marie wallin | Alive & Knitting

My quest for self-isolation – which is the same as my quest every other year – is to finish up some of the projects I have on my needles. Here’s one that’s been hanging around for a while that is finally done. (Phew.)

The pattern is called Starling Wrap, knit in Rowan Fine Art, and it’s included in the Rowan Fine Art Collection – which was published in 2013. I loved this shawl and bought both the yarn and the book immediately. Rowan Fine Art is a fingering weight yarn, so the book has patterns for socks and shawls. Here’s the Ravelry link for the book, so you can see all of the patterns. I’m not sure how readily available the book is anymore, because the yarn is discontinued.

Here’s the picture from the book of the Starling Wrap. I ordered the same colourway that was used in the sample. And here the perils of online shopping begin to show up. First, for some reason, I thought this colourway (Waxwing) would be reddish or burgundy – in fact, it’s russet, gold and brown. Second, the yarn is also spun hard, which surprised me when it arrived. I was thinking it would be more squishy. Its spin means it’s probably a really good sock yarn for socks. If I had felt it, I probably wouldn’t have bought it for a shawl, and I wouldn’t have chosen this colourway if I’d seen it in real life first. Finally, if I’d flipped through the book before buying it, I would have seen that there were no charts for the lace stitch – just oceans of text instructions. I didn’t cast on until June 2014, according to my Ravelry project page. I made my own chart of the lace stitch and things went reasonably well.

The project then stalled because Rowan chose the Starling Wrap as the free download pattern from the book – I had ordered the book from the UK just for the one pattern – and then they discontinued the yarn, which meant it was half-price everywhere. I was a bit annoyed, which is not conducive to happy knitting.

This yarn is handpainted, btw, but it’s done in a very precise way. (Or maybe it’s precise to each batch or dye lot.) In order to ensure that the variegation worked the same way with each skein, when I got near the end of a skein, I matched the variegation (and its direction) on the next skein by placing the two ends alongside each other.

Last spring, I decided to get it done. The shawl takes three 100g skeins of Rowan Fine Art: I’d knit up two skeins and was well into the third. So, I pulled out the project to just crunch through the rest of it. It’s not TV knitting and it went back in the bag again. Until last week. Out it came. I had started the tenth repeat of the pattern. I was thinking I had to do twelve and use up the yarn to get the length – lo and behold, it was already longer than the pattern specifies. I could have cast off after nine repeats, years ago! LOL So, I finished that repeat and cast it off Saturday. I gave it a good soak and blocked it, and voilà! The endless shawl is done!

Starling Wrap designed by Marie Wallin knit in Rowan Fine Art by Deborah Cooke

It’s enormous, too. I couldn’t take a picture of the whole thing, so this is less than half. And yes, the ends still need to be sewn in. Here’s a detail of the pattern, which is very pretty. The variegation in the yarn made a narrow stripe, which is nice, too.

What do you think?

Nordic Tweed pattern book from Rowan — Rowan Nordic Tweed

I can’t believe this sweater is finally done! This one has been on my needles for a long time. The scary thing about Ravelry is that your project pages will tell you exactly how long you’ve been working on something – I cast this one on in December 2016. As so often happens when I modify a pattern, I got myself into a corner (or two) and so it was put aside. And, as often happens when I lose interest in a project, when I finally pick it up again, what’s left to be done is no big deal. This sweater sat with one sleeve for the longest time, but I finished it up last week.

Rowan Colourspun for Wilhelmina knit by Deborah Cooke

The yarn is Rowan Colourspun, a discontinued yarn that I really like. (I knit the mister a vest of this – Skye – and Ice Cable Mitts in it, too. ) The colourways are Jervaulx (the red), Winterburn (the light grey) and Semer Water (the dark grey). I used Felted Tweed for the bit of blue, but really should have hunted down the Colourspun blue.

Wilhelmina is in the Nordic Tweed pattern book from Rowan. (That’s a Ravelry link.) I modified the pattern, though, because it has dropped sleeves and an angled shoulder. The original design also has no fair isle pattern on the sleeves. So, I used the stitch counts and basic shape from Bute (that’s a link to the one I knit here on the blog) with the reindeer and snowflake pattern from Wilhelmina. (That’s a Ravelry link, too.) Bute is fitted through the shoulders, a style I prefer.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, but was more complicated than I expected. The first issue is that Bute is knit with Rowan Colourspun and Rowan Felted Tweed. Since I wanted to use Colourspun, I thought it would work well. It did, but Bute is mostly Felted Tweed, which is thinner, and this sweater is almost all Colourspun – so my Reindeer sweater is bigger than my Bute, even on the same needles with the same stitch count. (And no, I didn’t swatch.) That part is okay. It’s kind of a teddy bear sweater this way.

Wilhelmina also has plain sleeves and I decided to put the snowflake pattern on them – then I decided the pattern had to match at the shoulder. More complication, more work, and really, in this yarn, the fair isle snowflakes are kind of lost. I shouldn’t have bothered – and if I hadn’t, it would have been done a lot sooner. I do like it, though, and the red is nice. It’s incredibly warm, too.

Below is the back of my Wilhelmina.

Back of Wilhelmina knit by Deborah Cooke

You can see that the Colourspun self-stripes a bit. I suppose I could have been strategic and started the red where it was darker and the grey where it was lighter, but since there are more red stitches than blue ones, that contrast wouldn’t have lasted anyway. I think the softness of the fair isle is inescapable – and kind of dreamy. I do like it. I made sure my reindeer started with light feet so their legs would be more visible.

And below is the finished cardigan. You can see what I mean about it being a teddy bear sweater!

Wilhelmina sweater knit by Deborah Cooke

The weather is dingy here, so even taking the sweater outside for a picture didn’t really show the detail well. Here’s a close up of my reindeer:

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Tag Archives: marie wallin

Starling Wrap

Wilhelmina, the Reindeer Sweater