Ends

I've been working on multiple projects these days.  All portable and varying in levels of difficulty.  Long wait times?  Work on I'm Not Who You Think I Am.  Unpredictable wait times? Work on Switching Modes-inspired mitts.  Can't possibly keep track of a pattern?  Work on basic socks.  This strategy produced a growing pile of finished objects, all needing their ends tucked in.

 I felt as though I had accomplished something once there was a pile of yarn scraps.  

All of these projects are made with yarn that has been dyed recently, either with Oogy, or later with inspiration from our earlier efforts.  

The Ideal Combination of Pattern, Yarn, and Tools

It makes such a huge difference in how well I can sustain my interest in a project.  

In fact, the right combination, in addition to a more unstructured schedule than usual, can lead to what one might consider obsession.  I started a shawl last week and now the center portion is done. It is a half hexagon and the pattern is very straightforward: perfect for patio knitting. 

Now I am applying the lace edging, which includes some beads.  It's slowing me down a bit, but I'm still enjoying it immensely.  

For this project it is the yarn that is the most important element.  I dyed it in the process of matching the color of my SIL's new car, yielding a variegated yarn with very short spans of individual colors.  The colors did not pool at all, and having the hues shift every few stitches kept me totally engaged.  The shawl pattern is from Jane Sowerby's Victorian Lace Today and is the fichu version of the Spider Shawl.  I'm not quite done with the lace yet, but it seems as though this will be a 1-skein project.

This is the cashmere/wool/silk blend shown in the previous post.

I dyed two skeins, so now I'm working on a less-than-full-skein cowl with the other one.  Once again, Oogy found a wonderful project to challenge us!

"I'm Not Who You Think I Am"

The designer, Kristina Vilimaite, provided clear instructions for the i-cord edge, and I marveled at how she came up with this technique.  Sometimes you have to just let the instructions take you along, despite your strong suspicion that it will end up a tangled mess. The edge is so cool! 

Now I have two projects to fill a long weekend of knitting!    

  

Car Envy

My sister in law got a new car recently, and its color inspired a new colorway that I'm calling Car Envy.  I've had my eye on a Subaru CrossTrek in color "Cool Grey Khaki" for a long while.

SIL just got hers in "Plasma Yellow Pearl"

It's SOOOO pretty.  I fired up the dye studio and combined Flavine Yellow with Golden Pear, and came pretty close to Plasma Yellow Pearl.

I combined it with Lavender, so some of the yarn actually looks like Cool Grey Khaki!

There's a shawl in progress...

Yarn Was Flung

It's been a challenging year in my academic life, so it is with much relief that summer is here.  What better way to get it started than to get together with Oogy for a few days of dyeing, eating, meeting the World's Most Cute and Sweet Pooch, and knitting? It was bliss, and we each have a large pile of yarn to show for it.  

Here is my pile:

 Some of it has already jumped onto the nearest needles!

Wool/bamboo sock yarn

becoming a sock with an afterthought heal

I've been experimenting with using a single color as a highlight at one end of a skein, or with dyeing only one end of the skein with a few colors, which limits the appearance of those colors to a short segment in the knitted item.  Of course, it all depends on the size and gauge of the item.  There really is no end to the fun of dyeing.

wool/silk/cashmere blend fingering weight yarn

on its way to becoming a drop-stitch scarf.  

You can see how the blue dyed portion of the skein has made short runs of blue in the scarf. I was going to make a big shawl with this yarn, but it is so intensely bright that I know I won't wear it.  So, it is going to be a smaller piece, more like a scarf.  Pop of color, for sure!

I'm always learning a new skill from Oogy, and this visit was no exception.  Here is my inaugural sock tube: 

I dyed the wool/silk/cashmere blend awhile ago and thought it would be a good candidate for the sock machine.  Now I can't wait to make a pair of mitts, some short socks, and use what's left as an accent color for a cowl.  

It's so great to have a new pile of bright yarn to play with, especially because I now have more time to knit, and I'll be reminded of the wonderful fun it was to dye it all. 

Consequences of not swatching

I've been happily making great progress on my Fair Isle project.  It was especially exciting to finish the last large border pattern.  I was happy with how the color changes came together, and was getting ready to begin the lace section.  Then I viewed the work from afar and discovered the appearance of...well, you can generate your own perceptions.  

I put it aside for a few days, until I was psychologically prepared to unravel back to the beginning of the pattern. I changed it to fill in the open area between the Xs and Os and tried to blend the background better.

Now I'm back to being nearly finished with the Fair Isle section!

Maakin Progress

Maakin = knitting in Shetland dialect

Having fully embraced the power of folding a rectangle of knitted fabric into a poncho, I have recently started to make another Fair Isle project.  The first Fair Isle poncho that I made was a product of many false starts, so it is rather satisfying to be making one that is intentional.  I have a framework for the entire project, although I didn't go as far as to actually write a pattern.  I do have a drawing that shows the sequence of Fair Isle motifs.

The numbers refer to motifs from Mary Jane Mucklestone's book.

The design is intentional and reflects traditional Fair Isle knitting in the combination of motifs. These techniques are clearly described in Mucklestone's book 200 Fair Isle Motifs, A Knitter's Directory. The same few Peerie (small) motifs alternate with larger border patterns.  Also, the backgrounds alternate from light to dark.  I wanted to arrange each large motif so that the Os of one motif appeared above the Xs of the previous motif. I made this task possible by choosing motifs with repeats of 7, 14, or 28 stitches. This isn't a traditional Fair Isle design element, but the border patterns get increasingly larger, ranging from 9-19 rows.  One last design element: the background for the current motif is one of the colors from the center row of the previous motif.

The color choices were also intentional.  I chose colors that I had on hand, and then purchased more yarn from J&S Wool Brokers.  

The deep orange is the main color of the poncho.  Once I finish the Fair Isle section, I'll use that color to work some basic Shetland lace. I'm about 1/3 the way finished with the Fair Isle section.

Each row has 206 stitches; long enough to get into a rhythm, short enough to stay engaged.

This shot shows the steek. 
Also, the Xs of one large motif are arranged above the Os of the previous large motif.

Finally Finished

I started a Fair Isle project about 2 (?) years ago, using a knitting machine and a cone of J&S Shetland wool to make panels that would fit together and form the back and sides of a cardigan with asymmetrical front openings. One opening would be lace, and the other would be Fair Isle designs.  I did finish that "sweater" but the concept in my head did not in any way translate as a functioning garment.  It got put away until enough time went by for me to face its deconstruction.  

A few months ago Oogy and I embarked on a knit-a-long to make Pinions, which was enormously fun to knit and yielded wearable garments. We were inspired to make up our own version, which we are calling Rogue Pinions.  We're maintaining a good pace, each of us contributing 2 "clues", one week after the other.  Here is my RP so far:

A close-up of #5 and 6, clues from Oogy that were especially fun to knit.

The success of Pinions had another impact: I found the abandoned failed Fair Isle/Shetland lace "sweater" and began is deconstruction, removing the sleeves, shoulders, and neck until all that was left was a long rectangle with two openings of live stitches where the sleeves had been.  Those got kitchenered, and one side of the rectangle got partially seamed to create a poncho.

The fair isle motifs are from M.J. Mucklestone's book 200 Fair Isle Motifs, and the lace portions are from Lovick's book The Magic of Shetland Lace Knitting.  The yarn is J&S 2-ply jumper weight.

FC58 is one of my favorite colors of J&S 2-ply

Most certainly going to wear this a lot!!!

A Second Pinion

Casapinka's Pinion was so much fun to knit that Oogy and I have decided to do another one.  And this time, we plan to choose our own patterns for each section.  Going rogue!  We'll alternate the job of choosing the patterns, and there is the option to add some narrative, i.e. a pinion.  Oogy's getting us started, and I already have my first patterns planned out!

Here is the yarn I'm using:

A few hand-dyed skeins, some that were purchased for other projects that never materialized, and a few leftovers.

Here is my first Pinion:

There's probably enough fingering-weight yarn to do a few more, but I'm beginning to wonder if this might be a good fate for the large collection of DK/sport-wt yarn...

Mitts Finished

 

Pinion Break: Da Meids Mitts

Last week a knitting pal shared her plans to make Katie's Kep, a Fair Isle hat from the 2020 Shetland Wool Week annual.  I got intensely jealous, which led me to set aside the Pinions project at Pinion 15 and make a Fair Isle project.  

Pictured on the cover of the 2021 Annual, Da Meids Mitts by Alison Rendall seemed like a good candidate to consider.  I was delighted that there were three colorways, all using Uradale Yarns Organic Native Shetland Wool.  I have curated a small collection of their yarn from both online and in-person purchases, and felt confident that I would have enough of each color to make one of the three designs.  I love working with this yarn because it has a rustic, natural appearance.

Turns out I did not have enough yarn in the designated colors.  I thought I might substitute in some other shetland yarns, but in the end decided to modify the color combinations.  We'll call it Colorway Four.

Combining colors in Fair Isle projects is a skill that I am still developing.  I made some important progress in this effort last fall when I took Tracey Doxie's color blending workshop during Wool Week, and then a follow-up workshop with her several weeks later.  For Colorway Four I opted to use three background shades, going from light to dark: Slett, Laebrakk, and Moorit.  The foreground colors were Ling Heath, Sea Pink, and Flukkra, going from dark to light.  I used Tormentil Heath for the lace cuff and the "singing" line at the center of the front Fair Isle pattern.  I normally use the same light-dark direction for back- and foreground, but I realized for this project that I need to exaggerate the contrasts between them to make the colors I had on hand work in the design. 

A strategy for blending colors and ensuring adequate contrast between back and foreground is to view the yarn choices through your camera's monochromatic setting. Here we can see that Sea Pink and Laebrakk are very close together, so I opted to minimize how much they were used in the same rows.

The advice we all hear and often disregard is to make a swatch.  The benefit of the swatch was hugely emphasized in Tracey's workshop, and I did consider doing one for this project.  However, any swatch I would have made would be the same size as the mitts, so I just went for it.  I knew I could tear it back and make some adjustments, although I decided I was happy with the original plan for Colorway Four.

I had some help finishing the first mitt.  

Alison Rendall suggests drying the mitts on a glove board, reminding me that I had acquired a set of these during one of my visits to the Shetland Textile Museum.  I'm using them upside down in an effort to block the lace and not stretch out the ribbing at the top of the mitt.

On to mitt two!

Another Update

As much fun as knitting Pinions has been, I have allowed myself to get derailed twice, so I'm still at Pinion 9.  

I liked Pinion 7 enough to add a variation of it to another work in progress. More about this later.

Then, I really liked Pinion 9 and got inspired to start another project.  I have lots of this yarn, so I'm thinking it will be a lacy sweater with this design for the sleeves.  It's only at the conceptual level now.  What I find most appealing is the lace effect between the double decreases.

I expect to be heading off on other tangents before Pinion is done!

Pinions KAL Update

It's been fun to use up some yarn that I dyed over 10 years ago.  I just finished Pinion 6.

A late knitted Christmas gift idea has emerged and will keep me occupied, probably until people are opening presents and wondering where I am on Saturday.  Pinion 7 will have to wait a few days!

Another KAL

December is not the ideal time to start a 20-section fingering-weight knit along shawl ("Pinions"; thank you Sharon from Security and Casapinka). I was convinced to do it when I learned it was going to be folded into a poncho shape. I have accumulated a massive quantity of fingering-weight yarn and am short on ideas for what to do with the small quantities of so many different colors.  

I wish I could say this was all of it...

But once I organized the pile into general color groups, I was able to envision how some of the yarn could get put together.  

Brownie is not impressed, but is rather annoyed that so much of his bed space is occupied.  I won't tell him that I'm knitting a project that was designed by another cat.

I opted for the greens.  If I have enough fun with those, I might make two shawls.  Or, I could wait a short time until Casapinka generates yet another awesome use of colorful fingering-weight yarn.

What's Hap?

As part of my longstanding appreciation for Shetland knitting, I have attempted to make a hap with DK weight yarn that I purchased from Bee Croft, the online shop of a crofter on Fair Isle. Having followed barkland_croft on Instagram for the last few years, and meeting the crofter, Rachel, at a knitting group in Lerwick in 2019,  I was delighted to learn that she is producing yarn from her Shetland sheep flock and did not hesitate to order a skein of each solid color (Barnacle, Butterscotch, and Busby) as soon as it was available.  After about a month of wool huffing, fretting about my inability to keep Old Shale on track (please don't look closely), and wondering if I would have enough yarn to finish the lace edging, a hap emerged. 

The challenge in designing the hap was to make sure I would be able to use as much of the yarn as possible on each layer.  I initially mapped the pattern out on graph paper and aimed to have equal amounts of area for each color, but lace has a mind of its own, and I had to use my best judgement as the hap grew. 

All that's left of my skeins of Busby, Butterscotch, and Barnacle.

It is only appropriate that this hap will get used regularly.  That's what I find so appealing about this Shetland lace tradition: it's EVERYDAY lace.