Damn, Knit & Blast It

This week I’ve been visiting my big sister, Carol and her lovely husband, Steve.

While I was being spoilt rotten, I remembered to take some photos of a couple of Carol’s jumpers that I made.

The first is a fair isle design from Rowan 38 called Electra – guess what?? It’s on the cover

The pattern gives the sleeveless version and a cardigan version. At the time I made it (2 years ago exactly – dates on photos are a wonderful thing!) I thought, “Yuk! Tank top!” so I decided to make the cardigan for me. I’ve since caught up with fashion and no longer think sleeveless knitwear belongs in the 1970s but please forgive me for that fashion lapse this once…

I was very happy and a felt a little “Stash busting virtue” as, being fair isle, it only needed a couple of balls of each yarn – 2 colours of Yorkshire Tweed DK, 1 colour Felted Tweed and 1 colour Kidsilk Haze (used double). I had a lovely mix in my stash and only had to buy 1 ball of cream KSH. My local John lewis had run out of cream KSH so on the spur of the moment, I decided to use one strand cream KSH and one strand cream Kidsilk Night – a good decision – the subtle sparkle really worked.

Choosing the cardigan was rather ambitious as my only previous fair isle experience had been a pair of Snuggle Bed Socks.

It hadn’t occurred to me that a cardigan has 5 pieces and lots of shaping. A tank top I mean slipover, has two quite simple pieces. I also wasn’t experienced enough to realise that making the pieces flat on two needles was hard too! Purling and wrapping the stitches with two handed fair isle – ick!

I slogged through and finished the beast – Montse Stanley’s Knitter’s Handbook was open on the fair isle section most of the time.

The nice thing about this particular fair isle pattern is that although it’s a 34 row repeat, there are only 7 rows which have two colours in them – the rest are stripes. Nice cheat huh?

Here’s the beast “in progress”…

The sleeves were pure evil to fit – it took three attempts to get the pattern matching on one of them – Grrrr It didn’t help that I was not happy at work at the time and I think I’d knitted a lot of my emotions into this garment!

I finally sewed on the buttons and guess what – I HATED IT!

It looked awful and frumpy on me and too big and the wrong colours.

Who do I know who takes a slightly larger size than me, loves blues and creams and I love enough to give a precious handknit? My big sister !

Carol tried on the cardi and I was truly amazed. What looked like the most disastrous mess on me looked fantastic on her. It fitted. It looked stylish and trendy. It was her colours. She wasn’t going to give it back again without a serious fight! It has since become one of her firm favourites – I’m so pleased on so many levels!

Here’s Carol modelling for me .

And the back…..

Want to see one of those difficult shoulders too?? It just matches…

I think the right buttons can really lift a garment and I think I did really well with these – they are sold as plain cream buttons and have this beautiful mottling on the back – you can see which side I liked!

I suppose all of you out there are thinking, “Yes. OK. But how neat is the back?!” If it was me, I’d be itching to turn it over and take a look…

With the benefit of hindsight and reading about other people who have made Electra, there are several things I’d do differently if I made another.

1. Investigate Steeking the whole thing – Eunny Jang has a fantastic intro to steeking on her blog.
2. At least knit the whole thing – Cardigan or Tank top – in one piece up to the armholes – darning in ends is not my favourite occupation!
3. Check my tension more carefully so I get to wear it!I have learnt that fair isle does make my tension go loose!
4. Cast off the button band even looser than I did (it’s a little tight)

This was a sad and miserable garment to make that turned out to be a very happy cardi when it found a home where it is loved!!

Completed Knit Report
Name:	Electra Cardigan
Pattern:	by Louisa Harding from Rowan 38
Yarn:	Yorkshire Tweed DK, Felted Tweed DK, Kidsilk Haze and Kidsilk Night
Pattern Problems:	None (that weren’t to do with my inexperience!!)
Pattern Modifications:	None – but I should have considered the points above!
Washing and Wearing:	It’s been regularly worn for 2 years and still looking good!
Knit It Again???:	I’m tempted by a tank top for me
Difficulty:	Hard – mostly because of doing fair isle on two needles.
Rating:	3/5
Other Postings Relating To This One:	None

I’ve finally finished Branwen.

Doing the crocheted motifs took longer than I thought – not because they were difficult but because it still aggravates my wrist and elbow to crochet too much. I had to do a couple then leave it for a day.

There are three sizes of motif and I chose three colours of Rowan Felted Tweed from my “Felted Tweed Stash” – a lot of which is leftovers from one of Thug and Mewsley’s favourite cushions – I’m sure you’ve spotted this in the background of my pictures a few times. It’s Kaffe Fasset’s Tumbling Blocks design – I knit one side and backed it with spare curtain material.

Here are the motifs in three sizes…

I made a few extra of each colour and had a play until I was happy with the distribution and colour mix.

It looked like this…

Some very tedious sewing later, I have a finished Branwen!

Please excuse the grinning idiot – Ben was making me giggle

I was bored watching TV last night and doing some channel chopping while knitting.

I stumbled upon the opening 5 minutes of the 1958 Richard Burton film Look Back In Anger.

The landlady collected her newspapers from the drenched (it was raining) paper boy, complained bitterly that they were wet, then announced, “Time for a good read….”

With the aid of Sky+ I managed to snap a close up of the headline that had titillated her interest.

Should be a warning to all of us Knitters!

I really must try and keep my blogging as fast as my knitting!

I finished off my Earth Stripe Wrap Sunday and started a new project – I’ve nearly finished it and I haven’t shown it to you yet!

It is in super thick yarn so it’s not entirely surprising it’s so quick…

Its from Rowan’s Country Escapes in Rowan Country…

a design called Branwen…

I really like the effect of the crocheted embellishments!!

I took this along to my Sunday morning Guilty Knitters meet and merrily made 25cm of back on my fabulous 9mm glass needles.

“Hmmm, I’d better check my tension. These needles are heavy and slippery and have been know to make my tension a bit loose…”

I needed 10 stitches in 10cm. I had 11 stitches! I measured it 5 times. I asked Judie to measure it for me too. It stubbornly read 11 stitches to 10cm not matter how much I smoothed, patted and tugged at it – too tight! I worked out that at that tension the garment was going to come up about 10cm too small on the chest. Ouch!

I was shocked! I’ve never had to change my needle size before when using the correct yarn for the pattern! I found it hard to believe that my tension was out. I even thought it might be because of my glass needles. I quick swatch on a pair of wooden 9mm blew that idea out of the water….

…I had to accept that for the first time in my knitting career – I had to change up a needle size!

A quick change from 8mm glass and 9mm glass to 9mm glass and 10mm plastic (my 10mm glass needles are beautiful but too heavy for me to really use) and some frantic reknitting later….

…My tension was spot on!

As you can guess – 10mm needles makes this a really quick knit. It’s half sewn up already!

I’ve really fallen for the subtle colour changes and thick warm woolliness…

Trust me to discover how great this yarn is as Rowan discontinue it!

I’m looking forward to rummaging in my Felted Tweed stash to see which colours work best for the “doilies” – I feel a fun evening of crochet coming on…

I have had one strange experience with this garment though – it kept moving around the living room overnight by itself…
….after setting up surveillance cameras and poltergeist detectors, I suspect I’ve found that someone was practising for his modelling career in front of the mirror

It’s done.

The Earth Stripe Wrap is mine!

Here she is…

And the back view – please excuse the big bum!

It’s warm and snuggly and I can see I’m going to be wearing it a lot.
I ended up making it 175cm long so it could be flung over my shoulder with enough overlap to stay there. 2 whole pattern repeats plus another 90 rows.

That looks like this much…

You’ll notice that the edges are not laying very flat, although you don’t notice that when it’s on. My fault I think.

There are two rows of double crochet all around the edge. I started doing a dc in every row but quickly saw it was puckering so settled on doing 1 dc in 3 row, then skipping 1 row. With hindsight I think I should probably have done every other row. I was so worried about it pulling tight I went too far the other way! Too late to change it now.

Here’s the edging in close up.

Remember I was going to use the crochet edging to hide the ends? I did do that…this is how it looks on the wrong side…

It’s not bad but if I did one again I think I would weave them in. It was neater woven in in the end.

So how much of my stash did this munch up? Not as much as you would have thought. Because I had quite a bit of some of the colours left and I’d had to buy some balls – I ended up with a net “Stash Reduction” of 4.5 balls of KSH.

Poor Ben asked,

“Is that all your Kidsilk Haze used up now then?” I had to break it to him that I still have enough to knit him a car cosy….

Putting the tassels on was the final task – it really finished it off. I seen some people on the web, say they weren’t going to add the tassels because of concerns over them getting tatty and tangled. I can’t really see that happening unless you’re really careless with the wrap.

After knotting them on I gave them a final “haircut” to get them all to the same length then gave them a quick steam over the boiling kettle while combing them through with a very wide tooth comb.
This was to get the kinks out and make them lay perfectly. Ben did think I had finally cracked when he saw me!

Worth it though…

The Earth Stripe Wrap (ESW) has whizzed along, despite me having my attention diverted by the Petal Bib and the green Snuzzle Scarf!

I reached the pattern decreed length of 148cm – Phew. Two full pattern repeats and another 60 rows.

Hmmmm….Yarn amounts are an annoyance again. To get to the 148cm point, I’ve had to buy third, extra ball, of shade 589 – Majestic (a mousey grey/beige colour) and have used at least a third of it. I haven’t touched the second ball of shade 582 – Trance (bright teal blue). Trance is used in the crochet edging so I will probably need that if I stick to the pattern but frankly, I would have preferred to use a different colour (that I have plenty left over of) and save adding another ball to my already obese KSH stash

This is the beast so far..

I tried the lovely creature on – it is beautiful- but somehow it’s not long enough – it’s just a personal preference – I really feel the cold…

I wanted something to really wrap around me – it’s ok but feels a little stingy and like it would be a pain to keep in place when flung casually over over my shoulder. No problem, lots of yarn left – I’ll just knit it longer…

…but how much yarn will the tassels take? I suspected that they eat up the yarn. The last thing I wanted to do was have to skimp on the tassels because I’d made the wrap longer.

Seemed obvious to me – make all the tassels now, then continue knitting till I’m happy or I run out of yarn!

The pattern says to make the tassels “in the same colour combinations” as the wrap. Not easy when faced with 182 rows of differing combinations. I decided to follow the pattern exactly and have double strands following the row by row changes of colour combinations.

To make the lengths 50cm long – I looked out a book of about 25cm height…A History of Handknitting by Reverend Richard Rutt fitted the bill perfectly!

This is a fascinating book as well as a good “tasselification tool”. Quite scholarly but packed with useful knitterly facts, technical information and historical and social details. It covers from the earliest ancient knitting to modern day – worth reading if you can get a copy. My copy is from the late ’80s so the cover has changed!

How about that picture of the Author – the Bishop of Leicester!

Now the tassely sums….

• I needed 8 strands in each tassle – that’s 4 rows of doubled KSH. (Phew – I’m a maths genius )
• I needed 36 tassles at each end.
• 36 tassles x 4 rows each = 144 rows of the pattern I had to wrap round the book.
• I had to do that twice – one set for each end.

And the method…

• Make two, 4 row tassels at a time in the same colour combination – you need one for each end!
• hold the desired colours together and wrap once around the book for each row, on the left of the book
• do the same on the right of the book
• if there are several rows the same, keep wrapping.
• when you have 4 rows worth (8 strands) in each “bunch”, cut through the yarn at the point you started (I always started at the bottom)
• You’ll end up with this…

What to do with all these lengths of yarn so they don’t tangle into a rats’ nest?

I looped them onto two spare knitting needles, putting one of each colour on each needle, using the normal knot for a scarf tassle – the Larks Head Knot. Bet you didn’t know that had a name huh?

I ended up with this…

Much fun has been had with these, they appear to be irresistible to anyone who sees them. Wigs and Hawaiian skirts are the favourite witty japes Thug and Mewsley are the only ones who, strangely, seem disinterested!

On with knitting another mile of ESW…

The Earth Stripe Wrap (ESW) is coming along well. I’m into the third pattern repeat and, to be honest, its getting a bit boring now. Absolutely beautiful but I’m fed up with changing colours!

I’d show you a picture but it’s just more of the same…

When I got home from Yarncrawl2 with this scrummy Misti Alpaca Chunky I was easily distracted from ESW.

I hinted I had a project in mind didn’t I? Well, This is how it goes…

I bought a new jacket in Next, in the sale. It’s super configurable (only an IT person would say “configurable”!) with removable linings and removable hood, removable furry hood trim, zippy bits, buttony bits, dangly bits and so many pockets I don’t think I’ve found them all yet. It’s also in a shade of green I adore.

Here it is…

All that is missing from this jacket is the perfect scarf….

I found the Misti Alpaca site and this free pattern for a one skein, Ribs and Ruffles Scarf.

It was done in one evening!

It’s soft, warm, snuzzley and a perfect match to the green of the jacket.

The pattern starts and ends with 60 stitches but you decrease rapidly (that’s how you get the ruffles) down to 15 for the body of the scarf – it’s skinny but intended to be worn doubled. The body of the scarf is a slip stitch rib – very easy and quick.

The ruffles…

What a colour match huh? Not bad as I wasn’t wearing the jacket when I bought the yarn!!

Now Susan! Get on with ESW!