Scandi knits in Icelandic wool

Plotulopi

A few years ago I visited Iceland. It was wonderful, a gorgeous country with lovely people and fantastic wool. The Icelandic sheep is an ancient breed which the Viking settlers brought with them. The wool has two layers to it. The outer layer (tog) is made up of long fibres, which are strong and water repellent. The inner layer (thel) is quite different, it’s very light and the fibres are shorter so it traps a lot of air and is a good insulator. Lopi yarns are produced from a mix of both fibres. 

My first project was a cardigan for my granddaughter knitted in Plotulopi. This comes as a plate and is hardly spun at all! It needs very light handling or it breaks. But it’s so light that it’s really easy to splice it back together by dampening the two ends and rolling them in your palms. You can also double it up by knitting simultaneously with wool from the outside and the centre of the disc. This twists the fibres and makes it stronger. However a transformation occurs when you gently wash the finished garment. The fibres mesh together and become fluffy. It makes a very light and warm fabric

Since then I’ve knitted these in Lett-lopi, which is almost a DK weight, on a 4mm circular pin. They are all seamlessly constructed. The yoked jacket had a steek in the middle of the front. Yes it was a bit scary! 

To prevent the cut edges from stretching out of shape I stitched fabric to the back and cut through both layers. The front bands were knitted separately and stitched on by hand. The closures are vintage hooks and eyes.

The little seed stich adds an extra layer. It needs to be loosely stranded at the back.

This navy sweater was inspired by traditional Norwegian knits. It only had steeks at the armholes which were much more manageable.

I brought some Plotulopi yarn home with me from Iceland and then discovered that I can get it here in the UK from Carreg Yarns in Wales, www.carregyarns.com. They have the complete range of these lovely wools in all the weights and colours. It’s worth getting some shade cards to drool over and ponder as you dream up the next gorgeous garment!

Have fun 

Fair Isle knitting for the 21st Centuary

A new sweater for the new season! I'm rather pleased with the way this has turned out. I wanted to knit a traditional Fair Isle with a contemporary look. A short, shaped sweater with no ribs  or seams and pearl beads knitted into the yoke pattern.

Using  "Knitting in the Old Way"  as my guide (again!) I planned a seamless garment. As always, the workflow begins with tension swatches for both the plain and patterned areas, using  traditional Shetland 2ply jumper yarns from Jameson and Smith. They still produce a large range of dyed and natural colours, which have been in use for decades.  The main colour is such a lovely peachy pink and so reminiscent of the 1950's. It is also just the right colour to match a skirt I want to wear this jumper with.

There were lots of calculations for the size and shaping all worked out and written in my notebook. I also needed to make sure that the Fair Isle patterns would line up in the centre of the front and repeat on the number of stitches I was using, so as not to have a funny line at the join of the round. This involved making a long strip of squared paper and marking out some of the pattern starting at the centre front stitch and working towards the edge. Then I could go back the the chart I'd drawn and be sure that the round would line up correctly, which it did!

The beading was a bit of a challenge. Getting the beads onto the knitting yarn involved threading them onto beading wire and then making a loop, like a giant needle threader, and threading them onto the knitting wool. As the bead holes were tiny this process frayed the knitting yarn quite a bit, so I used two balls of the same colour for the beaded rows. One ball for stitches with beads and the other for the plain pattern in that colour. This meant I had three strands of wool to manage, but it also means that if the yarn frays too much and breaks I shall only have to repair the beading and not the main fabric of the garment.

It was worth the effort …

Knitting with Colour and Stash Busting

After all that navy blue I feel the need to work with colour. These are some fairisle and intatsia samples from my collection. Some of you may recognise the patterns from the work of Kaffe Fassett, the grand master of colour and one of my heros.

The diamond sample was an early piece which I made back in 1982, after attending one of Kaffe's wonderful weekend workshops, which really did open up a whole new world of knitting for me. The colour changes are quite abrupt in places but as you can see from some of the other samples, blending improved with practice.

You may also be able to see that I have used 2 or 3 strands of different coloured fine yarns knitted together to create a more interesting colour texture that can be achieved with a single double knitting or chunky yarn. It's fascinating to see how one colour can change simply by putting it with a complementary colour. I spend quite a lot of time choosing colour pallets. It inspires me to knit it up and see what happens. Sometime the unexpected results prove very interesting!

 I never throw scraps of yarn away. I try to keep them in boxes, sorted by colour. Odd balls of lovely yarns will always get used, eventually.

If you'd like to find out more and learn how to turn all those left over bits of yarn into gorgeous colourful samples I shall be running a half day workshop on Saturday October 1st from 10 am to 12.45 pm. You can click the link below for more information and book online

Texere Tribe


You really don't need to be an expert knitter for this. As long as you can do knit and purl stitches you'll be fine. Smooth and even tension comes with practice, this workshop is about opening our eyes to colour, having fun and sharing.

Seamless Guernsey Sweater

Here it is, a traditional seamless fisherman's sweater, with shoulder straps, underarm gussets and a monogram in the bottom right corner.  It is knitted in 5 ply Guernsey wool using the same cable and moss stitch pattern as I used for the cabled jacket described in a previous post Fitted Cabled Jacket. I wanted to knit it in the round with no seams to sew and no tight cast off edges.  All the stitches are threaded onto a contrasting colour yarns and picked up later when needed.

I used an excellent book for this project. "Knitting in the Old Way" by Pricilla A Gibson-Roberts and  Deborah Robson. It is a treasure trove of information containing plans for numerous styles of sweater construction, which can easily be adapted.

Happy Holidays!

This is the time of year when I like to get at least some projects finished, before I start designing new things to knit. So my spiral rib socks will get some attention today and then I shall finish the big guernsey sweater. I've only got the cuffs and neck ribbing to do. Pictures will follow very soon.

In the new year I plan to knit all sorts of lovely things for my first grandchild which is due in March. It's very exciting ...

As you can see the fingerless gloves have been very popular. I've knitted a few pairs for Christmas presents. The snowflake ones look very vintage 1950's and the anchor design was a special request from my son. He's very pleased with them.

Thank you so much for taking the time to find and read this blog.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Whatever you are doing and wherever you are have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year.

di

Spiral socks and knitting belts

The cold weather is fast approaching and wooly socks will be required before too long.

I needed a bit of easy knitting as the other projects are complicated and require some concentration and good light.

These are from a nice little book 'easy knitted socks' by Jeanette Trotman. I'm knitting them for myself in Noro Silk Garden Lite on two 3.5mm pins. There is no heel to turn. They are simple spiral rib tubes. It is knitted in a basic 2 x 2 rib, which you shift by 1 stitch on every fourth row. These are spiraling anti-clockwise as I am a left-handed knitter and simply followed the pattern instructions.

The pattern describes a method of knitting in the round with a long circular needle. I can see the point of only using 2 double pointed needles for this as it is much easier to keep track of the rib pattern on only two pins. Three, which I tried and failed, does make it tricky to see exactly where you are up to. However as they are only socks it seemed straightforward enough to use two double pointed needles and to knit onto a third. This is a traditional Shetland technique for knitting seamless sweaters, as it prevents the possibility of loose stitches in the middle of the sweater. In Shetland they used a knitting belt to support the third long steel knitting needle. Although I use circular needles for most of my work I still use my knitting belt from time to time.

The photo shows a detail of a child's sweater and the knitting belt.

Fingerless Gloves

Rarely content to simply knit a pattern according to the instructions (I do like to mess with things) I adapted these fingerless gloves from Cailyn Myer's lovely pattern,  Wintergreen Gloves, which is available as a free download on Ravelry. and Cailyn's blog.

I decided to experiment with yarns and snowflakes. I used some very fine charcoal grey cashmere yarn on a cone, which I used double as well as Shetland 2 ply jumper yarn from Jamesion & Smith (grays) as well as alpaca 2 ply lace yarn, which I also used double (maroon/purple) and some silk/merino (lavender) both from Posh Yarns.
Here is the result.
It's a  pretty prototype, but it's not quite what I wanted.

The lavender yarn is too fine in relation to the rest of the glove. It distorts the snowflake by squashing it.

The shading of the grays on the snowflake is a bit abrupt. This pattern would work better if it was knitted in one colour and the background colours were changed and shaded.

The curls of the wave motif at the cuff are in the wrong place and seem to be at odds with the spikes of the snowflake.

The maroon spots are too dark.

So I set about knitting another version.

This is looking more promising. The larger snowflake and the softer shading work quite well. I shortened the cuff and knitted a pattern. I also used 3 strands of the cashmere on this one. It was good enough, so I knitted a pair for myself!

The point I'm trying to make is that it is always useful to knit samples and experiments. If it turns out really horrible, then bin it, but try to work out what went wrong first.