Author Archives: Heather

Supercook socks

In a fit of efficiency I have actually managed to photograph a finished object (well a pair really) only hours after they came off the needles.

This is the yarn I dyed with Supercook food colouring a couple of weeks ago.

It is my usual ribbed sock pattern, with short row heel. This time I tried out yarn over short rows. Again I am having trouble with getting them even, one side is reasonably nice but the other is a bit sloppy. Back to the drawing board on that one, I have another idea to try.

For a quick recap, the yarn is 4ply / sock weight Blue Faced Leicester superwash, from H W Hammand. It is very nice yarn to knit with, and the socks are lovely and comfy (I am wearing them as I type).

I love how these have come out.

I will be interested to see how well the colour lasts, and also how the yarn washes and wears. The yarn is quite smooth but with a small halo.

You can tell how much I love them by the ridiculous number of photographs I have taken 🙂

Distortion

Leave a Reply

Our homework for the July City and Guilds class was on stitches which distort the fabric, slits, slots, dropped stitches and elongated stitches.

My first two samples are in black, which unfortunately didn’t photograph very well. The first shows vertical slits in the fabric. Each section is knitted separately and then they are all united in the row that joins the slits. I gave each of the interior sections a one-revolution twist, one in each direction, before the join.

The second sample is of horizontal slots in the fabric. These are made like large horizontal button holes.

Then we moved on to dropped stitches (intentionally that is). The extent of the dropped stitch is controlled with a yarn over. The yarn over is worked at the point you would like the dropped stitch to stop unravelling. I like to mark the stitch I am going to drop with a safety pin so I can keep track of it as I am knitting. You can make it travel across the knitting using balanced increases and decreases, make a decrease on the side of the marked stitch that you would like it to bend towards, then make a corresponding increase on the other side so that the total number of stitches remains the same. For this sample I only used one dropped stitch. Since the stitch is wider once it has been dropped, I made two decreases at the start of the dropped section, one on either side of the yarn over. Then made two corresponding increases once I had dropped the stitch at the top of the section.

Next onto more elaborate patterns. These are all from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

First Vertical Drop Stitch:

It was interesting to see how this looked with different yarns. They are all wool, apart from the top purple which is 75% wool, 25% nylon. I think this pattern actually looks quite good in the yarn with a slight variation of colour, but the very multicoloured yarn at the bottom is too much and obscures the pattern.

Next elongated stitches. Elongated stitches are created by wrapping the yarn more than once around the needles when a stitch is created, then dropping these extra wraps on the next row. First Simple Elongated Stitch:

Then the slightly more complicated, Twisted Elongated Stitch:

They were all fun to do, though I am not sure whether I would incorporate the slits or slots into a garment. They might be fun if you wove ribbon through them. I find the change in texture interesting when you have a line of elongated stitches or dropped stitches and I’m sure you could create something which used that to good advantage

Concertina socks

4 Replies

I finished these a little while ago now, and have finally photographed them (why do I feel that I am always saying this? I really must get round to photographing things more quickly after finishing them).

They are inspired by the Scrunchie Hand Warmers (Ravelry link) by Leah Oakley from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders which Jo made. I used the same pattern for the leg, then did a garter stitch short row heel and a plain stocking stitch foot.

The yarn is 4ply Shetland, bought on a cone from Uppingham Yarns. The yarn is designed for machine knitting, and so comes oiled. This time I skeined enough off for the socks, gave it a nice wash, and then balled it up when it was dry. A much nicer knitting experience than knitting with the oiled yarn. I think oiled yarn varies a lot in how much oil there actually is in it. I have knitted with some of the ColourMart yarn, which although oiled doesn’t really feel it. I find that the Shetland, and the lambswool from Uppingham both make my hands feel quite sticky when I knit with the oiled versions. Also I was surprised at how dark and yucky the water was when I washed the yarn, so better out than in.

I love the colour, a really interesting flecked brown. You would be surprised at the different colours you can see when you look closely. Quite a lot of shades of brown, and some yellow, but also bright blue and red.

However I don’t think it is going to be a very hard wearing sock yarn. I wanted to try out the pattern, and the garter stitch short row heel, and will enjoy them while they last. I was thinking of using them as bedsocks once the weather gets colder.

The heel was really enjoyable to do, and I love how nice and symmetrical it is. It is one of the problems I have with all of the methods of stocking stitch short row heels that I have tried so far. Since you are working stocking stitch, you end up having to use two different methods to close the short-row gap, one for knit rows and one for purl rows, and I have yet to find a method where they actually look the same. Leaving you inevitably with one side of the heel which is neater than the other. This is conveniently eliminated with the garter stitch short row heel since all rows are knit, so you only need one method. Incidentally the method I use is to wrap the stitch like you would with a conventional wrap and turn. Then when it comes to close the gap you just ignore the wrap, and because of the way garter stitch lies the wrap just looks like another stitch.

I think this is my favourite heel so far to make and look at. It hasn’t been cold enough yet to wear them, apart from a quick modelling session, so it remains to be seen how comfortable they are and how well they wear.

These took me a while to make, partially due to my experimenting with different tubular cast-ons. The effect being that I lost count of the number of times I casted on, knitted a few rows, decided I didn’t like it and tried again. Luckily I have a whole cone of this yarn, I’m not going to run out any time soon.

The upshot of all the experimentation was that a couple of the methods don’t come out stretchy enough when I do them, but I did find a method I liked. I settled on the following method:

Provisionally cast on half the stitches you need (I like the crochet over the needle method).
Foundation row: Work k1, yo all the way across, join in round.
Row 1: k1, slip 1 with yarn in front. Don’t pull the yarn too tight on the slip stitches.
Row 2: slip 1 with yarn in back, p1.
Repeat Rows 1 & 2 once more.
Start your k1, p1 rib.
After a few rounds you can take out your provisional cast on.
Ta da! Admire your lovely stretchy tubular cast on.

This is Tubular cast-on: version A in “Vogue Knitting”: The Ultimate Knitting Book, doctored so it works in the round.

The only difficulty with this cast on is that it doesn’t really work with my preferred cuff rib. Usually I like to work a 3×2 rib cuff, decreasing to a 3×1 rib for the legs. Really this cast on only works for a 1×1 rib. The other main method of tubular cast on can be fiddled to get a 2×2 rib but it does require some gymnastics. I think I will do some more experiments.

Knitting with colour

2 Replies

Our homework for the June City and Guilds class was knitting with colour; stranding, weaving in, and intarsia.

My first sample was an example of stranding:

I did this one by knitting flat, then at the end of each row, snipping the yarn and, after zooming the stitches along to the other end of the circular needle, re-joining the yarn so that I could knit the next row, rather than purling back. The pattern is a traditional one, sometimes called Norwegian star I think. The yarns are all 4ply weight Shetland, apart from the darker blue which is an oddment and I think is probably acrylic, I’m not sure where it came from actually. I enjoyed knitting the pattern but didn’t enjoy the fact that this method meant it was hard to get the first and last stitches of each row neat and not sloppy. In light of this I worked all my other stranded samples circularly. It may be bizarre but I would rather do twice as much knitting and have it neat 🙂

With the stranding the yarn is just held loosely at the back of the work when it isn’t being knitted. Our next sample was weaving in, where the non-working yarn is woven into the working yarn every other stitch in the same way that you would weave in yarn ends.

As you can see, the yarn being woven tends to show through to the right side. This is particularly obvious if, like I have, you have used yarns which contrast a lot in lightness and darkness. This does allow you to make large blocks of one colour while still knitting in the round with relative ease.

Next up, Fiona gave us a traditional pattern, and using the same selection of colours inspired from a picture, we had to colour in the pattern in a variety of different ways. My picture is of tulip fields in Holland 🙂

It really shows how a pattern can look different depending on the contrast between the background and the foreground. Value contrast really makes a difference. It is one of the problems I found with a couple of my samples, that I had put orange against green, and although they are very different colours, the particular shades I had chosen were very close in value. So if you photocopied them in black and white they would come out the same shade of grey. This means that particularly from a distance the pattern is not clear, and just looks rather blurry.

Lastly we did a couple of samples of intarsia. The first geometric, so I used an argyle pattern.

The second pictorial.

They are supposed to be fish.

These were all very enjoyable to do, it has been a long time since I did any intarsia and apart from tangling the yarns a bit it was all good fun. I am definitely going to do some colour work for my second project for the City and Guilds – I just need to get a move on with the first one! Speaking of which, I don’t think I have mentioned this on the blog yet. I will take some pictures as it already has most of a body and one sleeve.

Everything in moderation

Leave a Reply

Yes, I’m afraid today is the day of bad puns. You will be pleased to know that at the moment I can’t think of any others.

I seem to have been having problems with comment spam at the moment so I have turned on moderation. If you have already left a comment before, any subsequent comments should go through fine, but any comments from new people will have to be approved before they appear. I hope this wont be too much of a pain for anyone.

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my dyeing, it was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do some more experimenting. I think that will hopefully be very soon, particularly considering the miserable weather we have been having here. C&G homework continues apace, slowed slightly by my computer spending time doing the electronic equivalent of lying on the floor and kicking its heels. I have talked nicely to it, and hopefully we are friends again now.

More soon, with actual knitting content!

Dyeing at home

4 Replies

After the excitement of the dyeing workshop with Jan, we couldn’t wait to get home and do some more experimenting. Since seeing the yarns Lisa from the Ash knitting group had dyed with food colouring I was very keen to have a go at that. Also I had some packets of Kool Aid picked up on a trip to America some years ago, and had bought some Jacquard acid dyes from Fibrecrafts which I was looking forward to playing with too.

We thought we would start with the least toxic and work upwards from there 🙂 Luckily when we replaced our microwave a few months ago I saved the old one (works fine, just a bit small and old, I bought it when I first went to university in 1995). So we could have a microwave dedicated to dyeing and not worry about cross contamination.

First off we soaked our yarns. I didn’t have any ammonium sulphate so we used white vinegar as a mild acid fixative. We soaked the yarn in water with a dash of washing up liquid, to remove any spinning oils and to act as a wetting agent, and a glug of vinegar for the acidity. As you can see this was a terribly precise experiment. The yarn we used this time was again blue faced leicester from H W Hammand, but this time the superwash sock weight. I tend to like to knit with finer yarns, and was interested to see how the superwash treated yarn would take up the dye. The yarn comes in 100g hanks, and we soaked two each, one for the food colouring and one for the acid dye, and soaked a hank each in plain water for the Kool Aid. The Kool Aid is already acidic so you don’t need to add extra acid.

While the yarns were soaking we mixed up the Supercook food colourings. Jan had given us a recipe of 1 tablespoon (15ml) of dye, to 2 tablespoons of water, and 1 teaspoon (5ml) of white vinegar. Using this ratio we mixed up two bottle of green food colouring, and one each of red, blue, and yellow. Each bottle contains about 3 tablespoons of liquid, so we mixed that with 6 tablespoons of water and 1 of vinegar. With the dyes all ready and waiting in disposable plastic cups, we laid out our cling film as before and arranged the damp yarn on top of it. One big advantage of this dyeing session was the opportunity it gave me to properly clean the kitchen worktops for possibly the first time since we moved in! We then covered the worktops with a folded out rubbish bag (to stop the dye dyeing the worktop) and a layer of newspaper (to mop up any spills) to create our workspace.

Happy dyer in action

Once we had finished painting we wrapped up our cling film parcels, put them in a nice cheap pyrex bowl bought for the purpose and nuked them in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Then let them rest for 2 minutes, followed by another 2 minutes nuking. On the second nuking the cling film parcel started to puff up showing that steam was being produced, but to be on the safe side we gave it another round of rest and heat. After the third cooking, a careful prod of the parcel showed that the liquid remaining was pretty much clear and that the dye had all be absorbed by the yarn. We left the yarn to cool down for a few hours, and went to mix the Kool Aid. Luckily the microwave is right next to the back door since the smell of boiling vinegar is quite pungent!

I picked up some of the Kool Aid several years ago on a trip to the states, and Paul brought me the rest back from a business trip. I was slightly worried when we first got it out (it had been lurking in one of my boxes of yarn for some years) that it might not work as the little packets had gone rather hard, but it turned out fine. After mixing up each of the sachets with a bit of water I was mystified as to why people would want to drink the stuff – the smell alone is really quite headache-inducing. I think the grape one is worst, reminds me of a kind of burnt plastic smell, not nice at all! Luckily we weren’t drinking it though, and after a few washes I am pretty sure the yarn wont smell any more.

We cooked the Kool Aid dyed yarn in the same way as before and then moved on to play with the Jacquard acid dyes. I had bought 5 colours of dye to get us started, in colours which I hoped would all go well together. Blue, purple, turquoise, teal and emerald green. While I was right that they did go well together and combinations of them created other colours which also co-ordinated well, the obvious difficulty we discovered was that without any yellow or red there were a lot of colours we couldn’t create. I have rectified this now by buying yet more dye, this is looking like being as addictive as the yarn buying 🙂

We made up 1% stock solutions in each of the five colours, 5ml of dye powder to 500ml of water. We were being a bit more scientific in our experimentation at this point, I have even bought an exercise book to use as a dyeing notebook and have been writing down what we did. We then mixed some of them together, and diluted some to create paler colours, and got painting! These skeins got the same cooking treatment as the others, and then we waited impatiently for them to cool down so we could rinse them and see how it had all come out.

Unfortunately I don’t have any good photos of the yarn in skeins, I think I was too eager to wind it into balls and start knitting. It really shows the contrast though of how a yarn looks in the skein versus in a ball, and again the finished knitting. I think the ball gives more of an idea of how the knitting will come out, the colours are more mixed up than they are in the skein. I have found this before with hand dyed yarn I have bought, that I love the yarn in the skein where there are big blocks of colour but these colours look quite different when they are chopped up into lots of little pieces in the knitting. That is not to say that they aren’t nice in the knitting, just that they can often be quite different.

So onto the finished yarn, all wound into balls (I do enjoy the ball winder). First the yarn dyed with the Supercook dyes.

I was so impatient with this one that I have started knitting socks already.

Then the Kool Aid, similar but a little different.

And finally the Jacquard dyed yarn.

I am very pleased with how they all came out, and the dyeing itself was such a lot of fun. I am looking forward to having another session. I want to try mixing colours a bit more, and also doing different shades of the same colour which would hopefully work with more textured patterns. There are more photos of my dyeing exploits so far here, and I am hoping to add to them soon!

Dyeing workshop

Leave a Reply

On 8th July Mummy and I went down to Basingstoke for a workshop on rainbow acid dyeing on wool with Jan Blight (unfortunately I don’t think she has a website). It was a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to doing more at home now I have an idea what I am up to.

There were four of us students at the workshop which was a nice number. Enough that we could gain a lot by seeing a great variety of different combinations of the same colours, and how different people approach dyeing in different ways. Yet few enough that there was comfortably enough space for everyone and we could all chat together. We all brought along our own yarns and Jan supplied Kemtex acid dyes and ammonium sulphate fixative. The yarn we took was aran weight, 100% blue faced leicester, from H W Hammand. A lovely yarn, it took the dye well and was a pleasure to knit with. We bought 1kg between us and dyed 100g each at the workshop so there is still 800g left. Mummy has earmarked some of it for a capelet from Nicky Epstein’s Knitting on the Edge: The Essential Collection of Decorative Borders. At the same time as buying the aran weight we also bought 1kg each of the same yarn in DK weight which I am really looking forward to experimenting with.

Jan had mixed up a selection of stock solutions of different colours of dye before our arrival, and after soaking our yarn well, we laid it out on cling film and set to with the colour mixing and painting. I got very carried away mixing different kinds of greens 🙂

Once we had finished dyeing, we wrapped up our little cling film parcels and let them sit for half an hour. Then unwrapped the parcels, sprinkled fixative over the yarn, and re-wrapped them to go in the steamer for half an hour. Once the parcels were cool enough we could rinse out the yarn in cool water and hang them up to dry.

For me part of the delight of going along to a workshop rather than just reading things from books is that you can see what a wonderful variety of different yarns everyone produces, starting with the same basic ingredients, and using broadly the same methods. The different combinations that people used, combined with different proportions of colour made all the yarns dyed look completely different. A real feast.

We all brought along pictures for our inspiration, but I’m afraid mine are really only very loosely inspired by them. After the first couple of skeins I just got carried away playing with all the lovely colours 🙂 The others were a lot more dedicated and it was lovely to see the beautiful and sometimes unexpected colours you can produce when inspired by a picture.

Jan also provided some fine yarn which she had put into very long circumference skeins, like you would do for socks, and some roving for us to play with too. I found the roving quite different to dyeing yarn, the dye didn’t seem to want to absorb as easily and I seemed to have more trouble controlling the colours.

When we got home we were so impatient to be knitting with the yarns that we had to put them in the airing cupboard over night to gee them along a bit.

Probably better than knitting with wet yarn though 🙂

When it came to the knitting I was interested to experiment with how the colours would look knitted up in different textures. To give a basic idea I knitted a section of garter stitch, a section of moss stitch (seed stitch to those over the pond) and a section of stocking stitch. Some of our skeins were slightly longer than others so I had enough yarn to knit a little ribbing as well. As you can see I was a bit obsessed with the green.

The palest sample (middle of the top row) shows the effect created when the steamer goes off the boil and you don’t notice until you come to rinse the yarn and all the dye rinses out, by which time it is a bit late. I like the effect of subtle shades of the same colour though and will be having an attempt at replicating this in a more controlled fashion.

On the right is the long skein, with a bit of ribbing at the top, then stocking stitch and then moss stitch, using the same number of stitches that I usually use for socks. I would like to try this again although the big skein was a bit unwieldy. The fibre was supposed to be shades of purple, rather than frighteningly pink. I think I am going to make some felted beads out of it, and make them into a necklace, possibly with a few other bits and pieces to tone it down a bit. That is the plan for now at any rate.

There are loads more photos of the workshop and the yarns here.

Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM

Leave a Reply

It has been a busy few weeks knitting-wise, so more will follow soon. First off though, on the 5th to the 7th of July I went to the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM, this year held in Winchester.

I arrived shortly after lunch on the Friday, and after collecting my badge and saying a few hellos we had our first outing, to the Knitting Reference Library at Winchester School of Art. They hold the collections of Montse Stanley, Richard Rutt, and Jane Waller, and we had a very interesting and informative romp through the history and sociology of knitting, based on these collections, given by Linda Newington, Head Librarian, and helped by her assistant.

The Knitting Reference Library mostly holds patterns and books, with Montse’s extensive collection of objects held in the Special Collections at the Hartley Library, University of Southampton. The Knitting Reference Library does have a small handling collection though, which they use with students, and which they brought out to show us. Their collection really is varied, from knitted toys (some incredibly kitsch 🙂 )

to the most beautiful and detailed gloves and mittens, some knitted by Richard Rutt himself.

After an opportunity to briefly browse the shelves of the collection we piled back into the assortment of vehicles, and trundled back to the University of Winchester for a well-deserved cup of tea and a biscuit, and the serious task of checking out the stock Gill of the Woolly Workshop had brought with her for the shopping room. There were also two quizzes designed to celebrate 30 years of the guild, and as a getting-to-know-you exercise to fit in alongside the hectic round of shopping.

After dinner was the show and tell, a wonderful wide variety of knitted items were shown, lots of inspiration. Then off home to bed.

Saturday started with with AGM proper. It was interesting to hear about the progress of the guild this year, and plans for the future, but it would have been nice if there had been more time allowed, so that more of the questions could have been answered more satisfactorily.

Following the AGM, Linda Newington gave a talk on the Knitting Reference Library, and the In the Loop conference. It was interesting to hear a bit more about the library, and exhibition and conference, particularly since I wasn’t able to get to the conference itself. Then after lunch we had another expedition, this time to Winchester cathedral.

The cathedral doesn’t have any knitting in it, but it does have some lovely woven vestments, and some very interesting tiled floors. I love tiling, and got completely carried away with photographing all of the different tiles. I think I may try and use them for inspiration for knitting at some point.

After a much appreciated cup of tea back at the University, Imogen Semken, one of the Directors of the guild gave a very interesting talk and demonstration on millinery. I was amazed at how you could create a sturdy base for a hat just by wetting the material (I think it was banana fibre) and stretching it over a mould and waiting for it to dry.

After dinner Joyce Meader gave a fantastic talk on military knitting patterns. In the picture below she is holding up two pairs of American civil war socks, you can choose which flag you put on the sole of the foot so that you can walk on the opposition 🙂

Joyce is a wonderfully entertaining speaker who really knows her subject. She had us all rolling in the aisles for the whole duration of her talk. If you get the opportunity to hear one of her talks definitely jump at it.

Sunday morning brought a final opportunity for discussion of the guild and its future, and prizes for the two quizzes. I won a pattern book by Debbie Bliss! A surprise and a pleasure. Mary Hawkins rounded off the meeting with a demonstration of how to use a knitting frame (without the aid of an actual knitting frame) as a taster of what we might see when the AGM is held in Ruddington near the Framework Knitters Museum next year.

Of course I didn’t escape without a few purchases:

Here is my prize pattern book, a Lucy Neatby instruction booklet on buttonholes, a pattern leaflet, a book on the textiles at Winchester Cathedral and some stitch markers which were given in the welcome bag at the AGM. There were also a couple of pattern books in the welcome bag which I have given to my mum as a consolation prize for not being able to come along.

I took loads more pictures at the AGM (95 of them I think!) which I have finally managed to persuade flickr to upload here.

All in all, a fun time was had. A good opportunity to meet old friends, and make new ones, and of course to see what everyone is knitting.

Fortissima Socks

1 Reply

In amongst the forays into the garden to wage war on the weeds now that the weather is nice I have managed a little bit of knitting. I actually finished these a while ago and have finally managed to charge the camera battery and photograph them.

The yarn is Fortissima Colori, colour 2419.

I love these socks, great colour and very comfy but they demonstrate that I need to get a bit more organised with my stash. I bought the yarn a while ago, thinking what a nice colour it was. When I got home and looked at it again, it still looked nice, but increasingly familiar. I finally remembered I already owned a ball of this yarn, lurking in the stash. I have done this a couple of times recently with books too, definitely time to get more organised and get on top of things.

Talking of getting on top of things, the weather is still sunny (though the forecast said rain tonight and tomorrow), so I am going to take the opportunity to attack a few more weeds in the front garden. I may be some time …

Surface Embellishment

4 Replies

Last months knitting homework for City and Guilds class was on surface embellishment, mostly things added to a plain piece of knitting, but some were knitted in. I had had a go at some of the techniques before, but some were new, so a nice mixture of old friends and new excitement!

The first old friend was the method of knitting with beads that I used on my bracelets. Here the beads are placed between knit stitches, and the piece is totally reversible.

Next, a different method of adding beads into the knitting. This time the knitting is stocking stitch, and the bead lies on the working thread in front of a slip stitch. The pattern is only on one side of the fabric, and this method seems to work best if the bead is a similar kind of size to the knitted stitch. I actually have a dress that I am knitting using this method. I have been knitting it for the last 8 years (ok it has spent a lot of that time in a bag). One of these days I will discover which bag it is in and dig it out and continue.

The last sample using beads involved sewing the beads onto an already finished piece of knitting. I was less keen on this sample. I think it looks a bit messy, partly due to the beads I used being rather inconsistent, and partly due to my not sewing them on very neatly. Not sure I will be doing a lot of bead embroidery in my future.

The next bit of embellishment was fringe. I’m afraid my example isn’t wildly exciting.

And then onto appliquÃ©. I got a bit carried away with this one 🙂 So many little leaves, so much fun, so many colours. I particularly liked the sock yarn ones.

Then a bit of Swiss darning (also known as duplicate stitch). My example is a little abstract, though I do think it looks a bit like an angle-poise lamp (totally unintentionally).

Finally, an example of embroidery. Despite my rather strained relationship with sewing I enjoyed doing this one, and I particularly liked the effect created by space-dyed yarn.