Thistle Vest

My thistle vest is finally done, and it turned out very close to what I had imagined. Many times, I can "see" exactly what I want to make, but it turns out to be different in reality. This one not so! I get compliments when I wear it.The beautiful flower pattern on the vest comes from Dale of Norway, and was originally published with the name Damask. Lots of people have since made their own versions, many with Kauni, so this is just one of them.

But because I am actually so happy with the result, I have written a pattern (describing just the stitch count and centering the flower on the front of the vest).
It will be available as a free Ravelry download shortly. Apparently, they have to link user names to designer names manually, and this takes time. I've waited some days already, so I assume it happens soon.

Shalom!

I really liked the yoke pattern on Meghan McFarlane's Shalom from first sight. It is similar to Mini til voksne from design-club.dk, which I had been looking at for a while. But design-club only sell their patterns with yarn, so that would be something like $100. Their yarn comes from Henriksens Uldspinderi, and I can just drive there myself and buy directly from them at a discount. I understand that knitting designers have to make money, but we costumers don't enjoy being treated like idiots. I'll pay a reasonable price for a good pattern, but I'm not going to buy your overpriced yarns.

So. In addition to being free, Shalom also has a nicer pattern on the yoke. I found that purling tbl is not as bad as its reputation, and it really makes the pattern so much more elegant.

I changed a number of things. First, I knitted long sleeves. If it is cold enough to wear something this bulky, chances are my arms will be cold, too. I used some mystery Icelandic wool, which I believe is 100 m per 100 g, knitting on a 6 mm needle. Did not try to get gauge, just made up some numbers on the way. The pattern only has one (small) size, so I made it larger by adding a 4th pattern repeat to the yoke:

After the 3rd repeat, I had 159 pattern sts (plus 10 edge sts). I increased 46 sts more or less evenly over the pattern part, for a total of 215 sts. I arrived at this number by looking at the previous increase. 159 is 130% of 123 sts, so the next number should be 130% of 159 = 205 sts, plus 10 edge sts = 215 sts. Don't know if this logic fits with general rules of yoke shape, Zimmermann percentage system, and so on, but it seems to have worked well.

So I knitted the 4th repeat, and then the next problem was how to split the stitches for body and sleeves. McFarlane splits the stitches to make bit fluffy sleeve caps on purpose, but my situation was different as I wanted sleeves. So I just put the yoke on an measured on myself. This resulted in 46 sts for each sleeve, 59 for the back, and 32 for each front.

The sleeves are only very slightly tapered, decreasing 4 sts on the first 20 rows. I increased a few stitches in each side on the last 10 cm of the body, to give a bit of illusion of a waist (I have none).

That's that. Love how it turned out:

Thistle Vest

I have finally learned to knit fair isle. I didn't even know there was a specific technique for continental knitters! All my english and american books just show various diagrams of holding this and that yarn in this and that position. I didn't know none of that works for continental knitting, but what I could tell was how ugly my earlier swatches were. An hour or so with a Danish book worked wonders. At first I was sceptical. Holding one yarn over one finger and the other over two? But it really works, and is actually quite comfortable.

So then I just wanted to get straight to business. Well, that is the kind of business with only two colors, and not more than 7 stitches in one color. I still haven't figured out how to cross the yarns on the back without switching the skeins around, which I'm sure is not the way to do it.

I wanted a round and flowery pattern, so I was happy to find that Pinneguri's beautiful thistle pattern doesn't have more than 7 stitches of one color.

After some swatching (yes, indeed), I decided to cast on 288 stitches, which is 9 pattern repeats. I cast on with the dominant color (which in my case is an orange-blue-brown multicolored Kauni, I used a grey one as background) and tried a tubular cast on first, my new favorite for rib! But it really does not work for a two-color rib. It was too bulky, so in the end, I used a standard cast-on, and - IMPORTANT - one row of all knit stitches in alternating color, followed by the two-color rib proper. This way, bumps of wrong color are avoided.Then, after a few rows of rib, 28 cm of the pattern followedI have to admit that the blue color blends more into the gray background than I had expected. But, this is really just an experiment, so I guess that's ok. As you can see, I've started decreasing for arms and V-neck (more about that later - I'm using some numbers I came up with, so we'll have to wait and see how it works), with some stitches for steeking inserted. I've of course never made a steek, so in that respect, too, this is an experiment. In other words, don't worry about the colors when the whole thing may still fall apart later!

A gift, and some shopping...

In addition to the puke mill and winder, I got this fabulous gift for X-mas (I know, it's so long ago, but I haven't blogged much all winter in Denmark):As you can probably tell, it's a crochet hook case. It is beautifully made by my sister, who (of course) also put it on ravelry, where it has 39 hearts as of now :)

There was also time for a little bit of shopping. But I was very thrifty, I promise! In one second hand store (in the town of Christiansfeld, which was founded in the 18th century by a religious order from Herrnhut in Germany), I found these amazing bone needles. They are hand made, and not completely regular, but they are about 4 mm. I wonder how old they are. They were relatively expensive for a thrift store find (100 kr, about $20)
This find was much cheaper! 3 sets of double pointed needles and one standard set, plus 6 Norwegian style metal buttons. All together 25 kr or about $5. Well worth the time picking through all the other junk! The needles are all metal - hard to get your hands on nowadays. The dp's are 2, 3.5 and 4 mm, and the standard ones are 2.5 mm

After a Long Battle: Mermaid Mittens Finished

This project was a battle at times. It started as my X-mas present to the women in the family - 2 skeins of Koigu each. This turned out to be a strategic move, as it is less bad to suffer together.
Actually I am really happy with the result, so let's not overdo the suffering part:I knitted tightly on 2.25 mm needles (a bit hard on the hands) and followed The Yarn Owl's instructions for thumb gusset and fingers, which worked out perfectly after switching left and right to their meaningful places in the instructions. But that's OK, I also still have problems with those words myself.
I made a tubular cast-on with these instructions, works beautifully for this project, but did give rise to one problem - I wanted the bind-off to be 1) identical and 2) invisible. This is where the project hibernated a bit, but after some practice rounds with these instructions, I did pull myself together and got it done. And I am very happy with it, the beginning and end do look very similar:

Thrummed Mittens

Last week was our official family knitting week! Inspired by Knitting Daily's thrum theme, we chose these mittens as part of the program. We bravely made the thrums (despite warnings that this can act as a gateway drug to spinning, which again can lead to a farmhouse filled with sheep, goats, and alpacas) out of roving that I have also used for my felted hat , so they go very well together:I used Yarn Forward's pattern, with quite a lot of lazy modifications instead of obtaining gauge with my random stash Harrisville Orchid Yarn:

• entire mitten knitted on 4 mm needles, so ribbing was 32 stitches and mitten 40 stitches
• 8 stitches saved for thumb
• when mitten was long enough decreased 4 stitches per round until 4 were left
• 17 stitches for thumb
  

Sooo proud of myself

Look at this:



Wow! It's a swatch. First time I both 1) made a swatch 2) washed it before measuring!!!
I know. 1) should be automatic and actually 2) should, too. But for me it took some unexpected happenings with the gauge of my forecast cardigan when I washed it, to actually start doing this.
The wonderful swatch is for Sukkertrøjen, designed by Marianne Isager. It is knitted with half Tvinni and half Spinni Alpaca (50% wool, 50% alpaca), both from Henrichsens Uldspinderi. I went on another trip to their factory outlet, and I promise I bought almost nothing there and it was very cheap...