Ja'ali Stole

When I was seven, my parents moved my brother and I from Deepest, Darkest Cleveland, OH to New Delhi, India. My dad had a Fullbright scholarship, so we spent a year in a far off and very different land. More then thirty years later, I went back for the first time, with my own seven year old (plus her younger sister). In some ways it had changed completely, but in others, it was just as I remembered it: the light was the same, the sounds of the birds in the early morning, the cows wandering through the city streets, and monkeys sitting on fences, waiting for the opportunity to snatch what ever they could right out of your hands.

We went and saw all sorts of sights in the Golden Triangle, and it was an incredible source of inspiration for my designing. The first design that came out of that trip was the Delhi Beanie, with a border inspired by a series of tombs in Delhi. The second one is in Issue 35 of Knit Now - the Ja'ali Stole.

Photo credit Dan Walmsley for Practical Publishing

This pattern grew directly out of my trip to India: one of the almost ubiquitous features of the numerous palaces and tombs that we visited were pierced stone structures called ja'ali. These were basically the Moghul version of window curtains, and served to let in light and air while making it very difficult for anyone outside to see inside.

This picture makes it pretty clear where the stitch pattern came from! I swatched in a number of different yarns, but finally settled on a mohair blend, in two colors to emphasis the eyelets and the solid hexagons.

The perfect finishing touch? A beaded fringe.

The finished stole is a lovely, lightweight wrap that is perfect for summer evenings, or days when you need a bit of extra warmth.

This issue of Knit Now is on sale starting today, Thursday, 29th May, in craft stores, newsagents and supermarkets across the UK. Outside the UK, you can get a paper copy from http://www.moremags.com/knitting/knit-now, or a digital edition from http://www.moremags.com/digital-editions/all-devices/knit-now. You can also get it digitally via Apple Newsstand. 

As a little celebration of the publication of this pattern, I'm going to give away the yarn and beads needed to knit the stole - that includes 5 balls of Wendy Air (70% mohair/30% nylon) in two colors, and approximately 75 faceted glass beads for the fringe. Please leave a comment on this post between now and midnight BST, on Sunday, 8th June, telling me which pattern is your favorite from Knit Now Issue 35*. I'll use a random number generator to pick one lucky winner. Good luck!

* Note: saying that this is your favorite pattern does not increase your chances of winning ;-).

Noordzee and a special Wonderwool Wales offer

I think most designers would agree that sometimes the hardest part of the process is finding the perfect name for our latest creative endeavor. That was certainly true of this month's pattern, until serendipity stepped in with the perfect solution.

I've been working on this lovely little shawlette for the past few weeks, using some absolutely divine yarn from Linda at Kettle Yarn Co (more on that later). It's just the perfect little tidbit to whet your knitting appetite: beads along the border, a bit of lace, some mindless stockinette with short rows to shape the body, and ta da! In very little time you've got a lovely scarf to throw over your shoulders on those slightly chilly spring and summer evenings (aka all of them in the UK). But as of Easter weekend I still didn't have a name. I was well and truly stuck.

On Easter Sunday, I took myself, my new shawl and my husband to the beach to get some photos.  But not just any beach - this was a beach in Holland, where we were visiting for the long weekend. While the girls built sandcastles and entertained thoughts of wading in the water, Himself snapped a bunch of pictures, and commented that the colors of the shawl and the colors on the beach were the perfect match. When I looked at the photos later, I knew I'd found the perfect name: Noordzee (otherwise known as the North Sea).

Noordzee is a fairly simple knit, but the beaded edging and changing short row intervals give it a bit of interest along the border and a somewhat unexpected shape. The short rows first draw the border up in a curve towards the shoulders, but then swing outwards and down, flaring into a shape that looks almost like wings. The piece can be worn as a shawlette (particularly if you block it somewhat aggressively to get the most coverage) or as a scarf for a bit of warmth around the throat.

The yarn for this piece is Kettle Yarn Co's glorious Westminster, a 50/50 blend of camel and silk. It is soft and beautiful to work with - I didn't find it at all splitty - and the silk gives Linda's incredible dyeing skills a lovely shine and luminosity. And here's where the special offer comes in...

If you are at Wonderwool Wales this weekend, I would encourage you to go visit Linda's booth and cuddle her yarns for yourself. If you are inclined to purchase any Westminster while you're there, she will give you a coupon good for 15% off the purchase price of Noordzee. I'd bet you could even find the perfect beads while you're there...

You can find the pattern page for Noordzee here, or click below to purchase it from Ravelry via Paypal. Happy knitting!

Teaser

A few shots from this weekend of April's upcoming pattern...

Worked in Linda's spectacular 50% camel/50% silk Westminster yarn. It has beads...

FO: Green The Whole Year Round, aka how not to panic

I blocked my latest FO on Saturday morning on Boo's bed while she and her sister played their ongoing, never-ending and incomprehensibly elaborate game of pretend. As I was pinning it out and adjusting the points, and smugly commenting to myself that it was absolutely lovely, I saw it.

You know what I'm talking about. It.

The dropped stitch:


I think all of you who have ever knit lace know the feeling that hit me at that moment - suddenly and completely incapacitating panic:

OOOOOOOHSHIIIIIIIIIITTTTT!!!!!!!!!!

Thankfully I had enough functioning neurons left to take the first and most important step in a lace (or any kind of) emergency:

Step 1: take your own pulse*

Step 2 really only applies to lace emergencies: stop the drop


In this case, with a handy dandy split ring stitch marker. Stick it through the dropped stitch and bammo - no more dropping.

I took a few moments (ok hours) to regroup and let the shawl finish drying. Then the next step was to fix the boo boo.

Step 3: find an appropriately sized crochet hook and fix the dropped stitch.



Step 4: find darned darning needle somewhere in the morass of chaos you call a desk/office/studio/room full o' wooly goodness, take a bit of leftover yarn, and secure that little barstard tight up against the i-cord bind off.



If done carefully, the result of Steps 1-4 is a invisibly repaired lace piece without having to resort to Valium and/or liters of red wine.


wrong side


right side

I was helped in this instance by a few factors - yarn that wasn't too slippery (100% silk would have been....trickier) and a lace pattern that called for moderate blocking rather then full on Nuclear Warfare blocking. The stitch had only dropped down about 3 rows when I caught it, and there weren't any complicating lace stitches below it to screw things up. That being said, the same sort of fix can be done with more complicated and elaborate lace patterns. The key is deep breathing and going slowly.

Without further ado, my latest FO:




please excuse the bad pretentious iDevice selfies, but I can't find my camera anywhere

Pattern: Green the Whole Year Round by Anna Yamamoto
Yarn: Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply (55% merino/45% silk), 399 yds/100 g, in Cherry. My shawl weighed in at 102 g, and I still have a little bit left over, so the skein might have been a bit heavy.
Needles: US 9/5.5 mm for the cast on, US 6/4.0 mm for the rest of the shawl
Start/finish: 17 January 2014 - 1 February 2014. Knitting done by 29 January, but, you know, blocking...

Comments/modifications: I made one major modification, which was to cut out one pattern repeat to make the shawl slightly smaller. I was worried I was going to run out of yarn (it calls for a full skein of sock yarn, so 440+ yds) and my yarn was slightly heavier, so I figured it would still end up big enough. The final dimensions of my shawl are 16 in deep at the middle and just over 50 in long, so about the same size as the original pattern.

Now for the comments portion of the evening: since doing more tech editing I find myself incapable of reading patterns without a running (usually waaaaaay more snarky then necessary) internal monologue. I try to keep this to a minimum, particularly with a lovely pattern like this which is provided for free. But sometimes I can't help it. I had two major problems with this pattern:

1) the designer includes charts AND written directions for every single line of the lace pattern, WHICH IS FANTASTIC! However, the symbols used in the charts were not ones with which I was familiar. The biggest brain cramp for me was that the symbol that I usually associate with a knit stitch (a blank square) was, in this pattern, the symbol for a purl stitch. Cue headache...

2) Problem 1 was exacerbated by the fact hat I didn't find the key to the charts until I was doing the short row section of the shawl (in other words, was done with the lace section). This is because the key was on the very last page of the pattern, and not with the charts. To solve my confusion, I ended up having to go back and forth between the written directions and the chart to decipher the symbols.

So really, these two problems were mostly on my head, for not hunting harder for the chart key, but I also think that they could have been avoided by putting the key with the charts. /end grumpy porpoise

The pattern is otherwise very well written and put together, and the final shawl is gorgeous. As soon as I get my act together it will get packaged up to off to it's recipient.

And now that it's finished, I can get back to my Unravel sweater...how's everybody else doing with theirs?

* When I was teaching newbie Ski Patrollers in college, this was A Real Thing. Just the act of stopping to take your own vital signs is enough to stop the freeze up that can happen in critical situations. 

Fiber Friday: Messier 51

At the beginning of the year, I made myself a really quick and fun hat from some gorgeous handpainted singles.

I'm pleased to say that, not only have I finished working up a handspun version, but the pattern is just about ready for release this evening.

 This version was worked up in 100 yds of Corriedale singles in the "Parakeet" colorway (spinning and prepping of the singles was blogged about over here at the Porpoise Fur blog). With that minimal amount of yardage, I ended up with a hat that is slouchy on Dev, but a closer fitting toque on me. Perfect!

The pattern for this hat, Messier 51, is going to go live sometime this evening. Shortly thereafter, the next issue of the Porpoise Fur newsletter will go out, and will include a coupon code for getting that pattern for free. In addition to the actual knitting pattern, the file also includes instructions and tips on spinning singles. If you're interested in getting this little beauty for yourself (it's perfect for holiday knitting!), please go over to Porpoise Fur, and sign up on the right sidebar for the newsletter to get your free copy. Happy November everyone!

FO: Shattered Sun Shawl

On Thursday, on a trip to Catherine's house to pick up my wheel, I managed to get some good pictures of my latest sample knit for Allison before I handed it over (sob!).


Pattern: Shattered Sun Shawl by Felicia Lo, of Sweet Georgia
Yarn: Sweet Georgia CashSilk Lace, 45% cashmere/55% silk, 400 yds/50 g, in (I think) "Summer Skin"
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm
Start/finish: 17 Oct - 21 Oct 2013
Comments/mods: no modifications. Love the yarn (!!!), gorgeous, fun, fast pattern to knit. Um...that's it. Have some more pictures.



Obligatory blocking shot:


I enjoyed every minute of knitting this, because the yarn is glorious, the pattern was complicated enough to be interesting, and intuitive enough not to need vast reserves of concentration - just the thing I was looking for last week. It was very, very difficult to hand over the finished shawl, but I feel confident that Alli will come back with something equally luscious for me to knit up for the next sample.

Fiber Friday: Porpoise Fur Socks

So, those socks I started at the Small Wool Gathering last Sunday evening?

Finished. I know, right? There are bonuses to knitting worsted weight socks...but here they are, all done,

with almost perfectly matched stripes (pats spinning self on the back),

a great fitting heel,

and absolutely no yarn left over.

Pattern: Autopilot Socks by Amy R. Singer
Yarn: handspun Porpoise Fur Cheviot in "FRET BFP-RFP". I split the length of fiber down the middle vertically, spun the singles with a short forward draw, and chain plied.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm circular needles, magic looped
Gauge: dunno. I just started with a smaller needle size then I would normally use to get a tight fabric, cast on a bunch of stitches for the toe and increased until it was big enough.

Now I am very sad because I can not find my matching skeins of Turkey Day Cheviot which are also going to be turned into matchy matchy striped socks. Also for me. Bliss!

Finished Objects

A number of things were finished over the last week or so. The biggest and best of those was Yarn in the City: The Great London Yarn Crawl (V1.0). It was a fantastic day, with ample stash enhancement of all sorts and loads of yarny goodness displayed at the pub afterwards. Our amazing volunteers shepherded their teams around London, despite the vagaries of London transport (I'm looking at you Central Line...), and kept everyone together and happy throughout what was a very long day. And Alli and I are pretty sure that we will be doing this craziness again next year, so if you didn't manage to come this time around, keep an eye out for V2.0 next autumn!

In the final run-up to the Crawl, I spent what precious little free time I had frantically finishing up my Christmassy-cowl, out of Romney Ridge Farm yarn I purchased on my Downeast Yarn Crawl over the summer.

I tend to find entrelac too fiddley for my taste/patience level, but it was just the right thing for me to knit last week - mindless but requiring a bit of focus. I kept going until I was almost out of yarn, and then did a 3-needle bind off using the last scraps and then a bit of leftover yarn from a different project when I ran out.

After the crawl, I spent most of Sunday morning spinning, but then turned to my wee baby cardigan - I finished the knitting on this more then a week ago, but (as always happens) I stalled out putting on the buttons. Not because I didn't have buttons, but just because I couldn't be arsed to pull them out and sit down and sew them on.

Now the buttons are all sewn on, and it's ready to go. Sadly, there won't be FO photos on the blog for quite a while because it's a Christmas present*. Here are the pertinent details:

Pattern: Right as Rainbow Baby Cardigan by Stephanie Lotven
Yarn: Spud & Chloe Sweater, very small amounts for the stripes and edging (Firecracker, Grass, Aqua, Lake and Grape Jelly), Brown Sheep Cotton Top (discontinued) in Natural for body and Brown for last stripe.
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 4 September - 14 September for the knitting, 22 September for actual sewing on of buttons.
Comments: This was a lovely, straightforward pattern, with the only complicated bit coming in the decreases in the yoke to make the nine points. Otherwise the perfect TV-watching, stressed-out event organizer knitting. I may or may not have piles of worsted/aran weight yarns decorating my office, waiting for me to cast on the next one.

Fiber Friday: Welsh Clouds

A few months back, I picked up some of Katie's handcarded, dizzed gradient roving at Unravel, and I'd been looking for the perfect project for it ever since.

When Brenda's new shawl pattern popped up in the most recent issue of Knitty, I was pretty sure I'd found that project. So I sat down and treated myself to spinning up this fabulous fiber.

Fiber: Hilltop Cloud Gradient Roving in "Peacock", 30% Shetland/50% merino/20% Tussah silk (she's got more available - go now!).
Spun/plied: 15:1 on ST Lendrum
Stats: 233 yds/100 gr, or approximately 1065 ypp. Also known as DK-to-light-worsted weight.

This fiber was an absolute dream to spin. The Shetland and the silk more then make up for the merino (not the most interesting fiber to spin IMHO). There were four braids with the same color progression, so I spun the singles with two braids held together, occasionally concentrating on one or the other to get the colors finished at the same time. I then plied the two singles together and ended up with only a few yards difference at the end. Result!

Not the most even, consistent spin I've ever done, but boy was it enjoyable. The final yarn is soft, bouncy and elastic, with just a bit of shine. I think it's going to make an incredibly drapey fabric, which is perfect.

But (and you knew there was a but coming, didn't you? My plans never work out that well...), the shawl pattern in question calls for 600 yds of fingering weight yarn, not 200 yds of DK weight, so this lovely skein will have to become something else. What exactly remains to be seen, although Amy had been tweeting lots of pictures of some crocheted shawl gorgeousness that might work for this skein.

I'm still determined to do Now in a Minute in handspun...I think maybe I will have to bust up my 5 bags of Hello Yarn Winter Storage Finn and end up with a pink and green version...how very Preppy Handbook of me!

FO: Ripples

I finished H's Ripple Blanket while at Wonderwool last weekend. I love it.

Pattern: Neat Ripple Pattern (Rav link) by Lucy at attic24, which is really more of a recipe then a pattern FYI
Yarn: baby melter acrylic FTW! Aka: Jarol Heritage DK, which is actually 55% wool/25% acrylic/20% nylon, and very nice to use. 270 yds/100g skeins, less the one each of navy, pale blue, teal, turquoise, red, chartreusey-green and royal blue.
Hook: US G/4.00 mm
Start/finish: 1 March - 26 April 2013
Comments/mods: since this is a recipe and not a flat out pattern, I had to do a bit of (ehem) swatching to get the size I wanted. I did a little practice swatch (also usefull for practicing decreases, which I hadn't done before) and figured out how many stitches I needed for approximately 24 inches wide (answer: 90). Then it was non-stop ripple action for a couple of weeks.

I didn't want a set striping pattern, so I grabbed the colors (mostly) randomly. I say mostly because I tried to space out stripes of the same color a little bit...

I ended up doing seven stripes of each color, which took approximately three quarters of the 100 gr ball. Total yardage used for this, therefore, was approximately 1400 yds. Finished measurements after a trip through the washer and dryer: 30 inches wide by 32 inches long. Due to the wool content, it did felt slightly in the dryer, but it came out nice and thick and cushy.

Done just in time to go off to baby H this weekend. Now I need to figure out what to do with all the leftovers (color block baby sweater anyone?).

Finis

My first pair of socks in just over a year (last pair were finished 20 March 2012).

Pattern: no pattern used, just started at the toe, increased till it seemed about right, knit the foot for a while, did a short row heel over >50% of the stitches (for extra heel room), knit the leg until I ran out of yarn (Sock A) or it was the same length as the first one (Sock B).
Yarn: chain plied handspun, "Gobbler" Cheviot from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, 95 yds for Sock A and 130 yds (not all used) for Sock B.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm and US 3/3.25 mm. I should have gone down one more needle size for Sock B, as the fabric is a bit too loose for socks IMHO, but c'est la vie.
Start/Finish: 11 March 2013-20 April 2013.
Gauge: yes
Comments: so...I love this colorway beyond all imagining, and am very happy with the socks except for one thing: clearly my winging the pattern (i.e. not using the Sock Fitting Bible*) has resulted in socks that are too big for me. The heavier weight (thicker yarn) sock is better, but I got a bit too caught up in making the stripes line up perfectly (mostly) and ended up with a second sock that is just a hair too loose. So be it - these will be lovely around the house socks when the cold weather shows up again. In June**.


My next pair of handspun socks (handspun skeins in this post, also with a large edible bird-inspired name) will be done a bit more mathematically, and so hopefully will fit a bit better.

* any and all books about socks written by Cat Bordhi.
** a certain fatalistic British-ness is infiltrating my attitude towards the weather. I suspect this is completely unavoidable. My apologies!