Cameo

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve just finished another shawl – this one is a wonderful pattern. I love garter stitch and alternating stripes. This one also has a bit of an unusual construction. It was an easy knit.

As usual, the flash has blasted out the colour – this is Madeline Tosh Merino Light and the colours are incredible, both richer and deeper than shows in this image. The colours I used were Firewood and Wicked. The pattern is called Cameo – this is the Ravelry link as the designer doesn’t seem to have a website of her own.

What do you think? I’m quite happy with this one!

Verdandi

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

You might remember that the three Norns have cameo appearances in my Dragon Diaries YA trilogy. While I was writing that series, I saw a trio of shawl patterns saluting the three Wyrd sisters, and knew I had to knit them. I’ve just finished the first one. It’s called Verdandi – she’s the sister in charge of what is. She’s the first sister to appear in my series of books and turns up in Flying Blind, where she was knitting snowdrifts.

Here’s the shawl:And here’s a detail shot of the tip:
The yarn is Fleece Artist Nyoni, which I love to bits, and I used 700m of it. I cast off in Knitpicks Palette in Bark because I ran out of the Nyoni. There are beads added to the hem, plus I made the shawl bigger by adding repeats of the charts. It’s 39″ down the spine of the shawl. I’m not sure how to measure the wings, but they’re big. The design is intended to evoke the leaves on the world tree Yggdrasil – here’s a link to the designer’s website page for this pattern.

I’m quite pleased with this shawl. The pattern was easy to follow, too.

What do you think?

Striped Cropped Cardigan

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

Well, I finally finished the reknitting of the sleeves on my stripey Noro cardigan. As you might remember, I had to reknit the sleeves. While that might have gone fairly quickly, there was a necessary period of mourning – I had to chuck it in the corner and sulk about the frogging and reknitting for a few weeks before I could actually do it.

Finally, I’d brooded enough and just did it.

This week, I’ve been seaming it up and even though that’s not quite done, I’ll show it to you today.

I’m still not entirely thrilled about the sleeves, which is why I haven’t finished the seaming. (It also hasn’t been blocked yet.) Where it changes from dark blue to light blue at the top of the sleeves, there are a number of decreases to shape the sleeves. Now that it’s assembled, I’m wondering if there are too many too soon. On the other hand, if I decrease more slowly, I could end up with a lot of fabric (like a dolman sleeve) around the underarm and that bulk wouldn’t be welcome. I’ll have to baste the sleeves and try it on to be sure.

Fingers crossed that it looks good, because I really don’t want to knit the sleeves again.

What do you think?

Garter Stripe Square Bag

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve had a nasty cold this past week and a half, one that didn’t want to go away. It wasn’t so bad that I could stand to spend days in bed (I have to be at death’s door for that) but was sufficiently bad that I couldn’t write new work. I’ve been doing administrivia – editing, proofreading, updating links etc. etc. – and got pretty much fed up with this particular cold virus.

Even worse, it also been affected my knitting. I couldn’t knit lace, or do any armhole shaping, or knit anything that required much thinking. I didn’t think I’d finish things well in this state – my stripey Noro cardigan is done, with the sleeves reknitted, but grafting those side seams has been beyond my abilities and energy level. I also wasn’t able to recalculate – I had started to seam together my Knit, Swirl cardigan, only to discover that the sleeves are too narrow. I need to re-plan, frog, and reknit the sleeves, but not while this virus was in residence. All my plans to finish everything before casting on something new were trashed by this cold.

Garter stitch has been suiting me pretty well. Knit, knit, knit. Easy, peasy. I didn’t have anything like that on my needles, so needed a plan.

Since my Noro cardigan is done, I have a lot of Noro Kureyon Sock left over in one colourway. (#289) It’s all bits and ends, though, because I needed to match the colour sequence and there were breaks in the yarn. I was going to put this in to my stash for the Sock Hexagon afghan, but it seemed like a lot of one colourway. I had a look in that stash and found even more Noro sock yarn….soooooooo, a plan was born. Altogether, I gathered over 500g of ends of Noro Kureyon Sock and Noro Silk Garden Sock.

A big chunk of it is becoming a stripey tote bag.

This pattern is for a felted bag, made of striped squares assembled in a clever way. Here’s the creator’s blog post about it – it’s in Japanese, but has lots of pictures. What a cute bag! There are some English instructions on Ravelry, right here. Essentially, you cast on an odd number of stitches and knit a square with the same number of ridges – 25 stitches knit to 25 ridges, for example. You make 22 squares and join them as indicated, add an I-cord handle and trim, and felt it. (If you’re on Ravelry, there’s a project by another knitter who used Kauni Effektgarn and the entrelac technique to create two gorgeous bags, right here.) It appealed to me to make a project not just from stash, but from leftovers. There will still be plenty of scraps for the Sock Hexagon afghan.

I started this project with alternating stripes of Noro – 2 rows of A, 2 rows of B, 2 rows of A, etc. – and even managed to mess that up a few times. That tells you all you need to know about my recent mental state. (It might have been the cold, or the cold medication. Either way, I cast on with birch Brittany needles, not really sharp pointy ones.)

So, I sorted out the Noro stash and chose a dark colourway of Silk Garden Sock leftover from my Inky Spider Shawl, to alternate with Kureyon Sock in #180. I have a lot of this, in bits and ends, and think it must have been from my infatuation with Kureyon Sock when the yarn was originally introduced. I knit a lot of socks for myself in it because I loved the colours – it looks like I bought a second ball in this colourway to make the socks match – but it really wasn’t good sock yarn for me. Those socks were like butterflies: beautiful, admired, and short-lived.

I started at the bottom of the bag, because it made most sense for it to be dark, and the central four squares there. I knit each one, then pick up the next one along the side to carry on. Seaming as I go. That works for me. Here it is so far:

The black and turquoise striped square was the first one and the bottom needle is pointing at the middle of the bag. Those are the four squares that will make the base. The dark Silk Garden Sock is gone, so I’ve moved into the #289 left over from my Noro cardi. There’s enough #180 to knit for a while. Things are getting brighter now. I’ll knit five on the top, then five on the bottom, just like the schematic.

What do you think? Does your knitting change with your health and welfare? Do you have “comfort knitting”, too?

Wingspan 2

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

I just finished another version of that Wingspan shawl. This one is in Noro Silk Garden Sock and used two balls:I had enough yarn to do ten triangles this time. And I figured out what I’d done wrong the last time – the pattern says to Slip 1, Knit 2 before placing the traveling marker after each work and turn. I only saw the K2, so my W&T’s on the first shawl are two stitches apart. They should be three stitches apart, as they are here. Doing it the other way made each triangle wider, but also made the shawl wider. This version is more like a scarf.

It does have beads at the base of each triangle, one on every fourth row on the second stitch in from the edge.

I like it a lot. What do you think?

Inspired by the Kleks Shawl

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

Last fall, I came across a wonderful lace yarn in my LYS. It was dyed to change colours once over the length of the yarn. The yarn is Knitwhits Freia Handpaints Freia Ombré Lace, and the colourway I chose – Grapevine – changes from purple through brown and green to chartreuse. I thought it would look great in a semi-circular shawl – crescents of colour – and was inspired by the Kleks Shawl. This is the Ravelry link for the Kleks.

I really like the look of this shawl, with its alternating bands of stockinette stitch and bramble stitch, but wanted a shawl that was a wedge out of a circle with a rounded neck – like the letter C. It’s clear from the projects shown on Ravelry that the Kleks doesn’t have that shape. I also was confused by the increase instructions in the shawl pattern (it’s easy to confuse me about such things) and noticed that many Ravellers had issues with the stitch counts.

So, I made a plan for some variations. This is how my shawl came out:

The colour is richer than that, but the flash did what it does. The crescent is about 18″ deep, so the full width is roughly 45″. It falls to my elbows and comes together nicely at the front. I love it!

Here’s how I knit this variation. You need a multiple of 4 for the bramble pattern, plus there are 3 stitches on each border. It made sense to me to cast on a multiple of 4 plus 6 stitches, then to always increase stitches in multiples of 4. If I can avoid counting stitches, I will!

(Actually, in order to make the lace pattern come out symmetrically, you need a multiple of 8 stitches plus 4, plus the borders, but I missed that bit. You might want to modify the counts if asymmetry troubles you.)

Here we go!

Collar:
Cast on 86 stitches.
Knit 1 row. Knit 5 more rows, slipping the first stitch on each row. (This gives a neater edge.)

First Stockinette Stitch Band – You’ll add 8 stitch markers in this band.
19 rows in total
Row 1 – Slip 1, K2, K8, M1, place marker, * K9, M1, place marker. Repeat from * six times. K to end. (94 stitches.)
Row 2 – Slip 1, K2, purl to last three stitches, K to end.
Row 3 – Slip 1, knit to end.
Row 4 – as Row 2.

Repeat this four row sequence four times, as follows:
Row 5, 9, 13 and 17 – Slip 1, K2, *K to marker, M1 before marker. Repeat from * seven times. K to end.

After each increase row, your counts will be as follows:
Row 5 (102 stitches)
Row 9 (110 stitches)
Row 13 (118 stitches)
Row 17 (126 stitches)

Remove the stitch markers anytime after Row 17. You’ll need them in different places for the next stockinette stitch band. End after Row 19, with the wrong side facing. (Yes, you knit the pattern stitch on the wrong side.)

First Lace Panel – 15 rows in total. This is one repeat more than the pattern specifies, which is why I have 15 rows instead of 11. Work in trinity stitch (or bramble stitch. Call it whichever) as specified in pattern, keeping three border stitches in garter stitch. There are no increases in this panel.

Second Stockinette Stitch Panel – This time, we’ll put 16 markers in the work.
19 rows in total.
Row 1 – Slip 1, K2, K7, M1, place marker, * Repeat from * fifteen times. K to end. (142 stitches.)
Row 2 – Slip 1, K2, purl to last three stitches, K to end.
Row 3 – Slip 1, knit to end.
Row 4 – as Row 2.

Repeat this four row sequence four times, as follows:
Row 5, 9, 13 and 17 – Slip 1, K2, *K to marker, M1 before marker. Repeat from * fifteen times. K to end.

After each increase row, your counts will be as follows:
Row 5 (158 stitches)
Row 9 (174 stitches)
Row 13 (190 stitches)
Row 17 (206 stitches)

Remove the stitch markers anytime after Row 17. You’ll need them in different places for the next stockinette stitch band. End after Row 19, with the wrong side facing.

Second Lace Band – as first lace band.
15 rows total.

Third Stockinette Band
Following the same increase strategy, add 24 stitches to every increase row. You’ll end with 326 stitches.

Third Lace Band – as first lace band.
15 rows total.

Fourth Stockinette Band
Following the same increase strategy, add 36 stitches per increase row. I forgot to count the stitches after this one.

Fourth Lace Band – as first lace band.
15 rows total.

Border
In an ideal universe, I would have had enough yarn to mirror the 19 rows of stockinette stitch followed by 6 rows of garter stitch at the collar. I was running out of yarn, though, so had to adapt. I worked 3 rows of garter stitch after the last last panel, putting beads on the second row, on every second stitch. I didn’t have enough yarn left to cast off (there’s about a meter of it) so I knit a row with some Kidsilk Haze in BlackCurrant that was in my bits and ends, then cast off with that. For the cast off edge, I used a crochet hook – this is the cast-off from the Fiddlesticks Knitting Peacock Shawl, which I liked on it. *Work 3 stitches together, place bead, chain 5, repeat from * to end, work last chain into last stitch and bind off. (I was short one stitch at the end, but just worked 2 together before the last loop instead of 3.)

And that’s it! What do you think?

Purple Socks

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

I haven’t shown you any knitting for a while, but today, that changes. I’ve finished a shawl, but it needs to be blocked. I’m not sure how I’ll manage that with the house at sixes and sevens, but maybe I’ll manage it before next Friday. I’ve finished the knitting of a cowl and it’s been waiting to have its buttons sewn on. I started to sew together a sweater that’s been patiently awaiting my attention, only to discover that my suspicions about the sleeves were right – they’re too long and too narrow. (Clearly, there’s a sleeve troll loose in my knitting projects. Remember that I had to frog the sleeves on my Stripey Noro sweater, too. Until recently, I didn’t even know there was a sleeve troll, but you learn something new all the time.)

I did finish this pair of socks – and they’re purple, too. Ta da!

Have you finished any knitting lately? I need to finish some more projects before I cast on anything new…

Wingspan 1

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

Here’s the knit I started before Christmas.

It’s from a free pattern called Wingspan. This is a really neat garter stitch shawlette – although mine came out a bit smaller than anticipated. I was only able to finish 6 wedges with my ball of Paton’s Lace, instead of the 8 that the pattern specifies. Either my gauge was way off, or the ball – which was from the mill ends – wasn’t a full ball.

I used a bit of a ball of a solid colour of Paton’s Lace for the 4 rows on the long edge, and put some beads in it to make it look less stark in contrast. This colourway is called Woodrose, and the ivory on the edge is called Vintage.

I’m quite pleased with it and am going to cast on another.

Simple Scarf

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

I’m pretty far behind on everything this month, but here’s one piece of holiday gift knitting that I’m optimistic will get finished on time. (The others will probably become 2013 birthday presents!)

This is the end of a scarf knit in Patons Lace Sequin, in the Amber colour. It’s not blocked, so the tip is curling up as yet. I’m not sure it will hold a block because of the acrylic content, but the recipient likes to toss things into the washing machine. This yarn will survive that, which is more important.

I started with 3 stitches and knit every row, increasing one stitch just inside each edge on the right side until there were 11 stitches.

After that, I knit 5, YO, knit to last 5 stitches, YO and knit to end on the right side. On the wrong side, I knit the first and last 5 stitches and purled the ones in between.

When I decided it was wide enough, I stopped making it wider, but continued with the YO edging. Those right side rows are K5, YO, K2tog, knit to last 7 stitches, K2tog, YO, K to end. (Because I’m fussy, I slanted the decreases – left leaning on the first one, right leaning on the second one.) The wrong sides are K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K to end.

I’ll knit until it looks long enough – with 314m in one ball, one ball will make a shorter scarf – then decrease down to a point again. I’ll have to K5, YO, K3tog, K to last 8 stitches, K3tog, YO, K to end on the right side. Once it’s down to 11 stitches, I’ll lose the YO’s and knit every row to take the garter stitch border down to a point.

My needles are 3.75mm because I didn’t want it to be very lacy. The recipient likes neutral colours, but I think the scattered sequins give it more interest.

What do you think?

Noro Cropped Jacket in Revision

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

Last week, I showed you a cardigan in garter stitch that I thought was almost done – that post is right here. It soon became clear, though, that I’d been ridiculously optimistic about its completion.

(Interestingly, Tupperman’s story has been doing much the same thing to me. That’s another story.)

At issue was the seaming. As mentioned to you last week, once the knitting was done, I would just fold the sweater in half, then seam up the shoulders and neck, then seam the underarms and sides. It was a great theory, but once I folded the sweater, I saw the problem.

Actually, there were two problems and they’re both on the back. Here’s a close-up:1/ First of all, the back has a little flange on each side at the side seam. On the left side, there are three green stripes between blue, and on the right there are three blue stripes between blue. That little tab doesn’t fit into anywhere when seaming up the underarms. Apparently, I should have added stitches from the top of that flange when I picked up the stitches for the sleeves. Oops! I had left the stitches live for the sleeves from the fronts and back, and my count came out correct without picking up anything from those bits. I was thinking it might be a gusset, but it can’t be.

I don’t really want a little flappy bit at each side seam.

2/ Have a peek at the collar and shoulder seams. That little Christmas tree shape should be sewn up. If you look on the right side of the image, it’s more clear that the back shoulder seam is too long to be matched to the front shoulder seam. It could be eased in – garter stitch does that pretty well – but my impression was that there was too much to ease. It might end up more like a gather, which isn’t a good thing at the shoulder. (Most of us don’t have puffy bits there. I don’t and I’m glad.) This likely happened because I just knit too many rows on the back for the shoulder, possibly because the movie was at such a good bit I lost count. (Feh.)

So. What to do? There were two choices.

1/ Frog the sleeves, frog part of the back to make the shoulder section shorter, pick up the sleeve stitches for the whole length and reknit the sleeves.

Not an appealing option.

Or 2/ Cheat.

Both issues are with the back, and I had live stitches on both edges of the back. Remember I told you about knitting upside down? Well, this looked like another great opportunity put that technique to work. I thought I’d take one row apart at the shoulder, narrow the back, delete the flange, then reknit the pieces together without ever unraveling the sleeves. My intent was to remove about 4 garter stitch ridges from the back. This would also fix another detail that was bugging me – the backs ended on the dark teal at the shoulder seam. The fronts ended at the bright turquoise in the contrast colour. By pure coincidence, the contrast colour ended at the same bright turquoise on the back, but the extra two rows of teal meant it didn’t look like the pieces matched when joined for the sleeve.

The problem with cheating? It would make the body of the sweater 4 to 5″ narrower in the body. That meant it wouldn’t fit me. It’s a trim-fitting cardigan, without a ton of ease. I wasn’t going to do this much work and end up with a sweater that didn’t fit.

So, I frogged the sleeves. I’ve fixed the backs and am knitting the sleeves all over again. I’m trying to be a Big Strong Knitter and just fix this – instead of chucking it into my knitting basket to fester for a year or so while I sulk about it – so we’ll see how that goes. Right now, I’ve finished those two shoulder wedges and am knitting down, knitting both sleeves simultaneously. I took advantage of the opportunity to rewind the yarn (again) and continue the colourway in order. The shoulder wedges are now blue.

It seems very fitting that I called this sweater ‘Compulsion’ in my Ravelry projects!

As consolation, I cast on a scarf for a Christmas gift, which I can’t possibly mess up. It’s in Patons Lace Sequin and I’m going to knit until it’s long enough. (Quite intellectually demanding, this project.) The colour is Amber, which is kind of taupe, because it’s for a person who likes taupe a lot. This is also a person who doesn’t like to handwash things and can’t wear wool, so the acrylic is the way to go. I’m liking the sparkles and will show you next week.

Alive & Knitting

Knitting and other tangled webs we weave

Cameo

Verdandi

Striped Cropped Cardigan

Garter Stripe Square Bag

Wingspan 2

Inspired by the Kleks Shawl

Purple Socks

Wingspan 1

Simple Scarf

Noro Cropped Jacket in Revision