A Quick Win - Rikke Hat

I've been spinning like a demon of late, and interspersing that with socks and BIG shawls. It felt like ages since I finished a knit, so I felt like I needed a win. I went to my queue and looked at what was near the top of my queue. I found the perfect project, Rikke Hat by Sarah Young. This is a free pattern and I'd seen quite a few people on podcasts and blogs who had made the pattern and really liked it. It also ticked my current hat requirement boxes; squishy and slouchy. I queued this pattern after buying some lovely yarn that seemed to be suitable for it. That yarn was from Posh Yarn and was Francesca DK, which is a 40% merino/40% alpaca/20% silk singles yarn, and it is as lovely as it sounds. This means I used some more from my older stash, which is always a good thing.

This yarn was so incredibly soft, every stitch of this hat was pure bliss.  The hat is knit in the round and is garter stitch, which actually means knitting one row and then purling the next. Some people haven't enjoyed this so have either knit flat and seamed up or done wrap and turns at the back seam. Personally, purling doesn't bother me at all because of the way purling is done in combined knitting, which is almost as easy as the knit stitch. I just love the way this yarn looks in garter stitch.

I love the way Tony dyes yarn. There is such subtle layering of tones in his semi-solid colours. This hat is unbelievable soft. I just want to wear it and it's WAY to warm for this kind of yarn to be on my head right now.

This pattern was the first time I'd tried a German Twisted Cast On. I really like the way it looks. I must remember it. I used the book Cast On, Bind Off by Leslie Ann Bestor, and the instructions are on page 41, where it is referred to as The Old Norwegian Cast On. I also started with the recommended needle 3.5mm and really liked the fabric, but the gauge was way too loose. I decided to reduce the cast on numbers to 96.

You work the brim and then go up to a larger needle for the body of the hat and then reduce at the top. I do like the way the crown looks too. The reduced number of stitches meant that the crown decrease instructions were a simple adjustment to make, just reducing the number of stitches between decreases by one.

I adore this hat. It is soft and flattering and unbelievably warm and light. It sheds like nobody's business, but I don't think I care!

I don't think I'll ever get tired of how slouchy hats look and feel! They also take no time at all to make. This took all of two days, from start to finish. It really was a quick win, exactly what I needed!

Tour de Fleece 2014 - Skein 1

You know how when I went on holiday in June, I wrote blog posts in advance so you wouldn't even notice I was gone? Well I should have done the same for the last week. I didn't think I needed to, because I wasn't going anywhere. However, as it turns out when my Other Half is on holiday and we don't plan to go anywhere, I still don't blog! After having such a lovely time in Suffolk, we decided that this week at home could be much more fun if we actually went somewhere! So we went places we wouldn't normally go to and I got as tired and sore as if we had gone on an actual holiday. But it was worth it because we had a lovely time. He's got another week's stay at home holiday planned for August. I need to plan in advance for that one so I can have at least one blog post scheduled for the week he is at home! I'm pretty sure none of you mind when I don't post for 10 days, but it does get me behind in my crafting updates!

One of my main occupations of the last 10 days has been my spinning for the Tour de Fleece 2014. If you've never heard of this marvellous event, you weren't reading my blog this time last year! Essentially, it's an event for spinners to follow along with the Tour de France and challenge themselves to try and push themselves a little further than they would usually go. It's our small tribute to the incredible feats of the cyclists in the Tour de France. This year I decided I wanted to make sock yarn, that I could actually be made into socks. I chose some fibre from Hilltop Cloud, that was designed to make good sock yarn, 70% Superwash Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) and 30% nylon. It was dyed in the Hipster Rainbow colour and I was really hopeful that with my Spanish Peacock Tibetan spindle I could achieve sock weight in a three ply without too many problems.

As the nylon content is 30% I was surprised that I couldn't really feel it in the fibre. I think it was slightly more sticky than it would be spin to BFL alone, but it was still really smooth. I'm not surprised as all of Katie's fibre is beautifully prepared for spinners.

With such a jumble of colours, I knew that unless I wanted to spend a very long time sorting fibre I would just spin a mixed variegated yarn. I decided to make it easier on myself and spent some time making little strips of pre-drafted fibre into small nests, before weighing out three separate bags of the nests to form equal amounts for each ply. I tried to make the colour distribution as even as possible.

I then proceeded to spin up three singles and wind them into three plying balls over the course of the week.

I loved spinning this fibre, as the colours were like jewels and the pre-drafted nests made the process much quicker than if it had been spun from the end of the braid. The singles were worsted spun, in what, if it were spun on a wheel, would be a short forward draw. I put quite a lot of twist into the singles as I wanted the yarn to be for knitting socks, so I wanted the yarn to have no chance of fibre escaping to pill!

When I had three plying balls I wound them into one large plying ball by winding all three singles together onto the ball. I then plyed the singles, again adding a decent amount of twist. This means that the fibre is dense, but I think very sturdy, and balanced.

I really love how the finished skein looks. I think it will knit into really lovely socks, provided I have enough meterage.  I only managed to spin this 120g braid into 272m, and whilst it is a heavy sock weight yarn, I'm not sure if I'll have enough to knit my usual 5" leg and 2" cuff. The last socks I knit used 317m, but the ones before that only used 249m, so I could be ok, especially if I do a shorter leg. I shall have to swatch and see what gauge I get.

I was a bit scared that my tight spinning was going to make the yarn too dense and that the socks would probably stand up on their own, but I think there is enough softness in it, from the BFL, to make the socks ok to wear.

I think knitting with this yarn will be a real pleasure and an education. I love the subtle shifting of the colours through the yarn and I think it will knit up to create a lovely effect.

I'm itching to wind this into a cake of yarn and start knitting straight away, but as I already have two pairs of socks on my needles already, I think this will have to wait until I've finished at least one pair! Spinning the yarn has excited me about knitting lots of handspun socks, but I think I should wait until I've finished the first pair before I decide to carry on with that excitement! I might find I need to put less twist in next time!

Socks Off The Needles Means More Socks Go On The Needles

You won't be surprised to hear that the socks I started knitting on holiday are now finished. You won't be surprised, because of the picture I showed you of the socks being nearly finished! Well, now they are finished and I have pictures to prove it.

You will be bored of hearing that I used my own personal vanilla sock pattern, designed to shape each toe as a mirror image, making the right foot 1/4" longer than the left and the Fish Lips Kiss Heel thrown in for good measure. You will also probably remember that there is some calf shaping 4" after the heel is turned, which followed by working 2" of a 1x1 ribbed cuff, finished by binding off with Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off.

I love how brainless this plain vanilla sock pattern has become for me. The only thing I have to look up is the shaped toe, and to be honest that is almost known off by heart now, I just check to make sure. This sock pattern is perfect for my feet, ankles and legs. I don't like to mess with things that work and fit so well.

The yarn, if you can't be bothered to look at my initial post about these socks, is from Desert Vista Dyeworks, and is the Viso base, 75% merino and 25% nylon, 4 ply weight, but with a good yardage of 462yds/422m. The colourway is Peter Max. I really love this colour. It feels kind of Autumnal to me. The yarn is very squishy and soft, so the socks feel gorgeous on. If ever I get another discount code, or sale, I will get this yarn again, provided I don't have to pay the customs charges!

Of course, with my nice vanilla striped socks finished, I had to put some more socks on those sad and lonely needles. I decided to use something a little different, Superwash BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) yarn, with no nylon! It feels like a bit of a risk, but BFL is a sturdy fibre and I am not hard on my socks. It's because I don't go out very much, so the socks are really used mainly as slippers. The yarn is from The Wool Barn and is in the Goth Girl Rehab colourway. It weighs 100g and measures 400m/437yds.  I've not come across this dyer before and I can't remember how I discovered her shop. It might have been a random search for self striping sock yarn, or a recommendation from someone else's favourites. I don't know, but this yarn is very pretty.

The bag it came in is gorgeous! Look at the little sheep having it's fleece unravelled! It's a really nice touch to get a hand wound ball in a little fabric bag, that has been hand stamped.  The colours are lovely and knitting with this yarn is a lot of fun. It feels silky, but strong, and I think it's going to make great sock yarn. Even if I only have a toe, for now.

I shall pick this pair up when I need some mindless knitting. There is no hurry to get it done, but I do like to have a toe cast on, so I can just pick up the project bag and walk out of the door, knowing I have something mindless to work on. Of course, I have a lot of socks, this is the 13th pair I've cast on this year! Who knows, maybe I might be persuaded to cast on for someone else at some point, but I'm not holding my breath. You can never have too many socks, in my humble opinion, especially if they are hand knit, designed to fit perfectly and in lovely yarn!

Hand Dyed Yarn All Knit Up

Almost six months ago I dyed some yarn. It was a 4-ply/fingering weight yarn made from 2 plies of Blue Faced Leicester. It was the first yarn I had ever dyed and I didn't know what to do with it. Then I discovered a really great pattern by Susan Ashcroft, That Nice Stitch. It's a free pattern on Ravelry and it's for a cowl. The textured stitch pattern, used in the cowl, is the same as is used in Susan's g'day boomerang shawl pattern, which isn't  free.  I saw the pattern and realised it would be a perfect way of using up my first endeavour in dyeing!

The stitch is interesting enough to make you think occasionally but not too difficult, which means it's perfect TV or podcast knitting.

As you can see, the cowl is knit on a bias, after using a provisional cast on. Once you reach the end of your yarn, or reach your desired length, you graft the two sets of live stitches together.  I used up all 350m of the yarn I had.

I used, as always, the Wise Hilda Condensed instructions for grafting. I can never remember how to start a Kitchener! You'd think after doing them quite regularly for several years it would be embedded in the brain by now, but apparently not.

I chose to make the cowl a little wider than the pattern recommended, by casting on 60 stitches. I really liked the size of the Foolproof Cowl I knit and decided that I would try and make this cowl a similar size.

My estimating stitch counts paid off and the cowl loops twice round my neck nicely without being too close to my throat. If left as a single loop it covers a lot of my upper torso, which I find nice and warming when it's slightly cool, but not cold enough to add a full shawl or cardigan.

I really couldn't be happier with the combination of pattern and yarn. I'm quite proud of myself for dyeing the yarn in the first place, but it has worked out brilliantly in this knitted form.  After knitting this fun cowl, I can imagine myself knitting the shawl version, maybe in some handspun yarn, or another hand dyed skein.

Now I've used my last skein of hand dyed yarn, surely that means I'm allowed to dye up some more, right?

Suffolk Holiday Knitting

I'm hoping you didn't notice my absence from the blog last week. I was good and actually wrote a few posts in advance to pop up whilst I was away. It has caught me up (I think) with the backlog of things I needed to talk about and it gave you something to read while I was away on holiday.

I had a lovely time on my holiday, staying in a cottage in Suffolk, a place I've never visited before. It's a gorgeous place and we will definitely be going back.  I won't fill this post with photos of my holiday, but if you are curious enough about what it looked like, here is a link to my holiday photo album on Flickr.

One of the things about not being in perfect health is that there is lots of sitting around recovering from days out, whilst on holiday. We chose the cottage for it's views as well as it's location. My OH (other half) could go for nice long walks just from stepping outside the door of the cottage, whilst I could lie on the sofa knitting and enjoying the view.

The View From My Holiday Sofa

It worked out brilliantly in that respect. Of course I had to have crafting to divert me whilst laying around, so I chose my projects carefully. I decided to cast on Mayura by CrystalRose. Not many people have made this shawl yet but the colour of the sample copy reminded me so much of some Wollmeise Pure that I had bought, that I really wanted to use that yarn with this pattern. Let's face it, knitting with Wollmeise yarn on holiday has to be a nice knitting treat.

Aren't those colours wonderful? The orange one is Sanguinella and the turquoise one is Turkis. I was originally going to create my own pattern using these skeins of yarn but Mayura appeared in my suggested patterns feed on Ravelry and it seemed perfect. The pattern is written so that there are sections of very straight forward knitting interspersed with "thinking about it a bit" knitting. It's perfect for a holiday knit. I could cruise along with the easy bits whilst reading or chatting and then do the trickier bits when I needed a little bit of mental exercise. Plus it was in garter stitch. I love Wollmeise yarn in garter stitch, it drapes so beautifully.

The shawl is divided into sections that have increases and decreases to create zig zags. This alone would make it a striking shawl, but then there are the added fun bits, the mitred squares. These are very cleverly done, but I decided to make a slight tweak to the pattern. In the pattern the edges of the mitered squares are picked up so the picked up stitches show on the RS and the WS of the knitting. I decided I wanted a balanced appearance and decided to pick up the stitches from the back of the work when I was on the WS. This means both the picked up chains of stitches are hidden on the back of the work.

As a result, the front of the work looks like this:

I prefer having a uniform appearance for my mitred squares! I did make one mistake with this shawl. I got my MC (main colour) and my CC (contrast colour) mixed up. I ended up having to rip back several inches of work, which annoyed me because it was a silly mistake to make. However, I've got back now to where I was, before the mistake was discovered.

Of course the other project I took with me was socks. I wanted something small and portable for the long car journey to Suffolk and back, plus it would be good handbag knitting for when I was sat somewhere and my OH went off exploring. I wanted to make vanilla socks but with nice yarn. I decided to cast on some special yarn I got recently. Stockinette Zombies had a discount code for Desert Vista Dyeworks, a dyer I wanted to try after hearing so much about her yarn. The discount code meant the yarn would drop down under the customs charge threshold and make it affordable for me. Of course I bought a skein!

The yarn is Viso, 75% merino and 25% nylon, 4 ply weight, but with a good yardage of 462yds/422m. The colourway is Peter Max. I didn't know when I bought the yarn that Peter Max is an artist who is known for his psychedelic colour palette. Now I know! I just bought it because I like the colours.

I managed to get one and half socks done whilst I was away. Vanilla socks really are the best car knitting, because I don't have to look very often at my hands, which means I don't get car sick.

The yarn is very light and bouncy. It doesn't feel very strong and I am a bit worried about wear. However I don't go out very often so my socks are generally worn as slippers most of the time anyway. It is lovely yarn to knit with and the colours are fantastic. I've enjoyed working on the socks and now I only have the cuff on the last sock left to do.

I used the opposite end of the yarn for the heels as I do all the time now, for striped socks. I really like how it maintains the stripe sequence on the main part of the sock. With the Fish Lips Kiss Heel, which is my favourite heel to do now, I knit the first stitch of the heel in the main yarn and then switch over to the yarn from the opposite end of the skein and use that for the heel. Then I drop that yarn and pick up the main yarn again on the last two rows of the heel where the last two twinned stitches are picked up at either side of the heel. This technique seems to minimise holes.

I really want to finish these socks so I can wear them, they are so squishy!

On holiday I also took some spinning, but I shared a picture of that recently. I'll talk about that more next week when I've got it finished.

I was pleased with what I accomplished on holiday, but I'm also pleased that the knitting and spinning I took worked out well for enjoyment and the level of difficulty. It's not often I get my holiday knitting right!

Instagram Photo Update

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1z4ycfm The colours on this gradient get better and better. It's @countessablaze merino if you are interested. The little bag is from Wildcraft and it's working brilliantly. It sits in my arm, keeping the fibre out of the way as I spin. No more tangled messes! #igspinners