Tweedy Hawthorne

Tags

crescent shawl, scarf, shawl, tweed, twist collective

A couple of Christmases ago my friend Kristen gifted me two skeins of a very pretty purple tweed that she got on her trip to Ireland. It took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with it, but eventually I came to the realization that it was meant to be a Hawthorne. Hawthorne is a gorgeous shawl pattern from twist collective that has a shallow semi-circular shape and just looks so cozy with lace and garter stitch. Both the pattern and the yarn had been percolating around my head for a while with me not quite sure what to do with either until one day it all came together and I realized my Irish Donegal tweed was perfect for this lovely pattern.

This shawl has an interesting construction – you cast on at the lace edge, work the lace section and then use short rows to create the semicircular shape. The pattern is very well written and easy to follow, but, through no fault of the pattern, it gave me tons of trouble because I didn’t have quite enough yarn to complete the garter stitch section as written, but I wanted to use every bit of it – which means I reknitted that section, like, five times to try to get a combination that gave me enough yarn to finish, but still had the deepest garter stitch section possible. I literally had no yarn left over! After casting off, I had maybe one and a half inches to weave in!

I love this shawl, it is so cozy and the yarn softened up quite a bit after blocking. The different construction of the shawl was really fun – this was my first of the new super popular crescent shaped shawls. I really love the shape and I think it is ideal for casually looping around your neck a couple of times. Very, very pretty. Thanks for the yarn Kristen!

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Honeycombs and Horseshoes

Tags

hat, rowan, scarf, snow

We’ve had a couple of snow days here in Oklahoma (although whoever invented remote desktop connection really killed the whole ‘snow day’ fun for me), so Hugo and I have been hunkering down (like the rest of the country, right?). Oh look, here he is enjoying the snow!

At least I can combat the cabin fever a bit by telling you all about my latest project, which I am completely in love with. You see, Sasha is having to face some pretty cold temperatures when he’s in Boston and he doesn’t have a matching hat and scarf set in the charcoal gray family (one of my favorite color families)! I haven’t made anything for him in a while, so I wanted to make him something really nice. We went to a couple of shops to find the perfect yarn and finally settled on Rowan Felted Tweed Aran in soot. After looking around at hat patterns for a while I remembered this scarf knitted by Brooklyn Tweed a year ago.

Once I had this pattern in my head, I couldn’t find anything else that appealed – luckily Sasha really liked the pattern as well! I started knitting the scarf to see if I could get the cables right, then once I had the pattern established I started working on the hat.

I love how the pattern looks in the Felted Tweed, and it’s really soft and warm. Sasha’s been wearing the hat for a couple of weeks so far without any complaints, and I just finished up the scarf, so we’ll see how that works for him. The hat required a little more than 1 ball of yarn, and then I ended up using 6 balls (+what was left over from the 2nd ball for the hat) for the scarf. The scarf is really long – like, 6 foot 6 inches, which is good since Sasha is tall. I used my blocking wires to get perfectly straight edges, and to even out the puckering of the seed-stitch borders.

Brooklyn Tweed’s original scarf was based on Beth Walker-O’Brien’s Aran Cashmere Scarf from Simple 1-2-3 Knitting. I don’t have the original pattern, but was able to create something close enough to satisfy myself (and Sasha). Oh, and for my non-knitter readers (mom), the title refers to the honeycomb and horseshoe cables in the pattern. :)

So handsome.

Noro, Noro, Everywhere

Tags

cowl, madelinetosh, noro, scarf

I did forget to mention one Christmas knit that I completed well ahead of time – a Noro striped scarf for my grandma. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of this one before it was gifted, but I can show you pretty much what it looked like with this picture of a matching scarf that I made for myself. (Hmm, I’m starting to see a pattern to my gifting – one for you, one for me . . .) I used Brooklyn Tweed’s basic Noro striped scarf pattern, casting on 39 sts, working 1×1 rib and slipping the first and last stitch of every other row until the yarn is used up. For my scarf I used colorways #244 and #279, and I love how they look together.  So fall-ish; I feel like I’m wrapped up in an apple orchard when I’m wearing it. (Too much? Oh well.)

I guess I’m on a Noro-roll these days because I’ve also knit myself a cowl. While in Chicago for the holidays, Sasha’s mom and I visited many yarn shops (yay!) and at an especially nice one called Mosaic Yarn Studio we both fell in love with Noro Kogarashi (which was a new yarn to me!). The shop had a cowl knitted up in one of the colorways (#7), and I liked it so much (and it was obvious that I liked it so much) that Sasha’s mom bought me a skein so I could have my very own. And now I do! I cast on 80 stitches, worked an inch of 2×2 rib, knit until I only had one color change left, then worked another inch of 2×2 rib.

And while on the topic of awesome acquisitions made in Chicago, we went to a great store downtown called Loopy Yarns and I got my first hank of Madelinetosh Lace in Baltic – it’s gorgeous, and very different from anything else I’ve got in my stash. I can’t wait to use it! Any pattern suggestions?

Here’s one final photo of the new Noro scarf joining part of the handknit scarf/shawl/cowl family by the door.

A Sabbatical from Sabbatical: Mobius

Tags

mobius, scarf, three irish girls

(brief pause here where I laugh at my own joke, which is actually not a joke at all, but a perfect summary of the content of this post)

At the beginning of last week I took a two day (work-related) trip, which was great timing knitting wise because I needed a little break from Sabbatical (get it? sabbatical from Sabbatical?  ha!)  I’m loving how the sweater is turning out, and my speed has definitely increased now that I’m more used to the lace pattern, but it’s still a little bit slow and I wanted to knit something fast!

I’ve had one hank of Three Irish Girls Kells Sport Merino almost since the moment I voted in the Dye for Glory competition on Ravelry and fell in love with the Estuary colorway (scroll through this post for all of Three Irish Girls Dye for Glory colorways – gorgeous!) (I might mention that I also fell in love with the Georgia Peach colorway and ended up with two hanks of Adorn Sock in it).  I’ve been at a little bit of a loss for what I wanted to do with this single hank of Kells Sport – I only knew that I wanted it to be made into something that would reside around my neck!

Enter Cat Bordhi’s Moebius cast on.  I realized that a simple garter stitch mobius – blocked to a really loose fabric so that it would drape nicely – would be the perfect fit for my Estuary yarn.  I decided to double the yarn to get a thicker fabric and sort of mix up the colors.  For my mobius, I cast on 150 sts (which in the moebius cast on means you really have 300 sts), and alternated knit and purl rounds until the yarn was gone!  When I finally cast off, the loop seemed really tiny, but after aggressive blocking it came out almost exactly as I imagined it!  I think doubling the yarn and stretching the garter stitch gives the impression of a more complicated stitch pattern than I actually worked.

Cat’s Moebius cast on tutorial is wonderful, and made the kind of mind boggling process completely understandable!  So, in summary – love the cast on, love the yarn, love the finished product!

Leafy McLeafleaf (or, Portland)

Tags

alpaca, scarf, shibui, travel

Since I was traveling last week, I had to bring along a small project to work on the plane ride(s) and in-between visiting with family and friends. Owing to my nature (as a last minute packer), I didn’t really plan ahead and had to comb through the stash and Ravelry to find an appropriate project the night before departure. I came across this adorable pattern – Saroyan by Liz Abinante. As I mentioned before, I decided to knit up this little scarf in my Peacock ShibuiKnits Baby Alpaca which was acquired while in Portland for E’s wedding.

I think this pattern is really very pretty and that it looks especially nice in a slightly variegated green yarn.  The leaf repeat is fairly easy to memorize after working a few, and I love patterns where I can complete little milestones along the way (one leaf, two leaf, three leaf . . . ).  I decided that I wanted to make a really long scarf using all of my yarn, and that I wanted to make the transition between the increasing/decreasing sections and the straight section more gradual.  The details: I worked 7 repeats of the increase section as instructed in the pattern and then one repeat increasing only on the first, seventh and thirteenth rows. I worked straight for 20 leaf repeats and then mirrored my increase section for the decrease section.  The only other minor change was to not work the “stem” on the final leaf.  My lovely scarf ended up being a little over 8 feet long and I only had a tiny bit of yarn left over.

After being knit, my leaves looked quite wilted and wanted to curl up and disappear.  The rest of the scarf was also curling (what can you expect from stockinette after all), so I decided to use a damp washcloth and iron the thing!  I got wonderful flat results, with perfectly planar leaves and lovely regular stitches.

While I was knitting away on this project, Sasha’s mom decided she liked the pattern and started on her own.  She was wanting more of a shawl and decided to increase more for a wider straight section and also work short rows at the shoulder so that the scarf/shawl/stole? would lay nicely.  So there you have it – from the same pattern a long, gradually widening scarf and a wide shawl with shoulder shaping.  I love all of the different ways different knitters can use the same pattern!  Oh, and did I mention that the pattern is one in a series based on one of my favorite shows, Bones?  Perfect!

Malabrigo Flowers Scarf

Tags

knitting, malabrigo merino worsted, scarf, star stitch

I love Malabrigo, and after knitting Ryan’s Malabrigo Koolhaas and Koolhaas mitts, I had to have something for myself. I saw a beautiful stitch pattern on a scarf at the Gourmet Yarn Co, and they were kind enough to give me the pattern. The stitch is called star stitch, and in a lightweight yarn like the one used at GYC, it really does look like a star. I wanted to see how it knit up in a heavier yarn, and Malabrigo was just the ticket. I actually think the repeats look more like a flower in the heavier yarn, and I just love how the color variations look with the stitch pattern.

I used Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Emerald. (I think this may be my favorite colorway!) The scarf was relatively simple, although I recommend knitting loosely if you don’t want to really hate the p3tog’s in the star stitch.

Bitten

Tags

knitting, noro, rib, scarf, silk garden, stripes

I’ve been bitten by the Noro Striped Scarf bug!  I knew that I would make one soon, and when silk garden went on sale at L&B it just felt like the right time.  I chose the colorways 8 and 292, mostly because I was in love with 8 and felt that 292 was the best way to incorporate some pink.

E and I arrived at L&B around 2:00 pm.  We spent quite a bit of time there, so I’m estimating that I left with the yarn around 3:00 pm.

By the next morning, I was weaving in the ends.  It would be safe to say that I quickly became obssessed with finding out what the next color combination would look like – so much so that I was finished before I knew it.  I really enjoyed knitting this, and will probably make another.  Not for a while though, and I think next time I will peruse the finished projects for my next favorite color combination.

Pattern: Noro Striped Scarf

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, #8 and #292

Cast on 39 stitches, worked k1p1 rib with 2 row stripes.  Slipped the first and last stitch of every second row purlwise.