The Nile - a bit of a review

I've been knitting for some time on one of the patterns from this year's Jane Austin Knits from Interweave... you can see how I love these editions by how well-thumbed my magazine is. There are usually several patterns I want to make and I find them very satisfying for my vintage-loving heart. My well-worn mag:


 
One of my local yarn shops has been holding a Jane Austin Knit Night throughout the summer and each person is knitting a pattern from either the first or second Jane Austin magazine, or the newer Jane Austin crochet book, Austentatious Crochet.


The pattern I chose is Margaret Dashwood's Shawl by Joanna Johnson. As you can see from the pictures, it is a repetitive and soothing knit - just what I was longing for! This shawl is a brilliant wisp of simple garter stitch and lace knitting with true vintage construction, style, and appearance. I love it beyond reason and want to make more, experimenting with different yarn weights and needle sizes.



This first one I'm making, which I've named The Nile for various reasons, is out of Frog Tree's Alpaca Sport Melange - a heathery green that looks not only like weeds along the river but like a real hand spun vintage yarn. My shawl will look like it came from Margaret Dashwood's shoulders just yesterday!



If you plan to knit this, please keep in mind that the pattern was designed for a pre-teen or young girl. If you are making it for an adult, you'll want to add yarn and pattern repeats - keeping track of your mid-point, so your decrease side will be symmetrical. I added one ball, or 215 yards, to mine.

Margaret has always been one of my favourite characters in Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility. I like her complete innocence and abandon - the way she relates to her two older sisters: who at times seem as close as twins. It obvious that she is much loved - and I love her keen interest in the world around around her. One of the most delightful scenes in the movie that stars Emilie Francois as Margaret, is when she is hiding under the library table and her sister Eleanor and visitor Edward begin to sprout outrageous facts about the source of the Nile River - causing her to pop out from under the table to correct them!



My day is long today, full of tasks left undone from my last two weeks of surgery and recovery, so there's no movie-watching planned - tasks like laundry, lawn mowing, and groceries that really eat up the weekend hours. But soon. Soon in one of these days coming up I'll rewatch Sense and Sensibility as I knit my Nile-coloured Margaret Dashwood shawl.

Holding my breath

January has been a wild month. In four weeks that were over in a flash we've had blinding snow storms with traffic-stopping accumulation, hope-inspiring 40-degree sunny days, flooding downpours complete with epilogues of bone-shattering, slip-inducing freezing rain, and bleak long days of low cloud-covered dark and cold. But today makes me think that even though the winter here lasts another 3 months, Spring may be more than a distant myth. Three months, I tell myself, I can hold on three more months...

I may have to visit friends who live in less temperamental climates.

In homage to Spring, I'm working on a Spring Nursing Shawl for a dear friend with a beautiful brand new little girl. She wanted black, in Noro, but - alas - the Noro yarn called for in this pattern didn't come in any black combinations and I was reluctant to switch to another Noro yarn that did because the lesser yardage would have meant many, many more skeins - 12 skeins instead of 3. So I don't know if, in the end, she'll even like these spring colours and use the shawl...



A risky endeavor for something that is so much work. I'm using a pattern designed by the owner of a LYS: The Easy As Pie Shawl. It is very drapey, which makes it a good nursing shawl, and also wider at the bottom than the top, so it doesn't feel like you're wearing a blanket when you wear it wrapped as a scarf around your neck. The yarn, a mix of cotton, wool and silk, makes it lightweight yet textural so it just feels good.



I considered switching to a sock yarn that was dark and black and wintery, and maybe I should. But the fact is I'm 25% done and Spring will be here soon and the black winter coat will go into the closet and she'll search for something that brings a bit of brightness and this particular colour combination of buff and tan and cream and teal will be... quite perfect.

At least I hope so. Sometimes my confidence flags, and my stitches slow, and I wonder if I should be the kind of knitter that knits what people want instead of the kind that knits my own self into what I give. Still, I can't help remembering Elizabeth Zimmerman and I knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises. After all, if EZ knit Nether Garments for her family and they loved them to unraveled shreds, then maybe I can bring a bit of Spring colour a few months early.

Goodbye to Camp Loopy

Camp Loopy 2011 is coming to a close soon and so many of us are feeling nostalgia already. The friends we've made, the skills we've learned, the knits we've accomplished, and the prizes we've won - it's all been so fun!

I've shown you how I learned to knit cables, and I showed you my Camp Loopy vest, but I haven't yet shown the first camp Loopy Project, a striped silk shawl in 3 colourways. The challenge was to make a two-coloured project, a shawl, wrap, or sweater. I chose Stephen West's Daybreak, a beautiful paneled and striped shawl.



And I knit it in three colourways from Hand Maiden Sea Silk: Earth, Hemlock, and Salt Spray. The silk yarn embodied the mountains, the forest, and the ocean and I called my shawl Daybreak on the Ocean.



Daybreak is a great pattern, not fast - especially since the rows get longer and longer from the neck down - but logical and simple. It's good travel knitting, great camp knitting, and the results are so beautiful they belie it's simple knit/purl construction.

I was so happy with the finished shawl and how the gradual lightening of the colours really was reminiscent of the sun rising over the eastern coastline of fields and mountains.

It was given away as a birthday gift this week and I so hope the recipient likes it.

Boxing Day

My knitted gifts were all well received this Christmas:


Walkies??

I have two favorites that I haven't shown you yet. One is an original pattern that I designed using Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious Single Silk in two vibrant colourways. I want to wait to show you that until I have the pattern written up and I've done one more test knit.

But my other favorite is this:



Annis

My version is made from FibroFibers Nightfall Yarn in the Ivy colourway.

Blocking:





As you can see, Nightfall yarn is gradient-dyed, so that the colours go gradually into black...



I assumed that the colour and the black would be blended from one to the other, the way that Blue Moon Fiber Arts colours are when they are mixed - where the two colours touch, a new hue is born. In other words, the mix magic happens. So I thought the lace would go from deepest black to dusk, to a greenish grey, to a light green, to a deep green. But Nightfall yarns are dyed in gradually increasing numbers of black patches, so that the illusion of gradually fading to black is created when you view the garment from a distance, but close up it looks a bit patchy. Not unpleasant by any means, but unexpected:



Annis is a lovely pattern, with lace edges...





I made this one double wide by going through the chart twice. It created almost-noticeable decreases, where in the original size the neck edge would have covered them...



In my version, I think the colour changes helped to disguise the short-row decreased a tiny bit:



This made a light delicate scarf - not wide enough for a true shawl but wide and long enough to drape around the neck twice. I have it on good authority that it is fun to wear: the recipient has had it on since opening it!

Mara

I finished the wonderful Mara this weekend and I love it. Mara is a small shawl by Madeline Tosh. Originally designed for her worsted, I substituted the Swan's Island Worsted that I'm currently in love with, in Teal. The above photo is the accurate depiction of this colour - for some reason, the weak sunlight here washed out the deep teal tone in the other photos. Swan's Island is so soft and pleasant to knit with. It's the same yarn I used for my Mr. Woodhouse's Scarf and I have two skeins of a cherry blossom magenta red for a narrower version, and a skein of a deep true red in for a hat, and the same red in the fingering weight for a lace scarf, and a skein of natural grey and one of a deep coral in the worsted that are un-determined as to pattern. I would buy the whole of Swan's Island line of yarns if I could!

Let me just go on about Swan's Island yarn for a moment. This is 100% organic merino, which is why it's so soft, and it's spun in Maine and dyed with natural dyes like Indigo, cochineal, madder, weld, and other plant dyes. Originally used for special woven blankets (that are available form the company) it's now available to the public for knitting and weaving. It's very evenly spun, has a consistent soft twist and results in a predictable gauge and fabric, unlike some softer worsteds that turn out a little 'thick-and-thin' in their spinning. The softness in this yarn comes from the base yarn itself, not from having a loose spin.



When my LYS first started carrying Swan's Island yarn, I picked up these two skeins of teal without knowing what I wanted to do with them. I had a vague idea that this might be a good yarn to use in my quest to learn colourwork. But then I came across the Mara shawl, and there you are - my imagination was captured! Each skein is 250 yards, so I knew I would be short and went ahead anyway as is my usual practice. Improvisation is my creative friend. I didn't know if I would do the fluted edge in a complementary colour, or if I would change the needle size for a lighter, larger shawl, but I wasn't concerned.

As it turned out, I used the recommended needle - size US7 - and ended up with a two inch instead of a four inch flute on the outside edge. It's the perfect size for my shortness (5' 3"). The width is the same as described in pattern. I made other modifications, as you can see:



Instead of garter stitch, I used mostly stockinette with just a few decorative rows of garter near the neckline. I don't plan to block it (the pattern recommends light blocking) and am going to wear it today - a rainy, windy, icy day - for a little knitted comfort.

Wrap me in dark vines...

As you can see from the Bobicus medal, below, I've crossed the finish line in the Short Track Shawl race of the 2010 Ravelympics.



I cast on in a hotel room on the ocean while watching the Opening ceremonies last weekend - away for Valentine's with my sweetie. He was very supportive of my Ravelympics obsession and understood my need to cast on at this exact moment! After I got a good number or rows down, we went down to the bar and watched the rest of the Olympic opening there, with good wine and chocolate covered strawberries...

My Ravelympics challenge was the beautiful Saroyan pattern by Liz Abinante, but in shawlette size...



I used Blue Moon Fiber Arts in their gorgeous Luscious Single Silk fiber - the Thraven colourway, and a size 10 (6 mm) circular Addi needle. It worked perfectly - just as I'd hoped. I thought I would need to add repeats on the increase section to make it wide enough for a shawl, but in fact, I knit it exactly as written. The soft bulky-ness of the yarn did the rest...



The season seems to be struggling to turn - winter is trudging towards the bus stop, her tattered skirts trailing in the dirt and remnants of snow... but spring hasn't arrived. We have dark days that smell like rain and I'm often melancholy and dark. You can see that my new shawl suits me perfectly right now. I'll wear it today!

The knitting was hung by the chimney with care....

My final secret holiday knitting project was opened last night by my friend, so I can now reveal it here.

Raven's Wing



This shawl was knit from Blue Moon Fiber Arts lightweight Socks That Rock, 1 skein, in the Raven series Rauen. It is a deep black with flashes of deep red. This yarn is such a pleasure to work with!

I started with a US size 6 circular needle (32 inch) and used a regular neck-down triangle shawl construction from Cosmicpluto's Simple Yet Effective Shawl without the stripes.



After a few inches, I switched to a slightly larger needle - size 7 - because the shawl was becoming very dense and heavy. While I liked this cosiness around the neck, it wasn't the effect I was going for in the body of the shawl. This shawl uses garter stitch so I just knitted on and on and on. It was great take-along knitting and I got a lot done while at Thanksgiving Dinner at my boyfriend's parents' house!

As I got toward the end, I started contemplating a lace edging that would really have the wing-like effect of my imagination. I switched to a size 9 circular needle, and started the edging chart for the Shetland Triangle from Wrap Style (a book I recommend). I started running out of yarn on row 12 of this 14-row edging, and was able to complete a loose bind-off just in time!



Wet blocking had an incredible effect on this shawl. Remember, it was mostly garter stitch, so it was crimped-up and small when just off the needles. I worried about plunging it into a sink full of tepid water - afraid it would bleed or pill - but it came through famously and only looked better and smoother! The shawl blocked out so large that it overflowed the edges of my long dining room table! I used blocking wires for the first time with this shawl.

One of the things that made me most happy, besides the deep, soft yarn and how it looked knit up, was that it really did look like a Raven's Wing - just the effect I wanted.

and my friend liked it.

Now, I am really in a knitting funk and can't figure figure out my next project. Any ideas?

Goodnight Moon....

The Golden Moon Shawl



a version of the Shetland Triangle by Evelyn Clark, from Wrap Style...

Yarn: Luscious Silk (sport weight; 360 yards) from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in colourway: Oregon Red Clover Honey; 1 skein

Needles: Size US 9 Addi Lace circular (32")



This pattern is so incredibly easy and fast. Just like last time, this shawl took less than 2 weeks from start to finish - and I didn't have all that much knitting time! I used a size 9 needle, when the pattern calls for a 6, because this is a sport weight yarn and the pattern is written for laceweight. The size was just right!

I did end up omitting one entire repeat of the body lace chart (I think it's 14 rows, actually) as well as the last two rows of the edging chart (I went strait to the final two rows which are in the book, not in the chart). Even so, it is just the way I would have hoped.

The yarn is very delicate. I treated it very gently, but still got a slight 'halo' or 'blooms' and a couple of pills. I'm hoping they won't show too much after blocking smooths everything out...

and here is a final shot - it's dark on the colour, but you can really see the stitch pattern.



This was actually a blast to knit. I can't wait to make the next one!