Spector in Mad Tosh Merino Light

Posted on August 19, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

Spector is a pattern by Joji Locatelli, a top-down pullover with some stitch detail on the yoke. It also uses four different colours to create a gradient. The pattern is designed to use Madeline Tosh Merino Light and for once, I’m using the specified yarn.

Here are my choices for the gradient. The colourways, from right to left, are Spicewood, Saffron, Simmer Pot and Red Phoenix. MadTosh Merino Light for Deborah Cooke's Spector That Simmer Pot is really something and the photograph doesn’t do it justice. I bought it on a whim. Here’s the page on Ravelry that shows it in stashes – because many Ravellers are much better photographers than I am. (I don’t see the colourway on the MadTosh website.)

And here’s the beginning of my yoke. I’ve started the first gradient change and am supposed to split the yoke for the sleeves. I’ve put it on a thread to try it on first, which is the wonderful opportunity of knitting top-down sweaters.

Spector by Joji Locatelli knit in MadTosh Merino Light by Deborah Cooke It seems that this sweater is supposed to tug down, to make a scoop neck. When I tried it on at this point, it seems too soon to split for the sleeves as it’s challenging to tug it down enough for it to reach my underarms. My gauge is spot-on. On Ravelry, people have commented on how stretchy it is and how well it fits. Hmm. I’m small in the shoulders, so this should work. Hmm. I decided to knit a litte more before splitting for the underarms, since I prefer more of a round neck and I dislike tight sweaters. I ended up knitting another 3/4″.

I’d just started the change to the second colour in this picture and you can see a teeny bit of it at the bottom of the yoke. I did the first round of bud stitches incorrectly, just below the ribbing for the neck, but I did them consistently 🙂 so I’m not going to frog back.

When the yoke is split for the underarms, there’s a neat little trick to turn the work inside out, so the body is mostly knit instead of mostly purled. I’m not doing that, as I don’t mind purling and I think there might be a gauge difference.

I also did some recalculations for dividing the body and sleeves because the pattern warns that the rib stitch might not line up. Of course, I want it to so I made some changes. I’m making the L or the fourth size. Instead of beginning the division at the marker, I worked 2 stitches first (P2), then put 66 stitches on a holder instead of 68. I cast on 6 stitches, placed a marker, then cast on 6 more. (This is two repeats of the ribbing pattern. The instructions are to cast on 7 PM and co 7 more.) Then I worked 125 for the front instead of 122, put 66 on a holder, cast on 6 stitches, placed a marker, then cast on 6 more. I worked to the end of the row, then removed the end-of-row marker and worked to the middle of the underarm in pattern. That’s the new beginning of the round.

Because I was in the middle of a colour transition, I alternated between the two colours from the old marker to the new one, then continued in the specified transition.

Instead of 68-122-28-102, I ended up dividing my stitches 66-125-66-103 for the sleeve-front-sleeve-back. With 12 sts cast on at each underarm instead of 14, my total stitch count is still 252, as the pattern specifies. Ha.

Now, it’s TV knitting. Onward!

Toe-Up and Cuff-Down Socks

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

Things have been quiet here, and I apologize for that. I’ve been finishing a book (one that doesn’t want to end) and trying to complete some knitting projects, too.

I finished these socks, finally, but still don’t like the feel of the yarn. It’s Estelle Sock Twins, which comes in two balls, each with the same gradient. (That’s a Ravelry link.) I found the yarn splitty.

It looks like a gradient, but the colour transitions are quick: I think it’s more like steps of colour instead of a steady gradation. You can see the change from the last blue bit to the dark orange in the third stripe from the top on the right: the blue/orange just ends. The finished socks look the same, so I’ll just use the old picture: Socks knit in Estelle Sock Twins knit by Deborah Cooke I knit them toe-up because I wanted to use up all the yarn in the gradient. This time I used the Ann Budd tutorial from Interweave Knits. It took me forever to get around to knitting the second one, because I still don’t like knitting toe-up socks. This is about the tenth pair I’ve made and I just don’t enjoy the process, no matter which pattern I use. It’s probably because I have to check the instructions all the time, while I’ve knit so many cuff-down socks that I just knit away. At any rate, they’re finally done and that’s a good thing because I got my needles back.

I cast on a new pair of cuff-down socks in Fleece Artist Trail Socks, a yummy yummy yarn, in a delicious colourway—Nightshade. (That’s a Ravelry link.) The colour hovers between brown and purple, with a few flashes of other colours that end up making a stripe.

Fleece Artist Trail Socks in Nightshade knit into socks by Deborah Cooke I’m just doing my usual sock thing, casting on 72 stitches, working 72 rows, turning the heel etc. This time I did 6×2 ribbing and added a cable twist every 12th row. It makes the counting easier to the heel, although I hadn’t planned it that way. I just wanted to mix it up a bit.

I also worked on the sleeves for my Juicy Gloss cardigan, but discovered once I’d knit one to the elbow that the sleeves would be too wide. I frogged it back and recalculated, taking an addition 8 stitches out of the sleeve at the underarm, then decreasing more rapidly than the pattern specifies. I’m reaching the elbow now and am much happier with the fit. I’ll show it to you once the first sleeve is completed.

Mr. Math’s New Vest – and Hat!

Posted on June 29, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

Sonny vest by Sarah Hatton knitted in Colourscape Chunky by Deborah Cooke When I finished my Iced in Noro Kochoran, there was a bit of wool left over. I decided to knit a vest for Mr. Math because it turns out that Noro Kochoran knits to the same tension as Rowan Colourscape Chunky. I have a book for Colourscape Chunky called Rowan Colourscape Folk. (That’s a Ravelry link.)

I’ve knit the Sonny vest by Sarah Hatton from it for Mr. Math before. That’s it at right, using Rowan Colourscape Chunky:

And here’s the Noro Kochoran one, all finished: Sonny Vest in Noro Kochoran knit by Deborah Cooke

This was a much fuzzier knit—and not the kind of thing to knit in the summer at all—but I was able to match it all up just as I wanted. I like having the red around the neckline, too.

First Snow in Noro Kochoran knit by Deborah Cooke There was a little bit of yarn left so I made a hat.

Jess by Sarah Hatton knit in Texere Olympia by Deborah Cooke This pattern is called First Snow and it’s one I use a lot. I was so busy concentrating on matching the colours that I forgot to do the increases after the ribbing: this one is a bit smaller than usual, but Mr. Math likes it better. It fits more like a watchcap. I had a pompom in dark grey, but he nixed that, so there it is.

The ten skeins of Kochoran are all used up. Yay! But, of course, I have another ten skeins stashed away in a different colourway. It has a bit of mauvey blue in it, but also a lot of grey like the first one. The Rowan book will give me some more ideas for using up the Noro. For example, I made this sweater for myself from the book, called Jess, in the same colourway as it’s illustrated in the book. I like it a lot, and am thinking I’d like a second one in the Noro Kochoran.

More Mittens in Gemstone

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

Remember those three balls of Red Heart Gemstone I found in the mill ends at Spinrite? Here they are again:

Seconds of Red Heart Gemstone

The three balls are all a little light. They should be 200g each and are closer to 140g each, which would be why they were in the mill ends. I’m knitting mittens with the free pattern from Tin Can Knits called The World’s Simplest Mittens. I finished up the ball of Flourite and got two pairs of the second largest size out of it, with a bit of yarn left over.

World's Simplest Mittens by Tin Can Knits, knit in Red Heart Gemstone by Deborah Cooke The repeat on the colour was longer than the amount of yarn needed for one ball. I just knit the four, then matched them up the best I could.

Last week, I finished up the Amethyst ball. I made two pairs of the third size, then one pair in the second size – with some stripes of Flourite, just for fun. Here they are:
World's Simplest Mittens knit in Red Heart Gemstone by Deborah Cooke It’s interesting how the mitts matched more easily, even though this was the smaller size. The repeat on the gradation must be shorter in this colourway.

Next up, the red ball – Fire Agate!

Red Heart Gemstone

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

Last week, on a beautiful sunny day, I drove up to Spinrite. Spinrite is in Listowel, Ontario. It’s a former mill for Patons, and has an outlet store. I don’t know how much yarn they spin there anymore – it seems that mostly they ball and band yarn for Patons, Bernat, Caron, Red Heart, Sugar Bush and other brands owned by Coats, which owns the mill. (You can see their yarns on the Yarnspirations site.) The outlet store has first quality yarns – mostly Patons and Bernat – for sale, as well as a lot of seconds and discontinued yarns/colours. I’ve bought a lot of seconds there over the years and quite often the issue is the weight of the ball: it’s too big or too small. One of the ladies there told me that these balls are the result of setting up the balling machines. They also stock an excellent range of needles in the brand I like (Prym) so when I need needles, I’ll often go up there and have a poke around the seconds bins while I’m there.

I found three balls that looked interesting on the seconds table on that last visit. Part of the fun (for me) is figuring out what the seconds yarns are. They don’t have bands, although they’re broadly separated by fiber – there’s a table for acrylic (although some blends slide in there) and one for cottons. The wool is usually in a box under one table since the ladies separate it out as they’re adding yarn to the tables. These three balls were all the same type of yarn – it was a marl spun of two gradient plies, bulky weight, a big ball and probably acrylic. I couldn’t find it in the store, but found it on the website when I got home. Seconds of Red Heart Gemstone

As if often the case, the colours are a bit off in the image. The red is much richer and deeper (for some reason, red always skews pink in pictures with this camera) and the mauve is deeper, too. The colour of the bottom ball is pretty true. It’s Red Heart Gemstone, which should be a 200g ball. These balls are all between 140g and 145g. I’m guessing that these colourways are Amethyst, Fire Agate and Flourite.

You can see that I’ve already knit one mitten from the Flourite. The second one isn’t going to match perfectly, which is making me twitch a bit (but not enough to break the yarn and discard this rosy section.) Mittens are my comfort knitting. I like knitting mittens when I’m thinking about other things because I don’t have to think about my knitting much. Also, mittens are finished faster than socks, especially when I use a bulky yarn like this one. I often to use an old Patons pattern, but it’s for worsted weight yarn. A couple of years ago, I found this fabulous pattern on Ravelry – The World’s Simplest Mittens by Tin Can Knits. This pattern has instructions for basic mittens in five sizes in four weights of yarn (fingering, DK, worsted and bulky). It’s a good clear pattern and it’s free. Here’s the Ravelry link and here’s the Tin Can Knits website.

Here are the first of my mittens:

If you’re interested in visiting Spinrite, you can find more information about the store and their tent sales, as well as directions, on their website right here. You can see the mill from the store, but I don’t think they offer tours. The stock of seconds and discontinued yarns changes all the time, so you never know what you’re going to find. That’s part of the adventure.

Comfort Fade Cardigan Completed

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Deborah Cooke

In moving my posts over and updating their links, I found some gaps. Here’s one: I’d said I would show you my completed Comfort Fade Cardigan in Rowan Colourspun, but never did. Here are the older posts: Comfort Fade Cardigan 1 and Comfort Fade Cardigan 2.

And here’s the finished cardigan: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke I’ve worn this a fair bit. It is odd that it doesn’t have a front fastening, although I’m sure I could add one. I do think I mucked up the sleeve decreases as they’re narrow – fine for wearing but less fine for pushing up to the elbow as I’m inclined to do with my sweaters. They’re also a bit long for me. And I know that I somehow did too many short rows on the collar: it’s quite substantial! That makes it snuggly, though – and is one of the hazards of knitting anything other than plain rows while watching tv.

It is a pretty cardigan, though, and a warm one. It’s a complete bonus that I knit it out of stash yarn! What do you think?

Dragon Scale Fingerless Mitts

Posted on November 29, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

Although I have many (many!) projects on the go, sometimes I like to take a break and make something quick. This week, I was tempted by this Dragon Scale Fingerless Mitts pattern. You can find it on Ravelry as a free download, right here.

It’s a crochet pattern, which is unusual for me, but I’ve been intrigued by the Crocodile Stitch for a long time. That’s the bit that looks like scales. I really like Crocodile Stitch done in a yarn with long colour changes – check out this backpack in Kauni Effektgarn.

I bought Red Heart Unforgettable in the colourway Rainforest, because I thought the colour gradations would be long enough. The first glove didn’t come out quite as I expected – longer colour changes would have been better. This stitch eats yarn.

Here’s the first one:You can see that the colour was changing within the row, so the effect is less striped. The mitt is a bit smaller than I’d expected and it extends further over the fingers.

Here’s the other side:The pattern suggests 8 chain stitches for the thumb opening but that seemed small. I did 12, then added another cluster of DCs. That improved the fit of the mitt – it would have been too snug for me otherwise. This first mitt took 31g of yarn. There are knots in the ball (grrr) which interrupt the colour progression. I’ll try to match the second one but we’ll see.

Because there are scales on the inside of the palm, this isn’t a mitt to wear when actually doing anything. I also think it would be cool if the scales went up the back of the mitt further. I’m going to think about it while making the match to this one. I bought a second ball of this yarn in another colourway and will try an experiment with that.

What do you think?

Comfort Fade Cardigan 2

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve been working away steadily on my Comfort Fade Cardigan and have an update – it’s almost done!

The previous post on the sweater is here. I had finished the yoke and was comparing the fit to other sweaters in my closet. Here it is after I finished the body. (This one is top-down, so I did the bottom ribbing last.) It was tough to confirm the fit because the collar ribbing is so wide – at this point, when I tried it on, it seemed to be falling off my shoulders. Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke I picked up the stitches to do the neck next (before the sleeves) to manage my yarn. I didn’t have enough of all the colourways, so decided to do the neck, then use half of whatever was left for each sleeve.

When I picked up the stitches for the neck, I forgot that the right side of the cardigan shows the purl side of the reverse stockinette. I also followed the directions and picked up with the first colour, which is my lightest one. At the bottom is my pick-up from the wrong side, which doesn’t look good on what will be the right side. At the top is my pick-up from the right side, which looks better.

Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke I did decide to frog and reverse the order of the colourways on the collar, picking up with my last colour, which is the brown. It blends in better and looks neater. See?

The collar is shaped with short rows for this sweater and it’s huge. In the picture above, you can see the wedges of short rows that add to the depth of the collar. It’s quite squishy and luxurious.

I cheated on the sleeves and knitted them inside out. (Ha. This makes me feel so clever.) This way, I could knit them in the round instead of having the purl them. The only thing is that I had to remember to leave the ends on the side facing me, not the opposite side as usual. Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

The sleeves are a little long and I didn’t finish all of the decreases as specified. Here’s the almost-completed sweater – I balled up the other sleeve in the shoulder and you can see one of my DPNs peeking out there: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

I couldn’t crop out that wonderful beam of sunlight. It’s so nice to see the sun again!

I’ll take some more pictures when the sweater is done. All I have to finish is that cuff. What do you think?

Comfort Fade Cardigan 1

Posted on January 25, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

There is a new(ish) knitting trend to knit with colours dyed in a progressing, fading from one to the next. For me, this started with Andrea Mowbry’s shawl Find Your Fade, which was published in December 2016 and is enormously popular. There are over 8000 projects on Ravelry! Andrea has designed other knitwear that features this kind of colour shift, and I’m knitting one right now.

Her Comfort Fade Cardi is an open-front, shawl collar cardigan, which is knit from the top down. It has raglan sleeves and requires four colours to fade into each other over the length of the cardigan. Since I always find it a bit dull to knit cardigans in stockinette stitch, I thought that watching the colours might motivate me. (It worked for my Hebrides cardigan, knit in striped KidSilk Haze.)

For this project, I raided my stash and chose my leftovers of Rowan Colourspun. I had knitted Mr. Math a vest in this yarn, then bought more to make myself a sweater when it was discontinued. Here’s a post about his vest. The pattern is called Skye.

So, in my stash, I have a russet, a brown, a green and a taupe in the Colourspun. This yarn has a gradual gradation and is kind of heathered. I thought it would be a good choice for a fade. I don’t have the right quantities that the pattern calls for – I have enough yardage, but more russet than I need and less brown. The yarn is discontinued, so I’ll work it out.

Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke Here’s the cardigan as of last Sunday. I’d just divided for the arms. You can see that the ribbing for the neckline has a good bit of space to fill – this sweater is designed to be worn open, so the fronts with the ribbing will just meet. It’s also designed so that the purl side is worn out, which makes it look even more blended.

I used the taupe first, then the green and have just started to fade into the russet. think it’s funny that the brightest bit of the taupe fell in the last two rows of it after fading into the green. 🙂

Here’s a look at the many colours in this yarn – I’ve been knitting more since the other pix were taken on Sunday, so it’s longer now: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

At the right is the taupe, fading into the green – which you can see is striping on its own – then into the russet. At the left, I’ve just started to transition to the brown.

I have a hard time getting a good fit with top-down raglans, but I think I’ve finally figured out why – which means I know what to do about it in future. I hadn’t finished the specified increases but it looked big, so I took it off the needles to try it on. (This is a very cool thing about top-down raglans – you can try them on as you go.) Then I compared it with a sweater I already have, which fits – in this case, one of my Hebrides in KSH. The Hebrides has a closer fit and is in a finer yarn, but you can see that it was definitely time to break for the sleeves. If I’d knit those remaining 12 rows, the sweater would have been droopy. Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry knit in Rowan Colourspun by Deborah Cooke

And here’s where I had my Eureka moment. See how wide the neckline is compared to the other sweater? Of course, the style is different, but when I try it on, it’s trying to fall off my shoulders. I’m narrow in the shoulders and when I sew, I always cut a smaller size above the bust to accommodate that. I should be casting on a smaller size than the one specified for my bust when I knit a raglan sweater for exactly the same reason. Aha!

I’m not going to frog this and start over, though. It’ll be a little slouchier than the original design, but I really like it. I have a feeling I’ll be knitting this pattern again, and will incorporate my changes then. In the meantime, I can fix another sweater that’s been waiting on me because I know what to do.

What do you think of this cardi so far?

Lizard Ridge Afghan Completed

Posted on August 24, 2018 by Deborah Cooke

I finished the border on my Lizard Ridge afghan, knit in Noro Kureyon. I used some Berella Muskoka that was in my stash, in the colourway Amethyst Heather.

I was concerned that the yarn would look too smooth in contrast to the Noro, but am very happy with the result. Here it is! Lizard Ridge by Laura Aylor knit in Noro Kureyon by Deborah Cooke

Lizard Ridge by Laura Aylor knit in Noro Kureyon by Deborah Cooke This is the edging from the pattern. It’s a nice shell stitch, which fits perfectly with the waves.