First Snow Hats

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

First Snow is a hat pattern I really like. (All the links in this post are Ravelry links.) It was a free pattern when I downloaded it, although it looks as if it’s no longer available. 😦 I started using this pattern a few years ago, for these Caron Chunky Cupcakes self-striping yarns – each skein came with a matching pompom: Caron Cakes hats knit by Deborah Cooke using First Snow pattern by The Vulgar Knitter The cables made these a more interesting knit than they would have been otherwise, and I liked the finished hats.

I also used this pattern for two bundles of Caron X Pantone, one in Faerie Cake and one in Morning Blues. These took me forever to finish because I don’t really like the feel of the yarn.

Although these hats ended up with bands of colour a lot like the ones above, in this product, there are five separate skeins of yarn. The cakes at the top include self-striping yarn. That makes an easier knit (no ends to sew in) but you can’t change the order of the colours.

Last fall, I used a ball from the mill ends of a purple tweed and made yet another hat. This one has a commercial fake fur pompom. I like this one!

First Snow hat pattern knit by Deborah Cooke in a mystery tweed mill end

I had more of those tweedy mill ends in my stash, so this summer, I knit it up into a few more hats, also with commercial pompoms. Wool hats knit in First Snow pattern by Deborah Cooke

Finally, I used up the last of the Noro Kochoran in a hat for the mister: First Snow in Noro Kochoran knit by Deborah Cooke This one is a little smaller, because I forgot to do the increases after the ribbing. I was too worried about matching the stripes – I had a lot of bits and ends to use up for this hat. It fits more like a watchcap, but the mister likes it that way, so all is good.

Do you have a favorite hat pattern?

Navelli, Nightshift and Audrey

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I didn’t post about my knitting last week, because I didn’t have anything finished to show you. I’m knitting along on some projects that are taking a while. So, let’s have a progress report today.

You might remember that I was going to frog the stockinette of my Navelli because I didn’t like the way the variegated colourway was pooling. Well, I have a sweater-quantity of a semi-solid Koigu in my stash, and since it’s a generous sweater quantity, I borrowed four skeins from that to use for my Navelli. This colour is working out much better – here it is:

The trick is that now I don’t love the blue in the fair isle section. It matched perfectly with the variegated colourway and is okay with this one. I’m not frogging back again. Que sera sera.

I’ve also been knitting away on my Nightshift shawl in Koigu KPPPM. I showed you the beginning of it here. My plan is to include the red – leftover from my Lunenberg cardigan – as one colour in each stripe. Here’s where I am now:

At this point, I’ve started the sixth repeat of the 20-row pattern sequence. (I’m calling a 20-row repeat a stripe.) The first one has a red background and the lightest purple as contrast. The second repeat has the lightest purple as the background and the red as the contrast colour. The third repeat has the darkest purple as the background and the red as the contrast. The fourth repeat has the middle purple as background with the red as the contrast. The fifth repeat has the red in the background again, and the first purple as the contrast. The sixth repeat (which I’ve just started) has the red in the background and the darkest purple as contrast. It is interesting how the purples, which look so different from each other, are difficult to distinguish from each other once they’re knitted up with the red.

I like this pattern a lot. It’s clever (it has i-cord binding on both edges that is knitted as you go_ and the pattern is easy to memorize. It’s a great way to use up different colourways in the same yarn, which means I’ll probably knit another one (or two).

I’ve also started to spend some time on my Audrey cardigan, which has been waiting on its sleeves for a while. Not only is it a cable pattern, but the dark purple means I need to knit it in daylight to see what the heck I’m doing. I have to have an hour in the afternoon of a sunny day, which doesn’t happen that often. The yarn is fuzzy and sheds – I keep it wrapped in a teatowel, which I spread on my lap when I’m working on it – and it makes my nose tickle a little. (It’s an angora blend, called Rowan Angora Haze. It’s also discontinued.) Here are the sleeves so far:

This yarn is so fuzzy that the camera didn’t know where to focus! The stitch pattern was reasonably easy to memorize but it’s not TV knitting. I put it aside because I thought the sleeves were too wide. I still think they are, even though I’m knitting a smaller size of sleeve. I’ll make them bracelet length and hope that does the trick.

I never showed you the body finished and assembled. Here it is, although I’m not convinced about the buttons yet. They’re a bit sparkly for me – that one is still on the button card.

I think my next project needs to be with thicker yarn!

I also went to the Woodstock Fleece Festival last weekend with a friend, which was a nice yarny fix. It was a beautiful fall day and there were so many vendors with wonderful yarn and fleece. Temptation was everywhere! In the end, I only bought two skeins of yarn – some sock yarn from an indie dyer and a skein of Spin Cycle Yarns Dream State, which I’ve been wanting to squish for a while. It’s actually the specified yarn for Nightshift. I’ll use this skein as the contrast colour on the yoke of a sweater I’m planning – the pattern is Fern & Feather (that’s a Ravelry link) and that ball of purple on the right will be the background colour.

Phew! Lots of purple on my needles. What have you been knitting lately?

Barista in Rowan Big Wool

Posted on October 7, 2016 by Deborah Cooke

When knitters unravel a piece of knitting, they say they’re “frogging” it. That’s because “rip it rip it” is the sound a frog makes.

Yes, it’s silly but it’s fun.

Another verb for the same process is “tinking”. If you spelling “knit” backwards, you get “tink”, so knitting in reverse is tinking.

Last night, I decided to frog the sleeves of a sweater, but I took a picture of it first to show you why. It’s knit in Rowan Big Wool, in a pattern called Barista. I had some Big Wool in the Wild Berry colourway, which I’d bought for a boxy jacket. I knit that jacket and frogged it when I didn’t wear it.

Because the yarn is thick, ripping it back and reknitting it isn’t that painful. There won’t be a mourning period—in fact, by the time you read this, I’ll probably have reknit most of what I pulled back.

Here’s what the sweater looked like yesterday afternoon: Barista by Martin Storey knit in Rowan Big Wool by Deborah Cooke

It has a great stitch pattern and I really like how it was knitting up. I also love the colour of this yarn. But….I had a funny feeling, so I knit the side seams and basted the sleeve to the underarm, tied the shoulders and tried it on. My funny feeling was right. The body is wide for me, even though I knit my size and got gauge. It has more ease than I expected, but I’m going to leave it. I had wondered while knitting it whether I should make it longer, and I did make it a little bit longer. The length is perfect. The sleeve, though, is quite snug. I like to push up my sleeves, so I need a little more ease in them.

Of course, I was knitting both sleeves at once.

But, rip it rip it. I frogged the sleeves and cast them on again with four more stitches each. I’m excited about this sweater, though, and am charging ahead to get it done. The days are cooler and it should be the perfect weather for this sweater soon. If all goes well, I should finish it up this weekend!

Knitting Audrey

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Deborah Cooke

My big plan was to finish up the projects that are already on my needles this year, and I am making progress on that. I’m in the midst of knitting the last square for the ugliest afghan in the world, for example, which will then just need to be sewn together (ugh. The sewing is about half done) and have the border knit onto it. The border is about 1/3 done. It is, though, the ugliest afghan in the world, and not a project that fosters a lot of enthusiasm. It might be warm when it’s done. It’s destined to go in the car to keep the dog claws off the upholstery, which again, isn’t very inspiring.

So, I needed another project to keep me from losing hope completely. The winner was Audrey, a lace and cables cardigan knit in Rowan Angora Haze and included in the Rowan Angora Haze pattern book. This yarn was discontinued and replaced by Rowan Mohair Haze, so I bought two sweater lots of AH when it was discounted to clear. It was time to get one fuzzy sweater on the needles. Here, btw, is the Ravelry link for Audrey, and also the one for Angora Haze. It’s still out there in discount bins all over the world.

The yarn is really soft and fuzzy. It does shed a bit but not as much as I expected. It’ll be interesting to see whether it sheds more or less once the garment is completed. My nose does tickle a bit after I’ve been knitting on it, but again, it’s not too bad. I did try a suggestion I saw on a Ravelry forum – I put a white linen tea towel on my lap when knitting this sweater. It gives nice contrast for those dark stitches and also catches any shedding hairs. I wrap the knitting in the tea towel when I’m not working on it.

Of course, my yarn is deep purple. 🙂 Here’s the left front so far: Audrey by Martin Storey knit in Rowan Angora Haze by Deborah Cooke

This shot was taken with the flash – the colour isn’t as rich as it is in real life, but you can see the cables better.

The cable pattern is actually easy to memorize, which surprised me. It’s certainly not a television knit, but it’s not that complicated. I knit the left front first, because I’ve had sizing issues lately with Rowan patterns. A lot of them turn out big, and I didn’t want to knit these cables over and over again. I knit a size smaller than I thought I should, and it’s coming out perfectly. The fabric is a little bit stretchy, and I guess it’s acting like a rib. Although the left front laid flat is 10″ wide, as it should be, I can easily smooth it to be 12″ wide. I’m glad I didn’t knit a bigger size, as it might get sloppy in the wearing. I doubt this yarn has a lot of elasticity – it’s just too soft for that.

I’ve made the front 2″ longer because I don’t want it to be as cropped. Also, I’ve eliminated the increases between waist and bust, and just knit it straight. That means I had to modify the decreases for the armscye (since I had fewer stitches overall) but that wasn’t a big deal. I won’t make the rolled collar but just a regular one with a buttonhole, and it seems to me that the sleeves are a bit too wide. I’ll double check those counts and measurements before knitting them.

Naturally, knitting one of the fronts first has left me with a dilemma. I’m going to have to put it aside unfinished and knit the back before I can continue. Rowan patterns often have an instruction like the one in the pattern “knit the front until it is 26 rows shorter than the finished back”. Aha. (I have another sweater on the needles that’s in time-out because of this. I have knit the back on that one, but since I substituted a different yarn, my row gauge is off. I need to figure out whether the specified number of rows will make the collar too deep or not. Knitting math tends not to get done, so that sweater front has been waiting patiently in my basket since November.) This weekend, the left front of Audrey is going onto a stitch holder and I’ll cast on the back.

What do you think?

French Cancan

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Deborah Cooke

This is a small shawl that I just finished. It was all together in a kit that I bought from one of the vendors at the Knitters’ Fair in September, and so pretty that I had to cast on right away (even though I had lots of things on the needles to finish). The pattern is French Cancan, and the yarn is Zen Yarn Garden‘s Serenity DK. Wow, what a scrumptuous, squishy yarn! It’s a merino and cashmere blend, and the colour is simply gorgeous.

Here’s the finished shawl, although I haven’t blocked it.I don’t really like blocking garter stitch, but prefer to let it do its own thing. The braid doesn’t really need blocking as the points already sit out nicely, so I’ll probably leave it be.

It has a lovely crescent shape and drapes nicely over the shoulders. It takes 2 skeins – one for the garter stitch body and one for the border. I was (of course) worried about running out for the border, but I had some of the second skein left over. The finished shawl is smaller than I’d hoped, more of a scarf than a shawlette. This is funny because I saw a sample when I bought the kit, so my expectations should have been in line with reality. OTOH I’ll probably wear it more than I would have worn a shawl, because it’s just the right size for wrapping around my neck under a winter coat. I suspect I’ll be making another of these – I quite liked the pattern, and the edging pattern was easy to memorize – and maybe I’ll make a larger one.

What do you think?

Alexis in Pink

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

And finally some knitting to share!This is a long vest with a cable on either side of the front opening. It’s quite boxy, so these end up being short sleeves. It’s not nearly this vivid a pink, but that’s courtesy of the flash. The design is Alexis from the pattern book Rowan Colourscape Folk. The yarn should be Colourscape Chunky, but this yarn is Texere Olympia in the colourway Eros. I’d read on Ravelry that the Texere yarn was very similar and it is – in fact, it’s indistinguishable to me from Colourscape Chunky and is much cheaper. Colourscape Chunky has also been discontinued recently and is becoming hard to find.

I like this yarn a lot, both because of the vibrant colours and because it’s got a nice rustic feel to it. The colourways for Rowan’s Colourscape Chunky were designed by Kaffe Fassett and I’m a sucker for the way he plays with colour. There are definite similarities with Noro yarns in that this one is a single ply, loosely spun, and still remembers the barn. It softens and fulls considerably when the finished garment is washed and blocked. It’s also unpredictable a bit in the colourway progression – I had thought after casting on the left front that I should frog it back and start in the red, so it would match the right front. You can see that wouldn’t have worked. The pink band after the red and before the mauve-flicky bit is much broader – the section was much longer in that other skein. The right front, in contrast, has a broader red band before the green-flicky bit. It would never have matched, even if I’d tried.

I knit the vest 2″ shorter than it was supposed to be, because I’m not nearly as tall as the model in the book. Also, I wanted it very loose, so cast on the large and decreased to the medium above the waist so my shoulders weren’t lost in fabric. It worked out well, although I could have begun the decreases sooner and spread them out more.

Here’s the back:This is where I made my big modification. I added that double cable up the back – the pattern has a plain back. It’s 11 stitches wide – P1, K4, P1, K4, P1, the K4’s becoming the cables – and does pull the fabric in a bit. I also widened it into a V at the top, so the cables on the back would line up with the cables on the front at the shoulder seam. This picture (without the flash) makes the colour look more red than it is, but it’s been raining too much outside to take pictures there.

Overall, I’m very happy with the vest. It’s warm and the colours are cheerful. It was a pretty quick knit, given the thickness of the yarn. What do you think?

Cable Front Capelet

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

This is a project that I finished this fall – and started this fall, too. It went quickly because the yarn is so thick. In the winters, my back gets cold when I’m at my desk writing. I’ve knit vests and shawls and cardigans, but nothing has been just right. When I saw this cable front capelet in Vogue Knitting, I thought it might be just the thing. I already showed you the yarn and the knit back in this post.

Here’s the Ravelry link to the pattern. The designer is Sarah Hatton, who designs a lot for Rowan, too.

I substituted the yarn, using a new yarn that I found at Spinrite called Patons Delish. It has an interesting chain construction and is a wool/acrylic blend, with a gradual self-striping effect. Mine is the Kale colourway. They had mill ends on sale at Spinrite – 5 unlabelled skeins in a bag for $19.99 – so I decided to try it out. My capelet took 7.5 skeins.

And here it is:The green is much darker than it appears in this picture, even though I took this outside with no flash.

Modifications were minor. I didn’t want the cast-off edge at the top of the collar, so I knit 15 cm (instead of 7) and rolled the collar, seaming that edge to the inside. I haven’t added the five clasps to it – I might put one just at the base of the collar, if I can find one I like. I’m such a lazy toad that I didn’t even block it – I just seamed it up and started to wear it. It’s very warm and just perfect for writing – the elbow-length sleeves stay out of my way when I’m typing and having the front open keeps it from getting too hot. (It is a bad choice in the kitchen as the hems want to drag through everything, but that’s okay.)

This is one project that came out just right!

Cable Front Capelet in Delish

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

A bit late today with my knitting post. I was hoping to take pictures outside to show the colours better. Yesterday, it was drizzling so I waited. Today, it’s pouring, so you get inside pix.

This is a new yarn from Patons, called Delish. I saw it at Spinrite and was intrigued – it’s super bulky weight but has a chain construction. See?

This makes it light and squishy. Hmm.

I bought some of the green because I’d been wanting to make a poncho or capelet for the fall. The pattern I’m using is from Vogue Knitting, called Cable Front Capelet. Because it has raglan sleeves, I thought it might stay on – or stay put – better than a poncho. Here’s the Ravelry link to the pattern. Here’s the back:It’s not blocked yet and the flash did make it look darker, but you can see the graduating stripe that the yarn makes. The chain construction isn’t that evident in the finished knitting, and it feels so wonderfully soft. I’m quite happy with how it’s working out so far. It’s a fast knit, too – I might really be done in time for fall!

What do you think? Have you tried any new yarns lately?

Plum Cordial

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

This is a quick project that I finished last weekend. In the middle of finishing so many big projects, I needed the encouragement of something that could be knit in a hurry.

The pattern is called Cordial from Rowan magazine, and it’s knit in Rowan Big Wool. Here’s mine:

I did make one modification to the pattern. You knit the cardi from the front bottom, over the shoulders to the back hem. The only seaming is the underarm seams. As it’s written, the cable runs over the shoulder and down the back, and as it’s written, the back doesn’t mirror the front. In my side, the cable would have ended in the middle of a diamond at the back hem. I knew this would bug me. Also those two little V’s between the diamonds would be upside down on the back. This would also annoy me.

So, I reworked the chart to keep knitting over the shoulder but to have the V’s end up right side up on the back. I also knit to the end of a full diamond at the shoulder, then switched to my upside down chart. The back of my Cordial looks just like the front, and that makes me happy.

It was maybe a little on the loose side when it was done, but not enough to be worth frogging and reknitting. When I washed it to block it, though, it grew and grew and grew. Yikes! I think this might be a merino thing – its springiness uncoils when wet – but it freaked me out a bit. I wrapped it in a towel and pressed out as much moisture as possible, laid it flat and worried about it for a few hours – then I put it in the dryer. I only left it for a couple of minutes at a time and checked it obsessively. It is a little bit felted, which I like, and fits perfectly now.

Ha. I really like it. And now back to finishing those UFO’s…

Cable Cardigan in Butterfly Super 10

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

I have thought for a couple of weeks that I would have a sweater to show you. This cardigan has been on my needles for years. It feels as if it’s been in process since time began, but that can’t be the case – the pattern was published in Vogue Knitting in a 2003/2004 issue.

It’s supposed to be knit in a 100% wool called Zara. I remember looking for the specified yarn at the time and finding it pretty expensive. So, I did a yarn substitution – I knit mine in Butterfly Super 10 cotton in a wonderful dark teal. This means that the resulting sweater is much heavier than it would have been in wool, but that’s okay with me. What slowed me down in the knitting is that cotton has no stretch, and you really notice that when knitting cables. I kept putting this sweater aside to knit more enjoyable projects, even though I really liked how it was working up.

I had to block it after it was done before sewing the pieces together. (Yes, you’re supposed to do that every time, but I tend not to.) There was no choice here because the seed stitch pulled up shorter than the cables on each piece. I’m still sewing the beast together, even though it’s been off the needles for over a week. It looks as if I might have to pick some of the seaming back because I can’t figure out how to make the collar fit. The neckline seems too large for the collar piece. Hmm.

So, maybe next Friday I’ll be able to show it to you, finally complete.

The good news is that it’s a sweater for transition seasons, so I should have it done just in time to wear for spring!

Update – here it is! I had forgotten that the collar didn’t extend over the button bands, then it just had to be eased slightly across the top of the saddle shoulders. All good and all done. 🙂

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