Category: Yarn

Designing!!

This is my first attempt at designing something from scratch!!! Details are sketchy below, as I want to market this in some form, either the item itself or the pattern based on it. So be warned this is copyright to me, do not copy, or attempt to recreate/sell or otherwise use the details here for personal gain: this is simply a record for information only.

Though that should be from scratch-ish, now that I think of it… the sleeves from elbow to wrist are the same as those of the shrug I made my sister – using needles of different sizes to create a lacy effect. However, with this the lower sleeves start wide, and are reduced towards the elbow. There’s ribbons threaded through at the elbow.

The top however is solid, small needles throughout, with stitches increased towards the middle and then reduced towards the opposite sleeve, where the large needle is re-introduced and stitch number is increased towards the wrist. In the centre portion, a circle for the head is removed by placing stitches on a small circular needle to be knitted up later as a collar. Mine is Dracula’s cloak-shaped, with points that stick up round my head, but I have plans for other shapes, including a Scottish Widow’s hood. I also have plans for a tight-sleeved (possibly gloved) cyber version in fluorescent colours and stripes, and possibly an open-fronted all-lace one in some yummy Astrakhan wool.

The inspiration is shown in the second photo. Us gothy types can suffer a degree of discomfort as a result of our dress, especially when the weather is too mild for a heavy coat but still chilly enough to require some covering over bosoms and arms. I could see a less ornate version being suitable for wear over strappy summer tops for those barbeques on a breezy summer twilight. It’s not really a poncho, too short even for a cropped sweater – it should not obscure the delightful outfit below it: about nipple-length is right.

I call it the Corset Cosy (TM).

Ay thenk yew.

To get ahead, get a hat

A few posts ago, I mentioned a matinee set I made for my niece. Specifically, how closely I followed the pattern for the beret, or bunnet as it’s called in my erstwhile neck of the woods, because I wanted to make one for my son. This was motivated by the fact that he kept slapping my niece’s on his head and running away, shrieking “Hat! Hat! HAAAAAT!” and giggling. So, dear reader, I did.

I guesstimated the number of stitches based on some rough measurements and memory, just made sure it had the requisite 7 segment swirl on top. I made it up in the same Blue-faced Leicester wool I used for the Aran cardi – which I still haven’t found.

For the stitch pattern, I used a single-repeat Tree of Life motif from Shelagh Hollingworth’s book, interspersed with a motif of my own devising (with a little help from Alice Starmore to get it started), repeated 4 times round the underband. My motif was an infinity symbol – an 8 on its side – which is a symbol I’ve always liked, with the forever and ever, amen. Nice combined with the Tree of Life too. For a bit of interest, I put bobbles inside the loops of the alternating two infinities to represent the point singularity at the start of the universe, just to continue the science theme. T’was only too late that I realised the result looked like boobies!

Around the edge, I put bobbles at 7-st intervals. I’m sure I had a deeply symbolical reason – I had for everything up to then! but it escapes me now. All I can think now is that it gives the bunnet a Henry VIII look… Over the top, I did two stitch patterns, both from the 1988 edition of the Complete Stitch Directory, one called Bee Stitch, the other Honeycomb Stitch. They weren’t a great fit into the space, but look okay. Actually, it looks a bit mediaeval, so perhaps I did have a Henry VII theme going on. Reason for Beeing? The Destroyer of Waists has recently become obsessed with flying insects, known collectively as ‘Bzzzes’.

I’ve googled for these two patterns but what comes up is not them – and I’m not certain the Amazon book referenced will contain it, as mine is an older edition by a different publisher, so here goes:

Bee Stitch: Worked over a multiple of 6 st, plus 5. Row 1 & all odd rows (WS) – K. Rows 2 & 4 – P. Row 6 – *P5, K into next st 5rows down, unravelling st in the rows between#, repeat from * to #, end with P5. Rows 8 & 10 – P. Row 12 – P2, K into next st 5rows down, unravelling st in the rows between#, repeat from * to #, end with P2.

 

 

Bunnet Top

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honeycomb Stitch: Over an even number of stitches. Row 1 &

3 – K. Row 2 – *K1, K into next st 1row down, rpt from *. Row 4 – *K into next st 1row down, K1, rpt from *.

I like that they both use the same principle of knitting into an earlier row. There’s something very fractal-ly about that, similarities across different scales, leaf growth on trees being governed by the same principles that create fjords, etc.

On top, I added a tassle rather than a pompom, carefully set to sit sideways as in the pic. And of course he refuses to wear it…

Inside, my new Subh Milis label!

Begorra

Back at work again for the last week – snowed under due to a Maths teacher’s sick leave and the dopey Yr 11s not sorting out their work experience – and before that a fortnight in Ireland which was anything but restful. Every time I go home I come back swearing I’ll never set foot there again, and then I forget how awful it is and go back.

It wasn’t too bad when I was single. Going “home” meant being shunted around parents and siblings living up to 50 miles apart, cross-border. Lots of travelling by car. Fine if I had no plans of my own. Things got more trying when I left to live in Birmingham: then, when I came “home”, I also wanted to visit friends, sort things out at the bank, etc. The former caused my family to throw a collective fit – why was I bothering to come home at all if I wanted to see other people? The latter rarely happened, and business had to be sorted out by post and the one branch my bank has in Birmingham. Then I met Tiny Husband. Foolishly brought him home one Christmas to meet the family, on condition that we were left at the coach station on the 27th to go to Belfast to meet his family. We finally got away on the 29th, driven up by my pissed-off sister, having spent the intervening time on the farm where there’s no phone and no satellite cover. TH’s mum was frantic.

Now, with the ba, it’s a bloody nightmare. It’s not safe for a city baby who doesn’t realise that tractors AREN’T just big toys, there’s never any food in any of the houses we go to (probably all eaten by my big fat rellies), and I’m not even consulted about where we’re going to be dumped, as when my sister walked off and left us on the farm overnight with no bottles, one nappy and no clothes after taking us for a “short visit”.

Really, never again – not without a car, and preferably a hotel reservation.

Although on the plus side I did larn maself how to double-knit, and put together some patterns for blankies, with a little help from Jessica Tromp, of which more anon.

While in Ireland I handed over the Drops Norwegian sweater and hat to new nephew Adam, 6 weeks. Stupidly, I didn’t take a photo to put up here, but I plan to make another for my wee man, so that’ll have to do. I did it in blue (MC) and yellow (2nd) 2-ply laceweight, with a 4-ply natural as the third colour. The laceweights I doubled and re-plied with my Daruma Home Twister, a fabby gadget. Okay, I could live without the re-plying function, but I love those funky fat centre-pullcakes. The sweater looked terrible while I was knitting it up, very cottony-ribbony and cold, but when I wet it for blocking, the fibres bounced up, almost felt-thick, yummy.

Adam’s mum will not let him wear it, of course. I made the 6-month size, so it should fit him in a month or two, but SIL is obsessed with proving her children are BIG. The older boy, at 7, is wearing teenage clothes, although keeping the clothes on him involves rolling up hems, rolling down waistbands over belts and wearing 3 or more layers of t-shirts etc to fill out the massive sweaters she has the poor boy in. He looks like a badly stuffed scarecrow. He’s certainly tall, but not teenage tall – maybe 10-year-old height. So undoubtedly I’ll hear shortly that the sweater was too tight to go over Adam’s head (despite one shoulder being a button-through). I sent her over a 6-12month outfit when Adam was born, which “dudn’t fut hum” as a newborn. Yeah, right. Madwoman. I told my sister to tell SIL if she didn’t want it, to send it back to me because I could sell it for $75 on Etsy, heh-heh.

I’ve also – finally – been inspired to make Tiny Husband a sweater. We’ve been together for five years, so it should be safe enough! I’d selected the pattern yonks ago when I was thinking about trying Aran knitting again and wanted something easy to start with – but then went and made something more complicated in the meantime. TH is of course gothically-inclined, so the usual wools in naturals, creams and beiges were out. Not that he wouldn’t like a white Aran sweater, but he’d just never have occasion to wear it. So the hunt was on for something darker.

I bought some grey wool off eBay, but when it arrived it was a marl (*spit!*). Fine for him, he’ll wear grey and navy at work, but – quite apart from my fear and loathing of the coloured-up wool – I just don’t think marls work for Aran. The beauty of the technique is in the sculptural stitchery: the wool is just the vehicle, and shouldn’t detract attention by being interesting in itself. Would Michelangelo’s David be quite such an eyeful in a mottled green marble? No. I said NO. Peasants. I also got some Welsh Black (aka brown), but it is very rough. Hairshirt rough. I may Aran something from it yet but it requires further thought. I’m still on the look-out for navy or dark blue wool, although just looking for the evilness of blue hurts me in the core of my soul. The sacrifices one must make for love…

However, few months ago I bought some mystery wool in the Bull Ring. No bands, but cheap and with a very pleasant hand to it. It’s one single ply of many filaments, very thick, soft and warm, but lightweight and slightly fluffy. I thought it might possibly be wool, maybe a merino or something, but as soon as I’ve decided it almost definitely is wool, it starts looking synthetic, like what polar fleece would be like to knit with. It’s coming up chunky, 14st to 10cm – the moss-stitch panels look like bobbles! It isn’t pilling as I knit, which is unexpected if it’s synthetic.

And just for fun I decided to muck about with the pattern – as usual. I’ve been reading Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Without Tears and was inspired to try knitting it in the round without seams, apart from a bit of grafting under the pits. It’ll mean a possible rethink of the neck – how do I continue the Aran with the decreases? but I wasn’t too thrilled with the plain collar any way… So I shall keep this updated.

The free knitting machine is lacking a carriage. But, hey, it was free. Doubtless the universe will see fit to send a carriage my way eventually, in that really unnerving way it does from time to time, just to make me think someone IS actually watching me…

Eyelash Shrug

My sister was invited to a rather posh wedding a while ago. She really had nothing suitable to wear – she lives in trackies and trainers and has virtually nothing else. Over the years of trackiedom she’d also lost all sense of glamour, colour, shape, etc and had a hard time finding something to wear. She hadn’t even tried on clothes in the shop in about 9 years! Since her evil ex took over her life and decreed that any attempt at looking nice clearly meant she was trying to pick up other men…

In the end she found something that tbh sounded like a trackie dress – i.e., thoroughly lacking in oomph. More phmoo really. Blackish-brown, straight-fitting (which means loose on her), nothing interesting in the way of pattern, fabric, embellishment.

About a week beforehand, she was complaining on the phone to me that she was worried that it wasn’t ‘grand’ enough for the bash, wondering if she should go out and look for something else. And I had an inspiration. I had some lovely glossy black eyelash yarn that I’d bought intending to make myself a shrug, but I hadn’t got round to it. Without saying a word to her about this, I figured if I really went for it, I could make it up over the weekend, post it on Monday, and she’d have it Wednesday at the latest. I got off the phone as fast as possible, mumbling something about her not being an important member of the wedding party or anything, who was going to notice what she wore, yada yada. Whipped out the needles and yarn and cast on loosely – Long-tail Cast-On works for me.

The pattern is based loosely around one that I lost yonks ago, no idea where I got it in the first place. It is however burned into my brain for all eternity. Well, sort of. Start by casting on 34st, increase 1st on BOTH ends of every 3rd row by making 1 (M1) into the second st from either end, until there’s a total of 50st. Then continue straight for the required length, and start decreasing (k2tog the 2nd and 3rd sts from either end) on every 3rd row until there are 34st left, cast off. See? easy peasy.

I do not, of course, remember the yarn weight, needle size, gauge… But shrugs are flexible! That is the beauty of the things! They do not HAVE to have wrist-length sleeves, they CAN be a bit skimpy, so even if you totally foul up the gauge, or don’t have the measurements of the recipient, or any of the millions of other things that can go wrong, it doesn’t matter!! A shrug in its simplest form is just a wide rectangle, long enough on its long side to go across the recipient’s back – but if it isn’t, just borrow a bit off each sleeve so they’re shorter. It doesn’t matter. I do have one handy hint though – if it’s to be a surprise gift, you can get a rough idea of the right size by finding out how TALL the recipient is. The distance from fingertip to fingertip of outstretched arms is equal to height. Knock off 6-8in for the length of the (adult) hands and you have an idea how long the shrug should be from cuff to cuff.

For example, I’m 5’6″, with biggish hands, roughly 7in.
5’6″ = 66in, minus 2 hands at 7in each (14in) = 52″ from wrist to wrist.
Anything shorter than this is fine for a shrug.

I think it was a simple lace pattern – yarn-over between stitches on one row, drop the yarn-over on the next, repeat till you’re fit to be tied with boredom – but, obviously, I is not jiggy wit da boredom. As the groovy young things say.  And the effect of any lace stitch is wasted with eyelash anyway, as the fluffs hide everything but the ‘hole’. So I used one 10mm needle to simulate the yarn-over rows and a 4mm needle for the ‘drop’ rows.

Wow! Two top tips in one post!

I only did the lacy bit up to approximately the elbows, then switched to two 4mm needles for the section over the upper arms and back, then back to the 10mm and 4mm needles for the other sleeve. Suspended bind-off gives a nice loose edge for this project. Sew up the lacy section of both sleeves right up to about 1-2in of the non-lacy middle section. The type of sewing up doesn’t really matter, as the fluffiness of the yarn disguises the neatiness/tidiness of the stitchwork – I’ve even crocheted up the sleeves on some of these shrugs and it’s not noticeable. Then, to tart it up a bit, I threaded a length of 1in black ribbon through the top row of holes in the lace and tied it in a bow opposite the seam – the bow is then on the outside of the arm. Finito!

Sister was thrilled with it, and got loads of compliments at the wedding. So much so that she went all Hyacinth Bucket and told people that she had a “little woman” run it up for her! and no, she didn’t really want to say who, or how much her “treasure” charged. Mainly because she had no idea how much something like that WOULD cost, although I think she was alarmed at the figures people were suggesting, to try to winkle the info out of her – “was it more than £150? that’s what X charged for my twinset last year and it wasn’t this nice”, etc. (Sis and I are both frequently alarmed by what people will pay for clothes that aren’t anything special. The tight-fisted gene is a terrible curse sometimes). She even got asked if the entire ensemble was run up by her “little woman”!

Not bad for a Primark outfit and a few balls of yarn from a poundshop…

Catch-up

My beloved big-baby brother occasionally sends Mother off on holidays – his sister-in-law works for an airline so she can arrange cheap flights. Last year he sent her over to me for a while. Very sweet of him – he is a lovely person – but Mum is not a good guest. We don’t have a car, and Mother is the sort who would drive to the loo if she could get the car indoors. She’s also from a generation of women who never set foot in houses of ill-repute (pubs to the rest of us), and cinema, theatre, etc., is out as she has the attention span of a goldfish with ADD so anything longer than 30mins stops making sense to her. Not to mention her inability to tolerate silences, which must be filled at all costs – this extends to the afore-mentioned cinema, theatre and indeed tv once she’s lost track of the plot. She once kept me on the phone for 4 hours and 23 minutes on a Saturday afternoon despite my frequent requests to go and do my shopping, laundry, visit the toilet…

All this would not be too bad if her conversation were interesting – and it could be: she is an intelligent, well-educated person with an interesting life. However, her conversation revolves around soaps which I never watch, and food. Specifically, everything that has entered her mouth and the mouths of all her acquaintances within living memory*. I have IBS and cannot eat wheat, buckwheat, sweetcorn, rye, oats, and cabbage, and since I fell pregnant I’ve had severe heartburn when I even think about cream, bananas, smoked fish, cheese, citrus fruit, fruit salad… Guess how much I like talking about food. She doesn’t ask how I’m doing, and could not tell you one thing that I’m interested in, because I don’t get to talk to her, I am talked at. I usually tune her out and just go “ah-ha, mm-hm, oh, dear”, and get on with the dishes, marking, having a bath, whatever.

So she came over for a week or so in the summer. I took her shopping a couple of days, once into town which was maddening – 20mins to get to the bus stop 50 ft from the front door? We got as far as Boots before the shops shut – and once along Stirchley high street. One of the shops we got to was a cheapie shop that sells remainders from catalogues. I’ve got some good stuff there in the past – leather trousers for £10, a suit for £5 – though they generally have a bigger range of 18-plus size clothes. Anyway, she got a lovely swirly patterned skirt and, after a lot of persuasion, a pink suede jacket, both of which looked gorgeous on her.

A while after she’d gone home, I saw some fancy yarns on sale, so I made her 3 scarves, all in pink. The first, at the top is pink and white ostrich yarn, which I made a keyhole scarf out of – there’s a hole about one-third of the way in that you can loop the other end of the scarf through, done by knitting half the stitches on the needle up to the required length of the hole, then put them on a stitch holder and breaking off the yarn, and knitting the other half of the stitches to the same length, then joining the two sides together and knitting to the end. I found this yarn very hard to work with. It seemed to lose a lot of fluff – even though it’s not fluffy as such – which got into my eyes and nose and irritated them.

The yarn for the second scarf, in the second and third pics, was like bunting! A long string, with little square ‘flags’, in a range of pinks from palest off-white to a deep plummy purple, at roughly one-inch intervals. Although choosing the needles was tricky – the band said 8mm – it worked up quite easily on one 4mm and one 10mm, to enhance the lacy effect.

The final scarf, in pic 4, was in pink-and-white eyelash. It’s just an ordinary rectangular scarf, nothing fancy. I really liked working with this: it flowed well, and produced a lovely furry effect, though counting the stitches was difficult. I’ve acquired a huge stash of it in a variety of colours, of which more later!

All of these were knitted when I was still working nights at the Hub, hence the model – a very scary Angel left over from the Christmas display in the church next door!

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* – Really. The menu from the wedding of the stepdaughter of a cousin of her next door neighbour but one, which was not attended by my mother or her neighbour, was the object of one of our recent telephone conversations.

Aran Cardi


I learned Aran knitting at primary school from the redoubtable Mrs Anderson (just retired last year, and replaced by my cousin’s daughter, Miss Anderson, no relation!). It was a bag, satin lined, quite nice as I remember. No idea what happened to it, probably a victim of fashion’s tide, Aran being considered a bit naff, what with the island itself being just off the coast. Oh the cruelty and folly of youth! When I think of the dosh I could have made, as a ‘native Donegal craftswoman working in the traditional oeuvre’ I could weep. I haven’t gone near Aran knitting since, until I realised how gorgeous it would look on a certain little fat blonde princeling…

Knitted up over Christmas, using for the first time a pair of bamboo needles from a set purchased from China via eBay, and some lovely Aran-weight undyed Blue-faced Leicester wool. I cannot for the life of me remember where the pattern is from – probably one I downloaded via Knitting Pattern Central – but the skills learnt in St Anne’s all those years ago came flooding back. Before the first repeat, I was able to abandon the paper pattern and continue from memory and feel – okay it isn’t the most demanding pattern, but even so. I was chuffed to find something I could do really well. I’m a good knitter, better crocheter, but this was so… automatic, instinctive.

Sadly, this is the only pic I have of His Nibs in the cardi (Note to self: do not send colourblind husband to buy buttons). Not only had he outgrown it, but foolish Tiny Husband put it in a cottons wash (Note to self: stern laundry lecture to Tiny Husband). It hasn’t shrunk too badly, but has felted a bit – not that this is a disaster in traditional all-weather fishermen’s wear, of course. I should dig it out and palm it off on my niece, I think. Nephew’s mum would not be impressed at being given an oul secondhand shrunk thing!

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