Category Archives: Main

The opposite of cast-on-itis

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We knitters know all about cast-on-itis, whose main symptom is casting on something new and then putting it aside to cast on something new, and then putting it aside it cast on something new…you get the drift. The change of seasons often brings this on, causing us to yearn for warm wooly things in the fall and winter and for all things silk, linen, and cotton in the spring and summer. Designers are busy releasing lovely new designs and we all lose our heads a bit and multiple cast-ons ensue.

Surprisingly, despite spending plenty of time perusing new designs, I seem to have the opposite of cast-on-itis. I desperately want to start a new project but can’t decide which. I have decision paralysis. I thought that I had finally picked out a pattern, and then I spent hours agonising over what colour to knit it in, and finally gave up.

So, in the meantime, until I can make a decision, I am working on finishing up some WIPs and trying not to resent all of the new projects being cast-on all over the knitting world. I recently picked back up my Hør no 19 linen tee. I started it last June, and then put it away in September when I was trying to finish a shawl for Emma before she flew back to Canada. It turns out I didn’t have too much left to knit, and I finished it yesterday. Below is a sneak preview. I can’t show you the finished project because it has just had its beauty bath and is currently quite wet.

I have been very slowly knitting my Osaka Scarf, which I also started last summer (in fact, I was working on both of these projects when I was in Tucson last July to see my mom and Stuart). I am now on the fourth of the five colour blocks.

We had a week of glorious weather, right up until the long weekend started, at which point it became cold and cloudy. We still managed a nice weekend, with lots of gardening (Doug) and knitting (me). We spent some time wandering around the various venues of the Henley Arts Trail, which is always fun, and purchased a lovely ceramic vase. When I was at university, my dad bought matching tee shirts for me and some of my friends that said “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” I thought about that when I saw this whimsical sculpture on the Arts Trail:

If I don’t cast on something new soon, I might find myself out of WIPs to work on. I would then be a knitter without a project, which would be far more sad than a fish without a bicycle.

A Walk in the Park

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I finished my version of the A Walk in the Park shawl:

The shawl is part of The Signature Collection designed by Erika Knight in collaboration with A Yarn Story, the Bath yarn store run by Carmen Schmidt. I knit it as part of the KAL with A Yarn Story. The design is actually for a triangular shaped shawl, as below:

I have never been a huge fan of triangular shaped shawls, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to style them properly. However, I really liked the contrasts in this shawl between the deep brown and white graphic stitchwork and the bright pops of colour. I decided to knit the shawl as a rectangle instead. It was a bit of a gamble, but I think it paid off.

I bought the kit in the original colours of Walcot yarns Origin, a lovely, bouncy worsted weight wool. Emma and I had a chance to see the shawl in person at the Unravel Festival and decided to substitute the soft purple-y pink yarn for a brighter pink (which I blogged about here).

I then had to decide whether to knit it back and forth width-wise or lengthwise. In the former case, I could fit in all of the different pieces of the original pattern (and then some) but the stripes of colours and textures would run across the shawl from side to side; in the latter case, the stripes of colour and texture would be very long, running from end to end, but I would have to select which bits of the pattern repeats to include and which not to include (because the width of my rectangle would be less than the long edge of the triangle shape). I chose the lengthwise option, in part because I like knitting shawls that way, and in part because it gave me the look I was after. You can see below how nicely those long stripes of pattern look.

I did some calculations and decided to cast on 360 stitches, using a US8/5mm needle. I then basically knitted the beginning sections of the pattern, but without any shapings (no decreases), and with some variations in how many repeats of each pattern to knit, so that the combinations of stripes of various widths and textures and colours would look pleasing to me. I started and ended it with 1×1 ribbing in the bright pink.

One of the difficulties I found while knitting it is that the gauges for the different textured patterns was not the same. For me, the unblocked gauge of the slipped stitch stripes was 26st/10cm, while the gauge of the slipped stich squares was 24st/10cm, and the gauge of the moss stitch was 22st/10cm. I became convinced that this would end up in a disaster as the fabric was incredibly wonky given the wildly different gauges of the varying stripes. I was also worried about the ribbing, especially on the cast-off edge, which tended to roll backwards. You can see both of these problems in the below photo of the edge of the unblocked shawl:

I kept knitting, however, even in the growing evidence of disaster because (1) I couldn’t bring myself to stop, and (2) I have tremendous faith in the power of blocking. And, if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good.

Today is the final day of a long holiday weekend. Life has been pretty crazy lately, so I hope that you have been able to find some peaceful moments to enjoy the start of spring; perhaps with a walk in the park?

Communing with knitters

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I had hoped to write to you earlier about my knitting adventures in Scotland a few weeks ago. I really had a blast up there. Two days after I returned from Edinburgh, however, I flew to Copenhagen where I managed to get really sick. Being really sick while on a business trip is not a jolly experience. Teaching all day and staying in a hotel when you are sick is bad enough, but it is more so when your husband is in Egypt visiting the pyramids. This did not put me in a blogging mood.

So, let’s go back to the Edinburgh portion of this story, which was excellent fun. I was there to attend the Wooly Good Festival. A bunch of knitting friends from Ravelry were planning on being there, and I thought it would be fun to go and meet up with them in person. I had booked tickets to the event back before I flew to Johannesburg in February, but I somehow neglected to book myself into a hotel or to buy train tickets. A few days beforehand, I realised that I needed to get organised. I put up a note on Ravelry, asking for a recommendation for a hotel near the event.

I then received a note from Sara, inviting me to stay with her and her husband, Richard. I had never met Sara before, so I was a bit concerned about taking her up on the offer. She wrote to me with a (very long) list of all of the knitters who had stayed with them in the past; it seems that her home is a halfway house for wayward knitters. As it turned out, Sara and Richard were lovely and I had a great time. On the Friday evening, they hosted a party for a group of knitters:

I knew all of these women through Ravely, but had only previously met two or three of them, so it was a delight to spend time with them. They were also great enablers at the festival, and it was fun to shop and gab and commune with knitters. I feel very privileged to be part of such a nice community. I think I was relatively modest with my purchases, buying four skeins of yarn, a knitting journal, a felted necklace and a few odds and ends:

I am chagrined to say that I went to Edinburgh and didn’t do anything but hang out with knitters and buy yarn. It really is a gorgeous city, and it has been over a decade since I was last there. I did manage to get in a few photos of the city as I was leaving to catch my train home:

Doug, in the meantime, spent a week in Cairo. He was busy giving talks and attending meetings, but he did manage to get to both the old and new museums, and to visit the pyramids and wander through some of the old sections of the city. He was last in Cairo in 1975, and it has changed a bit (as has Doug).

The long Easter weekend is here, and we are relaxing after our travels. I have finished one knitting project, and almost finished a second one. Stay tuned to this space for a full report.

Clearly not switched at birth

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When Emma was visiting a few months ago, we went to the Unravel Festival of Yarn and  purchased the yarn for her to knit the Field Shawl, by Maxim Cyr. Here is a photo of her wearing the sample at the festival:

A few days ago, I get a call from Emma.  She has started the shawl and she is upset.  “Mom, there is a little bump of colour showing up where it shouldn’t be. I can’t figure out why it’s there. I have already ripped the whole thing out and re-knitted multiple times. It is still there. It is annoying me. Here, I will send a photo.”

She sends us the above photo and Doug and I look at it.  “I am not seeing anything, Emma. What do you mean?”

Emma says: “Enlarge the photo, Mom. See? It’s like a pixel.”  Aha. Here is what Emma is referring to:

We talk about the nature of knitting, that a knit stitch on the one side causes a bump on the reverse side.  Emma is not having it; this pixel doesn’t correspond to a grey knit stitch on the other side. I spend some time trying to convince Emma that this is nothing, that she shouldn’t worry about it.  Her knitting is so beautiful and neat. The shawl will be gorgeous, etc. 

Emma says: “Mom, I have been looking at all of the photos of finished projects on Ravelry and none of them show these pixels.  I must be doing something wrong.  Why is this happening? I want to understand the process.”

We hang up. I immediately start systematically checking Ravelry project photos and find one that also has identical pixels, clear as day (but only if you are squinting and searching for them). I send her the photo. Hahaha!

The next day, Emma calls. She is annoyed with her increases.  They don’t look neat.  She has already ripped out and re-knitted the beginning of the shawl multiple times, but she wants it to be perfect. I said “Have you tried kfb?” Emma decides to rip it out (again!) and try kfb.  I counsel her not to rip, but to start a new piece using kfb, and then compare.

Last night, Emma calls up and she has now knitted a new beginning of the shawl, like a swatch, in which she has tried multiple increase options for each section – kfb, m1l, m1r, place the increase 1 stitch in from the i-cord, etc.  You can see the photos of both pieces, front and back, below. 

We then spent an hour debating each section.  Which has the neatest looking increase?  Which is easier to do?  Which produces a better i-cord?  What increase produces the most pleasing shaping? And yes, are there any pixels popping up?

I tell Emma that she doesn’t need to be worried at this level about her work, because all of the options are good. (Also, she has figured out how to run the mohair thread up the side through the i-cord, so no threads to end off. Big win!)  Doug then helpfully points out that I have spent the evening systematically tinking back my current knitting project (360 stitches to the row) because I had made a completely unnoticeable mistake some rows back.

Emma says “See, Mom, this is evidence that I was clearly not switched at birth by the hospital.”  As if we needed evidence, when she is a living, breathing  “Doug mini me”. (Seriously, though, isn’t her knitting lovely?)

Tomorrow I’m heading to Edinburgh to attend the Wooly Good Gathering. Maybe I will see some of you there?

Published!

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I interrupt our expected knitting content to announce the publication of my book! I am beyond thrilled to be a published author!

The book was co-written with my fabulous colleague, Tatiana S. Rowson, and published by DeGruyter. It is available in paperback or ebook. You can find it on Amazon, or ask for it from your local library or bookstore! ISBN: 9783111314440.

The book is grounded in the demographic reality that populations are ageing, and that we are not only living longer, but often healthier lives. As a result, our attitudes towards work and retirement are changing. We believe that we can all prepare ourselves for this new reality by making smart personal leadership decisions. We can develop the mindset, self-awareness, and adaptability to navigate change with resilience and confidence. The book is intended to be personable, informative, and also actionable, giving you the tools to have agency over your own story.

To write this book we drew on academic research as well as on our combined decades of experience in teaching personal leadership development to executive MBA students around the globe, and in coaching and facilitating workshops. Both Tatiana and myself have lived and worked in multiple countries, in different language and cultural contexts, and we have each undergone non-standard career paths; this has also contributed to our interest in this topic.

To quote the praise on the back of the book from executive coach and writer, Jonathan Passmore: “Sometimes you come across a book that speaks directly to you, and to the age. This is such a book. With an ageing global population and an ageing workforce, individuals and organisations need to press the reset button on what life and work look like past 65. Rowson and Sloan have produced a superb contribution to the field, which asks the right questions and offers answers: Important, intelligent and insightful, an essential read.”

Writing a book was a crazy adventure. Who knew that after writing and submitting the manuscript, it takes another 10 months to see it in print? Who could have guessed that my first published book would only mention the word ‘knitting’ once?

Stay tuned for my next post, when we shall return to our regularly scheduled knitting content.

Unravelling

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To a knitter the term ‘unravelling’ usually means the act of ripping out your knitting. However, if you are lucky enough to be in the London vicinity in February, it can have an alternate definition: the act of attending the Unravel Festival of Yarn at Farnham Maltings. This year, Unravel was especially nice because I went with Emma.

We took the train there which turned out to be easy peasy, much better than trying to park the car once you are there. We went on the opening day, in the morning, so although it was fairly crowded, it was still perfectly manageable to see everything and move around without being crushed.

We had a lot of fun exploring, squishing lots of yarn, having fun conversations with like-minded people, and admiring all of the beautiful hand-knitted garments being worn. We came home with some very nice treats:

If you remember from my last post, I have joined a KAL to knit one of Erika Knight’s Signature Collection garments produced with Walcot Yarns. I chose to knit the shawl called A Walk in the Park, and ordered the yarn in the original colours. I did want to see the shawl in person, and so our first stop at Unravel was to head to Walcot Yarns, where Carmen had brought along samples of all the pieces. Here is Emma wearing the shawl:

I like this shawl, but I was having two niggles about it. The first is that I just don’t like the triangle shape for shawls, particularly for worsted weight shawls. I have a secret plan, however, to change the shape. (You will need to watch this space to see how that transpires.) My second niggle was with the set of colours. I like the dark brown and white, and I love the greens. But, once I had the yarns in my hands, I really wasn’t crazy about the pink. Emma and I spent some time trying out different options and decided to keep the original sets minus the pink, and to replace it with – a stronger pink! Here you can see the originals (on top) and my new set (with the lilac-y pink Fireweed replaced with the fuschia-pink Petunia).

I really think this one change is amazing; it makes the whole thing pop for me. The KAL starts soon, and I am now all prepared to cast-on.

I purchased a skein of very fluffy boucle yarn from Kettle Yarn Co along with a skein of grey Northiam DK in order to make the Beanie Number 6 pattern by My Favorite Things:

© My Favourite Things

Emma tried on a very fluffy, cosy scarf designed by Maxim Cyr called Field:

She then proceeded to get advice from many, many assorted people on which shades of yarn to buy so that she could knit one. The two yarns on the top of our goodie photo are for this shawl, which will combine a silvery grey Fluff yarn with a beautiful DK from Les Garcons in a deep green blue (although it looks mostly blue in the photo). Max kindly posed for a photo with Emma:

We also bought a bunch of odds and ends and haberdashery, including some new Chia Goo Forte circular needle tips, a bottle of Soak, and two little tartan notions pouches.

It was altogether a fun expedition, and to make it more fun, we had a nice lunch afterwards. It was Valentine’s Day and we were surrounded by couples having romantic lunches.

We spent some time winding all of that yarn into cakes:

I especially like the below photo of the two yarns for the hat pattern, perched on top of each other as in the hat:

Isn’t it cute?

I was going to bore you with more photos of the event, but I am worn out, so you will have to imagine it for yourself. Now, despite all of this yarny fun, I have yet to knit a stitch in days, so I am off to remedy that.

Like ships that pass in the night

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I’ve just returned from a business trip to Johannesburg. I was away for 10 days, which felt like a long time. Interestingly, on the very day I left for Johannesburg, Emma arrived home for a visit. Yes, bad planning indeed! She landed at Heathrow only hours before my departure, and by the time she and Doug made it to the house, Emma and I had less then an hour of overlap. Alas, we were like two ships that pass in the night. The good news is that I am home now, and she is still here, so once I recover from the long flight and busy week, I can spend some time enjoying her presence.

I always take a knitting project with me when I travel. (As we knitters know, it takes much longer to pack one’s knitting than to pack everything else.) I took a very lightweight, mohair shawl, the Osaka Scarf, which I had originally cast on in July to take with me to Arizona. It seems to have become my travel project, mostly because it weighs next to nothing, is just miles of stockinette with nothing tricky going on, and fits into a tiny project bag. The shawl is knitted in blocks of colour, with five different shades of Ito Sensai silk mohair yarn.

I didn’t get to knit too much while I was there; a heavy teaching schedule and being super tired aren’t really conducive to knitting. However, I did manage to get in a few hours while sitting in the warm 30 degree sunshine out by the pool:

I am hankering for something a bit more meaty to knit now, something to keep my brain engaged and hopefully block out some of the horrible news of the world. (I am not going to discuss the horrible news here, which just keeps getting worse every day, because knitting is my safe space, so I am endeavouring to keep this a safe space too.) To that end, I have just signed up for a KAL (a knit-along) with Carmen Schmidt of A Yarn Story. The KAL is for any one of the 5 projects designed by Erika Knight for the Signature Collection using A Yarn Story’s yarn, Walcot Opus.

I have to admit that I am unsure about the project I chose from this collection. It is a shawl called A Walk in the Park:

© Erika Knight

This is not my usual type of shawl. For one thing, it is triangular-shaped, and I much prefer rectangular shawls. It is also outside of my usual colour choices. I ordered the yarn in the same colours as the pattern photo and was surprised when it arrived to discover that the colour I thought was black is actually a deep brown. Emma says she likes it much better with the brown, and that it gives it a beautiful depth. It still feels slightly out of my comfort zone.

Both Emma and Doug were surprised that I didn’t pick one of the pullover patterns from the collection, and maybe I should have. On the other hand, the whole family has been confiscating my hand-knitted shawls lately, and I am in danger of running out of shawls! I do have my mind on some glorious pullover patterns, however, which may very well make it to my needles. The top two contenders at the moment are The Checkerplate sweater by Lily Kate (for me):

© Lily Kate France

and the Liv Sweater by Moreka Knit (for Emma):

© Moreca knit

Emma and I are planning to attend the Unravel Yarn Festival at Farnham next week, and I expect that some yarn will find its way home with us! So keep an eye on this space for some new projects in the weeks to come!

I’ll end with a photo of a visitor to our garden today:

Perhaps he is interested in my next project too?

Time goes on

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Happy New Year, everyone! I had a vivid flashback on New Year’s Eve to 25 years before, Doug and I walking through Potsdam with two young children, watching the crazy excess of fireworks that the occasion provoked, surrounded by speculation of whether Y2K might crash the computer networks, and thinking how utterly weird it was to have a year that didn’t begin with ’19’. And now, here it is, 2025, the children are grown, I can barely stay awake to welcome in the new year, and I fear that my weird-o-meter has been blown to smithereens. Things change so quickly, and yet, here we are.

I missed most of the end of the year stuff that I usually post here, like my annual mitten post and the round-up of knitting projects. The last year ended on a sad note for us. My step-father, Stuart, died on the 24th of December, 2 days before his 91st birthday. Stuart was a lovely man, a hugely supporting presence in my life, and a great grandfather. We will miss him.

In the interest of completeness, and because they are terribly cute, I do want to show you my final finished project of 2024, a pair of mittens for Leah.

These are the Robinia Mittens by Anne Ventzel. She published the pattern just as I was finishing up my Anne Ventzel knit-a-long project, showcased in my last post. I liked the pattern instantly, and this was confirmed on my trip to Aarhus in mid-December when I was able to try on a sample pair at the yarn shop, Yarnfreak.

I purchased the yarn, Filcolana Peruvian, a worsted-weight wool, in a lovely blue and yellow combo, and cast on as soon as I returned. They are not only super cute, but they are fun and very easy to knit.

I realised after I took these photos that Leah is posed in a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” tryptich. And have you noticed how well they match her coat?

Tomorrow I go back to work after a strange and stressful Christmas break. I was very tired and feeling burned out before the break, and then we had a lot of sadness to deal with. Not surprisingly, I ended up getting sick. Doug has been suffering from knee and hip problems. Emma was not home, which was also sad. On the other hand, Leah has been home for a month which has been lovely. Here we are in Henley-on-Thames:

And here we are (with dinosuar!) in London at the Natural History Museum:

I am busy planning out my next knitting projects. I have a few things still on the needles which I hope to either finish or frog, and I intend to cast on some new things soon. Kate Davies announced a new knitting club yesterday, which I imagine will spark some ideas. I am planning another pair of mittens or two. Leah has managed to co-opt one of my shawls (see above photo), and since Doug also adopted one, and Emma managed to go home with two, I think I may need to cast on a new shawl for me. So, life goes on, with a New Year in front of us. There are certainly some weird things coming our way, and many challenges, but also there is family, and craft, and intellectual pursuits to keep our hearts and hands and heads engaged.

Mixed results

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It’s been a while since my last post, and in the meantime I started and finished a jumper:

That is pretty fast knitting, by my standards. From cast-on to cast-off was exactly six weeks. The design is Bella Blocking by Anne Ventzel. I knitted it as part of a KAL (knit-a-long) organised by Carmen Schmidt of A Yarn Story. The KAL was for any pattern by Anne Ventzel and we were a really nice bunch, about 30 knitters who met on-line once a week to knit and chat, while learning new techniques (for some of us), comparing yarns and colours, giving encouragement and advice, and just hanging out. I’ve had mixed results with KALs but this one was nice, very low-key and not too big.

Carmen had brought her Bella Blocking to the retreat, which she knitted with her own yarn, Fluff by Walcot Yarn and Les Garcons. I tried it on and was impressed with the fact that it wasn’t itchy (it isn’t mohair), and weighed next to nothing. She had brought along bags full of Fluff in every colour, so I grabbed some in Cinema and Shadow, and signed up for the KAL.

I have mixed feelings about the resulting jumper, however. There is a lot to like and also things I don’t like about it. To start with the good things, I am crazy about these two colours in combination. They are really my colours, and they look great with this pattern. The yarn doesn’t itch (I already said that, but it bears repeating). The sweater is amazingly light (it weighs 220 grams) and is also very warm. It is comfortable.

The fact remains, however, that the jumper is pretty shapeless. I am unhappy with the dropped shoulders, the extra bunching under the arms, and especially with the sleeves, which just don’t sit right. I have tried to use artfully curated photos here so that I show off its best features, but you can see what I mean with the photo below.

I actually re-knit the sleeves multiple times trying to fix them, but I never got them to a point where I really like them. I also tried very hard to knit this with the 2 skeins of each colour I had purchased, but in the end needed more of the Shadow. I could totally have made it with only four skeins if I had made it an inch shorter and made the sleeves shorter, but after trying it on and ripping, and re-knitting umpteen times, I ended up with this. I think the root of the problem is the drop shoulder. The pattern calls for significantly more ease, which would have had a much greater dropped shoulder. I didn’t want all that ease around the chest, so I knitted a size 5, which with my slightly tighter gauge, gave me about 4 inches of ease. I ended up with a shoulder that was dropped enough to look sloppy and totally un-shapely, but not enough of a dropped shoulder to look intentional.

Doug’s comment on this jumper was: “I think the fact that it’s shapeless is kind of a feature.” Hmm. Enough said.

The result is a lightweight, easy, slouchy sweater in beautiful colours that looks and wears like a sweatshirt. Not a bad choice for lounging around the house, or going for a walk in the woods. It’s not something I would wear to work, though, or when I was trying to look put-together. Cosy is not a bad thing, so I am going to enjoy slouching around in this, while trying to pick patterns which suit my shape and style better.

Go green!

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For the past 18 months or so, one shawl has been at the top of my wear pile; the one I nearly always grab to keep myself warm and colourful. This is the simple striped shawl I knitted in seven shades of Garthenor Preseli (and blogged here). When Emma came home to visit last October, she was taken with it and asked me to knit one for her, using green shades rather than the red and orange tones I had used. We ordered a bunch of greens and mixed in a grey, a cream, and a yellow, and then sent each other many, many photos with different layouts of the possible combinations. In August, I realised that with Emma due to return home for another October visit, I had just enough time to knit it and send it home with her.

When I say ‘just enough time’ I mean it, and once again, I finished it literally in the nick of time. I cast off the last stitch just before midnight on Saturday night (week before last), and stayed up late to wash and block it. On Sunday evening, just as we were losing the last of the light, and as it was starting to rain (but of course!), I unpinned it so I could take a few photos. The next morning, she was wearing it as she left to fly back to Vancouver.

The shawl is knitted sideways. I cast on 386 stitches and, knitting a 3-stitch i-cord at each end, knit 10, purl 10 across. It is very simple, intuitive, mindless knitting. I knitted the first one when I was in the throes of post-covid brain fog, and if your brain is feeling tired, this is a good project to pick up.

I am totally enamoured of the Preseli wool; it is so cushiony and soft, and I find myself always squishing the shawl when I wear it. It is comforting. (Still wooly, however; it’s not a superwash merino). I’ve been wearing the heck out of mine and it hasn’t pilled. The colour sequence used is: Holly, Wild Olive, Slate, Kettle, Gorse, Marble, and Willow.

My notes from the first one say I used a US6/4mm needle. I did exactly the same with this one: same yarn, same number of stitches, same number of rows (26) of each colour. In a completely bizarre and inexplicable fashion, the green one came out wider but they both came out to the same length. Here you can see the green one as it is blocked and pinned out on the right, with the red one next to it for a size comparison.

The finished, blocked size is 19″x76″ for the red and 23″x76″ for the green. How can they be the same length but not the same width, given each stripe is 26 rows on the same size needle? It is a mystery for the ages.

I am so happy my family tolerates my need to take knitwear photos with good grace. Even when there are suitcases to pack. And it’s raining.

Diligent readers will have noticed that this means that Emma flew home with two shawls, since she also managed to finally finagle me into giving her my Soumak shawl (see my last post). I think I will need to cast on a shawl or two this winter to replenish my stock.

If you can vote in the US elections, please do so. Vote early (like I did this week)!