A Cashmere Lace Scarf

I have just finished (well, actually a couple of weeks ago now) a beautiful scarf in Yarntelier Cashmere Lace.   

 I got the yarn from Louisa Harding's studio in the Byram Arcade in Huddersfield, along with the pattern.  The design is Olena, and it makes a scarf so light and airy that one 50g. ball of yarn makes a good sized scarf (mine is about 135cm. x 25cm.).  

Louisa intended the scarf to have beads in the lace for the first few pattern repeats at each end of the scarf:

But I'm not a beaded scarf sort of person, so I left those off.  I also didn't do the picot cast on, though I did try it - I couldn't make it look neat, so just did a regular cast on.

The lace pattern is really beautiful.  It's not one that I know, but could well supplant Print o' the Wave as my favourite lace stitch. 

I did a lot of the knitting in public, i.e. in the various knitting groups that I go to, but that wasn't a very good idea.  I made a few mistakes in the lace. the worst being near the beginning when I had to unravel about 15cm., which at that point was more than half of what I had already done.  I did think about leaving it, because I thought that no-one else would see the mistake, which is probably true. But I am very glad that corrected it, because now it's perfect.  I made a few more mistakes, but I made sure to check more often, so correcting them wasn't such a big deal. 

Louisa promised that washing the finished knit, to get the spinning oil out, would make a huge difference - the cashmere would 'bloom'.  And she was right - it felt quite soft while I was knitting it, but now it is delightful.  Very soft, warm, and light, and the colour is gorgeous too - not quite solid, a lovely grey-blue.  I love my scarf.

A Lacy Shawl

I finished knitting this shawl two months ago, in September, but couldn't write about it because it was a birthday present.  Maura had a significant birthday in March, so the shawl was several months late - but first the yarn was faulty and had to be replaced, and then I broke my wrists and couldn't knit, and then Maura was in Italy until last week.  But now she is back, and I have given it to her, and so I can write about it.

It's the Bosc Pear Shawl designed by Tetiana Otruta.  (A free pattern on Ravelry.)  I knitted it in Louisa Harding's Amitola, a lovely wool/silk yarn that I like very much - I have already knitted a cowl and scarf for myself in it, in other colourways.  Maura's scarf is in Elvira - mostly dark and muted colours, black and purple, with some brighter blue, and a dramatic pink-purple.  The Bosc Pear shawl has bands of stocking stitch, alternating with bands of lace - as you can see from the photo, even the stocking stitch bands are very light and translucent in the Amitola.  It was easy to knit, it looks good and feels beautifully soft.

     
So, very belatedly:  Happy Birthday, Maura.

A Woven Stitch Cowl

I've been knitting a lot of neckwear lately - the Petal Cowl and the Seascape scarf.   Both of those were knitted in Louisa Harding's Amitola yarn, which is lovely, and I wanted to try the thicker version, Amitola Grande, which is about Aran thickness, and the same soft mix of wool and silk.  So I knitted another cowl in it last month - I was knitting it at Sheringham after I finished the Seascape scarf, and it was a quick knit.

I knew from a cowl that a friend had knitted in Amitolda Grande that it was likely to have very definite stripes, and I wanted a more blurry effect.  So I knitted it in woven stitch again, like the mitts I made before Christmas.   In that case, I chose woven stitch for its texture, but the effect of the slipped stitches on a variegated yarn is to avoid sharp changes of colour between rows, by mixing the colours together.  The effect is  really nice....

  ... and the other side is very presentable too.

I made the cowl quite small, and shaped towards the top - I didn't want to have too much loose fabric around my neck.  (It doesn't keep you warm and just gets in the way, is my opinion.)

I like it very much - I've been wearing it a lot.

This colourway of Amitola Grande is called Sleepy Hollow (525).  I usually like to know the names of yarn colours - they are often very evocative.  But Sleepy Hollow is a horror film, I never watch horror films, and I'm not very happy to think of a horror film when I look at my cowl.  (I have just watched the Sleepy Hollow trailer and the colours are very muted, with lots of browns and greys, so perhaps that's the reason for the name.)

Seascape Scarf

I said in my last post that I finished knitting a scarf at Sheringham. Here it is.

The pattern is the Spiral Staircase shawl by LizAnn Petch - a free pattern on Ravelry. On the smooth edge, you increase one stitch on every row, which creates a pretty edge, and the curve that you see in the finished scarf.

On the other edge, you cast off ten or so stitches at regular intervals, which controls the width of the scarf/shawl.  I wanted it to be a scarf, not a shawl, so I cast off a few more stitches in each step as I went along, so that the width doesn't increase as much as it does in the pattern.

The yarn is Louisa Harding's Amitola  (again - I finished Xandy Peters' Petal Cowl in the same yarn in December).  It's colourway 106, which is called Seascape. The North Sea, not the Mediterranean, evidently - the colours are quite muted.  And it didn't occur to me until I got to Sheringham that it was very appropriate to be knitting in a yarn called Seascape at the seaside.   Here's a view of the sea at Sheringham, on Sunday morning when the sun was shining:

The pale browny-grey colour in the scarf, between the two dark grey stripes, seems to me very characteristic of the North Sea.

The self-striping yarn works very well with the pattern - I like the way that the stripes curve across the width of the scarf.  I used one ball of Amitola, and the finished scarf goes right round my neck, with the two ends hanging in front.  It looks very good - you see diagonal stripes of the different colours of the yarn, and the zigzags around the edge.  (Yes, a photo would be a good idea.  But I'm trying to find a suitable pin to fasten the two ends together, rather than tying them, or just leaving them to hang - I might get a photo taken when I've found one.)   It's very soft and warm, too.   And I think I'm getting better at knitting garter stitch - I don't find it easy to keep the stitches even (stocking stitch is much easier) but this is better than previous attempts.

P.S. One of the blogs I follow is Orange Swan's The Knitting Needle and the Damage Done. Many of her posts review knitting magazines, and her comments on the designs are very perceptive, caustic when they need to be, and often very funny.  Sometimes I find myself laughing out loud, e.g at "Call me hidebound, but my rule is never to make any knitted garment that sleeps more than two" as a comment on a hugely voluminous top.   Worth reading.

Damask in Progress

I have been knitting a top for myself with the Rowan Damask yarn that I won in the raffle at the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM weekend in Cardiff.  There are just 6 balls of yarn, and it is quite a summery yarn anyway (viscose, linen and acrylic) so I am making a sleeveless top, though I plan to wear it over a shirt.  I decided to start it straightaway rather than carrying on with the alpaca cardigan I was already knitting, in the hope that I would be able to wear it before the summer is over.  I have nearly finished it, and we might have warm weather still to come, so I am still hoping.

The pattern is loosely based on Wimberry from Lousia Harding's Little Cake book, though I have not done the deep lacy edging at the bottom - I would not have had enough yarn for it.  I have also done the horizontal eyelet bands in a different yarn, partly to eke out the Damask, but also bcause I thought that they would not show up well in random-dyed yarn.  The idea came from the long-sleeved version of Wimberry, where Lousia Harding has used very contrasting colours for the eyelet bands.

For the eyelet bands, I used a ball of Debbie Bliss's Eco-baby cotton yarn in a duck-egg blue that I already had.  I like the effect - the colour tones with the colours of the Damask, while the matt texture gives a nice contrast.

I am knitting it in the round, partly to avoid having too many ends to weave in.  It's been useful to be able to try it on as I go, as well.  I should finish it this week, and then all I need is some warm weather...... 

     

Wearing tweed

This has been a busy week, including two days at the Knitting & Crochet Guild store, working on sorting out the magazines, and more work on them at home. The main store is currently more or less empty - most of the items that were not water damaged by the burst pipe just after Christmas have been moved out, so that the building can be dried out. But that is nearly done.  The dehumidifiers are about to be removed and the contents will be moved back shortly - there's a lot of work still to be done. So no blog posts this week. I know that lots of people work full-time and still manage to write their blogs - I just don't know how, that's all.

But I have also managed to finish my Old Moor jumper. It had its first outing on Tuesday at Knit Night. I'm very pleased with it - it fits well and the tweedy yarn looks good in the herringbone stitch and the stocking stitch too.  I like the way the neckline is shaped and finished off - the edging is just a few rows of garter stitch, but it all looks very tailored and neat.  I worked the shoulder seams using short row shaping and Russian grafting, of course - practise what you preach.  And I am very proud of the neatness of the armhole seams.  Those were the only seams I had to sew, as I knitted the body and sleeves in the round.    

I made some changes to the pattern that I didn't mention before.  It is supposed to have a V-neck  at the back as well as the front, but I don't like having a draught down the back of my neck so I filled it in.  Also, the yarn is not soft enough to wear next to the skin, so  I will be wearing another layer underneath (except for modelling purposes) and a V at the back would make that difficult.

Another change is that I reduced the diameter of the cuff, because I wanted it to be close-fitting.  The herringbone stitch is not at all stretchy, so it is now quite a tight fit over my hand.  The pattern has a looser cuff and then a wider sleeve, but I have staged the sleeve increases evenly so that the sleeve is a closer fit overall - I thought that a loose cuff and sleeve would just be very annoying.

I have started another project to replace this.  It is a lacy scarf in Kid Silk Haze, for a friend who is 60 in April. She asked for a sort of plum/damson/berry red colour, so I am using Liqueur - a lovely rich dark red.  And now I shan't say any more about it until after her birthday.

Old Moor Progress

I have started knitting the Louisa Harding Old Moor jumper with the Rowan Felted Tweed yarn that J gave me for Christmas, as I wrote about here.   I have got to about halfway up the body.  So I have finished the band in herringbone stitch that forms the hem, which Louisa Harding says "takes its cue from the traditional woven fabrics produced in this area of Yorkshire".  On each row, you knit 2 stitches and then slip 2 stitches, taking the yarn across the front of the fabric.  The herringbone pattern is formed by the staggered horizontal lines of yarn as they are carried across the slipped stitches.

Because of the slipped stitches, the herringbone band is a much firmer fabric than the stocking stitch used for most of the rest of the jumper.  The slipped stitches mean too that there is not an abrupt change from green yarn to grey yarn; it takes three rows to work all the stitches in the new colour.  I like that, and I think the whole band is very attractive.

The pattern is written with the back and front of the jumper knitted separately,  but I decided to knit them in one piece, in the round, on a circular needle, to avoid breaking up the herringbone band with side seams.  Another advantage is that then the yarn carried across the slipped stitches is always on the nearside of the fabric, so that you can easily see whether the zigzags are developing correctly.  If the herringbone stitch is knitted back and forth, then on the alternate (purl) rows, you have to carry the yarn across the far side and it would be harder to spot mistakes.

 This is my second project knitted Continental style, after the Baby Sophisticate  jacket.   Now that I am past the herringbone band, I have a long stretch of stocking stitch in the round up to the armholes, which of course is miles of knit stitches.  So I shall be very good at knit stitches, Continental style, by the time I reach the armholes.  That could be problematic, because after the armholes I shall have to switch to working back and forth and purl alternate rows, and purl stitches are trickier than knit stitches in Continental knitting.  But I think I shall be OK, because I did both knitting and purling in the Baby Sophisticate jacket and my tension seemed to be the same for both.

 I did write in  an earlier post that I was finding knitting on circular needles awkward and slow, but Continental knitting has solved that.  With my original style of knitting, on straight needles, I hold the right needle under my arm, and my right hand holds the yarn and takes it round the needle to make the stitch.  On a circular needle, my right hand has to hold the needle as well as move the yarn, and so I have to keep switching from one to the other.  With Continental knitting, though, you can keep hold of both needles; the left hand holds both the left needle and the yarn, but the stitch is made by the right needle picking up the yarn.  So in theory, there are fewer steps involved, and in practice, hopefully, it will be quicker. 

And I bought myself a set of interchangeable KnitPro needles (i.e. cables and tips), which was an extravagance, especially as I wasn't sure whether I could adapt to Continental knitting at that point, and so how much I would use them. But they are a pleasure to knit with.  

Christmas Presents

Now that Christmas Day is past, I can write about the things I made as surprise presents.  I sent my daughter and her girlfriend a pair of mitts each.  They are in Oregon, so we spoke to them via Skype on Christmas Day (evening here, before breakfast there).  We have webcams at both ends, so I could take a snapshot of them wearing their mitts. 

One is a pair of convertible mitts, with a button-down top, in merino DK.

 The other is a pair of fingerless mitts in Manos del Uruguay merino/silk DK. The pattern is Nalu, which is free on Ravelry.   I love the way that three stitches break away from the wrist rib, skid across the back of the mitt, and then end up soberly as part of the top rib again.

Both very successful, I think.

I asked J for something knitty for Christmas, but he said he wouldn't know what to choose, so I bought some yarn, put it in a gift bag and showed him on Christmas Day what he was giving me.  Who says romance is dead?  Apparently, I gave him a 4-volume regimental history of the 7th Hussars.  

The yarn is Rowan Felted Tweed DK in Grey Mist.  I already had one ball in a soft green (Herb?) that I acquired two years ago when two Rowan people gave a talk on the company at the local Oxfam shop.  They handed out pairs of knitting needles with a ball of yarn and 20 stitches cast on, so that we could knit while listening.  They retrieved the needles at the end of the session, but we got to keep the yarn, and the perfectly pointless piece of knitting.  It is very nice yarn and good to knit with, so I have been looking for a use for one ball of Felted Tweed ever since.  (They also had a wicker basket full of odd balls of Rowan yarn that we were invited to help ourselves from, so I am looking for a use for several other single balls of lovely yarn, too.)

Louisa Harding's Old Moor jumper

When I saw Louisa Harding's Little Cake  book, I liked many of the patterns and thought immediately that the Old Moor pattern would be suitable for my odd ball of Felted Tweed. It is designed for Willow Tweed,  which is also DK, so I think the pattern will be adaptable, and it uses one ball of a second colour.  So that will be my next project.