Outside:
and in:
A simple lace scarf in leftover Fyberspates thick nef lace yarn. Easy to pick up and put down, which makes it perfect for relaxing between study sessions. Speaking of which, time to get back to the books!
Tag: knitting
Truly scrumptious
New yarn for a couple of designs that are currently percolating away in my brain. 55% merino, 45% silk: 100% scrumptious.
Story of a design – Strawberry
This design popped into my head almost entirely fully formed when I saw Susanna IC’s Rose Lace Stole. Except that when I looked at the stole, I didn’t see rose petals, all I could see were strawberries. I tracked down the Estonian lace stitch used, called Waterlily, and it still looked like a strawberry to me, albeit an upside down one. With just a couple of tweaks (including changing from stocking stitch to garter), I had a shawl edging.
I decided to work the body of the shawl in garter stitch to help avoid the curling that comes with stocking stitch. I’m not usually a fan of garter stitch but I do love how it works in this shawl. It would be straightforward to knit a stocking stitch version, if wanted, just purl all the wrong side rows rather than knit.
The strawberry edging uses one of the manipulated stitches that are characteristic of Estonian lace. Three stitches are knitted together and then immediately increased to seven, which gives the beautiful curve to the top of the strawberry. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is but the pattern includes full instructions and, after you’ve done it once, it is straightforward.
Naming the shawl was also straightforward; it just had to be Strawberry!
Strawberry is now available from Yellow Ginger Designs and Ravelry.
A pattern, a birthday and a sale!
Lots of celebrating going on this weekend: it’s my birthday on Sunday, which is even better than usual since Monday is a bank holiday in England, and I have a new pattern out!
In honour of all this, there is 25% off all my patterns on Ravelry this weekend. No code or voucher needed, the discount will be automatically applied to any pattern purchased before midnight (GMT) on Monday.
Have a great weekend!
ETA: This is what happens when I post from my phone on my way to the pub; I should really have told you what the pattern was called – Strawberry – and that it’s on both Ravelry and Yellow Ginger Designs. Here’s a picture to make up for it:
When I needed sunshine, I got rain
The only thing you can be sure of with the Brits and British weather is that we’re always happy to talk about it and we’re never happy about it. If it’s raining, we wish it was sunny; if it’s sunny, we start worrying about hose-pipe bans and sun-burn. I am further convinced that the British weather has a mean streak; if you’re relying on particular weather on a particular day, you can pretty much guarantee you’ll get the exact opposite … which is exactly what has been happening to me this week.
I had planned a photo shoot for this week for my latest design. The pattern is for a summer shawl so the shoot was going to be outside and there was going to be grass and sunshine and I even bought strawberries:
And then it rained … and then it was sunny but I had to do all the other outdoor things that I hadn’t done because it was raining … and then I had time and it was raining again.
I know when I’m beat so I abandoned the idea of taking the photos outside and took some inside instead. Then I spent ages making them look like I hadn’t taken them in a corner of bedroom with a sheet pinned up and then, once I had everything the way I wanted it, the sun came back out!
Oh well, at least I have the pictures and an enormous bowl of strawberries to munch on.
Speaking of the pictures, here is a taste of what is to come when the pattern makes it through the editing process (hopefully, this week):
Can you guess what I’ve called it?
It’s Estonian lace, Jim…
…but not as we know it.
My current project is a lace scarf using a stitch pattern from the Haapsalu shawl book. Except that I’m using hand-painted, dark-coloured silk rather than natural-coloured wool, and metal circular needles rather than wooden straights. Oh, and it’s a narrow scarf rather than a shawl and it won’t have a border. Other than that, it’s definitely Estonian lace.
The pattern is Käpakiri 2 (Paw pattern 2) and the yarn is Silk Lace in Nutmeg from Hedgehog Fibres. The 100% silk is stunningly luxurious and the colours are beautifully coordinated. Also, because the yarn is hand-painted, there’s no pooling or striping of the colours.
In theory, this will be a birthday present for my mother-in-law who would love these colours but I might have to knit another one for myself before I can part with this one. Fortunately, there will be plenty of the silk left!
Book review: The Haapsalu Shawl
I’m going to come straight out and say it: this is my favourite knitting book, ever. Not only does it have beautiful photography and styling that you would expect to see in a coffee table book, it also has wonderfully clear knitting instructions and charts for knitting your own versions of these beautiful shawls.
The book is split into three sections: the history of the Haapsalu shawl, “Teaching the Traditions”, and the stitch patterns.
The history section covers the beginnings of shawl knitting in Haapsalu (a small town in Estonia), for sale to wealthy Russian holidaymakers, and then how the tradition continued through two World Wars and Communism up to the present day.
“Teaching the Traditions” tells you everything you need to know about how to knit your own shawl describing yarns, needles, calculating stitch counts for casting on, reading charts, and how to knit and attach the lace edging (which, traditionally, is sewn on rather than knitted on).
Then there are the stitch patterns and, if you didn’t look at any of the other information in the book, it would still be worth buying the books just for these. There are more than 100 separate stitch patterns given and each one gets its own page with a crystal clear photograph of a swatch and its chart. There are 9 lace edgings included too, also with photographs and charts. There are no written instructions for the patterns so you do have to be comfortable reading charts. The charts use slightly different symbols to those that I’m used to seeing (and using) in patterns but a full key is given and I haven’t had any problems following them.
The patterns themselves are beautiful and frequently complex. Some include nupps (little bobbles) and manipulated stitches but some involve nothing more complicated than yarn-overs, k2tog and ssk. It would take a certain amount of courage to cast on for one of these shawls without having knitted any lace previously but if you’ve got a couple of shawls under your belt, you will find plenty to inspire and challenge you here!
Knit Nation – Estonian Lace
As I mentioned in my last post, the other class I attended at Knit Nation was Merike Saarniit‘s “Estonian Lace”. I absolutely loved this class, which was a great mixture of information about lace (and other) knitting in Estonia, oohing and aahing over the shawls and garments that Merike had brought, and getting a chance to try out some Estonian stitches.
This is my class swatch (in Dale Baby Ull 4 ply) based on Merike’s adaptation of the Estonian stitch pattern, Silvia. The pattern has the nupps and manipulated stitches which are common features of Estonian patterns. Merike showed us various techniques for creating nupps and manipulating stitches (which is where you knit a certain number of stitches together and then increase in that stitch to get back to the number you started with, or more). I loved Merike’s attitude to knitting the Estonian patterns, which was very much that it doesn’t really matter how you work the stitches, if you’re getting the result that you want then you’re doing it right.
This class is also responsible for the other purchase that I made at the Knit Nation marketplace, the book “The Haapsalu Shawl”. There’s a full review of this coming (ETA: review is now up) so I’m not going to say much other than this is easily the most beautiful knitting book I have ever seen. It is expensive but once you’ve seen it in person, it is difficult to resist. The added bonus is that it is also filled with useful information!
If you’re interested in Estonian patterns but don’t want to splash out on the Haapsalu book yet, take a look at New lace – old traditions. The authors of this blog regularly publish photographs of swatches of Estonian stitch patterns and provide accompanying PDFs with the relevant charts and stitch instructions. There is also the Haapsalu Sall blog, which is mostly in Estonian with some English content but you don’t need to understand the language to admire the beautiful shawls!
Knit Nation – Photographing your fibre
I had signed up for two classes at this year’s Knit Nation, Franklin Habit‘s “Photographing your Fibre” and Merike Saarniit‘s “Estonian Lace”. Unfortunately, when the weekend came round, I was ill, taking a bizarre cocktail of antibiotics, decongestants and paracetamol and mostly deaf in one ear. Undeterred, I turned up for the classes anyway and I apologise to any of you who were in class with me and had to listen to me coughing and probably seeming somewhat anti-social as I was struggling to hear anything anyone was saying.
Because of this, my memories (and most of the photographs I took over the weekend) are somewhat blurry, although I do remember enjoying myself and I did manage to learn some things!
Franklin’s class (which I attended on the Friday) was a good basic introduction to the technicalities of photography, covering things like aperture speeds, depth of field, etc. Lots of the technical stuff I had learned before but mostly forgotten and Franklin’s explanations were really clear and easy to understand.
He also discussed different types of light and lighting and how to get better results with light for your photographs without having to spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on professional equipment. I decided there was no better time to put my new knowledge to the test than when photographing the yarn that I bought at the marketplace.
The photograph on the left was taken without the aid of any special lighting equipment. The photograph on the right was taken with the aid of my new super-duper high-tech reflector (otherwise known as a piece of cardboard wrapped in tin foil):
The difference is subtle but definitely worth the two minutes and no money that it cost me to set up the reflector. I can see it getting a lot of use in future!
The yarn is Juno Fibre Arts Buffy Sock, which is the only yarn that I bought this year (mostly because I realised beforehand that I still had quite a lot of last year’s yarn left). I think the colour is Wraith. It’s a beautifully soft superwash sock yarn but I have a feeling that it might end up as shawl. That is what usually happens to yarn around here, after all!
Story of a design: Waterlilies
This pattern has been a long time coming! I first posted about it more than a year ago, showing the original inspiration:
which became:
which (eventually) became:
I love it when a plan comes together!
Originally, I had knitted the shawl without a border but after wearing it a couple of times, I decided that it really did need a border but couldn’t find an existing one that I liked. So, being me, I decided just to make up my own. That worked surprisingly well, so well in fact that I used the edging for my Celandine shawl as well.
I knitted the second sample in Knit Picks Shadow Tonal Lace. It is far less luxurious than the Plymouth Yarn Baby alpaca that I used for the original but, having decided to name the shawl “Waterlilies”, I couldn’t resist the idea of knitting one in yarn which is explicitly designed to “give your knitting the appearance of watercolor”.
I always find naming patterns difficult and even asked for help with this one. As chance would have it, it was a comment from Steven that made me think of the flower motifs as waterlilies floating on the undulating yarn-over “waves” (boy, that sounds pretentious!) and the name was fixed. Since Steven has absolutely no interest in a free copy of the pattern, I’ve sent a copy to Giselle whose suggestion was my favourite of those that I received.
Waterlilies is now available from Yellow Ginger Designs and Ravelry.