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.
I admit that I have not been doing much knitting the last two weeks, despite being in lockdown. I’ve been working from home, which seems to take more time not less, and when I’m not working, I have spent a fair bit of time alternating between long chats with the girls (yay!) and stressing about the news (boo!).
However, on Friday I received some beautiful new yarn in the post:
Yesterday was a glorious, sunny Saturday and I sat at my kitchen table with the doors and windows open, listening to the birds sing, and working on a swatch. My plan is to knit Koko, a large wrap by Olga Buraya-Kefelian:
It takes a bit of time to get used to the pattern, but once you’ve figured it out it is easy peasy and flows off the needles. That is not to say it is fast as (with my gauge, more below) I am knitting 62 rows per 4″/10cm. That’s going to be an awful lot of rows. Here is my swatch just off the needles:
It bunches and curls in on itself, but here it is (still unblocked) with me sort of smoothing it out a bit and holding the edges down.
You can see that the resulting fabric is very three dimensional. (On this point, I must interject to say that Olga is a genius! Truly! No one does three dimensional patterns like she does. I took a class with her once which was so much fun; I blogged about it here. If you get a chance, do take one of her classes.) I was worried that a lot of the three-dimensionality of the fabric would be lost during blocking, and so I gave it a very light block – soaking it thoroughly but then not stretching it out to pin, but rather pinning it gently to shape. Here you can see the blocked fabric:
I tried to take a photo of the blocked swatch which would show the rich, sculptured hills and valleys of the fabric – this is the best I could do this morning:
Isn’t it wonderful? I am in love! The navy is a fantastic, dark, rich navy that looks blue in some lights and almost-black in others. It is the perfect background, along with the cream, for this brilliant pop of green! I am loving this colour combination so much.
The pattern calls for sportweight yarn, and this is fingering weight, so the gauge is way off. The pattern gauge is 24×54, and this swatch, washed and blocked, is measuring 32×62. But I love the resulting fabric and I am willing to put up with LOTS more knitting to turn this out. (Ha! I say this now…..) I also have 800 metres of each colour, so plenty to make a large size wrap even with a significantly smaller gauge.
And for those inquiring minds out there who want to know what the reverse side looks like (I always want to know this!), here is a photo for you.
Best wishes to everyone! Stay well and keep knitting!
This lockdown is starting to get to me. I am feeling anxious. I miss the girls. I wonder when we will all be together again. Emma moved into a new place (yesterday) and we weren’t there to help. (Imagine trying to move apartments during a lockdown!) Leah is posting photos of her gardening, and canning and preserving, and we are not there to sample the goodies. Thus, I am anxious, thinking of the girls, thinking of being in Vancouver, thinking of the trip we had planned there in May (not happening now), and imagining being out in the world, walking around in the sun, care-free. So what better post to link to in this Lockdown Flashback than Cowl-a-bunga, which I posted on the last day of December 2016?
This post has lots of photos of us wandering around Stanley Park, Vancouver, on a beautiful, sunny, winter afternoon. Doug, Emma, and Leah are each wearing cowls which I knitted for Christmas presents that year. It was a good day.
Today it is sunny here, and quiet, and I have new yarn! So maybe today will be a good day, too. Here’s wishing you all a good day. Keep safe, everyone!
There is a reason we knitters refer to “sleeve island”. Knitting sleeves is tedious at best and agonizing at worse. Especially when knitted in the round. And when knitting a sweater for one’s husband, the sleeves can seem interminable. For this Lockdown Flashback, I direct you to a post from February of 2012 with the endearing title “Do you love your husband enough to knit the sleeves?” If you have ever done this, you know what I mean.
When I wrote this post, I was not convinced I would ever finish knitting these sleeves. I was not sure that even my devotion for Doug was sufficient….
It was, of course, and the finished sweater turned out pretty damn good, even if I do say so myself. (You can see the finished sweater here or here.)
Today, let’s hark back to a post from February of 2014. Green, glorious green was one of my early Wearability Wednesday posts, and showcases a cabled mohair shawl which I cast on in 2008 and finished in 2010. I love this shawl.
I also really love this post. It contains photos of me wearing the shawl over a period of years, in many different ways, and with many different outfits. I think it shows off the versatility of this piece and also the joyfulness of a bright, lovely, hand-knitted accessory.
Some of these photos were taken at home in England, and some in the desert near Tucson, and when I read this post it brings back lots of memories. I hope you like it.
I later knitted another of these shawls, by the way, which I wrote about here.
If you are in lockdown or self-isolating, I hope that you are well and managing to keep your spirits up. I’ll be back with another Lockdown Flashback on Wednesday. Stay safe!
Why did I have an appointment at Rowan? Why did I have a breakdown? More importantly, did I get a goodie bag? You will have to read the post to find out. Revisiting this post made me smile. I hope it makes you smile too.
For those of you currently in lockdown or self-isolating, how are you holding up? Does knitting help? Keep safe everyone!!
For this Lockdown Flashback, let’s look at a post written way back in May of 2013: Venetian Audrey modelled. I had knitted a beautiful pullover for Emma while she was away at her first year of university, but although I had posted about the knitting process quite a bit, I was unable to get any modelled photos of the finished pullover until she came home for the summer. The sweater pattern is called Audrey and was designed by Kim Hargreaves. I’ve actually knit Audrey twice; the first time for me, followed a few years later by this version for Emma.
I am especially proud of this knit. I had to do extensive re-writing of the pattern to get it to fit her (and to convert it to the round). I was very concerned about getting the fit exactly right, and as it was knit entirely in rib and Emma was not around to try it on, it was not an easy task. It took endless measurements, lots of patience, some ripping and re-knitting, and a fair bit of math. I think it was worth it: don’t you?
With so many of us under lockdown due to the pandemic, or living under varying degrees of self-isolation, I thought that I would introduce a new feature. I don’t know about you, but I am seeking out things to read that aren’t full of gloom and doom, and things to distract me from constantly refreshing the news. These are anxious and very weird days and it is good to have some time in which to knit, and smile, and read un-complicated things. I thought about producing more content, but, let’s face it, that would take time away from knitting, which I already know is good for managing anxiety.
So, I thought to make a little post – a lockdown flashback – every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which contains a link to a previous post on this blog, with a little introduction. I have over 450 posts to choose from, encompassing just under ten years of writing this blog. I will continue to write a normal post every weekend, to keep you fully current on my adventures in knitting. I will try this for a few weeks and see what you think. If you enjoy it, I will keep it up for awhile.
I randomly looked at previous posts titles and found one called When you need a rainbow…knit one! This seemed like a good place to start, as a rainbow sounds pretty nice right now. I wrote this post in March 2017. It shows off a new pair of mitts, knitted in rainbow colours and photographed against the bright and cheerful backgrounds of early spring in Henley-on-Thames.
