Finished Shawl

Posted on March 16, 2022 by Deborah Cooke

I finished my shawl, knit from the Rowan subscribers’ kit! I told you about this in December when I cast it on. Here it is on the blocking needles:

Lace Scarf by Sarah Hatton knit in Rowan Pure Wool 4ply by Deborah Cooke

It’s BIG! It blocked out to 18″ by 83″, with ten repeats. I used up all but 10g of the wool.

Here’s a detail image on the blocking needles:

The colour of the yarn is a greyed blue, quite pretty. It looks more grey here and more blue in the first post. In reality, it’s in between.

The shawl is supposed to be knit in a circle, with the ends grafted together, but I knew I’d wrestle with wearing that. Instead, I knit 6 rows of garter stitch at the beginning and at the end. I also increased the selvedge stitches from two stitches to three. I would have liked to have done another repeat of the first motif at the end – this second picture actually shows the cast-off end – to make it more symmetrical but there wasn’t enough yarn. I could have added a repeat of the second motif at the beginning if I’d thought of it then, but we’re going to go with asymmetry at this point.

My Ravelry project page is here.

I found this a nice knit, although it got to be quite a pile in my lap by the end. The lace stitches were easy although I didn’t quite memorize them, and the wool showed them off well.

It’s interesting that the shadow in the snow makes the picture look blurred. The colour is more true in this shot. I’m hoping this will be the last chance for a while to toss a project in the snow for pictures.

On to the next project waiting to be finished!

Lace Scarf from Rowan

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

I’m literally stitches away from finishing my Stripes pullover, but will miss the chance to take a picture of it in time for this post. I’ll show it to you next week instead. It took a bit longer because I had to rip back one sleeve – there was a join in the yarn that made the gradation change too quickly. Once the second sleeve was knitted, that became obvious and (of course) I wanted them to match, so I frogged it back.

Since I’ve been knitting in the kitchen, I cast on something a little more interesting. This is a lace scarf designed by Sarah Hattan in Rowan Pure Wool 4ply. It was the Rowan subscribers’ gift in (gah!) 2009/2010. Yes, I’ve had it in my stash all that time.

This was a gift for buying an annual subscription to the magazine. It came with 6 balls of yarn and two patterns – there was enough yarn to make either one. Incredibly, there aren’t any pictures of this online. Give me a minute…..

Here’s the pattern card that came with the yarn. MIne is a bit faded:

I’m making the one on the right, which is supposed to be joined in a circle, like a huge cowl. That didn’t seem very practical, so I worked 6 rows of garter stitch instead of doing a provisional cast-on. I’ll do 6 rows of garter stitch at the other end, making it a big scarf instead. You’re supposed to work 2 stitches in garter at either edge, but I changed that to 3 – a two-stitch border always looks a bit lonely to me.

Why did I have this stashed for so long? Well, I wasn’t sure I wanted a big scarf or cowl. I’d thought the wool would make a nice little sweater, but it really isn’t enough yardage for that and the colour (Eau-de-Nil) is an odd grey-blue that is pretty but hard to match with anything. I decided it was time to just knit it up and be done with it.

I like the pattern and it’s pretty easy knitting – just not tv knitting. That’s the second ball of yarn, so it will be pretty long when it’s done, probably similar dimensions to my Earth Stripe Wrap (but with fewer ends to work in! Ha!)

I’ve had a few other Rowan subscribers’ gifts. This was what I did with the six balls of Rowan Denim – I made a bag, just in not the pattern that was included. I still have the yarn gift for the Judy beret. (That’s a Ravelry link.) It’s bright pink. Maybe I should knit that up next.

A Shrug for Barbie

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

I was tempted into knitting for dolls by my friend, Jen, and this is dangerous territory. It’s really addictive to knit teeny tiny projects – the assumption is that projects will be finishing quickly, but I’m discovering that my need to get it “just right” means these little sweaters take a while. (We’ll talk about sewing for dolls later. I’m further down that rabbit hole.)

Jen has a Blythe doll and I knit this little shrug for her.

Shrug for Blythe knit by Deborah Cooke in Kidsilk Haze

This is extremely teeny and I wish I’d put something in the photograph for scale before sending it off. It’s maybe 2″ wide. The pattern is a free pattern on Ravelry called Shrug for Blythe, and it’s a great pattern. I found the instructions very clear and the results adorable – with no seaming! I knit it in some leftover Elann Silken Kydd, which is discontinued (that’s a Ravelry link) and a lot like Rowan Kidsilk Haze.

Bacall, a shrug pattern from Rowan designed by Sarah Hatton

I tried this sweater on Barbie, because I don’t collect Blythe dolls, and it was too small. The length was good and the back width, but the fronts were small. Barbie definitely has more of a bust than Blythe! I played around with the stitch counts and made a few more changes, too – I wanted a shrug king of like Bacall, a Rowan pattern for actual people. (The Rowan site has been redesigned and I’m not sure this pattern is even there anymore, so that’s a Ravelry link. It was originally published in Rowan 44, and was a free download for a while.)

This shrug was designed by Sarah Hatton – I think the sample garment is too broad in the shoulders for the model shown here (or maybe too wide in the neck), but I love the roll collar.

I knit the long-sleeved version of it in Kidsilk Aura for myself, and it’s a wonderful squishy soft warm sweater. (Yes, I actually used the specified yarn. It happens sometimes.)

Here’s my finished sweater and here’s my Ravelry project page.

Bacall by Sarah Hatton knit by Deborah Cooke in Rowan Kidsilk Aura

And here’s my modified shrug in Rowan Kidsilk Haze, adjusted to fit Barbie:

Shrug knit for Barbie by Deborah Cooke in Rowan Kidsilk Haze

It has cap sleeves and a garter stitch collar. There’s also a loop and button closure at the front. The collar can be rolled as above, or lifted so it makes an opera collar. See?

My model, btw, is the 35th Anniversary Reproduction Barbie from 1993, the brunette version. I bought her on eBay NIB, and removed her from the box. (Yes, I am an un-boxer.) The plastic tie in her hair had disintegrated so I had to redo her hair, and the adhesive from her strapless bathing suit had also dried into a sticky mess, but I got her cleaned up. (I think she looks happier after 28 years in a box.) She’s a bit cheeky, wearing this shrug with nothing underneath, but she needs some tops and dresses. The Kidsilk Haze is really soft…

I still have a couple of tweaks to make to the pattern and will knit another one to be sure I have it right. (See how this goes?) Then she’ll need the perfect dress to wear with it…

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.

Jess

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Deborah Cooke

I seem to always have a lot of knitting projects on the go, and last winter I figured out part of the reason why that is: I tend to take on big projects. They’re either really detailed or take miles of yarn, or both, which means they take a long time to knit. In March, I decided that I needed a little break from those epic knits and planned for some instant gratification.

Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way.

This sweater is from a book called Colourscape Folk – that’s a Ravelry link – which features a Rowan yarn called Colourscape Chunky. It’s a single-ply yarn, spun in the UK, with self-striping colourways designed by Kaffe Fassett. The yarn is currently discontinued. I’ve used this book and yarn before: here’s a long vest in shades of pink that I made for myself (it’s not so hot a pink as the flash makes it look), and here’s a vest I made for Mr. Math, also from this book and in this yarn. Both of those projects were quick knits and came out well.

When this yarn was discontinued by Rowan, a very similar yarn appeared in the inventory of another British company Texere, called Olympia Chunky. British knitters on Ravelry who had fingered both yarns suggested that Olympia Chunky might really be Colourscape Chunky with new ball bands. I had knit Mr. Math’s vest from Colourscape Chunky and had stashed more for him for another cardigan, but the colourways I wanted for myself were gone. I bought Olympia Chunky for the pink vest and couldn’t tell the difference between the two yarns. I also bought Olympia Chunky for the project I’m talking about today.

Here it is:The cardigan pattern is called Jess, and it’s from that same Rowan book. I’ve even knitted it in the same colourway as shown in the book. While I’m quite happy with the finished vest, it was a nightmare to knit and far from the instant gratification I’d expected. This batch of yarn was filled with knots. The problem with a knot in a self-striping yarn is that the two ends knotted together invariably don’t match. In order to match the colour gradation, you have to sift through the other skeins, trying to find the match, then break and join the yarn there. You can see how this ends up being an inefficient use of yarn. While Colourscape Chunky did run thicker and thinner (as do many single ply yarns) this batch varied more wildly. Some stretches were less than half the thickness the yarn was supposed to be, and those stretches went on for a long time. The parts knit in that thinner yarn actually looked lacy. I knew the yarn would full some in washing, but not that much, so I had to break out those parts and seek matches, etc. etc. In the end, I used parts of 6 skeins for a cardigan that required less than 4, and ended up with mounds of bits.

I had some issues with the fit through the shoulders, too, both in terms of the sleeve cap being too short to fit well into the armhole and the armhole being too shallow for me. I think I knit the sweater from the armholes up at least three times. The interesting thing is that it feels huge, even though it has finished out to the correct size (and the correct size for me.) I think that’s because those wide garter stitch bands at the front are designed to overlap, but since the front of the cardigan hangs open, they seem to be extra width. The collar is larger and lower than I’d expected, but it’s staying the way it is now.

Of course, I finished this winter cardi just as summer is beginning! I think I’ll stick with my epic projects for a while.

Iris Cardigan

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

We haven’t talked about knitting on Fridays for a while, so it’s time to get caught up.

This is a cardigan from Rowan Magazine 45 – the pattern is called Iris.I wanted the kind of cotton cardigan that can be tossed over anything, plus can be jammed in a bag and come out looking good. It’s a bit bigger than I’d anticipated, so has a little more of a sloppy joe look, but I love it. I made some modifications, including more buttons on the front and rounding off the repeats of the various pieces to ensure that the lace pattern matched at the seams. I used the same hem pattern on the sleeves as on the sweater – in the pattern, the sleeves are hemmed with garter stitch, which seemed less consistent to me. The mods are described in more detail on my Ravelry project page.

The yarn is discontinued – it’s Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Cotton DK and Nashua has gone out of business. (Ironically, I was substituting for a Rowan yarn, and Rowan took on some of the Nashua Creative Focus yarns. Not this one, though.) I found it a bit splitty and can’t count how many times I worked back to snag a stray ply that wasn’t where it ought to have been. The colour is darker than it shows here – more of a burgundy. I’m not a huge fan of knitting with cotton, which is why this one took so long to finish, but I love wearing cotton sweaters.

I took this one to RWA National in Atlanta and it was perfect. 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!

Bacall in Kidsilk Aura

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

I’m not sure how this happened, but I ended up knitting the fuzziest and warmest sweater this summer – during a record heat wave. It’s done now, just as the weather is getting a bit cooler, so maybe there was a greater plan at work.

It still need to be blocked to make that garter-stitch border lie flat, but here it is:

The pattern is called Bacall – specifically the Long-Sleeved Bacall – from Rowan Magazine 44. Wonder of wonders, I used the specified yarn this time: it’s Kidsilk Aura, which is like KSH but thicker and fuzzier. It’s also discontinued. The colour is Pistachio.

I had some issues with the sizing on this pattern. Many of those on Ravelry who have knitted it mention that it is generously-sized – and it looks that way on both of the models in the patterns, too. I’m narrow through the shoulders and really wanted it to fit properly there. In fact, if you multiply out the number of stitches by the gauge, the finished piece will come out larger than the schematic indicates. I made the specified gauge of 4.5 stitches per inch. The back for the medium required 111 stitches, which would give a finished width of 24.5″. The schematic says that the back of the medium size will be 20″. Not with 111 stitches! So, I followed the directions for the small to get the size I wanted. It fits perfectly.

My other modifications include adding three inches to the length. It’s still a bolero jacket but it would have been too short otherwise. I’m glad it’s this long. Also, I knit the neckline edge in one piece – it’s supposed to be knit in two and seamed at the back waist, then again at the back neck. I seamed it at the waist at the left side seam and knit it all the way around.

I’m very pleased with this sweater and the way it fits. The colour is great and I’m sure I’ll wear it a lot – once it’s cooler outside!

What’s been on your needles this summer?

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?

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