My baby sister gets me most of the time and so gives me amazingly just right presents.For Christmas 2014, I got Hunter Hammerson's ebook Curls. This is such a kid in the candy store book for me. My short list from this is only about 12 of the Curls. I cast on for the first curl, Pitted Olive on Boxing Day 2014 and this one went to my Mum. (After all I had liberated the yarn from her stash originally....)
My dream Curl was always the cover pattern - Filemot. I love the the fern like lace and the crisp pop of the twisted stitches. Then it seemed as if all my online knitting friends were conspiring to make me knit a shawl in May / June. In
The Unofficial Women’s Weekly group there was a shawl / scarf knit along
running. In the Stitch Addiction Podcast Ravelry group there was a Shawl KAL for May and June (with prizes). In Village Hopelessly
Over Committed, May was Cast on Dream month. And in Laughing Purple Goldfish designs, it was Me Me Me May.
I can take a hint when it’s that blatant guys!
A dream knit needs dream yarn too. Dream yarn doesn't need to be expensive. It just has to be a dream to knit with and wear. In my case this came cheaply from an op shop. (That's a thrift store or charity shop for my US and UK readers). This is a blend of wool and other delicious goodies possibly alpaca, angora or mohair. It has such depth of colour for such a neutral shade. It also blocks up delicious soft with a lovely drape and feel. Knitting this curl would be the swansong for this well loved batch of yarn. (It's also been part of two hats - Federation and Winter Smoke as well as the amazing Anyone got Cable! scarf-ghan)
Pattern:Filemot Needles: 4.5 mm straights and a long circular Yarn: upcycled 8 ply (DK) op shop wool, alpaca and, I suspect angora, blend in winter white/cream with small gray and black fibres Cost: 50 cents for the whole bag - best 50 cents I ever spent on yarn!
Selfie with an SLR with my eldest daughter. She knitted the cowl she is wearing. I'm really proud of her.
This was not an easy knit by any means. It was has literally millions of twisted stitches and they are slow to knit. It's a full lace pattern - no plain purl rows to have a breather and there are twisted stitches on the purl side too. It took me a few goes to get some of the stranger twisted decreases straight in my head (especially the ones decreasing two stitches at a time). However, it was worth the pain and occasional frustration.
Like all lace, blocking really makes a difference. You really don't see the full beauty of the lace when it's all crumpled up on the needles.
The shawl did get finished in time to make the cut off for prizes for the KAL in the Stitch Addiction Podcast Ravelry group but it didn't win a prize. In one of life's great ironies, the post after mine did!
The beauty of curls is in their curved shape and hence the many, many ways you can style and wear them.
Draped around the shoulders secured with a shawl pin shows the asymmetry of the shawl off to perfection.
Or start with the largest point at the front and warp the ends around and secure with a brooch or shawl pin.
Or wrap around like a scarf to create a snuggly neck warmer to ward off the chill on a blusterly late winter day at the seasdide.
Thanks once again to my daughter and son for their amazing photography skills. These photos were taken on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. If you look very carefully in the last photo you can see my happy photo bombing family.
(Let's not mention the fact that I last time I posted on the blog was My 2015 shall we? Sorry blog, I do still love you - but LIFE!!!! makes me have to do tedious things first sometimes)
You may have realised in my day job I'm a mild mannered semi-nerdy mathematician/ statistician. Yes, I have the glasses and calculator collection and academic university day job to prove it. It means that I get somewhat excited about some things that the rest of the world thinks are slightly weird. Take Pi day (14th March) for example. This year was a very special Pi day. A once in 100 years Pi day. We had the first 5 digits of pi as the date (American style dates of course). Cue an amazing Pi party.
I got invited to the the most amazing online Pi Party in existence with over 100 types of virtual pie and knitting goodness galore hosted by the amazing PJ. Luckily it was a Saturday so all day my inner nerd was eating as much virtual pie as I liked (there was pizza pie, apple pie, lemon meringue pie, cheesecake.... and all calorie / kilojoule free and no crumbs in the knitting). And all the while I was singing internally "It’s pi day. It’s pi day. You’ve got to cast on on pi day…."
(What for, a pi shawl of course). I wanted to make a lacy pi and
settled on the 100 anniversary pi shawl design - Camping. I’m a sucker
for lace leaves and it has a beautiful scalloped border. I made this
fairly large and at large gauge so it can double as a pi blanket.
I began with Emily Ocker’s circular cast on using a crochet hook.
This is so cool. I always love when I get to learn an awesomely
practical new technique and this so neat and useful for my future
knitting.
I used the first 12 rounds of the Heliotaxis pi shawl pattern (up to
the 72 st increase round) as the beginning of my shawl. I did however
chase up a copy of the 100th Anniversary edition of Elizabeth
Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac to look at how the original beginning
went. I devoured the July chapter - a shawl …
‘Have you seen the well known geometric theory behind what you have
been doing? …. It’s Pi, the geometry of a circle hinging on the
mysterious relationship of the circumference of a circle to it’s radius.
A circle will double its circumference in infinitely themselves -
doubling distances” (Zimmerman, Knitters Almanac). I do have to take issue with EZ about her comment
about women forgetting such mathematical theory the minute we finish
high school in order to fit in more practical knowledge. Clearly that’s
not the case for all such women. Who says Pi is not practical anyway? It
after all is applicable to knitting! (Plus I get to teach the awesome usefulness of pi to science students).
Drive by pi
I worked on dpns until I had enough stitches to transfer over to a 80 cm long circular.
This was awesomely addictive knitting - along the lines of just one
row more…. Because the patterns were relatively short repeats, the lace
was quick and simple to execute. It didn’t lose it’s charm even when the
rows were 592 stitches long (or nearly 900 in the last row!) It only
took about three weeks to knit too - very quick for nearly a jumper’s
worth of wool.
I have to agree with EZ that a circular shawl is perfect travel
knitting. The knitting creates its own bag shape as it grows and you can
store the yarn inside it. You can knit on public transport without
losing the ball under seats. It scrunches up small enough to transport
easily even when close to the end.
It blocked out huge - 52 inches or around 134 cm in diameter. We
decided this is about the largest circular shawl I can actually
practically block. It took nearly the whole alphabet - 25 of my 26
alphabet jigsaw blocking mats (and most of the lounge room floor).
This may be my first pi shawl but it won’t be my last one. This is coming to my next maths conference so it can hang out with the other mathematicians who truly appreciated the blend of geometry, maths and gorgeous lace this is.
Pattern: EZ 100th Aniversary Pi shawl: Camping by Mwaa Knit Obsession incorporating the middle of Heliotaxis Pi Shawl by Nata's Knots - both are free patterns. Yarn: Blue grey wool blend? Recycled yarn bought from Lifeline op shop - thin 8ply weight. Cost: $5 for a jumper lot. I have 2 balls left over Needles: 4.5mm (dpns and an 80cm and 100 cm circular)
In January 2014 my needles and I started on a journey of discovery. In March 2015 after thousands of stitches, miles of seaming, many adventures and delicious knitting experiences along the way, we called a halt. The great scarf / strip afghan experiment is finished and officially in use. Anyone got cable! is a finished object and a much loved family member. There are arguments about who gets to snuggle under in on the couch on in the recliner. It's actually rarely me (and I did knit it for myself...)
The lovely ladies in the Unofficial Women's Weekly Group on Ravelry are owed a giant hug for providing the motivation to create this beauty. We were encouraging each other to complete the various knitted afghans we were making. Many of us were doing variations on the classic, knit a square - make an afghan. However the sheer horror of the concept of all that sewing was a giant hurdle many were baulking at. So I thought, why not make strips instead of squares. Essentially I knit all my favourite cable and cable and lace
scarves that caught my eye recently and sewed them up into a lap
blanket for me. The genesis of the idea, the inspiration and the early stages of construction are described in more detail in this blog post (Anyone got cable! - A scarf-ghan).
This was a great strategy. There was a constant variety of patterns and yarn in little do-able chunks at a time. I didn't get bored in the middle of the process. Each scarf got a chance to tell its own story along the way. See also a series of scarves = afghan for the details of each scarf strip - e.g. patterns used. As a bonus most of them are free patterns.
On Good Friday we convinced the afghan to come and play in the Sunflowers and have its final beauty shots taken. The town I live in has two giant public art installations designed to brighten up some depressed and unused industrial areas of town. These photos were taken in a field that is a giant spiral maze of sunflowers. (You can read more about the project here - #getsunflowered).
I admit, I did wimp out of this without strictly finishing it completely. I haven't added a separate knitted edging. I toyed with both a sideways knitted garter stitch and an i-cord border (and had a go at both) but felt it didn't really need it enough to make me feel justified knitting it.
Here's the boy demonstrated how you can wrap yourself head to toe in the awesome snugness. He make the blanket look like a butterfly chrysalis.
I'd like to thank my children for frolicking in the sunflowers with me. I'm off to plan the next afghan adventure now. I don't think I quite have it out of my system. I might just snuggle here under my blanket while I knit the next one.
It comes as no great surprise to those who know me that I'm a Dr Who fan. My favorite doctor is the tenth Doctor - David Tennant. I could write an essay on why he's the coolest, sexiest, most interesting Doctor with the best story arcs but this is a knitting blog after all. I'll just post a photo of the most awesome Doctor for you to contemplate (There is a point to this, I promise you).
After last year and all the shawl stuff I still hadn't quite got it all out of the system. I may have wanted to make yet another lace shawl and after much
deliberation and hours of time spent squirreling through the Ravelry pattern database, I decided that Nymphadelia was the next lace shawl for the needles. Blue tweed and
brown variegated sock yarn together should be cool. (This has the added benefit of using up the stash as is my
goal for 2015).
I was right. It is cool!
I was a little dubious about these two yarns together in the ball -
variegated yarns often knit up so much differently to how they present
as a ball and so I was hopeful it would work like I pictured it in my
head. Why this colour combination? I love blue and brown together. It
quite frequently features in my wardrobe. This particular blue and brown
colour combination is my tribute to the 10th Doctor. These colours evoke
his costume: blue and brown pinstripe suits, a long brown overcoat and
converse sneakers (See photo above).
I may have temporarily yarn bombed another statue. It was just the right shade of blue. How could I resist?
And that is part of the inspiration for the name too. The shawl
pattern (a free one from Knitty magazine) is called Nymphalidea (the Latin
name for one of the largest butterfly families). The colours are 10th
doctor inspired. Hence Butterfly Kisses for The Doctor.
I cast on as Day 1 project for Feburary COM over in Village Hopelessly
Overcommitted (VHOC). Must say I love the simplicity of the lace and
purl ridges and the effect of the variegated yarn. Easy to
remember pattern and it’s flying along. I managed 18 repeats of the
Wedge D and welt combination in the first day.
The next day I got to 21 repeats and then 24 repeats on Day 3. Day 4 was a
day of long train journeys. Prime knitting time. So I finished all 27 repeats.
(And I ended up with the correct stitch count as given in pattern! Bonus).
The shawl was now in need of aggressive blocking to show off in its full
glory! Lace is so messy just off the needles before blocking works its magic.
Pattern:Nymphalidea by Melinda Vermeer - a free pattern from Knitty Deep Fall, 2013 Needles: 4mm Yarn: Bendigo Woolen Mills 5 ply Colonial in Berry twist - donated stash from my Aunty and Moda Vera Noir sock yarn in Coffee Mix. (I have enough yarn left over to make another one...)
In November, I knitted and knitted and knitted some more and 27 days later I had a completed cardigan. It was all in response to NaKniSweMo - a challenge to knit a sweater of more than 50,000 stitches in November. (The acronym stands for National Knit a Sweater in a Month. Though it should more properly be international these days). It was inspired by NaWriNoMo (National Write a Novel of 50,000 words or more in November). The sweater tried to document the process and kept a diary which you can read here.
A sweater in a month? Why not? I’ve done it before. A sweater of
50,000 stitches plus in a month? Doable. When the month is November….?
Now maybe, we’re pushing it. It’s marking month. I’m going on holidays
at the end of the month. It’s late spring here in Australia and the
weather is warming up. We’ve already had a few days over 30 degrees
Celsius. And I have to finish my DFAD for the IFFF Fungus Among Us CKAL
by the 18th. But what the hell, you never know till you try.
It’s time to knit something substantial for me. I’ve knitted both
Mark and Mel a jumper this year. I’ve made me two shawls and a stole and
a hat and some fingerless mitts (2 pairs). Must be time for a sweater
(or more properly a cardigan). I’m not so much of a sweater girl but I
do love me a good cardigan.
Rhodium has been on my radar / floating around the queue since I got a copy of The Knitter’s
70th issue. In fact, I pretty much want to make the whole platinum
collection. I have three jumper lots of yarn for me just sitting around.
This is going to be stash busting. I have some weird dirty cream / tan /
latte coloured up-cycled yarn I got from the Lifeline Op shop for $5
for the whole bag. It’s a pure wool blend with little black threads and
angora in it I suspect. I have 16 balls.
I swatched on the 31st October and washed and blocked the swatches on
the first of November. The pattern calls for DK weight yarn on 3.25mm. I
knitted swatches using both 3.25mm and 3.75mm of all three main
stitches. The row gauges given in the pattern for the rib are weird -
less rows over 10 cm for rib than reverse stockinette? I’m going to
match the row gauge for the reverse stockinette as the bulk of the
jumper is this and it only has rib bands.
I’ll count the stitches in a spreadsheet but a quick calculation
based on gauge and the schematic is fine to meet the target of 50,000
stitches.
Pattern:Rhodium by Deborah Helmke from The Knitter Issue 70, The Platinum Collection Needles: 3.75mm Yarn: dirty cream / tan /
latte coloured up-cycled yarn, pure wool blend with little black threads and
angor, op-shop special Total cost: $5
The family is ambivalent about this and an overall finished garment. They like the colour, praise the execution and the lace but really dislike the overall design. Long fronts and a short back look weird according to them. I love how deliciously snugly and warm this is. They just don't get modern design.
It took a while to get the finished modeled shots for this given I went on holidays as soon as I finished and it's been too hot to wear a winter weight cardigan. But finally courtesy of the non existent summer weather, we got the photo-shoot. Thanks to the boy for his awesome photography skills once again.
An afghan has quietly been creating itself along in the background all year this year. (Well, not exactly on its own, it has been relying on me to be quietly knitting along on the component scarves amongst all the other knitting this year).
We first met the afghan in all its glory in April - Anyone got cable! scarf-ghan though sneak peaks had made it into the blog before that.But I haven't really posted about it since then and lots of progress has been made. In fact its an almost functional couch blanket now.
It's time for round two. I have made 4 more scarves since.
Scarf number 5: Twisted ribbons
The fifth scarf is a hybrid cable and lace pattern which I started in early April. I started this using the two balls of cream coloured Panda Machinewash crepe I'd bought in an end of winter sell out. (Can't you see that this was a potentially disastrous move?) But the pattern just ate through the yardage and I inevitably ran out of yarn late April and
ordered some more. Whilst I was waiting I cast on scarf number six. (Can't have idle knitting needles, can you?)
Then of course the new yarn
didn’t match colourwise. I knitted about half a pattern repeat but it
offended my sensibilities. The colour change was that dramatic! So
frogged the lot on 1st June 2014. I bought two more balls and began again in
the new cream machinewash. This was now going to be the June strip!
That was
probably a little ambitious. Actually I cast this back on on the 22rd of
August! I was finishing up all the the other WIPs (Two jumpers for
various children being the biggest of them). And it was finally completed on 15th
September. The irony was that after blocking this ended up about 2
pattern repeats too long so in early October I frogged a bit of it and
redid the garter stitch edge so it fitted with the rest of the strips. This scarf should just be very happy that I am persistent in the face of adversity.
Scarf number 6: Bernadette cable scarf
I had a cold and everything else I was working on is
too complicated for my brain to cope with. Cables again - waving cables interlocking gently. This was me being productive whilst coping with the saga of scarf number five (see above). This was smooth sailing in comparison. And the yarn is a dream to knit. (Pity I think it's discontinued).
Pattern: Bernadette Cable Scarf by SmarieK Knits Needles: 4mm Yarn: Panda Woolblend Crepe 8 ply, Gray, 3 and a little bit 50g balls.
Scarf number 7: Eagle feathers
This one is based on Eagle Feathers - a free scarf pattern with a series of different patterned bands beginning with simple chevrons and morphing through to full feathers. I started with a provisional cast on
as it is worked out from each end. This was true stash busting. The yarn I used had a somewhat checkered past. I was reusing the yarn from Arundel
which I had frogged during the Ravellenics. I had some some fun (not!) unpicking the
provisional cast on and getting the correct amount of stitches to work
the other way. This was a really fun pattern to knit and I especially
love the feathers section on each of the edges. Unfortunately it ended up too long
after blocking. It’s always hard to judge just how much a lace pattern
will open up. So I took off one pattern repeat on each end and redid the moss
stitch borders.
Pattern:The Eagle Feathers Scarf by Margaret Kiprenko Needles: 4mm Yarn: Patons Australia Katie, Tan / mustard, 4 50 g balls
Scarf number 8: Beaumonde
Earlier this year I discovered the delights of dropping stitches on purpose (See Curly Wurly). I was eager to try this again. This was slated to be a cable scarf again. This pattern is a combination of cable and dropped stitches - the very definition of
fun. It’s awesome to drop stitches on purpose. The yarn is some cream 12% angora, 48% viscose and 40% acrylic in a
buttery cream colour I bought for $2 a ball in an end of season sale. So this something I actually bought purposely this year with this rug in mind.
Pattern: Beaumonde by SmarieK Knits. (She has an awesome collection of free cable scarf patterns available. This is the second one I have used as part of this scarf-ghan). Needles: 4mm Yarn: Moda Vera Messina, cream, 3.2 50g balls
I decided to bite the bullet at the beginning of December and sew what I had completed up in order to decide how many more scarves I needed to make to ge the width I want. This process took most of a week using my ususual evening knitting time to painstaking stitch the scarves together.
It's not quite as wide as I want it to be. I estimate I need two more scarves and one is already on the needles - a leafy lacy tendril on reverse stocking stitch. It's not too early to declare this project a massive sucess. Even at it's present size, it's a snuggly, cuddly useable couch rug. It stretches from my toes to my chest. Various family members have spent a fair bit of time trying to claim this for their own but it's mine, mine, you hear ..... (Cue evil laugh track here). However, I foresee me making variations on this theme for the next few years.... (My mum wants one, so does the hubby....)
For the 2014 Ravellenics I boarded the Tardis with needles and yarn
in hand and joined the giant crew of knitters and crocheters flying
through time and space watching the Sochi Winter Games and crafting all
sorts of goodness. Some very wonderful fellow travelers offered prizes
for our efforts and the Tardis random number generator chose me to get
this free pattern - a gorgeous geometric shawl pattern called Bequin.
I’ve been contemplating making a shawl for a long time but there were
too many wonderful patterns to pick from to make my first. This sealed
the deal. I had a pattern so I didn’t have to pick one. I have some very
old gifted brown yarn from my Aunty that was perfect for this.
Why Brown? Brown is underrated. I’m a brown kind of person right down to the boring brown hair (with a touch of grey).
When I was naming this project, I thought of my favourite Little
Golden Book that I read to my little sister first and then my children
over and over…. The Color kittens by Margaret Wise Brown.
”… and that made brown, Brown as a tug boat, Brown as an old goat,
Brown as a beaver, Brown. And in all that brown the sun went down”.
Meet Brown as…
Pattern:Bequin by Ydun from The Apple Basket Needles: 4mm straights and a 100cm 4mm circular needle. Yarn: Paton's Australia Azalea, Light fingering 3ply, 4 balls of brown (this is a long discontinued yarn. I suspect this is from the 1970s). Cost: Free - gifted stash from my Aunty.
Despite the fact that this was my first lace shawl, in fact my first shawl of any type, it ended up being the third one off the needles. I got distracted into freeform along the way and made Lacewing and Curly Wurly while I was supposed to be finishing this.... (And a few other things too).
I cast on on the 8th of April and it flowed along quite
nicely up until the third section of the shawl. I was still working this on straight needles as the yarn is so fine it
still fits on a long straight needle. This is essentially geometrically
arranged panels of faggotted lace. Every second row is just purl with a
narrow garter stitch edge. The patterning is logical and the use of stitch markers between repeats really helps keep track.
I worked off the minimal written instructions and the charts. I
found a mistake in the transition row for the third section of the shawl
where the minimal instructions indicated one stitch border on each side
of Chart A but the picture and the complete written instructions
indicated it should be two stitches. I contacted the designer and she modified the pattern and sent me a new version.
Obligatory shawl pose
I did make the occasional mistake and had to tink back a few rows
till I had the correct set up again. I had to redo the last four rows
of section II 4 times to get it right. (Took me two days for 4 rows). The
pattern is nicely written and quite intuitive but needs patience and I
tend to make mistakes when knitting at night.
Knitting a lace shawl taught me patience and not to drop stitches!
Well the shawl got neglected in the push to finish the jumpers for
the kids and with me discovering a new playground in IFFF. I made a
major push to complete this as part of October WIP wrestling. It was
very slow going with the last edge section. Very long rows (400+
stitches) and it was getting to the half an hour a row stage. But slow
and steady got there. I really enjoyed the cast off - a new to me
technique.
The first finished shot. Indoor lighting really changes the colour of this.
I love the geometry of this and how it curves and hugs the shoulders.
Really interesting shape. Cast off, ends sewed in and blocked fairly
aggressively to open the lace on 25th October 2014. But it had to wait a while for a real photo shoot. I took it with me on holidays to the Gold Coast in late November, early December 2014 and finally got some finished shots on the balcony of a high rise silhouetted against the amazing view.
I think I'm hooked. What shawl shall I make next....
