Small things

 

I like knitting sweaters and normally I would always have a sweater on the needles. But recently, with the weather getting colder and a trip to Saskatoon for work,  I have been drawn to smaller items, socks, hats and mittens… A warm cowl as well. The good thing about knitting small items is that it is so much easier to work on them while in a bus, plane or automobile. Not all of them of course, the multi-coloured fair-isle cowl  was not a commuter project, but it was lots of fun to make. Apart from having to seam a load of small threads at the end. 

Another matter is that  these assecoires are really used heavily at the moment as there was even the first thin layer of snow on the ground here… Who knows it might be a proper winter this year.

 

It has been some time

 

It has been some time that I have been writing here, lets say it was just life…. busy at work and not really finding inspiration to write when on free time. It is certainly not that I have not been knitting. Maybe not as much as I normally do, but every day at least a couple of rows to keep me sane. Even on Ravelry I am not really that active anymore. Yes I do update my projects and occasionally I write a message on the board, but it is occasionally and not more regular than that. 

Anyways the last couple of weeks I have started to make autumn/winter items. It’s not that it has been really cold yet, in fact there have been some freaky warm days, but it is getting stormy and the days are definitely much shorter, so good to make yourself more cozy. M wanted a real cozy sweater with a polo/roll neck please. September morn was deemed to be just what she wanted. I dug out some yarn from my stash, some Madelinetosh vintage tosh that I had bought at WEBS during a sale a couple of years ago. A nice straightforward knit, good for just relaxing...

Before that I made Korra for S. In that case it was the name of the pattern that caught our eyes. Actually that’s not true, it was Toph that we spotted first. During the last couple of years we have a cat that stays with us for a couple of months and then leaves. Then after a couple of months he is back and stays for a while. I am pretty sure he lives at tho households. He is nice and loves to be petted, and we gave him the name Toph, since we fought he was a female cat (which he isn’t, he is a castrated male…). Anyways Toph is the favourite character of both my children from the Last Airbender and therefore we had to check out the other patterns. S liked Korra very much, especially in the colours as in the pattern. So for once, exactly the same colours and yarn as from the pattern, and yes maybe a bit matchy matchy with her hair… Knitting this hat was real fun, short row shaping and all in garter too.

Cables are fun too

After a number of projects with colour work,it was time for something different, a bit of cable work.  M is normally not really that interested in wearing sweaters but she spotted Vika when I was browsing through patterns and she really liked it. She liked the cables and the neat turtle neck. Since I had some Madelinetosh in my stash in a nice blue that was a good match for the gauge, it was an easy decision to make this one. I didn’t really make any changes when knitting this one, had to play a bit with the sizes though, as M is quite thin, so I knitted the body is size 8 (she is 12) but lengthened it considerably. The sleeves are knitted for size 10 and also longer. For the sleeves I also changed the increase rate to space it out evenly at the end. Other than that, no changes at all. I knitted this without a cable needle (there is a tutorial here) which makes knitting cables so much quicker. Also the project becomes easier to transport as there is not that little cable needle that can so easily get lost. It is just a bit tricky to learn, and it needs a bit of dexterity, but once you’ve mastered it, it makes cable work actually easier. 

Winter Hat

 

I have been a bit obsessed with colour work lately. After knitting the Fair-Isle sweater for S, I wasn’t entirely done with it, so a quick-ish hat to really satisfy my stranded knitting needs… Funny story about this, I was at a meeting  and somebody noticed my knitting in my bag and was really nice about it. One of the guys who was in the group when this happened, smiled, lifted his trousers to bare his ankles and there were his knitted socks ;-) Now this was really nice since he was in “hard-core” physics and he said that he knitted socks mainly in meetings…. So yeah, us knitters unite in the strangest places….

The hat is Saudade, yarn bought as a kit at Ysolha.

Colours

My first big knitting project of the year got finished yesterday and I feel quite pleased with it. The pattern came from a Japanese book and I wanted to knit it for quite some time but other things came always in between. During the autumn my big daughter asked if I could knit her a Fair-Isle sweater, slightly vintage inspired and this pattern came to mind. The biggest problem was the yarn. Spindrift and Jumperweight bot come in lots and lots of colours, but this sweater was knitted in yarn that had slightly more weight but as it was Japanese not at all easy to get here. In the end I decided for Duett superset which is just slightly thicker than the yarns from the shetlands. S wanted the sweater in similar colours as the book, so we had to match them and there are quite a number of them. The Superset really worked well since it is slightly sticky yarn and that really helps for getting the tension right for the stranded knitting. 

I didn’t make any changes apart from the back where I also used the colour work (in the original the back was only in the main colour) and as the sleeve cap instructions were quite odd (or maybe I just didn’t interpret the scheme right) I did my own shaping there. As there are so many colours on a neutral background, it goes with almost anything, which is of course important ;-) .

Anyway this was fun, and that one has to treasure these days… So many days this week I woke up with dread, what will be in the papers today… Last week Saturday was a glorious counter of course, but the rest of it. So many decisions from Trump and so much worse than even imagined. Mexicans, women, muslims, scientists all being targeted and what will next week bring?  One other good thing of knitting this jumper is that I have quite a bit left-overs for stranded projects, maybe something like a bit of my own resistance mittens. 

 

P.S.

P.S. I forgot to activate the pattern download on Ravelry yesterday….too hasty I guess. It is fixed now and the pattern can be downloaded.

 

And just a peek at what I am knitting now, challenge for January:

A small gift for 2017

 

Some weeks ago I knitted a slipped stitch hat for M. I really did like the way that it came out and I thought it would be a nice idea to make it into a pattern. I quite like slipped stitch knitting as it is easy to do and it gives a real nice effect. In this case the slipped stitches are giving rise to vertical columns. Slipped stitch fabric is also quite dense, so it makes for a good warm hat.  Since I spent my last day of the old year and the first day of the New Year with a terrible cold, it gave me plenty opportunity to reknit the hat, take careful notes and make it into a pattern. So here it is a Slipped Hat for a fast quick knit too keep one warm for the year to come. 

Just one note on the yarn, I used Rowan Fazed Tweed, unfortunately now discontinued.  I love this bulky yarn as it is soft but doesn’t pill. Any bulky yarn would work. The hat comes in only 1 size ((Women’s), but using a slightly thinner yarn and smaller needles will make a smaller hat as I did with the one below (Bigger child). Notes on that hat can be found at the project page, here.