Nachtfalter

Ok, so if you hadn’t noticed, my pattern was published in the latest issue of Knitty.

I decided to make Nachtfalter, which is also in this issue. I love garter stitch and it’s a quick and easy project.

I used King Cole Baby Alpaca DK in meadow.

It was a really quick knit and the finished mitts are lovely and squishy.

One to add to the Christmas gift pile.

Yorkshire

This blog post is a wee bit delayed. I’ve been away on holiday in Yorkshire, which happily coincided with Yarndale, so I dragged Mr along.

The bunting was still up this year but has now been accompanied by lots and lots of mandalas.

It really did look fantastic. It was a lovely day and my purchases were quite restrained (well, for me anyway).

A skein of Deeply Wicked by Easy Knits for the Woolly Wormhead KAL. Anyone else doing it?

A lovely thank you skein of Soliloquy Sock yarn from the Linda at Tall Yarns n’ Tales for the sock pattern in Knitty.

A selection of pretty buttons from Textile Garden and a few needles.

Oh and a crochet kit from Natural Dye Studio, which I wanted to do on holiday. I was sans ball winder, so a very patient Mr helped me wind 5 skeins of yarn into balls.

On the way back, we went to Fountains Abbey in the afternoon and took a few nice pictures.

Fazed

I’ve made a start on my Fazed Tweed jumper but my attention span at the moment is very short. I keep on moving from project to project.

And it gets worse, more yarn… I do have a project in mind. With my pattern being in the latest Knitty, I had a good look at all the other lovely designs. Nachtfalter in particular – it has garter stitch for starters. This lovely colour of King Cole Baby Alpaca DK is going to be ideal – the colour is called meadow. So hopefully you’ll see a pair shortly.

Photo Tutorial: Neater Knit to Purl Yarnovers

My pattern Ticklepenny, that is in Knitty Deep Fall 2014 issue, uses knit to purl yarnovers. See the panels of leaves down the side of the socks...

The normal way of doing this can make a yarnover which is larger than a purl to knit yarnover. When they are near one another then it can make it look a little unbalanced. 

There’s a little trick you can do to make them neater – basically, wrap the yarnover clockwise around the needle instead. This does mean you have to remember on the next row/round and either re-seat it or work into the back of it.

The bottom leaf has normal knit to purl yarnovers and the top leaf has the neater version (there's not a huge difference in this example but it can be more obvious depending on the yarn and your knitting style).

I’ll explain in more detail.

A normal knit to purl yarnover is made by bringing the yarn under the right needle, then…

...over the top of the needle and back under again and because it is worked by effectively going around the needle twice, there is extra yarn and the yarnover is bigger than a purl to knit yarnover.

So for a neater knit to purl yarnover -

1. Normally, the yarn would be at the front for a purl stitch, leave it at the back and insert your needle into the next stitch as if to purl.

2. Purl the stitch. By not bringing the yarn to the front you’ve created a backwards yarnover before the purl.

3. It should look like this. The stitch below is being pulled up by the shorter backwards yarnover.

4. The next step is how to deal with it on the next round/row. It looks the same on the next row,  whether you are working in the round or flat. It looks like this.

5. Work the first stitch and then it should look like the next picture, with the backwards yarnover and the purl stitch that has been pulled up on the left needle.

6. First method is to knit into the back of the stitch, insert right needle from front to back and knit the yarnover (if you need to purl your yarnover, purl through the back loop instead), once this has been worked the purl stitch relaxes and you can then purl it. I sometimes find this tricky to see so I tend to drop the yarnover and re-seat it in its correct position.

7. Second method - drop just the yarnover from the needle.

8. It will then look like this.

9. Pick up the yarnover by going from front to back with the left hand needle…

10. Repeat as necessary...

New Pattern in Knitty, Deep Fall 2014

Some very exciting news. I have a pattern in the latest issue of Knitty.com.

I’ve known for awhile and been desperate to share the news. Here's the Ravelry page.

The pattern is called Ticklepenny and it’s for a pair of socks. The yarn weight is not one that is typical for socks. Instead of using a standard fingering/4ply sock yarn; it is worked using a light fingering / heavy laceweight yarn. The yarn used is Tall Yarns ‘n Tales Soliloquy™ Sock Lace, available here.

The socks are a unisex design and the idea came about when my Mum requested a pair of socks that would fit easier in a pair of shoes. The socks are worked on a 2mm needle and at this gauge allows for a lot of detail in the design.

The socks are worked from the top down. The panels down the side of the sock are mirrored for each sock. There is an eye of partridge heel flap and the feet are plain, so they are easier to fit inside a pair of shoes.

The model is my lovely sister-in-law and the puppy is Bella, who very fleetingly sat still for a photograph.

I had photo shoot on my parent-in-law’s farm, which was fun. Unbelievably, the pictures with the yellow in the background are my sister-in-law stood in the corn bucket! She was a great sport! Plus, it does make for an interesting background.

Fine Donegal

This lovely shawl has just come off my needles. The yarn is a new one from Debbie Bliss – Fine Donegal. The colour is Heather 10. I am absolutely in love with this yarn – I enjoyed knitting every bit of it. Ravelry Project Page

I was in too much of a rush to start the shawl to take a photograph of the balls but they are lovely and big. I want to use the word dumpling to describe them for some reason. Fine Donegal is a 4ply weight yarn and it comes in 100g “dumplings”. It’s a single ply yarn and very reminiscent of Rowan Fine Tweed; however, it has 5% cashmere content which seems to have increased the strength of the yarn. The rest of the yarn is 95% wool. It feels soft and with nice body to it.

The little flecks of tweed in the yarn are really beautiful. The shade I used was a heathery purple but with flecks of bright pink, green, blue etc. They are a similar tone to the main colour so they give the yarn a lovely depth of colour.

The pattern is from the book that goes with the yarn – Fine Donegal. The pattern is rather uninspiringly called “Shawl with lace edging” but it’s a lovely pattern. The edging is worked separately from the main body (which was great TV knitting), then sewn on. The sewing was really easy as there is the same number of rows for the edging and the shawl, so I didn’t even need to pin.

It blocked nicely too. It has an even softer handle now it’s blocked.

It is quite a large shawl, which I imagine will make it lovely in cold weather.

Goodies

Oh dear, look at that. More wool came home with me…and quite a lot of it this time.

I managed to bring 17 balls of the new Rowan Fazed Tweed home. It’s a chunky weight yarn and it’s very soft with some lovely colours in the range. I did have a difficulty picking my favourite colour but thought I’d go with something classic and went with black.

The plan at the moment is to make the Plum Creek Jumper by Sarah Hatton, which I’ve been eyeing for awhile and thought the yarn and pattern would make a nice combination.

I did make another purchase recently. It’s this nifty little thing from Hilltopcloud.

It’s a wrap per inch (wpi) tool with a difference. It’s more of a useful tool for a spinner rather than a knitter but there are times that you don’t know what thickness the yarn is as a knitter too. 

Normally, you wrap the yarn around an inch space and see how many wraps there are. You can still do that on this but you can lay the yarn across the lines at the bottom to see which it fits in best. This works really well.

Here’s my new Fazed Tweed laid across the 8 line, a quick look at the very handy chart at the top tells me it’s on the border of Aran/Chunky. The other thing that I love is that the chart is on the tool, so you won’t lose it or have to go and look it up on the computer. Money well spent.

Dishcloth

The Rico Creative Cotton Aran that I bought last week has transformed into a dishcloth.

It is the same stitch pattern that I used for this cowl, which was perfect as it is made on the bias. This meant I could stop increasing and start decreasing when I’d used half the yarn – so the dishcloth was as big as I could get it with one ball of yarn.

I do love the colour but it is quite a psychedelic blast for the eyes.

FO: Blueberry

I finished another project recently but didn’t get any decent photographs of it.

It’s a new pattern from Sirdar 4493, which has a cardigan and coat variation. I did the largest size in the coat. I just adore the collar. The yarn I used is Click DK in Blueberry, which is a really unusual deep purple.

I only managed to snap one picture of it. I really love the collar, it’s very sweet. Unusually, there are 3 different needle sizes used in the pattern. One for the stocking stitch, a smaller one for the garter stitch and the edges and a larger size for the band across the middle. The band is a mixture of cable and lace, so it doesn’t want to be at too tight a gauge.

I bought a few balls of yarn recently from A Good Yarn.

A ball of Rico Creative Cotton Print Aran for a crocheted dishcloth and 2 balls of Sublime Baby Cashmere Silk Baby 4ply. I used the DK version to make this cardigan and really loved it. On my visit to Loop in January, I bought Juju’s Loops book and I think I’ll make the Sprinkle baby cardigan with the Sublime.

FO: Plume

I have finished a few projects recently but been quite lax in photographing them.

I had a little photo shoot with Mr with my plume cardigan. I’ve come to the conclusion, that I’m not a very good model – so you only get to see one photo that came out semi-well.

The yarn is the scrumptious Bergere de France Plume, which is absolute heaven to knit with. The pattern is a free one from Drops, which is done in a yarn that works in the same gauge as Plume with a very similar fibre content too.

I didn’t like the sleeves on the original – the cuffs were quite loose. I rewrote the sleeves so they fitted snuggly around the cuffs. I worked the back, one front and a sleeve first, and sewed it together, so I could check the fit (it was fine!).

I was in a rush to wear it, so stupidly decided to steam block it – word of advice – don’t.

There’s a lot of man made fibre in it and I knew it was a risk, and managed to melt some of the fibres. Thankfully, it’s not a lot and not really noticeable. I wet blocked it instead, which worked a lot better. Though the front bands still want to flip in.

I’ve tried a few different tactics to combat it. Crocheting around the edge made it worse. I ended up picking up along the front and bottom edges of the band and immediately casting off again, which has improved it dramatically but not totally.

After, the photo was taken, I put snap fasteners next to the buttons, so the band doesn’t flip over the buttons and hide them.

Despite some issues, I do still love it and think it’s going to be a fab Christmas/winter cardigan, even though I’m wearing it in the middle of summer.

My photographer for the day was very patient and I took a lovely photo of him, while he was waiting patiently for me.