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.

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

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.

Starling Wrap

Posted on February 3, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

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?

Finished Nightshift

Posted on January 27, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

This was a project that I feared would never be done. It’s Nightshift, a pattern by Andrea Mowry, (that’s a Ravelry link) but I knit it in Koigu KPPPM – a fingering weight yarn – instead of the aran weight yarn specified. It took a while, but it’s finally finished – and here it is!

Nightshift knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

And here’s a detail of that left corner:

Yes, I threw it in the snow for the picture. I haven’t blocked it and the cast-off edge (on the left) is rolling a bit. It’s pretty big and has fourteen repeats of the 40 row pattern.

I’ve blogged about this one a couple of times – here (August 2019) and here (September 2019) and here (June 2020). A year and a half. I’m so glad it’s done!

Nightshift shawl by Andrea Mowry knit in Koigu KPPPM by Deborah Cooke

It’s knit in five colours of Koigu KPPPM and I used up all of the yarn – that’s why there are tassels. They used up the last bits.

Here’s my project page on Ravelry with all the nitty gritty details.

What do you think?

The Wingspan Shawl

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

It’s finally finished and here it is: Wingspan shawl by Kyle Vey knit in Briar Rose Fibers Sea Pearl by Deborah Cooke It’s so big that it was hard to take a picture!

This is the Wingspan shawl, a pattern that was released this past spring. I substituted a yarn from my stash – Briar Rose Fibers Sea Pearl – because I thought it had a shine like raven’s wings. One skein was also the right quantity for the shawl. This stash-busting plan went awry, though, because I ran out of yarn and bought another skein to finish the wing tips. So, now, instead of having one skein of Sea Pearl in my stash, I have .9 skein in another colourway. C’est la vie.

I also went up a needle size, because I thought the fabric was too tight. That might be why the shawl is so big. I blocked it hard in a slight V and it’s 78″ from wingtip to wingtip.

Although it’s an amazing and unusual shawl design, it’s was less difficult to knit than I’d expected. If you’ve ever knit a chevron stitch, this is similar. I found it a little tricky at the beginning to get my bearings, but stitch markers were a big help. Once I got the hang of the pattern and could read my knitting, it became a bit repetitive (but not a TV knit for me.) The transitions – between each tier of feathers – were the challenging part for me and I had to follow them very closely. I don’t love the transitions, btw, and wish the spine of each feather started sooner in the transition, as soon as the stitches are available instead of all feathers beginning at the end of the transition, but it would be a lot more complicated that way. The transitions blocked out better.

Here’s a detail shot. It’s hard to capture the subtlety of the colours in this yarn. It really is lovely. Wingspan shawl by Kyle Vey knit in Briar Rose Fibers Sea Pearl by Deborah Cooke

You can see the transitions I’m talking about, below the tier of feathers on the left and before the ones that hem the shawl (and fall to the right). They’re triangles of stockinette stitch, filling the space between each feather on the previous tier.

You can see that I added some beads, too. I really should have used a lot more of them.

Phew. I’m glad to have that one off the needles! What do you think?

Calienté

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Deborah Cooke

This is the stole I made with my Zauberball Lace, which is the Fuschienbeet colourway. The symmetry was pure luck, but it makes me very happy.

My initial idea was to make a stole with pointed ends and a fairly simple pattern to show off the colour changes in the yarn. I thought immediately of Miriam Felton’s Juno Regina, but a quick look at the pattern revealed I’d have to follow the charts. I was in a chart-free frame of mind. I reasoned that I could adapt the Diamond Centre pattern from Victorian Lace Today to my purposes, and that’s what I did. It used almost exactly one ball of Zauberball Lace – I had less than 2 metres left. And beads – of course, it had to have beads.

The pattern is available as a free Ravelry download (do we love Rav? Yes we do!) right HERE.

Revontuli

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Deborah Cooke

There’s not a pot of gold at the end of the Kauni rainbow – just some northern lights.

As mentioned yesterday, I used the EQ or Rainbow colourway of Kauni in Mr. C’s Elrond sweater. I paired it with the EF colourway, which is navy, purple and blue, so some of the rainbow didn’t have enough contrast. I broke out the purple, turquoise and green bits of the rainbow and set those parts aside. When his sweater was done, there was a ziplock full of purple, turquoise and green.

I thought of making something for myself, maybe another shawl.

This pattern is called Revontuli, which apparently is the Finnish word for the northern lights. (That’s a Ravelry link.) It just so happens that every time I’ve seen the northern lights, they’ve been lime green or turquoise, so this worked out perfectly. There’s a smidge of yellow at the centre cast on and at the outer hem.

I washed this by hand once, giving it a good soak, but it still didn’t soften as much as Mr. C.’s sweater. So, into the pillowcase and into the washing machine it went. Here’s the finished piece – I love it!

The colours are not quite as vivid as the flash makes it appear – it shades from gold at the centre into lime, then a softer turquoise than this, then purple. I turn back at red-purple. This looks quite primary, but the real thing is more like petroleum on water. I like that palette!

It shrank quite a bit in the washer, because it was knit at a looser gauge (on 4.5mm needles). It blocked 33″ from the middle to each point when I washed it by hand – after the washer, it blocked at 28″. It’s not felted, though – you can still see the stitches – but it is closer to being felted than Mr. C.’s sweater. Once again, the Kauni really softened. This is like having a soft blanket tucked around the shoulders. I think I’ll wear it a lot because it is so snuggly.

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