Tag Archives: Ann Budd

For your hands

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This knit started back in 2014 when one of my knitworthy nieces traveled to Iceland. She had a great vacation and brought me back Léttlopii by Istex. The real Lopi. The Lopi skeins that have Icelandic labels. Spring Green and Black Heather:

Yes, I know that Reynolds Lite Lopi is essentially the same yarn. But these skeins had traveled far and they needed to be knit into something that honored their Icelandic roots. I wasn’t sure what I’d make of it. Mittens, I figured. But I couldn’t initially find a two-color pattern that I liked. And so the yarn made its way deeper into my stash. Then came my current stash down effort. I found Hlekkir by Hildur Ýr Ísberg and decided it was perfect for my Lopi. It’s a freebie on Ravelry. The pattern is available in Icelandic and in English. I chose the English version.

Nice “afterthought” thumbs blend perfectly into the patterning. Hlekkir is an Icelandic word that means “links on a chain.” That perfectly captures it!

My niece and I had an interesting long distance text session on the fit. I had a very difficult time explaining what measurements I needed. She sent me this to help out:

It didn’t help much. The distance from the base of the thumb to the top of the middle finger–in the normal world–is measured this way. But a diagonal measure doesn’t work in the knitting world. I had Steve trace my hand and then I measured his tracing. I thought the man was a bit too much of a detail guy, as he traced every gnarly bump. And he seems to have been a tad more adept on the thumb as compared with the rest of my digits. I assure you that I have all my fingers and that they’re approximately normal looking. But, from this sketch, my niece understood what I needed.

I got back the best reply possible. My niece told me our hand sizes are the same. “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

I thought about adapting Hlekkir’s chain link pattern to knit a hat. You’d think I’d have made enough hats to make that easy. But my design skills failed me and, instead, I made Bethany Hill’s Drips, another Ravelry freebie. So, meet Lopi Drips.

OK, I snuck in yet another hat. I wasn’t supposed to do that. But this is an extra-excellent hat. It’s meant to resemble the drips on the outside of a paint can. Think this:

Reimagined as this:

Very cool!

And, after that digression, back to stuff for hands. These are Aimee Alexander’s Farm to Market Mitts. Mine are knit in Plymouth Yarn’s DK Merino Superwash.

That interwoven cable is a big favorite of mine. This is the 5th pair I’ve knit!

I’ve been known to goof and get one of those twists wrong. But, in this pair, I didn’t fall asleep at the switch. This pair? This pair is finally one for me.

The next pair of mitts is Ann Budd’s In-A-Pinch Fingerless Mitts. Mine are knit in Lion Brand LB Collection Merino Yak Alpaca, an Aran weight. One ball, 126 yards/60 grams, was enough for the pair. Budd herself gave me that skein of yarn and the pattern at a knitting retreat last year. I weighed out the yarn, as Budd recommended, and separated the skein into two equal balls to knit the mitts. And it almost worked! I just had to shorten the mitts by a few rounds.

The mitt pattern has a few difficulties. I’ve added the clarifications that one Raveler says came right from the horse’s mouth/pen (Budd) to my Rav project page. That should help if you’re of a mind to give these a try.

These next mitts are Amanda Scheuzger’s Mt. Battie Mitts. Mine are knit in Stonehedge Fiber’s Shepherd’s Wool Worsted. I thought possibly the cabling would drive me batty, but the cable work was actually a lot of fun.

Did you notice that the twists reverse from one hand to the other? Nice touch. You only need two cable needles on one of the rounds. The palms of the mitt are knit plain. That works well. The only minor revision I’d make next time is I’d put the 15 thumb stitches on a waste yarn and come back later and knit taller thumbs (in the round). That’s because my thumbs would welcome a bit more coverage.

These fit well and will serve well.

Speaking of hands…

I found this sorting through my box of childhood sentimental stuff. This is my hand back in 1957. I was five. My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Gale. I didn’t like her. Not one bit. I also didn’t like kindergarten. Less than not one bit. One day we were commanded to put our hand in–whatever this is, possibly Plaster of Paris. My mom kept my hand mold in her stash of sentimental stuff and eventually she gave it it to me. I recently photographed the mold and then pitched it. My mom didn’t know what to do with it, so she gave it to me. I decided I’d relieve the next generation of trying to figure out what to do with it. There’s a photo if I want to see it again.

I am satisfied with how my hands grew up. They know how to work. They know how to  play. And they learned how to knit. Good hands.

More for your neck

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This pretty is Betangled Cowl by Jennifer Weissman. It’s designed for an Aran weight yarn. But I decided to knit it in Stonehedge Fiber Shepherd’s wool, a worsted. It was mid-December during a dreary stretch of days. I succumbed to the lemon yellow colorway. And that luxurious 24-stitch cable. Yep. 24-stitch. I was finally able to use a gigantic j-hook cable needle that I’ve never used before to hold those 12 stitches.

I obviously knew that I was under gauge. This wool, in these stitches, wasn’t happy until I moved down to a size 8 (and 7) US-sized needle. Since it was going to be lemon yellow come hell or high water, I decided I’d accept a narrower version and just add some pattern repeats. My gauge was 20 stitches to 4 inches (not the 17 the pattern calls for) and 34 rows to 4 inches (not 26).  I knit the medium size and ended up knitting 10 pattern repeats (rather than the 8 that the pattern called for). Mine is 9.5 inches tall and 36.5 inches edge-to-edge.

I like this one. A lot. The pattern is available for purchase here on Ravelry.

I thought I’d sworn off buttoned cowls. Generally, even lightweight buttons add more weight to a cowl than I prefer. And then the cowl sags along the button-band line. But Betangled bewitched me. If I make this again, I believe I’ll do a provisional cast-on, ditch the buttons, and graft the ends together. I’m not sure how I’d manage the ribbing sections though.

This looks and wears much better on my glass head than it does on me. It seems to take more precise wearing skills than I possess. But I’ve been advised “Just put it on and ignore it because it’s beautiful.”

I sewed a button on both sides of the top buttonhole so that when the cowl flips forward, there will be a button.

This is Ann Budd’s Crimson Leaves Cowl. Mine is knit in Sun Valley Farms MCN fingering weight. The yarn is a great mix of 80% merino, 10% cashmere goat, and 10% nylon,

This cowl was a lot of work. 252 stitches and size 2 US needles. There are no resting rows in the 4-round, 18-stitch repeat lace pattern. But the pattern is not complicated. To the awake and alert, anyway. I am not a skilled lace knitter and I was able to manage it without lifelines, just using stitch markers to frame the pattern repeats.

I’ve not knit many fingering weight cowls. Glass head is able to keep it from flopping over at the neck and showing its reverse side. I’m not so successful with that because, well, because I move. Despite it’s floppiness I like this cowl and have already gotten a good deal of wear out of it.

I used Elizabeth Zimmerman’s sewn bind-off, as the pattern suggests. It’s very elastic, which assures that the bind-off won’t bind. And it does leave the fabric somewhat wavy. But it’s not much of an echo of the waviness of the cast-on edge. Sort of the nature of the beast, I guess. This cowl needed a rather stern wet block to open up the pattern. I wasn’t successful, though, in matching the bind-off edge to the handsome cast-on edge.

This next pattern is Martina Behm’s great freebie, Wolkig. It’s another fingering-weight cowl. But this one-row pattern (that’s not a misprint) is incredibly easy to knit.

Behm explains: “The Wolkig cowl is twisted and has extra volume due to strategically worked decreases and increases, so it can be stretched a little to fit comfortably over your head when putting it on. Stretched in the other direction (lengthwise), it will fit snugly around your neck without leaving any gaps where the cold wind might sneak in.” Here’s a look at it off-neck.

Wolkig, which means “cloud” in German, is even interesting on its non-public side, as this next photo shows. That’s especially true worked in a variegated yarn like my Zauberball by Schoppel-Wolle. Zauberball is a sportweight, though maybe a lightweight sportweight. It still worked out well.

This is my fourth Wolkig. You might want to check out the rest. I measure the success of this pattern partly by the fact that every Wolkig I’ve knit is sprucing up somebody else’s neck. My knitworthy folks like this pattern a lot. I really should knit one for me.

Steve’s Tyrolean socks

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socksock

Here, with apologies, is the somewhat-too-long story of this pair of socks. They are Ann Budd’s “Basic Sock Pattern” from her “The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes and Gauges.” It is an entire book of no nonsense patterns with absolutely no goofy names. Basic Sock is an excellent pattern and it fits Steve’s boxy foot exceptionally well.

This yarn is Opal Antonia aus Tirol, by Zweger Garn. It’s a discontinued yarn. It was inspired by a Tyrolean pop singer by the name of Antonia. Here’s one of her YouTube videos. I think she must be the one in the sort of hula-inspired skirt.

Um. It’s hard to know quite what to say about that. It’s been on YouTube for a year and half and it’s had 13 views. Actually, I was the 14th. Antonia is a knitter. And Zweger Garn named a line of sock yarns after her. I found the yarn marked way down when Sweet Peas closed in St. Clair, Michigan. I think the self-striping didn’t quite work out as intended. Those green globby sections don’t look quite right.

Steve really likes hand knit socks. Mostly he wears them in winter around the house.

So, the story of these socks. The yarn, which is 75% wool/25% nylon, is skeined with 465 yards. That should be enough even for a man’s pair of socks. But after approaching the heel on the first one, I convinced myself there was no way I would have enough yarn. So I took my heavily discounted yarn and partly finished sock to a local yarn shop, intent on adding another color to the heels and toes. Easy. Right? I couldn’t find a good match and ended up buying this pricy skein of Spud and Chloe fingering weight.

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You may have noticed something. But you probably figured that it it didn’t “go” well with my Tyrolean pop singer colorway because there’s something off about your monitor. Your monitor tells no lie. It looked terrible.

I used to make a lot of socks, but I haven’t made any recently. Apparently I’ve lost some sock IQ points, because I forgot where the color change should go for the heel. I did the heel in the main colorway. So I decided I’d just put a color block in the foot part of the sock. Exquisitely bad idea. And then I returned to Antonia for the toe. Another bad idea.

I finished the sock and then stared at it for weeks. And I stared at my remaining Antonia and decided I might have enough yarn of that colorway after all.

So, I eventually knit the second sock entirely in Antonia. Then I frogged the first sock back to where Spud and Chloe made their appearance. And, just to make it special, before I was done I managed to convince myself that I really was going to run out of yarn after all. But, no, I’d weighed the yarn correctly. I had a very small amount of yarn left. Just enough for darning if it’s ever needed. But, actually, I don’t do darn. Darn and I don’t play well together.

In the end, this is a nice basic pair of socks that fits Steve’s feet just the way hand-knit socks should: perfectly, with no irritating seams.

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Cold feet fixes

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bedsocks2

Michigan, like the rest of the Midwest, has been trapped in the polar vortex for weeks. When it hasn’t been below zero it’s been snowing like crazy. We’re bracing for something like 8 inches of snow tonight. So, it’s been a good winter for warming up cold feet. But you can only stay by the fireside for so long and then you have to venture under the chilly bedsheets. These are a modification of Jo Sharp’s “Bed Socks” from the Vogue Knitting On the Go series.

The pattern calls for a DK weight, but I wanted something beefier. These are knit from Plymouth Yarns Encore, a workhorse, easy-care, 75% acrylic/25% wool mix. I decided that laces would be superfluous and just knit them a tad long. They stay put nicely. The plan wasn’t to have them be mismatched, but this pair was a real yarn-eater and I was running out of the green. These are knit flat and seamed. Being seriously crochet-impaired, I seamed by picking up the stitches on both sides and then doing a 3-needle bind off. I thought the resulting raised ridge would resemble a crocheted chain. Resemble is the key word there. Not an elegant solution, as the seamed side shows. But great for keeping feet nice and cozy.

bedsocksThis next lovely is Ann Budd’s “First Time Tube Socks,” a pattern from Interweave Knits Holiday 2009 magazine. I should apologize to Ann and her fine pattern for my choice of yarn. But every yarn, on sale or not, deserves being knit up into into something or other. This is my “on sale” Berrocco Comfort something or other. These tube socks are very comfortable in bed. Unlike the printed sheets, they are also very ugly.

comfort_tube

Worked up in a nice calm brown, these would have been comforting to the eyes as well as to the feet. Let’s just say no more and change the subject.

Yuko Nakamura’s “Non-Felted Slippers” have been in my queue for more than two years. I hesitated to knit them because I was unsure if slippers knit on two needles in a bulky weight yarn would work out well. Plenty of Ravelers have modified the pattern to work in the round, but I decided not to monkey with it. I just trusted the thousands who have knit this free pattern “as is.” The pattern doesn’t disappoint.

slipper_kal

I honored the length of time the pattern spent in my queue by knitting it up in some of the oldest yarn in my stash, Aberdare Yarn’s 100% two-ply bulky mohair. I purchased it about 20 years ago, intending it for doll hair that never got knit. The yarn was spun in Kenya.

aberdareorangeaberdaregold

Lovely fuzzy yarn, but difficult to find a proper project for it. I think these slipper socks put this special yarn to good use.

I decided to try the pattern again, in a worsted weight, with an added cuff. When friends, even kids, come over and take their wintry boots off at the door, I’d like to have an assortment of slippers for them to wear if they want to. These were knit in a beefy worsted weight yarn, Blackberry Ridge Color Flow, from one of the browner sections of the Autumn colorway. For the cuff, I just continued to knit instead of bind off, decreasing one stitch, and working a knit 2, purl 2 ribbing for 25 rows.

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Encouraged by the results, and pleased to be using up so many oddments, I worked up one more pair. This time I used a partial skein of Old Sage Brown Sheep Bulky for the soles and leftover Berroco Vintage Chunky in Breezeway for the cuffs.

Blue_slippersI’m looking forward to tackling next winter’s cold with a basket of comfy slipper socks kept by the door.