All of my knitting projects lately have seemed endless. I keep picking time-consuming projects, and this is exacerbated by my new schedule which means I have much less time in which to knit. The result has been that I occasionally feel as if knitting is a slog – not the desired outcome for a pleasurable pasttime. I was in need of instant gratification; hence, the quickie.
I also have two daughters at university, which means little disposable income. So, I did a search through my stash yarn. I found two and a bit skeins of Rowan Cocoon, a chunky wool in a soft grey, no doubt left over from when I knit an Owl Sweater for Leah (which will be the subject soon of a Wearability Wednesday post). I didn’t feel the need to search for a pattern and just grabbed a set of needles and improvised a pattern for a cowl.
I used a US 10.5 needle and cast on 272 stitches, joined in the round, placed a stitch marker to mark beginning of round, and then knit in a 1×1 rib reversible cable stitch:
Rows 1-3: K1 p1 all the way around
Row 4: *Put 4 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 P1 K1 P1 from left hand needle, and then K1 P1 K1 P1 from cable needle, then K1 P1 (four times)*, repeat from * to end
Rows 5-7: K1 P1 all the way around
Row 8: *K1P1 (four times), put 4 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 P1 K1 P1 from left hand needle, and then K1 P1 K1 P1 from cable needle*, repeat from * to end
This made a thick, lovely, wavy fabric:
Blocking it, however, really pulled out the fabric quite a bit, revealing the cables (and adding quite a bit of length). The unblocked measurement was 22″x5.5″ (for a 44″ circumference) and the blocked measurement was 28″x6″ (for a 56″ circumference). I sort of like the look of the fabric better pre-block, but the truth of the matter was that it was too thick and bulky to look right as a cowl and didn’t easily double up around the neck. Here is the finished cowl:
These photos were taken in a 5-minute window between rain showers, so are not the best, but you can see from the above one that the pattern is truly reversible so that the back and front sides are the same.
Alas, one quickie was apparently not enough to assuage the instant gratification urge, so I dove back into my stash yarn pile, and came up with a skein of Noro Kureyon. I decided to knit the Campout Fingerless Mitts pattern by tante ehm, which is available for free. Here is the finished pair of mitts:
I decided that I wanted to be clever and use up every last bit of yarn from the skein, so I knit the two mitts at the same time (more or less) pulling the yarn from one end of the skein for one mitt, and from the other end for the second. First, I cast on and started knitting the first mitt using the end from inside the skein:
Then, I put the stitches on holders:
Then I cast on the second mitt using the end from the outside of the skein:
(Ignore the red yarn which was used as a provisional cast-on. The mitts are constructed by starting with the garter stitch band around the top, grafting the two ends together and then picking up stitches and knitting down in stockinette stitch. If I knit these again, I wouldn’t bother with the provisional cast-on and grafting; I would just sew the two ends together.) I then continued to knit the second mitt, pulling the yarn from the outside of the skein:
The whole point of this exercise was to make the mitts as long as possible without needing to break the yarn, or wasting any yarn. I needn’t have bothered: towards the end of the second mitt, I encountered a knot in the yarn:
I decided to stop the second mitt just before the knot, and thus had to end the first mitt at the same length; without the knot, both mitts would have ended with this dark blue colour around the end. As an aside, there seem to be two types of approaches to knitting with Noro. The first approach always tries to make the colour changes match, so that both mitts would have the same colour progression, or both sleeves on a pullover, etc. This involves buying more Noro than you need, and cutting out the bits you don’t want and coordinating the colour runs across the garment. The second is to let the colours be and just knit. This is the approach I prefer, and leads to mitts that don’t match. I kind of like them that way.
Now that I’ve got this out of my system, I hope to go back to my longer projects with more enthusiasm. I’m heading off to Cornwall for a few days holiday. Given the grey and rainy weather, there should be plenty of time to knit.
My body might be going to work every day, but my brain is definitely on holiday. It all started, in a predictable fashion, when I went on holiday with my family last month. When you are on holiday it is a very good thing if your brain comes along for the ride. Luckily, my brain cooperated and I spent a week in which I never thought about work. The day we got back, we all came down with a ghastly bug, which meant we spent a week being truly, horribly ill and then two weeks being queasy, pale and shaky. Unfortunately, work intruded on this time and I dealt with it as well as I could, but my brain decided it was still off-duty thank you very much. And this was followed by a heat wave which is now stretching into its second week. I love the heat so am not complaining, but clearly my brain has used this opportunity to put up a metaphorical “Off fishing” sign, and shows no intention of returning to duty any time soon.
When I packed for my holiday, I took far too much knitting. I took my Neon cardigan, which was done except for the finishing, and I took the back of my Exeter cardigan, a densely cabled piece. Both of these required more than the normal amount of concentration. Why did I take them on holiday? I am not sure. I think I imagined sitting by the side of the pool with my feet up, gazing at the view and knitting. What I didn’t realize was that when you go somewhere new (Lebanon) to visit family that you have never met, and furthermore, when that family runs into the hundreds of people, you don’t spend your time gazing at the view and knitting. I loved absolutely every second of my holiday, and Lebanon is truly a wonderful, magical place, full of absolutely fantastic people. It was not the place to take the kind of knitting that demanded concentration.
Luckily, at the very last minute (while the taxi was pulling up to the door), I threw a skein of Wollmeise Lace-garn into my bag, and printed out a copy of the pattern for Viajante, a shawl (of sorts) by Martina Behm. This is the skein of wool:
It is really a gorgeous blend of purples and blues which I had purchased at Knit Nation 2010 in London. That venue, by the way, was the first time I had ever come into contact with Wollmeise yarn. They had the most amazing display of wool that I have ever seen, before or since, and practically started a stampede by yarn buyers. I kid you not; it had to be experienced to be believed. While there, I purchased three skeins of Wollmeise Pure, and then couldn’t resist this skein of Lace-garn, even though I had no plans for it, and don’t often knit with laceweight yarns.
A skein of Lace-garn has 1591 metres per 300 gram skein. My skein weighed in at 338, so it has even more. (Wollmeise skeins are often generously overweight.) Do you have any idea how long it takes to hand wind that many metres of laceweight yarn into a ball? Answer: it takes a very long time. Eventually, the whole family got into it. Emma and I took turns winding while a number of cousins lent a hand. (Note that this was done by the pool, in front of a lovely view.)
Viajante is a completely gorgeous pattern. It is a sort of a combination of shawl and poncho, and is a really clever, original design. I loved it the minute I first saw the pattern on Ravelry. Here are a couple of the pattern photos:
copyright Martina Behm
copyright Martina Behm
Even though I loved this pattern straight off, and even had the perfect yarn for it sitting in my stash, I still had no intention of ever making it. This was for two reasons. First, the idea of knitting this enormous shawl in laceweight in stockinette seemed like an act of torture. Surely, I reasoned, it would take a year to knit and cause me to pull out all of my hair in the meantime. Second, even though I think it is completely gorgeous I really couldn’t visualize myself actually wearing it.
Enter Rachel. Rachel is a colleague of mine at the university, and the only one who knits. She gave a talk a few months ago, and I went to hear it. The talk was truly fascinating, but I must admit I could not keep my eyes off the Viajante shawl which she had just finished knitting, and which she wore to give her talk in, in an obvious ploy to make me jealous. As soon as the talk was done, I ran up and asked her if I could touch it. “Here,” she said, pulling it off, “Try it on! I knew you would want to.” I was completely smitten. Would I wear this? Absolutely. I decided at that point that if I was ever insane enough to want to knit endlessly in stockinette with laceweight yarn, I would knit myself a Viajante.
Viajante can be worn as a poncho or as a shawl. It is knit in a tube. It is totally mindless knitting (and when I say that I really mean it – there are hundreds upon hundreds, maybe even thousands, of tiny, laceweight stitches on tiny needles knit in the round). It is the perfect “my brain is on holiday and I can’t be bothered to think about anything” knitting. You could knit this while sleeping if necessary. You could definitely knit it while laughing and talking and eating fabulous food with hundreds of newly-met relatives. You could also definitely knit it while recovering from the flu and barely hanging in there. You could certainly knit it in 30+ degree heat with humidity, even while imbibing gin.
So, my friends, here you have it: what to knit when your brain takes a holiday. Do yourself a favour and send your brain packing today. You won’t regret it.
