Category Archives: knitting

Airplane knitting

In October 2012 I went to New Zealand for my uncle's funeral. It's a reasonably long flight from here at 15 hours, and I figured I needed an easy project to knit, that I could pick up and drop without losing my place. The Revontulli pattern was ideal, and also used up some yarn in my stash that needed a simple enough lace pattern to not overpower the yarn.

Yarn: Kauni Wool 8/2 Effektgarn in colour EV, one complete skein

Needles: 5.5 mm

Pattern: Revontuli-huivi/Northern Lights

Modifications: I had to rip back the last two rows to have sufficient yarn to bind off.

Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/laurendw/revontuli--huivi-northern-lights

Tweed hat

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We were planning on going to Regina, Sakatchewan, for Christmas 2012, and thus a new hat was needed for my husband. He picked the pattern and of course went for a simple one. I did have to rip out and reknit to make it big enough, but it worked out in the end. It's said to be very warm, which is needed for the -30 deg C that one can easily encounter on the prairie.

Tweed hat front

Yarn: 2.25 skeins of Berroco Blackstone Tweed Chunky in a light grayish brown

Needles: 5.5 mm for the brim, 6.5 mm for the body

Pattern: Jason's Tweed Hat by Melissa Thomson

Modifications: I added 10 stitches to make it big enough, thus 80 stitches, and I used Techknitter's flat top method for the top.

Comments: The yarn is a bit splitty, and doesn't like being ripped back much.

Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/laurendw/jasons-tweed-hat

Red and black and grey

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These colours make a good scarf, knitted in Brioche, for a Christmas present. Multi-colour brioche knitting is almost like shadow or illusion knitting, but the image isn't quite as dependent on viewing it from the right angle.

Yarn: Kauni Wool 8/2 Effektgarn in colours EMC and EC

Needles: 3.5 mm

Pattern: Geveldak Scarf by Nancy Marchant, from the excellent 'Knitting Brioche' book

Modifications: None

Comments: the book is excellent, the pattern was easy to follow.

Ravelry link: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/laurendw/geveldak-scarf

Festivus 2010

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It's been a long, long time since I blogged anything. I blame a number of factors, all of which too boring to detail here and now. But, I finally gave myself some motivation (I couldn't wear my festivus gift until I photographed it; and it's only a small step to blogging once I have the photo!)

The TCYW Ravelry group's Festivus 2010 was held in December. The basic concept is that each person in the group who wants to take part gives a fibre art gift to one person, and receives from someone else. You know who you're giving to, but not who you're receiving from. There's a price limit, and we all go out for dinner some place nice. This year it was organised by the inimitable Beentsy and Yarnpiggy, and it was, just like last year, an excuse for spoiling each other and being spoiled.

It turns out that having a mystery spoiler/spoilee is also a good way to get to know someone you might not have previously known; my spoiler was Lady Sheepsbane whom I hadn't met before. With help of appropriate Ravelry forum postings she came up with just the right gift (that's the Ravelry link), knitted in the right size and colour. And some lovely handspun yarn that hasn't told me yet what it wants to be, a notebook just the right size (small enough to fit in my purse), and a candy to top it off. A perfect combination of festivus items.

Lace Design

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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!