Mitts in Twined Knitting

I said last month that I was knitting a pair of fingerless mitts in twined knitting - all inspired originally by somehow volunteering to do a workshop in twined knitting for the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild.  (I think I might have been hypnotised.)  I finished those mitts, which I intended to be for me, but then someone asked me to write the pattern, and I decided that if I was going to do that, I'd like to change it a bit.  So I gave the first pair to my daughter, and made another pair for me.

The wristlets I designed as the workshop project were knitted in two colours - you switch colours for (almost) every stitch, twisting the yarns each time.  For the mitts, I used two strands of the same colour, again alternating the strands for each stitch.  (That's the original use of twined knitting, I believe - it's called two-end knitting in Swedish, and  you can use both ends of one ball of yarn.)    

Here are my second pair of twined knitting mitts:

I'm calling the design Aspen, because the diamonds on the back of the hand and the cuff reminded me of the diamond shapes on the bark of aspen trees at Harlow Carr garden in the autumn - and aspen trees grow in Sweden, where twined knitting also comes from.  

Twined knitting gives a very nice texture.  Apart from the areas of pattern, it looks similar to stocking stitch on the right side, but actually it feels slightly ridged.  (Taking one strand across the back as you knit a stitch with the other strand pulls the fabric in a bit and makes the right side of each stitch tighter than the left.  At least that's what happens when I do it.)  

And the wrong side looks very different to stocking stitch:

 
Susie's mitts are only slightly different to mine:

 
They have chevrons on the cuff, and the border to the thumb gussets is a bit different.  I've taken the elements of the designs from the book by Birgitta Dandanell and Ulla Danielsson, Twined Knitting - A Swedish Folkcraft Technique, which is full of photos of original garments of all kinds. The English translation was published by Interweave Press in 1989, and is out of print, but I've been able to borrow a copy from a friend.  

The yarn for both pairs of mitts is Debbie Bliss Rialto Heathers, which is a beautifully soft merino DK. The colour is Pebble - a lovely silver-grey, very like aspen bark. (There's also a little bit of black for the cast-on, and the plaited braid.)  Twined knitting in DK yarn gives a very thick fabric - these mitts are very warm and cosy.

I've now knitted two pairs of mitts and two and a half pairs of wristlets in twined knitting.  (I wrote about the 'half pair' here.)   I made one pair of wristlets for the workshop - a refinement of a previous pair, which I haven't shown.  Here it is:

 
 I have a cardigan in the same dark teal colour, so I've worn these wristlets quite a lot - they really help to keep you warm.  For the workshop pair, I dropped the third colour for the cast-on edge, and the plait - I wanted to keep casting on as simple as possible.  

  
I think I've done enough twined knitting for now.   I like the effect very much, but it's slow to do (because you have to keep stopping to untwist the yarn) and you don't always want your knitting to be thick and wind-proof.  I'm doing the workshop for the Birmingham branch in April, so that might inspire me to take it up again, but at least until then, that's it for twined knitting.  

Twined Knitting in Sheringham

Last weekend I went to Sheringham youth hostel for a knitting weekend.  As last year, it was organised by the Leighton Buzzard branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  The weather this year was different, though - damp, misty, quite mild, no wind.  Sea and sky were almost indistinguishable.  But a knitting weekend doesn't need sunshine and we had a very good time.

On the Friday and Saturday evenings, we sat in the lounge and knitted, had excellent dinners provided by the Youth Hostel staff, and did more knitting.  And lots of chatting.

On Saturday morning we went to The Mo, the Sheringham museum, on the sea front.

It is not open to the public in the winter, but we had a special tour behind the scenes.  The museum has recently been extended, thanks to a lottery grant, and we were shown how the new storage areas are being used.  We saw some wonderful ganseys, too - some modern ones that we could handle, and others from the museum's collection.  One particularly fine gansey dates from the 1950s - the knitting is meticulously neat, with 14 stitches to the inch, I was told.  (Didn't manage to get a decent photo, I'm afraid.)

 In the afternoon, we had workshops back at the Youth Hostel.  I repeated the twined knitting workshop that I did for the Huddersfield branch of the Guild in December.  (And never got around to writing about - Christmas got in the way.)   I had designed a wristlet to knit in two colours of DK.  (There was also a flat piece, that you could think of as a coaster, for those people who couldn't manage knitting in the round.)  

I didn't know anything at all about twined knitting before I found that I had somehow volunteered to lead a workshop for the Huddersfield branch.  It was originally scheduled for April 2016, but postponed due to my argument with a ladder.  So I've been practising twined knitting for quite a while.  Looking back, I see that when I knitted a cuff or wristlet in twined knitting in March last year,  I said here that I didn't want to knit a second one.  But since then, I've got more enthusiastic, and I decided that over the weekend I would knit something a bit bigger, just for me.  Over the weekend (including the long train journeys there and back)  I worked on a pair of fingerless mitts.  Not in two colours this time, but using the two ends of one ball of yarn.  I love the effect of two-end knitting and the surface patterns you can make.  The mitts are going to be very warm and cosy.  More when I have finished them.

        

Thank you very much, Brigitte, for organising another really enjoyable weekend.

    

Bonham Mitts

I have just finished the Bonham mitts that I was knitting at the Knitting & Stitching Show in Harrogate at the end of last month.  They are a Christmas present for my daughter, so I've timed it well.  Not a surprise present - she chose the colours and tried on the first mitt during the knitting so that I could get the length right.

The yarn is Rowan Donegal Lambswool Tweed, discontinued long ago.  I was given several skeins in different colours a few years ago, and it has been languishing in my stash ever since.  I thought it would be right for these mitts, because the recommended yarn is Rowan Fine Tweed (also now discontinued). The Donegal Lambswool is a similar weight.  The colours are called Blue Mist and Pickle.  Blue Mist is fairly straightforward, but pickles come in all sorts of colours. But the yarn is the colour of Branston pickle, so perhaps that is what the name refers to.

The mitt design is by Angharad Thomas, and based on a pair of gloves dated 1818 that were sold by Bonhams the auctioneers a year or two ago.  (You can see the original gloves on Angharad's blog, here.)  It's an interesting construction too - all the increases for the thumb gusset are on one side, not on both sides as is usually done.  So the thumb on the second mitt has to be a mirror image of the first.  And on one side of the thumb gusset, the rows of stitches are in the same direction as those on the palm:

   
and on the other side, where all the increases are, the rows of stitches are at an angle to the palm:

It's an intriguing effect.

I'm very pleased with the finished mitts.  They are wrapped up and under the Christmas tree, and I'm sure Susie will like them too.

Knitting in Harrogate

Yesterday afternoon I was at the Knitting & Stitching Show in Harrogate.  I wasn't there as as a visitor, but as part of  'Crafters in Action' - several guilds that had stands at the show (the Quilters' Guild, the Lace Guild., the Batik Guild, ....), had been asked to provide people to demonstrate their craft.  So I was there to knit on behalf of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.

I was knitting a fingerless mitt.  (They will be a pair eventually, of course.)  The design is called Bonham and it's by Angharad Thomas - she decided that she had knitted far too many glove fingers in the last few months (as you can see here), and needed a break.  I thought the Bonham mitts were an appropriate choice to knit yesterday, because proceeds from the sale of the pattern (via Ravelry) go to the Guild.

I did have some time to look around the rest of the Show too.   I met Louisa Harding at her stall, where she was selling her lovely Yarntelier cashmere.   (By chance, I was wearing my Petal Cowl in her Amitola yarn, as I pointed out to her.)   And I was also seriously tempted by the beautiful colours on the Knitting Goddess's stall, especially the bundles of 10gm. skeins in related colours.  But I keep telling myself that I don't need more yarn (and I really shouldn't buy yarn when I don't even have a project in mind).

Just by the Crafters in Action area, there was a Vintage Tea Party going on,   The idea (I think) was to sew an outfit using a dress pattern from a special vintage range, and then wear it at the tea party.   You could choose any decade from the 1930s to the 1960s, but the 1950s seemed to be particularly popular.  Here are two wonderfully elegant ladies taking a break from the tea party.

      
Elizabeth's dress (on the right) is made from an Almedahls fabric, printed with a design of plants in pots.  We thought it would be suitable to wear for a little gentle gardening in the summer - dead-heading roses, perhaps.

One Thing and Another

I finished sewing in the ends of yarn on my On the Other Hand mitts a couple of days ago, and pressed them.  I wore them today at Lee Mills - it was very cold downstairs in the store downstairs, and woolly mitts were very welcome.

Now that the Mystery Knit Along is finished, I know that I chose Sarah's design for the cuff, and Ann's design for the hand.  (But did my own thing for finger and thumb cuffs.)   I'm really pleased with them - while at the same time thinking that lots of the other pairs in the Knit Along turned out even better.  (You can see photos of many of the finished pairs in Ravelry.)  A lot of people reversed the colours for the second mitt, which looks stunning, or chose different options for the two mitts.  The Knit Along was altogether a lot of fun, working through the pattern, and watching what other knitters were doing with the pattern at the same time.

I have also just finished a cabled scarf.  The photos shows it just off the needles - I plan to press it to get the cables to open out a bit.  More on that later.

I used the same yarn for the scarf and the mitts - Wendy Merino 4-ply (fingering weight).  In fact, I used the same blue-green yarn for the mitts as for the scarf, because I miscalculated how much I would need for the scarf and was going to have some left over, and then chose the red (Rose) to go with it.  So now I have matching scarf and mitts.  The blue-green is called Pacific, though it reminds me more of conifers than sea.  It is very nice yarn, very soft, and Pacific is not completely solid, but is a mixture of blues and greens, with occasional surprising flecks of colours like bright emerald green and black.

Now I'm working on some small pieces in Swedish twined knitting for a workshop I'm doing next month - I'll report on progress later.

On the Other Hand (3)

The last instalment of the On the Other Hand Mystery Knit Along was issued last Friday,  Lots of participants have already finished their mitts and posted photos to the Ravelry group, because Ann and Sarah are offering prizes, to be announced at 2 p.m. today.  There are some really beautiful finished pairs - lovely choices of colours, quite a few with different choices of options for the two mitts.  

My mitts aren't quite finished - I still have the thumb cuff to do on one of them.

I changed the pattern a little bit - I did a single corrugated rib for the finger and thumb cuffs, rather than repeating the double corrugated rib. And I wanted the thumbs to be a bit longer, so I have extended the patterning on the thumb gusset for 4 more rows before starting the cuff,

I'm really pleased with my mitts. Even so, the finished projects in the Ravelry group make me want to knit another pair and choose the other options and different colour combinations. But I already need to knit a pair of fingerless mitts for a workshop I am doing in April, and there is probably quite a low limit on the number of fingerless mitts anyone needs. (My daughter has already reached her limit, with the pair I gave her at Christmas, though she tells me that should I feel an irresistible urge to knit more, she has several friends who would be very glad to receive them. But I'm not sure I'm that generous.)

I'll post more photos of the finished mitts when they are completely finished. It's been such a lot of fun taking part in the Knit Along. Several other members of the Thursday knitting group at Spun have been taking part too - a sort of mini Knit Along. I've enjoyed picking the colours, choosing between the different options and guessing which option was designed by Ann and which by Sarah - I saw Ann last night, and she told me that my guesses were correct - they'll show their original samples in the Periscope broadcast, I believe, and also the second pair that each has knitted to the other's design. Hope I can get organised to watch it live.

On the other Hand (2)

It's now week 2 of the On the other Hand Mystery Knit Along, so we have the instructions for the hand part, including the thumb gusset.    I've done the first mitt, as well as the cuff of the second.    

I did Option 2, the stranded knitting option, and it looks really good  (apart from my slightly uneven knitting).  I tried Option 1, but my knitting wasn't turning out very neat, so I switched.  I love the thumb gusset, with the colours reversed.  (And for non-knitters, yes I do know how daft it sounds to say 'I love the thumb gusset'.  I don't care.)  

Not sure how they are going to finish off the thumb - part 3 should give us two options for finishing the mitten, so each option will have to fit with both options for week 2.  We'll find out on Friday. 

I must confess I didn't entirely follow the instructions.  I tried the cuff in the medium size, and decided it was a bit tight, so the cuff is the large size.  But then I decided that a large hand size might be too large, so I switched back to medium.   So large cuff, medium hand.   (Did I test my tension beforehand?  No, I didn't. Partly out of couldn't be bothered, but also I thought that testing my tension on stocking stitch might not be a good guide to my tension on stranded knitting, because I'm not a very good stranded knitter.  And knitting a tension swatch in stranded knitting for a pair of fingerless mitts seems wasted effort - you might as well just get on with it.)

I am quite pleased with myself that I did knit the hand part with one colour in each hand, as you are supposed to.  And it was surprisingly easy to do.   

I'm still not sure that the green and red contrast enough in shade.  I took a photo of the two balls of yarn, before I started knitting, and converted it to black-and-white, as Ann recommends, and they were sufficiently different, I thought.  But then I've taken other photos of my knitting in progress, and sometimes the two colours come out the exact same shade of grey.  I think it depends on the lighting.  Damn.   

But never mind - I'm obviously not going to go back and start again.  I like the two colours together - that's why I chose them of course.  I think the pattern on the palm may not show up very well at any distance, but then that's kind of a secret little pattern for me to admire as I wear them.  And on the plus side, I've made a couple of mistakes, with a green stitch where it should have been red, and v.v., and the mistakes would be much more obvious if there were more contrast.  (I might swiss-darn the mistakes later. Or not.)   

Here's a black and white photo, just to show that the design does show up properly, at least if the light is good. 

     

On the Other hand

We are in the first week of the On the other Hand Mystery Knit Along fingerless mitts, so we are knitting the cuffs.  There is a choice of a corrugated rib cuff, or a corrugated rib  and lice cuff (which at least one person taking part thought was a typo, perhaps for corrugated rib and lace - but no, in Norwegian designs, lice are individual stitches of a contrast colour.)  One of the choices was designed by Ann Kingstone and the other by Sarah Alderson, but we don't know which is which.  (Guessing is allowed, though.)  

I chose the corrugated rib cuff,  I haven't knitted a corrugated rib before, as far as I remember, so that seemed quite adventurous enough for now.    Here's the first cuff:

 

I've just bought some more needles, so that I can knit the second cuff this week too.

The yarn is Wendy Merino 4-ply, in Pacific (a dark blue-green - the main colour) and Rose (a soft red).  I watched Ann's Periscope broadcast, now uploaded to YouTube, on Shade contrast in stranded colourwork knitting, where she says that it's not enough to choose different colours - you also need them to be sufficiently different in shade, otherwise at a distance they won't be distinguishable.  I thought that the green and red I had chosen might not be a good shade contrast, so I followed her suggestion of photographing the balls of yarn and converting the photo to grayscale, so see how different they were.  And in fact the red showed up as much lighter than the green, so I think they will be OK.

I also watched Sarah and Ann's Periscope broadcast introducing the Knit Along.  They talk about our Huddersfield knit-and-natter group, where they came up with the original idea of having a joint knit-along.  The group is called Bitter and Twisted - we named it when we started meeting in a pub, where  there was the possibility that some of us might drink bitter, though I think that in fact none of us do.  (Twisted obviously refers to yarn.)  I remember them discussing various ideas for possible projects - I think that gloves were suggested at one point, but I'm pleased that it's simpler than that.

I intend to have finished both cuffs by Friday, when the next part of the pattern is due to be released.  I expect that both Ann and Sarah's choices will involve stranded colour-work, but that leaves a lot of scope.  It might be difficult to choose....      

Yesterday at Spun

Yesterday being Thursday, I went to my local yarn shop, Spun, for the regular knit-and-natter session.  Lydia has a display of winter knits in the window, including two sweaters from the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  I showed both of them in December at the Guild branch meeting on picture knits (see here).

They work well in the display, because the backs of both are interesting as well as the fronts - the bird tracks across the back of the robin sweater, and 'ICY' on the polar bear one.

(Though I don't really understand why anyone should want to have 'ICY' written across their back.)

Several people at Spun had already signed up to the Mystery Knit ALong that's being run by Sarah Alderson and Ann Kingstone, and were choosing two colours of 4-ply yarn for it in the shop.

The Knit Along is a pair of fingerless mitts - you'll find it on Ravelry if you search for a pattern called On the Other Hand.  There will be three stages, with two choices at each stage, one designed by Ann and one by Sarah, so there are 8 different combinations altogether.  (Or 16 if you make the thumb cuff and the hand cuff different, though personally I wouldn't.  Or 16 x 16 if you knit each mitt independently, though personally I think that would be daft.)

The description of the pattern on Ravelry includes the tags:  cables, corrugated ribbing, slipped stitches, stranded, twisted stitches  -  none of which are an essential part of a fingerless mitts pattern.  So it's going to be complicated.

I signed up for the Knit Along when I got home.  I'm already knitting a scarf in 4-ply in a dark teal colour, and will have some left over, so that's one of my colours.  Not entirely sure yet about the other.  The first instalment of the pattern was due to be released at 11 this morning - haven't looked yet.  Very exciting!
   

Woven stitch mitts

Unlike some writers of knitting blogs, I don't make many knitted Christmas presents. (Too much pressure!)  But this year, I made a pair of fingerless mitts for my daughter - not quite in time for Christmas, but nearly.  Here they are.

I made her a pair a few years ago which she still wears (see here), but she keeps those 'for best' and wanted a pair that she could wear every day and not worry about.  She wanted a very dark purple, and I found just the right colour in Wendy Merino DK, which I use a lot.  It's called Sloe - the colour of sloe gin.

I knitted them in woven stitch, a slip-stitch pattern that does look like woven fabric on the right side. It has a four-row (or four-round) repeat.  If you are knitting in rounds, on an even number of stitches, it goes like this:

Rounds 1 & 3: Knit.
Round 2: (Knit 1, Slip 1 with yarn in front) to end.
Round 4: (Slip 1 with yarn in front, Knit 1) to end.  

It is somewhat similar to linen stitch, though much less dense.

  
The mitts fit well (we kept trying them on as I was knitting) and are reported to be very warm.

Baht 'At Mitts Finished

I have just finished the Baht 'At fingerless mitts from Ann Kingstone's Born & Bred book.  Very timely, as it has turned out - it's snowing and the local weatherman predicts it's going to snow for 50 hours!  (Whereas exactly a year ago, it was unusually warm - 15°C.)

I used the yarn that Ann specified for the mitts - Titus, from Baa Ram Ewe, which is a wool/alpaca mix.  It's named after Sir Titus Salt, who built the village of Saltaire, near Bradford, around his mill.  The story is that he made his fortune from developing ways to spin and weave alpaca, when no-one else in Bradford thought it was worth anything. 

I changed the pattern a bit, by adding a few extra stitches:  I wanted to knit them quite tightly and I've got big hands.  I've also made the thumbs a bit longer.  I'm really pleased with them.  One nice point, that you can't see, is that although the right side of the pattern is very textured, the other side looks almost like stocking stitch.  Because the yarn is slightly fuzzy, the inside of the mitts is smooth and soft - they are lovely to wear.

For a small project, it's taken me a while to finish them. I was only knitting them occasionally, especially on long journeys on public transport, because it was a very portable project.   I did quite a bit on the flight to Portland in February, and on a train to London and back last Saturday. The woolholder I bought on eBay proved invaluable for knitting on a plane - it sat on the tray table, and so there was no risk of the ball of wool falling on the floor and rolling down the aisle.
 

When I finished knitting, I opened the woolholder, and found that the ball of wool looked pretty much the same as when I started.  I have used just 40g. of the original 100g. skein.  So I could knit another three mitts!  But actually, I have plans to use it along with the leftover alpaca from my Color Affection shawl  and from the brioche stitch scarf I made as a Christmas present the year before last.  There are 5 different colours altogether, all 4-ply, and I have some ideas for some kind of stripy cowl or tubular scarf.   Not quite worked out yet.

Mazy Mitts

Now that Christmas Day is past, I can write about a pair of fingerless gloves/mitts that I made for my daughter as a Christmas gift.  I have made her fingerless mitts before, with a single opening for the fingers, even though she asked me for fingerless gloves - I said that knitting four little stumps for the fingers would be far too fiddly.

But then I came across a (free) pattern in Issue 41 (Deep Fall 2012) of Knitty    Phalangees by Jodie Gordon Lucas  allows you to have separate finger openings in fingerless mitts without breaking the yarn.  A brilliant idea, if you ask me.

This is what the finger openings look like.  Essentially, you knit a round that creates the finger openings in a figure of eight fashion, and so joins the front and back of the hand together between the fingers, and then you cast off in a similar way.   (Although I didn't do it in quite the way that the pattern specified.  I also made the finger openings different sizes, as you can probably see from the photo - the second finger opening is a bit bigger than the others and the little finger slightly smaller - in the pattern they are all the same size.)

I did find it very tricky to knit the joining rounds and finish off, I must admit.  It was maybe partly because I was using double pointed needles - I prefer them for knitting small things like mitts, and I didn't have any circular needles of the right size.  The pattern recommends one or two circular needles- that might have been easier though I'm not sure that it would.  At one point I was using a small forest of DPNs (14 of them) to go round the figure of eight curve....

So it was awkward - but not as much work as knitting the fingers separately.  I did the thumb in the conventional way - the method specified in the pattern seemed a bit obscure and required breaking the yarn anyway, so I just did the usual thing. 


The two-colour maze pattern is from Phalangees too, though you could use the technique with any kind of stitch pattern on the palm part of the mitts.  The maze pattern is very striking, though, and I wanted to see how it's done.  It's simple to knit - it looks as though you knit with both colours at the same time, taking the colour not in use across the back of the fabric, but in fact each round is worked with only one colour, using a slip-stitch technique to skip over the stitches that should be in the other colour.


I am really proud of the finished result - I think they look very good and will be very warm.   And they fit, I am glad to say.

Scrumptious gloves

I mentioned quite a while ago that I was knitting a pair of gloves.  It has taken me a long time to finish them - not only the knitting, but also weaving in the ends, of which there are a lot in a pair of gloves, and that's a job I really don't enjoy.  But they are done.  They were made for a friend and I posted them to her this week, so now I can show a photo of them.

       
The yarn is from Fyberspates, a 45% silk, 55% merino mix called Scrumptious (which it is).  It has a beautiful sheen, and the silk makes it very strong, so I hope that they will wear well.  The colour is Water - a lovely grey-blue.

This was the first pair of gloves I had knitted, so I consulted my friend Angharad who knows a lot about knitting gloves (and has a blog on the subject).  For the basic pattern, she lent me Ann Budd's  book The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, which has a chapter on gloves.  The stitch pattern on the hands is based on a brocade pattern in Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns, which she says was used on a knitted silk vest worn by Charles I (on the day of his execution in 1649, but let's not think about that).    I'm very pleased with them - they have turned out well.

Born & Bred

Earlier this week I went to Leeds to see my dentist - I had broken a piece off a tooth.  (Flossing my teeth!!  Although he says that it was undoubtedly cracked already and the floss just dislodged it.  And that I shouldn't stop flossing.  Well, he would, wouldn't he.)  While I was in Leeds, I got a bus to Headingley, with my old person's free bus pass, and went to Baa Ram Ewe to pick up a copy of Ann Kingstone's new book, Born & Bred, that I had ordered.

Born & Bred was launched at Betty's Café in Harrogate last Saturday, during the Knitting & Stitching Show.  The designs in it were inspired by places in Yorkshire, and use yarn from Yorkshire sheep breeds.  Ann has published it herself in partnership with Baa Ram Ewe and it is full of really gorgeous designs.  The photographs are gorgeous, too.


Betty's was the appropriate place for the launch - it is a Yorkshire institution, and one of the designs is a tea-cosy named after it.  Not one I'm going to knit - I have no need for a tea-cosy as I don't drink tea.  But if I wanted a tea-cosy, this would be the one to choose.  (That's a Ripon Morris man in the background, btw.)

I had a preview of most of the designs in the book, because I see Ann regularly at Knit Night (Tuesday evenings in the George Hotel).  I decided quite a while ago which one I'm going to knit first - a pair of fingerless mitts called Baht 'At.  There is a hat to go with it, called (as no one from Yorkshire will be surprised to know) Ilkley Moor. For anyone else:  there is a famous Yorkshire song which begins "On Ilkley Moor Baht 'At".  Baht 'At means "Without a Hat" and the song describes the dreadful things that might happen to anyone who ventures onto Ilkley Moor hatless. 

Baht 'At mitts

The mitts and the hat are designed for Titus yarn, which is a wonderful mixture of Wensleydale and Blue-faced Leicester wool with alpaca.  I have had a skein of the yarn for a couple of weeks now - I explained here that Baa Ram Ewe were going to send me one.  Since it arrived, I have been waiting impatiently for the book to appear - although I really should finish at least one of the projects I am already working on before starting another.

Novel Knits

 

I have not been going much to the Tuesday Knit Night at the George Hotel recently, but I did go the week before last, and found Ann Kingstone and her sister Marie in the bar.   Ann has recently published a book of her designs - her first, though she has published designs in various knitting magazines.  It's called Novel Knits and the designs are inspired by her favourite authors - Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien and J.R. Rowling.  She had a copy of the book with her and I borrowed it to take a look - and then she gave it to me!  So generous.  Ann  is an expert knitter and many of the designs are technically interesting as well as looking good, so it was a lovely gift. 

Pemberley

I think my favourite design from the book is Pemberley, which is intended to evoke the Regency interiors of Pride and Prejudice.  The neck opening has an i-cord edging, which gives a very neat finish - that's one of the techniques that seems to have been developed during the time I wasn't knitting and I have not caught up with it yet.  I must try it.

 

Lanthir Lamath

Some of the designs I had seen before because Ann or Marie were knitting the samples at the George.   One is the cover design, Lanthir Lamath, a hooded scarf.  I wrote about it in a previous post,   A Knitting Puzzle,  when Ann and Marie were both knitting it - Ann was running a knit-along and posting the instructions in weekly instalments via her web site, and Marie was testing the instructions to see if they made sense.

There are also smaller items - socks and fingerless mittens - as well as shawls. I might try one of the pairs of fingerless mittens first - they are extremely pretty. And there is another book to come - Ann was knitting a sample for her second book, and plans to get all the samples knitted by the end of March.  I look forward to seeing that one too - judging by the jumper she was knitting it will be full of really original ideas, again.     

You can find more details of Novel Knits (and buy it)  from Ann's web site.  All the photos in this post are taken from there, with Ann's permission.    

World War I Knitted Comforts

Knitted Comforts for Men on Land and Sea

Here is another pattern booklet from the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection at Lee Mills, Beehive Booklet No. 17.  Knitting "comforts" for the troops was common during the First World War.  Richard Rutt, in his book A History of Hand Knitting says: "The First World War stimulated British knitting to the point where it was regarded as as a national mania".  It was helpful for the women at home to feel that they were doing something, however minor, for the men fighting in the trenches and at sea.

This booklet has a collection of patterns, mostly devised by Marjory Tillotson, who was the chief designer for Baldwin's.  (Baldwin's merged with Paton's in 1920.)  Her career is outlined in Richard Rutt's book. It was unusual then, and for decades afterwards, for the designers of knitting patterns to be identified, but in this case her full name is given with the first pattern, and most of the others have her initials at the end.

The booklet is in rather poor condition, unfortunately - all the pages have become separated and two are missing.  But the surviving pages include patterns for a "Plain helmet (or Balaclava cap)", a sleeping cap, bedsocks, several kinds of sock, a seaman's jersey and a "Coat Sweater (or Cardigan)". The Crimean War terms (balaclava, cardigan) were presumably not widely recognised at that time, and so could not be used by themselves without further explanation. 

Stout steering gloves

There are also mittens (actually what we would call fingerless mittens) and two thicknesses of "steering gloves", which we would call mittens, with little diagrams giving detailed measurements.  There is a note saying that "The original garments have been approved by the R.N.M.D.S.F. - to whom the publishers are indebted for the use of several illustrations giving the Standard Measurements."   I asked Google about the R.N.M.D.S.F., without much hope of finding anything, but in fact the organisation still exists - the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.  Their web site notes that much of the mine-sweeping work in both world wars was carried out by the fishermen and their vessels, and indeed the "Knitted Comforts" booklet says that the garments will be of great use for men engaged in mine-sweeping.

I especially like the illustration on the front, of the intended recipients (a Royal Navy sailor, a fisherman, a soldier) chatting on the quay.  Though the soldier does look surprisingly like Stalin.

Christmas Presents

Now that Christmas Day is past, I can write about the things I made as surprise presents.  I sent my daughter and her girlfriend a pair of mitts each.  They are in Oregon, so we spoke to them via Skype on Christmas Day (evening here, before breakfast there).  We have webcams at both ends, so I could take a snapshot of them wearing their mitts. 

One is a pair of convertible mitts, with a button-down top, in merino DK.

 The other is a pair of fingerless mitts in Manos del Uruguay merino/silk DK. The pattern is Nalu, which is free on Ravelry.   I love the way that three stitches break away from the wrist rib, skid across the back of the mitt, and then end up soberly as part of the top rib again.

Both very successful, I think.

I asked J for something knitty for Christmas, but he said he wouldn't know what to choose, so I bought some yarn, put it in a gift bag and showed him on Christmas Day what he was giving me.  Who says romance is dead?  Apparently, I gave him a 4-volume regimental history of the 7th Hussars.  

The yarn is Rowan Felted Tweed DK in Grey Mist.  I already had one ball in a soft green (Herb?) that I acquired two years ago when two Rowan people gave a talk on the company at the local Oxfam shop.  They handed out pairs of knitting needles with a ball of yarn and 20 stitches cast on, so that we could knit while listening.  They retrieved the needles at the end of the session, but we got to keep the yarn, and the perfectly pointless piece of knitting.  It is very nice yarn and good to knit with, so I have been looking for a use for one ball of Felted Tweed ever since.  (They also had a wicker basket full of odd balls of Rowan yarn that we were invited to help ourselves from, so I am looking for a use for several other single balls of lovely yarn, too.)

Louisa Harding's Old Moor jumper

When I saw Louisa Harding's Little Cake  book, I liked many of the patterns and thought immediately that the Old Moor pattern would be suitable for my odd ball of Felted Tweed. It is designed for Willow Tweed,  which is also DK, so I think the pattern will be adaptable, and it uses one ball of a second colour.  So that will be my next project.