New knitting room

by
Reply

Well, well. Our new home has a (ahem) bonus room in the lower level. Maybe we’ll turn it into an exercise room. Um. No. Maybe we’ll turn it into another guest bedroom. Um. No. I now have a knitting room! I am so pleased that I can hardly contain myself. I don’t want to get on too much of a digression but that is a strange way to express intense joy, in terms of being unable to contain yourself. But on this occasion it’s apt.

My new knitting room is a place for all things knitterly, and yarnie, and also a place for remembering good people. The bent wood stick chair was my grandfather’s. I’m no spring chicken so you know it’s old. Pa used to sit on that chair, which was in his basement. That’s where he changed out of his work boots and into something more house-appropriate.

The carved map behind the chair is of Hillman’s Long Lake. My younger brother gave us the map and it will forever remind me of good times at the lake and my brother. My swift and ballwinder need no introduction to you yarnie folks. An assortment of knitting bags are sewn from a number of needlepoint pieces my mom left me. They hang on a (new) coatrack its designer calls “Knit.” I couldn’t resist. My knitting room isn’t all looking to the past. I’ve added new stuff too. My new work table is “Jive” from Haworth, a cool Holland Michigan company. The yellow chair is one of a set of four I purchased several years ago from Overstock. Super comfy, very sturdy, and totally colorful. My granddaughter made my new snips container by decorating a paper carton Robinette’s orchard uses to pack fruit. The tall staff with the red apple on top was carved by my older brother.

By now, you get the focus of my new knitting room. It’s wonderfully unfocused. Knitting. Yarn. Old stuff. New stuff.

My rocker is the best place ever for comfy knitting. Good light roo. And that’s another of my older brother’s creations next to it. He’s an avid fisherman and often paints and carves fish into his furniture pieces. You can see him and more of his work here in my “I knit for folk art” 2010 post.

My knitting room has a shelf its entire length. I’ve peopled it, well crittered it, mostly with my recent stuffies. I knit almost all of them while we waited patiently/impatiently from the closing date to our very delayed move-in. Except, that sheep in the corner. Do you recognize that she’s a version of the Serta mattress company’s advertising mascot?

I found my metal sheep mascot in the mattress section of a local furniture store near Grand Rapids. I sort of, to be honest, begged the owner to sell me that sheep. Sheepie was a dusty mess but cleaned up very nicely after a sudsy bath in Dawn dishsoap.

My new sheep magnetic board is from Wayfair. Many of my favorite photos have found their new home, including one of 3-year old me standing behind Pa’s chair looking a bit mischievous.

My new space has lots of room for knitted critters, including Jutta, Olivier, Vera, Joris, and the rest of my Annita Wilschut gang. The mini storage drawers on the ledge contain my buttons, all nicely sorted by color or style.

The wall opposite my critter ledge is a great spot for my yarn bins and tools. That’s my Ravatar doll slumping on top of one of the plastic shelving units. Most of my bookcase is devoted to paper patterns and books. I ruthlessly trimmed back on these in recent years as I went (mostly) all-in on digitized patterns. I’ve kept the special books and discontinued non-digitized patterns. Otherwise my library of books and patterns found new good homes.

My granddaughter visited here last month. She loves to draw and I found this near my swift one afternoon.

She has a new desk that sits just outside my knitting room and she’s drawn it in the foreground. The package of Dutch Cocoa cookies she’s given me needs a bit of explanation.

They are Evelyn’s favorite cookies. I plan to frame her drawing and add it to my knitting room permanently.

Moving takes a lot out of a person. Especially an old one! But I love our new home and our new part of Michigan. And I definitely love my new knitting room.

Stora Dimun

by
Reply

This is Cheryl Oberle’s wonderfully soothing knit, the Stora Dimun Shawl. The pattern is included in her excellent book Folk Shawls: 25 Knitting Patterns and Tales from Around the World, published by Interweave. The publication is out of print. You may be able to find it at your local library or on a used book site like Abebooks.com. It’s a great knitting book and pattern resource and definitely worth the search.

Stora Dimun is one of my favorite shawl patterns. In fact, this is the 4th time I’ve knit it!

It’s a large shawl meant to be knit in sport or DK weight. I used Cormo Sport by Elemental Effects. It proved an excellent choice for this knit. With a light blocking the shawl is 72 inches from tip-to-tip and 29 inches deep. But the sportweight yarn keeps it light. Lightweight but very warm.

Here’s the shawl spread out on my full-sized sofa. If you’re a petite person (I’m not), you could wrap this around yourself twice. Doesn’t that sound cozy?

Early mornings are already chilly in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s where I moved to two months ago. Yep, at the end of June we moved from our beloved Long Lake–it was time. The new adventure is unfolding in Grand Rapids. (I’m keeping the blog name the same, though, since so much of the years since 2009 focused on the lake and its critters.) I’ve already been enjoying my Stora Dimun sitting on our front porch with my morning cup of coffee as I watch the local Sandhill Crane family and a giant oak tree in front of our house.

New spot to live.The knit goes on.

I’ve knit Stora Dimun three times before. My first one was when my lace skills were super rusty. It was warm but the lace was all scrambled. It’s keeping someone else warm now. The next two were gifted at the outset. But this one’s for me!

Even more toys

by
2

Meet Joris. Joris is…let’s see…a dragon. At least I think he is one. Joris is an Annita Wilschut pattern available here. Wilschut says that “Joris is a weird creature. He’s got 6 points or maybe horns on his head. So, he looks like a dragon, but he does not dare to say so. He’s afraid people may get scared.” So, a dragon. A dragon with keen sensibilities about what we people are able to tolerate in our knitted critters.

Joris’s toes and fingers are a bit fiddly to knit. But the pattern directions are spot on and very clearly laid out. If you want a Joris, as long as you’re proficient with double-pointed needles (that’s what I use) or magic loop technique, go for it!

I knit this Joris in Limbo Mexiko Color, by Schoeller + Stahl. It’s a DK weight. I just let the colors fall where they happened to fall. I must say that the muzzle and face colors worked out remarkably well!

Here’s a closer look at his spikey horns.

A seriously excellent dragon. I’ve knit him once before and blogged about Joris #1 here.

This is going to be an all-Wilschut blogpost. I am such a big fan of her work! This is the first time I’ve knit what I call my blue pup and what Wilschut calls Victoria.

I am super-pleased with how Victoria turned out. (Do be sure to pick up the errata on the pattern page, though: On page 5 of the pattern, the directions should be “close the round and knit 5 stitches” (not just “close the round.”)

Victoria is one of Wilschut’s early releases. It’s a tad less clear in some places than I’d have hoped. Unfortunately I knitted a back leg backwards at one point. My pup is wearing a collar because his neck turned out to be quite messy. I couldn’t get the pick-up of stitches to be as neat as it should have been. I think her collar is cute though. And her head being cocked to one side is so endearing. The perfect gesture for this pup.

I’m not much of an embroiderer, as I’ve often confessed. For Victoria I took the easy way out and used both safety eyes AND a safety nose. I had one size nose in my stash and it fit Victoria perfectly.

I knit my blue pup version in Schachenmyr’s Extrafine Merino. It’s a DK weight, which is very close to the sport weight that the pattern calls for.

Next up is Nellie Hippo and Elephant Floor. Again I used Schachenmyr’s Extrafine Merino DK. The pattern can be knit in any weight yarn, of course. Well as long as you don’t run out. One pattern provides the directions for both critters.

Mine are definitely a pair, knit in reverse-colored sundresses.

Ok. Everyone at once: “What’s with the ears?” I know. A tad odd. No two ways about it. I’ve made my peace with Floor’s ears and suggest that you can too. She’s a fun knit.

Same for Nellie. Fun. And knit all in one piece–just like all the Wilschut patterns. When the knitting’s done you aren’t left with a pile of pieces to sew together. Knit. Stuff. Enjoy.

Here’s the pair snuggled together thinking about what matters most in their world. I heard them discuss that it doesn’t matter if you have warts on your muzzle or stupid ears. You don’t pick your friends by how they look. They decided being a friend and having one is what it’s all about.

Think fall…and hats

by
4

For those who follow my blog you are forgiven for thinking, “Yawn. That knitter is knitting the Thinker hat again.” I am. I definitely am. This hat is wonderful one. It fits well. It’s fun to knit. It’s a quick knit. The Thinker is a fits-all-head-sizes great hat! Check out The Thinker by Susan Villas Lewis. For $6 US you’ll have a hat pattern that works from newborn to extra large adult.

This is the (ahem) 12th time I’ve knit The Thinker. And I’m thinking about knitting it again soon!

This time I used a wonderful but sadly discontinued yarn by Sugar Bush Yarns: Bold. It was an excellent superwash merino worsted and I was disappointed to see it bite the dust. That’s true even though I managed to snag a boatload of skeins at a great price at WEBS a good while back.

I make a few modifications in the pattern to make it even more perfect (to my way of thinking). I knit the ribbing on US 5’s and the body on 7’s instead of knitting the entire hat in the same needle size. And after the ribbing I knit one round plain before starting the body of the hat. I also knit one round before starting the second section of ribbing, after the main body of the hat. Those extra rounds create an attractive transitional “furrow” that I like. Totally knitter’s choice on that. The largest size ends after half a section of the garter stitch, after what amounts to a round 9. I knit a round 10 before transitioning into the ribbing.

Even a super organized crown decrease!

Next up is Christine Kelly’s Mutze, actually it’s Mutze with an umlaut above the “u.” But this keyboard dummy can’t figure out how to type an umlaut so umlautless Mutze will have to do. I knit my Mutze in Berroco Lanas, a wool worsted.

My only modification was to work the crown decreases only until I got the stitch count down to 12. I feared that following the pattern exactly with a final set of decreases would result in the dreaded pointy-hat-syndrome. ‘Tis a condition to be avoided at all costs in my knitting world. Heads don’t come to a point and hats shouldn’t either, in my view. Well, except baby hats. We can put babies’ heads in any kind of silly hat we want to. They do not care.

Mutze is a good no-nonsense hat, akin to a number of hats with this same basic construction: alternating reverse stockinette ridges with ribbing of some sort. It’s an excellent addition to the catalog.

PentaCap is next: a freebie by the very talented hat designer, Wooly Wormhead. OK. Probably her mom didn’t name her Wooly and her birth certificate doesn’t say her surname is Wormhead. But she goes to great lengths to keep her “real” name to herself. She goes by Wooly. And she also says that she just made up the name “Ruth Patterson” when the NY Times interviewed her on businesses like hers reacting to Brexit by shifting their companies to Estonia, though apparently just in the digital world.

I’m digressing. Nothing new in that. PentaCap is a typical Wormhead creation. Strong structural elements. Lots of great techniques to learn. I knit mine in Plymouth Yarn Worsted Merino Superwash Solid. It’s a tad pricey. But there’s a lot of bang for the buck. And when someone throws the hat in the washer and then in the dryer all will be well.

I used the suggested crochet cast-on. You work it just like a provisional crochet cast-on except that instead of working with a contrasting yarn, you work with the main color. And you don’t unravel it to work in the “other” direction. You simply enjoy the stretchiness and how nicely it frames the hat.

At the end of the garter stitch section comes a “bind off braid.” That’s what creates the interesting raised ridge before the stockinette section begins. For me it’s a new tool for the toolbox. Here’s the link to the designer’s tutorial on how to work a “bind-off braid.”

And PentaCap has a nice swirly, well-behaved crown.

It’s warm here in Michigan. Not Phoenix or Miami warm. Breathing in deeply doesn’t sear your lungs. And if you stumble to the sidewalk you won’t end up in the burn unit. (That weather is nothing to joke about and I won’t.)

But, anyway, it’s warm for here. These are the dog days of summer, after all: 20 days before and 20 days after the dog star Sirius rises and falls in conjunction with the sun. In case you don’t have your star charts handy, that’s from about July 3rd to about August 11th. I always enjoy knitting hats during the dog days. Hats are small projects. They don’t create a lot of heat in your lap. So consider knitting a hat! Pretty soon heads in your neck of the woods will be needing them.

Dolls

by
2

This is Birch Doll, a totally cool creation by Courtney Spainhower. Spainhower says that “sweet, shy, willowy Birch is an artistic soul who prefers sitting quietly with his thoughts under blue skies.” I find him to be totally sweet. Those long limbs, so crucial to his look, are a tad fiddly to knit and stuff. But the overall effect is totally worth it. And the embroidered belly button? The perfect touch.

Birch Doll used to be a freebie available on Ravelry. It isn’t available anymore. So that’s the bad news. Check your Rav library because when it was first released quite a few Ravelers, including me, added it to our libraries or downloaded it. I can’t make the pattern available to you but if you’re an experienced toy maker I’m thinking you could reengineer it. I wasn’t able to find the pattern on the Wayback Machine–just the image. If you find the pattern there, please leave me a comment and I’ll add it to this post.

Birch Boy poses in a variety of endearing seemingly thoughtful ways.

I knit Birch Boy in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted. My only modification was to sew the arms onto the torso rather than button them in place. If a small child plays with Birch Boy I didn’t want to risk the buttons coming loose. But, for now, he’s on duty pondering the meaning of the universe perched in a prominent place in my new knitting room.

Birch Boy’s a little overwhelmed by all the company, preferring to keep his own counsel. In particular, Jutta (the bigger doll with the dreads) is bothering him because she keeps asking if he has alopecia or just shaved his head. Jutta can be a little snot, by the way.

Next up is…a purse?

Yep, until you open the drawstrings and fold down the picot-edged top to the bottom of the bag.

What little kid wouldn’t think this is just the cat’s meow?

It’s Frankie Brown’s freebie: Cradle Bag. I knit mine in Sandnes Garn Double Sunday, a merino DK-weight yarn. First time I’ve used it and I was impressed.

Brown’s pattern includes the cradle bag and a combo sleeping sack/pillow that fits perfectly inside the bag. It’s designed for a 5-inch baby doll. My only modification was to tighten up the gauge with a somewhat beefy DK yarn to stiffen the cradle some. I knit on size 3 US needles. Many who’ve knit this have made the same modification.

I’ve knit Cradle Bag once before and blogged about it here back in 2020. That bag was for my granddaughter and I made many of the clothes that Brown has designed for 5-inch dolls. The clothes, knit in fingering weight, make a wonderful addition to Cradle Bag if you’ve enough time to devote to the project.