FO: Buchanan Tee

I finished a fantastic little summery top a couple weeks ago.

It's the Buchanan sweater from Kate Davie's wonderful little book appropriately titled "Yokes".   The last sweater I made of hers was the whimsical Owls pullover.  Sadly, I left it in storage and I want it back (along with that denim pencil skirt, ugh, sometimes I just miss my stuff).

There are several winners in the Yokes book.  Loads of simple, creative designs that would be flattering to most- there is quite a bit of waist shaping worked into these patterns, which, hello, I can't do without.

This was designed with a heavier wool in mind- a mohair blend!- but I couldn't do a short-sleeved top in wool.  In my mind, it called for cotton, specifically some of my jealously hoarded long-discontinued Rowan Calmer.  It behaves like wool but it's nice and light weight, making it perfect for summery little tops that you dream of wearing.  Lately, I've been in a "suns out, why am I freezing?" sort of place so it hasn't gotten any real use yet.  I can't wait.  Tomorrow is a warmer day according to the Met office.

I loved the colorwork on the Yoke of this.  It's much bolder and graphic than traditional fair-isle yokes.

All-round, a winner.

FO: Oranje

My fair isle obsession continues.  This has been the winter of colorful colorwork for me, with nary a cable or lace to be seen.

I liked the idea and look of a more modern take on the traditional fair isle yoke sweater- something with a bit of shaping and more modern looking yoke motifs- and I've been wanting to cast on for the Oranje cardigan for a while.  I originally thought I would work this monochrome- black, grey, white- but got inspired and replaced the black with the most insanely shocking pink I could dig out of my stash.

The yarn was sport weight, so it took quite a while to get knitted up.  It was pretty boring until the yoke, and then it got colorful and a bit complicated with all the braids tangling up the yarn.

I finished the knitting, then butchered it.

Ha ha, kidding, I machine-stitched neat lines on either side of the steek, and then split it from navel to throat like the barbarian that I am.  Pullover become a cardigan, presto changeo!

 Oh and I did try it on before I sliced this- I was happy with the fit.  Then I washed and blocked it, and wouldn't you know it?  That son of a bitch grew and grew and grew.  Behold the wonders of superwash wool.  I blocked it a bit smaller, with some success.

Behold.

It is now a too-large cardigan.

I put in button bands, but no buttons or zippers yet as I give this some thought.  The cardigan is in time-out while I decide what to do with it.  I had made the Medium size- 40", wanting something that wasn't skin tight.  Unfortunately, if I would have made the next size down, I would have gotten a much better fit.  So it sits, folded in the corner, waiting for divine inspiration or someone slightly larger then me to be in want of a sweater.  

I love the details- the short rows to build up the back of the neck:

The neatly turned hems:

The colors I chose, and the braids that added texture and gave it a more modern look:

Alas, none of this will make up for the fact that it's about two sizes too big.  It's just way too much fabric for me to swim in!  I did want a relaxed cardigan, but this much ease is just unflattering and unkind to the curvy.  I'm trying to decide if it is worth it to tuck in the button bands and attach a zipper- it would lop off about two inches that way.  I need to somehow get rid of six before I felt like this was a good, flattering fit.

It's not a complete loss: It was fun to knit.  But you can see perfectly in the photo below that all the extra fabric is just hanging out.

But the yarn, ooooh, the yarn.  That touch of cashmere makes it so lush.

Sigh.

I used 2 skeins of Sanguine Gryphon Bugga in Tulip Tree Beauty (grey) and most of one skein of Devil's Flower Mantis (pink) plus a skein of undyed yarn.   I DID SWATCH and yes, I did get gauge.  It's just bad judgement on sizing and yarn drape on my part really.

If anything, this cardigan has taught me to doubt myself a bit more and to take my self-confidence down a few notches.

I did make some modifications: the original has 3/4 sleeves and a high turtleneck that reaches the chin.  I lopped off the turtleneck once I finished the short rows, and added inches to the sleeves.  Having a winter sweater with 3/4 sleeves just seemed silly.

To be continued...

FO: Shwook

Back in October when I visited the Knitting in Stitching Show at Ally Pally, I mostly behaved myself as far as purchase power was concerned and walked away only burdened by a few small skeins of Jamiesons Shetland in tow.  It seemed serendipitous: having just returned to civilization after a very long walk through Scotland (but nowhere near the Shetland Isles) and I felt the need for an after-the-trip souvenir, since the only thing that I bought in Scotland ended up being cold meds to ease miserable flu symptoms on the train ride home.   Backpacking makes you weary of every extra ounce you are schlepping.

But I love to work with Shetland, and I do love colorwork in small doses (a pullover this colorful and picky would be my personal hell).  I picked a hat pattern to go with and resolved that these five green skeins would not be sitting around in my stash for years.

Speaking of backpacking, I did want a really warm hat that would cover my ears completely.  This one fit the bill nicely: a generous slouch, with the strands of colorwork carried in back to make it extra wind-resistant.

It's cheerful in shades of chartreuse and sage, willow and ivy and eucalyptus greens.  My only complaint?  I should have done the brim doubled: folded over with a picot edge to give it extra warmth and a polished finished edge.  Just having ribbing on such a complex colorwork pattern is about as fitting as putting a Honda Civic medallion on a Rolls Royce.  

The nifty thing is that this used up very little yarn.  Meaning, if I juggle the colors a bit, I have plenty of yarn leftover for another similar hat.  

But, sigh.  My resolve of walking through the winter has somewhat failed me.  The vanity of having new boots (NEW BOOTS!) that I'm unwilling to walk through bog with yet, coupled with the tiresome gray skies and drizzle cold means I've been quite the homebody in my free time, but whipping up some fantastic things in the kitchen and furiously scheming the next few bank holiday weekends.  Meanwhile, I grow comfortingly fat on dry Manhattans and thick, hearty Lebanese lentil stews, waiting with a mixture of excitement and dread the day a large hill rears up directly in my path.

The pattern is called Shwook- it's a free pattern to celebrate Shetland Wool Week 2014, and it's still available on the website.

FO: More hats! A shawl! And another thing!

Three hats, in fact.

Even though I don't celebrate Xmas, I feel swept up in the spirit of the cold dank weather and whip out gifts to my non-knitter friends.  My stack of hats is slowly diminishing as I send them to the four corners of the earth in time for the Winter Solstice.  Which is still a month away!  I don't even know how the days are going to get any shorter, but apparently they will.  This is the furthest north I've spent a winter.  I feel like I'm atoning for enjoying summertime so much.  I'm actually having a really hard time waking up in the mornings, and one recent weekend, I managed to sleep until 10:30.  Seriously!  That's half my day, gone.  It just wasn't light enough outside for my body to convince itself that it was indeed morning, and nearly afternoon.

I made a Whale Watch Hat from New England Knits.

It's all scraps- mostly Knit Picks Pallet.  For the price, it's a really nice yarn, similar to Jaimison's spindrift in weight and hand.  I was thinking of making the Whales a bit darker, but I kind of like them in the lighter shade of blue- they look kind of abstract, and probably more acceptable that a grown-ass adult might pull this off.

Speaking of which...the trend of grown-ass people wearing spirit-animal hats...why?  Kitten ears and giant false eyes are cute on toddlers, a bit weird on adults who aren't on their way to support a sports team.  Enlighten me.

Last fall when I was in Dublin, I visited a cute knitting shop and nabbed a couple skeins of Studio Donegal Tweed merino.  They knit up perfectly into a set of hats- kind of a his-and-hers affair.  The same, but different enough to not nauseate casual observers if they happen to leave the house together wearing them:

A masculine cable hat called One Bourbon, whose recipient has a smaller head size than my beau:

The brim will actually fold up when it fits properly.

And a lovely lace hat called Magnolia:

Oh!  And here's a shawl:

I usually do a better job of photographing these beastly shawls, but it's been raining like crazy every morning this week, and I needed to get this in the mail.  So you get to see my interior windows.

It's the Cladonia Shawl by Kristen Kapur.  It's written to have stripes and a looped bind-off, which looks fantastic, but I thought it gave it a much different appearance to make it plain and solid.  The yarn I used is Brooklyn Tweed Loft, and it used every last inch of yarn.  In fact, I ran out the very last bit- I needed about 10 inches more.  Panic!  Freak out!  I tinked back a few more stitches and then, gasp, SPLIT THE PLIES.  So there's one edge that has slightly thinner yarn in the bind off, and it survived blocking like a champion.  Honestly though, I couldn't think of anything else to do in that situation.  

The yarn is not my favorite.  The stitch definition is a bit muddled, which can be used to nice effect here with just the small bit of lace.  The one thing that does irk me is that if you tink back at all, the yarn will sometimes just un-spin itself and you are left with a broken strand.  It's lofty and loosely spun, making it great for warmth and texture, but it doesn't hold up to multiple mistakes.  Not that I ever make them.

Finally:

One of my favorite blends to spin and knit would be Blue Face Leicester sheep wool blended with silk.  The BFL is a long, silky soft wool that has beautiful drape and lustre.  Add some silk with that and, oh, I become enraptured.  It begs you to hold it close.

While I loved the colors in this skein of Codex- gold and near-black- they pooled up terribly.  I tried and I tried to do anything with this- spirals, garter stitch, lace, broken rib- and I just couldn't get it to stop with the ugly pooling.  Disappointed, I was.  

Ah, wait.  I know how to crochet.  A quick search and I found something well within my abilities- the Chi-town Cowl.

That's not so bad, is it?

I made a moebius cowl.  Easy as pie, it used up almost the entire skein and only took a few hours.  It's soft and silky and if you have a small-ish head, you can loop it around twice comfortably.

 Now, to bring back the sun...I understand why the 21st December is such a celebratory affair.

FO: Snowflake Mittens

Hey now, it's springtime.  I should get some mittens on.



I don't know what inspired me to make such wintry-themed mitts so late in the season- maybe it was east-coast empathy!, but, eh.  There's always the sunny optimism of  next year's winter, and I will always have friends with cold hands.



The yarn is KnitPicks Palate, a fingering-weight rather affordable wool yarn that comes in many, many colors.  The pattern was also from KP, although, I can't recommend it highly.  The adult sizes run so small that I had to go up three needles sizes from the recommended gauge just to be able to get a good-sized mitt happening.  Still, they are pretty and worth the effort.



I love the wintry colors.  Those are words no one has ever said in March ever.  

Shetlands in Shetland wearing Shetlands

These photos have been circulating around the series of tubes the past couple weeks, and I couldn't be happier.

From the Visit Scotland website, naturally. I do believe I will again.

Some of my favorite things: Ponies. Handknit Jumpers. Countries that bear the name of their namesake dark liqour.

They are cute as hell. The first pony I learned to ride when I was wee was a Shetland.

His name was Snip. If you tried to put a sweater on him, I'm sure you would be out a sweater and be sporting some fancy bruises. I was so happy the day I graduated to a real horse as I disliked him much. He had two speeds: walk and stop, except for when he thought it was time to go out to the pasture, and then he suddenly became Secretariat. He had that wily pony demeanor that I fear to this day. The moment I was free to choose, I went right for the horses in the "big and dumb" category and never looked back.

Still. Shetlands in fair isle sweaters is all sorts of cute.

FO: Selbu Modern

While I'm at it, here's another hat I finished and it's my go-to winter hat this year.

It's the Selbu Modern by Kate Gagnon Osborn. I've been meaning to make it for years now.

While the pattern is written well, colorwork is always a little time-consuming as I can't read charts when I'm anywhere but home, so it takes me a little while to complete something.

The yarn is The Fiber Company Canopy Fingering in the colors "Orchid" and "Fern". I wanted something subtle and washed out to go with my muted winter palate this year. I love this pattern- it reminds me of an eastern architectural motif- and I could see stealing it for a colorwork yoke sweater.

While I could have gone up a needle size on the main part of the hat to make it slouchier as written, I like it as it is. It's very warm- the yarn floats in back makes it particularly wind-proof. Coming back to Paris after spending some balmy days in New York and it's exactly what I need to keep my ears covered. It's been barely breaking freezing in the mid-afternoon, and the dark has really set in. I'm getting used to it, but it's really wrecking havoc on my sleep cycle as I'm waking up in the morning to a few more hours of night, and that's just weird. So I'm embracing it- dressing warm and waiting for the return of the sun.

FO: Mittens to Sink yer Teeth Into

Je vis! Happy September! I'm back from a hectic but fun past couple of weeks. I have lots and lots of pictures to sort through from my travels, and even more adventures to plan in the coming months.

First, here's something fun I finished more than a month ago:

Wolf mittens! There has been somewhat of a fascination with wolves on garments for the past few years. What started out as satire has become a coveted clothing item, and we've been seeing loads of wolf shirts in Paris this season. None of them are as awe-inspiring as what you can find at the street fairs in Brooklyn. The annual Bay Ridge street fair is still the place to get your classy howling wolf shirts, but there is also a tendency in Paris for all things dream catcher as of late, so I have high hopes that one day Eurofashion will catch up.

What could be better than wolves howling at the northern lights? Nothing. Go ahead, try to argue your point. You lose.

Throw a wolf on anything and you are an instant bad-ass.

This came from a KnitPicks kit called the Winter Woodland Mittens that I impulsively bought ages ago, which gives you enough yarn to make 6 pairs of mittens. While the color combinations caught my eye, the patterns are kind of sloppily thrown together. Even though I got gauge, I ended up having to go up 3 needle sizes and adding extra stitches at each edge to get these to fit my rather average sized hands. Except these are were supposed to fit larger hands than mine. More stitches were added, for a total of 8, which is why they have a black boarder around them. So I'm kind of bummed that the patterns, as written, will only make a child-sized pair of mitts and I know few children in cold enough climates to actually have the need for double-thick mitts.

Also, the thumbs...they look a little wonky, but since taking the pictures I ripped them back and finished them after re-charting the pattern to accommodate more stitches since they were super tiny and cutting the circulation off to your most important digit otherwise. Although, not having a thumb just means you are more wolf-like than anyone else, and gives you license to pee on any tree anywhere at anytime. Design flaw or feature?

I actually made these to be worn in Norway as I was scared to death about how cold it might be. While knitting these at the height of our short Parisian summer was a little gross, I was happy that these were not needed on our summer vacation, and they are safely tucked away until we get real wintery weather.