Aeolian

I've been working on Aeolian for a while... for some reason I got really bored in the middle, and put it away for a while. But then it came back with a vengeance, and I finished it in no time. Here it is:



For some reason I can't capture the beauty of this shawl in a photo at all, but I guess everybody knows what it looks like.

But the result is what I hoped for, soft and with good stitch definition. It is the shawlette size, but big enough by far - i used a 4 mm needle, so that gave some size too. I hated working the pearls, and they don't even show that much. So this may be my last beaded project as well as my first.

Mixed WIPs

I haven't blogged for a while, but I also haven't finished anything for a while!

But I do have a truckload of WIPs. First my Noro Bohus vest. It's coming along, I'll be at the underarm quite soon. Meanwhile, the patterns and color combinations are proliferating in unexpected ways



I've also had some good progress with my Bog Jacket. I'm past the critical point - the point where you remove the thumb trick stitches and graft the two ends together. Quite nasty, but it came out... not invisible, but not that frankensteinian either



Some other TV knitting (and lots of episodes of The Wire) is my Cobalt Jacket. A top-down raglan of my own design. The earlier version was knitted on bigger needles, but the most recent incarnation is on 4 mm, relatively small for the thick mystery yarn I'm using



Last, but not least, I've knitted most of my Aeolian for Vibeke, shhh! My first and probably last piece of beaded knitting. But it does look good, and I'll be done soon (just unraveling several rows tonight, but that's a temporary step back. Lifelines? No)

Winning the lottery without playing

On a recent trip to NYC, I stayed with an old friend. At some point, she told me she had a sewing project that didn't fit her. Maybe it would fit me, so could I try it on? Well of course I could, and this is what it looked like:



Perfect. Like it was tailor-made for me. And as it turns out, it is. Several years ago, we made a jacket for me by mutual effort (well, mostly she made it), and in a moment of confusion, this was the pattern she reached for when she made this jacket. How lucky can you really be??

In NY, there was also time for a little bit of shopping. I have been wanting to go to the Habu showroom for a while, and this time I did. It is very small, but there are so many treasures packed there, all of the exquisite Japanese type. And I suppose it also helps that the place is so hidden. No signs outside. Just go into the camouflaged building, say "Habu" to the doorman, and take the elevator to the 8th floor:
Habu Textiles
135 West 29th St. Suite 804
New York, NY 10001

I've been eyeballing the Kusha Kusha scarf for a while, so I got the yarn for that (two right skeins). And, I ordered A-4 2/10 Kusaki Zome silk for another project on my shortlist, a 1932 blouse from "A Stitch in Time". The darkest color was not in stock, so it was sent from Japan, and here it is (on the left):

Yay! Thistle Vest Pattern Available

It took a while, but my thistle vest pattern is now available as a free Ravelry download.

You can get it here.

If you are not a member of Ravelry, sign up immediately :)

One More Vest!

After my recent self-proclaimed success with the Thistle Vest, I've jumped straight to another fair isle vest. I must have been bitten by some kind of bug?

This one is made from my stash Noro Kureyon Sock, that I have been experimenting with earlier, but was never convinced the experiments were going the right way. So the new deal is fair isle, heavily inspired by Bohus patterns. I love the Bohus style, the only complaint being that the patterns only cover yokes or front panels. It looks beautiful, but it means you have to knit almost an entire sweater in plain stockinette! So I zoomed in on the color pattern itself, fusing and modifying different Bohus designs. I think it's going well so far:I really like the way the dusty colors blend but still stand out.

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: