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.

Shopping and what came from it...

A couple of weeks ago during host-lov (autumn leave) I spend one day with my daughters shopping in Göteborg. I felt a bit guilty as I had to work during leave so I felt that at least one day could be used to do something with them. I kind of like walking/browsing through a city without buying a lot and so does the big one and although the smaller daughter is more like my husband in not liking shopping too much, going to Goteborg was still a fun prospect. It is a two hour train trip away and for once we had bought the tickets really in advance which meant that it wasn’t too expensive. The train comes with free internet, so that helps as well. In Goteborg we had a good time exploring the city (not really been there a lot) but I did come home with stuff as their are some real nice yarn shops… As we were there, the sky became dark and darker and then the first snow flakes of the season came down and then as we were in a yarn shop just then, I knew what to do with that tempting yarn… hats.  We came home with some Rowan Felted Tweed and a nice organic wool from Italy. My youngest one spotted fake fur balls and really wanted one for a hat and OK that could be incorporated. 

This week the yarn became hats, the felted tweed became a Folklore hat. I knew I wanted to make a hat using some stranded knitting and after browsing the Revelry library we found that one. It is a good design and since the motifs are not large it is real fun knitting. There are no long floats so a very good item if one wants to try some stranded knitting. With a nice big multicoloured pompom at the top it makes a real fun and warm hat. For the other hat, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. I had two colours grey so it could be stripes or stranded or maybe a two-coloured brioche hat. I did some browsing but nothing really caught my eye. In the end I went for a simple slip-stitch pattern creating vertical stripes. It is really very simple and I really like the result. This one is more like a beanie, but it comes over the ears, very important for keeping warm according to my smaller one.

Polwarth

Slowly I knitted this sweater last month. It took a bit longer than I had foreseen, but then I had two false starts and my brioche goes very very slow. I started with a needle size 2.75/3.25 but I felt that the fabric was a bit too stiff, so rip rip rip and over to 3.25 and 3.5 mm. Much much better and the yarn really started to sing. This is Ysolda Blend no.1 and it is really lovely stuff, very soft and yet somehow sturdy too. Strangely enough it was also slightly splitty which really only bothered me when I was knitting the brioche borders and triangle. As for the pattern, as this sweater is for my teenage daughter and it is supposed to mimic a sweat-shirt, I decided not to have any shaping at all. I think that really worked well and I guess it will be a well-beloved item. It suits her well and is exactly her style. Way back in April, when I first spotted this pattern, I knew this would be a real good one for S. 

Next things to come, are some hats, with 5 weeks or so to go in this year (I can’t wait for 2016 to be over, but then I also dread the year to come) and already one winter week behind us, some warm hats are really needed. So that’s the plan, a couple of warm hats, some mittens too and then probably a cardigan for me.

The Blues

 

I am having a serious case of the blues. I lie awake at night and I am worried. Not much I can do but being worries. It was not my election, but as it stands, an US election does affect the whole world, so yeah, I have reasons to lie awake at night. Also similar populism is at work in the UK (Brexit, anyone), France, Hungary, basically the whole of Europe, including Sweden. I am sick of it and hate the small-mindedness of it all, the under-belly feelings that are brought upwards, the latent racism and misogyny that is awakened. Also I am a scientist and I am just so offended by the anti-science (experts are not needed, global warming doesn’t exist, and so on and so forth) almost anti-education vibes that are being expressed these days.  Last month I spoke with a colleague in a similar position in the UK and he said that he had become a member of a political party as he felt he had been silent too long. Right! I have always been upfront about my (non)beliefs, my political stance and so forth and I will remain doing that. I will continue to discuss politics at a dinner table, at the coffee breaks at work and so on and I will try to speak out more when I hear bigots talking. On a what can I do level, I am also becoming Swedish as I have to vote where I live. Not an easy decision to make (I will lose my birth nationality) but I need to do this.

I also want to give honor to tech knitter for her latest blog , I hope more people will follow this path, speak up, become party members or activist or something, but do not be quiet!