Finished Faroese shawls, Blocking shawls, a Cabled Tam Design

Regina (Rubicon on Ravelry) finished her Woven Diamonds Faroese...I think it turned out stunning!

She made a couple modifications to the pattern, if you are on Ravelry her notes are here:
Rubicon's Woven Diamonds Faroese.

I failed to show a photo of Fran's Woven Diamond Faroese. Fran was the first one to work the pattern - as a matter of fact she was the one who admired my blue one and encouraged me to write it up.

You can see Fran's shawl on her blog here: Fran's Woven Diamonds Faroese

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am working on a shetland style shawl design in Jojoland fingering weight wool. I have yet to find just the right edging so I have put this project on hold as I await Nancy Bush's new book, " Knitted Lace of Estonia " I'm hoping that there may contain an edging that will work or a stitch pattern that will inspire me to create an edging. In the meantime I blocked the shawl to see how the size is working out and to determine how wide the edging needs to be.

I used to block my shawls on towels laid over the carpet in the spare bedroom (which was once my sewing room and has since become the stash room). However, we have a little Yorkie named Buddy....

who was making a mess of the carpet when no one was looking and had to pull it up.

When we did that I could see that I wasn't helping the situation by blocking on it. Sometimes I spray my shawls with water to re-dampen them once they are pinned out, and that was also leaving water stains on the carpet backing.

Recently I found some interlocking mats at Big Lots (I also saw the same ones at Tuesday Morning).

I bought two sets at a very reasonable price. They seem to work great for blocking, I can pin into them and still shift the whole surface around if I need to. The wrong side of the mats is smooth. They did have a very strong rubber smell when I first opened the package but that seems to have dissipated.

Last year I took a fair isle hat class at Kirkwood Knittery taught by Brooke Nico.

I wasn't too fond of the result on my first attempt, so that that first hat lives at the shop. I had much better luck with my second design and also made matching fingerless gloves (background is brown shetland wool and the patterning consists of many different pieces of leftover variegated sock yarns).  Not one to wear hats, I found that I really liked the way this one looked and it didn't smash my hair too badly.

To block this tam none of my plates were the right size (of course not); instead I made a 10" diameter circle out of cardboard and covered it with plastic wrap.  Stretching the tam over the cardboard form, I threaded a piece of waste yarn through the edge of the ribbing (this works great if the edge is worked with a tubular cast-on) and drew it up into a small circle.  This was much better than using pins to keep the hat on the form while it blocked.

         

The last few weeks I've had an idea for a cabled tam inspired by the celtic cables in Viking Patterns for Knitting by Elizabeth Lavold and the patterns charted by the girl from auntie for her awesome designs.

I worked a few swatches and a prototype just to see how cables might work:

I bought a skein of Classic Elite's Alpaca Sox at Knit and Caboodle to use for the actual tam in a soft gray color. Next I worked a portion of the stitch pattern as a fingerless glove to determine the gauge. Then I played with the stitch pattern in excel for many hours to decide on the best way to work it. Finally I cast on and knit, this is the result:

It didn't turn out exactly as I'd pictured it, still deciding if I ought to publish it or not - leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Ravelry Love...

Ravelry is fun, fun, fun - the more time I spend there the more I like it.  It's a knitting party 24/7.  

I love seeing everyone's finished objects. My favorite part of the Greater St. Louis Knitter's Guild meetings has always been the portion at the end called 'Show and Share', one aspect that I love about Ravelry is that it is like a giant Show and Share! It's very inspiring to see what people are working on.

It's really been inspiring to post the Flower Scarf free pattern (download it here or here) - I am fascinated that it has been downloaded 373 times and favorited 243 times to date and there are 17 posted Flower Scarf projects listed - very cool.  Susan (I'm Knitting As Fast as I Can) is knitting a Flower Scarf and at the same time working on continental style knitting - I have visited her blog before and admired her patterns - so it's fun that someone I 'know' (is there term for that?) is knitting my pattern.

The Woven Diamonds Faroese has been favorited 67 times and several copies of the pattern have sold in my Ravelry shop (MakeOne's Ravelry Pattern Store).   Regina (Rubicon) is working on the Woven Diamonds Faroese - she chose the prettiest color yarn - can't wait to see how it turns out.

Ariel Socks have been favorited 41 times.  Nancy (Knitarooooo) is making Ariel Socks and posted a nice comment about the pattern on her Ravelry project page.

It's fun too to review my friends 'activity' page.

Plus there is an amazing amount of information in the forums.

And with over 7,800 groups there is a group for just about anything one could think of.

Gotta go back to Ravelry now and get my fix....

Bad Blogger

I am a bad blogger, I know that I  should write more often.

Excuses, excuses:

1. Some days I think what could I possibly have to say that would be interesting and hasn't already been written about.
2. Other days I have so many ideas on what to write about that rather than choose one I choose none.
3. Most days I'd rather knit than blog.
4. Also I'm lazy.

I hereby resolve to be a better blogger.


What have I finished recently?
As a rule I prefer to have no more than three objects in process, usually a pair of socks, a larger project such as a sweater or a shawl, and a third project which could be who knows what.  If I have more UFO's then that it feels like I will never get anything finished and they only thing I love more than starting a new project is finishing a project (I get bored in the middle obviously). 


Right now I have no socks in progress. 


The most recent (probably in the last six months) socks that I finished are these:

      
               Ariel (pair #2)                                                                     Ariel (pair #3)
Plymouth Yarn's Happy Feet, color no. 4.                          J.Knits SuperwashMe Light
This yarn was actually too heavy for this pattern             
and this pair is a little too big.
                        
Unnamed                                                                      Unnamed, Stranded
German Herringbone stitch pattern                   Regia Silk (dark Brown)
Fortissima Socka Disco3 yarn                                    J.Knits SuperwashMe Light (cinnamon)
                                                                                          Variegated that I think is Schoeller Stahl

Plain Old Plain Old
Berroco Sox

I already blogged about the Nordstrom's knock-off sweater which I finished in June 2008.
This tank top was finished in August 2008. I love the flat cables (they are not actual cables but instead are made with increases/decreases).  The stitch pattern is in 'The Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns'.  However, when I swatched the pattern as given in the book it was severely biased:

       

The reason is that it is only shown as increasing in one direction.
I rewrote the chart so that the 'cables' alternated one left/one right which eliminated the bias:
The yarn is Classic Elite Premier (cotton/tencel) that I've been wanting to use for a project for quite a while and although I loved knitting with it,  when worn for the first time the yarn left fuzzies all over me and I could feel it getting longer/stretching all evening.
Last Spring (not sure exactly when but I am sure it was too warm to wear by the time I finished it) I finished this sweater  (The solid color is an alpaca yarn and the variegated is a handpainted sock yarn):

It took a couple weekends to make a quilt for my daughter.  She wanted the numerous sorority t-shirts that she had amassed made into a blanket.  This photo was taken before the actual quilting took place, it took several days just to baste it.  I tried to avoid basting but I should know better and had to rip out my first quilting attempt.  I now remember why I only ever made one quilt before, and I don't plan on making any others any time soon.  I know it looks upside down - I should have shot the photo from the other end of the table.

What am I working on now?

This shetland shawl design in Jojoland Fingering Weight wool.  Still need to decide on the edging:

Top down garter stitch cardigan inspired by one from Victoria's Secret (see earlier post).  The yarn is Reynolds Mandalay, 100% silk, no fun to knit with at all.  This yarn had a previous life as another sweater that I never finished as noted in an earlier post.

A crochet cardigan in Brown Sheep Cotton Fine.  I thought this would be a nice change of pace and would go more quickly than a knit cardigan, but the stitch pattern I chose (marguerite) is slow to work and I'm struggling to keep an even gauge.

I've been admiring these sweaters where the cable goes around the yoke:
Tahki Stacy Charles Zara Cabled Tunic as seen in Interweave Knits; 

Lion Brand's  Cable Luxe Tunic


Armed with knowledge from an article in The Best of Vogue Knitting Magazine by Meg Swenson titled 'EPS Revisited' and inspired by this charted cable pattern from the girl from auntie as well as Viking Patterns for Knitting by Elizabeth Lavold, I have been swatching for a  cabled yoke cardigan design in Brown Sheep Sport.

This cable will be worked sideways around the yoke with  a narrower version at the cuff.  After reading Meg's article I came to understand that in a circular yoke only about 1/2 of the yoke involves increasing (if working top down) or decreasing (if working bottom up), the remainder is knit even to the armhole - now I see (lightbulb moment) how the sweaters with the sideways cable work.

Well that was quite a long post - took hours to do, my own fault - I vow to try and be a more frequent blogger!

Inspiring Retail Designs

I can spend hours on the internet looking for inspiration and noting current knitwear trends on the websites of retailers (Dillards, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom's, Bloomingdales, Ralph Lauren, Spiegel, Victoria's Secret, etc. etc.)

I had so much fun creating (knitting a knock off) of this sweater:

Here is my version:

Recently I noticed this sweater on the Victoria's Secret website:

The last few days I have been working on knitting something similar for myself not necessarily as a pattern to publish.  I'm using a yarn that I am "re-purposing" (that's a new term I keep hearing on HGTV - it seems to have replaced their catch phrase from last year "makes it pop") from an unfinished sweater that I frogged last week. Not my favorite yarn (Reynolds Mandalay, 100% silk) - if it doesn't work out I'll send it back to the bottom of the frog pond permanently.

Then coincidentally, yesterday I came across this blog of someone else admiring this type of design: Olgajazzy.

On the Duplicate Designing Phenomenon

There is a phenomenon that has been discussed on other knitting blogs across the net, and even noted by Lily Chin at a last month's Greater St. Louis Knitters' Guild event: it is quite common for designers to come up with very similar designs at nearly the same time.

I talked about this on my July 13 post below relating to the stitch pattern used in the ever popular Monkey Socks.

This morning I woke to find this thread on Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/patterns/323852#reply_form.

If you're not on Ravelry, Krystofer came up with a sock design that he also didn't realize was essentially the same as Monkey socks: http://queerknits.blogspot.com/.

So 'unventing' applies not only to technique, but also to design.

Updates

Woven Diamonds Faroese Shawl Classes.........
The class at Kirkwood Knittery was a lot of fun and I learned a bit about teaching.  It was rewarding to see several of my 'students' complete their shawl...here's a photo of JoAnn's shawl before blocking:

Barb's been working on her shawl but her grandson put a crimp in her progress.....you might say that this shawl is so much fun even babies eat it up!

I'll be teaching this class again, this time at Knit 'n Caboodle starting in September.  Contact Knit and Caboodle in St. Charles, MO or watch for information in their newsletter if you're interested in taking this class.

Patterns now also available at Loopy Ewe............
the patterns for Woven Diamonds Faroese, Ariel Socks and Man's First Socks are now available at Loopy Ewe.

UPDATE 09/24/2008 - Woven Diamonds Faroese pattern is also available through my Ravelry Pattern Store or by clicking the link at the right hand side of this page in my 'profile' section.

The three patterns are also available at Kirkwood Knittery and Knit and Caboodle.

Also be sure to check out the Flower Scarf - it is a quick project that uses approximately 150 yards of laceweight yarn. I knit this one with cashmere/silk from Hand Maiden.

It's a FREE PATTERN!

Guild Workshops.....

Last weekend the Greater St. Louis Knitter's Guild hosted workshops by Lily Chin for Guild Members.

Friday evening she spoke about What to Look For in Yarn and gave some tips to help evaluate various yarns and how they behave.  She talked about her stash (so large it has it's own storage space lease), gave some great and amusing ideas for places to store your stash, and advice about why one should not feel guilty for having a stash.

Saturday morning I attended her workshop on Pinstripe Knitting and came away with a lot of ideas for using that technique.

Saturday afternoon the subjects were Design Inspiration and Interpreting Fashion Trends.

Lily brought along a lot of her original garments - very cool to see and touch actual garments that have appeared in magazines and books.  I got to be one of the models which was a lot of fun.

I very much enjoyed meeting and chatting with Lily.  It was really a great event.

On Socks - Part Three

Ariel Socks

The thing that most fascinates me most about knitting is:  strip everything else away and there's really only one stitch - Knit. All other results, especially stitch patterns, are generated by manipulating and combining the knit stitch.  That's magical.

For a long time I had been admiring a stitch pattern titled Fish-Scale Lace in the perpetual calendar '365 Knitting Stitches a Year' (May 31).

Last Fall I bought a very lovely skein of J. Knits and chose to use this stitch pattern for a pair of socks. I always admire sock patterns that offer something a bit unusual and I worked the lace pattern into the heel. My friend Candy really admired my socks and suggested that the pattern ought to be published.

So I went to visit Sheri at the Loopy Ewe (those of us who live near the Loopy Ewe and can go there in person are so lucky - are we not?) to see if she thought this would be a marketable pattern.  Sheri said they looked great, but wait - isn't this the same stitch pattern as 'the Monkey Socks' from Knitty?  

I had heard of the Monkey Socks but wasn't really familiar with the pattern.  It turned out that Sheri was correct - it was the same stitch pattern.  It's a weird phenomenon that seems to repeatedly happen... knit designers coming up with strikingly similar designs.

Back to the drawing board.  Still loved the stitch pattern and the back of the heel treatment.  What if I used the stitch pattern in a panel format rather than an all over design?  Place twisted ribs at the sides for stretchiness, turn the panel the opposite direction for the front/instep to lead into the toe, maybe try that box toe shaping I found on the internet, use the pretty J. Knits SuperwashMe Light that I bought while at Loopy Ewe - hmmm.......

.....and thus we have ARIEL SOCKS (fish scale lace --> mermaid ---> Ariel - get it?):

and Back..... 

Ariel socks are a lot of fun to knit. They seem to go quickly - completing each repeat of the 14 row stitch pattern keeps it moving along. The one/one twisted rib cuff is 2.25" deep which not only looks really nice but provides enough stretchy rib to keep the sock from sliding on the leg. The box toe looks good too and is comfortable to wear. I love, love, love the SuperwashMe Light yarn - there are 550 yards per skein - plenty there to make a much longer sock. Although any light-ish weight sock yarn will work (i.e. Opal, Trekking, etc.). Also subtle color changes will look best (i.e. stripes would be too busy for the stitch pattern).

The color 'Iowa' is actually more of a cinnamon and very pretty, but after photographing these socks in several different sessions I never could get my camera to pick up the color properly - they really are not as orange as they look in the photos.

My friend Barb was the first to knit a pair - she wrote:

    "The pattern is fun.
     They are fun to make but not so hard you can't remember the pattern.
     I thought about giving these as a gift but I like them too much!"

'Ariel' will soon be available for purchase from The Loopy Ewe and is also currently available in the St. Louis area at:

Chris' Needlecraft Supply http://www.chrisneedlecraftsupply.com/

Hearthstone Knits (http://hearthstoneyarns.com/)
Kirkwood Knittery (http://kirkwoodknittery.com/)
Knit Escape (http://www.knitescape.blogspot.com/)
Knit N Caboodle (http://www.knitandcaboodle.com/)
The Weaving Department at Myers House (http://www.gslkg.com/weavingdept.html)

UPDATE 09/24/2008:

The Ariel sock pattern is now also available in my Ravelry Pattern Store, or by clicking the link on the righthand side of this page.