Oliver’s mum asked me last year if I would make him a Christmas stocking, but unfortunately things were looking a bit frantic at the end of last year. This year however I have got my act together, and luckily Oliver is still young enough that hopefully he might not have noticed the absence of the stocking last year.
Here is the first side of his stocking:
And here the second:
The yarn used was Hobbycraft double knitting acrylic for the white, and Hayfield Bonus DK acrylic for the other colours. I found the Hobbycraft yarn a bit thin and am not sure I would use it again, but the Hayfield seemed more robust. I used 3mm needles even though this is a DK weight yarn so that the stocking would be firm enough not to stretch too much, and so that presents wouldn’t poke through. I also wove in the colour not in use every other stitch so there would not be long floats on the inside to get caught on little fingers or on the corners of presents.
It is now winging its way to its new owner and hopefully will reach there in time for Father Christmas to do his job 🙂
I have been spinning some North Ronaldsay fibre I bought a while ago from Scottish Fibres. I thought a bit of variety would be fun, so this is a carded preparation (most of the other fibre I have spun recently is combed) and I spun it up a lot thicker than I normally do.
It has come out about a chunky weight, though is a bit variable, I have 185g, 238.5m of the brown, and 195g, 184m of the white. I am planning to dye the white, though I’m not quite sure what colour yet, possibly red? I am planning to make a double layer hat from Spin Off magazine, though I will have to tinker with the pattern a bit as I think my yarn is a bit thicker than the pattern is expecting.
It has been fun to try different spinning though I did find the carded preparation a bit difficult to get an even yarn from. I think a bit more practise is probably required 🙂 The North Ronaldsay is surprisingly soft, although interestingly I think the brown is slightly softer than the white, and the white has more kemp (brittle hairs that I think wont take the dye, and tend to shed). I am interested to see how this will dye up, and am looking forward to knitting with it, and seeing whether that will even out the lumpy bits.
Back in the middle of a rather wet July I spent a very enjoyable three days up at Imperial College in London for Knit Nation. I had booked a hectic schedule of classes which were all great fun.
On Friday I had an all day class with Anne Hanson on Sweater Fitness. This included taking a full set of body measurements and then looking at how to adapt existing patterns to our measurements. All useful stuff. I have been quite successful in designing garments from scratch using my own measurements, but less successful in adapting already existing patterns, so there were a lot of useful tips to be gleaned. The penny really dropped when we were looking closely at the schematics of our chosen patterns, and I realised that a lot of my problem was not just that I usually need a different size for my chest than for my tummy / hips (this is something I have been aware of for some time and so am used to compensating for), but that my shoulder measurement matches up with a completely different size. I am shaped rather like a pyramid 🙂 So many garments hang from the shoulder line and if you don’t get that right the whole garment looks badly fitting. This was amply demonstrated by the T-shirt I was wearing to class. In order to get a size which was comfortable around my cake-storage areas the shoulders of the T-shirt extend past my own shoulders by a good couple of centimetres and droop in a not terribly flattering manner.
We covered lots of useful tips on how to transition from one size to another at strategic points in an existing pattern. I shall definitely be putting this information into action, and taking a very hard look at the schematics of the future patterns I knit. She also had some very interesting things to say about different ways to reduce the stitches from the bust line to the shoulders, whether you opt to decrease in the armhole area or do darts which go up to the centre of each shoulder. I look forward to doing some experimenting with this to see which works well for my shape.
On Saturday morning I went to a class on Vintage Fit and Finishing with Susan Crawford. It was very interesting to learn how fashions in ease and fit have changed over time. Very valuable information when knitting a vintage pattern. I am not sure I will ever go for the full vintage re-creation garments which seem to be popular, but I can certainly see me using some aspects of vintage patterns as inspiration.
On Saturday afternoon it was The Many Faces of Cashmere with Clara Parkes. Fantastic stuff! She manages to be hilarious and extremely informative and interesting all at the same time, and three hours of cashmere can never be a bad thing 🙂 We had lots of little samples of fibre and yarn to feel and knit with. It is constantly amazing how many different yarns you can make from the same fibre.
Here are all my little samples before washing (click to make huge):
Top row L to R:
Schulana Cashmere Moda, 100% cashmere, caged construction (so fibre is blown through a type of thin Icord-type tube), 4mm needles.
Classic Elite Posh, 30% cashmere, 70% silk, S on S cable construction, 5mm needles
Laines Du Nord Royal Cashmere, 100% cashmere, knitted tube construction, 4mm needles.
The bottom of the sample is Filatura Di Crosa Superior, 65% cashmere, 35% silk, brushed, and I used 3.25mm needles. For the top of the sample I used the same needles and as well as the Superior I added Filatura Di Crosa Nirvana, 100% merino, so the two yarns were knitted together.
The white below is fake cashmere fibre, I think this is nylon.
Here are the knitted samples after having a wash:
All of the samples fluffed up a bit on washing. Cashmere is often oiled to stop it hairing up the machines when it is processed so you don’t get the full effect until you have given your knitting a wash.
I loved the opportunity to sample all the different blends of cashmere, and different ways of spinning. There are some very inventive manufacturers out there. I am still a bit afraid of spinning cashmere because of the short staple, which is better suited to long draw, which I am not very good at. I am hoping to do some practising soon though so I can overcome that.
After Saturday’s classes I went to see the film about Bohus knitting, not a subject I knew much about before, although I love their patterns and have the kit for the Wild Apple around here somewhere.
Sunday morning was Photographing Your Fibre with Franklin Habit. Again lots of interesting and useful information. Some of it about how to set up your scene for your photography, and some on how to actuallly use the camera. I shall be spending some time with my camera manual soon! I only have a little point and shoot, but even that I don’t really use to its full potential.
As is often the way with these events there was a very tempting market place. I came home with two books:
This is merino / nylon / stellina, 100g, 400m, 4ply weight in colour Mermaid from Krafty Koala. It was green and purple and sparkly, so I could hardly be expected to resist.
I had a great time and it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with lots of fun knitting people. I was a bit tired by the end and managed to get completely drenched on the way home – you could literally wring the water out of my trousers from the knee down where my umbrella didn’t cover them.
I think there isn’t going to be a Knit Nation next summer because of the Olympics, I am looking forward to one in 2013!
Just when I was nearly caught up things became busy again. They are calming down a bit now, so I shall plod on with the catching up, like the tortoise I shall get there in the end 🙂
At the beginning of June we had a lovely week’s holiday up in Orkney. It was the first time we had been, and it was lovely. Beautiful landscape, and interesting things to visit, and we were very lucky with the weather. The light up there is really beautiful, though it takes a bit of getting used to that in June it only gets dark for a couple of hours a night. We had to hang a blanket up over our window in order to sleep. I’m not sure I would fancy it in the winter though. I think it would get a bit depressing with only a few hours of light each day.
We stayed in a cottage about a mile outside Kirkwall, the capital, and this was the view from Scapa Bay just a short walk from the cottage:
The light seemed to make the seaweed glow.
We visited a lot of the typical tourist things. All the neolithic remains are very impressive, and well worth visiting if you are in the area. Also the advantage of going before the school holidays was that most things weren’t too crowded.
The air up there is very clean, and the most amazing lichens grow. These were on a grave stone at the Brough of Birsay:
The landscape was not as barren as I had been expecting. I think I had been picturing something more windswept and moor-like, but actually most of the mainland is gently rolling, and very green. Also there are trees, they are just not very tall. This is the Ring of Brodgar, one of the stone circles:
We spent most of the time on the Mainland, but on one day we had a trip out to Rousay, one of the closer islands. We had a moment of excitement on the way there, when we realised that we would have to reverse the hire car on to the ferry. The ferry is quite little and only takes about 9 cars, though it had fewer when we went over because a lorry carrying what looked like road surfacing stuff was taking the space of about 6 cars. Luckily the hire car was quite titchy, and the ferry staff were very friendly and experienced. Since there is only one hire car service at the airport, and the vast majority of their cars are the same, the ferry staff were well practised at the exact instructions they needed to give in order to get the desired outcome. I also got the impression that if one had had a total melt-down about it, they would have driven the car on for you. At least we had been driving the car around for 4 days at that point so were also quite familiar with it. The Antipodean lady we were talking to in the queue had literally just arrived by plane and picked up a car and driven straight to the ferry.
There were several cairns on Rousay, and a very impressive broch and tomb at Mid Howe. This is the broch, to give you an idea of the scale, the two little blobs at the bottom left are people:
And here is the tomb, protected by a building which has been built round it:
Unfortunately it is hard to tell the scale, but it is really massive. The walls are seriously thick, at least a couple of metres, and the whole tomb is enormous. Very impressive, especially considering how long ago it was built.
After visiting Mid Howe we drove round the rest of the island, and were delighted to find a bay where we could watch seals swimming around, really close to the shore. They are very graceful in the water, and surprisingly ungraceful out of it.
Here are some flopping around and sunning themselves on a shelf of rock near the shore:
And here are a couple playing in the water:
It was wonderful to watch them.
On our last full day we went into Kirkwall and had a look around the Orkney Museum. They had quite a bit of knitting, and a couple of spinning wheels on display, including these lovely stockings:
I found a couple of nice fibre-y things on our travels to bring back and remind me of a lovely holiday. We didn’t manage to get up to North Ronaldsay this holiday, but hopefully might make it up there to see the sheep another time. I got these both from The Woolshed, who I don’t seem to be able to link to at the moment.
First 100g of hand dyed North Ronaldsay fibre:
I haven’t decided on the best way to spin this yet, but I love all the colours.
And also some DK weight North Ronaldsay yarn in natural white, and natural dark brown:
I am thinking about making a two-coloured hat with these though I haven’t totally made up my mind yet.
Today is my niece Jenny’s first birthday! Happy birthday Jenny! How time flies.
I allowed myself a week and a half off from knitting on my current City and Guilds project (a large circular lace shawl) to whip her up a birthday cardi and two matching hats.
The cardi is the Seamless Infant Kimono by Carina Spencer, and I used Knit Picks Swish Worsted (100% superwash merino wool) in Sunshine, with Bok Choy edging. I used 5mm needles for the main body and 4mm for the edgings. I made the 12 – 18 month size, with the tapered sleeve option, and am hoping it will fit her at some point when the weather is suitable for it!
I had some yarn left over after the cardi and so decided to knit a pair of hats to go with the cardi, one in each of the colours.
I used the Elfin pattern by Woolly Wormhead for both hats. It is a lovely elastic pattern so hopefully should fit for a while. I used 5mm needles and made the large size for both hats.
I experimented with different invisible cast ons for both hats. The one on the green hat came out a bit frilly, it is almost like a picot edge. It is quite pretty, but I think for most things I prefer the version on the yellow hat.
I posted them last week but they haven’t arrived yet, hopefully they will turn up soon.
It has been very nice to do a bit of knitting which actually grows as you watch it (it grows even faster if you are actually knitting while you are watching – ha ha). The City and Guilds project is in lace weight yarn on 3mm needles, at something like 4 rows to the centimetre, and at its worst had more than a thousand stitches on each round. I would knit and knit and knit and knit, and it would look exactly the same. I am onto the edging now (128 pattern repeats, more than 2000 rows, but at least each row is relatively short), and although there is a lot of it I can now actually see measurable progress. It’s a good job it is nice yarn and an enjoyable pattern 🙂
The other excitement round here this week (apart from us actually finished boarding the loft – hooray!) has been the arrival of some lovely fibre from World of Wool. I had a play with their new custom blend tool to make this 75% merino, 25% silk blend:
Yum yum! I have a kilo, and am planning a jumper, though that is about as detailed as my plans have got so far. I am really looking forward to spinning it, and knitting with it, and am very pleased with how the colours have come out. There are actually three different shades of green of merino in there, and I love the way they work together.
I also bought some dyed blueface leicester fibre.
300g of purple, and 100g each of royal blue and black. I am planning to blend these together somehow – I’m a little vague on the details at the moment, I think I will have to do some experimenting, and then make the Lanesplitter skirt, I think I will probably spin a 3ply rather than a 2ply to try and make it a bit more hard-wearing.
They were having a special offer at the time so I also got a hessian shopping bag, and a bag of all sorts of little bits of interesting looking fibre with my order.
Back to the shawl now, the end is nearly in sight!
Back in May I went on a workshop on Improving Your Spinning with Jan Blight at her house in Basingstoke. Last year I went on her beginner spinning workshop and enjoyed it, and had been looking forward to attending the improver one to learn more.
We started off with finding out a bit more about our wheels, what kind of drive (single or double) system, and tensioning system everyone had, and what ratios were available. I think everyone had different wheels, it was really interesting to be able to see the differences and learn more about the different wheels.
Then after a bit of warm up on fibre we were already spinning, Jan gave our some bluefaced leicester tops, and we spun a semi-worsted yarn. This is semi-worsted because although we were using worsted style spinning, for it to be proper worsted yarn the fibre would have had to be hand combed with all the fibres going in the same direction (so all the tips pointing one way, and all the butts pointing the other). When fibre is commercially prepared like this top is the fibres are all aligned but some might be 180° out with the others. My spinning was not too bad, but I’m afraid I rather underplied this one, more haste, less speed.
For our second sample we were concentrating on getting our hands in time with our feet. This is a great aid to more consistent yarn, if you move your hands at the same time as your feet, and for the same distance each time then you will get the same amount of twist entered into each section of your fibre. So the idea was to draft forward for say 1 inch as you treadled once, then smooth back an inch when you treadled the next time. So each inch of yarn would contain the amount of twist entered from two depressions of your treadles. Luckily I do this fairly automatically, though it was useful to practice keeping more in time, sometimes if I am tired my hands run away from my feet. Again I underplied this one, though it wasn’t as bad as the first.
We stopped for a packed lunch in the garden, it was a lovely sunny day, and I actually had to sit in the shade! And Jan treated us to home made cake – yum!
Then after lunch Jan gave us some organic merino top, very lovely soft fibre, and we had a go at spinning thicker and semi-woollen. For a true woollen yarn you need to hand card your fibre. I had a go at some spinning over the fold, and some a kind of medium-draw. I think I need to practice this! It was fun, but rather lumpy. I would also love to be able to long-draw properly – Jan mentioned that she might hopefully be running a workshop on this later in the year so I shall keep an eye out. I had sorted my plying problem out by this time, patience and less hurrying was the key, so this is a much better finished yarn.
Then to round off the day Jan gave us some merino crossed with dorset horn crossed with lincoln fleece that she had washed, and we had a go at flick carding. We spun this worsted, then the first sample was spiral plied, and the second was just a straight 2ply. Although this was washed I found it rather sticky to spin, and sticky to knit too, it feels better now I have washed it. I think I am just very picky about having no lanolin left in the fibre at all, although I know a lot of people like to leave a bit there when they are spinning.
Here are my skeins of yarn, from left to right as I spun them (and described them above):
And here they are knitted up, but not washed. From the bottom in the order of spinning:
And here is the knitted sample after washing:
It was a really interesting workshop and I learned a lot. It has also been useful to go from fibre, to singles, to finished yarn and then knitted piece and assess how it looks at each stage. I want to make sure that I am making yarn I enjoy knitting with. The difficulty is that I also like to spin a large enough amount so I know I will have enough to knit a complete item, which inevitably takes me a while, so the feedback from knitting my own yarn takes a long time. It was very useful to spin and knit small samples and get pretty instant feedback (well a couple of months seems fairly instant to me!) so I can adjust my spinning to create the yarn I like to knit, even if the samples aren’t going towards a finished garment. I am looking forward to doing some more practicing on my own to try and improve my consistency, and improve my woollen spinning.
Saturday 20th August began fairly early for Mummy and I. After collecting together all our knitting bits and pieces we hopped in the car and drove to Marlow Bottom, Bucks, to help Jill, Rosie, and Jill’s husband Roy get the hall arranged for our Patchwork Knitting Workshop. Sue, one of the attendees, and her husband also very kindly arrived early to help us. The hall is a lovely size, and very convenient, but unfortunately this year we discovered when we arrived that they had just painted all the woodwork the day before, and the place stank of paint 🙁 Something we were not very happy about, especially since Jill booked the hall months ago so they certainly had plenty of warning that we were coming.
At 9 I popped to the station to pick up Mary, one of the other attendees, and then once we were back and everyone had arrived and got themselves installed we started a lovely day of knitting at 9.30.
Here are some of the attendees in action, although this was actually taken later in the day:
The theme for this year’s workshop was chevrons. In his books Horst calls these Herringbone. So we started off with chevrons, either on their own or joined to mitred squares, depending on what each person was interested in. After a tea break (very well orchestrated by Roy), we then looked at triangles, to fill in the space at the top of a chevron, or between two mitred squares on the diagonal. We then got onto different methods of joining as you go. We started off with joining one strip you are working on to one you have already finished, in three different ways, and then went on to three-needle cast-off for joining two already worked pieces after lunch.
Here is Penny’s sample, showing a mitred square, two chevrons, triangles, and a knitwise join:
Lunch was again very well organised by Roy. He took all our orders during the morning and then went out to the Fish and Chip shop to collect them just before we broke for lunch. We had a lunch table set up away from the knitting so people could leave their work in progress as it was without having to pack up, and yet we could all sit together and chat over our meal.
After lunch we continued with joining methods, and then moved on to making a paper template for a jumper, to your own measurements. This is a method that Horst advocates, that you make a paper template and then can keep trying your knitting up against it until it is the right size and shape. It lends itself well to knitting in modules, or also freeform knitting and crochet. However he doesn’t really show you how to create the template from your own measurements. So we talked about how to take your measurements, and where you need to be measuring, and then using the very kind and accomodating Mary as our beautiful model we measured her and drew up a template for her for a long length jumper / jacket with modified drop sleeves (also sometimes called square set-in sleeves), a round neck, and waist shaping. We only covered drop shoulders and modified drop shoulders, since really set-in sleeves can be a day’s workshop in themselves, and the two basic shapes we covered are a good introduction, and also lend themselves well to patchwork knitting.
After everybodies brains were filled up with measuring and calculating, we moved on to show and tell. I love to see all the creative things people have been working on since we last saw them. So many great ideas, and beautiful knitting. Very inspirational.
Here is the table full of items ready for show and tell:
To finish off the day Jill and Rosie had had a great idea for how to go about planning your next patchwork knitting project. Armed with a block of post-it notes, they drew on the row lines for mitred squares, and cut some to make triangles. You can then play around arranging them on a convenient surface until you have a pattern you like, before you start the knitting.
The tidying up went surprisingly quickly, and after hardly any time we were waving everyone off and saying hello to my aunt and uncle who had come to pick Mummy up for the next leg of her round Britain tour.
It was a lovely day, I hope that the other attendees enjoyed it half as much as I did.
Back at the beginning of May was National Spining Week, which I spent demonstrating at Clandon Park again with the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers. I had a great time, it was lovely to chat to so many people. Also this year we brought along one of the guild wheels and so were able to let people have a go themselves. We had lots of kids have a go, who were all very quick on the uptake, even though some of them had trouble reaching the treadles while sitting on the chair!
I always like to have something nice and loud to spin at these events. It is nice to have a variety of things that we are all spinning to show that spinning doesn’t have to be all brown (although I do like brown too 🙂 ). So this year I was spinning some supersorted bluefaced leicester from Baby Long Legs in Tangy Doddle Tastic, which I bought at Knit Nation last year. I think the supersorted part means that it is the best quality bluefaced leicester, it certainly feels nice.
I spun a 2ply construction, which is about commercial 4ply in thickness. I have 104g and 342m. I split the top in half length wise in order to spin the two separate plies, so the colours merge slowly from one to another. My plan is to make the Marywarmers fingerless mittens pattern, though I might make them a bit shorter in the arms. They wont be identical because I didn’t split the fibre in two to make two lots the same when I started, but hopefully that will add to their charm 🙂 It was a very nice fibre to spin, and I love the colours.
Today was the day of the London Surrey Cycle Classic road race. They were testing out the proposed route for next year’s Olympics, and seeing as it passed only 2 or 3 miles from our house I thought I would pop out and watch the excitement.
It was all good fun. I arrived nice and early (I was the first person to park my car at my designated spot – I had picked a place which isn’t too close to where people live so it was quite nice and quiet), set up my chair and my knitting, and sat down to knit a couple of rows while I waited for the action. Here is my little encampment, the yellow bag contains the knitting:
As you can see from the view up the road:
And the view down the road:
I pretty much had the place to myself when I arrived. A few more people did come later, but it wasn’t exactly crowded.
After a bit of a wait, in which a couple of safety cars went by, and then an info car telling us a bit about how the race was going, the leading motorbikes arrived:
Shortly followed by the breakaway 2 riders, and first section of peloton:
Then the second section of peloton:
And the third section of peloton:
Followed by a little bunch of stragglers (you can hear the people up the road cheering them on):
Then came a couple of groups of cyclists who I don’t think had race numbers on, and they weren’t followed by hoards of cars, so I think they were keen amateurs:
Then came some more amateurs, and a couple of lorries collecting up any rubbish that had been thrown by the cyclists:
My camera isn’t actually a video camera so the videos aren’t terribly good, you can’t zoom while you are in video mode, but I enjoyed making them 🙂 A fun day out, and I managed to knit about 3 rows 🙂
In April we had a lovely week’s holiday in Bath. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, we had to go and buy extra emergency sun-cream, and didn’t need to use our waterproofs at all! I won two tickets in a competition held by the Knitting and Crochet Guild, so at the end of the week we also had a wonderful day at Wonderwool Wales.
It was lovely to look round the show and see what everyone was selling, I was so wrapped up in it that I completely failed to take any photos. One of the things I particularly enjoy about this show is the space. There is plenty of space between the stands, and around the edges of the stands that you have somewhere you can pause and think, and it doesn’t feel claustrapobic at all.
This stuff is so incredibly soft. We really need feely-vision so you can appreciate it 🙂
I’m not sure what I am going to do with it yet. At the moment it is sitting on top of the piano so I can give it a little stroke each time I pass by 🙂
I also bought British Sheep & Wool by the Wool Board from P&M.
I am looking forward to reading this and learning more about British sheep breeds and their fibres.
I was a bit tired at the show, it was at the end of a hectic week of sight-seeing and enjoying ourselves. But I did manage to say hello to several people I know which was lovely. A very enjoyable day out, and a lovely holiday.
