Things have been a bit slow here at Scarlett17Knits Towers (not my real address!) lately. Long story short, I was made redundant from my day job last month. Anyone who has been through a redundancy knows it can be an emotional process, even if you're expecting it. I wasn't expecting it which made it even more of a blow to lose a job I loved. I'm also someone who has always defined myself and my sense of purpose through my work. Without my job, suddenly I wasn't sure who I was any more. OK, I'm also Mummy, wife, knitter, designer, friend, daughter, but I didn't have "wage-earner" or "professional" high up on that list any more.
It completely knocked my creativity too. For about a week I didn't even want to knit (and that's how I know things must be bad!) or to spin. All my design ideas suddenly seemed pointless, not worth pursuing, or too hard work to get my brain around.

For now, I have decided to go freelance while I work out the next step on my career path and have signed up with an agency and, thankfully, have already started getting work (slowly, but everyone's got to start somewhere) which has massively helped my sense of professional self-esteem. I had two designs that were almost-ready which I had pushed aside when everything started falling apart at work, but which I now feel ready to pick up again. I've had them both tech edited already and will be looking for testers before the end of the week. I've also had my confidence boosted by the success so far of this month's pattern release (Shetland Marine, if you missed it), and by a weekend away with knitting friends that completely recharged my batteries. 

I'm working on a new sock design, and I've also made good progress on a circular lace shawl design, as well as casting on my first socks from handspun sock yarn!
I might have had a setback but I'm down but not out. Onwards and upwards, right?!

This month sees me back to the large lace shawls I love to design. (In fact I've got another being swatched as well. Just can't get enough of that lace!).
Shetland Marine is a top-down triangle, starting from a garter tab, and including beads. They're optional but they really do add sparkle to this delicate and feminine design, perfect for over a sundress or a plain shirt and jeans.

The pattern includes both charts and fully written instructions, so you can choose your preferred pattern style. 

If you'd like to knit your own Shetland Marine, you can find the pattern page in my Ravelry store by clicking through either photograph or the link in this or the first paragraph.

It's pattern release time again!! Letterkenny scarf is April's new release and I hope you'll like it! The long thin wedge shape is formed using simple short rows, resulting in a scarf that's close to 7 feet long (!) and wide at one end but narrow at the other. The stripes allow you to play with colour, use up leftovers from other projects if you wish, and the simple garter stitch pattern is easy to memorise for a quick and relaxing knit.

My sample scarf was a travel knitting project, ideal for a car passenger around the north west of Ireland (hence the design name), as it meant I could both occupy my hands knitting on a road trip, and admire the beautiful scenery without having my head in a pattern the whole way round. For the same reason, it makes great TV knitting too. 

You can link to the pattern in my Ravelry store by clicking on either of the photographs, or the pattern name above!

This weekend I decided to try a new-to-me spinning technique.
All the yarn I have spun so far has been plied. Even my very first attempt at spinning was plied, albeit with the skill one would expect from a complete beginner. After watching some online videos recently, I was inspired to try spinning singles that would remain as singles. I don't often knit with singles yarn, and I do like a nice tightly-twisted yarn so this would be a different direction for me, but I also wanted to have a go at some of the techniques I had seen in the videos.

I was given this fibre for Christmas and it's been sitting in my stash for over two months now because I had no idea at all what to do with it. I don't even know what it is - it came in gift packaging with no information about the fibre content. The only thing I knew was that it would felt - and that was only because I rubbed a small amount between my hands in hot soapy water to see if it would.

It's really not my colours - I prefer blues and teals, or blue-toned reds, and the overriding shade in this fibre is the fuchsia pink. It's not clear from this photo, but about half the fibre is that bright pink. I do like the pale green-blue but there wasn't a lot of that in there, and I really didn't like the combination of the dark purple with the frankly snot-green!
I decided if I was going to experiment with a new technique I may as well use fibre that I didn't mind if I messed up with. I could practice and experiment and if the whole lot ended up in the bin it would all be a learning experience and I wouldn't have wasted any favourite fibres.


I started out setting my wheel on its largest whorl, which is 6:1. I usually spin very lightweight yarn, but I knew that the low twist required for a singles yarn would be more stable in a thicker weight with more fibres drafted together so I decided to aim for something closer to a DK. Then it was what to do about the colours. After stripping the first section of the fibre to try to isolate each individual colour, I decided the pink was just too loud and in too large a proportion of the total amount of fibre for my taste. Then I tried combination-drafting two or three of the colours together in different combinations until eventually I ended up just drafting all five together at once to see what happened!

I decided I liked that effect better. Depending on where in the fibre I drafted from I was getting different optical blending effects in the spun yarn. Oranges, teals, purples and browns that weren't present in the dyed fibre were appearing in the yarn. It also made the spinning much faster!!

The entire 100g was spun in less than one afternoon. I just managed to squeeze it on to one bobbin!

Even with trying to manipulate the fibre colours with stripping and drafting, that fuchsia pink still dominated but I knew there were some fun colour mixtures underneath. 

Next step was to wind the newly spun yarn off the bobbin and into a skein, hoping it would hold together. I'd done lots of ply-back tests throughout the spin, trying to avoid overspinning it. Low twist really isn't my default spinning style but I was worried I'd overcompensated for my usual high-twist and had underspun it and the whole lot would fall apart! There are some areas of inconsistent thickness but to my pleasure and surprise the yarn held together at least for long enough to get it skeined up.
​

Next task was soaking and a little fulling. I'd never fulled my spun yarn before. I've felted garments, both on purpose and by accident (!), but always to proper felting. Past the point of no return, as it were! I also had the added challenge of my five-year-old deciding he had to help me, and that because water was involved he had to take his clothes off to do so!
I ran hot water in the sink, as hot as the tap would go so it was ok to dip fingers into for a second but I couldn't hold my hand in the water. I also had a basin of cold water, as cold as the tap would go. Between us, he and I dunked the yarn into hot soapy water and then into cold water, back and forth a total of three times.

After the third trip through the cold rinse, I could see the yarn was fulling - in fact I was worried I'd perhaps done one temperature shock on the yarn too many and perhaps ought to have stopped after the second cold rinse. It's a tricky balancing act when you don't really know what you're doing and you're trying to avoid splashing very hot water on to your naked child!

​Finally it was snapped to even out the distribution of any remaining twist, and hung to dry. (The yarn, that is, not my son!)

And here is my finished skein of yarn!

I've reskeined it, partly for ease of winding and also to make sure that the yarn has actually held together along its full length, and I'm so pleased with it! Still no idea what to do with it, but now instead of fibre I'm not fond of that I don't know what to do with, I have soft fluffy yarn full of interesting colour combinations in a DK weight I can use in a sensible quantity (about 250 yards).

It seems February vanished in the blink of an eye, and somehow here is March already, and another new pattern hits my Ravelry store.

Orchids for Eve is a DK weight cowl which was originally designed as a gift for my Dad's partner using my own handspun yarn.

It's worked up from the bottom edge, starting with a picot cast-on and finishing with a picot cast-off, both of which are explained in the pattern. The leaf lace pattern is both charted and written so you can work from your preferred style.

The inspiration for the pattern was the stitch pattern itself. I had seen a Ravelry design challenge to design a cowl using a leaf pattern, and I loved the picot edgings. The whole thing just kind of came together from there, and my handspun merino 3-ply behaved itself very well to make it.

You can find the pattern in my Ravelry store here or by clicking through the photo.

Or rather, gloves for kids. My five-year-old has been pestering me for “gloves with fingers” all winter. I have been putting him off, for various reasons. Firstly, he has perfectly good warm handknit mittens, which he can put on easily by himself. Secondly, I have other stuff I need/want to knit. There were Christmas presents and design samples and unfinished WIPs which all pushed gloves down the list. Thirdly, and probably the biggest reason, I have only ever knitted one pair of gloves before. Mittens, yes. Mitts, loads. Gloves with actual fingers, once, and oh boy were they fiddly! All those little tubes to make the fingers, the finished fingers getting in the way, the yet-to-be-worked stitches on holders getting in the way, and oh so many ends to weave in after finishing all those digits!
Finally I caved. Two afternoons, two gloves done!

The pattern is a free one from Ravelry, Gloves for Kids by Lise-Anne Michel. There’s just the one size, to fit a 4-7 year old, which was exactly what I needed. The yarn is two colourways of Wollmeise Pure hold together, Jewitta über Berlin and Admiral in der Wolke. They seem to be just what he was looking for, because he’s barely taken them off since they came off the needles!

Speaking of stuff on the needles, as well as a sample shawl using my handspun, I have another not-my-design pattern in progress at the moment too. I remembered this week I had promised my sister I would make sleeveless tops for each of my two nephews, and if I don’t make them soon they won’t need pullovers, they’ll need swimwear! This is a pattern called Kidding Around from Cygnet yarns which I found in a back issue of Simply Knitting magazine.

February's offering from my pattern store just went live! Leprechaun's Gemstones are top-down socks with a flap-and-gusset heel, sized from 7.25" up to 10.25" foot circumference. 
They were designed during a trip around Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and were actually the third incarnation of the original idea. The first draft biased so badly I couldn't wear them, and the second version looked great but the stitch pattern had so little stretch that even my 8 year old couldn't force an adult size sock over his heel. A trip back to the drawing board resulted in this lace sock with a pattern that appears to form a stack of cut gems down the sock. Invented in on the island of Ireland, and with so many rainbows (it rains a lot there!), it seemed logical that this sock treasure might be found along with the leprechauns' gold at the end of the rainbow.

Any plans I might have had for designing and knitting this week ended up being put on hold from Wednesday, when I came down with a doozy of a cold. I’d had a bit of a scratchy throat on Tuesday, a slightly stuffy nose on Wednesday morning but generally felt OK, but then by the time I woke up on Thursday I felt rubbish. I spent literally day all Thursday blowing my nose (honestly, you’d think there would be a limit to the productivity of one human nose but I must have exceeded all normal limits on Thursday and maybe considered seeking sponsorship from Kleenex or something!), and when I put the kids to bed at 8pm, I went too.
I actually took a day off sick from work on Friday, which is a real rarity for me, spent the morning sleeping, the afternoon vegetating on the sofa under a blanket, and when I went to collect the children from the after-school childminder she answered the door with “oh my goodness, you look awful!”. Thanks!
There have been some nasty cold viruses going around this winter and I can attest to the unpleasantness of this one. If I don’t even have the energy to knit, I must be feeling bad.
By Saturday afternoon I decided I could manage some work on my current shawl design, but then switched back to my garter stitch scrap blanket later after I’d taken some cough medicine which causes drowsiness. I’m susceptible to drowsy-making medicines at the best of times. Never mind “do not drive or operate machinery”, I was treating it as “may cause drowsiness; if affected, do not attempt knit design”!
It’s now Sunday and I’m feeling much better today. Still coughing and sneezing but infinitely better in myself and more than up to some stocking stitch. Coincidentally this yarn happens to change colour just at the eyelet row! Couldn’t have planned that if I’d tried!

This is (clearly!) the beginning of a shawl. What is less obvious is that it has taken two full evenings and an afternoon of knitting to get this far. I’m not that slow! This is the third incarnation of this shawl, however. In my head I had an idea for a shallow crescent shawl, but when I started it, I didn’t like it. That transformed into a modified triangular shawl, but then that didn’t turn out how I had envisioned it either.
Turns out this shawl wants to be a semi-circular one! Who knew?! I think this is the right choice though. The yarn cake is forming a heart in the centre as I knit it!

It’s rare that I knit two samples for a pattern. In fact, it may even be unprecedented but on this occasion it is necessary. Next month’s pattern is to be socks, but unfortunately the sample pair I have knitted have proved to be completely impossible to photograph! The yarn is a gorgeous variegated green, and it’s the variegation that is causing the issue. In real life, the stitch pattern shows beautifully, the variegation and the design work together in delightful harmony, and the name suits the design. Rendered on film (or rather in pixels) the stitch pattern totally vanishes among the colour variegation. I’ve tried indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, cloudy overcast sky, bright sunshine, it makes no difference, the stitch pattern is completely indiscernible.
And so here I am, casting on another pair in a different yarn, hoping the socks and the camera will play nicely this time!