Tag Archives: stranded knitting

Witch Hare Kit

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A bit ago, I treated myself to a knitting kit and it arrived yesterday. It’s from Virtual Yarns and is the Witch Hare kit, for mittens and a hat. You can see it on their website, right here. Virtual Yarns is Alice Starmore and Jade Starmore’s company, featuring many patterns, books and yarns designed by Alice and Jade. There’s some wonderful eye candy on their website, so treat yourself to a few minutes of browsing.

Here are the pattern cards in the kit. They really are lovely, full colour on sturdy stock. (Apologies for the flash!)

Virtual Yarns Witch Hare kit - patterns

I like this design, especially the mittens, and I was curious about the Virtual Yarns tweeds. A kit seemed a good way to check them out.

Here are the yarns in the kit. They look scrumptious.

Virtual Yarns Witch Hare kit - yarns

And here are the patterns on Ravelry, in case you want to check out some other projects. They’re listed separately – first the mittens, then the hat.

The plan is to make the set once as the kit instructs, then possibly make the mittens again with another yarn (what yarn?) held double with KSH. The ones by the kit might get a KSH lining. We’ll see. Lovely yarn, though. I can’t wait to see how it knits up.

Chullo Hats

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Here’s another UFO found in that stash – an unfinished chullo hat.

chullo hat knit by Deborah Cooke in Knitpicks Palette

This hat is knit of Knitpicks Palette and was a kit. Here’s the Rav page for the Andean Chullo Hat pattern, which is still available. Here it is at Knitpicks. The kit, which isn’t available any longer, came with several balls of Palette – I’m thinking maybe 8 colours. Palette is a fingering weight wool, which comes in a lot of colours.

I remember the pattern being a bit of fun, as there were numerous motifs that you could place on any of the sections and knit in any combination of the colours to make your hat your own. Have a peek at the projects on Rav to see the many variations. Of course, I had to march the llamas around the hat, though they might have shown up better if I’d knit them in the white in the kit. It’s also possible I mucked up the decreases at the crown because the circumference does diminish very quickly. (?)

This hat stalled without the tassels, partly because of the chullo hat shown below. I didn’t knit this one – I bought it at the Mountain Equipment Co-op a billion years ago (give or take). (In the 90s there were a lot of South American knits available for sale.)

South American chullo hat from the Mountain Equipment Coop

It’s knit of a yarn that seems a lot like Lopi Alafoss – but its special magic is that it’s lined with polar fleece. The mister grabs this hat whenever it’s really cold.

inside of South American chullo hat bought at the Mountain Equipment Coop

I meant to do the same with my chullo hat, but was stymied as to what shape to cut the pieces for the crown. Now I realize that the creator of this hat avoided that challenge by only lining the main part of the hat and the flaps. I’ll do that with mine.

We also have a couple of chullo hats from one of the mister’s trips to South America. He hiked the Inca Trail back in the day (to end up at Machu Picchu at dawn) and it was so cold that he bought two hats from the local knitters. Both are chullos. He wore this navy one.

South American chullo hat

He bought this second hat just because, and I’m glad he did. It’s so beautiful.

South American chullo hat

The wool is so fine, it’s almost thread. Look at the detail.

detail of South American chullo hat

Someone had a very fine set of needles! I love that the colour placement is apparently random. It’s such a lovely piece of work – and very inspiring.

And here, finally, is my own lined and finished chullo.

chullo hat knit by Deborah Cooke in Knitpicks Palette

Scandinavian Family Cardigan

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Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas

Now I’m digging out old sweaters that I’ve never blogged about. 🙂 Today I’m posting about my Scandinavian Family cardigan from Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas. (The title and the book cover are linked to the Ravelry page since this book is out of print. It was published in 1995.)

The Scandinavian Family sweater is stranded knitting, with contrast bands at the shoulders and hems. It’s a drop shoulder boxy design (more square pieces!) and I had some fun mixing up the colours.

One of the interesting changes in patterns is that many companies (like Rowan and Elite) once offered many size variations in each design, so you could make the same sweater pattern for every member of the family. (Rowan also used to offer sleeve and length variations.) Here’s the photo spread for this sweater from the book:

The Scandinavian Family sweater from Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas

The picture is dark so it didn’t photograph that well, but they’re all wearing a version of the same sweater.

And here’s my version:

The Scandinavian Family sweater from Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas knit by Deborah Cooke

I split mine up the front to make a cardigan, which meant I added facings all around. I started with the mixy gold blend in the borders, which had been in my grandmother’s yarn stash, and chose colours to coordinate with it. I have no idea what the content of it is – it was a huge handwound ball when I got it. The green and white yarns used in the main body are from a farm/mill that used to be near Ottawa called Belle Vallée Wools. (They might still exist. I’m not sure.) I bought the green and white in Carleton Place on a road trip to Ottawa in the mid-90s. The yarn is a lot like Briggs & Little Regal. Many of the colours in the yoke are actually fingering weight and I held them double. Again, I bought yarns all over the place, but mostly on that road trip.

A detail pic. I love this fair isle pattern and all the colours in the green tweedy wool:

The Scandinavian Family sweater from Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas knit by Deborah Cooke

This is a really warm sweater, probably because it’s knit tightly. No worries about the wind with this one! The other thing about this kind of wool is that it doesn’t change much over time. It doesn’t pill or show wear the way that softer yarns do. This sweatter looks very similar to the day it came off the needles, thirty years ago, and not because I haven’t worn it.

Here’s my Ravelry project page. I called this one my Snowflake Sweater.