Tag: knitty

Silky Tweed Clapotis

Silky Tweed Clapotis

This is my fourth Clapotis, in Rowan Silky Tweed. It’s taken me more than a year to knit it, because I kept getting sidetracked by more interesting projects along the way. I wore my Rowan Tapestry clapotis ever such a lot over the winter, but it doesn’t quite go with all my clothes. This nice neutral grey should hopefully fill in the gaps. Although it’s a bit heavier than the Tapestry, the silk gives it a lovely drape.

I knitted this one back-and-forth on a circular needle, and that helped to alleviate the terrible wrist pain I’d had from the previous one. Because you can keep the weight of the weight of the knitting in your lap rather than on the needles, it’s a lot easier to manage.

Silky Tweed Clapotis

I was spurred on to finish this one by the fact that I’m going on holiday soon, and I’m going to be spending quite a lot of time outdoors. I’d rather hoped that in the middle of May I might need to be taking sandals with me, rather than an enormous scarf, but this is England, and the weather’s nothing if not unpredictable. I should probably thankful that I’ve also knitted a matching hat.

Peachy Shawls

Tulips Shawlette

Now that these shawls are finally finished and have reached their recipients, I can safely show them to you all!

The Tulips Shawlette, above, is by Anniken Allis, and the pattern’s in Issue 36 of The Knitter. The moment I saw it, I reached for the first 4-ply yarn I could find in my stash, and started knitting. It was quite a while before I realised that I had no earthly use for a peach lace shawl, but I was enjoying knitting it so much that I didn’t really care. Eventually it occurred to me that it would look lovely on Paul’s grandmother, and it became her Christmas gift.

The yarn is Rowan Cashcotton 4-ply, now discontinued. I usually prefer not to work with cotton because it hurts my hands, but this is soft and lovely. Unfortunately the angora does shed – working with this on my lap made me wonder whether Bond villains need shares in lint rollers, to get rid of all the fluffy white hairs.

Tulips Shawlette

I hadn’t knitted any lace quite as complicated as this before, feather & fan being about my limit. But the two designs fitted together really well (being an 8-row and a 16-row repeat) and the pattern was written out as well as charted. I followed the written instructions for the most part, because I find a row of text easier to keep in my head than a row of symbols. I used a lot of sticky notes to mark my place, and it took me a long time to really understand how the pattern worked.

Tulips Shawlette

I did use the charts for the edging pattern, mostly because I couldn’t seem to get the written instructions to repeat properly. I’m not terribly keen on the edging, it doesn’t seem very definite, somehow. But I do like the shawl as a whole, and I feel a bit braver about working from charts now.

Peach Wall of Shawl

Because the Tulips pattern required a lot of concentration, I wanted another project to work on that was much simpler. I also wanted something that could also work as a lap blanket. This one is Wall of Shawl, by Martina Patricia Munroe. I think this design looks much more interesting in a handspun or multi-coloured yarn, but I thought it would be nice to make a “matching” gift for each of Paul’s grandmothers, and I was really enjoying working with the Cashcotton.

In fact, I was enjoying it right up until I came to knit the edging. That yo row (the decorative holes near the bottom) doubles the stitch count, at which point I thought my head might explode with boredom. I didn’t count the stitches on the final row, because I didn’t want to know!

The only thing I don’t like about this shawl is the way that the edge curls up. It’s a natural feature of stocking stitch, so there’s not much I could have done to prevent it. The pattern suggests knitting the ruffle about 3” long, which probably helps, but I was running out of time and patience. I could also have cast off on the wrong side, which would have turned the edging inwards, rather than out. But the shawl itself is a lovely size, and the fabric drapes beautifully.

I still don’t have any real need for a peach lace shawl, but I have quite a lot of this yarn left, and The Knitter seems to be going through a phase of showing me lots of lovely patterns that I really must knit as soon as I possibly can! I’m resisting the urge at the moment though, while I knit my fifth Clapotis – a nice simple one in Rowan Silky Tweed. After that, perhaps I’ll cast on for something a little bit more complicated.

Noro Clapotis

Noro Clapotis

Every time I knit a Clapotis, I complain all the way through.

“It’s boring!”
“My hands hurt!”
“Maybe I could make it shorter…”
“How much further?”

But every time I’ve finished knitting a Clapotis, I can’t wait to start another one.

This one was started in July, as a birthday present for my mother-in-law. But her birthday came and went, and I was still knitting, so it became her Christmas present instead. It’s made from five skeins of Noro Cash Island, a lovely soft blend of wool and cashmere. It’s beautifully soft and drapes beautifully.

Thankfully it was extremely well received – my mother-in-law is also a knitter (and a much better one than me!), so she appreciates the time and effort that goes into making a gift like this as much as the finished piece itself.

And I may have had a little accident in the John Lewis sale, and bought five skeins of Rowan Silky Tweed, to make a pretty grey one for myself…

Quadrat

Yay, the new Knitty is up!

Knitty’s a funny one for me – I love looking through the new designs, and I’ve got quite a few patterns queued on Ravelry, but I’ve actually completed very few Knitty projects. Slither, Fetching and the ubiquitous Clapotis are the only ones I’ve finished, I think.

This one though… I know I haven’t got enough of the correct weight of yarn in my stash unless I wanted to make it stripy, so I’m now wondering what I can unravel in order to make myself a Quadrat!

I need about 900 metres of dk/worsted weight yarn – something that can be worked on 4mm needles.

The bargain section at Kemp’s Wool Shop is looking pretty tempting right about now…

Helena for Catherine.

Big Ted models Catherine's Helena Cardigan

Here’s my completed Helena, from Knitty.

It’s beautifully modelled by Big Ted, who refused to take off his Ewok outfit for the picture.

I’m sure that baby Catherine won’t mind that you can see where I made the switch on the sleeves from working back and forth on one circular needle to working in the round on dpns.

I must confess that I’m still not a big fan of working in the round. Perhaps its because I come from a dressmaking background, but I do feel as though shoulder seams particularly give a structural integrity to a garment. This is especially important in larger knitted items as they can be heavy, and all the weight of a big jumper is carried by the shoulders. Then again, my preference is for raglan sleeves which don’t have proper shoulder seams whether you knit them in the round or not.

Now I just need to decide what to knit next. I have a jumper a scarf and a lacy tank top all half-finished, and yet I’d much rather be designing a pattern for a pink and black stripy pirate jumper… possibly with this gorgeous “deathflake” motif across the front.

Working on a baby cardigan

Helena - without sleeves

Aside from hats, this is the first baby garment that I’ve knitted.
The pattern is Helena, from Knitty.

I had originally planned to knit Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “February” baby cardigan, but I didn’t have access to the pattern when I wanted to start knitting (i.e. IMMEDIATELY!), so I went with this one instead. The construction’s basically the same, but the lace pattern and hem are different.

I’ve only changed one thing about this pattern, and that was swapping the front ties for three little buttons. I do wish I’d cast off on a larger needle, but that’s just a peculiarity of my knitting style not a complaint about the pattern. The same applies to the fact that it took me a whole hour to pick up and knit the stitches for the band. Ouch.

I have to confess that my motives for choosing the February pattern were entirely selfish. I’ve never knitted a top-down raglan cardigan before, and I wanted to try out the technique on something small. I’d really like to knit myself a February Lady cardigan, but I didn’t want to launch into yet another big knitting project only to abandon it because I didn’t like the way it was turning out.

All I need to do now is knit the sleeves, and finish them off with a neat little picot hem. Then it can be sent off to Catherine, who hopefully won’t have grown out of it before she gets to put it on!

My First Clapotis.

Clapotis

Now that the birthday gift has been received (only a week late, oops…) I can now reveal my first Clapotis!

I have to confess that I’ve been avoiding making a Clapotis for several years. There are more than ten thousand finished Clapotii listed on Ravelry, and another five thousand people with this project in their to-do queue. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about, and I didn’t want to jump on a giant knitting bandwagon just for the sake of it. So I didn’t knit one. Until now.

The reason this gift was a week late is that I spent many, many evenings knitting swatches for scarves and then unravelling them again. I wanted to make a companion gift to go with these Slither gloves, so I was originally thinking of something stripy, or perhaps an intarsia or fairisle design that would make the most of the three colours. In the end I couldn’t come up with anything that looked nice on both sides (I’m fussy about that in a scarf), so I started looking for any kind of scarf or wrap that could be made with the amount of wool that I had.

Clapotis turned out to fit the bill perfectly, and I’m glad it did!

I couldn’t have done it though, without the help of Stricklady‘s handy Clapotis Chart. She breaks down each section of the scarf and charts exactly where to place your markers, and how many repeats you need to make. Using this, I could keep track of which row I was working on, and figure out exactly where to change the colours so that I could be sure I’d have enough yarn to reach the other end. Thank you, Stricklady!

While I was out walking at the weekend, chasing geese with the camera, I could have done with a Clapotis of my very own. It’s perfect for this in-between weather – not quite warm enough to go without a coat, but not quite cold enough to want to be completely bundled up. I might have to have a little hunt through my wool stash, and see what I can find…

Slither

Last night I started knitting the Slither gloves, from Knitty.

Today I will mostly be unravelling them, and starting again. Wah!
(I made a mistake right at the beginning of the stripes, dammit.)

The pattern is marked as “tangy”, which is not really very complicated in the great scheme of things. The particular difficulty with this pattern is that you’re doing three things at the same time.

Decrease every sixth row; repeat twelve times.
Change colour every eighth row; repeat ten times.
Make a buttonhole on the third row of every colour change.

Given my current inability to remember what day it is, I can’t keep all of that lot in my brain and knit at the same time. So, I have made myself a handy chart, writing out the rows in blocks of two stripes at a time. I’ve simply numbered the rows, 1-16 in five columns, and I’ve written “dec” or “butt” on the appropriate row, to remind me that I have to do something other than just keep knitting.

Now I just need to keep track of which row I’m working on, and everything will be fine!

 

 

The pattern and the image above are © Veronica O’Neil. She also has some handy hints and comments about the pattern on her blog!