Happy days

I have spent a 'happy' day yesterday plying up yarns for winter socks, scarves, mittens etc. I use lace weight merino (mostly from Thehandpaintedyarn.com, as the colours are wonderful and the yarn is soft and strong), but also use yarns from cones that I have, in the main 2/28's and single ply.. This time I also had some wonderful cobweb weight silk from Colourmart which has added a beautiful sheen to the yarns and also brightens the colours. For socks I ply 2 strands of merino and one of silk and for scarves I just use 2 stands of the merino.

The sun was out, and it is such a beautiful autumn day that I took the yarns outside to photograph them, don't the colours of these match the flowers and the pebbles well?






I also finished off and blocked a scarf made for the Colour Swap on Ravelry. Its knitted from lambswool on cone, 2ply, in a wonderful straw colour way. I have used the crest of the wave pattern , doing 4 repeats of the lace pattern to 4 rows of garter stitch for the border and elongating the pattern to 12 rows of lace and 12 rows garter stitch for the main body. I'm really pleased with the look of the scarf, it's light and airy and the lambswool shows the stitch pattern well. So next week, after a trip to the Ally Pally tomorrow..yippee... it will be making its way across the Atlantic.

there and back again

Well, we're back,(truthfully we've been back a week or so but I have taken a bit of time getting back in to the swing of blogging) and these are some pictures of wonderful Wales. At the left is husband and dog at the top of a mountain that was just rising behind the site we stayed on. The middle is taken from the top of Snowdon, and yes we chickened out and took the train. The funny thing is it was glorious up there, the views were outstanding but does that show in the photo's...no. I think the camera 'sees' the view OK but just can't provide the atmosphere... it was freezing up there, the wind was so strong we were struggling to stand and the feeling of awe that you got looking down to sea level just doesn't translate on to the lens. Bear in mind that this was 'one' of the sunny, warm days of summer, I really wouldn't want to be up this mountain on a wild autumn day. The one on the right is an arty-farty shot of the rail track on top of the mountain... how did they build it all the way up there?






Train on top of the mountain


Dog 'on holiday' on a beach on Anglesey


Didn't get a lot of knitting down whilst away, well actually no knitting was done whilst away, I thought about knitting, the wool and needles were there but ... no knitting. Since I've been back there has been knitting, 4 slouchy hats for my daughters workmates, lace scarf for swap partner, pair of socks for a friend but they have all gone to their recipients and I forgot to take piccs!!
So I will leave you with more photo's of barbed wire... developing a thing for barbed wire.. just not sure what to do with it.

pictures and blogger....grrrr

After a terrible tussle with blogger I let him... must be a HIM... put them where he wanted to... so sorry for the rather messy look to the previous post.

useful daughter

It was really nice to see Claire at the weekend, not only because I'm blessed with a beautiful daughter(... and three rather handsome sons... ) but because she is a willing model. So here are some photos of the cowl made from the knitting in the previous post. I was going to make it into a scarf but ran out of two of the yarns I had used to make up the colours,
It is possibly a bit wide, but I had to finish on a pattern repeat to create a circle. I really like it, I like the nice , soft colours, and really like the stitch pattern and the fact that it has two distinct patterns therefore making the cowl reversible. The hand spun merino (from Handpaintedyarn.com) is lovely soft and cosy, and more importantly... not itchy!!

Whilst she was here I also used her to model something I had intended for myself.

We are away on Thurs, on our now annual tour around the UK. Mat is playing at Towersey Folk festival and then we set off with the caravan. This time we are going to tour around Snowdonia and Angelsey. We went to that region briefly last year and loved it so thought that we would go back and spend some time there. So this is the last post until the end of September when we return.


Back to the knitting... I thought I would make myself a shawl to wrap up in during the festival, and also trial a pattern before I committed some rather lovely pure cashmere to it. I decided to use a pattern from the book Folk Shawls. I choose the North Sea Shawl and used some wool and silk I had (on cone). I made no changes and just knitted the pattern as written. There are several changes I will make before I knit with the cashmere.. I will add border stitches as the lace patterns right to the very edge stitch. The transition lace is a bit weak,the look of it needs strengthening and the central pattern, across the back and shoulders, needs to be knit in two parts and grafted to create a symmetrical look. Having said that the shawl was attractive when knitted as is and would have been lovely except for one thing... after washing the yarn became very itchy.


As you can see she did sterling work, and only cost the price of a roast dinner!!... Oh and the shawl,.... it went home with her as she doesn't find the wool at all itchy. Thank you Claire.

playing

This is not work for mod 1..which is what I should be doing!!... but a 'play' using some of the colours identified in the artwork and colour wraps for 'The Fence' and a pattern found in my Mod 1 work... so what is it?... of course it's a scarf, or rather it may be if I continue with it.

The picture above shows it lying against some of the colour finding exercises from 'The Fence'. I spent a happy hour looking up the word fence in a thesaurus, partition, boundary, picket, palisade barrier, paling,guard, rampart,enclose,defend,, separate, fortify, and many more, I find having a list of words helps me concentrate on the design source, and gives me ideas to work from.

I haven't used all the colours I found but have made an 'artistic' decision and used about 3. These are made up of lace weights (Shetland, merino and some strange cone of yarn that can only be the dreaded acrylic) plied together to get the colours which also gives it a textured look.


This picture gives the other side... I love the way it has 2 distinct patterns... this is in fact the right side and I created the pattern to go with this artwork from Mod 1 (although I have to say that the inspiration for the holes came from seeing Lyn's lovely scarf in sea foam stitch done in beautiful hand spun, by herself, merino) I wanted something with much more texture between the holes and I am pleased with the way its turning out.

I find myself drawn again the working in three colours, striping them one row at a time. I find it fascinating how the colours move according to what stitch pattern you are using and how, if you use a pattern that uses a number of rows not divisible by 3, the colours will appear in order...seen in the picture below.. the holey bobbles repeat the colour sequence.

Of course I now have loads of 'what ifs' floating about in what remains of my brain... make it reversible... should be easy enough, just add one more row of the twisted rib so that you are doing the holey pattern on a wrong facing row/ right side row alternately, and turn one of the welts to the other side.... make it lengthwise, make it by increasing from a small end, gradually getting wider and then narrower again, I like the way scarves of this shape wind and sit round your neck... make it in one colour to show the pattern off... change the twisted rib for another pattern stitch.. change the holes making them longer and thinner... use it for something other that a scarf, now that's a difficult one(for me, the person most seduced by scarves) but I can see it as a cuff pattern for a pair of mittens.

Here are a couple more pictures just because Blogger is playing nice today.

module one

These are some images from my folder of work. None of it has yet been for assesment.


knit and purl samples


The little book holds my abbreviation exercise and two knit and purl samples are along side it.


These are my cast on sample(waiting for some more to join it), cast on's and decorative cast off.



These three are.... assorted rubbings, rubbings and wash and a knit and purl sample



The three below... rubbing from texture collage cut and shapes identified, looking at the lines in the source material and exploring a few textures I can see in the photo



The three below are my source photo, texture collage and a rubbing taken from the collage






Now some recreational knitting.... firstly the start of a scarf based on the 'Cold Mountain' colours(see previous post) using the Morning Surf pattern. I have used 2 colours of lace merino from the Handpaintedyarn company and size 3.5m needles. It is a bit darker and richer than the photo shows.This is for my daughter, she choose the colours, yet again lace weight merino from the Handpaintedyarn company, this time 6 colours.... 2 together for main yarn and 2 x 2 for the highlight nubbles. She want a 'Claptois' type scarf with out the holes caused by the dropped stitches but still ribby looking. I have used a bias rib pattern, the scarf has a great drape.

fenced in!

I seem to be increasingly drawn to fences lately, wooden ones, stone walls, steel barriers and barbed wire. WHY? I don't know, I keep walking/driving past them and they are 'calling' to me... all sounds a bit hippy but sadly true. The latest one to catch my attention is the humble barbed wire fence.
The colours captivate me...as well as the contrast in textures between the rusted portion and the steel.



Also the 'knot ( is that what it is called?) makes me think of twisted cords and wrappings. What to do with them and the ideas that they are throwing up... having been to Urchfont in Wiltshire for the college's annual end of term exhibition ,where the company artway.co.uk come to ply their wares, I now own lots of different shapes and sizes of sketch book so I think I will just start one on fences and play.
I have been feeling much freer about sketchbooks just lately, much less precious about using one and I think it's helping me to think more creatively. Having somewhere to put random ideas, thoughts, pics etc seems to set them in my mind. So, I have a nice large one now that contains these rambling muses.
I was watching the film Cold Mountain last night and was very taken by Ada's clothing (Nichole Kidman's character), in particular a long dark maroon coat she wore with a lacy bright blue scarf. The coat was belted with a nut brown leather belt finished with a brassy coloured buckle... I just loved this combination of colour so wrote them down in random 'book, where they joined company with a picture of a towel whose pattern was stripe of differing widths broken with a haphazard chevron, a sketch of an expanded grid and some notes and a sample using it (incorporating dropped stiches, cast off/on and ribbing), a dried rose, and some colour chips from a paint card in the colours of a scarf I saw someone in an advert wearing. Written down like this it makes me feel I might becoming slightly unhinged!!