My Little Angel

We are still celebrating Christmas here and am trying to enjoy the season as much as possible.  A family medical emergency made it difficult to really celebrate much this year but things have calmed down and we enjoyed a little day of treats and shopping after Christmas and this little Angel was there waiting for us.  I understood more why I liked her so much when I brought her home and realized she matched my tea cups perfectly!  I like her hand painted face very much, and they way she looks so angelic with the light filling up her dress.  I believe in angels.  I know that sounds a little funny but we’ve had a guardian angel move in mysterious ways through our lives more than once.  Its a comforting feeling when the world feels so topsy turvvy these days.  I’ve known other people who had to go through the holidays with something very sad moving through their life and I guess this year was the year for it to happen to us.  Its a very difficult thing to experience.  I have been spending alot of time quietly knitting, and letting these emotions pass through me.  Some nice things brightened up my life over the holidays that were a very special treat, making new friends through this blog, finding new creative outlets, and remembering what we have to be so thankful for.  Now I am thinking just a bit about New Years Resolutions.  Last year I decided that I would teach myself how to knit in two colors and I’m pretty happy with my progress so far but there are so many technical things to learn still.  In some ways it felt like moving to a new city, looking for new places to shop, new friends to help you, new places to discover and explore.  This has definitely been a very interesting, fun, and exciting journey.  I hope next year I will have a finished sweater to show you.  Because I started a new job this summer I’ve been super busy so I’ve enjoyed working on little projects mostly, in the evenings, during my lunch breaks, and on the week-ends.  I have been trying to collect patterns for little things that I can carry around in my bag with a few balls of yarn and needles, things that do not require alot of intense concentration, so when I found this ski headband from Bea Ellis through another blogger, I was thrilled to have a go at it for my son.  The yarn I used for the outside in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, and the lining was made out of cotton in a lighter weight yarn.  My impressions of the DK, well, it was very soft, but it didn’t have the same solid feeling of the baby cashmerino.   I am still waiting for my Christmas gift to myself to arrive in the mail if you can believe that.  I ordered it through Amazon on Dec. 6th, it stayed in Illinois for three weeks, finally found its way into California and it seems to be bopping around from one place to the next, came home today, found a pink slip in my mailbox, and apparantly now it is in the postoffice until after New Years!  So close…oh the agony!  This is what I hope to make this year after it comes in the mail and I spend some time studying, researching, swatching, etc.  I didn’t think these older patterns could be brought back to life but Marina has proven to me that you can!  To get myself into tip top marathon shape, I am excercising my skills on Eunny’s Ivy League Vest.  I was pretty happy with this Harrisville New England Shetland wool so I’ve got my fingers crossed this might be just the combination I have been looking for. 

Norwegian Christmas from Marie Claire Idees

This post is especially for Suzi in Germany for sprinkling my world with so many well wishes to bring in the New Year!  Teenage son and I took long trek to La Jolla for some Felted Tweed to make the vest below and plopped ourselves down for a cup of hot cocoa after four hours of driving and oh, what a treat, we found Marie Claire Idees’s Christmas edition.  I know how hard this magazine is to find here so I hope the editors don’t mind so much if I share a little Marie Claire crafty goodness online with visitors who love colorwork knitting.  THIS was the magazine that got me hooked on Fair Isle and Norwegian knitting and every once in awhile their Christmas edition goes all out with Scandinavian for the holidays.  In addition to this woman’s cardigan, there is also a pattern for a child’s cardgian to match (the little girl also has a matching hat and scarf with pockets for gloves.)  But my favorite of all is this incredible charcoal gray and cream white afghan, made with Norwegian motifs.  I was so excited to see how they put it together, with the squares not lining up perfect side by side.  There is much more forgiveness in this design if all your squares don’t turn out to be the same size.  Another big plus, the alternating squares are based on textured patterns, which helps keep things interesting with the whole world of cables wide open to experiment with.  I saw a simliar idea in the book Indigo Knits (for a beach blanket made in indigo yarn (blue and white with alternating squares made up of stripes, and solid textures…) that gave me the encouragement to keep working towards the finish line with another colorwork afghan I started several years ago, also from a pattern in the Christmas edition of Marie Claire Idees (red and white photo below). 

If you’d like to give this a try, you don’t really need a pattern, just find any fairly large size knitting motif or make your own and surround it with a few plain color rows, then join together as you like.  Purling in two colors is not difficult at all, and its exciting to finish each square relatively quickly, and then on to the next fun new one to try out.

There are so many other incredible Christmas inspired craft ideas inside this issue, it was one of the better Christmas editions I’ve seen in the past few years.  If you are able to find a copy in your local bookstore, I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it and get the chance to read through it all!  I for one will be carrying this around with me all week-end just drinking in all its lovely goodness.

Its here, its here!

Look what arrived in the mail today!  Traditional Knitting from the Scottish and Irish Isles by Debbie Bliss.  Santa placed an order for this way back on December 6th and it finally arrived!  I first read about this book at Wendy’s Knits and had it on my wish list at Amazon for over a year.  Unlike what I thought, many of the sweaters are not knit in flat rows, but rather in the round up to the underarms, nice!  The variety of sweaters is tremendous, and sizes for the whole family.  The yarn used was Jamieson and Smith (US size 2 needles), mostly in neutral/natural and autumn shades, with a few designs in primary colors.  The women’s sweaters are very feminine, no masculine unisex type sweaters here, true to form for Debbie Bliss today.  Even though this book was published in 1991, there are no tell tale signs of the 80’s in any of the designs.  The colorwork charts are all in black and white, colors designated by symbols, and all the patterns are true to the XO patterning but not literally X’s and O’s, beautiful snowflake, sunflower, starburst, and other designs with bands of color running through in graduated shades.  This book was much less expensive than an out of print Alice Starmore book, but equally if not more spectacular.  Another nice little treat and fun discovery was finding Tasha Tudor’s Old Fashioned Gifts at an antique shop the day after Christmas which had color work patterns for Norwegian style mittens and slippers.  I have Tasha Tudor’s crafts but nothing in it included any colorwork knitting patterns at’all, these were especially pretty and it was so nice to have the beautiful illustrations on the pages with the patterns.  It was a first edition 1979 copy but pretty stained on the cover so I picked it up for a really great price.  Now I need to make a pretty cover for it to match the beautiful illustrations on the inside.  What a treat to have a craft book with these incredible illustrations!  There are lots of recipes inside too for things like peppermint patties, almond brittle, taffy, candied apples, and hot cross buns.  All of the crafts are focused on the holidays, things like a paper valentine mobile, and a cornucopia for Thanksgiving.  Very charming gifts for children included a child’s pinafore, cloth book, and a hat box for dolls and their tea party accessories.

New and Wonderful Fair Isle Vest Patterns

Eunny’s Ivy League Vest gave me the perfect excuse to give this New England Shetland wool a try.  I had been wanting to see if there was another alternative to Jamieson’s of Shetland and Jamieson and Smith.  It really bothered me that both yarns would have sections that would thin out.  This yarn doesn’t have that problem at all, it is very texturally consistent.  The colors Eunny chose are very soft matte colors, almost looking faded, and very nice for achieving a vintage appearance from the beginning.  She was very clever in her use of colors, with three lights and neutral brown, you could substitute the two blues for any two colors you like, but I happen to be a very big fan of navy blue and turquise ever since I saw them paired together in an eye shadow set by Christian Dior; the gal behind the makeup counter told me they were signature colors for them…who knew?  I just liked the colors!  (Before I started this obsession with Fair Isle knitting I had a very big obsession with eye shadow colors….as it turns out, its a little more affordable knitting!). I enjoyed every bit of working the corrugated ribbing, went right along my merry way up the sweater for about an inch until I realized, this pattern calls for decreases in pattern, not at the edge, but evenly spaced around the circumference, and, not on a plain color row.  I violated my golden rule to never start a pattern until I had read through all the directions and now I’m stuck!  I do not know how to accomplish this feat unless I revise the pattern and insert plain color rows and make my decreases on those rows (do I dare say that I am about to embark upon improvisational knitting? Me, the lover of all things structured and ordered?  Would Elizabeth Zimmerman be proud?)  While I’m stuck and sitting on the fence about all of this, I am thinking of another vest, from the new Rowan magazine, and this time I read through all the directions and there is no decreases except at the end of the rows.  (Look how pretty it looks on Delana, all finished, and just beautiful!)  This is one of those patterns where you want to hold on to it forever, because:

 a) its classic, traditional, sporty, but also feminine and timeless, b) it doesn’t take alot of yarn so its comparatively affordable as compared to a sweater, c) it takes less time to knit than a sweater without sleeves, d) the Rowan felted tweed performs beautifully in Fair Isle knitting and its relatively soft as compared to the Jamieson yarns and the Harrisville New England Shetland, and e) its something that even us warm weather knitters can wear alot when our winters only get as chilly as the 50’s (F).  In case you want to do your own Google searching to see other photos, the vest is called “Fyne Vest” and the pattern is found in Rowan Magazine #42.  Either way, if you decide to make one of these, keep in mind, Eunny’s vest is knit in the round and the Rowan pattern is based on flat rows, something for everyone in both camps

Peppermint Dreams

This little confection was to be my little treat for the day on Christmas in between baking sugar cookies and cupcakes with pink icing.  The yarn never arrived in time so I improvised and made another hat instead.  At first I tried to duplicate the plaid but I hadn’t realized I needed double rows of each color to make them stand out as checks so I winged it for the rest of the way up to the top.  The snowflake pattern came from the book, “1000 Great Knitting Motifs.”  I also wanted to experiment with beads after I saw them in Special Knits by Debbie Bliss (next photo).  I found directions for knitting with beads in the Knitter’s Bible but they didn’t want to cooperate and go exactly where I wanted them.  After looking more carefully at the photo of Debbie’s sweater, I realized they must have been hand sewn on with needle and thread!  Oh well, another experiment tried, another lesson learned!  When the Debbie Bliss DK finally came in, the pink was all wrong, a funny purplie pink kind of color, maybe you could go so far as to call it dusty rose, which looks very pretty next to robin’s egg blue, but not quite the peppermint candy cane kind of pink I was hoping for, so I’ve given up on making this makeup bag from Holiday Knits for now but I’ll have my eyes out for just the right colors until I have my “ah hah” moment and find them.  Then my fingers will be itchy to give this a try again.  I like the plaid so much and the more I worked on it the more I realized it is ever so Scottish.  I’ve been in love with pink and red ever since I subscribed to French and Italian TV through international sattelite programming (when my son was taking High School French after we returned from a trip to France) and I saw a gal from Italy wear this incredible red dress with a pink sweater.  I didn’t know you could combine pink and red and have it look that pretty together.  After that I painted all my kitchen cupboards in pink and red and I’ve been obsessing over pink and red kitchen gadgets and dishes and…..well, you get the picture.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I’ve always dreaded and resented having to dress in navy, gray, and black for work all the time when I really want to be pink!  And the cookies, well, we baked and I’m sorry to say we ate them all before we got around to taking a photo.  The recipe for the sugar cookies we made this year came from “Pretty Party Cakes” and oh my goodness they were good, with fresh squeezed lemon juice in the icing and lemon zest in the dough, fabulous!  We made little gingermen and dressed with in robin’s egg blue icing.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

To keep you inspired over the holidays, here are a few Christmas craft discoveries I found this year that were my favorites:

Roses for Christmas (Beata, I know you’ll love this one!)

Sugarplum Pullover by Mari.

Meg’s Stocking for Eli

11th Hour Christmas Stockings by MaryJane

Christmas Market Goodness from Leena in Finland

Monterey Christmas Stocking by Knitting Musician

Fair Isle Christmas Ball by Moth Heaven

And of course, some old favorites:

Korknisse  and the Mini Stocking Pattern from Little Cotton Rabbits

Most of all, I hope everyone found peace and love on Christmas Day.  Best Christmas Gift this year (to self):  Mason-Dixon Knitting !  Thanks to Moth Heaven for turning me on to this great book and blog!  Loads of laughs and pretty patterns too!

Yarn Poop and Other Christmas Tales

I’m still laughing from the cute little post at Moth Heaven and am wondering if I’ll ever become a stash-a-holic with yarn poop coming out of the back of my car!  Mostly my stash is filled with misguided efforts from not knowing any better and hoping that my mistakes will be used up as mittens and scarves over the years.  Went to bed last night with some unwelcome news from a dear friend who is now in the hospital so the smile it brought was especially needed :-)  On to happier thoughts, I finished another UFO, and I’m happy to say, I think its the nicest ‘felted’ project I’ve ever made.  It took me 5 mistakes to realize, wash lightly, briefly, ever so gently (all the books I read said throw in a towel, wash it vigorously with jeans etc.etc. which I cannot recommend….definitely less is more:-); “lightly felted” gave me the nicest results….with some stitch definition left and just a nice soft appearance on the surface.  I also loved how this rough coarse Noro Kureyon turned into something soft and cuddly after felting.  I decided to show the bag handles first because the colors were just so pretty.  I used the pattern from the book Handknit Holidays and was inspired to pick this color from Sally Melville’s book where she used the same for her “kiss tote bag” but she used brown instead of the white I used here for the contrasting color.  I wasn’t sure when I first started knitting if the contrast would be enough but sure enough it was with the darker colors, a little less so for the lighter greens but I liked that effect, with one repeat showing up on top very clearly and the next one below that not so pronounced.  I also love color of the Noro Kureyon; very similiar to Koigu in the sense that it graduates from one color to the next, no abrupt changes in color, so it mirrors color from nature exactly and gives everything a water color finish, so perfect for Fair Isle!  Making the bottom of the bag was a lot of fun too; I wasn’t sure if the bottom would stay flat…I did end up with a very flat bottom but there is nothing to keep it flat if I put things inside so you either need to put something inside like a small round piece of cardboard to use as a handbag, or as a present/gift bag, you would definitely need to put an object inside with a flat bottom that fills up the space as if the bag was doing double time as wrapping paper (like the photo in the book).  Now that I’ve posted the photo, my eyes are sort of doing a double take, because every time I look at this, it keeps reminding me of a starfish in the sand.   I also thought I would post some photos of what the finished bag looked like before felting so anyone that hasn’t done this before can see.  I always wished those pattern books would include a before and after and it helped me tremendously seeing them online from other knitters.  Because the Kureyon is like homespun yarn it goes from thick to thin so the felting helped even things up and give it a much smoother appearance.  After felting the top stopped curling, the sides smoothed out, and the colors blended together more.  There was a lot of fuzz that had to be shaved off after felting but I didn’t capture a photo of that stage.  I just used the cheapest men’s hair shaver I could find at Target, I think it was something like $17.00 - a good investment if you plan to felt alot.  This past month my mailbox was flooded with JoAnn’s 40% off coupons and never found the time to make it over there and finally yesterday I went thinking all the good stuff would be gone but was so excited to see Nicky Epstein’s Knitting Never Felt Better still on the shelf so I splurged with my coupon and now I’m really happy because I’m thinking felting is a nice thing to do afterall, once I found some success with it.  There are directions inside for some pretty braided handles that makes me want to create a whole bag for just so I can carry it around with those handles, they are too cute.  I had my eye out on that book ever since I saw it but I was so discouraged with my previous felting attempts, I thought I had given up on it for good.  One of the knitting stores I visited in San Francisco had a scarf on display based on one of the techniques in the book where she uses marbles to give flat knitting some texture and it was very, very pretty, much more so seeing it in real life as opposed to the pictures in the book.  One more day until Christmas and I have one UFO left, a Fair Isle Christmas stocking….will I finish?  Just the toe left (on size 0 needles)….I’ll have to pull out all the Christmas movies and speed knit through all of them….I wonder how many other knitters are out there with flying fingers rushing to the finish line? 

Tickle Mine Pink

Another Debbie Bliss Fair Isle “swirly goodness” to borrow from Pink Berry, I haven’t had this much fun with pink since I was a little girl.  Thank you Beata for all your inspiration! Same pattern as below, but this time I took Mary Jane’s advice and left my peerie fix between the snowflakes out and sure enough all was well after blocking, no funny ripples.  I trapped the unused color behind every stitch and I think that helped a bit too.  I tried to capture the colors from the little girl’s cardigan from Family Knits but I’m not sure if that pink in the background is still available.  (Laughing Hens recommended 601, which I had, and went with, but, you can see, the colors are not the same.) Perhaps 601 was the closest substitute, and indeed, its fine, perfectly acceptable, but not the same….and so it goes with Fair Isle knitting.  The colors were not listed by number for the pattern, so god and perhaps Debbie herself only knows what that color was.  I suspect they made the model with older discontinued yarn, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong if anyone has any clues for me.  I’ve made six of these hats now, enjoying swatching the colors out and seeing the pattern come alive.  I also made this hat to see if it would be something I’d enjoy making for an entire cardigan because I fell in love with the little girl sweater, but its just not quite the same loveliness without the right background pink that you see in the photo for the little girl’s cardigan.  Perhaps one day I’ll figure out what that color was!  If anyone happens to know I’d love to get your thoughts.  I have lots more ideas for various color combinations but I am loosing the motivation to make more hats, have no desire to work on mittens with dpn’s, would love to make a scarf but have no fair isle pattern for size 3 needles (any ideas anyone?).  I am thinking that I should just make my own and use moss stitch to prevent the sides and edge from curling but I’m too chicken to risk failure (i have alot of those!).  I ordered some yarn for the holiday week-end to make a cute little makeup purse (Holiday Knits) in candycane white, pink and red in Debbie Bliss cashmerino DK but it looks like it won’t arrive in time until the New Year’s week-end.  A little anticlimactic but nonetheless hopefully it will still feel like the right thing to work on for next week-end. 

Knitting Classic Style

Is everybody almost finished with their Christmas shopping?  One more day of work left and I’ll be so happy to have the long holiday week-end!  Another stress induced lunch trip to my local bookstore led to a discovery that brought the spirit of Christmas back into my heart, this beautiful collection of classic sweater patterns including my favorite, this cashmere twinset from Knitting Classic Style by Veronik Avery (2007, Stewart, Tabori & Chang).  Also inside are three colorwork patterns, a traditional Norwegian pullover sweater (photo below), a Fair Isle cardigan (Brittish style with small peerie rows but made in Shetland wool) and a Lopi/Icelandic yoke cardigan inspired by Mary Maxim (first mention for me) circa 1950s (reminds me of the intarsia patterns of the 80’s by Annabelle Fox) - seriously, its gorgeous and would knit up very fast!  (Lopi is very scratchy so warm weather knitters might want to find a yarn substitute.)  There is also a pattern for fingerless Latvian mittens with a nice pattern with lots of step by step instructions made out of Reynolds Whiskey; beaded wrist warmers (reminds me of Arnhild’s Knitting Studio) with very elegant black yarn and black purl beads (very fun to learn how to knit with beads and easy too); and some “bicycle socks” with colorwork around the top part of the sock (makes you want to pick up those dpn’s again!)  The cardigan pattern is based on knitting in the round with steeks; the Norwegian pattern is knit in the round up to the underarm with beautiful set in sleeves “for a good fit” ie. no dropped shoulder.  I wish I had time to post photos of all of them, Amazon has not done justice to this book in providing photos and descriptions, but I hope that if you read this you’ll keep your eyes out for it in the store and take a peak to see the wonderful patterns inside.  This is the nicest collection of very classic, sophisticated, elegant sweater patterns I’ve ever seen.  The twinset will definitely be next in the que (good inspiration to finish whats on the needles!)  Before I sign off, here is a link to another colorwork knitter/blogger (Moth Heaven) that I spotted this morning for the first time, loaded with incredible colorwork photos and lots of fun stories.  I’ve also added the link to my link list below.  If you’ve read this far, another big surprise is waiting for you too if this will be your first time visit, a link to this incredible blog, Riihivilla, that I found through Moth Heaven, hurray!

Vintage Christmas Fair Isle

I’m curious as to what images are envoked for you when you first take a look at the colors in this hat?  I feel as if it would look right at home in a different place and era, circa 1950’s, with a matching ski sweater and bright red scarf (in my dreams).  My hands are really starting to feel over worked, my 5th hat in about as many weeks.  My snowflakes on this one helped me survive the company Christmas party, so there is a bit of tension problem in a few of them.  Most of the colors were very close to the Debbie Bliss cardigan including the design from the Vogue Knitting Dec. 2007 issue.  I’m still trying to get used to the putty gray in the background.  But I really liked the teal and red together, and the pink, white and red together as well.  I don’t have alot to say about this one, its very sporty and rustic compared to the ones below.  I’m not sure if I would have been happy making a whole cardigan with this combination of colors, but it was very exciting to see how these very different colors sat side by side with one another to bring this design to life. 

I still have lots of ideas for swatching this same design but I think for the next one I’ll settle for just a ski headband instead, casting on and then launching straight into the colorwork without the ribbing, then binding off after the snowflake section is complete and will see how that goes. 

I wore it for a test drive on a bikeride at the beach and it was very soft and warm, keeping my ears nice and warm as the cold air whipped across them so I’m calling this my bike riding hat :-)  Its in the 50’s finally during the afternoon, pretty chilly for Southern California, so its a nice time to be knitting, with a real sense of purpose as well.