The Shawls of 2012 (1. Buryan)

I've spent the past year doing an MPhil, and consequently, this blog has been somewhat neglected. I have still been knitting and crocheting, but my room doesn't have very good light and the weather in Britain has been somewhat appalling over the past couple of months. Thus, I haven't really got my act together to get some of my creations photographed.

I've made several shawls this year. As I was giving one of them away to a friend, then that was the kick into action that I needed to get it photographed. But it was another rainy day, so I ended up shoved into the one picturesque corner of my room (a white painted fireplace), trying to get some decent shots. I took a lot, and ended up with three 'modelled' shots that I like, and more 'on a white background' shots that are decent.

I thought that I would post the pictures up here. The shawl is another variation on the clustered trebles technique that I used on the Endellion shawl, and was an attempt to use up some leftover Wollmeise 80/20 Sockenwolle (the Pfefferminz Prinz that I had previously used on my Multnomah and the Vergissmeinnicht from the Idony gloves  and Knotty gloves). It ended up a little shorter than I really wanted, but I really like the mix of the two yarns.

After making Buryan (I thought after Endellion, I could use Cornish saints as theme names for my shawls), I've made two more shawls. However, my parents have taken one of them (Petroc) home. I'm off on my usual summer transit, helping on various camps, so I don't think that I'll be able to photograph it until the end of August. My other shawl, Piran, is almost finished. I'm trying to work out how to do the edging and the bind off at the moment. Hopefully, I'll be able to photograph it on my travels. All three of these shawls are my own designs, so when I have time, I'm hoping to write up the patterns, get them tested and then release them.

Hopefully, it won't be another ten months until I post here again!

Multnomah Shawl (and Flamies)

This post is mainly about my experience knitting the Multnomah shawl. But before I do that, I'm going to point you towards the Crochet  Liberation Front's annual Flamie Awards, where my Esmée Cardigan has been nominated for 'Best Design - Adult Garments'. Looking down the list of nominations in the voters' guide, its a great list of some of the best designs and contributions to the crochet world over the past year. And being the Crochet Liberation Front, it does make me a little sad that I'm tacking it onto a post about knitting. But I'm somewhat shy about 'vote for me!' self-promotion (which is why it has taken me until the end of the voting period to actually make this post), and I didn't want to put it on a stand-alone post. And crocheters, do not fear, I am crocheting as I type this post (well, during thinking time), so I should have some crocheted loveliness to post up soon. Also, I'm going to rework the Esmée Cardigan for self-publishing in the summer once I get the rights back, so my brain will be switching to more thoughts about crochet over the coming months (as well as lots and lots of thoughts about final exams).

Anyway, onto Multnomah.



It was quite a pleasing knit, all in all. I used almost a whole skein of Wollmeise Sockenwolle 80/20 Twin We're Different in Pfefferminz Prinz, and 3.25mm needles.


The needles provided the only problem for the knit. When I started, I only had my 3.25mm circular needles with a 30cm cord. These are some old needles that I inherited from my grandmother - so they're a little sticky, and the cord isn't particularly flexible. Also, despite measuring them in a needle gauge, I still wasn't sure if they were 3.25mm. The pattern told me that I would need a longer cord so I promptly ordered some nice Addi premiums online with a 100cm cord. They took longer than expected to arrive, by which time I had a nicely scrunched up shawl on the little circulars, having reached almost the edge of the garter stitch section. Thankfully, when the needles arrived then they were the same size as those I had already been using, and the shawl doesn't seem to show any evidence that two different needles were used.



It was quite mindless, especially the garter section. The feather and fan provided some interest, but it suited the end of term, when I didn't really want to be spending a lot of my time focussing upon my knitting.



As you can see in the above photo, the variegated yarn striped or changed colour nicely, without any large patches of pooling.

One of the next posts will hopefully contain one of the two knitting patterns I have ready to go - I've typed it all out, reknitted it, and am now just waiting for a sunny day when I can photograph my samples.

Yarn

This is the yarn that I want to use to make a shawl. Wollmeise 80/20 Sockenwolle in We're Different Pfefferminz Prinz. But first I have to wind it. I have an armchair, which has the perfect back size for winding (much better than using tuna tins or glasses to wrap the yarn round) but 500 yards is still intimidating.

Knotty Gloves, and Wollmeise

You may have noticed that photos of my gloves have a particular photographic style. And that the Idony gloves were published at the same time of year as the Skaði gloves. The photographic style is due to my brother being around at Christmas, and he is someone who actually knows how to operate a camera, rather than my 'point and shoot at someone with a pretty background'. The time of year is because the Idony gloves were a present for my Mum. I've reach the curious point in my crocheting adventures where I feel guilt if I follow a pattern. Something like fingerless gloves are so simple that I ought to be able to devise a pattern for them myself, rather than follow someone else's design. There are, however, a few fingerless glove designs that I intend to try once I get over this feeling of guilt - especially Aoibhe Ni Shuilleabhain's Dragon Skin Gaunlets (these also fall into the other area of crafting guilt - that I ought to be making things from the magazines that I own, last year's subscription to Inside Crochet means that I now have a whole magazine box full of patterns I have not made).

Anyway, back to Knotty. These were a gift to me. By me. I had bought a Wollmeise We're Different Sockenwolle 80/20 pack on a whim and in the heady rush of 'trying to get something Wollmeise before they all run out', in turquoise. With these packs, you aren't told which colours you are getting, just the colour family they fall in. These are also the yarns which have acted as guinea pigs, tests or don't quite match what they are meant to be. They are sold slightly cheaper than the basic colours, but you can't control which colours (aside from the colour family) that you get. I like Wollmeise - for the colour saturation, the length, the smell (I don't know what the smell is, but it's not at all sheepy) and that it is produced in Germany, meaning I can have it shipped to the UK without having to pay custom dues (what has put me off buying the Sanguine Gryphon's yarns). I ended up with two guinea pig yarns, variations on Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not), which became Knotty and the Idony Gloves and Pfefferminz Prinz (which is variegated turquoise and green).

So I had some Wollmeise, but as with many rash yarn purchases, I didn't really have a pattern in mind. Thanks to Ravelry's pattern ideas function, I was able to look through what others had made and eventually settled upon Knotty.

Which is a pair of knitted gloves, which a large cable on the front. Much more advanced than anything I had tried before. I had done cables on the Brambles beret, but not to the extent that are on Knotty, and I had never dropped stitches and then picked them up again. However, undaunted, I bought myself some Addi circulars in the right size and started.

The cuffs were too big. I wanted to cry. Instead, I started again, casting on 52 stitches instead of sixty. This time they worked. When I got to the cable, I worked it on the first thirty stitches. I changed the size of the fingers to fit in with the smaller number of stitches (picked up 8sts front and back for index finger (16 total), 6 for middle and ring finger (12 total each) and remaining 12 for pinky). I think this probably meant that there were larger holes at the bottom of the fingers, but I filled these in with the waste yarn from joining on at the bottom. And more importantly, they fit and I didn't have to buy another needle!

I have waited to post until I've worn the gloves out and about for a bit. I still like them, they still hold up, they are warm. I'm not going to put them away in a cupboard. The only probably is the ends that had to be woven in - some of them are beginning to pop out.

A few months before buying the We're Different pack from Wollmeise, I had bought a single skein of Vamp. Vamp is red. Bright, unquestionably red. I hadn't known what to do with it. I'd tried crocheting a bolero, but that hadn't really worked. But this Christmas, I knitted up a lace mini-scarf with it for a friend. Then for Christmas, I received New England Knits, a beautiful book. I'm now making another scarf based on the lace panels from the Ashfield Cardigan. I will endeavour to photograph it properly and post it here. And I'm planning a big project...to knit a cardigan. But I think that deserves its own post.