Silk and such..

 

My first summer project has been finished, a fun top well suited for a teenager. I knitted this with Kiito which is a 100% silk yarn. But it is one of those dry silk yarns and not one of those smooth shiny silk yarns. It makes for a lovely slightly tweedy fabric which will work so nice for hot summer days. Not that we have hot summer days yet, but hopefully later in the year we get at least some of them. I made some minor changes to the pattern, the main one is that I didn’t do a single row of crochet at the neckline. That felt too flimsy, instead I did a couple of rows of garter in the contrast colour. Otherwise no big changes. As this was mainly stockinette, this was a fast project, just like the one I am working on now. With a yarn like this stockinette can work so well...

Ready for Spring

It is nice that spring is on its way. On Sunday we went out to watch the Cranes resting on their long track to the north and after that we had a long walk along a river with fields with loads of birds back from the South, lapwings, oyster catchers, geese, a lark in the sky and that was really really nice. Unfortunately there was a very cold strong wind and I was already feeling a bit iffy, so on Monday I had a fever and was in bed. Spring too? I am feeling better now so it wasn’t a long one, but annoying it was.

Anyways I finished my Braid Hills, a little spring cardigan with some nice twisted stitches to keep me just warm enough. It was a pretty straight-forward knit, I didn’t really change anything except the sequence of how I knitted it (one front first, then the back and then the other front) in order to minimise the seaming. I also picked up the sts for the sleeves just very slightly different, but really those are not big changes.I found some nice buttons in my stash that added to the vintage feeling. 

I can’t really see the rowing out anymore after blocking and the cables show up neat and nicely. This is nice yarn with that slightly “artisan” feel, not as polished as some yarns, but very nice and soft and that nice heathered colour. 

Braids

it’s spring, so I am knitting a cardigan that is hopefully perfect for just this time of year. It is lightweight and has a soft-colour, not toasty warm but more an item to take that chill away. There is a bit of cable work, or actually twisted stitches going on to keep it interesting, so I am quite happy. The yarn is the main thing. It is De Rerum Natura Ulysses which is made from white and black merino sheep. That mixture gives the yarn a grey heather which makes the colour quite hard to describe but also quite lively. It is quite a soft yarn with a nice drape and it is just ever so slightly fuzzy which makes that the stitch definition is not as good as for some merino wools. I also have a slight whiff of rowing out which is also funny. I sometimes have a bit of rowing out with certain cotton yarns, but I do not think I ever had it with a woollen yarn so I am a bit puzzled. It is however less bad in real life than in the photo so I can definitely live with it, but it is just one of those riddles, why does this wool do this...

Since the yarn is so soft and still quite sturdy feeling and the colour is so nice, I think I might come back to this one, maybe for a lace cardigan...

Summer is coming....

Yesterday I was with my big daughter at Malmö syfestivalen, and can I just say that it was a good thing she was there as I would probably have increased my stash even more than I did… So summer knitting all lined up now….

Neat

I had an intensive week and face a bit of writers-block, so I will just show a couple of pictures…. Maybe I will update it tomorrow, but for now….

 

Underdog

 

In this time and age, I don’t think that there are many parent who haven’t encountered Harry Potter in one way or the other. In our case we have read all the books to the eldest one and are now on a cycle for the youngest one as well. We’ve seen the movies (more than once, especially the 3rd one as I do think that is by far the best one) and we have seen the train going over that bridge (it helps when there is a strong link to Scotland). With a daughter very much into cos-play, it is just a wonder that there wasn’t a call for a knit earlier. Well I knitted the “Harry Potter” sweater many years ago, but apart for that, that has been it. And there has been quite a bit of really nice knitwear in Harry Potter…. So it didn’t came as a surprise that I got a request for a “school sweater”. What was a bit of a surprise was the house, it had to be a Ravenclaw sweater… The other day we were at the Science Fiction book-shop in Malmö and like “Forbidden Planet” they do have a good collection of bits and pieces of merchandise including Harry Potter stuff. Hagrid comes as an extra sized vinyl pop figure and so on, and there are Gryffindor & Slytherin badges and even an odd Hufflepuff scarf but the one that is absent was Ravenclaw. One of my favourite characters from the books & films is Luna, clever and loopy, but so very insightful. So why is Ravenclaw so neglected? To be clever at school and actually liking to learn can be a reason to be bullied, the trope of the clever scientist to wrapped up in his/her experience to forget that (s)he has gotten over to the evil side is quite common. Hufflepuff is charming and innocuous, Ravenclaws are too clever for their own good. Why Hermione is in Gryffindor and not in Ravenclaw is another good question I guess…. In any case I am knitting a Ravenclaw sweater…..

Magic

 

 

 

I guess the best one say about a pattern, I did not make any adjustments at all, just plain sailing…. This one was like that, no adjustments at all, so not a lot to write about. One of the main attraction for me about this pattern was the treatment of the shoulders, better seen in the picture to the left. It is difficult to find the name “French shoulders? German shoulders I have also seen and a couple more names. I think it is a nice treatment. I also like the stockinette vs cable contrast, the trims and the slipped stitches. A very nice knit. The pattern is Plum Wine knitted in Madelinetosh DK Twist in a lovely lively blue.

So a little bit of magic here...

My next project is also magic related but in a completely different manner… To be honest one of the reasons that I was drawn to Plum were these shoulders and those I will employ again on the next project, but that one will be own design, a request again from S…. Lots of stockinette so a nice contrast with this one… good to blend things!