Rogue Adventure

About 7 years ago, I found Rogue. 

 I learned about it reading Helene's blog.  (Helene writes excellent blog but my Norwegian isn't that great, so her photos and my guess work must suffice).

I had sworn about 15 years before never to knit a cable sweater again.  One should never say never.  I love this pattern, thank you, Jenna. I went to an upscale unnamed yarn store in an unnamed city and bought some yarn for it.  They did not have enough, and promised to send the rest, stating that "dye lots didn't matter for this yarn."  Like heck...don't ever believe that.

Finished Rogue in light green, with big streaks on the sleeves where the dyelots met.  It fit poorly.  The yarn met gauge but wasn't somehow chunky enough.  I think I actually put it in the trash!!  Maybe I gave it to my local charity place...

Anyway, I always vowed that I'd do another...after researching for a long time what yarn to use, I settled on Jamieson's Heather Aran from here.  This time in a natural cream.  I'm steaming along and loving how Jenna fit the shaping in to the cables.  Brilliant!  Ironically, when I did Rogue the first time, Jenna suggested using this yarn, which obviously as recounted above, I didn't.  But it's a pleasure to knit this sweater again.

 In my travels on the internet this week

Granted sells fabulous  chunky handknits.  Their prices might actually be fair for the handknitters. (People ask me a lot "how much to knit me a sweater?"  I dunno, 1K sounds about right...given how precious my time is and how many hours it would take...). While the label "Cowichan" cannot be used, there is certainly a strong resemblance.  My favorites at Granted are the wave and the mermaid. 

The Red Cross sponsored the Production Corps during the First and Second World Wars, and copies of official knitting patterns from WWII are available here.

I love Librivox, which involves the opportunity to listen to spoken versions of books in the public domain.  I just finished Jane Eyre and am now on to Moby-Dick.

Lace design...goes on and on and on OR why I love a graph

I have been busy this week.  A while back, I conceived of a shawl.  This was after my trip to Scotland and I was enchanted.  I wanted to design a shawl that was like some of those I saw on my trip.  Most traditional shawls in Scotland are square in shape, and are either 1) functional working women's shawls or 2) fancy lace shawls originally knitted for sale to wealthy women.  I wanted to design one that incorporated the earthy-crunchy feel of the working croft woman's shawl, but with some added lace patterns.  I also wanted it in a nontraditional triangle shape.

I knew in my head exactly what I wanted to do...it is designed in my head.

For the first attempt, I wrote down the directions as I knit. There are many opportunities for mistakes over the course of 300+ loooooong  rows.

For the second attempt, I started a graph. I wrote about it here. The second shawl is cute (and alpaca!) and seen here.  But my graphing skills and perhaps my problem solving skills failed in the border.  I screwed up the border and must go back and redo it...later.

This month, I returned to the graph and the shawl.  So, I being my own test knitter.  Again.

I should add that I am using excel for this graphing task.  There are some internet resources to help me, discussed here.  And, it helps to have a teenaged son at home for some basics on how to move a graph chunk from excel to a word document (use paste preview).  Working on the graph is much more fun;  this will be a graph only pattern.

I am having more success this time.  Here we are so far.  But...I'm not sure after all these hours of work that it will be free...the yarn is from Harrisville Designs New England Shetland and is lovely to work with.

Vibration Knitting

So, a long time ago I bought yarn from Mostly Merino at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Fest.   It's a heavy worsted, about 4 stitches to the inch and I also purchased a sweater pattern for it.  Didn't start it.  As we know, merinos have a history in Vermont.  And interestingly, I had traveled to this farm a long time ago as a day trip during a workshop at Green Mountain Spinnery. 

In 2006, after moving to South Carolina, I found a cool triangular shawl pattern with intriguing shaping, done in a cone, actually, neatly avoiding...you guessed it....purling in stranded colorwork!!  It came from Sheep to Shawl by Patricia Kim for Philosopher's Wool.  Construction involved starting on 4 needles then moving to a circ, with 2 increases per row at the edges.   Once done, there is a steek to stitch up and cut, to open up the triangle. I decided to repurpose the lovely merino and wool blend for this heavy shawl.  It's the kilim shawl, here's the pattern

I decided this year to try to finish some old FO's, of which this is one.  It actually was almost done; there are 5 different colors.  As there were different amounts of each color, there has been some spontaneous "vibration" use of the colors...as in I used what seemed to work at the moment...

I am having fun doing an icord at the top

 It will be a big blanket of a shawl...after it's steek is steeked and the fringe applied

And in other news, here's a new offering at youtube

why is it that this IMMEDIATELY reminded me of the killer rabbit in Monty Python and The Holy Grail...?

Does she look like me?

I gave Theodora-Lucia long hair because I don't have it...she and her klukka (Icelandic for "slip" or underdress) are done. She's finally smiling because she has hair, eyes, a smile, and a klukka...

More wardrobe to follow...

I finished a hat for R

No, R isn't pictured here, it's B...in the Utopia hat, done in Cascade 220 washable wool.

And in other news, it's warm here on the first of February in SC...

rosemary is starting to bloom

"native" SC gladioli are sprouting...actually, they are not native, they were brought to America some 300 years ago...called "african parrot"

 

cats want out to eat some grass

and the garden produces lettuce and broccoli

Who Knew??

Take the Quiz here!

Well, and apparently I am Anne Elliot, who exactly is Anne Elliot?  I  don't recall Anne Elliot??!!  Help?

OK, so, what did Jane Austen do with a spinning wheel?  While the well intentioned folks at Interweave are using Jane to sell stuff (I do love them, but really...) I have a suspicion.  Women of the upper reaches of society did not in that era knit or, god forbid, spin.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.  Poor women did both.  Jane aspired not to.  It's likely that she did some needlepoint or crewel, for decorative and not practical purposes.

In other news, finished a hat for son R, modelled here by son B

it's the Utopia hat by SmarieK, thanks! B is looking intense as he's watching the Patriots win...

I also finished Lucia Theodora, but not her clothes as yet.  She's hiding behind a pillow case, not a little upset about the lack of wardrobe...

Shetland Tea Shawl

I have at long last completed my second handspun Shetland shawl.

I described the beginning of this project here.

As I mentioned, I searched for patterns that incorporated traditional Shetland lace motifs. I settled on the Shetland Tea Shawl by Dale Long, in A Gathering of Lace.

Now, to be frank, I'm not a huge fan of XRX Press and here's why  (I hope they are reading):  They produce some lovely books, but 1)I'm not a fan of oversized knitting books, hard to use  2) Too much "beauty" photography and not enough functional knitting photography.  I don't need to look at a huge lavish garden spread with a young model sporting a garment in a way that a young-ish person would never would.  And I couldn't see exactly what the center of this circular shawl looked like!

NEVERTHELESS I was really taken with the Shetland Tea Shawl.  I loved the circular construction which I had not done before.  EZ's classic circular shaping allowed me to use the different colors that I got from the yarn in concentric circles which made sense to me.  I did not do the border that is knitted on sideways as I knew that I was running out of yarn, went instead to the old standby Evelyn A. Clark border

O

O

7

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5

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3

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1

 It's upside down to the border shown below.

(Maybe one of these years I'll figure out how to use Excell to do this, or breakdown and buy the right stuff to develop and reproduce charts!)

It's really kind of a chunky throw but I really love it!

Glove palms and a doll

OK, so we went to Charleston (that's SC) for an overnight during the holiday and visited the Charleston  City Market.  There was a Peruvian lady there selling alpaca handknits...the boys each bought a chullo in natural colors, and R got a pair of gloves.  

Thinking that perhaps the gloves needs some palmar traction,  I purchased some mitten palms from Halcyon Yarn (the only place I could find them, I actually made a purchase there a long time ago during a visit to Maine), shortened them a bit, put some additional holes in with a hammer and a small nail, and sewed them on...voila!

I am having way too much fun birthing a Theodora (also available here)...

She has brown hair (like me). I like not being bored while I knit (e.g. I prefer no vast wastelands of garter or stockinette...) and like a lace pattern. Similarly, with doll knitting,  there's lots of shaping to do  to keep me busy.  Thanks, Helene!!  I suspect that various family members (me, my Mom, my little neice) will all want one, so I suspect more Theodoras will follow...