Very Pink

A new cardigan, knit in very vintage, very pink Bluebell Crepe. The pattern is Judy Brien's X Cardigan, and confirms my suspicion that this is the perfect sleeve length. I don't even have to take it off when I wash the dishes, which is more important than you'd think.

So far two people have stopped me in the street to ask whether I'd knit one for them!

Mustard

This was a pleasure to knit, but not quite easy. The lace sections required full concentration; the larger pattern isn't an intuitive pattern, in the sense that the repeat is too large to memorise, and the previous row doesn't really give clues to the next one. The transition to the smaller pattern is also a bit of a fudge, and I think I fudged it even more than the pattern did. After three attempts I just did my own thing to make it work.

 The yarn is from an old crocheted cardigan I found at a second-hand shop. It's acrylic, so I had to steam it several times to get the kinks out. After that it knitted up beautifully, though.

 The pattern is the Closed Bud Pullover from Teva Durham's Loop-d-Loop Lace. More details on Ravelry.

Just In Time

I'm ready for winter this year, with what feels like an entire herd of alpaca snuggling my neck.

Two skeins of laceweight alpaca, 2 3/4 mm needles, trinity stitch. Cast on enough stitches, and keep going till yarn runs out. (Then undo two rows so there's enough yarn to cast off with.)

A Bit More Knitting

 Remember my plan to make baby blankets by knitting squares from scraps of wool? Well, it ran into a snag: turns out I can't sew squares together while reading a book. (I did try.)

So the bag full of squares just sat there glaring at me while I read and felt guilty. Eventually I'd had enough. I ripped out all the squares, divided the wool into a pile of light and a pile of dark, and re-knitted all of it. While reading.

Even the back looks nice!

I couldn't toss the squares I had managed to sew up. Unpicking while reading is only marginally easier than sewing while reading. So I simply picked up stitches along the borders and finished off the blanket. Doesn't look wonderful, but it's okay.

Three blankets made and four books read.

This Is Me

Amy Hertzog's Knit to Flatter book grew out of a series of blog posts she wrote about how to choose and adjust knitting patterns. She discussed lengths and widths and proportions, illustrating each point with photographs. What made the series different, and more helpful, was that she showed unflattering choices as well as good ones.

In the book she instructs you to take a photo of yourself, and draw lines on it to determine your basic shape. This is harder than it seems. (And in case you think I'm exaggerating, the Ravelry forum is full of people posting photos of themselves and asking for help in determining their shape.) It's quite difficult to look at yourself properly, to not be distracted by your face, your hair, your oddly-shaped knees. Possibly it helps to do this over a few days. Eventually the oddness wears off and you can see that yes, that is you.

I took it a step further, and traced around the photo to make a line drawing of myself (to scale: 16,5cm high*). I printed out a ton of them, and started drawing different clothes on them.

And finally I understand why long skirts make me feel like a little walking hut.

Then I drew some dresses I've been thinking of sewing.

I even dove into my Pinterest boards and drew some of my favourite pinned outfits.

This might look like a lot of work, and very frivolous work too. But I'd rather spend an afternoon drawing next to the heater with a cup of tea, and a puppy asleep at my feet, than wandering through shopping malls,  trying on clothes in badly-lit changing rooms, and coming home with nothing to show for my time. I'd rather spend a bit of time drawing than waste a whole day making a dress that, although fitted and of a gorgeous fabric, makes me feel clumsy and sloppy. Not to mention not having fabric to burn through, experimenting.

 *Drawing to scale means that I can take measurements from the drawing and compare it to the schematic of a knitting pattern. I can also draw a schematic to scale, and overlay it on the drawing to get a sense of where things might need to be adjusted.

Sheep Auction

Remember my sheep? Here he is again, but snapped by a proper photographer this time. He'll be up for auction in Sandton during Wool Week (28 May to 3 June) as part of Cape Wool's wool campaign.

"Cape Wools SA, together with Sandton City, Nelson Mandela Square and The Campaign for Wool, will host Wool Week SA at Sandton City in Johannesburg from 28 May to 3 June 2013.

During this week, visitors to Wool Week SA can enjoy a static wool display on Protea Court showcasing wool products and related activities, as well as a sheep art exhibition. A school education programme will also be shown during this week with wool information aimed at school children.

A first for Nelson Mandela Square is the live sheep that will be displayed to the public on Saturday, June 1, followed by a sheep art auction that afternoon where Jo-Ann Strauss will be the MC. She, along with two models, will be dressed in wool by Hendrik Vermeulen Couture.

As part of the static display in Protea Court, Cape Wools SA will encourage local knitting groups to join hands and knit scarves for the Expresso School Scarf Drive. Wool yarn sponsorships for this project from African Expressions have already been secured. African Expressions has also committed to some finished scarves, which they are currently working on.

For more information on Wool Week SA, please contact Cape Wools SA at 041 484 4301."

(Probably the most exciting news is that the yarn donated for the scarf drive will be real wool. Not novelty yarn. This must be a first.) 

Straightforward Mitts

A new set of fingerless mittens for me, because someone keeps losing theirs and taking mine. It's a free pattern: Straightforward Mitts.

Knit in DK rather than 4-ply as South Africa is permanently out of 4-ply, or at least that's what they told me at the yarn shop.

Tiny Knitting

 A friend gave me two skeins of linen-silk yarn that she'd dyed with logwood. It's so thin that she thought it might be weaving yarn, but I only know how to knit - and I love thin yarn.

Time to use my 1.5mm needles again! I picked stitch patterns that I thought worked with the colouring, cast on what seemed to be enough stitches, and knitted till I ran out of yarn. Result: thin, drapey scraps of fabric, perfectly suited for scarves that won't dangle in the ink when I'm printing on a cold winter's morning.

There's been some knitting

Since I last ranted about knitting and wool and charity blankets, I've gathered all my scraps of wool into a bag and stashed it near the couch. Every now and again I drag it out and add a few squares. I started off knitting in one colour and trying new stitch patterns, but soon settled on half linen stitch as a way to blend together colours in a pleasing way. (Some of the scraps of wool really are just that.)

There's enough for one blanket so far!

More Than Good Intentions

Every winter there's a project to get people to knit blankets for charity from synthetic novelty yarn. Every winter I'm more annoyed enraged by this. (I ranted at some innocent, well-meaning folk this week, and I apologise.)

Making blankets for babies is a good thing: it's pretty damn cold out there, and lots of babies don't have enough keeping them warm. Making these blankets from some laughable, flammable, plastic, flammable, novelty, flammable yarn - that's not okay. 


Why would you give people things you wouldn't use yourself? 

Why not make these blankets from wool?

Wool is biodegradable. It's something we do actually produce locally, though we seem to export most of it. It's warmer than acrylic yarns. It doesn't burn easily and doesn't melt if it does burn - I stress this because blankets for charity are presumably intended for use in homes where candles and paraffin lamps and stoves are not uncommon. It soaks up water - the blanket gets wet, not the baby inside it, at least up to a point. It doesn't attract dirt, unlike acrylic yarn - hello, miracle microfibre cloths that magically clean with only water (what a stroke of rebranding genius that was....) It doesn't need to be washed as often as acrylic, which is convenient in cold, rainy winters. It wears very, very well. And it's a pleasure to knit with. 

A ball of wool costs perhaps R40, and there are cheaper. That's quite a lot of squares. That's also a cup of coffee and - oh, you know how much R40 is!

I can afford to buy one ball of wool every few weeks. I can knit a square when I'm between other projects. Or when I'm stuck and need daylight and a clear head to figure out why the stitch count on a current project isn't coming out right. Or if I want to try out a beautiful stitch pattern I saw on Pinterest, like Herringbone (knitting) or Crocodile (crochet). In fact, I'll break out my stitch dictionaries and work through them. I'll carry some wool and needles in my bag for the next time I have to wait 45 minutes for a train. I'll give Fair Isle a go. I'll buy some lovely local wool. I'll buy colours I love but would never wear. I'll make a cardboard loom and learn to weave some patterns. Or finally unpack that Milnerton market knitting machine and learn how to use it. 


And when there are enough squares, I'll sew them together and donate the blanket. And start another one. No deadline, no target. 


If you'd like to join in, please do. If you don't feel up to making a whole blanket, why not make a square or two (10cm x 10cm or 20cm x 20cm) from wool and I'll add them into one of my blankets? And if you've always wanted to learn to knit or crochet, here's a purpose for your practice squares. (Hint: it's easier to learn to knit with nice wool than with creepy bobbly stuff.)

Let's give blankets that will last, and provide real protection. If we're going to give, let's give properly.

Simple

I think I've been waiting my whole life for this pattern: Marla, from the always fabulous Needle & Hook. A perfect boat neck, knit in 4-ply at a gauge that makes sense ie. the gauge recommended on the ball band.

This is knit in the inexplicably discontinued Elle sock wool, so it's thin and dense and drapey and warm. I'm a bit glum about this yarn's disappearance; there's so little local 4-ply available as it is,and almost none of it in natural fibres or non-baby colours. Are there any other brands around that are affordable and in solid colours?

Knitting!

Two! Finished knits! That worked! The one on the left is Paris, the one on the right is from Stitchcraft No. 329, and judging by the pattern pic it's early to mid 1960s.

Both knitted in very vintage 4-ply courtelle crepe yarn. As usual, the vintage pattern fits me better; I did expect the cardigan to be longer, and even though my gauge was spot-on, I suppose the model in the photo demanded less width-ways stretch from her garment than I do, so it ends up shorter on me. The sleeves are fine, so presumably my arms are of a reasonable diameter. But overall it's not a disaster.

Don't let anyone tell you that photographing all your vintage patterns and saving them in files tagged 4-ply, 3-ply, cardigan, vest etc is a waste of a Sunday, by the way. I cast on in the turquoise for a different jersey, and we popped in a dvd. About a hand's width into the knitting, I realised it was going to be horrible. I frogged, we paused, and I clicked through my vintage patterns, grabbed the Stitchcraft from my stash (yes, they're stacked in order!) and we got on with the movie. Ten minutes, tops.

While I'm on the subject of knitting.... Helene tagged me with a knitting tag:

1. Are you always happy with your FO's?
2. Are you sometimes so disappointed that you frog everything and start a new project? Why? Color? Yarn? Making? Too small? Too large?
3. Do you wear your knits or do they end up at the bottom of a cupboard? If so, why? How do they age after being washed and worn?
4. Do you always make a swatch?
5. Finally, would you rather work with some yarns you know well rather than others to avoid bad surprises?

1. About 50% of the time.
2. Yes! I have some things that are on their third incarnation. It's one of reasons I like knitting - mistakes can be unravelled and turned into something else. I haven't bought yarn for  years; there's a whole stash of things waiting to be made into other things. It's usually a size/shape problem - but so far vintage patterns are working well.
3. I wear them. I've had a few horrible moments recently upon stepping out the door and realising that everything I'm wearing was made by me, and there's too much knitting. I do tend to knit because I want the clothes, rather than knitting for it's own sake, but I'm learning to sew as well, to sort of vary the outfits. Everything I've made from vintage yarn has aged very well - I'm always on the hunt for crepe yarn. It wears incredibly well, but just doesn't seem to be available any more. Vintage patterns tend to be knitted at a tighter gauge, too, so things keep their shape. I've frogged a few things made from more modern patterns because they became droopy and floppy.
4. I do. Usually because I'm knitting with something other than the suggested yarn - usually something unlabelled I found at a secondhand shop.
5. I'm happy to try knitting with just about anything. There's always a chance of a good surprise!

I'm tagging Janemactats and Asiye.

I made a knitting pattern!

 It worked. I traced a pattern off an existing shirt, made a chart, and knitted it up. It's not beautiful, but it's really a sort of knitter's muslin. Proof that this will work in other (nicer) yarns and stitches. 

I'm sure there are simpler and more elegant ways to do this, but I'm a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of thinker. No leaps and bounds. But if you'd like to see how I plodded through this process, read on....

Trace a pattern off an existing garment that fits you well. This is only likely to work with things that are made from a knitted fabric, unless you mean to knit at an incredibly firm gauge.

Lay the garment flat and inside out on a big piece of paper, and trace closely around it, holding down the seams as you draw along them, and making sure everything stays flat and doesn't move around. I used greaseproof baking paper - it's big and you can see through it. After tracing, fold the pattern in half, check that the two halves match, and make corrections. Repeat for each part of the garment. Sleeves are obviously more easily done folded in half.

I drew a line down the middle of each pattern piece, and along the bottom straight edge, and marked up the whole piece in a 1cm grid.

I smoothed out some of the curves, but others, like just under the armhole, or the neckline, I left exactly like the sewn seams, because I wanted to make something as close as possible to the shirt I had. This approach won't give you a very intuitive knitting pattern - it'll mean a lot of checking the chart closely. Instead of  "Decrease 1 stitch every 6 rows" you're more likely to end up with "Decrease 1 each side, work 3 rows, decrease 2 each side, work 2 rows etc". So this is the time to decide how closely you'd like to stick to the original, and how much you'd prefer to flatten curves. Bearing in mind that knitting stretches, and looking at the simplicity of most pattern schematics, I'd guess that you could get away with quite a bit of line straightening. But I have yet to test that.

I knitted a swatch in the yarn I intended to use - a big swatch, to see how the yarn behaved on different needle sizes. I was aiming for a fabric with a drape and stretch close to the shirt's. Then I measured the swatch, and figured out my number of stitches and rows per centimetre.

Now it gets fiddly. I used knitter's graph paper from a book, but you can find it online. (It might make more sense to set up your own grid, at the same scale as the knitting. But that's not the plodding way.) I traced a grid off the graph paper that matched my gauge of 3 stitches and 4 rows per centimetre, and then copied the curved parts of the pattern to this grid. Putting the grid back over the graph paper, I drew stepped versions of the curves to match the stitches. Then I checked the numbers to make sure that the number of stitches and rows the decreases are worked over matched the lengths and stitch counts needed. A bit of fiddling, rubbing out and redrawing, was needed.

To make a chart I could follow while watching tv, I redrew the stepped curves onto regular graph paper. Just to make things simpler, I coloured the knit rows and left the purl ones blank. Much easier to check at a glance, and easier to make sure that decreases of more than 1 stitch were located at the beginning of rows.

I kept the full-size paper pattern handy while knitting, and every now and again checked my knitting against it.

 I think it will be very easy to modify this pattern, to add length or width. For some reason I could never get my head around the calculations needed; now I can draw them directly onto the pattern, plod through a few fiddly bits, and have a new pattern.

Knitting Books: not just for knitters

 Tooting my own horn... my buttons on the pages of a book!

I bought Ysolda Teague's book Little Red in the City a while ago, and read it from cover to cover (and squealed when I saw my buttons).

It has patterns, and they're lovely, but the real beauty of it is the way it's written. Every pattern has a proper schematic showing how the pieces of the garment fit together; stitch patterns are charted as well as written line-by-line; yarns are described in terms of the fabric they create as well as their weight and fibre content. Complete measurements are given for each size, including measurements you didn't know you'd need (until you do), like cuff measurements. Just looking over a pattern is an education in pattern-reading. The side-by-side chart and row instructions make it clear how charts work, and will probably have you able to 'read' your own knitting in no time.

Most of the book is about fit, measurements, and modifying pattern instructions to fit you. I must admit that I read this part rather grudgingly. Too much information, I thought. I don't want to become a knitting designer, I just want to make clothes. I'm lucky enough to be able to find things that fit in standard sizes in shops, so I don't need to deconstruct patterns to this degree.

But it all sank in, and this weekend when I was sewing t-shirts* I found myself blithely re-drafting patterns, tracing patterns off other clothes, and knowing what was wrong with the fit on the first go, sometimes even before cutting a piece of fabric.

Even if you don't ever plan to knit one of Ysolda's designs, this book will help you choose and use other patterns intelligently. And it may even improve your sewing.

*photos to come when the light in Cape Town improves enough for indoor pictures of dark blue garments.

Handknitted Stockings - and they're easy!

(Oh my, just noticed the bits of puppy fur on my stockings... sigh....)

Anyway, these are ridiculously easy and ridiculously warm! The pattern is from The Complete Book of Knitting Crochet and Embroidery (1977), which is probably not very useful. But here's the clever part: all shaping is done by changing needle sizes.  I used 5mm, 4.5mm, 3.75mm, and 3.25mm, with 2-ply yarn.

I don't have all those sizes in circular needles, so I just split the pattern up the back and knitted back and forth. When it came to the foot I did the heel shaping on either side, following the pattern, so that the seam runs under the foot. This pattern is written from the top down, so length adjustments are a bit iffy. Luckily I'd knitted these before, about 20 years ago, and had notes to go by.

But I don't see why this wouldn't work brilliantly knitted toe-up, allowing you to measure width as you go, and switching needles when necessary. In fact, any toe-up lace sock could probably be turned into a stocking by doing this. You could even knit the foot in the round, and split the pattern when you get to the part where you run out of circular needles of the right size (just cast on one extra stitch on each end for seaming).

End with about 5cm of ribbing, and yes, you will need garters of some sort.

Scarf: finished

Finally finished: Summit from Knitty, but a scarf rather than a shawl. I ran out of silk along the binding-off edge; I left it lying for a while, trying to screw up the courage to undo rows and rows of tiny slippery stitches so as to reclaim enough to finish off the binding properly. Couldn't do it. So I found embroidery cotton in a close-enough shade, and finished off with that.

It's ended up being a not-very-practical but still pretty scrap of silk, just long enough and just wide enough.

Far and Wide

While these little chaps are making their way to Grahamstown for the Co/Mix show next week, the pencil cases and purses below are already in Durban for the Home Grown Fair, thanks to Nadia of Cupcake Couture.

Yarn Bombing

 
Saturday was International Yarn Bombing Day. The South African National Gallery was our target.

See more pics on my Flickr page, and have a look here for more bombing on Table Mountain.

(I've picked the winner of my brooch giveaway using a random number generator: Libe, congrats! They'll be in the post soon. Thank you all for the lovely comments, and I'll have a tutorial up before the end of this week.)

Bolbommers!*

Tomorrow is International Yarn Bombing Day! Don't get a fright.

*Thanks to tjou-tjou for the translation.

Fallberry mitts

I love this pattern!

On the left, the small size knitted in DK wool, and on the right, the large size knitted in sock-weight alpaca. Both were knitted on 2.75mm needles.