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.

Fitted Cabled Jacket

Here's a detail of a fitted cabled jacket that I finished recently. It's knitted in indigo dyed cotton, which needs to be washed at 60 degrees before you sew it up because it will shrink by 20% vertically! It was a bit messy to knit as the indigo stains your hands and needles, so I worked with an apron on.

The jacket shape was taken from a previous successful pattern and adapted to allow for the shrinkage, which did complicate the maths, but I got there. The waist shaping was done by using smaller needles so as not to spoil the lines of the pattern.

The cable and moss stitch pattern is a traditional one used for guernseys in the fishing village of Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast. I adapted it slightly by using double moss stitch, and crossing the cables on every fourth row instead of the fifth row, as I was knitting back and forth rather than in the round. The rhythm of the knitting fell into place, double moss stitch, 2 rows, cross cables on the fourth. I didn't need to tally 5's and watch the 2 row repeat for the moss stitch. It was easy to see where I was up to.

I'm now knitting the same pattern as a traditional seamless guernsey for my son, more on that soon ...

happy knitting!

How it all began

Back in the 1950s when I was a small child many people knitted and made their own clothes. Seeing a sock grow on what looked like more that 15 dancing needles was incomprehensible and fascinating. I wanted to understand how it worked. How can winding thin stringy wool round pointy sticks make socks or jumpers?

I was given a French knitting kit. It came in a nice box and was called Knitting Nancy, I think it was made by Sharps. Eagerly I began winding the wool round each metal loop and making stitches. It seemed to take forever until the knitting actually came out of the wooden dolls feet, however hard I tugged on the long tail! I knitted yards and yards of 4 stitch iCord in assorted colours but never found a use for it. The box had pictures of 'jolly' coiled bags and table mats but to be honest they looked pretty lame, in a post-war make-do-and-mend worthy pastimes sort of way.

Frankly, French knitting was a disappointment. I wanted to make scarves and jumpers for teddies, not snakes!  So my mother taught me, with a pair of plastic children's knitting needles, which had a distinctive cellulose smell, especially if you chewed the ends. Anyway I got the hang of it and teddies got garter stitch scarves with dropped stitches and holes.

It was a start.