Category Archives: City and Guilds

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Seven

The cyclists did their biggest climb so far this tour, into Andorra, and I have crested my own little summit with my spinning.

I have finished my first full bobbin of the tour. Yes, the grey Dorset is finally finished! Only two bobbins of the white to go and then I can ply it and see what it will be like as yarn.

In honour of the occaision I have been playing at making mosaics with Picasa 3. So here is a recap of my progress on this yarn on the tour.

And another, because if a thing is worth doing, it is worth overdoing.

I ran my foot over with our side gate shortly after taking these photos while having a quick tidy up outside. It is a nice substantial gate. I am hopping around now (well not right now, since even with the laptop I can’t type and hop at the same time). I shall go and bathe it and anoint it in a minute.

I have been managing to do a spot of knitting in between all the spinning. I have finally finished my latest test sample for my current City and Guilds project. I was test driving how the colours work, and also testing 6 possible patterns, of which I will probably use 3. This is the project I have been dyeing all the colours for.

This is it in its unblocked, straight off the needles state.

These are the most likely 3 patterns.

And these are the three probably rejects.

As you can see the edging at the bottom edge is too loose. I think the top edge is better but now probably a bit tight. I am reserving final judgement until after it has been washed. The top edging is worked on smaller needles, which I think works well, but I think I decreased too many stitches.

I also think I need to introduce another couple of intermediate colours. Another medium orange about half way up to ease the transition from red to orange, and a very pale orange just before the yellow. It is coming along though, and I am looking forward to being able to measure the tension after it has been washed and start plotting out the final design.

Unusual Fair Isle

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The homework for the April City and Guilds class was unusual and experimental Fair Isle. I am trying to be a bit more experimental with my samples but am not sure I am really succeeding. I find it quite hard not to have a little voice at the back of my head thinking about whether it would make a good garment or a practical something-or-other, whereas for these samples the whole point is to experiment and view the sample as art rather than as something necessarily useful.

The first two samples are corrugated Fair Isle. Here you pull the strands across the back of the work tighter than usual to create a raised surface. It is rather hard on the hands! This stitch is often used in tea cosy patterns. The first sample uses the same number of stitches in each colour.

And the second uses more stitches in the purple sections. The other yarn is actually a plastic sandwich bag I cut into a long strip. Not very pleasant to knit with! It feels very stiff and crunchy once knitted up too.

Next I had a go at fulling a bit of Fair Isle. The background yarn is wool while the foreground is cotton. Here is how it looked before.

And here after going through a nice hot wash. I like how the cotton stands out a bit from the fulled fabric as well as the stitches being still well-defined. I didn’t full this until the background stitches were completely obliterated, but it would be interesting to try that too some time.

Next I tried Meg Swansen’s Purl When You Can. This involved purling the stitch if the stitch you are working into is in the same colour, and knitting it if you are changing colour. It creates a fabric which doesn’t curl and can be used around the bottom of jumpers and sleeves to create a non-rolling edge without interrupting the pattern. The first sample I purled when I could in both the background and foreground colours.

For the second sample I only purled when I could in the background colour, and worked the foreground colour in knit. This is enough to stop it curling, and doesn’t disrupt the pattern as much.

Both of these seeemed to work well when there were strong diagonal lines in the pattern, but some more delicate details were rather lost.

For my last sample I worked a Fair Isle pattern using two different weights of yarn. The background is aran weight, and the foreground 4ply weight.

I’m not sure that this one was a great success. Fair Isle is actually very forgiving of different weights of yarn, and although the background does show through the foreground a bit, it is not nearly as obvious as I thought it would be.

Smocked knitting

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The homework for the March City and Guilds class was on smocked knitting, something I had never tried before.

My first sample involved knitting a sample of k1, p1 rib, and then working the smocking afterwards.

The next two samples came from patterns in Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. With both of these the smocking is knitted in as you go along.

This first pattern is just called smocking.

The second is called variation smocking. Unfortunately I chose a yarn which doesn’t show the pattern terrible well again 🙁

These were fun to do but I’m not sure whether I would use them in future knitting projects. The variation smocking is more delicate, but the other two make really quite a firm and thick fabric which limits its uses. They might make good tea cosy fabric, since they would be very well insulating, and a bit of a change from other tea cosy patterns.

Double knitting and quilted knitting

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I am back to doing samples of different techniques for my City and Guilds course. The homework for February’s class was on double knitting, where you are creating a double layer fabric.

This is plain double knitting, where you end up knitting a tube with stocking stitch on each side.

Next I had a go with knit and purl patterns, these both look the same on each side. Unfortunately my yarn choice was rather poor and the grey sample doesn’t really show up the pattern very well.

The blue is actually slightly better in real life, but being rather shiny cotton didn’t photograph very well.

Next I had a go at a combination of double knitting and garter stitch. This is another sample which looks the same from both sides. I think this would make great table mats. It is a very pleasing pattern to knit too.

Then the last sample of double knitting was using two colours. With this method one side is the inverse of the other colourwise. A wonderful effect, although hard to keep track of what you are doing! I really loved how this one came out, very stained glass looking.

And this is the other side. Not quite as good since it turned out that the multicoloured yarn was slightly thinner than the black so the black tended to show through a bit.

As well as the double knitting February’s homework also included two samples of quilted knitting. These patterns are both from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. First is the single coloured quilted lattice.

Then the two coloured royal quilting.

I really enjoyed knitting both of these samples. Both have a different but definite rythmn about them which makes them very pleasant to knit once you get into the swing. I will have to have a think about how you could incorporate them into a garment.

Snowiness

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Like the rest of the UK we have had unaccustomed snowiness over the last few days. It started on Sunday night:

and by Monday looked like this:

This is definitely the most snow we have seen here since we moved in. Paul’s work had emailed and told everyone to work from home unless it was critical that they made it into the office so we put on our warm clothes and stayed indoors. At lunch time we went for a walk around the village to assess the situation.

The station was closed:

But there was some surprisingly industrious snow enginnering going on. Unfortunately I failed to photograph the large igloo in progress on the village green, but did photograph the snowman on the common (for reference Paul is about 6 feet tall – that is one tall snowman! Click the picture for the full effect).

It was very beautiful but a bit cold, so after a circuit of part of the common we came home and dried off and had hot chocolate 🙂

The snow is definitely on its way out now although I am surprised by how well it has lasted.

And now to justify the knitting blog part – well not actually knitting, but ingredients for knitting at least. I mentioned that I had been doing some more dyeing while my parents were visiting. Here are my latest efforts. They are for some more experimenting for my next City and Guilds project, which is coming along, although slowly.

I am very pleased with the oranges, they have come out pretty much as I planned. The green was a bit of an experiment. This is the first time I have had a go with Kemtex acid dyes, and this is their green. It is quite a bit bluer than I was expecting, and too blue for this project, though it is a lovely colour. I have also been playing with the acidity again (me, obsessive, heaven forbid!), and I made the solution for the green a little more acid than my last experiments. One of the reasons for this was the discovery that if you make up dye solutions and then leave them for 3 months, the less acidic ones go a bit mouldy (although they do still dye the yarn fine). However since the acid fixes the dye to the yarn, and the stronger the acid the faster the fixing (this means that the colours don’t run as far), in this case the colour has hardly had a chance to get onto the yarn before it is being fixed to it, resulting in the inside of the yarn if you unply it being considerably paler than the outside. It is an interesting effect, and makes the yarn look slightly heathered which is pretty, but I think I will reduce the acid next time and aim for a more solid colour.

Snow!

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We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow!

It is definitely starting to melt now, but was exciting while it lasted. Sadly I wasn’t quick enough to dash out and make a quick snowman – not sure there was enough snow for it either, and I may possibly have frozen to death attempting to do it in my pyjamas.

All in all I have decided it is safer (and definitely warmer) to be inside today. I am going to catch up on some work, and hopefully also have time to do a bit of knitting. I am still fiddling around with possible colour combinations for my next City and Guilds project. Here is my sample so far:

On the black and while photograph it is easier to see which pairs of colours don’t contrast enough to really show up a pattern. Although I love the reds and greens together, and the dark reds with brown I think they are perhaps a little too subtle (you can stop laughing now about the idea of me being too subtle). More playing to go I think. I want to try out all the colours against the dark red next, and then all the colours against the lime green. Then I think I will try putting the darkest colours in one pile and the palest in another and trying them out against each other. After that I will have another assess of the situation and see whether I think any of the combinations have potential, and whether there are any obvious colour gaps. Then possibly a bit more dyeing, or time to try knitting some actual patterns. I think this should keep me busy for a bit 🙂

Dyeing solid colours

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I borrowed the Baby Burco owned by the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers and have been having an experiment with dyeing solid colours. This is for my next City and Guilds project. Each project has to be inspired by a different one of our art modules, line, colour, texture, shape, and form. My cardigan was inspired by the module on line, and my next project is going to be inspired by the module on colour. There are four projects we need to complete in total, but we can do them in any order we like. Two are garments, a jumper with set-in sleeves, and a jacket or cardigan with sleeves which are not set-in. Both garments must display different necklines. Then there is an accessory and an item for interior use. I am planning to do the jumper with set-in sleeves next, and have been collecting pictures of autumn leaves for my inspiration.

Here is the Baby Burco in action.

I also bought some pH testing strips to test the pH of the dye solutions I was mixing. The The Dyer’s Companion (Companion (Interweave)) says that I should be aiming for a pH of between 4.5 and 5, and as you can see from the strip below, I had a pH of about 2, which could explain a lot of things. I have been doing some more experimenting with how much citric acid I use, and reckon that actually you need relatively little to create the appropriate pH. Citric acid is actually more acidic than acetic acid (vinegar).

I used 4ply weight superwash Bluefaced Leicester wool, and dyed 100g of each colour to give me plenty to play with. My idea is to knit up some samples and try out different colour combinations to see what I like. I don’t have firm ideas yet of what I am doing, so am hoping that doing a few knitted samples will give me some thoughts. It could well be that some of these colours wont be used in the final garment, and that I might add in some others, but at least this is a start. I dyed 10 colours for my first go.

I had quite a lot of trouble dyeing the kind of orange I had first been aiming at. You need a surprisingly small amount of red dye in with the yellow. I do like the couple of much darker oranges too though, and am looking forward to experimenting with all the colours.

I have started a little knitted sample but haven’t got very far yet.

I’m afraid it has been rather dark here, and the colours haven’t come out properly. The paler green near the bottom isn’t mint at all, but rather a paleish grass green. The 2×2 spiral idea is from Janine Bajus, she calls is speed swatching, and it is a nice quick way to get an idea about whether colours look reasonable together or not, without having to worry about the pattern. If you cast on 4n – 1 sts (where n is any whole number) then it will all spiral automatically with no effort whatsoever 🙂 In this case n = 20 so I cast on (4 x 20) – 1 = 79 sts. Big enough to get a proper look at how the colours are coming out, but small enough not to take forever. My plan is to do a few of these speed swatches, or perhaps just one long one, to give me some ideas for colour combinations. Then to work out possible patterns and try them in the most likely of the colour selections.

I started this on Sunday at our City and Guilds class, it was good to have other people’s input, and I agree with Fiona that this brown isn’t right, and that a redder brown would look better. I’m not yet sure whether I want a brown at all though, or whether I will have the darkest colour be the dark red, so I think I will do a bit more swatching and thinking before I dye any more colours.

Talking of Sunday, I got my cardi back from assessment and it is all fine (whew!) though I do need to make sure to do more art, and fewer photographs for the next projects.

Finally handed in

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Here is my Keble Cardigan (named after Keble College, Oxford, since the brickwork helped to inspire the travelling stitch pattern). This is my first project for my City and Guilds course. We have to do 4 projects as part of the course, one jumper with set in sleeves, one cardigan or jacket with sleeves that are not set-in (so raglan, dropped shoulder etc), one accessory, and one item for interior use. I jumped in with the cardigan first and it has taken me 10 months to do, from starting to collect the photographs I used for design inspiration, through many iterations of the pattern, through to the final knitting and finishing.

I am very pleased with how it has come out, and it is the best-fitting cardigan I own. Finally a cardigan that I can wear open without it sliding off at least one shoulder! I do think this is the best thing about designing and knitting something yourself that you can have something which fits just as you like it. I now have a cardi that fits on the shoulders and chest, and the tummy and hips all in the same garment!

The yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, 55% merino, 33% microfibre, 12% cashmere. The really clever thing about the pattern is that all the waist shaping, sleeve shaping and the raglan shaping is hidden in the lattice pattern. That took quite a bit of working out but I am very pleased with the finished result, and the clean lines that it gives to the garment, since there are no extra shaping lines interfering with the stitch pattern.

I handed it in on Sunday, and will hopefully find out whether I have managed to include all the appropriate things in the write-up when I get it back next month. So, one down, three to go! I am planning to do the jumper with set-in sleeves next and have already started dyeing some yarn to use for trial pieces.

Out and about

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It has been an exciting few weeks on the knitting front here, and I’m afraid I have suffered from the problem that when you are busy doing things the time to write about them just seems to disappear, or I am available but just too tired to make any sense. Anyway, things are a little quieter now (we wont mention the City and Guilds homework that I am still behind on) so I will do a spot of catching up. I am going to try and keep things in the order that they happened, otherwise I will be confused (it doesn’t take much).

I have been composing this post for some time (I told you I was a little slow) and was all ready to tell you all about the progress on my Kool Aid socks. They are becoming quite well travelled, although sometimes they don’t make it out of the bag. However, on Sunday I began to have worries about whether I would have enough yarn, and when I weighed what was left discovered that I had knitted exactly half of my ball. Unfortunately I am only half way down the foot of the first sock. Oh blast!

I haven’t been doing too well with these socks, since they are on their second incarnation already. Oh well, at least it gives me a chance to practice the cast on and a slightly different heel again. The Supercook socks use the same base yarn, but I used 2.5mm needles, and had plenty of yarn left over. I was slightly concerned that as it is quite a fine yarn I would get a more hard-wearing sock if I went down a needle size or two. So I started the Kool Aid socks on 2mm needles – I think that may have been a step too far. This time I think I will try 2.25mm needles. I haven’t actually undone them yet. I was concerned that I would undo them in a fit of pique and then think of something I should have measured which would be useful for the re-knit. I will bite the bullet soon.

Anyway, here is a picture of the sock disporting itself at the old alma mater before its untimely demise.

On a more chirpy note, my stitch samples for City and Guilds class were all fine, so I am inching my way slightly closer towards finishing. I have been playing with potential button holes, and think I have just about made a decision. Soon I will be on to the even trickier decision of buttons themselves.

On a completely un-related note, The case of the disappearing teaspoons: a longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute gave me a good chortle today.

Combined stitch structures

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Apologies for no post on Monday, and that today’s post is rather later than usual. We have been down to Cornwall for a couple of weeks which was lovely, so the last three posts were brought to you by the magic of post-scheduling. However I haven’t been very quick at getting things sorted out once we got back, although we now have clean clothes which is a good thing.

September’s City and Guilds knitting homework was combined stitch structures. All of my examples come from the 1000 Knitting Patterns Book.

First up stranded knitting and lace, with a few slipped stitches thrown in too.

Next some cables and lace.

And finally some intarsia, a little bit of stranding and cables. The original pattern for this was in just one colour, and had a mixture of garter stitch and reverse stocking stitch for the background. I changed it to use all reverse stocking stitch and to introduce the colours. The rings are worked in intarsia, but the background is stranded across the back of each ring.

These were the last set of samples to complete the sample portfolio, and I handed in the whole lot (all 5 lever arch files of it!) at the class on Sunday. This is the first piece of work that I have had formally assessed for this course although Fiona has been checking our work as we go along to make sure we haven’t got completely the wrong end of the stick. It is nice to finally hand something in officially though, and I think it will be useful to have a bit of feedback on it all before I am too far along with all the other parts. It is always hard to know exactly what is expected on a new course until you get your first piece of work assessed. I am miles behind on the projects though so I had better go and get a move on with them!