New year, new blanket

Christmas and the New Year are over, and it is back to every day routine.  I started my new blanket several weeks ago, and now it is nearly finished.  This time it is back to dark colours, my favourite brown, grey and black with some green and teal.  I am knitting this one with size 4.5 mm needles again, because I thought most of my dark yarns are aran weight.  It is not necessarily so, but I quite like the effect I get with the larger needles.  I do mean to get back to double knitting weight blankets on 4 mm needles in time.

I don't like the bright teal colour, and soon I will have finished this particular lot of teal wool, and I will be pleased.

The first jumper that I meant to unravel for this blanket I changed my mind about.  It is this Paul Costello chunky jumper knitted in tweed yarn.  The yarn is lovely, and it is in the mink colour that is one of my favourites.  But I didn't examine it thoroughly enough when I bought it - the seams are serged, so it would mean short ends of yarn and a lot of fastenings of ends.  For a long time I thought I would unravel it anyway, because the yarn is so nice.  But there is so much yarn in the wool store that I really don't have to do it.  So it has gone back to the charity shop, and I hope somebody will enjoy wearing it.

The one that I did unravel is this Marks and Spencer big man's cardigan.  It is a nice grey colour, in pure wool that felt nice.  The yarn turned out to be double strands of 4 ply shetland wool, a pleasure to knit with after separating the strands.  The cardigan was very easy to unravel too.  The covered brown buttons are bound to come in useful some day.

The second was a Ralph Lauren Polo man's sweater in navy cashmere - the colour in the photograph is too light.  This is nice yarn.  The seams were impossible to unpick, partly because of the dark colour, so I did more cutting than I would have liked.  The yarn is slightly thinner than 4 ply, and so nice.

Kaffe Fassett Outlined Star jacket

Nearly thirty years after the publication of Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Knitting his patterns still appear in charity shops.  I had nearly given up hope of finding another one, three years after the last one, when I came across this jacket.  The pattern is Outlined Star, although this precise jacket does not appear in the book.  The one there is in a yellow colour way, and the  yarns aren't given.

The colours in this one are pale, some even fluorescent, although that does not come out in my pictures.  The strong mauve shade slightly spoils the effect, and I would have left it out.  The yarns are without mistake Rowan yarns, so perhaps it was knitted from a kit.  It is knitted to a chunky yarn tension, very thick, with a chunky tweed used singly, DK wool combined with 4 ply and the 4 ply yarns trebled in many places.  There are three yarns per row, and the three are woven in with every stitch so it is very thick.  The jacket shows no sign of wear so I suspect that it may have been too uncomfortable to wear.  It is big - with chest circumference of 124 cm.

Altogether it weighs over 1340 gr.  In theory that would be enough for one blanket, but not knitted at a chunky yarn tension.  So if I want to use all the yarn, or most of it, for one blanket I will have to combine it with other yarn.  I haven't decided yet.  It will go into the wool store with all the rest.

And just because I like it so much two pictures of blanket #143, now that it is finished.  I have crocheted an edging, all the ends have been fastened, and it has been washed.  Although fastening ends can take a long time I find it enjoyable; it is very peaceful, and you feel you have achieved something.  Washing serves as blocking; it makes the blankets smoother.  It is also otherwise a good thing.  Some of the yarns may have been around for 20 or 30 years or longer collecting dust, and the blanket is too large to keep on my lap so I let the edge fall on the floor when it gets long enough. 

The next knitted blanket

I keep on knitting even if I don't blog regularly.

My next blanket, #144, is red, several shades of red with bright red, rust, burgundy, orange and even a little bit of pink.  All mixed with brown, beige, green and grey.  Earlier I bought wool in charity shops regardless of colour.  Now I try to reject wool in colours I find difficult, particularly bright colours and white.  I am surprised to find how many knitted garments that I examine are knitted in shades of red.  I had no idea the colour was so popular, because it is not one of my favourites.  For blankets red is fine.  It is nice and cheerful.

This blanket is knitted in aran weight on 4.5mm needles.  It is quite thick because a lot of the red wool comes from picture sweaters from the 1990s, and a lot of them were pictures of flowers, red flowers.  The green thick wool comes from leaves.

I have a spread sheet, by date of purchase, of knitted garments in the wool store waiting to be unravelled, and now I pick the next one on the list, regardless of whether the colour suits the blanket in question.  The wool will get used sooner or later anyway.   Doing it systematically makes me feel I'm getting somewhere, and I like the randomness of not knowing which the next one will be.  (I don't cheat by peeking ahead.)

The next one for this blanket was blue, a nice pale blue DKNY silk cardigan.  The silk is quite thick and it feels nice.  I bought this cardigan very cheaply, and I wore it the first summer.  It was really comfortable.  I like the way the raglan sleeves were done.  It started with decreases from the armhole, but halfway just one increase at the shoulder line was done instead.  This cardigan was easy to unpick.  The seams came away like a dream, and for the rest it was just a question of pulling a thread.

The second garment was a Marks and Spencer cashmere polo neck sweater.  It may seem very laborious to unpick such thin yarn.  It is surprisingly strong, and I like the hint of softness it adds to the blankets.  I don't bother to fasten ends.  The yarn is mixed with other stronger ones, so I just overlap with the new end, and cut any stragglers when the blanket is finished.

Rocking chair cover or Gungstolsmatta

A few months ago my mother asked me to knit a cover for her rocking chair.  She had seen a woven one on a crafts stall in the local market, and she thought I could knit something similar.  At the time I was planning to knit a blanket in chunky wool in a pattern that I have seen somewhere - a blanket (or scarf) knitted sideways each row in a different colour and with the ends tied in a fringe.  It would do away with the need to fasten ends, not always easy to hide in chunky wool.  So I set to work by looking at the wool I had.

The colours I had planned for my blanket were not to my mother's taste, so I ended up with the Icelandic or Icelandic type wools left over from my Modern Throw.  (I haven't forgotten about my Modern Throw.  I find it frustrating too that I have not been able to finish it.  I'm waiting to get the use of my spare room back, so that I can lay the blocks out in a pleasing pattern before I start joining them.)  In the end I left out the whites because I thought they would be impracticable in a cover that was likely to get heavy use.

But there wasn't enough wool left, so I ended up buying more.  I spent some time staring at the wool shelves in John Lewis.  I wanted a self striping yarn to add some interest.  Rowan Colourscape was too colourful to fit in with my grey colour scheme, and too expensive.  I chose Patons Shadow Tweed - about 50% wool 50% acrylic.  It was single ply and pleasant to work with.  My only complaint about it was that the dark sections were too dark and not obvious from balls on the shelf, nor could I see a pattern leaflet with the yarn knitted up.  The colour sequences were also a lot longer than I had wanted.  I have seen since other balls where the dark bits show more clearly.  There is also a little bit of viscose in it in the form of colourful loose threads woven in here and there.

Then I added Rowan wools.  I had bought a ball of Cocoon in a charity shop earlier, and I knew how lovely it was to the touch - like unbaked dough.  So I bought one more in a greyish colour.  I also wanted a lighter shade, and I chose Rowan British Sheepbreeds Chunky Undyed, and it was very pleasant too.  It was thinner than the others so I added a strand of the light grey Jaeger Matchmaker 4 ply wool from a charity shop.  I am surprised by how much I like these two Rowan yarns.  I would be very happy to knit more with either.  Earlier I had dismissed the Sheepbreeds yarns as old fashioned, but they feel so unexpectedly nice.  Cocoon I thought of as a chunky and therefore not interesting yarn.

I wanted a slipstitch pattern to add bulk and I found it in Montse Stanley's Knitting, woven check or hopscotch stitch.  It is so simple, slip every other stitch on the knit row and purl the next row.  I wanted to make both edges the same, so I did a crochet provisional cast on for the sideways edge, and then the pattern stitch.  It worked well, with long rows, changing colours as I thought best.  It was when I got to the middle that it got interesting, because I wanted the colours to be symmetrical from the centre.  The Shadow Tweed was worst, and I had to start from the right place in a new ball.  I am happy with how it worked out, it is reasonably OK.

Then I did a crochet cast off on both long sides, and turned my attention to the fringe.  This is the part that I am unhappy with.  I did a moss stitch at the beginning and end of each row, and it was too high next to the slip stitch pattern, so the edges flared.  I wanted an even edge, but this was the wrong way to go about it.  Doing the fringe helped to some degree, but it is still far from perfect.  As I had used the same yarn for several rows I had to add more lengths of yarn to the fringe.  It looks untidy.  Although all the yarns were new some had curls, and it is not so attractive.

On the whole I am pleased with it.  The yarns are nice, and it has a pleasant comfortable feel to it.  As a project it worked out, except for the moss stitch sides.  If I did it again I would buy  all the wool, so I would be able to plan the colours more carefully.

My mother says that it is too nice for the rocking chair, and she uses it as a shawl (or stole?).  This view is the cover on an ordinary kitchen chair, as a rocking chair is not to hand in my flat.












Rocking chair cover C11

Yarn:  odd Icelandic or Icelandic type yarns, Patons Shadow Tweed, Rowan Cocoon, Rowan British Sheepbreeds Chunky Undyed, Jaeger Matchmaker 4 ply, weight 580 gr

Needles: 6 mm

Tension: 13 st per 10 cm

Size: 48 cm * 170 cm excluding fringe

Pattern: Own using woven check stitch

Knitted: 11 August to 20 September 2011

Doing bus crochet

It was while I was crocheting together blanket C9 that I realised how much I enjoyed the crochet, and I looked round for yarn suitable for a crochet project, something I could do on the bus.  So it needed to be portable and easy to do.   I remembered this 4 ply yarn that I bought in a charity shop about a yarn ago.  It came in a plastic bag - nearly one and a half kilo.  I managed to convince myself that it was a wool blend, so it would do in the blankets.  But I think I was wrong.  It is much more likely to be pure acrylic.  For crochet it would do fine.

The colours are nice - two shades of yellow, rust and brown.  The yellows and rust are crepe, so ideal for crochet as it gives a nice definition.  Together the colours look good.

I enjoyed doing the Erika Knight's hexagons, and I wanted something similar.  In Jan Eaton's book 200 crochet blocks I found a pattern for a square block in trebles without the gaps that you get in granny squares.  It is a very easy pattern, easy to do and easy to follow.  I memorized it after the second row.

So now I have finished the yellow blocks.  The rust yarn turned out to be thinner than the yellow, so I can't put them in the same blanket.  I tried the brown one.  It is thicker, so no good either.  The brown yarn is an ordinary 4 ply, ie not crepe, but it must be spun with a z twist because it splits very easily, so it is more awkward to crochet.  The yellow yarns were a dream.

That means that I'm heading for two baby blankets - one yellow and one brown - instead of one adult sized.  I'll leave the rust yarn for crocheting together.  I still enjoy it very much, and I wonder what I can find to do on the bus next.

Another blanket

Another long break without writing.  I have been doing some knitting, mainly on the new blanket, #143.  This one is double knitting weight on size 4 mm needles.  I enjoy knitting it.  The light colours cheer me up.  The yarns are good, too, several cottons and two mohair.

I unravelled a mohair cardigan for this.  It was quite simple, in a broken rib pattern, very easy to unpick despite mohair's tendency to stick.  Compared with the white mohair that I also use it seems thin.

I was going to unpick a second sweater, this crochet top by Chillipeppar.  I started by unpicking the edging, but I changed my mind when I saw the yarn.  It is very thin cotton, several unspun threads.  I decided it would add nothing to the blanket, so it went to the dump.  Now that I have got so much yarn in the wool store, I have less patience unpicking garments.  It's not that I don't enjoy it, but it seems to take so much time when I could be knitting.

Still around

I have not got much further with my Geo Modern Throw.  I finished knitting the 20 blocks.  Then I washed them.  Not because they were dirty, although some of the yarn may have hung around for 20 years or more, but because it seemed a good easy way of wetting them for blocking.  I washed them by hand and spun them in the washing machine, in two batches.  Then I placed them out on the spare bed, the wrong way round because the edges rolls upwards the right way round.

The blockss look much better now.  The sculptural effect that I enjoyed has largely disappeared, and I think that is for the good.  The thing that worries me is that the blocks differ in size according to the yarn used, and that it will it look strange when they are put together.

I have put the blocks aside for the time being, because I have started a new project, using some of the leftover yarn from the throw.  So this is also chunky and now that I have got more than half way through it is beginning to annoy me.  I am doing this on request and there is other knitting I would rather do.  Knitting on 6 mm needles tires my hands and I can't do it for hours on end, so it seems slow.