I bought these books a little while ago but having been putting off reviewing them and this week I realised why — I just don’t like them. I’ve been waiting for them to magically improve so that I can say nice things about them and it is now time to accept that this isn’t going to happen.

My first and biggest complaint is that there doesn’t appear to have been any sort of logic applied to the arrangement of stitch patterns within the books. Some sort of logical arrangement might have helped the editor spot the patterns that are repeated under different names. Not just similar patterns with a slight offset or a slightly different description of the stitches — the exact same pattern with exactly the same wording (and photograph!) just different names.

Similarly, there’s no way to find patterns by number of stitches or number of rows. This might not be such an issue with the cable and aran stitches but it makes the lace book very difficult to use other than to flick through for general inspiration.

The photographs are another issue or rather the swatches are. I know how hard it can be to take a good photograph of a swatch but some of the yarn choices and particularly colours of the swatches make it impossible to appreciate the patterns. I’ve knitted a swatch for at least one pattern so far just to try and see what it looked like which defeats the purpose of them including photographs in the first place.

The lace book also has no charts, despite one of the ‘useful’ hints scattered throughout being “Take the time to learn how to read knitting charts; it’ll make your knitting that much easier”.

To end on a somewhat positive note, I will admit that there are stitch patterns in the books that aren’t in any of the other books I own, I have used some of the stitch patterns and I’ve yet to find any errors in the patterns themselves. Not exactly a glowing recommendation but I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.

Remember this?

which turned into this:

Well, it’s back and now it looks like this:

Not without a lot more ripping back and re-doing along the way but the front and back are now finished and will match brilliantly after a little blocking. Even better than that, the argyle worked out perfectly and the top of the top brown diamond is exactly where it’s supposed to be (and not three rows earlier, for instance).

Next step is to sew one of the shoulder seams so that I can start knitting the neckband. Given that the temperature in London is currently far too high to have an entire jumper sitting on your lap, that might not be for some time. Fortunately, if it’s too hot to sew it, it is also too hot for Steven to want to wear it!

I bought two new craft toys tools last week; can you work out what they are from the picture? (Hint: it’s not the towels or the metre stick.)

I’ll admit it’s not the best of pictures so how about something a little clearer:

I’ve been knitting (and wearing) so many shawls that I thought it was about time I bought some blocking wires in an attempt to make blocking easier. I should say that I love the effect that blocking has, the seemingly magical difference that it makes to knitted lace changing it from scrumpled blob to beautiful shawl; I just hate the crawling about my knees while working with dozens of pins. (I also hate the waiting for things to dry but I knew even blocking wires couldn’t speed that bit up!)

So, I ordered a blocking kit from I Knit, finished (yet another) shawl and set to blocking. Initially, it seemed that the wires weren’t going to make things much quicker; feeding them into the edges of the shawl seemed to take quite a while. What was much quicker was adjusting the shawl to the size and shape that I wanted. In the past, I would pin most of the shawl out and then adjusting anything would mean moving lots of pins. Being able to just tug the wires out slightly and replace two or three pins was so much easier. It also took far less time to get the edges suitably straight, something I always struggled with before.

In short, I think I like them. I’m sure that the inserting of the wires will get easier with experience and the easier adjustment should mean that I get better results as I’m less likely to settle for “straight enough”.

The second new toy was a bit harder to work out from the picture above since it was taking the picture rather than appearing in it! Have a bad web-cam picture instead:

My trusty digital point and shoot camera died some time ago and, while we have a great digital SLR, I always felt like using it was too much effort for simple things like blog pictures and updating Ravelry. Having the SLR also meant that I didn’t feel like I should buy a new point and shoot because, well, we already had a camera. As well as that, I’m very fussy about my cameras which roughly translates to “it’s nearly impossible to find one that meets my arbitrary and sometimes contradictory criteria”. I do love Canon cameras though so when I spotted this one being sold “ex-display” in the John Lewis sale, it only took a couple of hours of pondering to actually decide to buy it. I’m glad I did though because I love it. It’s small and neat and easy to carry around with me but is also surprisingly powerful and has the functionality that I was looking for.

Expect to see the output of both the camera and the blocking wires in future!

I mentioned recently that I had a couple of lace shawl designs in progress and I thought I would share a preview of one of them.

This shawl was inspired by the Japanese pattern sourcebook that I reviewed in April. The green version of the pattern is as it originally appears in the book (and on the accompanying CD).

I changed the green to red in an image editor to get a better idea of how the pattern might look in the colour of yarn that I wanted to use.

I found a flower motif in my Vogue Ultimate Knitting Guide that seemed perfect and proceeded to sketch and chart and swatch and then sketch and chart and swatch some more. I originally tried cables for the undulating lines but they weren’t showing up well in the laceweight yarn that I was using so I changed to eyelets instead and this is the final result:

The yarn is the Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Lace that I brought back from honeymoon and it’s beautifully light and soft.

What I haven’t decided yet is whether or not I will add a border. I have a couple of borders in mind but haven’t done any swatching or calculation to see which, if any, I could make fit. I’ve knitted the entire shawl (and worn it!) with just a narrow garter stitch border for now. It does curl slightly at the sides but I’m worried that adding a border will make it too fussy.

The other advantage of not adding a border is that it will make getting the pattern ready for publication much quicker! The chart is ready to go; written instructions are nearly done and I’m just waiting to be able to take some better photographs so that I can put the whole lot together.

The only other thing missing is a name! I’m still waiting for inspiration to strike so if you have any ideas, leave a comment or send me an email. If I use your suggestion, I’ll send you a free copy of the pattern when it’s published.

It’s getting harder to find decent second-hand bookshops in central London these days so we recently took a trip to Hay-on-Wye to satisfy our cravings.  I spent a fair amount of time rummaging through any craft books I could find and managed to pick up a few interesting additions to my library. I plan on writing fuller reviews once I’ve had the chance to read them more carefully and try some projects but here’s a quick look in the meantime.

Alabama Stitch Book, by Natalie Chanin with Stacie Stukin:

A collection of sewing projects for recycling and embellishing old t-shirts. I first heard of this book when the House on Hill Road blog reviewed the follow-up book Alabama Studio Style. Having now seen this book and the review of the second one at House on Hill Road, I think the projects in the second book are probably more to my taste but there are a couple of projects in here, including a skirt and corset top, that I do really want to try. All I need now are some t-shirts!

Designing Knitwear, Deborah Newton:

I’ve been getting more ambitious with my designing (I currently have a couple of lace shawls in progress) and my eventual ambition is to learn how to design clothing. I had seen this book recommended as a good guide to knitting design and, at a first glance, it certainly seems to cover everything you could want to know. In fact, at first glance, the sheer quantity of text and detail in this book is a little overwhelming. I think this is going to be a book that I sit down and read through rather than dipping in and out of. I’ll let you know how that goes later.

520 Quick and Easy Patchwork Designs, Kei Kobayashi:

The concept behind this book is simple: using folded origami squares as the basis for quilt designs. Take your square of paper, fold your shape, unfold the paper and use the geometric pattern of crease lines as the basis for your quilt block. My quilting has yet to progress beyond simple patchwork blocks but there’s a wealth of inspiration in here for anyone from the absolute beginner to the expert looking for something new. There is a large section on traditional American quilt block patterns, as well as variations on geometric patterns and some Art Deco and computer graphic suggestions as well. It is a design book rather than a how-to-quilt book so if you’re looking for detailed guidance on quilting, piecing and finishing quilts, this isn’t the book for you but if you’re looking for inspiration, there’s plenty of it here.

Steven discovered recently that two of the smart (shop-bought) jumpers he owns have holes in the elbows.We didn’t spot them until they were well past my darning abilities and I was loth to darn them anyway because both jumpers have a hole in exactly the same place, meaning that any repair would probably wear through again quite quickly.

Steven wasn’t particularly keen on my idea of sewing suede patches on, explaining that even when he was a physicist working at a university he didn’t wear jumpers with elbow patches, but did suggest that I could unravel the jumpers and re-use the yarn. As can be seen from the label in the picture below, this was a very appealing idea.

The first step to recycling a jumper to reclaim the yarn is to check the seams. Machine-made jumpers can be manufactured in two different ways. The first is the same as hand-knitting; the pieces are knitted to the appropriate size and shape, and then sewn together — this is ideal for unraveling as you will end up with a single, continuous length of yarn. The second is known as “cut-and-sew”. The fabric is knitted in a single large piece and then the pieces are cut out and sewn together. Unraveling a jumper made this way will result in a lot of short, individual pieces of yarn, which aren’t much good for anything. (Depending on the fibre, you could still recycling these jumpers by felting.)

The picture below is my attempt to show you what a “good” seam for unraveling looks like; it might be better to take a close look at some hand-knitted garments to get the idea.

The next step is to unpick the seams; a sharp seam-ripper is useful but be careful not to accidentally cut the knitted fabric. The pictures below show the under-arm section of the body and the sleeve with the hole after it had been removed.

After unraveling, I washed and dried the yarn to get the kinks out. I had wound the into balls as I was unraveling but wound these into hanks for washing and drying. I hung the hanks to dry and hung weights from the bottom to stretch them slightly to straighten the yarn.

It occurred to me after I had removed the sleeves (and fortunately before I had unraveled anything else) that the rest of the  jumper was still in great condition and that it could work well as a tank top, if I knitted some bands around the armholes. Now that I had a large quantity of matching yarn, I experimented a little with needle sizes and stitches, picked up a lot of stitches round the armhole and started knitting.

I’m really pleased with the results; but K1P1 rib takes a very long time with such fine yarn on 2mm needles. Hopefully it will be finished by the autumn since it’s too warm to wear it just now anyway.

The best bit is that, even when the armbands on this jumper are knitted, I still have another jumper to unravel (it has a round neck so can’t be turned into a tank top) plus nearly 100g of yarn from the sleeves on this one. That’s enough laceweight cashmere to keep anyone happy for quite a while!

I’m not very good at self-promotion. It’s been suggested to me in the past that Scots can be “a bit backwards about coming forwards” and, while I wouldn’t like to comment on the general application of the statement, it describes me to a tee.

However, the whole point of publishing things is to share them with other people and, in a previous post, I promised to share all my publishing news so here’s the full run-down of what I’ve been up to publishing-wise and a sneak preview of what is to come.

There’s been both self-publishing and non-self-publishing so let’s start with the stuff that other people have published.

In the other post, I talked about Theresa, which was actually the second pattern that I had published in The Fibertarian; the first was my Stylish Squares blanket in their Winter 2009 edition. This was my first ever published-by-someone-who-wasn’t-me pattern and both the submission process and the publication were more than a little nerve-wracking but so exciting that I was determined to do it again, which I promptly did in their Spring 2010 edition.

Those of you who clicked on the blanket link will have realised that it doesn’t take you to The Fibertarian site, it takes you to Yellow Ginger Designs instead. I decided that I wanted to keep a certain amount of distance between this blog (personal) and my publishing (public) and so I started Yellow Ginger Designs. The name comes from the beautiful yellow ginger plants that we saw in Hawaii. We later learned that they were actually an imported pest that the state is trying to eradicate completely but I still think they’re beautiful! (Unfortunately, the design of the site doesn’t currently live up to the beauty of its name but pretty-ing it up is definitely on my to-do list.)

Yellow Ginger Designs will have all my self-published knitting patterns as well as sewing and other craft projects. At the moment, it’s mostly knitting patterns but I have some sewing projects and craft tutorials that just need some decent photographs before they can go up. Everything is free at the moment, but I do plan on adding a “for sale” section in future. Everything that is currently free will remain free and there will continue to be free content added.

I’ll continue to blog about craft stuff in general on this blog but any patterns or tutorials will be published over there. I will probably mention here when I’ve updated the other site but I can guarantee that, given my dislike of promotion, this blog won’t be turning into a constant stream of advertising!

A post-exam wander around the craft and design sections of the bookshops on Charing Cross Road today turned up a wonderful little volume entitled “Pattern Sourcebook: Japanese Style. 250 Patterns for Projects and Designs.” The book is a collection of Japanese pattern designs in nine different categories, including plants, creatures, geometry and, of course, waves.

The book comes with a CD with JPEG and PSD versions of each of the patterns and, best of all, purchasing the book permits unrestricted use of any of the patterns for any purpose whatsoever without any further fees or need for acknowledgement or credit. Many of the patterns are set up so that they can be tiled in all directions.

There is a sentence or two accompanying each design with a short explanation of its origin or symbolism. The translation from Japanese is a little quirky at times but not enough to be distracting.

The patterns are purely patterns and no instructions are given on how to use them but I’m already in danger of being overwhelmed by ideas for ways to incorporate the designs into knitting and quilting patterns.

To sum up, if you’re interested in Japanese patterns and styles or just looking for a new source of inspiration, I can highly recommend this.

Details

• Title – Pattern Sourcebook: Japanese Style
• Author – Shigeki Nakamura
• Publisher – Rockport Publishers

There was just enough light left when I got home from the office to take some bad web-cam pictures of some of my more recent projects so I thought I’d get caught up on updating my Ravelry projects and actually blogging about some of these.

First up is my Theresa Lace Scarf pattern that is currently available in the Spring 2010 edition of The Fibertarian (more to come later on other publishing news).

I’m going to admit upfront that I love these scarves possibly more than I should so I apologise in advance if I end up sounding like I’m selling something; I’m not on commission, honest!

The first scarf started with a rough idea in my head as a way to use up some leftover laceweight yarn. I played with some stitches from the Encyclopedia of Needlework at Project Gutenberg and Theresa was the result (named after Thérèse de Dillmont, the original author of the Encyclopedia). The second one was when I realised I was addicted.

The first one (in the orangey-brown colour) was knitted using Knit Picks Gloss Lace that I brought back from honeymoon and the second (in navy) is Knitwiches 100% Pure Cashmere Laceweight. These photos really don’t do them justice but there are some better ones at The Fibertarian or on Ravelry.

The pattern itself takes a little bit of concentration at first due to the slipping, lifting and re-knitting of stitches but, once you get the rhythm of it, it is almost meditative. Due to the twisted nature of the pattern, it is very difficult to frog this scarf even with relatively smooth yarn; I can only imagine it would be completely impossible with something like Kidsilk Haze.

They’re wonderful to wear; very light with just a little bit of extra warmth. They can also be squashed very small to fit into bags or a pocket when even that little bit of warmth is too much. Last, but not least, they are also (unusually for something I’ve knitted) highly fashionable at the moment!

I used to think that I didn’t believe in the sweater curse — the idea that if you knitted a boyfriend a jumper before you were engaged the relationship would break up shortly after. I’m now realising that there are other forms of sweater curse and I’m suffering under one of them.

My curse seems to be something like this: if I offer to knit Steven a jumper and let him pick the pattern (so that I can be sure he’ll like it) he will inevitably pick a pattern that requires a technique that is completely new to me. In the past this has included cables and inserting zips and, for the jumper that sparked today’s post, intarsia.

The jumper is the Argyll Vest (Ravelry link) from Men’s Knits by Erika Knight. I’m knitting it in Rowan RYC Cashsoft 4-ply. It’s not the most exciting pattern to knit but it is going to be a great jumper when it’s finished.

Like the other techniques that I’ve had to learn to knit Steven’s jumpers, it turns out intarsia isn’t really hard at all. Pay attention to the chart, remember to twist your yarns where the colours meet and try not to let the yarns you’re not currently using get too tangled. If only that were the only thing I had to worry about.

The back of the jumper (where there’s no pattern) knitted up very quickly, even considering it’s 4-ply yarn on 3.25mm needles.

The front, however, is a different story. The front has gone from what you see in the photograph above to this:

Yes, that’s right. The front has had to be ripped out all the way back to the ribbing. Why?  Before I cast off for the under-arm, I thought to check the size of the front against the size of the back. The cast-off for the under-arm was two inches lower on the front than on the back.

I re-measured … still two inches different. I re-calculated the number of pattern repeats that I was supposed to knit on the front to get the same number of rows as I had knitted for the back … those were right. I re-counted the number of diamonds that I had actually knitted … those were right. I then repeated those three checks many, many times but every time it came out the same. I had calculated my pattern repeats correctly, I had knitted the correct number of pattern repeats and the front was still two inches shorter than the back.

The jumper disappeared into the bottom of my knitting bag, not to be seen again until a miracle happened that would result in either the front magically matching the back next time I measured, my number of pattern repeats magically turning out to be wrong (either as calculated or as knitted) or some other explanation for the problem magically presented itself.

The jumper stayed in the bag for a couple of weeks. Nothing magically fixed itself.

Then I went looking for my 3.25mm needles to swatch for another pattern.

Remember those 3.25mm needles that I mentioned above? Well, when I went looking for them, it turned out that they weren’t in this jumper after all. I had knitted the front (including all the intarsia) all the way to the under-arm on the 2.75mm needles that are used for the ribbing.

I now had my magical explanation for the missing two inches and the front of a jumper to rip out. Do you know what is hard about intarsia? Ripping it out.