The Fathom Five Shipwreck Cowl by Raven Knits is a light fingering weight cowl inspired by a marine park in the designer's native Canada.
What have you cast on first this Gift-A-Long?!
So the Indie Design Gift-A-Long began in the early hours of this morning and having got the school run out of the way, I have downloaded my first pattern and cast on! My first GAL project this year is one I meant to cast on so many times during Gift-A-Long 2016 but the time just ran away with me. The Fathom Five Shipwreck Cowl by Raven Knits is a light fingering weight cowl inspired by a marine park in the designer's native Canada. If you like feminine accessories designs, there are plenty in Raven Knits Ravelry shop. My personal favourites are Gilraen's Cowl, which I think would look beautiful peeping out from underneath an understated classic trench coat, and the stunning Girdle of Melian Shawl - there's also a poncho version of the design if you prefer. The pattern for Fathom Five Shipwreck Cowl is clearly written and easy to follow, with both charted and written instructions.
What have you cast on first this Gift-A-Long?!
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With only a few days left until the start of the fifth Indie Design GiftAlong I went through my yarn stash and pulled out some bits and bobs that I plan to use for my first cast-ons.
The list of participating designers and their patterns will be launched when the GAL starts at 8pm US east coast time on Tuesday, but from people’s customised profile pictures, (and with some participating designer behind the scenes spoilers!) I can pick out some of the designers now and start choosing from their portfolios. I’m looking forward to seeing the full list and searching the bundles, stocking up my Ravelry library and finding some new-to-me patterns, but I also want something ready to cast on first thing Wednesday morning. (The time difference means the GAL starts for me in the middle of the night, and while I love to knit, I also love to sleep!). Pictured here, I have (top left) three shades of Wollmeise DK, and I’ll be looking for a mitten pattern for those. Below them I have some purple laceweight, which I’ll be searching for a cowl pattern for, a multicoloured green fingering weight for which I have a pattern in mind, and some purple sock yarn which is just waiting to become a particular pair of socks. On the right, the three complete skeins are for two specific projects. The blue is going to become a cowl, and the red a sweater, which I plan to be my first cast-on. What I’m actually going to cast on will be revealed on Wednesday, but for now, why not head over to the Ravelry GiftAlong group and join the chat while we all wait excitedly for the fun to start! With the fifth annual Ravelry Indie Design Gift-A-Long fast approaching, it's time to start thinking about what I want to make. The list of participating designers won't go live until the day the GAL begins - Tuesday November 21st this year - but I'm already thinking about what sort of patterns I'm going to be looking for so I can hit the ground running when things start.
The first thing I'm going to be looking for a pattern for is mittens in DK weight yarn. Maybe colourwork, I'm not sure yet, but my husband's grandmother, who is well into her 90s, is a very knitworthy gift recipient and I made her a scarf last year and a hat the year before, so this year will be mittens. She likes blue and I have plenty of blue DK in my stash so that's an easy start. Next will be a sweater for me. I kind of have an eye on which pattern I'd like to choose, assuming the designer is in again this year. It's a pattern I've knitted before and I'd like another so let's see if she's in the GAL this time around and then I can decide. I'm also thinking of socks. It's not like I don't have plenty of sock designs of my own, but I like to use the GAL to relax and knit other designers' patterns for a change. I have two skeins of sock yarn bought specifically with my sister in mind, so she may well find some socks under the Christmas tree this year. Finally, I'm looking for something to use up about 50 yards of chunky weight handspun. I had spun this back in the summer to make a hat with. Hat achieved, and the pattern for Soft Honeycomb is available in my Ravelry pattern store, but I spun too much and I have this left over. I tend not to use chunky yarn so it's unlikely I can use it alongside another yarn, so I'll be looking for a stashbuster pattern for that. What do you hope to make in this year's GAL? Are there any designers you hope to see there? Yes, just one more week until the start of Ravelry's FIFTH annual Indie Design Gift-A-Long!!
If you've joined in a GAL before you'll understand my excitement. If not, come on over to Ravelry (join if you're not a member already) and join in one of the biggest, craziest, fun-filled KAL/CALs you could hope for in the run up to the holiday season. So what is the GAL? Well, it's what happens when independent pattern designers work as a team - a huge team, of over 300 designers of knit and crochet patterns - to make the whole thing greater than the sum of its parts. The whole shebang kicks off at 8pm (US-EST) on Tuesday November 21st 2017. (That's the early hours of Wednesday for those of us in the UK, and even I'm not that committed but I'll catch up ASAP, I promise!). Multiple KAL/CALs according to category of item take place - headwear, footwear, homeware, handwear (is that even a word?!) and prizes can be won for any finished object made from a participating designer's paid-for self-published pattern. The chat moves fast, and it can be intimidating, but just dive in where you are and see what happens. The first week of the GAL also includes a sale. Each participating designer will be offering a bundle of up to 20 of their patterns at a 25% discount using coupon code giftalong2017 for the first seven days, and then the KAL/CAL madness continues through to the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve with the massive New Year party. Prizes can also be won for games, spot prizes and giveaways. Mostly coupons valid for any one pattern from a specified designer through Ravelry, but there are also physical prizes to be won in a draw after the GAL is over, so get your finished object photos into the thread for a chance to win yarn, books, project bags, notions and more! Have you participated in the GAL? Hope you enjoyed it and to see you over there again next week!! For now, here’s a sneak peek at my two current samples-in-progress. The blue one is a lace shawl with beads, triangular, top-down, with stitch patterns based on traditional Shetland designs. The one that looks pink is actually purple - I don’t know what it is about this colour but it just won’t photograph- and a cowl for a design challenge on a theme of leaves. That seemed a perfect use for this handspun merino, which is really soft and knitting up with beautiful stitch definition.
These will be 2018 releases. My last two designs for 2017, which will go live in December, will be a cowl and a hat. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted! This morning was the first cold one here this winter. You know it’s chilly when you’re woken by the sound of the next door neighbours scraping ice off both of their cars before they head out to work! It was only 3°C when I walked the children to school at 8.15am so I’m guessing 6.45 it had been close to zero. On days like that you need warm accessories, and I was glad of the samples for the patterns I will be launching this week. Watch out on Wednesday 1st November for two new patterns in my Ravelry Store, Soft Honeycomb hat and Soft Honeycomb cowl. Both are knitted in chunky/bulky weight yarn - my own used my handspun and the stitch pattern lends itself well to the thick-and-thin yarn that less experienced spinners might produce, especially for the cowl. The patterns themselves will go live on Wednesday 1st, and please feel free to pass the message on to any knitting friends who might want a speedy hat and/or cowl pattern for gifts or for themselves. Both of these knit up fast, just in time for winter!
Last month I decided to move on with my spinning. I started out with a drop spindle last November and immediately took to the craft. Five spindles later I began to get frustrated with the speed limit that a spindle has. Having to keep stopping to wind the yarn on every few feet, the relatively small amount of plied yarn that a drop spindle can hold, needing to wind the singles off on to holders to spin the second one, then plying. It was taking months to make a decent length of yarn. I finally caved and bought a spinning wheel, and I’m pleased that I love it! And here it is! A Louet S10C with Scotch tension, double-treadle. My husband had been concerned that a wheel would take up a lot of space in our home, and wouldn’t get used. Wrong on both counts! It fits neatly in what was unused space between the sideboard and a bookcase (it will even tuck behind a door if necessary) and so far I’ve spun two skeins of plied and finished yarn and am working on my third. Here are those skeins.. The pink one (which tends more towards purple than the photo but I just can’t get my camera to pick it up) is a 2-plied Merino, roughly DK weight and about 200 yards in length. The second is the first part of a pack of undyed Shetland fibre I was given for my birthday in four natural colours. The finished yarn is chain-plied to a fingering weight, about 150 yards. I’m now working on the black fibre from the same pack, and will then spin up the grey (fourth is moorit, a lighter brown) and plan to use them for colourwork. Here is the black so far. As for my spindles though, they’re not being retired just yet. I have two projects in progress on those with designs in mind for each.
I seem to be falling behind in here, because I have two patterns out this month already and it's only mid-month! The first one is a colourwork design that I've loved since the moment the idea popped into my head. Fear the Firedrake! are colourwork socks (you don't say!) worked from the cuff down to the toe. I have short feet so the chart ends where my feet do (!) but it's easy to add more red (or whatever colour you choose) or busk it and add more flames if you need to lengthen the foot. They take a bit of concentration, not least because the colourwork on the back of the leg extends into the heel flap so you'll need to be able to work stranded colourwork flat as well as in the round, but I hope you'll agree the overall effect is worth it. I love the potato-chip nature of stranded colourwork (just one more round to see the next bit of the picture appear) but tend to use it on hats and mitts rather than socks. I do love a stranded colourwork sock though. And the other pattern this month, which just went live today, is Corrie Cornflower. This one was designed for my own handspun yarn, which was also the inspiration for the name. I started spinning at the end of last year, and like many newbies my early handspun was really quite chunky. Smooshy, warm, a bit thick-and-thin, very useable, but not what I usually knit with. It was a personal milestone reached when I successfully spun a 2-ply fingering weight yarn in sufficient quantity and quality to be able to knit a full project and this shawlette design was the result. The yarn was spun from some dyed Corriedale fibre in a colourway called Cornflower. Corriedale wool isn't quite as soft as merino but it is comfortable against the skin, and is easier to spin for a beginner as the fibres are longer and less slippery so easier to work with.
Don't worry, though, the pattern will knit up beautifully in commercial fingering weight yarn too. The design isn't beaded, but it wouldn't be difficult to add beads if you wanted to. Or try a gentle gradient-dyed yarn for a different effect. Enjoy! I have been designing a hat. OK, I concede that is not anything new, but for this one I wanted a particular look and that required learning a new cast-on. The hat was designed for some yarn I had hand spun on a drop spindle, and I had deliberately spun the yarn to be thick, chunky weight and squishy so I wanted an overall soft and squishy look to the hat too. A cast-on edge can sometimes look and feel a bit tight but a tubular cast-on has a natural rolled edge which fit the look I wanted for this hat. I had never worked one in the round in 2x2 rib before, and couldn't find a single online tutorial for the exact effect I wanted. A mash-up of several different ones resulted in the following. The pattern will link to this tutorial once it is ready, but meanwhile, I hope this step-by-step photo guide helps in your own hat knitting. This tubular cast-on begins with a crochet chain provisional cast-on. For the purposes of this tutorial I am working with a 20-stitch tubular cast-on as an example. Obviously a hat for an adult will require substantially more than that! The tubular cast-on starts with only half the final number of stitches, and the remaining half will catch us up later on. Confusing, I know, but trust me, it works. Since I want a final total of 20 stitches, I begin by casting on 10 (half of 20). To begin, use waste yarn to make a crochet chain around 6 chains longer than the number of stitches you are going to cast on. Make sure to leave a cast-on tail about 8"/20cm long - you will need it later. Working into the bumps on the back of the chain (and not into the chain loops themselves), pick up and knit 10 stitches using the working yarn. This will become the first Right Side row. Purl one row, then knit one row, then purl one row (or in short, work 3 more rows in stocking stitch). It will now look like this: The next thing we need to do is remove the waste yarn and pick up the stitches from them. Carefully unpick the crochet chain, releasing the knit stitches attached to them one by one and pick them up on a second needle. If possible, try to start from the left hand side so your needles end up facing in the same direction. (If you end up with them pointing in opposite directions you will need to use another needle to help you turn the lower edge row around, as you need to end up with two lots of 10 stitches, one above and one below, like this.) Be careful with the number of stitches coming off the crochet chain. Because a crochet chain cast-on causes your first row to be half a stitch out of alignment, it is easy to accidentally pick up one too many or too few. Make sure you have the same number of stitches on each needle (In this example, that's 10 each top and bottom) Now hold the two needles so that they are side by side, as if you were going to work a three-needle cast-off. Hold the one that was uppermost just now in front, and the lower one behind so the right side of the stitches are facing outwards. Now hold these two needles together in your left hand and take the circular needle you are going to work the brim of your hat with in your right hand. You are going to slip all the stitches on to that new working needle, in the right order, to form the 2x2 rib. To start, slip the first two stitches from the front needle (the one closest to you in your left hand) purl wise on to the new needle. (You can slip them together or one by one, that doesn't matter, just as long as its the first two stitches from the front needle) Next slip the first two stitches from the back needle purl wise on to the new working needle. Now go back to the front needle again and slip the next two stitches purl wise on to the new needle. And then take the next two from the back needle. Because the backs of the stitches on the back needle are facing you, they have the appearance of purl stitches, even though you knitted them. This is how the 2x2 rib pattern forms. Keep going in this way, slipping two stitches from the front needle, two from the back, two from the front, two from the back, on to your new working needle until all the stitches have been taken over on to the working needle. I now have all 20 stitches together on the one needle and am ready to carry on. (Of course, for a full size hat you would have far more stitches than this, which will make the next bit easier. Assuming you are using a 16-20" circular needle, the stitches would fill the cable so pretend there are more stitches on mine too) As you can see in the photo above, the working yarn is now at the right hand end of the work, but the needle tip is at the left. It is an easy job to just slide the stitches along the cable to the other needle tip so that they are ready to knit, and your working yarn will be at the correct place for you to carry on. Bring the other needle tip around and start working in 2x2 rib, knit two, purl two. The stitches will be orientated such that they already appear to form 2x2 rib so just continue in the pattern as set. When you get to the end of the first row, do not turn but join to work in the round. Place a marker if you wish to mark the end of the round, but there is no need to cross stitches or knit two stitches together to close the round. This tubular cast-on will naturally have a small gap in it (formed by the folded stocking stitch beginning). Use the cast-on tail to carefully seam the gap closed from the inside when the hat is completed. This is one way of starting a hat with a 2x2 rib using a stretchy tubular cast-on.
As you may or may not have noticed (!) I like to knit socks, shawls and scarves. Most of those use fingering weight or 4-ply weight yarn, which tends to come in either 100g or 150g skeins. I have small feet and can get a pair of socks for myself out of about 70g of typical sock yarn, less than 300 yards. Small shawls use more, but not often an entire 150g skein of Wollmeise Pure, of which I have quite a bit.
All these projects mean I have accumulated an extensive collection of partial skeins of yarns in similar weights and similar fibres but not enough to make a second project. Annoyingly they’re almost all too much to justify throwing it away, but what can you do with those odd bits and bobs? In the past I’ve made scrappy socks, and cowls. In fact you’ll find free patterns for both of those here on my blog. This time I decided I fancied a change though. When I was expecting my younger son, I had a similar situation with DK weight yarn oddments and I used them to make a ten-stitch blanket, using the pattern from Frankie Brown on Ravelry. Various permutations of the blanket are now available, in different shapes and designs. I decided to use my sock yarn scraps to make the Double Ten-Stitch version, with two square spirals, one inside the other. I’m planning to add any oddments I accumulate over time until the blanket is sofa-throw size. It’s wool and wool-blends so it should be cosy but not too heavy in fingering weight. So far it is about a foot across, so I have a way to go yet! |
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