Tag: handspun

Yet more knitted blankets …

Our house is full of knitted blankets – we really do not need any more!Nevertheless, over the past few years we’ve made several more, two more of them this last winter. They are all quite different in construction and size, but they still a pleasure to use on these wintry days …That’s Ilsa,-  cosily settled on the ruched throw I’ve recently completed …This is a really lovely pattern which you will find knitted in more muted single-colour tones on Ravelry here. I loved knitting it – and so did the cats, cuddling up with me as I beavered away on wintry nights …And it used up some (not all!) of my stash of handspun yarns …

It’s such a simple pattern, all knit in garter stitch.  The striped part of this blanket is doubled in stitches when it comes to the plain dark knit – thus giving a ruched effect.  I crocheted round the entire blanket several times to tidy the edges of my rather raggedy homespun …We all love this light little throw – perhaps the cats most of all. Indeed, there’s a possessive look to their presence here which is perhaps a little worrying …I really like knitting small blanket/throws. A year or so back, I knitted a green-toned one.  This was an adaptation of a pattern I found on Ravelry here. The Scrappy Lengthwise Scarf uses slip stitch  to make a scarf, but this pattern adapts very nicely to making a blanket.Such an convincing woven effect!While I wove all the ends in, Anne Wheaton used this pattern to great effect to make a fringed blanket. I stuck to habit and crocheted round my blanket …My only critcism is that slip stitches are very easy to catch!Definitely this winter’s pièce de résistance is the blanket we made of Stephen’s machine-knitted swatches …We’ve written before of Stephen’s machine-knitting designs and another blanket we have made from our knitted swatches.

This blanket started with me crocheting round the edges of his swatches and ironing them flat …Then they are laid out as we struggle to work out which pieces will fit where ..Not easy when Stephen has knit each piece to a different size! (Eggy doesn’t help either …)

Then there’s a long time while I stitch them together and we both get very fed up with the pieces lying on our sittingroom floor.  Finally the blanket goes into the washing machine for a light wash (to get rid of all that smelly machine-knitting oil), and out it goes to blow gently in the balmy Northumbrian breezes …The designer checks it out …It has an occasional home in our new (old) caravan. It doesn’t just look cosy, it really makes sleeping in there very cosy indeed …So it was well worth the effort.  But can I face next basketful of swatches?! Perhaps next winter …While I’m left contemplating the next knitted swatch blanket, I’ll hand you over to Stephen for him to explain the whys and wherefores of some of his patterns:

Inspiration for my patterns come from all over the place, from 60s op art to designs found in the built environment.
Several years ago we stayed for a few days in Ripon and explored the ruined abbeys of North Yorkshire. We found little surviving of Byland Abbey above ground level, but came across many medieval floor tiles still in situ, including this one.
I first designed a pattern to replicate it in knitted Shetland wool:
I then developed it to a second pattern adding a bit more interest
This is still very close to the original pattern. But my third pattern is much more developed, and it is quite hard to pick out the underlying original pattern:
The next pattern was designed and knitted in response to the Manchester Arena bombing. The bee is the symbol of the city, and both Katherine and I joined others all over the country showing our solidarity with the city in this terrible time by making small bee-patterned items. K made a padded heart, and I made this bee swatch to wrap it in.
The next pattern  is one I designed myself, and knitted in tuck stich – this was actually a tension swatch I used for scarves I knitted for my daughters last Christmas. The fascinating thing about tuck stich, where the wool is caught of the needle but not knitted, is that it distorts the pattern, with straight lines ending up slightly curved. In extreme forms of tuck stitch, when several rows of wool are not knitted, the tensions in the knitting make the fabric buckle and pucker in rather unpredictable ways.Finally, a pattern based on a very simple quadrant motif treated in several different ways.  Here the motif is put together in opposite pairs, and between the left and right side as shown the colours were reversed. Very effective, particularly when framed by Katherine’s crocheted border.
I used this pattern to knit several large panels for covers for our sofas. For these I also used another element that I like using in my designs, that of pure randomness. The width of each coloured band, and its colour was selected at random, using a simple computer program. Which version do you prefer, black quadrants on coloured stripes?
Or coloured quadrants on a black backgroud?
Food patterns for thought, hopefully!

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A new take on Kaffe Fassett …

I’ve been nuts about Kaffe Fassett knits since his wonderful colourful designs exploded into the knitting scene in the early 80s. You may have read in my earlier blog about the knits I made using his patterns. But my Kaffe knits (as I like to think of them) sort of fizzled out as we came to the Millennium – partly this was because I was very busy on the employment front, and partly fashions in knitting had changed.  Like many other knitters I explored knits that focused on texture rather than colour.  I now have lots of lovely single colour shawls.

But last year I sort of came to a halt with my knitted shawls.  I had lost heart – they weren’t really my thing.  What I really longed to do was to return to my original knitting passion and knit multi-colour again – with strands and strands of differently-coloured yarn – just as Kaffe had taught us.

But those huge boxy garments! To some extent they were necessary for the enormous dramatic patterns, but I knew I just wouldn’t wear a new knit that was as large and ungainly as this.So I began to think small pattern.  This is Kaffe’s Little Circles pattern (which you will find on p.136 of his Glorious Knitting)If you look carefully at my sample piece (and in much better light) you will see that my circles are much smaller than in the original pattern, and some rows feature designs that are not circular at all. Because most of the yarn is so variegated, in many rows you lose definition anyhow.I was pleased with this – I liked the colours, especially the odd shots of fuchsia, and the pattern may be pretty random at times but it still looks regularly patterned to the casual eye.

This irregularity was important because I’d decided to knit a cardigan using Truly Myrtle’s Timely pattern. This is a striped top-down knit – and far from being baggy and saggy as those old Kaffe knits were, this is fitted, and funky!  I love it! Because it is a top-down knit with no seams there are lots of increases and decreases.  The irregularity of the stitch pattern is important in that it allows me to make all these alterations without revealing these adjustments as glaring mistakes.

I’m sorry to do this to you, Libby, but here is my very shabby printed copy of your lovely pattern – you can tell it’s well-loved …I selected two yarns for the background stripes. The vibrant green yarn is Madeline Tosh.  It’s a fingering weight merino (Tosh Merino Light) called Jade.

The other yarn is my own hand-spun.  It’s predominantly a blue/green/black alpaca batt dyed and prepared by The Border Mill but I have added bits and pieces of my own hand-dyed silks and wools.  It’s very light and soft, and combines beautifully with the Madeline Tosh, making this garment much softer and lighter than my old Kaffe Fassett knits (into which I threw every yarn I could find – including my own hair.)As for the rest of the yarn …. well, in proper Kaffe Fassett style it is a motley collection.  There is handspun, and shop-bought – but most importantly there is Rowan Kidsilk Haze.  This is such a useful yarn for projects such as this.  Being a very fine fluff yarn, it lends itself so well to padding out another yarn that is just too thin to fit in to the general ensemble … So, I started knitting …It was tricky.  After all, I was knitting alternate pairs of rows in first one background colour and then the other, with extra yarns introduced to give the stitch pattern. At times the variegation of colour in the yarn meant that I was knitting with almost identical colours …With any knit like this, you are going to have to stop and sort out muddled yarns frequently …However with persistence, I very soon had enough body to try it on.  This is the beauty of a top-down knit.  You can tell so easily how well the fit is working out – and see too how the decorative pattern is developing.  You can tell that I’m pleased!The original Timely cardigan pattern had a deep ribbed border, but I felt that wasn’t suitable for such a very patterned knit , so I opted to knit a picot edge instead …It looks nice here – a very pleasing detail – but alas, it was so darned frilly! I’d have to think about it …Picking up the sleeves and knitting down on 6 needles (yes, 6!!) was horrible knitting.  So fiddly! It didn’t help of course that I was working with so many yarns …The knitting needle and yarn muddle made for truly miserable knitting – the sort when you really don’t want to pick your knitting up because you know you’ll have to concentrate so hard …How pleasing then to get to the bottom of the sleeves and finish them off with these very fine cuffs! As I said earlier, I didn’t feel plain ribbing was suitable for this very patterned knit, but this two-colour rib works very well. (It’s a 2 purl, 2 knit rib.)Then I returned to compare that picot hem against the ribbed cuffs.  Yes – it’s definitely time for some frogging …I got so excited with the success of the re-knitted two-colour hem rib that I forgot to photograph it before I completed the cardigan.  But this pic does very clearly show how much nicer the ribbed hem is than the picot one …Now for the button band.  I did get my picot edging in here.  Because the yarns were so soft, I double knit each band and then folded them over. This works more easily with the button band than the buttonhole band (where you end up with rather unshapely buttonholes which have to be tidied up.)The tidying-up method I favour is binding with buttonhole stitch (of course). When pressed it gives a very nice edging …And finally for the neckline – where I followed the Truly Myrtle instructions to the letter. I do like this informal slight neck border …That last pic reminds me: there were ends to darn in. Lots of people hate this part of the process, but I (luckily) find it rather restful …So – now for the finished cardi!I’m very pleased with it!  The Truly Myrtle pattern is just what I wanted for this project – it’s a comfortable and stylish fit. The cardigan is very light and soft to wear.

And no – I didn’t block it.  I pressed the button bands with a hot iron through a very damp protective cloth, but that was all.  I like the rough texture of this multi-yarn knit.

Of course, I made it much harder for myself because I used a two-colour background.  Were I to knit such a cardi again (and yes, I’m already mulling over how I might translate one of Kaffe’s bolder patterns to a modern knit), I’d definitely restrict myself to a single yarn for the backing.  Perhaps a variegated yarn or I might change the yarn as I went along, but I definitely wouldn’t want to be carrying two main colours right the way through another knit.

Off now for some serious mulling …