K is for Katika

Two years in to my A-Z shawl challenge and I’ve reached K, for which I decided on Katika by Julie Nandorfy, a free pattern on Ravelry that I’d favourited a while ago.

It’s a very straightforward pattern, based on the same principle as the very popular Baktus scarf: you start at one end, increase until you’ve used about half your yarn, then decrease at the same rate so you end up with a long, shallow triangle. This version has a pretty scalloped lace edging, and an integral i-cord finish to the top edge which gives a lovely neat finish.

The yarn is Tenby, from the Welsh dyer Cariad Yarns; it’s a merino/cashmere/nylon blend which makes a lovely cosy shawl, and I love the mix of colours in this skein, which remind me of the colours you see shimmering on split petrol.

The shape of the shawl makes it more scarf-like than shawl-like to wear wrapped round my neck, though it also drapes very nicely over my shoulders if I wanted to wear it that way.

I’d be lying if I said this was going to be my new Favourite Shawl Ever; there are several others I like better, but this isn’t bad and is definitely nice and cosy. And it was a quick, relaxing but not boring knit at a time of year when I didn’t really have the mental energy to tackle anything too complicated.

I’m not sure if I have any more mental energy now; L is Anna Richardson’s Lady Heather which I think may take me a while. Even if I didn’t have a geeky urge to cast on for a Bigger On The Inside at 6:15 this Saturday…

J is for Juliana

When I was crocheting the Juliana shawl I was a little bit worried about the size. I know crochet uses more yarn than knitting, and despite using most of two skeins of sock yarn, it still seemed quite small; when I’d finished it was only just wide enough to wrap round my neck. Still, I thought I could probably stretch it a bit bigger with blocking. So I blocked it over the weekend.

So, it turned out that blocking did more than just ‘stretch it a bit’. Somehow it made it go from a smallish shawl which could drape comfortably over the back of an armchair to one that barely fit on a 4-foot square blocking mat. It’s gone from being fairly solid and scrunched up to something light and airy and absolutely gorgeous, and I am so pleased with it.

Given that I was having lunch with crochet supremo Laura today, I couldn’t resist showing off!

Shawl – Juliana
Shawl pin – Purlescence
Dress – East
Boots – Duo

Finishing

I’m on holiday this week, which means I’ve basically been spending my time listening to Radio 4, watching re-runs of Poirot and knitting and crocheting. And that means that once again I find myself WIP-free. I finished the Juliana wrap on Monday:

It still needs blocking, and will get a proper post once that’s done, but I’m really impressed I managed to crochet something so big (and I don’t think the mistakes in the mesh really show).

And then today I finished yet another pair of Earl Greys for T:

These are in self-striping colour-block yarn from The Knitting Goddess. The yarn came wound into cakes with the colours going in opposite directions, and I like the quirkiness of similar-but-different socks so I left them that way.

And I still have several days of holiday left. I’m off to cast on something new!

Scarves and shawls

Recently I have found myself wearing Galathea and Godiva a lot; the long narrow shapes lend themselves to being worn as scarves which sit neatly within the open front of a jacket, where the larger shawls/wraps look a little strange (particularly over jackets with more structured shoulders). And it’s been cold enough that I’ve wanted jackets most days.

Shawl – Godiva
Jacket and dress – East
Boots – Duo

When it gets a bit warmer, though, I’ll probably leave the jackets at home more often and just wear shawls over my work dresses, so bigger shawls that cover my shoulders will be best. Semi-circles like Citron, Hypernova and Isaura work brilliantly here, but so does Elektra’s diamond shape.

For casual wear, I like smaller shawls I can wear wrapped round my neck; shallow trianges are my favourites.

And I could really do with some summer shawls or scarves, in non-wool yarns (I can’t wear wool at all in hot weather, even in blends, it just feels suffocating). I’ve accumulated quite a nice little collection of 4-ply and laceweight yarns in silk and cotton and even linen and pure bamboo. I suspect long and narrow is going to be best here; I want things I can just drape round my neck more as decoration than for warmth. Basically a handknitted replacement for the cheap viscose ‘pashminas’ I’ve been wearing for years.

Clearly, I need lots and lots of shawls. Which is just as well, as I’m not even halfway through the A-Z yet!

Startitis

After spending all of January with only one knitting project on the go at a time, today I threw caution to the winds and cast on not one but two new projects (in addition to the Doctor Foster socks I started last weekend).

I finally found a J-shawl I liked. It took me a while, because my Ravelry pattern search is set to return only knitting patterns, and it turns out that the shawl I want to make is Juliana.

I’m not much of a crocheter, but I do admire Laura‘s lovely shawls, and I know I can manage the basic stitches. It remains to be seen if I will actually manage to crochet an entire shawl, of course!

I also cast on for this vintage snood for my friend S, who isn’t a knitter but had spotted the pattern on eBay and been rather taken with it.

The original pattern calls for ‘lingerie braid’; thanks to a suggestion from Jane I’m using Colinette Giotto which I think is rather effective at getting the frilly effect.

Indecision

I finished a pair of socks on Thursday which had been my only knitting project for the previous two weeks; they’re my dad’s birthday present and his birthday is on the 22nd, so I didn’t really have time to work on anything else.

They’re basic top-down socks in a 3×1 rib with a plain knit row every sixth row and each rib section offset by two stitches from the one before, giving an interesting texture which looks like more of a brickwork pattern when stretched. I used just under 100g of Yarn Yard Bonny in brick red (which is what suggested the brick pattern to me). I was quite impressed that I managed to knit a pair of men’s socks in two weeks!

Since then, though, I’ve spent the weekend dithering about what to knit now. Having spent the last few weeks of 2012 knitting Christmas presents, and then finishing up WIPs, and then started this year with a birthday present, I’m overwhelmed by choice. At first, I cast on for a pair of Glasgow School Mitts in some lovely purply merino T gave me for Christmas, but it seemed ridiculous to be knitting fingerless gloves when we have several inches of snow and the weather isn’t forecast to get above freezing at all in the next five days. So I thought maybe I’d knit some new flip-top mittens to go with the fleece-lined Boden mac I bought just before Christmas (I got the grey with pink and orange flowers), as my purple striped Podsters don’t really go with it at all, and then spent most of yesterday evening swithering between more Podsters and Broad Street Mittens with a flip thumb. I cast on Broad Streets first, then decided to do Podsters with bits of the Broad Street pattern added, and then realised that the Podster pattern has been substantially updated anyway so only really needs a bit of tweaking here and there anyway.

And then I thought I’d start the next of the A to Z of shawls, and cast on for Juno Regina in purple merino/cashmere/silk laceweight. Which was fine until I dropped a stitch in the second repeat of Chart B and had to unravel the whole thing, and thought that maybe I didn’t want to knit something where a large chunk of the instructions read ‘repeat these two rows for 42 inches’ anyway. So I wound a skein of saffron-yellow Yarn Yard Crannog for the Japanese Garden Shawl, and then decided I wasn’t really sure I wanted to knit that at all.

Still, at least I got quite a bit of my first mitten knitted.

Given that I seemed to be having a dropping-stitches day, it was probably just as well to stick to basic rib and stocking stitch rather than attempting lace. But I’m still not sure what I want my next big project(s) to be. I am generally less than inspired by the choice of shawl patterns beginning with J, and indeed K, which does make me wonder whether I really want to carry on with the A to Z challenge (it was a lovely idea, but when there are lots of patterns I definitely want to knit, why waste time knitting things I feel meh about?). And I’m wondering about a cardigan – possibly Pilkington in my Skein Queen Voluptuous – but I’m not sure that late January isn’t too late to start knitting woolly cardigans really. Though it definitely feels too early for summery things!

Oh well. Mittens it is, then.

I is for Isaura

I finished my Isaura on Christmas Day. I used 78g of Yarn Yard Spinel (80% wool, 20% silk) and knitted 8 wedges rather than the 6 specified by the pattern to make it a bit more than a semicircle. It looked like a small scrappy thing pre-blocking, but after blocking it had pretty much doubled in size and is light and floaty and lovely.

I’m very pleased with it, and actually I don’t think I look that bad in tangerine after all!

Tangerine dream

I don’t think there are any colours I actually dislike. My favourites will always be purple, the purplier reds and teal, but in recent years I’ve branched out into greens and blues and oranges and even a bit of yellow. What I do tend to go for, though, are deep saturated shades, rather than pastel colours, and although I’m rather fond of orange these days I really wasn’t at all sure about this skein of Yarn Yarn Spinel (80% wool, 20% silk laceweight).

(I might add that that is the only one of an awful lot of club and surprise yarns in all kinds of colours I’ve had from the Yarn Yard that I haven’t loved on sight!)

It just seemed a little too sugary, a little flat. But the November and December colour for the Rainbow Challenge in the Yarn Yard group on Ravelry is orange, and somehow this yarn just wouldn’t stop calling to me. After my failure to start an Ishbel it told me in no uncertain terms that what it really wanted to be was Åsa Tricosa‘s Isaura.

So I cast on, and was knitting away without much enthusiasm until I got on to the second wedge, when I suddenly realised how pretty the pattern really is.

And then I took my knitting from the living room, where the light isn’t particularly good, into the kitchen where it’s much brighter, and realised that the orange isn’t dull and flat at all; it’s bright and vibrant and brings some much-needed sunshine into the gloomy winter days.

Ramblings about knitting

I’m back at work today after a lovely weekend at the Glasgow School of Yarn. I completely failed to take any pictures but Antje has put loads up on Facebook (you don’t need a Facebook account to view them).

I managed to keep my spending fairly restrained and mostly resisted the urge to buy random skeins of sock and lace yarn just because they were beautiful (I love beautiful yarn, but I do have rather a lot).

Two skeins of Skein Queen Voluptuous (DK weight, 200g skeins so probably enough for a jumper), some Ripples Crafts 4-ply silk (because that was just too beautiful to resist), some hot chocolate onna stick, a mug (which is now adorning my desk in the office) and three balls of Jamieson and Smith to knit a fair isle Kindle cover, because I did a Fair Isle workshop with the lovely Liz Lovick which has inspired me with the confidence that I can tackle a colourwork project.

I’ve also got quite a lot of knitting done over the last couple of weeks, including knitting almost the whole of a pair of Podster Gloves over the weekend. Pictures will have to wait until this coming weekend, though, as it’s already got to the time of year when I’m not home in daylight during the week.

After I’d finished the gloves on the train home yesterday I tried to cast on for an Ishbel as the next in my A-Z of shawls. I’ve been meaning to knit an Ishbel since the pattern came out in January 2009; it was what inspired me to start knitting shawls in the first place. I bought a skein of yarn in mother-of-pearl colours from Skein Queen at a launch event for Ysolda’s second Whimsical Little Knits collection in November 2009 which has been earmarked for Ishbel ever since then. And yet, when I finally got round to casting on, I just wasn’t feeling the love; I went wrong within ten rows, and then when I tried a second time I went wrong almost straight away. And I’m honestly not sure I want another small triangular shawl with a stocking stitch centre and lace edging; these days I like shawls that I can wear as wraps with my work dresses, or more casual scarf-shawls in interesting shapes, textures and colour combinations. I fear that Ishbel’s time has passed without my realising it, and I in the A to Z may well end up being Isaura; I’m finding myself strangely drawn to the idea of using some tangerine-coloured BFL/silk laceweight from The Yarn Yard for it. And meanwhile, I have cast on some emergency socks (toe-up, vanilla, using the leftover yarn from the Podsters with contrast heels and toes to make the main yarn go further).

Hypernova!

Hypernova is blocked! It’s huge:

As a wrap, it really does wrap round me completely.

If I just drape it round my shoulders, it looks almost like a cardigan.

Either way, I absolutely love it and it was definitely worth the slog.

(Though I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get it under a coat when I’m out and about…)

Pattern – Hypernova from Arlene’s World of Lace
Yarn – Crannog (discontinued) from The Yarn Yard; total used 267g/1,335m.