Tag: Knitting

Aurea & Center Street

Self striping zebra yarn boleros, no raccoons in sight.

My first shipment of wholesale yarn included a kilo of Superwash Zebra DK, a 100% merino wool that has black and white yarn. I was massively interested in seeing how that would knit up, so I started a project in June 2022. I cast on the bolero Aurea by Berroco Design Team and planned to incorporate the eyelet details of the Center Street by CJOriginals on the back. When I look back on the project and what the Aurea pattern says, I did not follow the instructions. I didn’t make separate pieces for the back and fronts and instead knit those all in one piece. Once the main body was done, I put it in a corner and only looked at it again in May 2023.

At that time, I decided to start knitting the arms. Again not wanting to deal with seaming, I tried to do top down set-in sleeves. I’m fairly certain that I didn’t make the sleeve cap large enough, so that’s something to keep in mind for next time. But the sleeves are there and that’s all that really counts. I then started on the neck edge, which was frogged a few times before I was happy with it. It needed a lot more stitches than I initially thought.

I do really like this yarn, it’s so soft and the way it stripes is really interesting. I do find it funny that there is less of a raccoon arm effect, where the stripes on the arms are much wider than those on the body. I guess the knitting in the round of the sleeve and the much longer knitting back and forth in the body almost cancel each other out. I haven’t yet entirely figured out how to wear it, because it does gape a little. I think I’m going to find some sort of pin to keep the fronts together and see how I like it then. For now, I’m happy with it because it is cute and warm.

Green & Blue

Almost stripy scarf in blues, with little eyelets along the way.

Another knitting machine experiment. I wanted to see if I could make a triangular scarf that wouldn’t grow as fast as most of the ones I’ve tried before. As such, there wasn’t a published pattern involved with this, just one I made up as I went along. The yarn was Alpaca 4ply sock, dyed with one side dark blue and the rest turquoise on 28 March. The scarf itself was started on May 2nd.

The experiment was quite nice, and you can really see the effect blocking has on pointy things. The scarf has a much better point after blocking even though the edges continue to curl a little. I’m not sure I mind though. I really like the striped effect that this dye job created.

This is the pattern:

  • CoR e-wrap cast on 6 stitches from 70L to 65L.
  • Knit 3 rows (CoL).
  • *Transfer the second and third stitch on the left, one needle to the left. Transfer the last two stitches one needle to the right (this creates two eyelets and one increase). Knit 4 rows.*
  • Repeat ** until there would be 11 stitches between the eyelets on the increase row. In that row transfer the middle stitch one needle to the left to create a decorative eyelet. Knit 4 rows. (Decorative Eyelet Section (DES))
  • Repeat ** 3x (15 rows from last middle eyelet); and repeat DES (the decorative eyelet will be two needles to the right.) Once there are enough stitches between the side eyelets, make decorative eyelets by transferring the 10th stitch from the center eyelet to the needle on the left.
  • Repeat until half of the yarn is knit.
  • Create the second half by e-warp casting on 6 stitches on the right and reversing all shaping.
  • Use a three needle bind of or some other method of attaching the two sides together.

Baby Zebra Hat

Little Zebra hat for a little baby

To add to the little Giraffe gift, I wanted to make an animal themed hat. It needed to be a safari animal and my Ravelry searches unearthed a zebra version. Baby Zebra by Marji LaFreniere, a cute little hat in black and white with a mane down the back. I didn’t want to make it too complicated so I knit the body of the hat on the knitting machine. Since the yarn was very thick, I cast on my 74 stitches (72 + 2 for seaming down the back) by putting 2 needles in work and skipping the next one. Once I reached the length, I pulled the knitting off the machine and onto 4 mm needles.

Since a hat needs to be smaller on top, I did the decreases by hand. Once it was done, I sewed the back seam, leaving space for the tufts of the mane. I made the ears mostly according to the pattern (either the maker can’t count or I can’t because the row numbers didn’t match up) and attached those to the hat. I then cut lengths of yarn and knotted those in the seam of the back for the mane.

I have No Idea whether or not this hat is actually baby sized. I’m notoriously bad at this, generally making baby hats sized for like 1 to 2 year old kiddos. We’ll see on which end of the spectrum this one ends up. The bottom of the hat rolls a bit, but I think it still like it. You can also still see the skipped needles in the body of the hat, it almost looks like ribbing. However, I still think this thing is stinking cute!

Fringe!

Things I’ve learnt in this project: fringe knotting is not my thing.

According to Ravelry, I started this scarf on February 25 and finished blocking it on February 28. I may have been slightly neglecting writing about it for no good reason. This was a knitting machine project, hence the quick turnaround. I’d dyed two skeins of quarter round fingering weight yarn with browns, reds and oranges on February 9. Then followed the instructions in the Shawl for all reasons by Carole Thimidis pattern. I decided to do the fringe because I wanted to see how something like that would work.

Well, the knitting of this thing took a few hours. Unraveling and then knotting all the fringe took longer than actually knitting it. You basically knit three stitches, then skip a bunch of needles and then increase stitches to make a a quarter of the body of the scarf. Then those stitches are decreased again (while continuing with the fringe stitches). Half of the scarf is now done, so the stitches are increased again, which leaves little holes along the spine. Those stitches are decreased to finish the scarf. Wrapping my head around how this worked took longer than actually making the scarf. I’ve now figured out the logic but it took me so long. When the scarf is done, you start unraveling those fringe stitches row by row. Once you have one loop loose, you make a knot near the scarf body to prevent further raveling.

Once I had all the fringe knotted, the scarf was wetted and blocked to a nice right sided triangle. It came of the machine in a very different shape. It always amazes me how well blocking works, now that I’ve figured out that’s a thing. The most interesting thing about this scarf is that the colours look very different from different sides. You’ll see that in the blocking image too. While there is about 1.5 skein of yarn in there, and there are some minor colour differences between those yarns, it’s not like one is significantly lighter. It’s just the angle that changes the way it looks. Since it’s been finished, I have worn this thing a fair amount. It’s pretty big even if it’s not very warm but still cosy!

Rainbow Bright Side

Nice pops of colour and texture on otherwise plain grey.

I saw the The Bright Side scarf by Lori B at some point last year when I was looking for scarf patterns on Ravelry. I was immediately intrigued. It looked like such a fun idea to have different coloured bits of texture in a scarf. This was one of the projects that I really wanted to make and finish. So on November 1st, 2022, I died some Chester Wool Company Alpaca 4ply Sock yarn in a nice light grey while leaving some yarn out of the dye pot. A short rainbow gradient was then applied to the undyed section and further steamed to set. It hang out in my house for about two and half more months before I finally picked it up and started my Rainbow Bright Side.

This was my travel project from January 14 until February 19. It was in a plastic bag in my rucksack and traveled with me on daytrips and to the office. I would sometimes do some knitting on it at home too. The pattern is very simple, there are some edge stitches on both sides, but in the middle just knit (and purl on the reverse), if you come across some rainbow stitches, purl them on the knit side and knit them on the purl side. You’ll end up with a giant crescent shape at the end. As the rainbow was dyed on the skein on one side, there’s approximately the same amount of stitches between each section of rainbow. As the width of the scarf changes all the time, this means that some interesting pooling can occur if the circumstances are just right. It’s very fascinating to see how these develop while knitting.

As you end on the widest part of the crescent, I had a hard time estimating how much yarn I still needed to finish. In the end, I won yarn chicken by about 4 cm and felt very lucky about that. I really didn’t want to take that many stitches out again. After winning chicken, the scarf was wetted and the blocked. I tried to pull it into an aesthetically pleasing shape on my pool mats. I think it worked. The point of the triangle is not in the middle of the scarf, which means I can wrap the short side around my neck once, but the long side twice. It also goes with a lot of different things because the colours are both neutral and bright – at least in my opinion. It’s already seen some wear, and I’m sure it’ll come out more often!

Yellow – Turquoise – Orange

Made some baby gifts from self-dyed yarn and other happy fabric.

Baby gift time again! First up, dyeing. On the last day of 2022, the second dye project was a single skein of Chester Wool DK 115 (Worsted) 50s. It is 100% merino and has 50 grams in a skein for around 100 meters of yarn. Since I still had soft yellow dye stock left from the other dyeing I did that day, I put 20 ml of the stock in my pot. Then I added several resists around the skein and dropped the thing into the pot. When it had simmered for long enough, I took it out and dyed the resists turquoise. I couldn’t resist adding some speckles and chose orange. All in all this meant that the skein turned out extremely bright and cheerful. If you ask me, perfect for a baby.

Since there was going to be a new baby, I set out to make some baby things and settled on these two patterns: Easy Peasy Baby Ball by A la Sascha and Tiny Tot by Kristen Rettig. One is a rectangle hat with tassels or pompoms and the other is a ball. I used up the entire skein in the making of these projects, so no leftovers!

I’ve also had a bit of flannel in the stash with a similar colour scheme. There’s also some additional red and green, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. The flannel was bought to make some poppies, so I set out to do exactly that. I tried to make these somewhat symmetrical with the plaid, so the scale was based on that. There’s some difference between these two poppies, one has a green stripe near the head, the other green. One has larger hands, the other smaller, but they are still very similar.

Both knitting patterns were quick, easy to knit and went smoothly. Of course the hat is way too big for the recipient, but I guess my track record stays intact on that score. The last item for the little baby was a spit scarf. Now with skateboarders, rope jumpers and a terry cloth back. It feels very soft even if the snap is on the wrong edge.

I hope the little one will have a marvelous and colourful life!

Coat Cowl

Now that the cold season is over, I finished my neck warmer.

In December, I dyed a skein of yarn (Chester Wool Ultra Aran) in dark blue with orange/brown specks to match my dinosaur coat. The plan was to make a cowl that would go with it, to protect my neck from the cold and wind. There is a lot of wind where I live, so this seemed like a necessity. I did already have a cowl, but it was much wider than this new one I was planning. After searching through Ravelry, I settled on the Whirl Me Away Cowl by Samantha Main.

The instructions indicate to replace the left needle tip with a thinner one, so it’s easier to pick up the stitches. So that’s what I did, the right needle was 6 mm and the left 4.5mm. It actually did help a lot with catching the stitches. I cast on 121 stitches and did the stitch pattern indicated until I felt like it was long enough. This took forever! The stitch pattern is very slow even though you’re theoretically knitting big stitches. Once it reached over my mouth, I started deviating from the pattern and cast on extra stitches on the sides in order to create a sort of flared base. This was pure improvisation, the amount of stitches cast on, the amount of rows between etc, it was all seat of the pantsing.

Once the main knitting was completed, I needed to bind off. I tried at least 4 different methods but they all flared too much and didn’t look good. I didn’t want to do a sewn bind off because they take for ever, and I was at a roller derby game. At some point I decided on the plan, and lost yarn chicken by about 10 stitches. So I took the entire bind off out again, frogged some stitches back and redid the cast off. Project done, you’d think. But no. There were some white spots on the cowl where I didn’t put enough dye on the resists initially. So I dunked the finished project in some water, put new dye on those white spots and steamed the whole thing. It was so much better afterwards. I’ve worn this thing almost every day since it was finished. I’ll definitely call this a success!

Purple Eyelet Scarf

Flower eyelet pattern for a purple scarf.

After the success of the knitting machine eyelet scarf, I figured it was time to finally knit up a skein that has been in the stash for years. I’ve held on to the yarn since it was bought during the closing sale of a yarn shop. The intention was to make a scarf for a former colleague whose favourite colour is purple. I forgot what kind of yarn this is and I didn’t dye it myself. I did not use a pre-written pattern for the scarf, I initially just started knitting over 51 stitches and would see where it would end up. It wound up being too short so it was frogged for a second attempt.

Using a closed cast on, and skipping every second needle, I cast on 31 stitches. Then I knit 10 rows and hand-ribbed them. While keeping two columns of rib on the outsides, I started with an eyelet pattern down the center. The eyelet pattern was:

  • 4 rows knit
  • Transfer the first stitch to the left of center to the previous needle on the left and transfer the first stitch to the right of center to the next needle on the right.
  • 4 rows knit (to create 2 eyelets on the first row).
  • Transfer the second stitch to the left of center to the previous needle on the left and transfer the second stitch to the right of center to the next needle on the right.
  • 4 rows knit (to create 2 eyelets on the first row).

Repeat until there is just about enough yarn left to do 4 rows of finishing knit and 10 rows of ribbing. Then weave in the ends and block the scarf to a width of 15 cm on your pool-floor foam pieces. Next, hope that the intended recipient actually likes it.

And she does like it!

Rainbow Tie Scarf

An afternoon of quick knitting a rolling corkscrew tie scarf.

I’ve by now amassed a decent amount of dyed yarn in my yarn table, so I figured I should use some to actually make things. So off to Ravelry I went. I recently discovered that Ravelry also has knitting machine patterns so I looked through that category for inspiration. I found this Ringel-Enden- / Korkenzieher-Stola by Gabi gruen. It’s a really easy rectangle knit (no thinking whatsoever) that automatically corkscrews at the ends because of the nature of stockinette knitting.

So I found the rainbow and white speckle yarn and cast on 81 stitches onto waste yarn. When I had knit around 8 rows of waste yarn, I continued with the rainbow yarn. I made sure to leave about 2 meters or so. Then the machine and I just whizzed back and forth until there was again 2 meters of yarn left. I transferred the stitches from the knitting machine onto knitting needles and cast off both ends so they are symmetrical.

The scarf started to do the natural corkscrews as predicted by the pattern, but less pronounced because it’s not as wide as the original. Since I only had one skein, I cast on fewer stitches and it turned out a little shorter. I didn’t think it can comfortably wrap around my neck twice, so I found a different solution. I used some of the leftover yarn from the stripy scarf to quickly knit a tie. A white snap was applied, and I had a cute little closure. I was pleasantly surprised by how this yarn knit up. I wasn’t sure if it would be a hideous mess of too much colour, but the little stripes are less busy then I expected.

Knitting Machine Scarf

Dyeing and knitting a stripy scarf.

Since the knitting machine entered my life, I’ve been looking for things to use it for. Recently I watched a tutorial about knitting a very pretty scarf on a knitting machine. It’s by Ingunn Hvatum and can be found here. The pattern itself is not very difficult, so it seemed like an interesting challenge. It did take a little bit of learning to achieve the eyelet edge smoothly, but that’s what practice is for!

You start with three stitches and every second row you create an eyelet and make the scarf that little bit wider. This is done until you are halfway through your yarn (in my case), or if you follow the instructions until you have engaged all needles. Once you are halfway, you knit 4 rows and then start decreasing one stitch while still creating an eyelet. Once you have three stitches left, you bind off.The last instruction is to crochet a chain and thread it through the eyelets.

For this scarf, I used one skein of self-dyed 100% merino wool (Quarter round by Chester Wool), which is around 400 meters. The skein was dyed a light grey while keeping a small section out of the dyebath. After the grey had set, the white area was overdyed with a mix of navy and green dye which resulted in a sort of petrol colour. Some orange transfer can also be found from the rainbow skein that was dyed at the same time. The aim for this one, though, was to do dark green, but I do like this end result. At some point, I accidentally cut through a thread so I ended up with two balls of yarn, one about 97 grams and one 10 grams. After knitting the scarf, any yarn that was left over was dyed with the petrol stock to make the crochet chain for the eyelets. All in all, a happy accident.

Once the scarf was knit, I had to block it because it was rolling over on both the eyelet and the neck edge sides. I thought it would be a right angled triangle, but while blocking that turned out to be wrong, so the point is a little more obtuse than I figured it would be. I still like it a lot. Once the crochet chain was attached, I still had a little bit of yarn left over, and I decided to add tassels to the points. Not sure how they will do if this thing ever sees the washing machine, but that’s a concern for some other time. For now, I’m just going to enjoy wearing this cute triangle scarf.