Category Archives: Knitting

More doubles

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Maybe, possibly, well likely not, you remember that Nate the kindly rural mail carrier so loved his first set of these mittens that he asked if I could make him another pair. His special request was to ask if I could knit him a camo-colored pair. Nate is not a knitter and had no idea how difficult it would be to find a worsted weight yarn (or any weight yarn, actually) in a decent camouflage colorway. These mittens, knit in Patons Classic Wool Worsted in “Forest” (#77014), came as close as I could find in a wool yarn.

I don’t know whether or not this colorway’s been discontinued. But it was extremely difficult to find. I couldn’t find it on-line. I finally located one skein in the back of a bin in a shop near me. It was just barely enough yarn to complete the mittens. Shopping in person was more fun than I anticipated:

Me: I’m looking for some camo-colored worsted weight yarn. I really like Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride but I don’t think it comes in any colorway that would work.

Dorinda: How about this, wouldn’t this work…(bringing me to a dark taupe shade of Lamb’s Pride)?

Me: (Puzzled.) No, I really want it to be camo-colored. It’s a special request.

Dorinda: Did you see this color…(bringing me to a darker shade of brown Lamb’s Pride)?

Me: (Even more puzzled). No, that’s all one shade.

Dorinda: What kind of camel are you knitting?

Me: Camo as in camouflage, Dorinda, not as in Bactrian.

Much laughter ensued. And then Dorinda found the one skein in the shop that worked out well.

This mitten pattern is Mittens From the Top, by Elizabeth Zimmermann. Nate thinks his new mittens are the cat’s meow.

But I wasn’t completely satisfied that Paton’s Classic Wool was going to give Nate the warmth of Lamb’s Pride. So I doubled up and knit him another pair, this time in the Lamb’s Pride Old Sage (M-69) colorway. Khaki, the green shade, is sort of in the same aesthetic as camo. There’s nothing much warmer than the Lamb’s Pride mix of wool and mohair.

Next up is a freebie slipper pattern that I’ve knit so many times it’s embarrassing. Nola’s slippers, by Nola Miller. This time I used King Cole Big Value Chunky. It’s a good non-pretentious 100% acrylic that will wear well and wash up easily

One modification to the pattern that I make is to use chunky or bulky yarn rather than knitting worsted weight doubled. I feel that worsted doubled produces such a stiff fabric that feet don’t so much get cuddled as manhandled. Plus, speaking of hands, mine don’t do well knitting worsted with doubled strands.

My other main modification of Nola’s pattern is that I extend the ribbing to form a nice deep cuff. Knit on US size 10 needles, following the pattern yields a slipper that fits a woman’s US size 8-10 foot.

Here’s another Nola’s, this time knit in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Superwash Bulky. I love the name of the colorway: Explosive Berry. I haven’t used this yarn very often. Good yarn.

Here’s a look at the soles, showing my final modification. I work a 3-needle bind-off that shows up as the center garter stitch ridge. You could bind off and sew the seam instead. But why bother when the stitches are all live. As I recall, there’s an odd number of stitches so I just knit 2 of the stitches together as I bind-off.

Next up is one of Kris Basta’s freebie dorm boots variations: Better Dorm Boots Deluxe. This first pair is knit in Plymouth Encore Chunky. The XL size, with the body of the slipper knit on US Size 9 and the cuff knit on size 10 ends up fitting a woman’s foot from about a size 8 to a size 10 (US sizing).

That little bit of lacework in the cuff dresses up the slipper quite a bit.

Here’s another pair, this time knit in Hayfield Spirit Chunky, an 80% acrylic, 20% wool. It’s been many decades since I knit with Hayfield yarn. It just hasn’t come up in my knitting world lately. A yarn shop near me stocks the yarn and I was drawn to this appealing colorway (Orange Swirl). It turned out to be wonderful to work with. I’d buy it again in a heartbeat.

And finally, the same pattern in Cascade Yarns Pacific Chunky Multi in their Brights colorway. WEBS had it so seriously discounted that I gave it a try. It’s 60% acrylic, 40% wool. For this type of project, it worked out really well. Oops. Not doubles anymore, triples, I meant triples.

I know. I can get ridiculous with my knitting stutters. Double doubles, this time. Here are Basta’s Better Dorm Boots Deluxes again in Plymouth Yarns Encore Chunky.

My recipients always also receive a warning with my slipper gifts: they are slicker than slick and don’t even think about wearing them on hardscape floors. In fact, I call them bedsocks.

I totally enjoy having 100% confidence that what I’m knitting will work out well. Maybe that’s one reason for all these repeats. Plus, with so many of my knit recipients having chilly feet these grown-up booties get snatched up from my choose-your-knit baskets very quickly.

Doubles

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Here’s Barley. It’s part of tincanknits wonderful Simple Collection, a freebie set of patterns aimed at beginning knitters. The patterns work equally well for experienced knitters looking for a relaxing rewarding knit. This is Barley the hat, not to be confused with Grain the shawl, Harvest the cardigan, Maize the fingerless mitts, Rye the socks, Oats the cowl, Flax the pull-over sweater, Malt the blanket, or Wheat the scarf. The patterns come in multiple sizes and are designed for worsted weight. But some of the patterns, including the hat, the pullover and the socks, also have lightweight versions.

It’s such a generous gift to the knitting universe. I knit this Barley in excellent worsted weight with possibly the longest name in the knitting universe: West Yorkshire Spinners Bluefaced Leicester Aran Prints. It’s the Blue Tit colorway.

Aptly named.

Here’s a look at the crown decreases complete with a pompom.

Why knit doubles? It’s a legitimate question for sure. I enjoy seeing how the same pattern knits up in different yarns. And if a pattern reliably produces a good result, I enjoy that predictability. I will especially retreat into that predictability if I’ve just finished a knit that I’m not completely satisfied with.

So, next up is Barley knit again, this time in Dark Pink from Novita 7 Veljesta Solid.

Here’s another look at Barley’s crown, this time not obscured by a pompom.

Neat and organized as any good crown should be. Barley gives a new knitter the chance to practice garter stitch in the round. It also builds skills in terms of learning to read your knitting.

Next up is Nici Griffin’s Escape Beanie. There’s a cowl and fingerless mitts that complete the set if you’re into sets. Personally I’ve always favored a mishmash look in my handknits. But lately this aged hippie is starting to see the value of sets.

This first Escape is knit in Shalimar Yarns Breathless DK. Drat. Yet another wonderful yarn you can’t buy anymore: 75% merino, 15% cashmere, 10% silk. I unraveled a little-used small shawl and knitted up part of the yarn in this Escape.

Here’s another Escape, this time knit in Schachenmayr Merino Extrafine 120, another excellent DK weight yarn. This DK is beefier than Breathless. I needed 54 grams of yarn and only had 50 grams of the Royal colorway. You probably spotted right away what my solution was.

Here’s a closer look at its bullseye top.

I’m actually quite satisfied with my solution. Before changing colors, I knit one round so that I’d avoid any of those half-one-color-half-another stitches. That round fades nicely into the pattern. No worries. Embracing one’s lemons can yield good results.

Next up is yet another in a series of Just a Hat‘s I’ve knit. It’s such an excellent unisex hat, a freebie from Galina Shemchuk. Shemchuk’s pattern used to be downloadable on Ravelry and savable to your Rav library. No more. Fairly recently she took the unusual step of photographing the pattern and adding it to the project page in that form. A little odd, but it works.

I knit this Just a Hat, my 5th, in Sugar Bush Yarn’s Bold. This is the Sultry Dusk colorway. Some skeins of this excellent superwash worsted may still be available for purchase, especially in the variegated colorways. But it too is now discontinued.

One more double today. My 6th Just a Hat, this time knit in Viking of Norway Raggen, another superwash worsted. Good news. Raggen isn’t discontinued. When it happens, this knitter won’t mourn its passing though. I found it splitty and sometimes the plies even unraveled as I knit. Maybe I got a defective skein. Two skeins, actually.

Nice hat, though. And in a hat maybe Raggan won’t pill as badly as it’s pilling in a pair of socks I knit with it. Just in case you want to see a solid color crown, have a gander.

Did I really just use the word gander? No, we will not talk about geese, ganders, or goslings on this blog. It’s almost mid March. I’ve already seen Canada Geese overhead no doubt scouting out places to land and nest. “Nothing to see here…move along, move along.”

Library Blanket

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This is Purl Soho’s Library Blanket, designed by the shop’s owner and founder, Joelle Hoverson. This is what purlsoho’s profile says about itself on Ravelry: “Purl Soho is best known for bringing a modern sensibility to traditional fiber arts. Our own brand yarns and an extensive collection of (mostly free!) patterns have been inspiring crafters around the world since 2002.” And so they have.

For this project I decided I wanted to follow the pattern precisely, even the color choices. So I swallowed hard and bought the kit from the NYC Purl Soho shop (with its California warehouse). A few times each year all the Purl Soho shop-brand yarns are on sale (usually for 25% off) so I at least waited for a sale.

The kit for the larger size blanket includes 7 skeins of Purl Soho Lineweight. Lineweight is a fingering weight in 50% wool, 35% alpaca, and 15% linen/flax. Not an easy mix to reproduce in another yarn. For the larger blanket, the pattern suggests you buy one extra skein of the natural shade because–unless you knit to perfect gauge–you’ll be very close on the yardage. I decided to buy one extra skein. Somehow I ended up buying two. And, part of the story on this blanket, I ended up having yardage leftover even from the first skein of the natural Lineweight (“Heirloom White”).

Library Blanket is knit double-stranded throughout with one strand of Lineweight and one strand of Purl Soho Linen Quill. Linen Quill is a light fingering weight 100% merino. Changing one yarn, or the other, or both, as the work progresses creates the interesting marled effect.

My blanket, minus its border used:

Line Weight (494 yards per 100 grams):

94 grams (475 yards) Heirloom White
60 grams (297 yards) Bright Flamingo
82 grams (405 yards) Red Plum
108 grams (534 yards) Lotus Flower
116 grams (573 yards) Blue Jeans
Total Line Weight used in the body of the blanket was 460 grams, 2284 yards.

In Linen Quill (439 yards per 100 grams) I used:

80 grams (352 yards) Pale Oats
52 grams (229 yards) Super Orange
46 grams (202 yards) Dark Iris
20 grams (88 yards) Crocus Bulb
284 grams (1247 yards) Cobalt Blue
Total Linen Quill used in the body of the blanket was 482 grams, 2118 yards.

If you’re knitting this blanket in yarn other than the Purl Soho, the yardage of each color could be helpful. Of course, your mileage may vary. I have a ridiculous amount of excess yarn from this project even not including the two extra skeins of Heirloom White Line Weight I purchased. It’s great yarn though and I am already thinking about what uses I’ll put it to.

As a number of folks who’ve knit this blanket have observed, the blanket looks a tad raw without a border. Plus, there’s a noticeable difference in the cast-on (and off) for the vertical rows as compared to the edges of the horizontal rows. The perfectionists among us might want to knit a border.

I used a double strand of Linen Quill in Cobalt Blue and Heirloom White in Line Weight for my border. It used 90 more grams of yarn. I hooked all my Chiaogoo cords together. Then I picked up stitches all along the outer edge along with 1 stitch in the corner (which I framed with 2 stitch markers). Then I worked garter stitch in the round. On each right-side facing knit round, knitting in the front & the back of the stitch before and after the corner marked stitch created a nicely mitered corners.

This turns out to be a lightweight but very warm blanket. Actually, Library Blanket is more of a throw than a blanket, measuring about 40 inches wide and 56 inches long. That’s assuming you agree that the horizontal rows establish the width. To my eye, those rows represent the bookshelves and the vertical rows are the books of various thicknesses.

Here’s a few thoughts I jotted down to remember in case I knit this again:

(1) When working the slip stitch on the vertical stripes, it looked best to me if I slipped the stitches purlwise.

(2) Using a double-pointed needle in a shorter length or a shorter length circular helped make the vertical sections knit up more quickly.

(3) After working the PSSO on the vertical sections, tightening up the last stitch a bit before starting to work the wrong side row worked well and closed up the sloppy stitch that seemed to want to form.

(4) Even the thought of weaving all those ends in only after completing the knitting made me want to take a long winter’s nap. I worked the ends in as I knit along, using the same technique I use in Fair Isle knitting.

(5) When picking up stitches at the start of the horizontal garter stitch rows I didn’t follow the directions in the pattern. Instead, I picked up stitches between the “bumps,” not into them, because that’s always worked well in my Rambling Rows afghans.

(6) Before cutting the yarns at the end of each section, remember to look ahead to what yarns are used in the coming section. The pattern always says to cut both yarns. But sometimes one of the colors is continued into the next section so you only need to cut one yarn.

I can’t get enough of looking at this one. I love the colors. It doesn’t “go” with anything in my decor, but honestly I don’t care. I like the cut of its jib.

And how cool is this? The shop also sells a matching 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle!

The shop even includes a postcard you can send to a knit buddy announcing your blanket’s completion.

Feathers and fans

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Feather and fan patterns. They all look a bit like feathers fanned out. I guess?

This one is Linda Smith’s version, her Feather & Fan Dishcloth. I’ve knit it. Ahem. An embarrassing lot of times. Let’s just leave it at that. This time I knit it in Queensland Collection’s Coastal Cotton. It’s good dishcloth yarn and Smith’s pattern is an excellent one. I followed the pattern exactly, deciding I’d knit 48 rows in F & F, in between the garter stitch caston and bindoff sections.

If you’ve not tried F & F before, it’s extremely easy. This one is a 4-row-pattern requiring a knitter to wake up (a bit) during only 1 row of the 4.

I’d been thinking about knitting a scarf soon after finishing this dishcloth. I had this big hank of Plymouth Yarn’s Mushishi, a worsted weight. I’d bought it in my online search for camo yarn to fill a request from Nate the rural postal carrier for a camo-colored pair of mittens.

In my defense: (1) online shopping for yarn you haven’t seen before can be hit ‘n miss shade-wise, (2) the yarn was seriously discounted, and (3) the name of the colorway is “Evergreen.” Once I received the yarn I decided it hardly looked a bit like camo. And it was too soft and drapey for the mitten pattern I wanted to use. It did, however, take me knitting an entire mitten before concluding that. I was definitely heavily invested in trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

I started my search for a new-to-me scarf pattern thinking that would be a good use of my Mushishi. There are so many patterns to choose from that I felt rather befuddled. Then I searched through scarves I’ve already knit successfully. Nothing seemed quite right. Next I remembered the recent pleasure of knitting Linda Smith’s Feather & Fan Dishcloth. Why not?

As Evelyn’s younger version was known to exclaim, “ta da!” I made My F & F Dishcloth Scarf just as wide as the dishcloth, 42 stitches, on US size 7 needles. I used the so-called Chinese Waitress Caston and the result was excellent articulation of the wavy pattern in the caston. I knit for about 64 inches, worked the 3-row garter stitch edging, and then needed to make a decision on what castoff to use. In the dishcloth, I just used my standard “old-school” knit-off-the-needles. I actually don’t even know what that one is called. I castoff loosely, but it didn’t give me quite the waviness I wanted. I used the very stretchy Icelandic bindoff for the scarf. It matched the decorative edge of the Chinese Waitress Caston quite nicely even if it didn’t quite echo the shape of the caston. I still like the look of it though.

The white slubs in Mushishi obscure the F & F pattern quite a bit. The wonderful texture is still there, but the patterning is not as distinct as it would have been in a solid color.

Here’s a closeup that shows off the patterning. It also shows that I wasn’t really hoodwinked by my computer monitor’s color rendering. Evergreen does have a bit of a camo look.

This will keep someone warm and it’s even a tad fashionable. Dishcloth knitting. It will yield a few bonuses if you keep a lookout.

Kris quadrupled

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I am a huge fan of Maria Socha’s hat patterns. She’s a major hat whisperer right up there with Wooly Wormhead. She’s Wooly without the tricky construction and picky gauge issues. Check out Socha’s portfolio here on Ravelry to see what I mean.

This is Kris, the hat. Simple. With Socha’s trademark special crown. The stylish crown forms by alternating s2kp and sk2p decreases. Such details can matter a lot for crowns.

Loads of knitters call their oddments “scraps” or “left-overs.” Maybe such homely terms demean these wonders. I’d been saving all my Malabrigo Rios oddments for a few years. I decided I’d knit a bunch, speaking of homely terms, a bunch of Krisses using up as much of my Rios scraps (oops) as possible.

Here’s Kris #2.

And its crown.

Kris #3 is a tad more dignified. I stuck to the darker shades. But those thin stripes of red, including for the cast-on, spunky it up a bit.

Steve’s been wearing this Kris around the house to keep his bald pate warm. Yes, his pate.

Gosh, a one-color top.

Here’s Kris #4.

I still had a water-logged golfball sized ball of that brown left, so I started dark. And then it was back to the brights. In oddment knitting you can get away with a lot when it comes to color.

The bulls-eye crown worked out. The hat’s recipient thought so, anyway.

Kris is distinctive even in its un-jogless stripes.

The jog is something this knitter accepts. It’s not a begrudging acceptance though it’s true I’ve tried various jogless stripes techniques. They just don’t look good to me. The jog reminds that hands knit these hats in an upward spiral building on each round below. A little jog? No big deal.

My Kris quadruplets were great fun to knit. And my Rios oddments are spent.