Bad cat!

Tags

Celestarium, FO, Knitting, shawl

The weather cooperated enough to block Celestarium yesterday.  It still wasn’t dry when I went to bed, so I left it on the floor of my bedroom where it was blocking.

In the middle of the night, I heard “RIIIIP, RIIIIP!”  ’The cat’s ripping up the shawl!’ shot through my head.  Bolting upright, I stared in the direction of my shawl, and sure enough, the cat was sitting on Celestarium!

My heart hammering, I shooed him off and wondered what to do.  I didn’t dare look at the shawl in the light for fear of a) committing caticide, and b) that I’d not be able to sleep for the rest of the night.  I knew though, that now the cat had the shawl in his sights, he would not leave it alone, so something had to be done to prevent any further damage being done.  I decided to cover the shawl with more towels.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the bad cat returned, sniffing interestedly at the shawl, but fortunately, wasn’t able to do anything further because he couldn’t reach the beads that had caught his attention.  I stifled the urge to strangle the creature.

I gingerly examined the shawl in the light of morning.  A bead had been pulled out of the shawl with his teeth, and the bead and yarn it was attached to dangled several inches off the shawl in a very ugly way.  It was a good thing the cat was nowhere in sight.  It was also a good thing I had heard him before any major damage was done.

Fortunately, the damage was repairable.  The yarn hadn’t been broken (or caticide would have definitely been on the cards) so I was able to draw the yarn back along the row and even up the stitches and settle the bead back into place.  Damn that cat.  He is a total nuisance, and a Very Bad Cat.  I would have liked to shut the door when I went to bed, but all the handles on the doors in this house are faulty and do not keep shut.  It’s quite annoying.  Perhaps I should consider installing a bolt.

And so, as some of you have asked to see the blocked shawl, here it is:

I still haven’t quite forgiven the cat, but at least the damage has been fixed.

Hope you are having/had a great weekend!

Play day

Tags

fair isle, FO, Happy go Knitty, Knitsch, Knitting, New Zealand yarn, socks, WIP

Today, for the first time in ages, I woke up without the weight of a deadline hanging over my head.  It felt so good.

I decided that with some free time on a rainy day, this would be a good opportunity to make further investigations into some projects that I’ve been eyeing recently.

But first, let me show you this!

They are done!  I love them so much.  They’re at once very “Alice in Wonderland” and “Wicked Witch of the West” don’t you think? I’m looking forward to refreshing my stocks of Happy-go-knitty next Saturday at the Wellington Underground annual “Wonders of Wool” market.  More, pretty stripy socks coming my way!  Funny how we knitters talk about yarn in terms of a finished project.

Also, another happiness-making thing happened yesterday:

Seven glorious hanks of Knitsch Milky Way, for the knitting of the Southern Companion were ready for my pick-up!

At Holland Road Yarn Company, Tash was busy making final preparations for her stall at this weekend’s Creative Fibre Festival.  Oh my.  Such hanks of gloriousness I saw, to set the heart aflutter!  I hope there’s still some left when I turn up…

Now to what I did today.  This is what one’s living room ends up looking like in the middle of a creative frenzy:

What was this all about you ask?  I’ve been eyeing the below interesting cardigan all week:

It’s called Conifer  (designed by Rosee Woodland), and it’s in Issue 54 of The Knitter.

Several features attracted me to it:  the knitted-on fingerless gloves (very handy to keep those winds out of one’s sleeves) and the fact that it’s knitted in reverse stocking stitch.  The certain someone I’m knitting it for likes to wear her sweaters inside out because she prefers the smooth feeling of the stocking stitch instead of the purl bumps.  This would be perfect!  The final feature I liked was the unusual reverse fair isle.  I’ve been thinking about using reverse fair isle in a pattern, and this looked like a good opportunity to try it out.

I also had in mind a certain person’s comment about knits in the English town she lives in “Oh, fair isle is so common, everyone wears it, it’s not special to me any more.”  Perhaps an unusual take on fair isle might be good?

I thought that Knitsch would make a perfect medium for it, given it’s meant to be for a certain girl who dislikes itch.  So, diving into my precious hoard of Knitsch, I did a bit of a stocktake of possibilities:

Something colourful for the yoke perhaps?

However, as I was winding the balls, it occurred to me that while all those colours looked oh-so-pretty together, they might seem cartoonish all in one garment.

I pared it down to pretty purple shades with a touch of gold:

I’m not sure about that gold, but the purples looked good.  The only downside was that when I measured the swatch, the gauge was far too small.  Bother and horrors.  That swatch was a real brain-teaser to knit too!  Reverse fair isle is tricky until you figure out that you can’t knit it like normal fair isle!!

I sat there feeling annoyed.  Knitsch was very much what I wanted to use.  I didn’t really fancy knitting more swatches until I found a yarn that matched.  Besides, I don’t have any other yarn in my stash with that colour range.  Why didn’t it match?  They were both 4 ply after all!?  They felt the same thickness in the hand.  I decided that I would see how many wraps per inch the J&S was… 15 per inch.  Then I wrapped the Knitsch, I found that it’s more like 20 wraps per inch!  Ah.  It made sense now.  I should probably have done that first.  Doh.

I wondered how Zealana Kiwi Fingering would work out.  She likes that yarn too.  I wrapped it, and found that it is exactly 15 wraps per inch!  I was surprised, because Kiwi feels a lot thicker.  (J&S is springier and lighter, but the width of the strand is the same).  So… although I don’t have a large colour range in that yarn, I decided to do one more swatch to see if really was the right match:

I am pleased to say that it gives the exact gauge that I need for this pattern.

My concentration petered out in the final row and I messed up the swatch.  The young boy got bored and started to watch a video.  And with the invasion of irritating noise into the ears came the advent of a headache and the loss of all ability to concentrate.  I need a nice, quiet, cosy little cabin at the end of the garden in which to knit, far from loud, concentration-shattering noises…

So now I need to go shopping for colours. But I guess I should consult with a certain girl first to see what she’d like?  :-)

Star light, star bright

Tags

alpaca yarn, Audry Nicklin, Celestarium, Doe Arnot, Flagstaff Alpacas, FO, Knitting, shawl

It’s not blocked yet, but it’s raining.  And it has been raining for the past week or more.  I am not complaining (too much) as it’s better that we have rain that the awful drought of the past summer.  However, it means that it’s very bad blocking weather!

By the time the weather is dry enough to block this beautiful baby, I suspect I’ll have moved on to other things to post about, so without further ado, here is my Celestarium:

It’s a fiendishly hard project to photograph I discovered.  I think the camera couldn’t quite decide whether to focus on the beads or the shawl!  Still, you do see the very pleasing star-like twinkle of the beads, so I’m quite happy.

The bind-off took me ALL day.  5,000 stitches, I think?  I wasn’t feeling very well, which was the perfect excuse to sit still and knit.  Hehe.

It’s draped over the back of one of my chairs, and it looks for all the world like I have suddenly found a portal to the Northern sky.  It’s a different view to what I am used to, and now I can’t wait to start on the Southern Companion!

Pattern:  Celestarium by Audry Nicklin

Yarn:  3 skeins of Moontide (dyed by Doe Arnot) in 100% alpaca from Flagstaff Alpaca in 4 ply (fingering) weight.

Knitting notes are Raveled here.

Thanks Audry, for that fabulous pattern!

“Bo” 帛

Tags

Anna Gratton, cowl, FO, hand-dyed, Knitting, Little Wool Co., New Zealand yarn, yarn

Variegated yarns are delicious.  Their gorgeous tones and wondrous contrasts excite and delight the eye.  The beautiful colours make the heart beat faster, and bewitch the knitter into a fast exchange of cash for a bundle of squishy, hand-dyed joy.

For me, that’s often where it ends.  The pretty skein sits in my stash looking cute, but never knitted.  It’s very sad.

Why?  Two main reasons:  For the most part it’s the thought of potential pooling that gets me.  Also, I just can’t quite actually deal with wearing a riot of colours in one piece (socks are an exception).  Even fair isle, which I love knitting and love to look of, is reluctantly worn if it contains a lot of colours.  I guess that’s why I adore self-striping yarns, semi-solids, and tweed.  They’re more interesting than plain colour, but less provocative to my “OCD” tendencies when it comes to multiple colours in garments!

However, when I saw this hank of “autumn in a skein” from Anna Gratton (the actual colourway is called Topaz), I had to buy it.  The tones were just too beautiful to resist.  (Reference paragraph one… ahem).  Orange tones are not normally my colour.  But this is an irresistibly beautiful, gloriously rich, true burnt terracotta, autumn leaf orange/brown captured in a magical hank of yarn.  Such a masterful dye job!!

You might remember this image:  The way the silk and mohair content caught the light made it look like a glowing ball of embers in the evening sunset.  There is very little I did to alter this image – the silk and mohair content really does catch the light and turn it into something awesome.

I was determined to knit something with this beautiful yarn.   Something that would show off the dyework at its best, and highlight the tweedy look and quality of the silk content.

I started to swatch.

These were a couple of my more successful swatches.  I went with the top one for a beginning concept for my design.

I really like how the linen stitch breaks up the variegation and gives it a more textural, earthy look.  It’s quite a slow stitch though, and also makes the fabric quite dense.  So I decided to break it up with stocking stitch and something in between to give it visual interest and increase the draping quality of the fabric.

It has taken me all summer to finish knitting this design.  I don’t really know why.  But they say that slow and steady wins the race, and indeed, it is done.

It’s still way too warm for my comfort levels at the moment, so this is how it needs to be worn until Winter finally decides to come play in the Southern hemisphere:

This pattern is called “Bo”.  Bo (帛) is the general reference to silk in the Chinese language (I’ve used Mandarin), and is the predominant fibre in this cowl of Little Wool Company’s 40% Silk/30% Mohair/30% wool blend.  The name is a nod to my Chinese heritage and the origin of silk.

Deliberately textural, earthy and organic looking, I’m happy with how it has turned out.  I wanted it to look like woven cloth when worn, but not quite woven.  The garter stitch/purl detail on the front of the cowl is reflected in the other side, so that together, the two sides complement each other very well.

It takes just 120g of a 200g hank of Little Wool Co. Silk/Mohair/Merino fingering-weight yarn to knit this cowl.  It’s a very light and airy yarn, so if you are wanting to substitute this yarn be sure to choose something with similar qualities.

The pattern will be ready in about a week.  It’s a simple pattern, and I hope it will bring some of you a bit of knitting pleasure.

This version is being packed off as a gift.  However, I’m going to knit another sample for me.  Perhaps you’ll join me?