More Excitment from Iceland

September 27th, 2010, 7:53 pm

I have really got the “Iceland” bug!

As well as doing my Lopi Course with Ragga Eirikdottir, I’ve now discovered Icelandic Intarsia, courtesy of Helene Magnusson – the other half of Knitting Iceland – and this wonderful pattern of Helene’s from Knitonthenet.

This is really tuning out to be a romp – a tale of being too clever for my own good and of fashioning knitting equipment out of the recycling bin!

Here’s the Pattern’s pics of what I’m attempting to make…

From Flag

This is “Flag” and is a free pattern from issue 10 of knitonthenet => Click here for the pattern

After all that intarsia in the flower blanket, I must be mad for taking this on but I was wowed by the cardigan – just the kind of thing I’ve been wearing lately And Lots of ways to wear it!

From Flag

So what’s Icelandic Intarsia? It’s just like “normal” intarsia but it’s in garter stitch. You do need to take the yarn to the wrong side of the work when you cross them over at colour changes though. Helene’s website has an extremely informative tutorial and some background history so I won’t even attempt to describe it more here.

Flag is knit in Jamieson & Smith 2 ply laceweight – wonderful yarn but very thin! Fortunately it’s knit on 5mm needles so this shouldn’t take me til Christmas to make

I was also surprised at how reasonable priced the yarn was for this project – the whole thing (in my size) for under £30 I’d never get a big Rowan Cardie for that!

The first thing to do with this pattern is to make 2 balls out of each of the balls of yarn (because you have 13 colours on the go at once!!)

That was an evening of “fun with ball winder”…

From Flag

Frustrating when all you want to do is cast on and get going. At last I had a heap of little yarn cakes…

From Flag

I rashly decided to cast on with a thumb cast on (cos it was quick!!) and started…deliberately ignoring one of the first instructions in the pattern…

“The key to this pattern is yarn management”

“I can juggle the balls of wool”, I thought , “I’ve been wise and have made centre pull balls…I’m a clever knitter….”

Not as clever as I thought!

Within about 4 rows I was getting in a hopeless tangle. Back to reading the sage advice on Helene’s website about yarn management…

The advice was to make a yarn box out of old cereal boxes to hold the balls of wool in the order you use them ….sounds mad huh??

Apparently, On the right side rows, as you change colours and pass them over each other – the colours twist together and on the wrong side they unwind and untangle as if by magic. I was not convinced!

“It’ll never work!”, “madness!!”

But I had a tangled mess of a project I really wanted to complete so I went into “Blue Peter”mode, got out the sticky back plastic and raided the recycling bin for cereal boxes…

(For anyone who’s not from the UK and wonders what “Blue Peter” is, it’s a much loved children’s TV program that always had a feature on making things from old bottles, cereal boxes and sticky backed plastic…you kinda had to be there!)

A cereal box, a lightbulb box, some strips of card to divide the yarn, some staples and some sellotape later I had the most amazing contraption!

From Flag

Ben couldn’t stop laughing – TSK!

I wedged the balls of yarn in their slots and tried a couple of row….

First the yarns twisted into a pleasing ladder…

From Flag

Then on the next row, they obediently untwisted and and were straight and untangled again. I was astonished.

I am truly impressed at how effective the technique is …

…if a little Heath Robinson!

With my yarn now firmly under control in the yarnbox at my feet, I’m whizzing along on the 5mm needles and garter stitch..

Filed under Knits WIP, Knitting · 8 Comments

This Man Deserves a Second Chance Hat

September 15th, 2010, 4:00 pm

As I’ve said, I’ve been busy – knitting, work, driving to Bristol and back.

Imagine my delight when I was welcomed home from a long drive by this…

From iPhone

The lovely Ben had prepared a delicious meal of Fajitas, all the trimmings and a hand crafted Margarita

You’ll remember that this lovely man had been put firmly in the dog house a couple of years ago (and has been there ever since in knitterly terms) after loosing a hat I had made him. Not just loosing it – but loosing it after only a couple of outings and before I’d properly photographed and blogged it!!

I had only managed this silly snap of the hat on Thug to use on the “APB for a Lost Hat” blog post...

From

The Margaritas did it, I have finally forgiven him enough to make him another hat

(I also need a commuting project but don’t tell Ben I said that!)

Ben had said he liked the Jacques Cousteau hat by Lalla Pohjanpalo – It’s a free pattern I found on Ravelry

(You can CLICK HERE to find the pattern on Lalla’s blog if you’re not on Ravelry).

Ben loved this picture..

From Ben Hat

And said it reminded him of the “Morph Ball” in Metroid Other M – a game he has just finished playing on the Wii…

From Ben Hat

So at the Iknit Weekender, I was questing to find the perfect yarn to make him this hat.

I went a little crazy at the Blackerdesigns stand - their wool is to die for. Their yarns are not only beautiful but British made and pure fibres. I get the strong impression that if you really wanted to know, they could tell you the names of each of the sheep your yarn came from!

I decided Ben should have this wonderfully soft and squishy Jacob wool with 50% mohair. Anyone who bleats “Wool is itchy”, Wool is rough”, “I can only wear thing so over-processed and soft they may as well be synthetic” should have a good long fondle of this yarn – it is lovely. You might have gathered – I get a little frustrated with the precious, spoilt, trying to out do each other on how sensitive they are, “it’s scratchy” brigade! (*thinks* opps, that’s probably alienated half my readers – gulp!)

Enough ranting – here’s the yarn!

From Ben Hat

I have got this far with the hat, after casting on 140 stitches with the Twisted German cast on I learnt in the Lopi course – just to make sure I remembered how!

From Ben Hat

I also bought some light as a feather organic Corridale from Blackerdesigns for a scarflette for me

From Ben Hat

And possibly the most Knit-nerdy book I have ever seen!

It was just too damned interesting to resist

From Ben Hat

Filed under Chat, Knits WIP, Knitting · 11 Comments

Taking Classes – Getting All Icelandic

September 14th, 2010, 12:28 pm

So, the Kidsilk Haze workshop was a day of playing, experimentation and fluffy indulgence.

The following day I was busy because I played in a Netball tournament for a work team – I’ve played once since school and that was last year’s tournament! A huge amount of fun but not much knitting there!

Following Netball, with unbelievably aching muscles there had to be the promise of something good to drag me out of bed early on Saturday…

Hmmm – A day the Iknit Weekender and a course on Icelandic Lopi Knitting with Ragga Eirikdottir was enough to get me out of bed!

I wanted to learn something new and have a bit of a challenge – exactly what I got!

Ragga told us some of the history of Icelandic knitting and about Lopi yarn – its a kinda “pre-wool” – unspun, light and fluffy and breaks easily

There’s lots of info on the Knitting Iceland site if you want to know more. Definitely worth a look!

Then we got to make a mini Lopaypeysa.

So cute!

From Little Lopi

This is what people always think of as the traditional Icelandic, thick, patterned yoke jumper. Although we learnt from Ragga that this has only been “traditional” since the 1950s!

So what did I learn?

Firstly – German Twisted cast on to start off with – I’d done Long Tail Cast On before but this is even better – very stretchy and doesn’t have an ugly wrong side either…

From Little Lopi

Try learning it!! ( Lots on Google for Twisted German Cast On)

Lopaypeysa are all knit in the round. Sleeves, body, yoke – the lot. So I learnt to do magic loop with one circular.

I know!! Every one has been doing that for AGES! I’m normally happy on DPNs and have avoided magic loop. All that shuffling of stitches up and down the needle seemed way too much faffing about for me. But I gave myself a little kick and decided I was there to learn new things, put away my DPNS and got to grips with it.

I made two tiny sleeves…

…and there was colourwork with two colours (could do that already- phew!)

……and there was joining the sleeves to the body…

Hmmmm

That really stumped me

I’m really not sure what the picture was in my head but I could not visualise how this worked…

Fortunately, I was sitting next to Marianne( excellent shawl knitter and the impossibly neat hand winder of balls of laceweight yarn) who helped me – Thank you!

I tried to describe how the sleeve join but came out with a long confusing ramble…basically, leave stitches at armpit on sleeve and body on waste yarn and knit back, front and over the top of both sleeves like this…

From Little Lopi

The armpit is kitchener stitched later when you’re done.

A few rounds of colour work with some nifty decreasing , a ribbed collar and I was done.

From Little Lopi

I had a great time – hard to keep up, learning new things and inspired to find out a whole lot more about…

From Little Lopi

Filed under Chat, Knitting · 9 Comments

Taking Classes – Cracksilk Haze

September 12th, 2010, 5:21 pm

What a busy week – and most of it knitting related

I have a back-log (back-blog? blog-log?) of blog posts for you – I just need the time to photograph and write them up – this beats struggling to find something interesting to say about purple square no.93!

Part of my busy week has been taking TWO knitting workshops! I’ll tell you about the first one today….

On Thursday, I took the Creative Kidsilk Haze workshop at John Lewis, Bluewater with Sarah Hazell.

I had booked this nearly 6 months ago as a day out for Guilty Knitters Mel, Anita, Judie and I – we were as excited as 6 year olds going to the circus

Sarah showed us sample of lots of different techniques with KSH and gave us patterns to try them out. We were then let loose on a multicoloured heap of the lovely fluffy, kitten-belly soft yarn to see what we could come up with. It was playtime….

I was wowed by the notion of combing the colour wash technique, used in my Earthstripe wrap (That’s where you hold 2 strands of KSH together and change the colour of one of the strands to blend colours together) AND moss stitch.

I grabbed a beautiful aubergine colour and a slickly green that I would never normally choose and my favourite “Jelly” green.

I was rather thrilled with how good they looked – note to self – colours you don’t like much can look great with other colours!

Must do something with this…

From kidsilk haze day

Then I played with combining Rowan Siena with KSH (I have lots of Jaeger Siena in my stash too )

Like this too!

From kidsilk haze day

And then there was the less successful trial with huge needles and an eyelet pattern…

From kidsilk haze day

Lastly, several of us played with the corsage pattern – it was very sweet…

Anita and Mel’s corsages…

From kidsilk haze day

And my attempt!

From kidsilk haze day

It was a lovely day out, playing and immersed in KSH.

Yes, I could have done a lot of that at home with my extensive stash but somehow I never quite find the time….

Filed under Chat, Knitting · 7 Comments

At Last – The Flower Blanket is Done

September 7th, 2010, 12:57 pm

The Flower Blanket is finally finished

I am so relieved.

First I must say, “Thanks you” for all the sympathy, empathy and support on my Despair Filled Wailing post – I think I’ve gotten over it now

Before I show you the inevitable “Finished Blankie” pictures, I guess you’d like to know about the edging?

I pretty much used the ideas from my wonderful Debbie Abrahams blanket books and threw in a couple of my own embellishments too.-

So, I picked up 37 stitches per block (that’s every stitch top and bottom and 3 out of 4 down the sides) and got 370 stitches.

I was worried I didn’t have much lilac left so I just did one row of lilac and….

….well this is getting boring – I’ll just show you!

From Flower Blanket

Some of each colour and a few beads nestling in with the garter stitch – just to pick up the “beadiness” of the blanket.

It worked really well in the corners too..

From Flower Blanket

Enough teasing – want to see the final, finished Flower Blanket??

Taaa Daaaa!

From Flower Blanket

I kinda liked this swooping shot of it too…

From Flower Blanket

It has been a slog to get it done but I have enjoyed most of the process
But the important question is – do the cats approve?

Hmmm… look what happened about 30 seconds after taking that photo, and putting the blanket out of harm’s way on the back of the sofa…

From Flower Blanket

Yes, that is Ben and his handknit, Brooklyn Denim jacket in the background – knitting every where you look in this house

“But, you made this for me. Right? Didn’t you??”, Said Mewsley – pulling her best ‘sad face’.

From Flower Blanket

“Don’t care. I worked hard on the snuggle-ability testing – I deserve it. My paws and claws are tucked in and it’s mine now… I’m ignoring you…

“

From Flower Blanket

When I get the Flower Blanket back from Mewsley, what am I going to do with it? Honestly – I don’t know – I started it when I lived in my flat and had a purple living room…maybe my knit room should be purple???

Until then it might end up living on the table, waiting for a good idea…

From Flower Blanket

Completed Knit Report
Name:	The Flower Blanket
Pattern:	Designed by me, heavily based on Debbie Abrahams’ Flower blanket
Yarn:	Jaeger Matchmaker DK, some beads and some Rowan Shimmer
Pattern Problems:	None, but I got so bored with those flowers!
Pattern Modifications:	Completely re-jiggiled Debbie’s pattern to make it 3 colours only.
Washing and Wearing:	yarn is allegedly machine washable but I’ll hand wash gently – will have to be careful how I use it.
Knit It Again???:	I’d do a different one maybe but not for a long while.
Difficulty:	3/5 Difficulty is in keeping going!
Rating:	5/5 A slog but I’m very proud of it
Other Postings Relating To This One:	There are loads – it was an epic!! Purple Flower Blanket – The Design Phase Flower Blanket – The knitting begins Flower Blanket – Taking Shape The Blanket Rules Cat Subdues Yarn and a Dumb Blunder Not Enough Yarn! I Need More Knitting Time And the Flower Blanket Goes On Knitgasm Blankie Dilema – Replanting the Flower bed Despair Filled Wailing

Filed under Cats, Completed Knit Report, Knitting · 12 Comments

Despair Filled Wailing

September 2nd, 2010, 10:20 am

Or perhaps this post should be called, “Stupid, Stupid, Stupid”

So here’s how I was reduced to “Despair filled wailing”…

I’m onto the last flower of the blanket….

I’m rushing around, grabbing my knitting, ready to go meet the Guilty Knitters for my Sunday morning knit-fest.

Quick look at the plan to see what flower it is…

From Flower Blanket

Yep, Yep, it’s a lilac background, purple petalled one…

Quick look at the blanket…yep, yep, that’s the one with no centre but a ring of beads…

I grab the necessary stuff…

I force myself to do the intarsia square, spurred on by the thought that it’s the last one. I really didn’t want to be knitting it. I drew on all my knitterly resolve to keep going…

I showed the Guilty Knitters my new project, that I have foolishly bought and is sitting looking at me, waiting to be started…It made it harder to persevere (More of that when I’ve done the evil Flower Blanket)

I got home, did chores, made dinner, then slogged through the flower, the end nearly in sight…

Something wasn’t right

This is what I was knitting…

From Flower Blanket

Hmmm…Right colours in the right places….

I looked up and saw the blanket, this square caught my eye…

From Flower Blanket

“NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!”

I had knit the wrong flower.

I wailed, I sore, I threw the evil, cursed, wrong flower down on the sofa and sobbed.

Poor Ben thought I had at least accidentally amputated a limb or garotted a cat. He wisely retreated, quickly, followed by a couple of slightly worried cats.

This is the flower I should have knit…