lots of things happening

It has been quite a busy week around here. With Tuesday's etsy update, wrapping and packing till a million o'clock (which is super fun and I love doing!) - there has not been the knitting time I would have liked. We can't have everything, right?

Even though my fingers weren't knitting, it seems that my mind was ticking along and making some grand knitting plans. Most of these plans I am keeping to myself, only because there's less pressure to actually make them should I forget / move on...as I am prone to do. I have managed to channel my scattered creative energy into one new project this week, and it's a good one! 

I briefly mentioned in my post about the Viola Breaking into the Pretty KAL that my ambitious knitting list included a jumper knit in Speckled Mist, the colourway I designed for Loop. Well, it's happening folks!!! In my true fashion, I've already had to rip it out once...it's possible that I may have to again, but I don't mind a bit because I'm just loving the knitting! The yarn I dyed for Loop is Merino Fingering, and I've realized that I don't have a sweater knit in this stuff yet. Thank goodness that's about to change. I'm loving the super high twist springiness that's going on, and love knowing that it's also going to be durable because of it!

Once again, I am also making up the pattern as I go along (the reason for lots of ripping out). The trouble with me and creating patterns is that I have a vision of exactly what I want to make, but then I have to use math...and well, that's it. So I knit by trial and error; not the fastest, but it works for me.

Anyhow, here's the little bit I've knit of the neck so far...

...the plan is a simple (ha!) top-down raglan...still deciding what will happen at the bottom so stay tuned! I've also decided to use a variety of batches of Speckled Mist together in this jumper. This colour has a mind of it's own, let me tell you! I hung onto a little selection of skeins that are all quite varied, just because I loved them. Now they're all getting knit together. Sounds mental, probably. We'll all have to wait and see what happens!

 Another sad side effect of all my business is that I have not reported on the studio's progress in a while! Well, lots has been happening, but here's the big stuff...

...and I mean big stuff. Look at this truck! 

Last I mentioned we were all sweating away, digging out this hole (except Lucy the dog did not help, but mostly stood in the center of everything). The hole has since been filled in with gravel (lots of blisters later!) 

The hero of concrete day, Shane! A very handy friend who just so happened to totally know what he was doing; having worked on many a concrete floor before this one. The floor would not have happened without him. I'd still be poking dried up concrete with a shovel right now if he hadn't turned up!

...I have no clue what I'm doing here...

This big stick is called a Darby, so I learned something!

By the end of the day, I was covered in concrete and I barely did a thing!

Here's the finished floor. The change in the room is unbelievable! My brave father tackled the job of cutting lines into the dried floor. I decided to take photos of all the dust drifting out the door instead...

Merino Lace

Like so many knitters out there, I sometimes have a tough time with laceweight yarns. Not with loving them -I seem to buy them all the time- but with knitting them up into useful things. I don't have a lot of use for lightweight jumpers, I live in Canada! In fact, this past winter was my first Canadian winter in a couple of years and I can tell you there were times that I thought I was not going to make it so summer...that I would surely become an ice cube before I could knit enough layers to stay warm. Lace yarn was not at all interesting to me over the winter, I saw it as a rather reckless and dangerous indulgence in my fight for survival!

Now that summer is officially here, and I've lightened up about the extremity of winter (only slightly) I have let another impulse take over - my need to knit up stash yarn! Another overwhelming aspect of my new (old) life in Canada is the yarn stash that I've been reunited with. I know many of you can relate to this one, it's huge, it's out of control! And so, I am working away at my stash, including that once pesky section of lace weight yarns. Turns out, There's quite a lot of stuff I want to knit with all that lace (phew!) 

My recent inventory has exposed my love of Viola Merino Lace yarn. Suppose I should have known about that already...There's something very special in the combination of a very fine singles merino yarn. It grabs dye super-fast creating beautiful splotches which remain delicate and subtle because of how thin the yarn is. I've thought about this quite a lot recently. 

Anyhow, as you may well imagine, I've been plotting many projects in the lovely Merino Lace...

You may have already seen the Light Grey Structure that I recently finished. I love this thing! Knit with Viola Merino Lace and Fyberspates Neff lace held double, I reckon that this jumper is going to be warm enough for winter layering. Huzzah! The pattern was brilliantly written and lots of fun to knit. It was my first go at contiguous sleeves and I'd say I'm a convert! I am most certainly dreaming up more double stranded lace jumpers!

I have also made a rather feeble start on the Halligarth Shawl that I was on about a while ago. I'm using Merino Lace for this again. The colourway is called 'Dusk' and I'm pretty crazy about it - so much so that the yarn is in focus instead of my knitting! 

And I am so excited to be sharing this beautiful shawl! Knit in Viola Merino Lace from many moons ago by the lovely UniqueUylond on Ravelry. The Pattern is Photosynthesis, and I'm pretty sure it was Uylond's beautiful shawl that inspired my Halligarth journey. Thanks Uylond!!

I shall leave you with a little glimpse of Merino Lace that will be making an appearance in the next Etsy update (soon to be announced!)

Happy Knitting!

finished laila

Last week my skilled camera friend Jeremy spent the day hanging out and managed to take some photos of me in my new laila jumper. He succeeded where so many others have failed to take a pictures of me with both my eyes open! It's a special gift that I have...pulling a dumb face and closing one eye exactly when the camera goes. Anyhoo, here's the jumper! I still love it and wear it every day, in spite of the climbing temperatures here in Toronto.

 

 

lots of knitting and reknitting

I believe that I mentioned in a previous post that I have been SUPER inspired with the knitting these days. I suppose that dyeing yarn again, and thus being surrounded by yarn most days is bound to inspire...if not I ought to be thinking of a job change. Phew, a sign that I'm on the right track! 

I seems, however, that I have become slightly over confident. All of a sudden, I think I can knit a new jumper every week...at the same time as socks, shawls and I don't even know what else. The result of this enthusiasm has been a lot of making mistakes, ripping back, re-knitting, ripping back again, re-knitting and so on. Oh well. Meanwhile the to knit list is consistently growing and growing and growing. 

Rather than grumble about it (more than I already have done just now) I think it would be much more fun to share some of my wonky knits and knitting dreams. So here it is, comin' at ya. All the knitting thoughts that have kept me awake at night...it's all too exciting!

First off, my Norn! I've loved this pattern for ages, well since the magazine came out (2012!) and just never got round to knitting it. I realized a couple of months ago that I've been hoarding Pom Pom magazines since the beginning, but not knit a single project from any. Well, I can say with certainty that all of that nonsense is about to change! I love this simple little crop top. Garter stitch, a little cable, hand dyed yarn. I love it all! The pattern calls for the Uncommon Thread DK. I have some, I love it, but I chose to knit this is my own MCN Worsted. These 3 skeins of Raven were sitting in my stash when I came home. They had already been knit into some failed projects and I felt it was time to give them a good home...final resting...shape, if you will. The pattern is simple and clear, I thought I'd be able to knit this up in a couple of days. Well, I have messed it up countless times by now (all because I'm not paying attention and/or rushing). Here she is, in what I hope is going to be her final stage of re knitting. Fingers crossed that the next photos of this project will be on me, finished.

 

My next tale of woe is a great one. I shared some progress pictures of this mohair cardigan a little while back, in this post. Well it was a slog to knit...but I pushed on because I was so excited about having a brioche, mohair, batwing, colourblock cardigan (as anyone would!) Here is the cardigan, almost finished. I just had a wee bit of sewing up left to go when I tried it on at last...and learned that the sleeves hang like giant, pucker-y, crumpled, lumpy capes. Sad. So I have now begun the painstaking process of pulling out all of that knitting in mohair and am pondering what on earth I can do to use the little bits of yarn that now remain. Sad day.

There has been a success, I knit this lovely Lila jumper in Noro Silk Garden Solo. I wore my Lila to the Toronto Knitter's Frolic this past Saturday and  attracted rather a lot of attention. Never have so many people wanted to stroke me before! It seems that many people have been slightly dubious about just how this beautiful colour would knit up. I'm feeling well chuffed with myself for being the bold person to go forward and knit an entire mental birthday cake jumper in the stuff!

Plans for this afternoon are a fun adventure walk to the lake and taking some proper photos of me in my 'mental birthday cake jumper' !

Next up in the cast on queue are a couple...a few shawls that I've had my eye on...

I couldn't help but hold onto 2 skeins of Dusk Merino Lace that I dyed up for the Knitter's Frolic...sorry folks, but it was my favourite.

So, the lovely merino lace is going to become one great big Halligarth shawl! It's been ages since I did any serious lace knitting, so I'm really looking forward to getting into this one.

Next up, some Wellington Fibres 3 ply. It's a lustrous, soft and fluffy combination of their own beautiful mohair and wool. I could not leave this behind when I visited the mill and farm at their open weekend a little while back ( more to come in this later). Anyhow, I cannot wait to cast on a 006 in this yarn...garter stitch AND tassles. I cannot want for anything more!

And last, but not least I have specially dyed some of my favourite colours of Polwarth and Alpaca to knit up a really, really big Quill Shawl. I have wanted to knit this pattern since the beginning of time it seems, but never had enough of the right yarn. Well, I've finally fixed that problem by MAKING exactly the right amount of the perfect yarn!

There are so many more ideas and projects to share, but you must be getting a little bored of me by now. I shall save it for next time!

a finished jumper

It's about time that I finished this little jumper up. I started knitting it at the beginning of the summer, almost immediately after I bought the yarn. I always feel so smug when I cast on yarn that I've just bought, it lets me pretend (just for a minute) that I'm one of those people who knits really quickly, finishes projects and doesn't accumulate more yarn than they could ever dream to knit in their own lifetime. That person is obviously me, but at least this little jumper let me pretend I was someone organized for a moment. 

The yarn is from Unwind. I tagged along with John and Juliet who were there with socks and yarn golore. It was SUCH a fun time, but I'm much too late to tell you about Unwind because all the organized people have already talked about it. 

I visited the Old Maiden Aunt stand late on the last day, and loved 3 colourways that remained only as single skeins. I love the challenge of making lots of little bits work, so I instantly decided to knit a bitty jumper combing all 3 colours. As soon as I arrived back to my North Devon home I set about planning the little jumper. And this is what I got...

 I love seed stitch. I love knitting it and I love the way it looks, so that was an easy choice! I also knew that I wanted to keep the shape simple, so there is a very slight 'A' line shaping in the sides of the body, and a super simple drop shoulder. I picked up stitches in the armholes and knit the sleeves down to the cuffs. Ran out of yarn at the elbow of the second sleeve, so there's a little bit of Viola merino fingering in Slate to finish off that last sleeve. 

I've been wearing this all over the place, and absolutely love it! It's inspired another crazy garment experiment...

....Which is this cardigan. I'm doubling Viola mohair lace with a 4 ply 100% alpaca yarn. Knit entirely in 1/2 brioche stitch, this crazy cardigan is going to have really deep batwing sleeves (in a different colour, because once again I have run out of yarn!) Shall keep ya posted on the mental mohair progress. Lots of great knitting going on these days!

 

I've finished something!

After a rather long spell of time in England where I was just not knitting much, I think I can safely say that I have my knitting enthusiasm back! Of course, I do not blame England, or any of my lovely friends and family there - no, they are not responsible for my lack of knitting. I put my knitting lull down to the fact that I wanted to enjoy my last little bit of time in the land that I love so much...knitting time took a dive while there were so many walks to go on, pubs to visit and adventures to be had!

Of course, one of the first things I did upon returning to Canada was to sort through ALL of my yarn...that's a lot. That's 2 country's worth of yarn! I quickly rediscovered 10 whole balls of Noro Kureyon!! It's a yarn that I love, but often the super-bright and totally mental colour combos are just too much for me (I spend most of my days collecting sticks, remember...they are mostly just brown...) But this, most fabulous colour way, I could manage, guess that's why I bought it! Anyhow, I set about deciding what to knit, and quickly realized that I wanted a cropped jumper that I could wear over top of my many flouncy frocks. I have lots of dresses and wear them constantly, but it's just too darn cold in Canadian winter to go without at least one wooly layer.

After lots of swatching and doodling and daydreaming I settled on a design. Deep raglan sleeves, a high neck (it's cozy!) little bobbles in a diamond-y pattern over the whole thing and (my favourite part of all) a brioche rib placket that is knit separately and sewn in. It's just one piece, all the way from the bottom hem to the cuffs! No need for bind-off stitches and grafting armpits and so on! Of course, I did knit the whole thing in pieces. I decided this was the only way to make the stripes do what I wanted...which was to be all higgldy-piggldy and not line up and not be the same thickness. I don't do too well with order or symmetry...

So after an awful lot of nattering, here is the jumper...

check out those side placket-y things!

over one of the flouncy frocks I mentioned

I really am this happy about my new jumper!

Of course, I cannot help but include a couple of pretty pictures. There have been some beautiful winter days by the lake recently...cold, but beautiful. There are just some of the textures and colours that I've been thinking about. 

Just look at that placket thing. I love it!