Navelli in Koigu

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve been knitting a sweater, too, and even though it’s not done, I wanted to show it to you. The pattern is called Navelli (that’s a Ravelry link) and it’s designed by Caitlin Hunter. I’ve never knit a cropped wide sweater before (or worn one) but I really like this design. I’ve also been admiring sweaters lately that use a variegated or gradient dyed yarn along with solids in fair isle work. When I found several skeins of a really pretty colourway at the Koigu tent sale, I wanted to work with that.

The colourway that started me off is P528, a mix of teal and pink and blues, even with a bit of purple.

I found one contrast colour at Koigu: a teal in KPM, 5513. It looks kettle dyed, in that there’s variation in the tone, but not additional colours. There was only one skein so it had to take the place of the light pink in the original pattern.

When I got home and checked the stash, I discovered that I had three skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in purple. It was a perfect match, so that became my “brown”. The variegated colourway is my main colour for the body of the sweater. (This yarn is discontinued. I’d bought it originally to knit these opera gloves from Vogue Knitting Winter 2008/2009. Since then, I’ve realized that I’m unlikely to ever wear long knitted gloves, so the yarn has aged in the stash. It’s good to see it being put to work.)

Here is my Navelli before I split for the underarms:

The variegated yarn is a bit more emphatic than I’d expected. The tips of the fair isle in the purple kind of disappear into the pattern of the yarn, but what really surprised me was the pooling—and the big swirl. It looks a bit like the way hard candy swirls – like this image to the right. (That’s a stock image with its watermark intact.) The left lollipop really looks like this sweater to me!

The strange thing is that I am knitting from alternate skeins (two rows from one, then two rows from the other) which should (theoretically) break up any pooling. This yarn, though, is determined to pool. I wondered what would happen when I split the sweater for the underarms – with half as many stitches being worked, I thought maybe the swirl would break up. It did, but it’s worse:

It’s actually making vertical blobs now. Ugh. That decided it. The patterning in the yarn is distracting from the fair isle – and I think it’s ugly. I’m going to frog back to the fair isle and reknit the stockinette with the colour that’s in the skeins at the top. It’s closer to a semi-solid than a variegated yarn, so should pattern like my Koigu Lunenberg. There’s purple in this colourway, too, but the blue in the fair isle might end up looking a bit off. I think it’s in there, but it’s not the dominant blue. This gives me a chance to make another measure of my gauge – it looks like I might need to stay on the smaller needles for the plain stockinette as well as the fair isle.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip it! I’m sad to do this, especially as I bought this variegated colourway specifically for this sweater, but that’s the way it goes.

Here’s my project page on Ravelry.

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?

Vogue Knitting Fair Isle Hat

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Deborah Cooke

There’s a hat on the cover of Vogue Knitting this fall, the new edition, and I’ve knitted one.

Vogue Knitting magazine First, here’s the issue of VK (fall 2016) and the hat in question. The hat is in the Modern Fair Isle article, which has some lovely patterns. (If you scroll down and click on the image of the hat, some alternate views will be displayed in a pop-up window.) The hat is knit of Rowan Felted Tweed and was designed by Mary Jane Mucklestone, inspired by some traditional Shetland hats in the museum there. I immediately liked the colors of the hat, so bought the magazine based on the cover.

My grey Bohus-inspired pullover is on the needles in Rowan Felted Tweed and Colourspun (it was also a design featured on the cover of VK that prompted me to buy the magazine) so I thought I’d make a hat to match – right now, the sweater is in that endless stockinette phase. I needed some instant gratification and this was it.

I didn’t want a hat of that shape, though. Here’s my finished hat: Fair Isle hat by Mary Jane Mucklestone knit by Deborah Cooke in Rowan Colourspun and Rowan Felted Tweed

I followed the pattern until the fair isle section was finished, then knit another row. After that, I began to decrease like this:

Row 1 – *K10, K2tog, Repeat from * to end of round.
Row 2 – Knit
Row 3 – *K9, K2tog, Repeat from * to end of round.
Row 4 – Knit
Row 5 – *K8, K2tog, Repeat from * to end of round.
Row 6 – Knit
etc., until there are 12 stitches left. K2tog all around, pass the end through the remaining stitches and bind off.

It fits perfectly and is very warm. I knit another one in different colours, since I have a lot of scraps of Colourspun and Felted Tweed.

Fair Isle hat by Mary Jane Mucklestone knit by Deborah Cooke in Rowan Colourspun and Rowan Felted Tweed What do you think?

VK Bohus Inspired Pullover

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Deborah Cooke

Vogue Knitting magazine winter 2015/16 For a while now, I’ve been working on a pullover from Vogue Knitting’s winter 2015/2016 issue, a Bohus-inspired pullover. (If you’re on Ravelry, here’s the magazine issue and here’s the sweater.) It was on the cover, and was pretty much the reason I bought the magazine. What intrigued me about the sweater was the fit. It didn’t look like an Icelandic sweater with a round yoke, but like it had more of a straight yoke. Icelandic sweaters fit men really well IMO but often look puffy on women. This one looked sleek. It also used Bohus design elements. I have a Bohus kit (Vildapplet cardigan, right here) but am a bit daunted by it. Bohus style sweaters use multiple colours of yarn in a row (three or even four) and also purl stitches on the right side. They also are worked on tiny needles in colours that gradually shade into others, so I thought this VK sweater in a larger gauge would be good practice.

I didn’t have the yarn specified, so I dipped into my stash to look for options in that weight. I found my Rowan members’ yarn pack, which was three balls of Felted Tweed, one in Avocado, one in Bilberry and one in Watery. Hmm. The Avocado would work for the Leafy Palm: the Watery for Caspian, and I used the Bilberry for both the Oxblood and the Mecca. (I thought about adding a fourth colour, but couldn’t find one that I liked with the others.) What about the white and grey? I’ve knit Felted Tweed with Colourspun several times, which works out to be a nice squishy combination, plus Colourspun has been discontinued. (Boo.) This was a chance to make another sweater in that yarn before it’s gone forever. I bought Colourspun in Semer Water for the charcoal grey, and in Winterburn for the white. These two shades of grey are much closer together than the white and grey used in the pattern, but Bohus is known for its blending of colours so I figured I had that covered.

This is a top-down sweater, so the cast-on is at the neck. One good thing about top-down sweaters knitted in the round is that it’s easy to try them on as you go—just put the stitches on a thread and tug the sweater on.

There has been goofiness with this one, which is why you haven’t seen it yet even though I’ve been knitting since April. I’ve knit the yoke three times. The first time, I missed the purl stitches on the schematic and had just knit them, so I frogged back. The second time, I made the L size, because I wanted a nice sloppy sweater, but the yoke ended up being enormous. I tried it on, then had Mr. Math pinch back the yoke from behind me until it looked right in the mirror. Then I counted the repeats to take out. It turned out I needed to knit the smallest size in the yoke, so I knit it again. My gauge is slightly off—instead of getting 21 stitches in 4 inches, I’m getting 20. I like the fabric and don’t want it to be stiffer by using smaller needles. The thing is that over 200+ stitches, that little difference adds up.

I like the colours a lot, but it is a round yoke. Bohus inspired pullover knit by Deborah Cooke

I’d expected it to be more like a Bohus sweater yoke, which isn’t a complete circle when flat. Here’s a Bohus yoke photographed flat in the Swedish Bohus Museum, so you can see what I mean. I’ve seen other Bohus yokes that are closer to 3/4 of a circle, but they’re seldom fully round—When people photograph the pullover yokes, the knitting pulls up into a cone closer to the neck, rather than lying flat. That’s why Bohus sweaters tend to fit women well through the shoulders. We’ll talk more about Bohus sweaters when I get mine a little further along and post about it. I’d like to finish that yoke before showing it to you. (Right now, it’s about 1″ deep!)

So, this pullover going to fit a lot like a round yoke Icelandic sweater, when all is said and done. It looks like an Icelandic sweater in most of the finished projects on Ravelry, too. I’m resigned to the good chance of it being puffy, but because I do like the colours and the yarn, I’m carrying on. Bohus inspired pullover knit by Deborah Cooke The purl stitches look quite neat, and they blur the transitions between the colours in true Bohus style. I also like the slight variegation in the Colourspun. There are little bits of colour in the dark grey as well that don’t show up in the photo—a bit of blue, a bit of purple—and they pull it all together very well. Now that I’m into the plain knitting, it’s going much more quickly. I’ve divided for the arms and am working down the body, and will show you more soon.

I’m already thinking about the hems and the neck—the pattern has ribbing on the hems, but I might just let them roll. It also has the ribbed neck knitted separately and sewn on, which is unusual. I had thought about casting on with the ribbing at the neck (at the very top!), but I’m not sure I want it as tall as in the pattern. It’s good to be able to try it on to decide, but I’m concerned about the join showing. I’ll probably pick up the stitches, knit up and hope for the best.

I have no idea how I ended up knitting this warm fuzzy beast in the hottest summer I can remember, but there you go.

The Gates of Moria Mittens

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Deborah Cooke

With all the busyness of the holiday season and #XmasAudio this past month, I haven’t written any posts about knitting. Another contributing factor is that I haven’t finished anything – I’ve done that scattershot thing again of starting too many projects at once. That always happens when I’m working hard to finish a book. This time, it was The Crusader’s Kiss.

I still thought I’d show you some in-progress shots.

First up, I started a pair of fair isle mittens. The pattern is called The Gates of Moria, and it’s from the image Tolkien drew of those gates. If you remember that bit in The Lord of the Rings, the etching on these dwarf-made doors was visible only when they were touched by moonlight. The inscription is “Speak Friend and Enter”, which meant that the word to make the doors open was “friend”. (ha)I’m knitting mine with doubled yarn, holding a matching strand of Kidsilk Haze with each of the sock yarns I’m using. The result is wonderfully squishy, soft and warm – and I like that it obscures the pattern a little bit in some kinds of light. Here are the mitts before they got thumbs:

Here they are in the snow, with thumbs:And here they are in different light, so you can see the pattern better:There was an idea when I started these that I might give them away as a Christmas gift, but they didn’t get done in time – and I admit I stalled on that because I want to keep them myself. 🙂 The pattern is very straightforward and well-written, and it looks like I’ll have enough yarn left to knit a second pair.

Bute Completed

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Deborah Cooke

This week, Fibre Friday feels particularly celebratory. I’ve finally finished a sweater that has been on my needles for three years – Bute, from Rowan magazine #52. This sweater is a fair isle cardigan, and I actually knitted it in the specified yarns and specified colours. ( I know. That never happens. Stop and take a breath. It’s going to be all right.)

Here’s a detail shot of the back in progress:Lots of colour changes in this one, and LOTS of ends to sew in. I’m glad that I wove or sewed them in as I went.

It turned out to be a beast of a knit, because I didn’t realize the sizing was unisex – or at least, I didn’t understand the implications of that. I knit, frogged and reknit this sweater so many times that it still makes my teeth hurt. In the end, I (a person likes a 42″ width for a comfy cardigan) ended up knitting an extra-small.

Yes, you read that right. XS. And yes, I knit the back in the M width and frogged it, then I knit the back in the S width and frogged it, because my mind simply could not wrap around the notion of me being an XS, even when I read the finished size measurements. There you go. (What are all the teeny people doing with this pattern?)

In the end, though, I love it. I did shorten the sleeves, and it did get longer when it was blocked, but it’s a great cardigan and I know I’ll wear it a lot.

I’m also glad to get my needles back!

I did make one mistake on my final knit – I switched out one of the greens without meaning to do so. The green band with the beige squares should use the more olive green, but I used the solid dark green by mistake. Once I had started that way, though, I finished it that way. That means I have more of the olive one left over.

Here it is:This cardigan is presented in two colourways, and I bought the yarn to knit the blue one for Mr. Math. It is, however, entirely possible that I will knit it for myself, now that I know what size to make.

Before it was blocked, this sweater wanted to be corrugated, because of the alternating bands of stockinette and reverse stockinette. I was amazed by how much that relaxed in the blocking, and how much longer the sweater became. It really has a lovely fit.

My Ravelry project page is here.

What do you think?

Back of Roan Completed

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Deborah Cooke

So, it’s been a while since I put this fair isle project aside, but I dug it out last week (after finishing my KSH Stripe cardigan) and have now finished the back. Here it is:It’s curling a bit because it hasn’t been blocked yet, but is really a big rectangle, decreased in to a point at the top in the middle. It’s supposed to be oversized and is big – the back is 26″ wide. I took this picture outside, and the colours appear a bit more zingy than they are in real life.

The pattern is called Roan from Rowan Magazine #56. (I posted about this project when I began it, right here.) The cardigan is like a kimono and is supposed to be knit in thicker yarn. I had this Kauni Effektgarn in my stash so recalculated and cast on in this instead. This is two colourways of the Kauni, and the yarn changes colour graduallly as you knit. (The original design uses a number of colours, and the knitter changes yarns as knitting.) Because the yarn is thinner, I had to do more repeats of the band with the diamonds to get the sweater to the right length – I decided to make it a bit shorter than the pattern, to ensure I wasn’t overwhelmed by the sweater.

The two fronts together are the same shape as the back, just split down the middle. Because I want the colours to change the same way on the front and the back, I’m going to knit the fronts as one piece, then cut them apart. This is called steeking. I’ve never done a steek before, and the prospect of cutting my knitting does freak me out a bit. I have a lot of knitting to do before it’s time for that, though.

Off to cast on the fronts!

What do you think?

Balkan

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Deborah Cooke

This is a sweater I made for Mr. Math. The pattern is called Balkan and is a design by Brandon Mably for Rowan Yarns. And here’s our variation:

Mr. Math wasn’t fussed about the softness of the yarn that’s specified for this sweater—I made him a crew neck sweater of softly spun yarn once before, and his whiskers roughed up the neck ribbing. He wanted something tough this time, and he didn’t want muted colours. He picked the yarn and the colours: it’s Harrisville Highland which is a wonderful tweed yarn. I bought it on cones, which is how they put it up for weavers. The colours are Tundra and Black Cherry.

This sweater is a very trim fit, and doesn’t have much ease in the body. I had some troubles with the sleeves: they were too tight in the forearm, then too full in the upper arm, then too long overall. When I reknit them to be wider on the lower arm and narrower on the upper arm, the sleeve cap ended up too short to fit into the sweater. I knit them either three or four times, but finally, they’re right. (Lots of notes on my Ravelry project page.) I was so fed up that the pieces sat in my knitting basket for more than a month before I decided to sew it together for Christmas.

The Harrisville Highland on cones isn’t washed, so it hasn’t been fulled. I gave the finished sweater a good soak in the tub and even walked on it to full the yarn, then blocked it to size to dry. The yarn blossomed in a wonderful way, and softened as well. Because it’s a tweed yarn, it has many other colours and subtle gradations, which don’t show up in the picture above. Mr. Math loves it. He wore the sweater on Christmas Day and has worn it a lot since then because it’s been so chilly here. He says the trim fit makes it great for layering and that it’s really warm.

Skye Finished

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Deborah Cooke

You might remember me talking about a vest I was knitting for Mr. Math a few weeks ago – if not, that post is right here. The pattern is called Skye, designed by Brandon Mably, from Rowan 52. I actually knitted it without substituting the yarns (a strange and incredible thing). It uses four colours of Rowan Colourspun. I finished it last week and really like it. As a bonus, Mr. Math also really likes it (!) and it fits perfectly!

Here it is:This picture is more true to the colours than the last one. What do you think?

Colourspun Skye

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Deborah Cooke

A few years ago, I saw a men’s vest pattern in a Rowan Magazine and really liked it. I didn’t rush out to order the yarn, and by the time I thought I might knit it, two of the colours required for the pattern had been discontinued. I figured that vest wasn’t meant to be. But a little while ago, I noticed that there were a few balls of those very same discontinued colours available at an online store. I ordered them up, and because I really like this yarn, I cast on the vest despite having so many other projects on my needles.

Here’s the completed back:The pattern is called Skye and it was designed by Brandon Mably. I seem to knit a lot of Brandon Mably designs for Mr. Math. The yarn is called Colourspun, and it’s a very soft yarn. It’s the same yarn used in my Icicle Mitts. The discontinued colours are the red and the brown – all of the colours have long variegations, so it looks as if there are more than four colours used. (Red, brown, green, then beige for the grid.) They also shade into each other at some points, which I like a lot. I think it’s going to be pretty warm, giving that the beige wool is carried across the back of each square. (You can see that at the top, where it’s curled back a bit.) Mr. Math likes it a lot, though, so I’m sure he’ll wear it.

What do you think?

Alive & Knitting

Knitting and other tangled webs we weave

Category Archives: Fair Isle

Navelli in Koigu

Navelli, Nightshift and Audrey

Vogue Knitting Fair Isle Hat

VK Bohus Inspired Pullover

The Gates of Moria Mittens

Bute Completed

Back of Roan Completed

Balkan

Skye Finished

Colourspun Skye