I haven't written for a while because of troubles adding pictures. But here is a new way that worked remarkably well for a first attempt. The Chicago cowl wound around my neck. It is warm and quite comfortable if I ignore how it looks.
On the last day of January I can report on my yarn diet. It is going surprising well. There is yarn on my list that I can buy without further thought. The rest I leave. It helps that my list is flexible according to what I see and how I feel on the day. There is no need for soul searching, no need for regrets. In January I bought three balls of wool, all on my list - a total of 150 gr. That is until yesterday when I found a Susan Duckworth cardigan. I like her patterns - intarsia with a lot of flowers. I have got her two books but I know I'm unlikely ever to knit anything from them, so I enjoy this cardigan. This is the second of her patterns that I own - last year I bought a sweater.
Last summer I bought a cowl from Gap and I wore it all the time because it was so comfortable. It was very simple in a thin stocking stitch polyester linen blend jersey fabric. For my Chicago knitting project in October I decided to replicate it for winter use. I bought Rowan Creative Focus Worsted in a burgundy colour and some Kidsilk Haze stripe in a darkish shade to go with it. I wasn't too happy with the colour as it was too purple for my liking, but I couldn't see one that I liked better.
So I did one of my two inch long tension squares and cast on for knitting in the round. Like the Gap cowl I wanted it long enough to go round my neck three times, about 180 cms. And I got it right - the length is perfect. I bought two balls of the thicker yarn (I have such problems with that name, why not something simple along the lines of Lima or Tumble) and knit it with a strand of the Kidsilk Haze with the intention of making it as wide as the yarn allowed.
It is not really wide enough, but that would not be noticeable if you wind it three times. The problem is the stocking stitch. It curls of course. I don't know why I didn't think it would curl. The Gap cowl only curled very little. I think it does not work because the knitted fabric is too thick. In a thin yarn it would work a lot better. Now it looks like having six sausages curled around your neck. Because I wear it anyway. It is warm and cosy. The Kidsilk Haze makes it soft although you can hardly see it. And I did knit it in the three days. The reserve sock knitting that I brought along remains with one sock half done. One of my few UFOs.
And onto the state of the yarn store. I knew that I had bought a lot of yarn in 2012. Every now and again I sort through a box or two of my yarns and I decide that I have too much yarn and I must not buy any more. This usually lasts about two or three days.
Last November I had another of my sort throughs and I decided again to go on a yarn diet, as the phrase goes. This time it has worked. It is a diet for me, because there is a list of exceptions, of yarn that I can buy. During the last two months I have bought 300 gr of wool on the list, and 50 gr that wasn't. The last ball served to emphasize to me that I am not happy to buy something not on the list, so it was worth it from that point of view.
Then, a few days ago I sat down to work out precisely how much I did buy during 2012. It was so much it surprised even me, and I dare not say it here. So it was a good thing that I had already started on the yarn diet. I wonder how I have managed to store so much yarn. Surely it should be much more evident than it is? I have realised that I have become more ingenious finding places for yarn. The space for clothes in my wardrobe has got smaller.
On the other hand the records show that I knitted 15.2 kg. My average has been 13.0 - 13.5 kg annually so it is good. I did not expect it because I am sure I have slowed down. Even the standard blankets take longer that usual and I knit few other things. It is going to be interesting anyway to find ways of using the yarn in the store. I still go to wool shops to look at yarn and I have managed the January sales without greater problems. Yesterday I just glanced at a bag of 10 balls of Sublime Soya Cotton in a charity shop. The cone of brown 4 ply tweed wool was more difficult to ignore, but I did.
The next standard blanket, #152, is another white, knitted in aran weight.
The main yarn is this yellow that I got very cheaply in a charity shop. It is Greenock double knitting, manufactured in Scotland. It comes in one ounce balls, so I would assume that it is from the 1960s. It still feels fine though, and it is very nice to knit with. There were 21 balls, so it is enough for several blankets. It is interesting to see how the yellow colour disappears when it is mixed with other yarns. The white - that used to annoy me - disappears too, so now I have fewer reservations about using it and I am getting accustomed to the idea that there will always be some.
There is also some pink mohair and this Jaeger angora wool blend in pink. I love the picture of the rabbit on the label. When I bought the Patons random coloured yarn I told myself that I had to use it in a blanket despite the fact that I would dislike the dark brown portions, so here it is. I am also using up bits of thin cashmere yarn. The cashmere gives such a nice soft feeling to a blanket although you can't see it, so I would like to continue using it. I don't know what to do - it takes time to unravel such thin yarn and one blanket takes a full medium sized sweater, so it would be one sweater per blanket. It is still possible to find reasonably priced cashmere in charity shops, even sweaters that haven't shrunk in washing.
I unravelled the Kaffe Fassett Outlined Star jacket that I bought a year ago. I decided this as part of my effort to use the white yarn, but on the whole I think it is a good idea. There didn't seem to be very much yarn there once it had been unravelled, and the unravelling was easy. It is more difficult to separate three strands of wool when you come to using it. The yarn is lovely of course.
The second garment was this fairisle cardigan in blue turquoise purple shades. The label said Woodward Davey and it is obviously hand knitted. I wondered if it was knitted with self striping yarn, but it was not. It was shortish lengths of a number of yarns in similar shades. It is very nice shetland wool, with blue mohair that has shrunk. It took quite a while to unravel, but it was nice to work with. I have seen a second cardigan with the same label in a more traditional fair isle pattern, but I didn't buy it. (You can now find links to them on Google.)
A while ago I finished one of my bus knitting blankets. I did it in my usual garter stitch diagonal pattern. It is so good for knitting on the bus because it does not require any counting, and you don't even need to look at it. I increase/decrease at the beginning of every row to make it even easier. This does mean that the squares end up slightly skewed, but the skewness disappears when you join them.
For this blanket I unravelled four charity shop sweaters:
A Gazman's man's sweater in a nice olive colour.
A grey Eddie Bauer sweater in garter stitch. The yarn looked like shetland but it was quite different unravelled. It was thicker than the others, so it produced fewer squares.
A Jigsaw polo neck in dark brown. I can't find a picture of this one now.
An unlabelled sweater in mole colour. This was also on the thick side, but there was plenty of yarn, and it was very pleasant to work with.
I started knitting this in February 2010 and completed it in September 2012. It took a long time because I did some bus crochet in between. I thought about joining the squares by doing three needle bind off, but it seemed too much effort for a not particularly nice blanket, so I crocheted the squares together using slip stitch. As edging I did one row double crochet and one row crab stitch.
The blanket ended up shorter than a full size single blanket, because I ran out of wool, and, with a yarn store full of yarn, I did not want to buy another sweater for unravelling. I had fun arranging the squares. I stuck to my first attempt, because otherwise I would never make up my mind. On the whole I'm pleased with it. I like the colours, and it feels pleasant, being 100 per cent wool.
And if you like exposed seams you can use the reverse side.
Note: I am having trouble adding pictures to this post. I'll publish the text and hope that Blogger will be more amenable later. Now all done.
Along with my blogging my knitting has slowed down. It is frustrating. I don't know how I spend my time differently, but I just don't sit down to knit so often or for any length of time. I would like to do more knitting. I keep buying yarn, so the yarn store is growing bigger, and it is stressful to think about all the yarn I plan to knit and all the ideas of projects that I have in mind.
Blanket #151 took nearly twice as long as other standard blanket. And this was even though it was in my favourite dark colours and in a tight tension with DK weight yarn. To make it interesting for myself I added a strand of Noro Kureyon Sockyarn, bought at half price, in similar shades but with added bright green and light beige sections. These will stand out for people who don't know what they are but it pleases me.
I unravelled this Marilyn Moore hand knitted sweater. The yarn is mainly wool, two 4 ply strands together or, in case of the brown boucle, three, with a little bit of silk and nylon. It was OK to unravel although it had a lot more knots than strictly necessary. I cut ruthlessly. It gave me a lot more short lengths, admittedly of nice yarn, but it will take years to finish it. The colours are good too, except that I have decided that I want to stop knitting red. There are a lot of red hand knitted garments in charity shops, so I tell myself - that's red, don't buy it.
The second sweater was a Marks and Spencer bright red cashmere sweater. This is one of the ones I bought for £9 when they sold cashmere at low prices in sales. I have several that I got for £5, too. M&S no longer sell cashmere so cheaply, and cashmere in charity shops is often shrunken so difficult to unravel. I like adding a thin strand of cashmere. Sometimes it is noticeable, sometimes it isn't. It is always easy to unravel, and it doesn't matter if the thin strand breaks.
In blanket #150 there were a lot of ends to be fastened. I don't mind because I enjoy it but it takes a long time. It is a very relaxing activity. I will show the crocheted edge as well.
I had a request for a cushion cover to the pattern of the blocks in the Modern Throw and I was happy to do it. This time I bought brand new wool. I liked the Icelandic Alafoss Lopi chunky yarn that went into the throw, so I bought some more. It is surprisingly inexpensive in comparison to other chunky yarns, and it is so lovely and soft. It comes in something like 17 shades, but the shop only had a few. The request was for a blue cushion so I chose two 100 gr balls in grey and one each in a pale and a darker blue. I wasn't too happy about the lighter shade because I thought there was too little contrast between it and the grey.
I aimed for a cover with a 40 cm side so I cast on a few more stitches than for the throw. Again I selected the number of rows randomly, and did one side with darker blue and the other with paler blue stripes. Then I picked up stitches around the edge and did a three needle bind off on three sides. The fourth side I crocheted together in slip stitch using a thin blue yarn which disappeared so you can hardly see it.
The finished cover was about 41.5 cm square and it was too loose for a 40 cm cushion pad. The 45 cm pad fitted much better. A cushion does look better if the cover is slightly stretched. The finished cushion is squashy and comfortable and pleases both the recipient and myself.
Modern Cushion
Yarn: Alafoss Lopi chunky, 245 gr used
Needles: 6mm
Knitted: 15 July to 20 August 2012
Blanket #150 turned out to be red and yellow, mixed with beige, brown and rust. I like the little bit of green added. There is still quite a lot of these bright colours in the yarn store, however much I try to get rid of them. At least I like red. Some of the yellow is too light for this blanket, but then it seemed too dark for blanket #149, and I have to include it somewhere. It is dispiriting, too, that there are so many yarns that don't really blend but need to be used up.
#150 is such an even number, but it does not really mean anything. The numbers go by the rows in the spreadsheet that I started in 1994. I must have knitted some 20 blankets before then. Occasionally I ask myself why do I do these - are they really any use. Now I could afford to buy new wool, so there is no need to confine myself to the knitted garments in the yarn store. But I still enjoy the unravelling, and using purely new wool would give a different character to the blankets. I like the economical and ecological benefits of using unravelled wool. The plain answer is that I knit these blankets because knitting them gives me so much joy.
For this blanket I unravelled a Bolivian knit cotton sweater from a charity shop. It is knitted in a combination of fair isle and intarsia, quite well except for the part where the third shade has been swiss darned. It was so difficult to unravel. The yarn is a nice smooth mercerized cotton and I thought it was 4 ply weight doubled. It turns out to be a thinner yarn trebled. I don't mind dividing two strands but three is too much and the individual strands are too thin to use as 4 ply. I went for removing the third strand and this gives a yarn of suitable weight. The colours are lovely pink and blue pastel shades.
The second knit was a shawl knit in a brown shetland yarn. It was very nicely knitted, but the yarn, a thick 4 ply, was too thick to produce a nice shawl. This is probably why it ended up in a charity shop. I bought it because I like the brown shade - very useful and will blend well.
I bought this Drops Vivaldi yarn in the flea market behind Frederiksberg city hall on my spring break. There was about 200 gr, some of it knitted into the back or front of a sweater. It was easily unravelled. The colour is a nice lime green. It is very thin, reminiscent of Rowan Kidsilk Haze, but it is only 58% mohair, the rest wool and polyamide. It adds a lovely sheen to the blanket, and you can only just about see the colour. In the biting wind in the outdoor market I did not notice the smell, but as soon as I got inside it was evident that it reeked of tobacco smoke. The smell disappreared after washing.
I haven't written for a while because of troubles adding pictures. But here is a new way that worked remarkably well for a first attempt. The Chicago cowl wound around my neck. It is warm and quite comfortable if I ignore how it looks.
