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 Light as Air Scarf

I have just finished a lacy scarf that I started earlier this month - a very quick knit.   The yarn is brushed alpaca and silk, very soft and fluffy, and it's knitted on 6.5mm needles, so it grows fast.

(As in the post I wrote shortly after I started knitting, the photo looks hopelessly out of focus, but it isn't - the yarn is just very very fluffy.) 

The pattern is called Light as Air - designed by my friend Steph as a free pattern for this yarn (see her Etsy shop - Steph's Crafty Bits).  It's a very simple stitch pattern - two rows, and one of them is all purl.  All the decreases are left-leaning, so the fabric is slightly biassed, which is why the ends aren't square, but that doesn't matter in a scarf.  Steph designed it as a shorter narrower scarf, to be threaded through a knitted loop in the same yarn, that would take just one skein.  I've used two skeins, and the scarf is about 28cm. (11 ins.) wide and about 170cm. (67in.) long. It will be very warm and cosy to wear.

Now back to my Rosedale socks - I have finished the first, but I will have to remind myself all over again how to do Judy's Magic Cast On.

Grey

I don't often write about what I'm knitting, until it's finished (in case it all turns out badly).  But I thought I would show you two things I am working on just now. 

At the top is a nearly finished sock for me. The yarn is a sock yarn (blue-faced Leicester and nylon) from Countess Ablaze in Manchester, colour Grey Skies in Manchester.  The pattern is a modified version of the Rosedale socks, from Cable Knits by Ann Kingstone.  The main change to her pattern is at the top - I have not done the complex rose-like cable that Ann designed, and I prefer a ribbed top to a picot edge.  Another change  you can't see in this photo: I have used the heel from Ann's On the Other Foot socks because they have a gusset and fit me very well.  And finally, I (unintentionally) worked some of the cables in the opposite direction to what the pattern specified, but I've decided not to worry about that. 

I have stopped work on the socks, temporarily, to start on a Christmas present for my sister.  (She knows all about it, so I don't need to be secretive.)  It is a scarf in a really luscious brushed alpaca and silk yarn.  The photo above looks completely out of  focus, but it isn't - the yarn is just very very fluffy.  It was dyed by my friend Steph (stephscraftybits on Etsy) in a beautiful mottled grey colourway that she calls Smoke.  The yarn came with a free pattern for a lacy scarf.   It's growing fast (on 6.5mm. needles) and is amazingly soft.

I'll show both socks and scarf again when they are finished. 

A Scarf in Springtime

Earlier this year, the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection was given several balls of a vintage yarn. They were donated by a Guild member who volunteers in a charity shop.  She bought the yarn when it was brought into the shop, because she thought it looked very old, and had never heard of the make - 'Wakefield Greenwood'.   But when she asked on the Guild Facebook group for information about the company, she was pointed to posts on this blog - I have been gathering information about Wakefield Greenwood for several years, because it was a local company.  She offered the yarn to the Guild collection, and we were delighted to accept it.

The brand name is 'Springtime' - a wool yarn that was made in several thicknesses.  This is 'laceply & tinsel' - very fine, as the name suggests, and composed of 75% botany (i.e. merino) and 25% tinsel.  I don't know what the tinsel is - some sort of metallic thread.

Wakefield Greenwood (aka W. G. Spinners) introduced their wool and tinsel yarn in 1953.  The Yorkshire Evening Post featured it in their report on the British Industries Fair in that year:

Wakefield, Greenwood and Company, Huddersfield, this year features wool with a sparkle.  Each strand is spun with tinsel thread, giving a "brilliant" effect to garments. Though this new product was introduced only eight weeks ago, substantial orders have already been received from European countries, South Africa, and Australia.  In the shops it will retail at about 3d. an ounce more than normal wool. 

We have about 200 Wakefield Greenwood pattern leaflets in the collection, and I looked for any that used this yarn.  Here's one that looks like the same black and gold colourway as our yarn.  It's in stocking stitch, and the pattern specifies a tension of 36 stitches and 52 rows to 4 in. (10 cm.) with size 12 (2.75mm.) needles.  I have knitted a stocking stitch swatch on size 12s and it makes a very nice fabric, with a lot of drape.

W. G. Leaflet 1021

Here's another evening blouse pattern, for the same yarn.  The lace pattern looks very complicated and the result looks almost not knitted.  Maybe I should try it.... 

W. G. Leaflet 1145

These two patterns are from later in the 1950s, but I did find a pattern for Springtime laceply that was advertised in 1953, when the tinsel yarn was introduced. 

W.G. Leaflet 152

According to the leaflet, you could make a short scarf, about 32 in. (81 cm.) long, with only one ½ oz. ball of Springtime laceply (i.e. without tinsel).  I decided to try it, to demonstrate what the yarn was like when knitted up.  I couldn't make a scarf of a sensible length from one ball, as it turned out, partly because the tinsel reduces the length in a ball, and also because I'm not very good at blocking.  So I used two balls - it's still quite a short scarf.  It's knitted on size 6 (4mm.) needles.  I found it absolutely impossible at first, because the only size 6 needles I could find were metal and very smooth -  their weight kept pulling them out of the stitches.  But then I found some bamboo needles of the right size and got on much better.  I put in lifelines, too, but didn't actually need them when I got the needles right.  

You can see that I haven't managed to stretch the lace pattern as much as in the pattern illustration.  In my defence, I think that the tinsel might possibly make it more resistant to blocking, maybe? 

I think it's much easier to relate to a vintage yarn if you can see something knitted in it that is also of the right era.  And now we have an example of something knitted in our 195os yarn to a 1950s pattern.  The scarf and some of the remaining balls of Springtime laceply and tinsel have already been in a trunk show of collection highlights last weekend, and will be included in future trunk shows too.  

Christmas Presents

I don't usually knit Christmas presents - I know from past experience that it's just creating an extra source of stress in getting them finished in time.  And I have not been much of a sock knitter, either, though for Christmas 2011 I did knit 3 pairs (of which 2 and a half were finished in time).   But this year, I needed a small portable project and decided to try sock knitting again, and to knit a pair for my daughter for Christmas - knitting one pair of socks seemed perfectly manageable.   I bought a skein of lovely Lichen and Lace sock yarn from my friend Sarah Alderson, and her sock pattern, The Chain.   (Sarah designed the thrummed slippers pattern that featured in my previous post.) 

The socks were finished well before Christmas.  They have turned out very well, and the yarn is beautifully soft. 

But meanwhile, my daughter said that what she really needed was a replacement for a scarf that she had lost i.e. she wanted me to knit a plum-coloured infinity scarf, as soon as possible. So I decided that the scarf would have to be for Christmas, too.

It took a while to find some wool of the right colour - King Cole Merino Blend 4-ply in Damson. By this time it was well into December, and we decided that the scarf had to be about 46 in. (117 cm.) in circumference, and quite deep.   I did get it done - I finished it at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve (knitted, ends sewn in, and pressed).  Cutting it a bit fine, I know, but on Christmas Day it was all wrapped up, under the Christmas tree. 

It's designed to loop around the neck twice.   I don't have a photo of my daughter wearing it, but here it is on our newel post. 

I knitted it in the round, with a chevron pattern of eyelets and decreases in the middle and garter stitch borders top and bottom. Basically, a very wide, short tube.

It turned out that she hadn't lost the original scarf after all, but as it's cotton jersey, a hand-knitted wool scarf is much nicer, and much warmer for the winter.  She's very pleased with both the socks and the scarf.  And I'm going to knit more socks - this time for me.  And maybe a Moebius scarf too.

My Linen Drape Scarf

I mentioned in my last post that at the show-and-tell session at the Guild Convention 2 weeks ago, I showed the summer scarf knitted in Rowan Linen Drape that I started in April (described here).  I finished it just before the Convention.   

Here it is.  It does drape very well (as it should, given the name of the yarn).  I like the fact that even the stocking stitch stripes are slightly translucent.  And as I planned, it's an open pattern but not too fussy.   

If I've got time (hah!)  I'll write out a chart for the pattern and add it to this post.  And I'll try to take another photo with a better colour - the blue is less grey than in this photo.  

I haven't actually worn it yet - it's been too warm to want to wear a scarf.   But today is cold and damp - a raincoat and a scarf are needed, and it will get its first wearing.  

A Portable Project

I've just been to Birmingham to do a workshop on twined knitting for the local branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  It was a re-run of the one I've done previously for the Huddersfield branch, and at Sheringham in January.   I went by train on Friday morning, spent the afternoon shopping in John Lewis (lots of trying on, result: one pair of jeans, one pretty Seasalt cotton top).  I stayed overnight with Janet, the convenor of the Birmingham branch, and Francis,  and they took me to a very nice Moroccan restaurant for dinner.  On Saturday morning we went back to John Lewis, because the workshop was held in the Community Hub room there.  The workshop went well - everyone got the idea of twined knitting.  Most people got at least halfway though a wristlet, and one finished it.  (A couple of people weren't knitting a wristlet, because they preferred to knit flat, or else hadn't brought dpns, and so were just knitting a swatch to try out the techniques.)  From my point of view, as the teacher, it was very gratifying. Afterwards, I had coffee and cake with Janet and a few others, in the John Lewis cafe, another brief shopping foray (a pair of brogues, smart but comfortable), and then went downstairs to New Street station, which is handily underneath John Lewis, and caught a train home again.  Altogether a successful trip.

But on Thursday, in between printing off the handouts for Saturday, I had a brief panic: what was I going to knit?  I have finished knitting the Secret Project  (still secret) and the lace yoke cardigan  is at least 80% finished - I've nearly finished the first sleeve.  As it's knitted all in one piece, that means I have to carry around most of a cardigan, and it's too bulky to take on an overnight trip.  I didn't have anything else planned, but I couldn't possibly go to a KCG branch meeting without some knitting.

I thought of starting something with some yarn I bought from the destash table at last year's Guild convention.  It's Rowan Linen Drape (now discontinued) - a linen and viscose mix that I thought would make a nice summer scarf for cool summer days (i.e. most British summer days).  I had already looked around for lacy scarf patterns and hadn't seen anything that appealed.   So finally, as a desperate measure, I decided to take a ball of the yarn and some suitable needles and invent something.  I'm making it up as I go along, which means a lot of backtracking, but I'm pleased with how it's turning out.

  

A Long, Long Scarf A-Winding

I have been knitting a scarf for my sister for quite a while now - I wrote in August about knitting a swatch for it, here.  It's been my main knitting project ever since, though I've been doing other bits of knitting, too (as well as everything else that needs doing apart from knitting).   It took a long time because of Margaret's specification - she wanted it to be 80 inches long and 10 inches wide (about 200 × 25 cm.)  And it is.

I could have made it a bit longer, because I had 20g. of yarn left, out of the original 200g.  But we had arranged to meet last Monday, so I had to stop knitting and press it before then.  Otherwise, I would have finished off the yarn - I think 80 inches was intended as a minimum, not a maximum, and I don't have an obvious use for 20g. of 4-ply yarn.

It wasn't a surprise present.  Margaret approved the colour before I bought the yarn, and I sent her the swatch so that she could check that it wouldn't be irritating (it's alpaca and nylon, because she can't wear wool).  So on Monday she tried it for size and declared it long enough, before re-wrapping it to put away until Christmas Day.

It is all knitted in dewdrop stitch, from Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns - an easy lace pattern.  Three out of four rows are just k3, p3 all across the row, and the complications that make it lacy are all on the 4th row.

The wrong side looks just as good as the right side, too, though they aren't the same.  In the photo below, the wrong side is shown on the right.

A very successful project - it will be wonderfully warm and cosy to wear.  And not itchy.

One Thing and Another

I finished sewing in the ends of yarn on my On the Other Hand mitts a couple of days ago, and pressed them.  I wore them today at Lee Mills - it was very cold downstairs in the store downstairs, and woolly mitts were very welcome.

Now that the Mystery Knit Along is finished, I know that I chose Sarah's design for the cuff, and Ann's design for the hand.  (But did my own thing for finger and thumb cuffs.)   I'm really pleased with them - while at the same time thinking that lots of the other pairs in the Knit Along turned out even better.  (You can see photos of many of the finished pairs in Ravelry.)  A lot of people reversed the colours for the second mitt, which looks stunning, or chose different options for the two mitts.  The Knit Along was altogether a lot of fun, working through the pattern, and watching what other knitters were doing with the pattern at the same time.

I have also just finished a cabled scarf.  The photos shows it just off the needles - I plan to press it to get the cables to open out a bit.  More on that later.

I used the same yarn for the scarf and the mitts - Wendy Merino 4-ply (fingering weight).  In fact, I used the same blue-green yarn for the mitts as for the scarf, because I miscalculated how much I would need for the scarf and was going to have some left over, and then chose the red (Rose) to go with it.  So now I have matching scarf and mitts.  The blue-green is called Pacific, though it reminds me more of conifers than sea.  It is very nice yarn, very soft, and Pacific is not completely solid, but is a mixture of blues and greens, with occasional surprising flecks of colours like bright emerald green and black.

Now I'm working on some small pieces in Swedish twined knitting for a workshop I'm doing next month - I'll report on progress later.

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.

More Reversible Cables

Quite a while ago, I saw Norah Gaughan's Here and There Cables design on Ravelry.  It's a lovely textured scarf, covered on both sides with cables which wander about, split and rejoin.  It's reversible, so the cables do the same thing on both sides, and I've been trying to figure out, with absolutely no success, how they are done.  But following the reversible cables workshop last week, I had another look.  Still couldn't work it out.  So I decided I needed to get the pattern - I really wanted to understand it, and I wasn't going to do it any other way.

 Here's a swatch:

And the stitch pattern is the same on the other side!

Now that I have seen the instructions, it's actually a very easy pattern to remember, and quite easy to knit.   I feel there's going to be a cabled scarf on my needles very soon....

One downside of finally understanding how the Here and There Cables work is that  trying to work it out in my head was an infallible way of getting back to sleep, if I woke up in the middle of the night.  Perhaps I'll have to try designing some variations instead.

Purple Silk

I've realised that I haven't written anything about my own knitting for a long time, though I have been working on several things, and just finished a very nice cardigan which I will write about shortly.  And I started and finished a quick project back in June that I have never mentioned.  I should, if only because it illustrates how useful Ravelry is.

Several years ago (in 2009, I think) I went to a free event at the Oxfam bookshop in Huddersfield.  Two of the Rowan designers came to talk about the history of Rowan, the process of putting together a collection of designs for the biannual magazine, etc. There were about 12 of us in the audience, and none of us had brought any knitting with us. (I hadn't been knitting again for very long, and wasn't used to knitting in public - now, I would definitely take along some knitting to a talk about knitting.)   But the Rowan people were prepared - they had brought along pairs of knitting needles and a large basket of odd balls of yarn, so that we could all knit a swatch while we were listening.

At the end of the talk, they retrieved the knitting needles, but said we could keep the yarn - and we could help ourselves to anything else in the basket, too.   So I came home with several balls of yarn, mostly purples and greens.  I used one, a ball of Rowan Felted Tweed DK in green, in a Louisa Harding design, Old Moor, which called for one ball of a contrasting colour.  But I haven't yet found a use for the others.

The most delectable was a ball of pure silk DK in a rich purple, by Jaeger.  (Jaeger Handknitting was owned by Coats, as is Rowan.)  It had a gorgeous feel, very soft and smooth - in fact, very silky indeed.  But I couldn't think what to do with - after all, what can you do with one ball of silk yarn?

But then, in June, we were going to London to visit friends, and I needed a small portable project to knit on the train.  I thought again of the Jaeger pure silk,  and this time posed the question more positively:   what can you do with one ball of DK yarn, 125m. long?   And this is exactly the sort of question that you can ask in Ravelry, through the advanced pattern search facility.

I asked for knitting patterns for clothing or accessories, for an adult woman, using up to 150 yards of DK yarn.  That came up with 889 patterns. Then I specified that it had to be available via a website (not 'purchase in print'),  which cut it down a bit.

I was getting a lot of hats and mitts suggested, and decided that they wouldn't be suitable, so specialised from 'All accessories' to 'All neck/torso', which left just 119 designs, for cowls, short lacy scarves, collars, and several buttoned 'snugglers' or neckwarmers.  I looked through the first page of the remaining suggestions (they are ordered by the number of projects for each design that have been posted in Ravelry, most popular first), focussing by this time on the ones with buttons, rather than the cowls, and found the one I finally chose, the Rios Locos neck snuggler by Amy Klimt.  It was free too!  (Another advantage of Ravelry is that it has lots of  free patterns - you can restrict your search to free patterns, if you want to.)    

So that's what I found to do with one ball of silk DK yarn.  I'm really pleased with the result, though I haven't worn it yet - it's not a summer item, even in Britain.  I think it will be very useful in the cooler weather, and very comforting to wear.   I think it might need more buttons, rather than just the four along one end, so that the end of the underneath layer lies flat, but I'll try it in wear first.

Now for the other odd balls of Rowan yarn....  What do you do with one ball of Aran weight?

Knitting with Eartha and Jasmine

Since I finished the Honeycomb lace infinity scarf that I wrote about in my last post, I have been thinking about what to knit with the two balls of alpaca DK yarn that I got as a Christmas present - I wrote about them here.    Some sort of scarf seemed the best choice - there isn't enough yarn for anything big, and it is very soft and warm, just right for a cosy scarf.  There is no yardage on the ballband, so I don't know how far the yarn will go - probably not very far.  So I needed a design that would allow me to stop knitting whenever the yarn runs out. I also wanted to make a feature of the two colours - each ball is labelled with the name of the alpaca that it came from, and Eartha is a darker brown than Jasmine.   I decided that the design had to use both colours equally, and at the same time.   After a lot of deliberation and experimentation, I came up with a 'two-tone' design for a scarf.   I started with a provisional cast on, so that I can join the two ends when I have finished to make a loop.

I switch from one colour to the other in the middle of the row, intarsia fashion.   I wanted something a bit more interesting than stocking stitch or garter stitch, and I chose a zigzag stitch.  It's a very simple k3, p3 rib, but after every two rows, I move the pattern one stitch to the right or the left, depending on whether I'm on a zig or a zag.

I had to knit two or three swatches before I got the changeover to look neat.  It's hard to change colours while also doing a zigzag, and not have the light brown straying into the dark brown or v.v.  I haven't quite managed to achieve that on both sides, but one side is perfect.

Apart from the (very slightly) untidy changeover on one side, the knitting is reversible.  But in fact, I don't think that is going to matter much, because probably when the yarn runs out what I'll have is a cowl.   We'll see.  More later. 

Honeycomb Infinity Scarf

One project that I have been working on for several months is an infinity scarf for my daughter.  It was intended as a birthday present (for her last birthday), but it's been too hot to wear a woolly scarf since then (that's my excuse).  I started it in May, and wrote about it here.   I finished the knitting several weeks ago, at least I think it's finished.  I haven't actually broken off the yarn, or blocked it, just in case she wants it to be longer.  

 So I sent her a photo of myself wearing it, to see if she liked the length as is.  And she has not yet replied, so it is still unblocked, not quite finished, not yet sent.   (And if you're reading this, child, it's you I'm talking about.)

It's designed to loop easily round the neck twice - it's very stretchy, and when it's pressed it will be a bit longer and looser.  It's lovely to wear - the yarn is Blue-faced Leicester and very soft.  My friend Steph, who dyed it, says that one skein will make a pair of socks, so it's quite surprising that I still have quite a lot of the skein left.

I took the stitch pattern from the article "An Orenburg Honeycomb Lace Scarf" by Galina Khmeleva in the Spring 2013 issue of Knitting Traditions.  I might write more about that later.  

Color Affection Finished!

Color Affection Finished!

It warrants an exclamation mark, because it took a lot of work.  I said here that I met someone in Portland wearing her own Color Affection shawl, and when I examined hers, I realised that I had misunderstood the instructions (my fault - they were clear enough)  and should have already started the border.  Apart from telling me that I was nearer to finishing than I had thought, that was also very liberating -  I remembered that after all it is my knitting and I can do whatever I like with it.

So when  I got home, I started the border, but didn't knit it according to the pattern.  The border, as written, is a 2 in./5 cm. strip of the second contrast colour, which in my case is the brown (Demerara).  It is the darkest of the 3 colours I was using and I thought that knitting the border according to the pattern would make it much too dominant.  (Also, having decided that I was nearly finished, I got impatient and really didn't want to knit too many more extremely long rows, taking about half an hour each.)  So my border is in the two contrast colours, Poinsettia (orangey-pink) and Demerara:  2 rows of Demerara, 2 of Poinsettia and then 4 of Demerara. And then I cast off.  The pattern says the bind-off should be very loose, and suggests using a larger needle, but I used Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off and it was absolutely fine.

As you can see from the photo, the finished shawl is very long, but it doesn't seem to be as deep as it looks in the illustrations to the pattern.  I'm not sure why.  I reduced the needle size to 3.5 mm (from the 4mm recommended) and wasn't very concerned about getting the gauge right - I chose a smaller needle because the fabric seemed too loose otherwise.   And I have used much less yarn than the pattern says you need: it specifies 352 m. of each of the 3 colours, in fingering weight yarn.  However, just from reading the pattern, it's clear that you need more of the main colour (M, grey in my case) than the first contrast colour (C1, Poinsettia) because whenever you have a stripe of C1 you also have a stripe of M, and then you also have the initial semicircle of M. In fact, I used about equal quantities of C1 and C2 (about 190m and 170m respectively) and about 50% more of M.

So, since I bought the amount specified in the pattern (two skeins of each colour), I have quite a lot left over - about a skein each of the two contrast colours and half a skein of grey.   It's lovely yarn (Artesano Alpaca), but I have more than enough yarn to knit already...

I really like the finished shawl - it's beautifully warm and soft, very light (see above).  And useful - it's snowing again today, so an extra layer of warm is very welcome.   I'm not very proud of my knitting though - I find garter stitch hard to knit evenly.  So I have to be careful not to look too closely, and just enjoy the overall effect. 

In the Loop

King Alfred in Winchester

Last week, I was in Winchester for the In the Loop 3 conference - The Voices of Knitting.  John came with me (to Winchester, not to the conference) so we had a week's holiday there.  While I was at the conference, John went to various military sites along that part of the south coast, such as the Napoleonic War forts on the hills around Portsmouth.  And while I wasn't at the conference, we went to places that would interest both of us - the old town of Southampton, Buckler's Hard, East Meon,..... And of course Winchester itself.

In the Loop was my first knitting conference.   It was fascinating - the talks covered a huge range of topics, all related to hand-knitting.  You can find the programme here.  Amongst many other things, there were papers on knitting and the Olympics (of course),  knitting therapy groups in the NHS, Shetland knitting (three different talks on that),  1930s knitted swimsuits,  the Faroese jumpers in The Killing, yarn bombing, the knitwear worn by early polar explorers,....    Several things I wanted to emulate - in one of the talks on Shetland knitting, there was a photo of a Shetland garden fence that someone had knitted, in the traditional Print o' the Wave lace pattern, but in garden twine using sharpened curtain poles.  I immediately started trying to think of somewhere in my garden to put up a similar fence.  Tom Van Deijnen (aka "tomofholland") showed a Curiosity Cabinet of knitting samples that he has made to demonstrate techniques, such as different methods to cast on or increase - you'll find a photo of part of it here.  And someone showed Schiaparelli's trompe l'oeil jumper with a white collar and floppy bow at the neck and white cuffs - whenever I see that, I think that I should knit it one day. 

 I took some knitting with me, of course, and finished my lace ribbon scarf during the second day of the conference.  The lighting was dimmed during the talks, but it is a simple enough pattern to do in poor light - I haven't made any permanent mistakes that I can see, at least.  I wore the finished scarf on the third day of the conference, straight off the needles, though it looks better now that it is blocked.  After that, I started the cuff of the second of the pair of gloves that I am making - the fingers of the first are not yet finished, but I needed something simpler to do than knitting fingers in the dark.

I need a mannequin

Another Lacy Scarf

I am knitting Véronik Avery's Lace Ribbon Scarf for myself just now.  It's a free pattern that first appeared in Knitty in 2008 - a very popular pattern, with over 6,000 projects in Ravelry.  I have made a scarf for myself to this pattern before, as described here.  That's very unusual for me - I don't recall knitting a pattern twice before (and in fact I get a bit bored with knitting socks and mitts because when you've finished one, you have to start all over again and knit another.)

But it's nice to knit - the stitch pattern takes some concentration, but it's easy to learn.  I'm also knitting a pair of gloves (more later) but they need more attention.  It's useful to have a more straightforward piece of knitting in progress at the same time, so that I can read or watch TV while I am knitting. 

The yarn is DMC Natura, a nice soft cotton in 4-ply (fingering) weight, in a pale gray-green colour (greener than it looks in the photo).  The colour is called Ambar, I don't know why.  Obviously it's not a typo for Amber.

 I have changed the stitch pattern a little bit this time.  The scarf I made before, in variegated sock yarn, has a tendency to roll inwards, in spite of my best efforts to block it.  So this time I have put a few purl stitches on the right side to try to avoid that.  It makes the stitch pattern more textured, which I like, though some people might not, and it does seem to be keeping very flat so far, though that might be because of the yarn, I suppose. 

Véronik Avery's introduction to the pattern says that she is emulating stylish people who wear scarves all year round.  Her model does look very chic, sitting outside in the sunshine, pouring a cup of tea.  That's the look I'm aiming for - though I don't claim to be chic, and I don't drink tea.  At least I'll have the scarf.  

A Brioche Stitch Scarf

I finished a small scarf earlier this month, a slightly late Christmas present for my sister-in-law. It is reversible, so you can wear it as either mostly grey or mostly brown (it is intended to go with a camel coat).

It's knitted in two-colour brioche stitch, where you knit each row twice, once in grey yarn and then again in brown yarn (using double-pointed needles so that you can slide the work back and forth). So you get two interconnected layers, one in each colour.

The 'keyholes', where you loop one end of the scarf through the other, are made by separating the grey stitches from the brown and knitting with each set separately for a while. So there is no decreasing involved - the work is narrower there just because you are only using half the stitches at once.  Very cunning! 

The yarn I used is Artesano alpaco in 4-ply - very soft and very light. The scarf took only 30g of each colour. And because the main part of the scarf has the two layers, it is very cosy.

Technical stuff follows.  The starting point was Nancy Marchant's It Takes Two pattern from Designer Knitting (the international edition of Vogue Knitting) in Winter 2010/11.  The original scarf was in S- and Z-twist brioche stitch, but Nancy Marchant recommended that you should practise the simple brioche stitch first.  I couldn't understand the instructions for the S- and Z-twist stitch, so I stuck with the simple one.

The scarf in Designer Knitting was knitted with Noro Silk Garden Sock Yarn, which I assumed would be about 4-ply, so I chose the alpaca yarn as a substitute.  But the pattern specified 4mm needles, which I found much too big - I used 2.75 needles and more stitches to get a fabric I was happy with.

The pattern specifies Two-colour Italian cast-on, and I found a tutorial on YouTube.  But I found that the cast-on edge is not stable until you have worked the two foundation rows (one in grey, one in brown) and after several attempts it was impossible to get a neat edge.  So instead I used alternate cable cast-on, which is one I often use, adapted for two colours of yarn (and on 4mm needle to make it loose enough).    In that method, when you make a new stitch  you put the right needle behind both loops of the first stitch on the left needle (that's cable cast on).   In alternate cable cast on, the right needle goes alternately from front to back and from back to front.   It makes a good stretchy edge for rib or moss stitch, and in this case,  you can switch between grey yarn and brown yarn and get a neat edge with is mostly grey on one side and mostly brown on the other.

When it came to finishing, I used the standard cast off method, again on 4mm needles, but switching from knit to purl along the row.  The grey stitches are knitted and the brown stitches purled, so that the loops lie alternately to one side or the other.  It doesn't look identical to the cast on edge, but similar.    

 Altogether it was an intriguing knit.  I have not used brioche stitch before, but it evidently has lots of possibilities worth exploring. 

A Scarf for Your Fridge

I am still working at Lee Mills, to sort out the periodicals collection of the Knitting and Crochet Guild.  By now, most of the periodicals are sorted and listed, but we still occasionally find surprising things.

Here's a pattern leaflet published in 1950 - not in Britain, obviously, as it's priced in cents.  The patterns are for crochet motifs that can be made into mats of various sizes, to cover chairs, tables and the electrical appliances around your home - including the fridge, from the picture on the front cover.  It's a revival, I suppose, of the Victorian idea that you should embellish everything around your home, and leave not a bare surface anywhere - though even the Victorians I think would have drawn the line at a decorative mat for a fridge (supposing that they had had them).  At least televisions and radios were made to look at home in a living room, so if you were the sort of person who made a crocheted mat for every chair-back and table, it was probably quite natural to make one for the television too.   But making one for a fridge, which is designed to look functional, clean and streamlined, seems a bizarre idea.   

Isn't the plural of scarf "scarves", anyway?      

Lacy birthday scarf II

We went to a friend's birthday party yesterday, and I gave her the lacy scarf I have been knitting in Manos del Uruguay laceweight yarn.   The pattern is Mirabelle by Jennifer L. May, which is a free download from here.  It is designed for one skein of Manos Lace, which makes a good sized scarf.

I am really pleased with the result - it is amazingly light and delicate.  The yarn is a wonderfully soft mixture of mainly alpaca with some silk and cashmere, and this colourway (Titania, which is variegated purple and green) suits the pattern well.

Being fairly new to knitting with such fine yarn, I am still surprised at how much difference blocking makes. Before blocking, the fabric is scrunched up and stretchy, and the lace pattern is not so evident.
 

Blocking transforms the fabric completely.  It emphasises the spaces between the stitches, almost more than the stitches themselves.  The finished scarf seems to be made of air as much as yarn.

Altogether a very worthwhile project - fun to knit, didn't take long, and looks really good.

Happy Birthday, Jeanette!