It’s great to take photos to appreciate the big picture look of the piece. It’s revealing itself to be a lovely, timeless pullover/sweater, and a knitting pattern will be available when test knitting has confirmed all the lovely details.
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Making good progress on the sample for the Fair Isle Pullover.
Making a start on the back of a Fair Isle pullover. This is the sample pullover for my current design. The aim is to create a lovely timeless knitting pattern in a vintage style.
The West-Northwest Pullover can now been seen on the Pullovers and Cardigans page.
It was one of those designs where I was wondering, “Am I crazy to be doing this?”. For some reason, these always end up to be my favourites. It’s worked in a 4ply/Fingering yarn and covered in small rib, cables and twist stitches, hence my doubts about my own state of mind. And of course a collar, which is so simple but transforms it to another level. The outcome is so worth it. I love the vintage look that I ended up with!
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We’re having a very out-of-routine few weeks at the moment, so very little is getting done on the knitting front. As I’d already picked up the stitches for an armhole for the Virgo Vest one evening, I managed to knit the armhole band in the car yesterday. So, as you can see, I have the neck band and one armhole band completed. Don’t hold your breath, but I’ll get there in the end.
I’m already thinking about what I’m going to design when this vest is completed. The plan is for a small lace bag (what is it with me and lace?) worked in a cotton/linen blend. When on a trip into town on Monday, I visited Clegs on the off chance that I’d find the sort of thing I was after. Having failed in my search on their website, due no doubt to my lack of skills, while wandering the shelves I managed to find some Katia Linen. “Ooooh!”, I exclaimed, and purchased it at once. Stay tuned for further updates.
My alpaca lace vest is nearing completion. The front an back are both finished and are currently blocking. Here is a picture of the back before blocking. It looks rather crumpled here, but the blocking is doing it wonders.
Tonight, I’ll be able to sew it together and measure up to calculate the required stitches for the neck band and armhole bands. Now to see if I have the right sized circular needle for the bands! The yarn is a little fuzzy, so I wasn’t sure how well the pattern would be visible, but it looks fine in this photo.
It’s great that it’ll be ready for Southern Hemisphere Spring wear, and Northern Hemisphere Autumn/Fall wear. A win for everybody!!
The Beatles Pullover I referred to in my last post is now complete. Here it is! It turned out really well and is well liked. There’s just a line visible between the L and the E where I’ve caught the floats. I’ve obviously got some learning to do on how to avoid that happening. Suggestions? Comments?
The lace vest I’m working on is coming along nicely. I’ve just finished the back and have started on the front.
I’ve also had a design appear in Issue 30 of Yarn Magazine. Yay! It’s my Hayley Ear Flap Hat. It’s a quick and cute big needle knit. Keep your head warm this winter! 🙂
I’ve had ideas to design an alpaca lace vest. I’ve knitted up my swatch in Heirloom Alpaca using a Falling Leaf lace pattern. My thought was to have a button up vest, but the size of the multiples doesn’t make that easy. It’s working out to 5.3cm per pattern multiple. For the five sizes I’m planning, that would give 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 multiples at the waist, and this stitch pattern doesn’t halve very well. For the odd numbers (7 and 9), I could drop one repeat and have 3 or 4 repeats for the left and right front, then make up the dropped repeat with a 5.3cm button band. That’s a pretty wide button band in anyone’s language. For the odd numbers it just wouldn’t work, and I don’t want to limit it to two sizes. That’s just not enough. But I love this stitch pattern in this yarn. What to do? Well, instead of making it a button up vest, I’ve decided it will be a pullover vest, with a scoop neck. I can design another button up vest later on.
However, the vest will have to wait for the moment. In the meantime, I’ve had a request for a Beatles pullover from my youngest. I’ve found a pattern for a Beatles Needle Case on Ravelry. In my collection of magazines I have the pattern for the Quilting a la Knitting pullover, by Norah Gaughan. This pullover is in the shape and yarn weight requested, so I’m just making it in one colour, plonking in the Beatles design at the front and changing the neckline as requested. I find this much stocking stitch pretty boring, but I’ve found a lot of pluses. It’s a lot faster than using a stitch pattern and I can knit for cms without having to refer to the pattern. I’m making great headway. At this rate I should be finished a lot sooner than I estimated, so it will hopefully get plenty of winter wear. (Southern hemisphere). 🙂 The yarn I’m using is Cleckheaton Country Aran, which is the same yarn that I used for the Kinematics Scarf, but this time in the cream colourway.
I’m more than halfway through knitting a very simple cabled scarf for one of the progeny.
It’s so simple, you could design your own variation, even if you’ve only ever followed patterns before.
“How?”, you may ask? Well, follow along these simple steps!
Step 1: Choose your yarn. Wool, or some sort of wool blend is nice, because it keeps it’s shape very well, but any yarn will do. Any weight you like, 4ply, 8ply, 10ply, whatever.
Step 2: Inspect the label from you yarn to find out the recommended needle size and the standard guage/tension. I’ve chosen Cleckheaton Country Aran, a fairly new aran weight/10ply yarn. The label informs me that the recommended needle size is 5.00mm (UK 6, US 8), and that the guage/tension is 19 stitches and 25 rows to 10cm. The stitch guage is more interesting to us than the row guage, for the moment anyway.
Step 3: Choose a cable pattern. If you have a good knitting book like “Vogue Knitting – The Ultimate Knitting Book” you will find a Stitch Dictionary included which has a cable section. You can use a cable pattern from a pattern book or magazine in your collection. Lion Brand yarn have a good online stitch dictionary, including cables. Borrow a stitch dictionary from your local library. Ours has Knitting Handbook by Viv Foster, The Knitting Book by Frederica Patmore and The Encyclopedia of Knitting by Lesley Standfield. Your library will probably have a couple.
The pattern you choose should describe the number of stitches as multiple of x stitches plus y stitches. The simple cable I’m using is a multiple of 9 stitches plus 3 stitches. The cable is 6 stitches with 3 stitches between each cable, which adds up to 9 stitches. The plus 3 stitches is so that you have the same 3 stitches (or however many “plus” stitches yours specifies) at the start and end of each row to balance things up.
Step 4: Knit a tension/gauge square. It won’t take long, I promise!!! To knit your square, use needles one size up from the ball band recommendation. It’s nice to have a bit of give and flexibility in your scarf; it doesn’t need a firm fabric like a pullover would. So in my case the needles size will be 5.5mm (US 5, UK 9).
If you wanted a 10cm wide square you could use the ball band stitches x 1. Aiming to have a square of about 15cm (6 in) we’ll need about 1.5 times the number of stitches specified on the ball band. 1.5 x 19 in my case is 28.5 stitches. Well, I’m not going to have half a stitch. I need this number to cater for my multiple of 9 sts plus 3 sts as well.
If I take the 3 sts from my 28.5 sts I get 25.5 stitches. Does 9 go into this? No. We’ll round up to something divisible by 9. 27 stitches will do the trick, plus my extra 3 stitches gives me 30 stitches. Even though I’ve gone up a needle size and rounded up for my stitch number, the cables will pull everything in, so I’ll add one more multiple of 9 to give me 39 sts, that’s four cables wide plus 3 extra stitches.
So cast on your 39 (or whatever number you’ve come up with), and start knitting using your chosen cable stitch pattern. I played around with mine. After a few rows, I started doing p1, k1, p1 between each cable because I thought I might like the look of it. I didn’t. So, after about 6 rows of this, I went back to the pattern as written. My cable pattern actually specifies to do a cable every 4th row, but that’s a more compact look than I wanted, so I did them every 6th row. Continue until you’ve got roughly a square. Cast/bind off.
Yay, you’ve got a tension/gauge square! Go you! Now, hopefully you’ve got some sensitive digital kitchen scales. Weigh you’re square to find out how much yarn you used. Write it down.
Step 5: Soak your square in water, remove it from the water, squeeze out any excess water, roll it in a towel and press out more water. Now lay your square on a fresh, dry towel, stretching it out a bit. It’ll spring back a bit, but don’t pin it; you’re scarf’s going to squish up when you wear it anyway. Allow it to dry overnight.
Step 6: Inspect your square, ruler in hand. How wide is it? How tall is it? Is this a good width for a scarf? If you added or subtracted a cable would that make it the width that you want? From this information calculate how many stitches you’ll need to cast on for your actual scarf.
Step 7: How much yarn are you going to need? If your square is 15cm x 15cm it is 225 square cm. (Thank you calculator!). If you want your scarf to be 140cm x 20cm that will be 2800 square cm. If I divide 2800 by 225, I find out that my scarf is the equivalent of 12.44 tension/guage squares. My square weighed 17g. If I multiply 17g x 12.44 squares, I get 211.5 grams required for my scarf. Each ball is 50g, so I need 5 balls, and there’ll be plenty left over.
Step 8: Obtain your yarn, cast on your calculated number of stitches and start knitting! Cast off when you’ve reached your desired length.
Let me know how you go, and I’d love to see some results! Good luck and happy designing. 🙂
The pattern for my new Janine Scarf is now available.The Janine Scarf is a mid-season cotton scarf in the Vandyke lace stitch. There is a cute, double line of bobbles at each end.
So that the “v”s are pointing down at both ends, the scarf is worked in two pieces which are joined using a three-needle bind/cast off.
The yarn used is Sirdar Calico, and the colour I’ve used is 727 (green). It’s a cotton acrylic blend in DK 8ply. The perfect yarn for a mid-season scarf.
Janine Scarf
Knitting Pattern
Yarn Suggested: Sirdar Calico or any other 8 ply / DK yarn. 50gm balls, 157 meters (172 yards)
Gauge:20 stitches and 31 rows = 4 inches in Vandyke Stitch
Needle Size: 4.5mm
Meterage: 340 m (372 yards)
Sizes Available: 140cm x 16cm (55 in x 6 in)
This pattern is available to buy from Ravelry for $US 5.40
WakefulKnits 