Another hap

So...someone to whom I'm related doesn't read my blog, so it makes no difference that I post something regarding her Christmas gift...

She travelled in Skye a couple of years ago and bought some yarn.  It is an itchy business...she couldn't tell me where exactly she's gotten it.

She tried to knit something with it, no luck, and "gifted" it to me.

My inclination was to do another hap...as a gift back to her.

I doubled the yarn.  The yarn is cream with some brown.  Makes me think of Scottish Blackface.  Who the heck knows...

I knit a hap square, and added churro handspun from Cassie to do the "traditional"  feather and fan lace border.  Luckily the natural colors look OK together.

You know, on a cold night with no central heating, this would be quite warm!  It's 4" by 4'

When in doubt ... try a hap

I don't really like variegated yarns for clothing...but sometimes I succomb to a purchase, because it's so lovely, and then I sit and look at it and think..."that would be lousy in a sweater but I LOVE it".

So in recent times these have wound up as square hap shawls...based on my center square pattern, minus the cat's paw lace.

for example, this fabulous stuff from Mountain Colors River River Twist, lovely soft merino.

Here's the evolving diamond-which-will-be-a square

And then there's this one:  my sister  bought yarn several years ago when she was in Skye (she beat me to Scotland by a couple of years). She doesn't know where she bought it or what type of sheep ...  it is very pretty, natural I'm sure, in natural white with brown mixed in...way too itchy for a sweater which was her original plan.  I am wondering whether it was Scottish Black Face.

 (I took this photo in Scotland).

 After she gifted it to me it sat at my house for a couple of years.  Sometimes, I have to wait for inspiration for what-to-do-with-stash yarns...and of course it  finally hit me...another hap. As a blanket it won't need to be next-to-the-skin soft. Using it in a traditional Scottish pattern would only be right.  This hap blanket will be a gift to my sister.

These projects tend to be car knitting for me. I work out of my car and sometimes must sit at traffic lights for 5-8 minutes.  In the afternoons particularly I am antsy to get home, and just grab the garter stitch project such as one of these that stays in the car. 

Both will wind up with an old shale border whenever they get done.

Old Shale Lace Shawl

 As I see it, there are four or so possibilities:

1) A traditional shawl pattern in a traditional yarn  ( a single breed yarn that is traditionally used with that pattern)

2) A traditional shawl pattern in a nontraditional yarn

3) A nontraditional shawl pattern in a nontraditional yarn 

4) A nontraditional shawl in a  classic single breed yarn (as might have been used in 1).

I suspect that my latest FO is an example of 2).  It's Evelyn A. Clark's Old Shale Lace Shawl, also at her website here.  We know that this is a "half hap" and that the traditional version is a (normal) hap shawl, a square with the old shale lace around the border.  While the wool (Shetland) is traditional, the dying is not, which is why I'm thinkin' this is a nontraditional yarn.  You can help me out here, I'm getting confused...

It is my handspun, about 16 wpi, made from a Shetland wool bumps from The Wool Shed in Orkney, Scotland, purchased in 2009. It's pretty scratchy but very lovely, Pam Murray was the dyer.  You know, just because the wool bump is soft doesn't mean the yarn will be.  But heck, I LOVE Pam's colors and its just the right size for over a jacket, either frontwards or backwards.

At the border I pulled out the points a bit to emphasize the pattern.  As I was blocking it, I kept thinking how enticing the old shale is, (the changing color does it justice) kind of the way the ocean is enticing...

Once again, thanks Evelyn and Sharon Miller

Baby Gift

Someone in my family had a baby boy last week.  I was smart and started a blankie last summer.  I confess, it's another opportunity for a not-natural fiber.  Young parents don't have time to hand wash and line dry, sorry EZ.  No, it won't be terribly warm...but it's cute and will be warm-ish.   I just finished it last night.  It's all Bernat from Walmart.  

Basic directions:  cast on 3 stitches, work in garter, increase one stitch at beginning of each row, work till yarn is half used up, decrease one stitch at beginning of each row. Bind off last 3 stitches.  This is another loose hap shawl square variant.

There is crocheting involved:  With a crochet hook, with single crochet, pickup  2 stitches in each in between row (ie between the garter bumps).  Please don't ask me how to express that better in crochet lingo, I just don't know.  Go round the whole edge.  On the next row, to make picot edge, sc in 2 stitches, then double crochet x3 in every 3rd stitch/loop.  Contact me if you really wanna do this!  It makes a nice little slightly frilly edge.

OK, gotta get this in the mail soon, to Ohio, for a little baby boy.  It's very exciting to see one's neices and nephews have babies.  Uh oh, guess this means I'm a great aunt or something similar??

In other news, isn't the muted late afternoon autumn light lovely?  

I don't think kitties care, they just want to act like they really have an opportunity to hunt at the feeder visitors...

An azalea I planted is blooming, sometimes they bloom twice a year...

And, in the garden, lettuce, cukes, and broccoli are starting to sprout on the right side of this photo...

FO: Half Hap in Alpaca

Oh good, a Finished Object.  I do not like how the edge came out, it's kinda like the pine tree lace opened up more than the Old Shale...I'll need to work on this for the next version...but it's lovely and soft

Old Shale

I hope my readership isn't getting tired of reading about Scotland, because I'm not tired of writing about it... When in Orkney, I bought, as I have mentioned prior, hand dyed bumps, in both North Ronaldsay and Shetland wool, dyed by Pam Murray.  I spun up the North Ronaldsay in what I could create as a laceweight, with I hope not too short runs of color. 

Pooling of color in knitting variegated yarns is an interesting phenomenon that  I don't  understand it, and I don't really like it, so it's just a chance I take in case it does...

I am not big on combining a variegated color yarn with a complex lace pattern.  I chose to do Evelyn A. Clark's Old Shale Lace Shawl.  It's a garter shawl with old shale lace at the bottom, probably with origins as a working woman's shawl.  It's not a shawl that I would  buy yarn to knit, rather, it speaks to me as what this yarn that I've created needs. It also seems appropriate to the Scottish origin of my fiber. (Plus, I'm trying to graph a shawl that I designed, which incorporates old shale, and this project is helping me on my learning curve to understand how to manipulate and chart the old shale lace.)

Old shale is an interesting lace pattern.  It involves the right leaning knit 2 together (K2) with the left leaning slip slip knit (SSK).  Here's a graph snippet

o

o

o

o

o

o

\

\

\

/

/

/

 

E.g., from right to left K 2 tog 3 times, SSK 3 times, yo, k1 yo 3 times.  One could do more k2 tog/ssk/yo's to make wider border repeats.

For most of my life, I've been a slob, and anytime I needed to knit two stitches together, I knit 2 together thru the back loops (K2 tog TBL), just because it's easy and fast.  I am trying to rehabilitate myself from this sloppy habit, pay attention, and take a little more time.  With old shale, this is important to get the stitches leaning the correct way in to the yarn overs.

I often lose or gain stitches with this lace and I don't often frog back to fix it (yeah sloppy here too, but I can get lost in the frogging), but if I get lost, I look for the center stitch in the yarn over section, shown here with the top yellow headed pin, to reorient myself:

This center stitch goes straight up which makes it easy to find.

Evelyn says that this is a good beginner lace pattern;  I'm not so sure.  A novice knitter friend of mine tried it and gave up.  I find it can be difficult.

FYI, Liz Lovick does a very nice job of explicating old shale versus fan and feather at her blog, here.  Liz says that "old shale" is really "old shell" but acquired the name "shale" as that's how Shetlander's pronounce it.  So now you can pronounce "shell" like a Shetlander.  And you can add "peerie" with a rolled "r" and say "little shell"  "peerie shale"!  (OK, OK it's an in-joke).

Hap Shawl Magnum Opus

In Brenda's Cast-On Episode 77, she discusses one's magnum knitting opus.  I didn't think that this shawl was until I heard her postcast, and now I know that it is. I did a prior post on this here, way back in June 2010 right after I started blogging. I finished this yesterday.

To recap a bit, when in Shetland I bought Shetland Supreme top at Shetland Wool Brokers, aka Jamieson and Smith.  I purchased 500 g of natural, and 25 g bumps of  mid gray, moorit, dark chocolate and light brown.  The colors are sheep colors.   I spun it up in to double ply, at about 11 wpi. I believe I started the spinning for this almost after getting home, perhaps August of 2009. I am not good at keeping track of how I'm spinning but it turned out fairly consistent.

The basic directions for this are in Sharon Miller's lovely book, Shetland Hap Shawls Now and Then.  I graphed up a  cat's paw lace pattern for the center square, which is knit as a diamond.  The pattern for this is available under "free patterns" in the sidebar.  Gauge is about 4 stitches per inch blocked.

The center diamond was a "car project," meaning that the knitting is not so hard that I can't carry it around in case I have a few minutes free during my work day, much of which is spent in the car, between seeing home care patients.  Cat's paws on the cat's paws lace:

Once the center was done, this was no longer a car project, as it involved serious lace.  It was November.  I picked up the stitches at the sides for the fan and feather border at a ratio of one stitch per row.  This was a mistake.  My impulsive streak had taken over.  I knit the whole border than did a light block with the iron and it sagged terribly in the middle.  So, I frogged the whole thing and checked the book, and discovered that my ratio on the diagonal should have been 5 stitches to 4 rows.  It's taken another 2 months to finish it. I used the four row fan and feather from Shetland Hap Shawls Then and Now.

Yes, it's missing the lace border.  Perhaps I'll do one someday.

I love the idea of knitting something that has been done long ago.  Of course, this shawl uses a different technique from the traditional, as I used a circular needle.  Per Sharon Miller, these were only available starting in the 1920's to 40's.

Other things I really like about it:  it's a single sheep breed project, uses the actual sheep breed that would be traditionally used, and it's a sheep to shawl, as it were.

Hap shawl update and where I'd like to be this weekend

My hap shawl that I am knitting from my Shetland handspun is not finished;  I was hoping that it would be done last weekend. Here's the tale:

Being the impulsive that I am, I just launched in and did not correctly calculate the ratio of stitches to pick up on the edges, and did a 1 stitch to 2 row ratio.  HELLO??  I  completed the WHOLE blasted thing including binding off, and the middle sagged like crazy. 

So, I want back and consulted Sharon Miller's book, then frogged the 6 inch wide fan and feather lace border that I had so enthusiastically completed over the last 2 weeks.  Turns out I needed to pickup 5 stitches for every 8 rows;  one in each facing stitch plus an extra after every 4th.  I proceeded to do this, then happily knit two rows, and discovered a mistake in my fan and feather.  SO, frogged a second time; not completely but a good ways back.

I am really hoping that this will be a lovely family heirloom, so I want to get it right!  More to follow...

This is what I'd be looking at if I could if could this weekend:

SWEA is the Swedish Women's Educational Association and every year on the first weekend in December they hold their annual holiday fair at the cyclorama in Boston.  Here is the info at the SWEA Boston website.

I took my boys there when they were small.  B recalls getting Will Farrell's autograph one year (his wife is Swedish).

It's an absolute blast, well...for me anyway, with

Lucia procession, Swedish crafts, food including those cute little heart shaped waffles made fresh with jam and whipped cream (boys were bribed with that), a number of folks sporting handknits in the Scandinavian tradition, and of course, the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) table, to help you plan your next trip!

If you are in the Boston area, don't miss it!  Since, I'm not going, perhaps I'll complete my hap shawl instead...not to mention my holiday UFO's...

British Sheep Breeds, Wool Week, Hap Shawl Update

About a  year ago, I noticed in one of my LYS that Rowan was producing a line called "British Sheep Breeds."  Coincidently, in the last three years or so, I am interested in the wool that come from specific breeds of sheep, and their qualities.  This may be a result of starting to spin and produce my own yarn.  I spin from roving that I purchase (no, I don't yet work from fleece, maybe that will happen when I retire and have put my two sons through college...and have lots of time).

Rowan has three products in their line:

DK Undyed which is Bluefaced Leicester
Chunky Boucle which is Bluefaced Leicester (available only in natural ecru)
Chunky Undyed in varying natural shades, including Bluefaced Leicester, Shetland, Black Welsh, Jacob, and Grey Suffolk

I have not used any of these, only fondled them!  I am considering the BFL Chunky for my next Rogue

However,  I'm also interested in the local produce/products concept, and am very interested in less emphasis on production and more on sustainability.

I'm also interested in what might be considered somewhat less, uh, overproduced? Not that I don't like a Debbie Bliss purchase, and honestly, at this point, I  still like knitting a sweater out of a commercially produced yarn from a carefully blended and produced fiber, that is a little more predictable than my handspun.

Issue 23 of The Knitter features an article on   Britain's sheep breeds entitled "The Return of the Native."  Because the price of wool is so low, farmers cannot afford to maintain wool flocks for fiber, rather, they are focusing on meat production.  Indeed, non wool bearing sheep breeds are being developed!!

To maintain the traditional wool breeds, Prince Charles launched the Campaign for Wool this year. Ironically, wool week is commencing as I write this (not planned)...wool week has many relevant activities in case you live in the UK or are lucky enough to be visiting this week!

The article has a shortlist of British sheep breeds, of which there are more than 60, as well as a list of producers of yarns made from these breeds.  I don't know how many of these are raised in the US.

In my travels last year to Scotland, I encountered several of these breeds.  I was lucky to travel in a very small plane to North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island in Orkney.

Here's the extremely small aircraft, with an ad for Highland single malt scotch (don't know which one, there are lots) on the side:

That is my dear friend Debbie from Ohio on the right.  Here is a photo of our pilot, whose anterior view  bore a very strong resemblance to Clooney.  Naturally, we assumed that he was not partaking of Highland single malt or any other, single, blended, or otherwise, while reading the safety instructions (which he did with Clooney's grace and je ne sais quoi {well, I do but can't quite express it in English or French}) and subsequently while flying.  Actually he was better than Clooney, as he had a lovely Scots (NOT Glaswegian) accent.  (If you're from Glasgow, sorry about that...). That said, I wouldn't have minded meeting him in the bar while drinking some sort of something...perhaps single malt, which is a big stretch for me...I would even have put my bar knitting aside...

AT ANY RATE we flew to see the seaweed eating North Ronaldsay sheep where they live (Fair Isle was in the distance but you can't see it here):

I purchased North Ronaldsay roving and yarn while there, it's just buttery-soft, supposedly because of the seaweed??  No idea what to do with it (yet):

Pam Murray is the dyer.  The natural color has the North Ronaldsay label.  Amazingly, there is a mill right on this little island, which I hope to blog about in a later post.

I also spied Scottish Blackface sheep while on a bus tour through the Isle of Skye (I thought this was a pretty great photo if I may say so, myself):

Of course, Shetlands were in view in Shetland:

Speaking of Shetland, here's an update on my hap shawl, originally documented here.  I am currently spinning the yarn for this, and I have several shades of the natural Shetland so it will have the authentic stripe-y effect.  I have finally finished the square with the exception of a couple of rows:

and am about to pick up stitches for the fan and feather edging.  It's taken me several years to get this far.  This is the only one in my "free patterns."  Once the edge is done, I will update it.  In the meantime, if you've tried this, keep track of the stitches at either side;  I did not and had to make a wee correction!

Coming up soon...a post on bar knitting.  My friend Jennie from Cheshire denies that it exists, and she would kill me if I did it in her company...

Shetland Hap Shawl from scratch, WIP

On my trip to Scotland last year, one of our stops was Lerwick, in Shetland. The highlight was of course Jamieson and Smith, with it's modest storefront, above left. I purchased several bags of Shetland supreme top. A delight to spin, soft and lovely. I purchased mostly the natural white, but also samples of all the colors : mid gray, moorit, dark chocolate, light brown.

Shetland lace shawls are incredibly fine and intricate. Lovely examples are at Sharon Miller's website. These shawls were knit to sell as a cottage industry, according to Sharon Miller's classic text, Heirloom Knitting. But the shawls I was really attracted to were the hap shawls. These Miller described in Shetland Hap Shawls. These shawls involve a garter square, surrounded by a simple lace, usually "Old Shale" lace were working women's shawls, square in shape, often tied behind the back, or used to swaddle a baby. It was something a little less fine that I could actually spin and knit myself.

So, my Shetland Supreme top was destined to become a hap shawl. I often spin as I knit, being too enthusiastic about a project to wait till the spinning's all done. Here's what there is so far:

I'm working on the center square, double plied yarn, worked as a diamond with a cat's paw design. In parts of Shetland the hap shawl centers are simply garter, although according to Liz Lovick, sometimes they had a lace pattern. I loved the traditional cat's paw and decided to knit the center square as a diamond (increasing to the final then decreasing) utilizing this lace pattern. I have an untested pattern (except for the one I'm doing) available in the sidebar, if you want to take a risk! Once I've got it all spun up, I'll add the fan and feather border, in graduated shades. These directions are just for the center square, but I'll add the border once I get to it.

I should note that according to Ms. Miller, these shawls were originally knit in sections or "border inwards" on straight needles, it was only due to the advent of circulars in the 20's to 40's (or by use of 4 quite long dpn's) that one could knit it as I am, "border outwards" or center first then picking up lace stitches around the border on a big circular.