Finished summer sweaters

This is another from Rowan, Tribe from magazine 51. The original had a colourwork pattern, that I might attempt one day. This is a cotton yarn version for summer.

 

 

 


This is from a Rowan free pattern called Windsor. I knitted it without the collar, in a cotton yarn, altering the depth of the rib along the bottom and also making the button band smaller

First scarf I have made in years

When learning to knit, you go through a scarf making phase and then leave them behind and do more exciting things. Getting some free yarn (Amy Butler organic by Rowan ) and free book of "Rowan's Greatest Knits" from the Knitting & Stitching Show last week inspired a scarf knitting week. The pattern is called Dew and it was much easier than it looks.

"This Attractive Affair" is finished

This is a 1930's pattern from "A Stitch In Time" Vol. 2 by Susan Crawford and Jane Waller.

Available from Amazon, Susan's website and at Prick Your Finger in Bethnal Green.

My first seamless sweater knitted in the round

I'm so rubbish at remembering to blog. I take photos of everything I make with good intentions, then forget all about them, much like knitting projects I intend to make, which are neatly hidden in cupboards, bags and trunks all over the flat. So some months after photographing it, here is my first seamless sweater knitted in the round, from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Opinionated Knitter book. Alas, it came out far too big in spite of several gauge/ tension squares and some maths to work out the right amount of stitches, so I started unravelling it.

The lovely ladies at Prick Your Finger sold me the JC Rennie 4-ply, and here is the sweater mid-unravelling around the neck, being modelled at a Prick Your Finger party/private view, which they kindly invited me to. Post relationship breakup, a party surrounded by wool and lovely people was just what I needed. Unfortunately this lovely man's name escapes me just now, think I had a drink too many, but the also lovely Tom Of Holland introduced us and we talked about cake and Brighton.

This wool has already been a fair isle, from a Stitch In Time V.1 pattern, which I decided I would never wear. The two colours of wool together reminded me too much of a Cadbury's Fudge wrapper. I'm going to have another go at making the seamless sweater, a bit smaller this time, and possibly something else as I had nine balls and the above only took four and a half. Any suggestions?

From "A Stitch In Time.", a photo by ThereminGirl on Flickr.

The many times knitted cardigan part 4

This is the last part of my cardigan of many colours tale. Here is the Mark 6.

The wool is Rowan pure wool 4ply which I hadn't intended to buy, as I hadn't intended to go to Liberty that day, but suddenly there in front of me when I took a wrong turn. This is how most wool ends up being purchased. The shop will suddenly be there, as if my feet unconsciously knew my trying to be thrifty willpower would weaken.

One sleeve was knitted at the Vintage at Southbank Festival, while I was selling craft kits and bigging up the Fabrications shop, while Fabrications's own Barley ran craft workshops. Here is fascinator making in action:

Lovely friends met me afterwards & we went for a wander round the outdoor Vintage market and I was lucky to find a card full of vintage buttons. The stall owner told me everything they had was deadstock (which means never sold, so not second hand) from a warehouse in Malta that had been abandoned. They have an eBay shop here and currently have 24 of the same buttons in pink and blue for a measly £6.50.

New needles, new style of knitting, new knitting guru

This is my new set of needles from fabulous Prick Your Finger. By a circuitous route of internet, I realised I couldn't live without them. Here is the long version:

A month or two ago whilst perusing the knitwear in the V& A Collection online in an idle minute, I found this jumper, which you may have seen on the House of Elliot (top tip from my Mum - buy the series from Amazon in the Dutch version second hand, it still plays in English and is a damn sight cheaper; top tip from me, the V&A also has free knitting patterns for toys and designs from the 40's).

This Elsa Schiaparelli jumper seems to be famous enough that a very vague description to a lovely lady in a wool shop was enough that she knew exactly what I meant.

In spite of my previous attempts at intarsia (multi colour knitting) being an aborted rabbit design (on the previously blogged knitted rucksac) so awful it didn't even get it's picture taken, I decided I wanted one of these jumpers. A quick Google brought me to the pattern online here at the Schoolhouse press, and so fortuitously I also discovered a great lady in the world of knitting, Elizabeth Zimmerman, who started the Schoolhouse press.

People may slag off Wikipedia for inaccuracy, but in most things that people really have a passion for they tend to share a lot of details enthusiastically and I really don't care if it isn't in proper impartial encyclopaedia speak. So I've learnt from Wikipedia that EZ as she is well known and  revolutionised knitting. Read it yourself if you don't believe me.

Having gone to Prick Your Finger to buy wool for the above bow jumper, I left with some JC Rennie 4 ply for an entirely different project, which often happens. Anyway, having discovered EZ and just how popular she is - books in print constantly since the 60s, a whole Flickr group just for finished projects with over 1,000 pictures and 41,733 projects on Ravelry - I treated myself to a her knitting book called Knitting without Tears from Amazon and completely forgot about my bow jumper plans.

Last week due to an invasion of lovely but tiring step-children, I was in bed at 9pm reading my new book. Unlike most pattern books, this is one to read and savour. She doesn't just give you the instructions, but her view of knitting and how she learned, how she came to knit in her unusual style and how to to knit her patterns for any wool and any sized body. The patterns are all for seamless knits made with a circular needle, so even with my wool stash overflowing I couldn't get started without new needles and an hour after waving the step-childrens off on their journey to Granny's house (really she is known as Nano, thus making her easily confused with an over hyped MP3 player), I bought the aforementioned set of needles, in enough sizes and lengths for any wool I chose. I've cast on & will post as soon as it's finished, telling the tale of learning to knit in a whole new way.

Being old enough to remember when the internet was rubbish unless you were an academic, Amazon and Google and online wool shopping didn't even exist, it still amazes me the way one random thought or random click leads to something new. Hopefully this time it will lead to a lovely, and very easily made jumper with hardly any sewing up after (a task so hated that some knitters pay other people to do it). So often a random click only leads to this:

The many times knitted cardigan part 3

So I made some clothes, started a rag rug and then it was time to knit another Hedda. This time my Mum had admired the Mark 2, so I offered to knit her one. Being very specific she sent me a picture of the colour she wanted and that she hated scratchy wool, in fact all real wool was out. I managed to find a match at Hobbycraft on a day trip to Essex (sounds weird to you maybe, but it only took about 30 minutes and there are lots of charity shops). It was finished a mere two weeks after Mother's Day, making it more of an early birthday present. Though all knitters will be told the knitted gift is lovely, but whether it will really be worn is another matter entirely. She liked it enough to wear it on my birthday, but I was rushing off straight after to do crafts in a field in Clapham (another long story), so I forgot to get a picture.

While I was at Hobbycraft I fell in love with the colour of this acrylic from the sale pile - it reminds me of faded jeans. Being the fourth one, it took a total of four days. The buttons are a vintage find from Fabrications in Hackney.

The many times knitted cardigan part 2

So, I had the cardigan in fluffy cream (that is so very stroke able). Next I probably started something that was too difficult and gave up and started another Hedda.

Way back when my first ever try at knitting a jumper was abandoned after discovering the front and back were wildly different sizes and wonky (I didn't know about blocking back then, but it was an acrylic yarn which I think doesn't block as well). It was unloved and stored away and moved house twice finally to see the light of day again and be recreated.

To digress a little, the rug in the background has been nearly entirely eaten by moths, after being stored under my bed. Moths are wankers. Anyhoo...

You can just about see it in my profile picture. This one has proved washer proof and reminds me happily of this grungey classic cardi. 

The many times knitted cardigan part 1

This started last year. I had a beautiful cardigan, actually I had two in different colours from the sale in Boden and wore them all the time. The design was really good and the company are part of the Ethical Trading Initiative, but it was was cashmere, difficult to wash and very expensive, especially when you want it in every colour, so I decided to knit my own.

After searching through many, many cardigan pictures on Ravelry I found the Hedda cardigan designed by Martin Storey, and headed to Liberty for the Winter Solace booklet and yarn.

The first version I made was in Rowan Alpaca, finished in December 2010. After previously knitting a cardigan coat with 22 balls that took three months of daily toil, this one took about three weeks, which made me very happy. Sadly following the instructions I washed it at 30 degrees. What I forgot was the spinning at the end of the wash. This is what seems to kills your knits.

Here is the tiny thing that came out of the washer, with the new Hedda mark 2, with more exciting buttons from Our Patterned Hand in Hackney.

Elsewhere...a knitted backpack

I have popped up in another blog from Fabrications, one of my favorite shops, with this backpack

It is from Stitch 'n Bitch Handbook: Instructions, Patterns, and Advice for a New Generation of Knitters
The original pattern has either a rabbit or a monkey on it, and I did give the intarsia (that's knitting with more than one colour of wool to make a design) a go, but couldn't get the tension right. As mentioned in the Fabrications blog, it is made in 100% British wool. Since that photo was taken I have been using it a lot and expecting at some point a strap would come loose, but it seems quite indestructible. I even went out with a two inch thick hardback book in it, along wit my usual bag detritus and even that didn't cause any stretching or ripping.

Knitting lace

Had a great time last night at the Shoreditch Sisters. Due to a mix up between my idea of what we'd need to bring to make rugs, compared to our inspiring speaker Annie Sherburne's tools and more professional technique, I ended up doing half the teaching and spent most of the night doing a good impression of knowing what I was talking about. I'll be sticking up a guide to the technique I was teaching, when I have finished a big demonstration rug, but for now here is one of my recent makes:

Here is an arm warmer from a Rowan learn to kit lace kit. I don't think the designer at Rowan had thought about the contradictory nature of a garment for warmth being covered in holes, but then I'm not exactly sure under what circumstances I'll be needing an arm warmer either. On learning lace, my first attempt came out a bit wrong, and it wasn't till I bought Purls of Wisdom: The Book of Knittingfrom Fabrications after seeing it on their blog, that I really understood how to do it.

For the uninitiated, knitting patterns are full of instructions like "K2, K2tog, YO, K2tog" etc. The Rowan pattern calls for a YWFD, which means "yarn forward", which it describes as

Bring yarn forward between the needles and over the right needle to form a stitch.

"Purls of Wisdom" describes a YO instead, which is Yarn Over, as

Bring the yarn to the front of your work, just as you would if you were about to make a purl stitch. With your yarn in front, knit the next stitch.

which might still be gibberish to you, but made more sense to me and seemed to make neater, bigger holes in the lace.

My next knitting milestones to conquer, after cables and lace, are some fancy stitch patterns and following bigger charts, and intarsia.

My cable cherry popped

Normally I'd be in the middle of a major sewing project and at least two knitted escapades, but since taking over as secretary of the Shoreditch Sisters and also aquiring a PS3 and LittleBigPlanet 2 (PS3), I've been too busy to craft as much. LBP2 clearly has to be the crafters choice of games, having a wee knit or fabric sack person and a whole seven levels in a cake themed world, not to mention all the other levels of robot and sticker filled goodness. Splatting baddies with a giant jam sponge while in a world made of battenburg is very hungry work though, so ideally you need a minion to supply endless tea and cake. I made do with too many rollies instead, which as I was so engrossed, burnt down instead of being smoked and have left icky stains (photos will not be shown).

When I can tear myself away from computers and commitee minutes, I'm challenging myself to learn how to knit cables, using a pattern from A Stitch in Time: v. 1: Vintage Knitting & Crochet Patterns 1920-1949
Making my first go at cables even harder is my improvised cable needle, which alternnate between being a crochet hook and a double pointed needle. Though as I've never used a cable needle I can't judge whether these make a suitable substitute.

When it's finished, I'll need pluck my eyebrows to smithereens and learn how to draw them in neatly, so I can lean on walls seductively, with my come hither beret on like the lady on the pattern:

I first heard of "A Stitch in Time" at an advanced knitting lesson at Fabrications, when the most fabulously dedicated to the forties lady I've ever met, poopooed it* apparently as there were erros in the patterns. I've found that if you know enough about knitting to try these not so simple patterns, then it is simple to spot the mistake. In the pinafore jumper pattern I'm making, it is a case of so many increases in a row not adding up the number of stitches you should end up with. So you add more increases till you get the right number.

And even if you're a beginner and find it hard to work out the right pattern on your own, the book has every pattern twice, explained in two ways. They faithfully reprint the original as it appeared in print in the 20s/30s/40s, including the photos. Then follow it with colour photos of a contemporary version of the knit, with modern yarn recomendations (subsituting wool for vintage patterns is a whole blog post on it's own) and explain the whole pattern in the more modern jargon.

Sometime I've actually found the modern way of writing too complicated, and that the vintage pattern explained it in a more straight forward way.

The yarn I'm using is even lovelier for being bought with Chrismas gift vouchers and is Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply.


*I love this weird phrase, or is it a word? I'm not even sure if that's how you spell it.