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Lace Design

November 24, 2009 in classes, knitting by lauren | No comments

I spent much of the weekend at Sivia Harding‘s lace design workshop, put on by the West Coast Knitters’ Guild. I love knitting lace, so the chance to learn more about the design process to jump-start me into designing my own shawls was too good to pass up.

The workshop concept sounds deceptively simple: come prepared with stitch dictionaries and figure out how best to fill the triangle shape with appropriate stitch patterns. It’s harder than it sounds, but Sivia made it seem, not quite easy, but reasonably straight-forward, with lots of places to make artistic design decisions.

Sivia has some wonderful designs and brought some of her shawls for us to admire and deconstruct, using them as teaching examples. She gave us ideas on how to start the shawls, various ways of finishing them, how to modify stitch patterns to fit nicely into the triangle shape, when and how to fudge stitch patterns to make the entire pattern easier to understand and knit, and lots of other tips. Everyone ended up with charts and swatches, and undoubtedly lots more ideas than they started with. Now all I have to do is finish the design I started (I want to change a couple of things), complete the charts, and start knitting!

Brown Sweater

August 12, 2009 in classes, projects by lauren | No comments

I recently realised that I have a lot of projects on my Ravelry pages that aren’t blogged. So I’m going to put in a few postings to catch up. Since it’s some time since I knitted these, details are likely to be sketchy, but at least I’ll have the photos in place.

First up is a sweater I knitted for my husband in Jean Wong’s Level 2 knitting class (a simplified version of the Nihon Vogue course). The requirements are for a round-neck sweater; my husband picked the yarn colour and the simple k3, p1 rib pattern. The rest was customised to his measurements. The ribbing around the neck, waist, and arms is k1p1 on smaller needles.

I used Elann’s Coto Canapone, a cotton/hemp yarn that shrinks when washed. Fortunately you do things properly for knitting class, so I did wash and block the gauge swatch. I made the body a little too long but am hoping it will shrink a little when washed again. I also made the ribbing around the neckline a little too deep; next time I’d make it only half the width. The yarn is hard on your hands while knitting, but does knit up really nicely and should wear well (my husband is hard on clothes). It’s also a reasonable price, and is machine-washable.

Yarn: Elann Coto Canapone, 20 skeins

Needles: 3.5 for the body, 3.25 for the ribbing

Pattern: my own, based on k3p1 rib for the boddy and k1p1 ribbing

Comments: the yarn shrinks when washed

Dates: Started September 13 2008, completed November 12 2008

Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/laurendw/ribbed-mens-sweater

Brown Men's Sweater

Brown Men's Sweater

Diamonds Cardigan

June 23, 2009 in classes, projects by lauren | No comments

This cardigan was my project for my Level 4 finishing class with Jean Wong. The finishing classes are a less hectic and less formal version of the Nihon Vogue course, which still teach a lot about design and techniques. Level 4 is meant to be a round-neck cardigan, so I decided I wanted to add argyle-style diamonds to it. Some amount of design and swatching later, I got as far as the photos show.

And haven’t got any further, since I’m working on another project. Much of my knitting time is while watching TV, or at a knitting meet-up, and somehow duplicate stitch and seaming don’t go as well with those activities as the more mindless knitting itself. Particularly as they both need good light.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some more done. Or maybe not.

Diamonds cardigan, frontDiamonds cardigan, backDiamonds cardigan, frontDiamonds cardigan, bottom front

Yarn: Rowan Calmer, 7 skeins of main colour and 2 each of the contrast colours. The bottom photos have the most accurate colours.

Needles: 4.0 mm (body), 3.75 mm (bottom ribbing), 3.5 mm (sleeve ribbing), 3.25 mm (neckband and front bands)

Pattern: my own

Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/laurendw/diamonds-cardigan

Bohus and Rovaniemi

September 28, 2008 in classes by lauren | No comments

This weekend was a busy one, knitting-wise. The West Coast Knitters Guild brought Susanna Hansson to town for two workshops, one on Bohus knitting and the other on the lapland mittens from Rovaniemi. I enjoyed both classes though the second one spoke to me more. The Bohus garments are gorgeous, the Rovaniemi technique somehow rustic and alive. Lots of other people have blogged about the workshops in more detail than I have energy for right now; suffice to say that if you’re interested in fine-gauge colour-work knitting, either or both classes would be fun.

And now it’s back to the sweater I’m knitting for Jean Wong’s Level 2 knitting class (no, not the Nihon Vogue, I don’t have time for that, this is the abbreviated version), so I won’t be finishing the wristlets any time soon, unfortunately. Oh well, that’s life. So much knitting, so little time.

Madrona Saturday

April 24, 2008 in classes by lauren | No comments

After the excitement of all that shopping on the Friday, I took two classes on the Saturday. In the morning, I took Lucy Neatby’s introduction to double knitting (A Dabble into Double Make a voyage of discovery to achieve a deeper understanding of your knitting! Try a variety of types of double knitting to produce two-layer fabrics. Starting with tubular knitting on straight needles, moving on to tubes within tubes and the double-knit pocket trick. Double Knit color patterning techniques include positive/negative and quilting for added texture and warmth.) After lunch, I went to see Pat Brunner teaching how to do art with short rows. (Tapestry with Short Rows Learn how to knit free-form wavy stripes, geometric shapes, and other intarsia-like effects with one yarn at a time using the short row techniques. Great for stash reduction and making unique sweaters, socks, hats, scarves, afghans and wall hangings.)

Personally I got more out of the double-knitting class, mostly because I was interested in the techniques. Lucy’s style works well for me, I like her self-deprecating comments and her notes and exercises on the handouts were clearly written. The swatches were fun, and I got Lucy’s DVD on the subject for when I want to delve more deeply.

double knit swatches

These swatches for double knitting show a checkerboard (note that the edge is closed on one part, and open on the other), a basic tube, and a knitted-in pocket on the top swatch (note the part where the stitches are doubled, that’s the pocket-in-progress).

The tapestry with short rows class was more difficult for me. The actual technique of knitting short rows wasn’t the problem, it was the tapestry bit that I found difficult. It’s obvious that Pat and many of the people taking the class have a much stronger artistic bent than I do (I’d call myself creative rather than artistic), and some of them came up with wonderful designs. I’d need to spend a lot of time figuring out designs on paper before wanting to commit them to yarn. For the more artistic people around, I can see the techniques being inspiring and the potential results stunning. No picture of my pathetic swatch from this one, as I didn’t like it enough to want to keep it.

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