It’s been more than usually mad around here these past few days, and I’ve been stalling on writing this post because I haven’t had a chance to take an up-to-date photo of the purple thing. But this evening the very lovely Niall helped me out, with his tripod and everything.

It fits! At [...]]]>

It’s been more than usually mad around here these past few days, and I’ve been stalling on writing this post because I haven’t had a chance to take an up-to-date photo of the purple thing. But this evening the very lovely Niall helped me out, with his tripod and everything.

It fits! At least, the waist shaping fits. If anything, in fact, it’s a little on the snug side, but I reckon that’s no bad thing. I’m really liking the way the open yarn-over columns contrast with the denser twisted columns, and the verticals seem, on a hasty appraisal, to be flattering in just the way I’d hoped. You’ll have to wait until I model the finished thing to see the full effect.

As you may have guessed, it’s a tank top / slipover / sweater vest / whatever the cool kids are calling it these days. And strictly, it’s not “the purple thing” any more, now that I’ve added the contrasting yarn. (Don’t you love the shock of it, though? I’m considering working in a reference to Caesar’s blood here, but that may be … forgive me … overkill. As it were. Ahaha. I slay me. Look – I did it again! I’ll get me coat.)

That’s Noro Kureyon, by the way, which my Ravelry friends (hi!) may recognise as being left over from the Butterfly cardigan I made last year. This design decision stems purely from circumstance: I’m reasonably certain that two skeins of the Louet Riverstone wouldn’t be enough for what I want.

This is an experiment: I’m designing as I go. I reserve the right to rip it out, but for the moment, I rather like it. I find the sloped introduction of the Kureyon very pleasing, and the tighter V of the neckline division is a nice contrast. (You can’t see that properly yet, since I’ve only done one side.) My fervent hope at this point is that I didn’t decrease too far on the outer edge. If I did, it’ll have to be ripped, because I’m not having gapey armholes.

The back will be different – possibly with an intarsia picture of some sort. I need to be careful not to use too much of the purple, because I want to knit the armhole and neckline ribbing with it.

So that’s it. Tomorrow is Very Secret Mysteries day, when I’ll be writing about crochet. Until then, farewell.

The purple thing is breaking my heart. Or stabbing me in the back, as the title of this post suggests. Is it knitting karma, I wonder, after my smooth ride with Down in the Woods?

I took the above photo on Friday, preparatory to making a bubbly progress post to delight and entertain [...]]]>

The purple thing is breaking my heart. Or stabbing me in the back, as the title of this post suggests. Is it knitting karma, I wonder, after my smooth ride with Down in the Woods?

I took the above photo on Friday, preparatory to making a bubbly progress post to delight and entertain you. See it there? Forty-nine rounds in, just about to divide for front and back. Get a good look at it, my dears, while you can.

Yeah.

I ripped it all out.

It was about 20 stitches too big. I’m not sure if my tension is different working in the round (my swatch was back and forth), or if I somehow changed needles between swatch and cast-on (not impossible: things are pretty crazy around here at the moment), or if I simply have a lot to learn about negative ease (entirely plausible).

“It’s all wrong,” I said to Niall. “I’ll have to rip it out again.” For alas, this was not the first time. My first cast-on was based on a sloppy measurement, and when I rechecked it I ripped out the first ten rounds. My second cast-on was made through a bleary haze of exhaustion, and I twisted the bloody thing and started knitting a Möbius strip. That was only about four rounds long before I ripped.

Not like this time. Forty-nine rounds, I tell you. I felt each stitch unravel as though it were tangled around my guts. Niall was slightly astonished that I went through with it. “I didn’t think you’d rip it out,” he said. “I thought you might just, like, eat loads, or something.”

But I’ve been making clothes for long enough to know that if I’m not satisfied with something, I. Will. Not. Wear. It. With the best will in the world, it’ll simply lurk in my wardrobe until the end of time, making me feel sad whenever I catch sight of it. In the face of that, forty-nine rounds doesn’t seem so bad.

Fortunately, I’m persistent, and I’m going to knit this thing if it kills me (with long knives, in the town square, getting blood all over my toga, to extend my conceit just a little further).

To add insult to injury, I’m using the magic loop technique this time around, which is a little absurd for something this big, but taking off 24 stitches (for the pattern it had to be a multiple of eight) brought me down below the manageable round length for my 100cm Addi Turbos. At least it also means I’ll get through those forty-nine blasted rounds a little more quickly.

It’s pleasing me, at the moment, that I’ll be able to look at my purple thing (which will be glorious, I decree) and know that this is probably the most thoroughly knit yarn in my entire collection. (As you may recall, it started out as a scarf.) One takes one’s comfort where one can.

On that point, actually, the Louet Riverstone has held up amazingly well to the repeated knitting and ripping it’s endured. If you’re going to make a spectacular series of blunders, it’s a good yarn to choose!

I’m on a serious design jag at the moment – finishing Down in the Woods and starting the purple thing in the past week. I’ve been knitting my own designs for (good lord) twenty years now, and I was asking myself this evening, have I learned anything useful? One or two things. Here [...]]]>

I’m on a serious design jag at the moment – finishing Down in the Woods and starting the purple thing in the past week. I’ve been knitting my own designs for (good lord) twenty years now, and I was asking myself this evening, have I learned anything useful? One or two things. Here – have a handful.

1. Swatch, swatch, swatch

Swatch. You may (like me) be a bit adolescent about swatching for other people’s designs (oh, Muuuuum, do I haaaaave to?), but trust me, swatching is your friend. Swatch for gauge, certainly, but also:

• Try out stitch and colour ideas.
• Check whether the transitions you’re planning will work in practice.
• Decide how you’ll cast on and off.
• See what sort of fabric your chosen needles produce – you may want to shift up or down a size.

2. Try out textured stitches in cotton

If you’re wanting to use a complex stitch, try knitting up a swatch in cotton with your various options. Dig out your favourite stitch library, if you have one (I love the Harmony Guides – details at the end of the post), and knit an inch or two of anything that takes your fancy. It’s a fun way to spend an afternoon. You may end up using only one of the stitches you try out, but the exercise is useful for a couple of reasons.

• Cotton has no loft to it, so you can really see the structure of the stitches and get a feel for how they might work in your garment.
• Different stitch patterns yield different widths over the same number of stitches – forewarned is forearmed.

3. Borrow dimensions from an existing garment

No need to reinvent the wheel spindle whorl. Base your dimensions on a similar knitted garment whose fit you like. Knitted fabric is very forgiving, fit-wise, so you don’t need to be 100% precise – go with what fits your stitch count and overall design.

4. Use techniques that suit you

The legendary Elizabeth Zimmerman declared straight out in Knitting without Tearsthat the main reason she knitted so much in the round was that she hated purl. Hear this: you don’t get extra points for slogging through techniques that give you no joy.

So if holding teeny needles makes your hands ache, use bigger ones. Or if you hate seaming, don’t do seams. (Aside: Actually, if you hate seaming, get hold of The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques. It changed my knitting life.)

On the other hand, if you do a mean tubular cast-on, adore beading, go all squishy at the thought of crocheted edgings, well, knock yourself out.

5. Count twice, knit once

Not as crucial as the sewing rule “measure twice, cut once”, since you can always rip out your knitting (unless the yarn’s really hairy, in which case you’re doomed). But if you’re anything like as impatient as I am, you’ll want to do the actual work as few times as possible – ideally once.

So take your gauge. Take your dimensions. Take your calculator. Sit with them in Zen-like communion (you know that means “do the sums”, yeah?), and then write down your magic numbers. (Incidentally, if you’re designing for an adult woman, this free sizing spreadsheet from Josi Hannon Madera looks pretty amazing, though I should note that I haven’t used it.) Work out row lengths, increases and decreases. Trust the numbers. Then take a deep breath, and start knitting.

6. Keep track like a fiend

Write everything down. Even if you’re not planning to make a fair copy of your pattern, you’ll at least need to know how many rows you knitted on the back before beginning the armhole shaping, or where your sleeve increases are. Also, for all but the simplest patterns, you’ll more than likely come to a point where the stitches on your needle don’t look like you thought they would, and you’ll have to tweak things. Keep a note of what you do – you’ll be glad of it.

Doing these things won’t turn you into Kim Hargreaves or Ysolda or Di Gilpin, of course, but they should help your designs to come out the way you’d planned.

Links to Amazon.co.uk
The Harmony Guides: Knit & Purl Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Cable & Aran Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Lace & Eyelet Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit
Knitting without Tears(Elizabeth Zimmerman)
The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques(Nancie M. Wiseman)

Links to Amazon.com
The Harmony Guides: Knit & Purl: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Cables & Arans: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Lace & Eyelets: 250 Stitches to Knit
Knitting Without Tears(Elizabeth Zimmerman)
The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques

I cast on the purple thing last night. It’s flying along now – I’ve done almost 10cm. But I wanted to show you it in its newly cast-on state, because I love that. Just a few rows done, the pattern barely discernible – it’s such a hopeful little ribbon of knitting.

(See what [...]]]>

I cast on the purple thing last night. It’s flying along now – I’ve done almost 10cm. But I wanted to show you it in its newly cast-on state, because I love that. Just a few rows done, the pattern barely discernible – it’s such a hopeful little ribbon of knitting.

(See what I posed it on for the photo? Do you? Gosh, I am witty.)

I used a cabled cast-on, for a nice stable edge – I don’t want it too stretchy.

My grandmother taught me to cast on like her, by knitting into the last stitch and putting the new loop back on the left-hand needle. (The cabled cast-on is very similar but makes a nicer edge, if you ask me.) This was circa 1980, when I was five or six. My grandmother didn’t tell me that hers was only one of several methods – in fact, I’m not sure if she realised.

I’d been knitting for decades before I found out that there was more than one way to cast on. I must be seriously conservative when it comes to my craft methods, because the only other cast-ons I’ve tried are provisional (which I used for Down in the Woods) and tubular (which I’m madly in love with, though I’m not entirely convinced that my feelings are requited).

When I think about it, the cable cast-on has more or less replaced my grandmother’s way (which is known as the “knit cast-on”, incidentally) as my default Here I Am Starting To Knit Something position.

So there’s a tiny little goal for the rest of 2009: explore casting on. What’s your favourite method?

I rarely manage to complete a project in its proper season, and this is no exception: here’s the Oyster’s new winter jumper, which I’ve finished up in some of the hottest weather Ireland has seen in years.

It’s a cuddly collared raglan in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed. This is a fabulously soft [...]]]>

I rarely manage to complete a project in its proper season, and this is no exception: here’s the Oyster’s new winter jumper, which I’ve finished up in some of the hottest weather Ireland has seen in years.

It’s a cuddly collared raglan in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed. This is a fabulously soft yarn, despite its rugged appearance. The Oyster chose it himself – quite a while ago, now – on a visit to This Is Knit.

It’s knit on 5mm needles, with 4.5mm for the ribbing. Traditionally seamed, with the rolled edgings knit in the round after the sewing up was finished.

Overall, I’m delighted with how this turned out. I started out knowing only that I wanted corrugated ribbing with rolled edges, and some kind of pattern on the body. (I thought it might be an all-over pattern, but in fact I think the understated band of lattice I ended up with works really well.) The idea for the collar came next, and then all I needed to do was work out how to join it all together. I based my dimensions on a fairly fitted cotton ribbed jumper from H&M. I confined the ribbing to the sides, added a little more ease and changed the collar design.

I’ve called it Down in the Woods because of its teddy-bear cuddliness, but also because the colour choices were motivated by the Oyster’s ever-verdant Robin Hood obsession.

Celebrations

• Edgings! I absolutely love the way the corrugated ribbing rises out of the rolled edge. I think it’s my favourite bit.
• Collar! The Oyster has an enormous head (ask me how I know), and jumpers of this design, with an opening part way down the front, often end up too tight on the neck long before he’s outgrown them in other ways. This collar is Enormously Clever, I tell you. It’s super-stretchy, and it involved no sewing or picking up of stitches. It worked just as I hoped, and I feel very smug about it!
• For the colour work, I took the opportunity to teach myself two-handed knitting, which was a revelation. I doubt I’ll ever go back to laborious one-handed colour changes for work like this.
• The two-handed style also greatly simplifies a technique advocated by Di Gilpin, whereby you catch the unused strand down on each stitch. (You don’t need to do this – every three stitches is fine – but if you do, you get a beautifully dense, consistent fabric, and the back looks fabulous.) Holding the pattern strand in the left hand allows you to “aim” the right needle on each background stitch without any faffing.

Lessons

• The jumper I based my dimensions on has very fitted sleeves. I made these ones a little bigger: they fit fine, but they’re still tighter than I was planning. Next time I do sleeves like this I’ll leave more space under the arms.
• I used the 4.5mm needles to knit the collar, which left it just a shade less generous than I’d have liked. Not enough to rip and redo, but if I make another of these I’ll use the larger size needle.
• The edgings look beautiful, but my casting off could have been looser. Quite a bit looser, in fact. The waist and cuffs have to be eased on rather more carefully than I’d like. This, I may actually frog and fix, because regular yanking around will shorten the life of the edgings.
• For corrugated ribbing, I must remember to twist the colours at the first changeover in future. I didn’t do this for the first few rows of the front, and had to sew down the resultant flaps. I can tell, but only if I look closely.
• This yarn has very little tensile strength. Sewing up was frustrating at first, because the yarn kept fraying and breaking; in the end I resorted to using extremely short lengths. Lots of ends to sew in, but that’s OK.

That seems like a lot of lessons for something I’m so happy with, but hey, there it is. The Oyster, for his part, tells me he loves it, which is always nice to hear!

I bought this intense royal purple Louet Riverstone wool (colourway “Phantom”) from Di Gilpin at last year’s Knitting and Stitching Show, intending to make it into a scarf for my mother. After much deliberation I chose a pattern – Knitty’s Elbac, version 1 – and set to work.

Have you tried Elbac? It’s [...]]]>

I bought this intense royal purple Louet Riverstone wool (colourway “Phantom”) from Di Gilpin at last year’s Knitting and Stitching Show, intending to make it into a scarf for my mother. After much deliberation I chose a pattern – Knitty’s Elbac, version 1 – and set to work.

Have you tried Elbac? It’s breathtakingly clever, and I’m deeply in love with it. It’s a cabled scarf, right, but because the cables are worked in rib, it’s identical on both sides. Fiendish.

Anyway, I started into my mother’s scarf and got almost half-way through before realising that the yarn I’d bought had a shorter yardage than the one in the pattern. I was going to end up with a disappointingly short scarf. This sad circumstance helped me to face the other salient fact about the Louet Riverstone, which is that it really isn’t quite soft enough to wear next to the skin. Or at least, not my skin, and thus, by induction, not my mother’s.

So I did what any self-respecting knitter would have done: I stuffed the project in a bag and tried to forget. Well. Let me be more specific. Actually, what happened was that I went to This Is Knit and bought two skeins of dreamily soft Araucanía Aysén instead.

By dint of knitting like the clappers I managed to produce a very lovely Elbac scarf by lunchtime on the day before my mother’s birthday. Result.

[Aside: My goodness, I have a lot to learn about lighting my photos. Hmmm.]

See that total reversibility? That’s pattern genius, that is. Thank you Laura (YarnThrower).

But what of the purple (purplepurplepurple) wool, you ask? Well, a couple of weeks ago I found it again, took some deep breaths and ripped out all my beautiful cabling. (I’ll buy some softer yarn soon and make another Elbac for myself, because it rocks so very hard.) I had the germ of an idea, which I let simmer for a few days before swatching.

You’ll notice I’m not telling you what I’m planning. I still don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. Watch this space.

There’s a story behind this hat. A long story.

In 2006, I bought some beautiful alpaca in an orange/yellow colourway at the Knitting and Stitching Show in the RDS. I wanted to [...]]]> [Years ago, I started a different craft blog. I made a grand total of four posts. This is one of them.]

There’s a story behind this hat. A long story.

In 2006, I bought some beautiful alpaca in an orange/yellow colourway at the Knitting and Stitching Show in the RDS. I wanted to make a scarf for my then-two-year-old, and after a bit of searching I found this fabulous Short Row Rib scarf by Ceris Morgan on Magknits [alas, Magknits is no longer with us, but here's the pattern page on Ravelry]. This pattern gives me serious knitting glee: it’s simple enough to memorise quickly, yet complex enough to remain satisfying all the way through the project – plus, it looks very impressive. It’s designed for chunky yarn, but with thin yarn on 3mm needles you get a lovely scarf for a small child.

I made the yellow scarf, and it was gorgeous, and before I could even photograph it, it got lost in the park. Oh well – these are the perils of knitting for two-year-olds. He’s three now, so obviously it’ll never happen again…

Anyway, as the autumn of 2007 drew near, I felt the urge to try again. I bought some yummy Rowan Tapestry at This Is Knit (Whirlpool colourway), and knit a blue version of the same scarf. As I was finishing it, I realised that it would make a beautiful and unusual hatband.

So I knit another length of scarf (I was getting pretty used to the pattern by now), long enough to go around the Oyster’s head, and sewed the ends together. Then I got out my calculator and did the obligatory maths, picked up stitches around one edge of the band and set off for the centre, decreasing regularly as I went. When I reached the centre I finished off with a little 3-stitch I-cord.

I’m really pleased with how this design turned out: it looks more or less exactly how I imagined it would. I love the way the pattern and the yarn work together: the short-row rib pools the colours in blocks, while the rounds of the crown make stripes, which gradually widen as the round gets smaller.

Here’s a moody model shot, in which you can just see the scarf peeping out at the neck of the jacket. Yes, his eyes really are that blue.