed out after a good soak.

I like this one a lot. I am a bit worried that the yarn may stretch with use, but I am going to be optimistic until proven otherwise. I think it is a nice summer tee, but also a great work tee to wear under a jacket. And, yes, it is definitely my colour. It is indeed a scrumptious strawberry, even out of season.

Joy in simple things

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I finished a new project a few weeks ago, but haven’t been able to show it to you, because I have been very busy (1) working, (2) travelling, and (3) working while travelling. In the month since I last posted (which is the longest break I’ve had in 13 years of blogging!) I’ve been sailing along the lake in Geneva, strolling around medieval French and Swiss villages, overseeing the busy start of a new semester, researching and writing, and teaching MBA workshops in Johannesburg. It’s been hectic. Despite all of that, I managed to finish knitting Dune:

If you recall, in an earlier post I remarked that this was an incredibly boring knit: a tiny bit of shaping at the shoulders and then endless rounds of stockinette at a very small gauge. I am still in that post-covid state, alas, where boring is better where knitting is concerned. And, as you can see, while the knitting itself is boring, the finished project is rather nice:

Dune is designed by eri shimizu; the pattern is called Dune and Foresta, where Dune is the cap-sleeved version and Foresta has long sleeves. This is the second of her patterns which I have knitted; the first was Flores, which I blogged about here. In both of them, I ended up cutting out significant amounts of ease. (If you look at this post, you can see a false start I made with this project, in which the garment would have been voluminous with a capital V; I ripped back and got rid of 4 sets of increases totalling 32 stitches. I think I ended up with a nice amount of ease – it is still roomy enough to feel cool on a hot day, but not so much that I am swimming in it.

While exceedingly simple, the pattern has some nice details, first in the small eyelet increases at the shoulder and the shaping along the clavicle:

It also has a nice line down the back formed by a narrow asymmetrical cable:

The pattern calls for i-cord edging, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, I left it out. I finished both waistband and sleeves with twisted ribbing, and I left a rolled edge at the neck. I find this kind of funny because in general I hate rolled edges. In fact, I once wrote a post called Annoying Things in which I wrote a long list of things which annoyed me. Top of the list? Rolled edges. (I still consider it a very funny post. It is from 2016, so it goes back quite a way, but still resonates. I suppose the fact that I just left a rolled hem on this tee means that even crusty old set-in-their-ways knitters are open to change. Yay me; I am resilient!)

The yarn I used is a 55% linen 45% wool blend called Kalinka 21 from Karen Oberg. I absolutely adore this yarn! I have used it before to knit my wonderful Treit (which you can see here). I will most certainly use it again. The linen and the wool take the dye differently which creates a richness of shade, and of course, the linen gives it great temperature control and drape while the wool helps it bounce back into shape. It has all of the lovely properties of linen tied together with the loveliness of wool and is also dyed by someone who has a similar colour sense to me. What’s not to love? I used less than 3 skeins to make this top.

I’m getting a real kick out of how lush and green our garden is right now. Our neighbours all have yards that are manicured with a ruler for that golf course look, and I believe they are all secretly appalled by our overgrown mess. I love it though, and right now it’s perfect! I had fun taking these photos yesterday and couldn’t resist surreptitiously taking a photo of Doug taking photos of me:

New top, lots of flowers, a peak of sun, a lovely cup of coffee, Doug trying to confiscate my shawl (and looking good in it); could anything make this weekend better? Well, yesterday I received new yarn in the post! And on that teaser, I’ll say good-bye!

Hirne 2: The one that pops!

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I love my Hirne cardigan so much that I decided to knit another one. This time, I chose to knit with mohair, in a knock-your-socks-off glorious orange-y red! This cardigan pops!

In fact, it pops so much, that it is very difficult to capture in a photograph. Suffice it to say, if you saw it in real life, it would have you smiling. It’s hard to resist a good red!

Hirne is a fantastic pattern by Kate Davies. As with the last time, I knitted it flat (back and forth in one piece, rather than in the round and steeked). This is a fairly straight-forward modification.

I was worried that the textured pattern in the yoke, made with twisted stitches, wouldn’t show up in the mohiar, but it looks fantastic.

For comparison, below is my original Hirne, knitted in Kate Davies Ooskit yarn. It is a really lovely neutral knit, and I have been wearing it almost constantly since I finished it at the beginning of the year. (See my blog post on the first Hirne here.)

I love the way that you can make the same pattern twice and yet by experimenting with yarn and colour, you can make something unique.

I rarely knit the same pattern twice, and almost never with a garment. I am not sure that I have done so since I knit Audrey by Kim Hargreaves for myself and then for Emma over 10 years ago (see my posts here and here). One advantage of knitting the same pattern is that the project flew off the needles: it took me four months to knit the first Hirne and six weeks to knit this one!

For this version, I used 10 balls of Gepard Garn Kid Seta in shade 1008, which I purchased at Ulstedet in Copenhagen (blogged about here). I held the yarn double throughout.

I have always worn bright colours, especially red, and I gravitate more and more to them as I get older. They are really good at mood-boosting. I find that this red looks good with so many things in my wardrobe. I know it will get worn often.

It is amazingly light (it weighs in at under 250 ounces, or less than half a pound). This means it is just the right thing to throw in a suitcase. And for such a lightweight garment, it is surprisingly warm and cozy.

Its been a beautiful Bank Holiday Weekend here in England! I hope you have had some sunshine and maybe a pop of colour where you are.

A little sparkle

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A few weeks ago, I noticed that I kept borrowing Doug’s mittens (these ones) and decided I needed to knit a pair of mittens for myself. Just as I was having that thought, serendipity struck and I received a newsletter from Loop London about a kit for a pretty pair of sparkly mittens. Clearly the universe was speaking to me; I hit the buy button and shortly received a lovely little kit:

The pattern is by Fabienne Gassmann with Loop and is available through the shop. The kit comes in three colours – rose, mustard, and black – and can be found here. (I said to Doug “What do you think of these mittens? I like the rose.” Doug replied, “Those are nice. I like the mustard.” I can’t explain why I then chose the black, but I am glad that I did.) The nice thing about mittens is that they take little time to knit, and then you have warm hands.

Although I am happy with the black, it was very difficult to photograph. In nearly every shot they either looked grey, or there was no sparkle. We tried many times to capture them properly. This is my excuse for the look on my face in the above photo. I was standing there, in the cold, for some time.

Despite the photo to the contrary, the mittens make me smile. They are warm and sparkly and soft.

I am heading to South Africa tomorrow, where my mittens will not be needed. Have a lovely week, everyone, and a little bit of sparkle.

Hirne: a beautiful cardigan

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I finished my Hirne cardigan early in the month and have hardly taken it off since. It is beautiful!

This cardigan, designed by Kate Davies, has the most lovely and understated features. Each detail of the design has been thoughtfully worked out and they combine in the most pleasing manner. I find it very peaceful, both to knit and to look at. Kate says that, in Scots, ‘hirne’ means ‘a cosy nook or corner’. It is a very apt name for a very cosy cardigan:

I used Kate’s yarn, Ooskit, a 100% wool, which is DK, undyed and worsted spun. This is the lightest shade, Riach, which is described as a pale, silver grey, but which I find is slightly more oatmeal than grey. This shade is very much outside of my usual palette of bright jewel colours. I worried that it would be a bad choice and wouldn’t work with anything in my wardrobe, but I’ve been surprised by how much I like this neutral shade.

I started knitting Hirne in mid-September, when I was still on sick leave and both my brain and body were operating at half-mast. I needed something calming and simple to knit. Although one might argue that the lace patterning on the yoke adds complexity, I trusted Kate to write a pattern which would fit and which would flow, and where all of the details would already be worked out. (And I hoped that by the time I was up to the yoke, I would be feeling better.)

The pattern is designed to be knitted in the round and steeked. I decided to knit it flat instead. This involved a few very minor changes, but is really an easy conversion. This turns out to be the only modification I made. Everything else was knitted exactly to pattern.

I wrote in a previous post that I struggled a bit with choosing the size, and in particular, I kept second-guessing myself while kitting the sleeves, which I worried were too tight. I ended up, after doing a bit of frogging and re-knitting on the sleeves, following the pattern exactly and I think the fit turned out really well. I made a size 5, 43.5 inches, and the blocked cardigan is bang-on gauge, which gives me zero ease.

One of the most interesting features is the way the buttonbands are done in the front. It uses an i-cord bind-off and incorporated i-cord buttonholes, which are nearly invisible. It is a new technique to me and I really like the look.

You may have noticed that there are no buttons on my Hirne; I haven’t yet found any that I like. But as you can see, the cardigan doesn’t look like it is missing something because the buttonholes are not in your face. In fact, I won’t worry if I don’t end up finding buttons I like, because I am very much enjoying this cardigan the way it is.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Opus Hat

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As soon as I saw the pattern for the Opus Hat, I knew that I would knit one for Doug. It is such a fantastic hat:

The pattern is by Maxim Cyr, whom I have gotten to know from two knitting retreats we both attended. (You should have a look at Les Garçons, the company owned by Max and his partner, Vincent; they have delicious designs, kits, and beautifully dyed yarns.) Max had previously put out a shawl pattern with this design, and I almost jumped at it, but I held back because triangular shawls are not my favorite. I’m glad I did because I like the hat and cowl combo better, and I knew they would really suit Doug.

This is a win-win because it also gave me a chance to try out the Opus yarn from Walcot, which I have wanted to try since seeing Carmen Schmidt from A Yarn Story wear a shawl knitted from this yarn at a wool show some years back. It is a sport weight yarn which the label describes as “70% Argentinian Merino, 30% Baby Alpaca, 100% Awesome”. That makes me giggle every time I see it, but now I know it is true. This yarn IS awesome.

The hat is fantastically cosy. The stitch pattern is made by stranded knitting, so the fabric is doubly thick with lots of little air pockets on the inside to keep the warmth next to your head. The brim is also doubled, which you can see here:

Carmen put together lots of kits for this pattern in many different combinations of Opus colours; I loved the original combo so much, it was an easy choice. The kit is enough to make both hat and cowl. Do I plan to knit the cowl? This yarn is too lush and the pattern is too more-ish to even think of resisting.

The pattern photos show the hat with a giant pompom. I like it, but I don’t think Doug is the pompom type. In any case, just look at this beautiful crown:

Doug started wearing this the minute I finished it, even before I had woven in the ends or blocked it. I had to steal it away to give it a bath and finish it properly. I am very happy because I came up with a great way to block it. Below is the hat lightly stretched over a rubber pilates ball. The ball is inflated to 23″, which makes it perfect for blocking a hat for Doug, and it is rubber, so no problem with it getting damp.

This hat is a winner. I love it. Doug loves it. Even bears love it.

Happy Sunday! I’m off to cast on a cowl!

Frigid weather, warm hat

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I finished my Oslo Hat – Mohair edition (pattern by Petite Knit) in time to keep my head warm during a very cold week.

How cold was it? This cold:

Yes, I know that it is not Ottowa cold, or Edmonton cold, or Wisconsin cold, or even Boston cold, but it is most definitely England cold, and my poor system isn’t used to it.

The resulting hat is pretty, but I must say that I had some issues with this pattern. It is written in a Scandinavian style, which is spare compared to the very precise and articulated patterns we have become accustomed to in the download era. I have commented before about this with respect to Danish patterns. As someone who knows how to knit, I don’t really have a problem with the spare style, but there are a few more serious issues here. First of all, there is a mistake in the pattern. In the directions for the decreases, she leaves out a critical K1, K2tog at the beginning of Round 1. If you’ve knit lots of hats, you can just scratch your head for a minute and say “huh, something’s missing here” and figure it out. But if you are not practiced at this, it will mess up your decreases, and thus the crown shaping. I ended up substituting a “ssk” instead of a “sl1, k1, pass sl st over” in the decreases as well; I think it is neater. The finished crown is nice, but beware the directions!

More critical for me is that the pattern has a odd construction. The bottom portion of the hat is doubly folded, meaning that the brim has three warm layers. The first fold is knitted in, that is, the fabric is folded over and knitted together. Then, she has you knit for a few rounds on the wrong side before reversing direction with a short row and continuing to knit on the right side. She gives no reason for doing this, and no photos to show what it is supposed to look like. This, by the way, is what it looks like:

When you wear it, you fold up the brim again, to get the three layers. I still can’t figure out the purpose of the purled ridge. It means that the fold is not neat. There is no clear fold line. Every time I wear it, I have to fiddle with the fold so that it doesn’t look weird. I don’t know why this annoys me so much, but suffice it to say that it annoys me. I notice that there are over 4000 of these hats posted on Ravelry, so I think I may be in the minority here, but next time, I would just skip the pattern directions and wing it.

I knitted this with some old Malabrigo fingering weight yarn from my stash together with some mohair, also from stash. I always keep yarn labels, which drives Doug crazy, and literally yesterday I decided to just toss away the labels on my desk, and of course they were these ones! There is a reason to my label-keeping madness, Doug! I think this shade of Malabrigo was called “paper”, but in any case, it’s white. I have enough left over to make another hat.

I’ve noticed this last week or two that Doug seems to have confiscated my red hat. I have finished this one just in time. I hope that, wherever you are, you are keeping warm and dry, and keeping hold of your hat.

We do so hate to be bored

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Last August, I was lazing around, reading through a bunch of knitting and book blogs (as one does). I came upon a post about knitting the fandoms – patterns and projects based on various comic book, sci fi, or fantasy franchises. In the post, they review a book of Star Wars-based knitting patterns and also showcase some Dr. Who and DC Comics projects. I myself have knitted a Tolkien-based project in the past, which I blogged extensively in these pages (the latest post is here, with links to the previous posts).

I clicked onto the next blog on my reading list, this one written by the husband and wife writing duo, Ilona Andrews. They write urban fantasy novels, which combine some sci fi, a bit of romance, a little magic, a bunch of scary monsters, fun world-building, and generally kick-ass protagonists. They are very popular, have written at least six separate series, and have a wildly devoted fan base who call themselves the Book Devouring Horde (the BDH). I immediately had the thought “What would a knitted piece of Ilona Andrews fan art look like?” And a fully formed picture of such a pattern popped instantly into my head! It would look like this:

Well, that was in August, and it took me some months to get around to knitting it, but I can happily say that I have now finished and I think it looks pretty cool. “But what does it mean?”, you may ask (thus proving yourself to not be a card-carrying member of the BDH). In the Hidden Legacy series, the super bad guy – who is known as Caesar – causes chaos while his identity remains secret. The only clue that readers have to his identity is in the very last scene of the the third book, in which he has a conversation with a fellow plotter. It is the first time he appears on page, and he says “We do so hate to be bored”. It is, in fact, the last line of the book. The BDH are busily engaged in wild speculation as to Caesar’s identity, which will hopefully be revealed in the next book, and this clue is central to the debate.

As the months went by and this pattern idea continued to percolate in my head, I realised that I liked it more and more, because this statement is a very truthful one, in ways completely orthogonal to Ilona Andrews and fandom knitting. I find that the line “We do so hate to be bored” has two very powerful meanings for me, both of which I suspect will resonate with many of you.

First, it appeals to me as a maker, as someone engaged in creative activity. I think this statement could be seen to define those of us who see ourselves as artists, inventors, creators; we do hate to be bored. We like to create things with our minds and our bodies – be it knitting, sewing, dancing, painting, cooking. Putting together the flights of fancy of my imagination, the know-how of my hands and fingers, the magic of yarn and needles, and the gift of knitting heritage, I can make something new and unique – and in doing so, I am not bored.

The second meaning has become clear to me through two years of this pandemic, and it is that we, as human beings, need connections. We need interactions, we need to engage. We need to keep our brains busy. Lockdowns have taught us that we hate to be bored. It is a deeply felt part of what it is to be human. When we are bored, we stagnate.

If you see me on the street in my new jumper, you can nod your head and think “yes, I’m with her; I do so hate to be bored.” Or, if you happen to be a card-carrying member of the BDH, give me a wave. I have my theory about who Caesar is and I’d be happy to debate it with you.

We took these photos this morning in Henley-on-Thames. It is still cold but it is gloriously sunny and people were enjoying being out and about. This is the first time in a while that I have knitted a sweater which I designed myself. For those who are interested in the creative process and/or the technical details, I will write it up and put it in a separate post, which I hope to publish in a week or two. (We are spending next week in Wales, taking a much-needed break, which may effect that timeline.) In the meantime, I wish you all a lovely, non-boring weekend!