Another Finished Navelli

Posted on March 24, 2021 by Deborah Cooke

I finally finished my second Navelli. Even though it’s not blocked yet and the ends need to be sewn in, I wanted to show it to you. I love it so much!

Navelli knit by Deborah Cooke in MadTosh Merino Light

The yarn is MadTosh Merino Light in Cardinal and Spicewood. The black is some Malabrigo Sock I had in my stash. This one fits more closely than my first Navelli, which is very boxy.

For contrast, I put them side by side – here they are:

The neck is a little higher on the red one so I must have done something differently. (?)

I don’t wear the teal Navelli, even though I love the colours. I thought it was too wide, but actually, it’s too short. I kind of like how loose and boxy it is. So, my current plan is to pick up the stitches all the way around just below the underarms, on two needles, take out a row to split the garment, knit two inches of teal, then graft it to the top of the sweater. I think I’ll wear the teal one then, and I won’t have to frog the sleeves and top.

If I make a third one of these (!!) I think I’d knit it between the two sizes. That would make for an odd number of repeats on the border pattern, which might be weird. I have to think about that.

In the meantime, I’ll make the teal one longer.

In other sad knitting news, I had to frog a top-down pullover. I’d knit eight inches of body, took it off the needles to check the fit (for the third time) and discovered it was way too big. Just a teeny bit off guage, but it added up. Off to frog pond.

What do you think of my new Navelli?

Navelli in Koigu

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Deborah Cooke

I’ve been knitting a sweater, too, and even though it’s not done, I wanted to show it to you. The pattern is called Navelli (that’s a Ravelry link) and it’s designed by Caitlin Hunter. I’ve never knit a cropped wide sweater before (or worn one) but I really like this design. I’ve also been admiring sweaters lately that use a variegated or gradient dyed yarn along with solids in fair isle work. When I found several skeins of a really pretty colourway at the Koigu tent sale, I wanted to work with that.

The colourway that started me off is P528, a mix of teal and pink and blues, even with a bit of purple.

I found one contrast colour at Koigu: a teal in KPM, 5513. It looks kettle dyed, in that there’s variation in the tone, but not additional colours. There was only one skein so it had to take the place of the light pink in the original pattern.

When I got home and checked the stash, I discovered that I had three skeins of Shibui Knits Sock in purple. It was a perfect match, so that became my “brown”. The variegated colourway is my main colour for the body of the sweater. (This yarn is discontinued. I’d bought it originally to knit these opera gloves from Vogue Knitting Winter 2008/2009. Since then, I’ve realized that I’m unlikely to ever wear long knitted gloves, so the yarn has aged in the stash. It’s good to see it being put to work.)

Here is my Navelli before I split for the underarms:

The variegated yarn is a bit more emphatic than I’d expected. The tips of the fair isle in the purple kind of disappear into the pattern of the yarn, but what really surprised me was the pooling—and the big swirl. It looks a bit like the way hard candy swirls – like this image to the right. (That’s a stock image with its watermark intact.) The left lollipop really looks like this sweater to me!

The strange thing is that I am knitting from alternate skeins (two rows from one, then two rows from the other) which should (theoretically) break up any pooling. This yarn, though, is determined to pool. I wondered what would happen when I split the sweater for the underarms – with half as many stitches being worked, I thought maybe the swirl would break up. It did, but it’s worse:

It’s actually making vertical blobs now. Ugh. That decided it. The patterning in the yarn is distracting from the fair isle – and I think it’s ugly. I’m going to frog back to the fair isle and reknit the stockinette with the colour that’s in the skeins at the top. It’s closer to a semi-solid than a variegated yarn, so should pattern like my Koigu Lunenberg. There’s purple in this colourway, too, but the blue in the fair isle might end up looking a bit off. I think it’s in there, but it’s not the dominant blue. This gives me a chance to make another measure of my gauge – it looks like I might need to stay on the smaller needles for the plain stockinette as well as the fair isle.

R-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip it! I’m sad to do this, especially as I bought this variegated colourway specifically for this sweater, but that’s the way it goes.

Here’s my project page on Ravelry.

Back of Roan Completed

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Deborah Cooke

So, it’s been a while since I put this fair isle project aside, but I dug it out last week (after finishing my KSH Stripe cardigan) and have now finished the back. Here it is:It’s curling a bit because it hasn’t been blocked yet, but is really a big rectangle, decreased in to a point at the top in the middle. It’s supposed to be oversized and is big – the back is 26″ wide. I took this picture outside, and the colours appear a bit more zingy than they are in real life.

The pattern is called Roan from Rowan Magazine #56. (I posted about this project when I began it, right here.) The cardigan is like a kimono and is supposed to be knit in thicker yarn. I had this Kauni Effektgarn in my stash so recalculated and cast on in this instead. This is two colourways of the Kauni, and the yarn changes colour graduallly as you knit. (The original design uses a number of colours, and the knitter changes yarns as knitting.) Because the yarn is thinner, I had to do more repeats of the band with the diamonds to get the sweater to the right length – I decided to make it a bit shorter than the pattern, to ensure I wasn’t overwhelmed by the sweater.

The two fronts together are the same shape as the back, just split down the middle. Because I want the colours to change the same way on the front and the back, I’m going to knit the fronts as one piece, then cut them apart. This is called steeking. I’ve never done a steek before, and the prospect of cutting my knitting does freak me out a bit. I have a lot of knitting to do before it’s time for that, though.

Off to cast on the fronts!

What do you think?

Roan in Kauni

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Deborah Cooke

I haven’t posted much about knitting lately, for two reasons: first, there’s been a lot of book news and I know you’re more interested in that, and secondly, I haven’t finished many projects this summer. I’ve been knitting a lot of stranded colourwork and fair isle, and that’s time consuming – though I love the results.

Here’s one that’s on my needles right now:This pattern is from the latest Rowan magazine, #56, and is called Roan. It’s a kimono style sweater and is knit in heavier yarn than the one I’m using. This yarn is Kauni Effektgarn, a yarn I love because of the way it gradually changes colour. This is the teal colourway and the pink/purple colourway. I had to recalculate things to ensure that the sweater fits – I’ll be getting more stitches per inch in both directions – so I’m knitting by the directions for the large size to get a sweater slightly smaller than a medium. I’ll need to add more repeats of the Celtic knot to get the length, too.

What do you think? I just love it!

The Completed Irtfa’a Shawl

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Deborah Cooke

Here’s a shawl that was on my needles for years. I kept stalling out on it, but it’s finally done—and it’s blocked too! The challenge this week was figuring out a way to photograph it, because it’s huge.

First off, the pattern. I talked about this one already once, right here. It’s a Faroese shawl, a pattern called Irtfa’a from Anne Hanson of Knitspot. Second, the yarn. I used a handpainted 2-ply merino lace called Fly Designs Dovely—the colour is Swamp Teal. (I’ve thought all along that the colour name needed some revision.) Here’s my Ravelry project page.

And here’s the finished shawl. It’s HUGE! 36″ from the centre back neck in all directions.What do you think?

I thought I was going to cast on my Firedance shawl next, but instead, Urdr made it on to my needles. I’m about a third done, and it’s a pretty knit. It’s the second of three shawls about the three Wyrd Sisters, the Norns from Norse mythology who have cameos in Zoë’s paranormal YA trilogy The Dragon Diaries. You might remember that I finished the first shawl in the series, Verdandi, last winter. I’m saving Skuld for last, just because that’s what she likes best.

Cable Cardigan in Butterfly Super 10

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Deborah Cooke

I have thought for a couple of weeks that I would have a sweater to show you. This cardigan has been on my needles for years. It feels as if it’s been in process since time began, but that can’t be the case – the pattern was published in Vogue Knitting in a 2003/2004 issue.

It’s supposed to be knit in a 100% wool called Zara. I remember looking for the specified yarn at the time and finding it pretty expensive. So, I did a yarn substitution – I knit mine in Butterfly Super 10 cotton in a wonderful dark teal. This means that the resulting sweater is much heavier than it would have been in wool, but that’s okay with me. What slowed me down in the knitting is that cotton has no stretch, and you really notice that when knitting cables. I kept putting this sweater aside to knit more enjoyable projects, even though I really liked how it was working up.

I had to block it after it was done before sewing the pieces together. (Yes, you’re supposed to do that every time, but I tend not to.) There was no choice here because the seed stitch pulled up shorter than the cables on each piece. I’m still sewing the beast together, even though it’s been off the needles for over a week. It looks as if I might have to pick some of the seaming back because I can’t figure out how to make the collar fit. The neckline seems too large for the collar piece. Hmm.

So, maybe next Friday I’ll be able to show it to you, finally complete.

The good news is that it’s a sweater for transition seasons, so I should have it done just in time to wear for spring!

Update – here it is! I had forgotten that the collar didn’t extend over the button bands, then it just had to be eased slightly across the top of the saddle shoulders. All good and all done. 🙂

Lace Jacket by Brooke Nico 2

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Deborah Cooke

I seem to be knitting a lot of projects lately that have knitted borders. Or maybe the borders just take so long to knit that they feel like endless projects. Not sure. At any rate, here’s another one.This is the lace jacket by Brooke Nico from Vogue Knitting fall 2010. I cast it on last fall in Kidsilk Haze, then put it aside for a while. I’ve been charging away on it lately – mostly because it’s so astonishingly pretty – and am now knitting the border. The jacket is constructed as a circle – well, actually, a pentagon – with a border all around the outside of the circle. You leave stitches on holders in two wedges of the pentagon, then go back and make sleeves there. I still have to do that bit. The red stitches toward the centre are those saved stitches.

But look at this border. On one hand, I think it’s really too wide for the circle and that maybe I should have substituted a narrower lace border. On the other, well, it’s just so pretty that I can’t stop knitting it. I’m incredulous that I’m knitting something so lovely.

What do you think?

In the Mood for Gloves…

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Deborah Cooke

On the flights to and from Seattle, I knit my first glove. The pattern is called Knotty Gloves, and is a free Ravelry download right now.

I used Malabrigo Sock, because it seemed too soft to me to make good tough socks. It was so pretty that I had to buy it anyway. The colour is called Solis.

I finally finished the second one and sewed in all the ends. Here they are:

Once again, we have the photography challenge. With the flash, the colour comes out more true (it’s teal) but the cable detail is lost. This shot was taken without the flash, so you can see the cables, but the colour isn’t even close. This colourway is all greens and teals – not blue as it appears here. You wanted to see the cables, though, right?

My Ravelry project page is here.

They came out quite nicely, nicely enough that I might try another pair in another yarn. (They look better on my hands than on the floor, but it’s tough to take a picture of your own hands.) The pattern is terrific – very clear and error-free. If you’re like me and had never knit gloves, these might be a good start. I wanted them to have long cuffs so knit an extra dozen rows of ribbing before starting the pattern. They probably would have been long enough, if I’d just followed the directions, but there you go.

This project, unfortunately, did very little to diminish my stash – it used only half the ball of Malabrigo Sock, so now I need to knit something with the other half. Hmmmm….

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