Waves

A few weeks ago, I went to the Hokusai exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (with Geoff).  Of course, one of the highlights was The Wave – in fact, 2 highlights as they had 2 different prints (a few hundred apart in the print run) which meant you could see how the precision of the lino cut would deteriorate over the course of prints.

However, the exhibition was considerably larger than the well know Wave and Mt Fuji related prints.  The botanical and bird prints were really beautiful – softer colours of green, peach and pink, and of interesting birds and flowers. Ultimately, I was captivated by the water prints and my mind immediately turned to the waves mittens in Making Magazine, issue 3, as well as some tonal blue Infinity Twist yarn in my stash, and off I went.

I cast on for the middle size, knit the requisite ribbing and moved in to the colour work pattern.  I was particularly captivated by the long, slow growing thumb gusset.  It started on the 3^rd round of colourwork and stretched out over 28 rows.  I find that it fits really well.

I made mitts, rather than mittens, given the climate in Melbourne.  Since I didn’t have the space over the fingers to transition from waves to dots, I changed the colourwork to separate those 2 elements.  I also decreased 6 stitches before I moved into the top ribbing to get a closer fit. 

Again, due to lack of space I changed the thumb.  This time I simply finished in stockinette and ribbing in the background colour as I didn’t fancy colourwork over such a small circumference!

My pink Raiun

My love of wollmeise continues to grow, with my recently completed Raiun in some fuchsia WM pure, give to my as a farewell gift by my lovely friend Renee (of East London Knit), when I moved out of London earlier this year. 

After some careful deliberation and research of open front cardigans, including some helpful input from one half of the podcast team ‘Imagined Landscapes’, Katie.  I chose Raiun by Kirsten Johntone, a Melbourne based architect/knitwear designer.

I’m just so pleased with it – the neckband is beautiful, provisionally cast on at the middle of the back neck and worked out in each direction, before picking up stitches for the body. I particularly like the shaping across the back, as the ribbing pulls the back in just a smidge.

Mods wise, I shortened the overall length – maybe 4m shorter than called for – and the final 2.5cm is ribbed the whole way across the body to avoid curling stockinette in the middle of the back. Finally, I completely ignored the instructions for the sleeves and just did my usual thing for fingering weight sleeves. I knit both the body and the sleeves on 3.5mm needles, so the fabric on the sleeves is slightly tighter (as I knew it would be).  I think that was the right decision as the body is a little drapier and the sleeves don’t bag out in the elbows.

I’m so tempted to knit another one…

Spending time with Norah

While I was still in London, I managed to book myself into a lecture and a class with Norah Gaughan at Sunspun in Canterbury - so I had something to look forward to when I arried backk in Australia.  The lecture was really interesting - Norah mostly focussed on the way she builds cable designs, that is the cable stitch pattern itself. Broadly speaking, once Norah has a starting point she then follows a logical flow - looking to expand, carve parts out, contract or flip the stitches, or substitute different cables in amongst an existing stitch pattern. She also talked about taking a dreamier approach - turning the swatches over and around, playing out 'what if' scenarios. 

Norah brought lots and lots of samples forus to try on.  There was the Circlet Shrug from issue 3 of Making Magazine and also the Flared Pullover from Norah's Cable Sourcebook that really caught my attention. 



The class that followed the next morning was focussed on hats - Norah gave charts for different styles of hats and different cable patterns - all interchangeable, and interchangeable with other cable patterns in the Cable Sourcebook.

I came out of the class, and lecture, feeling really inspired to incorporate more cables into my knitting - whether that's simply adding a cable stitch pattern into an existing pattern, substituting cables for others that are more appealling, or even knitting more of Norah's designs as is!

It also encouraged me to incorporate more of the techniques I learned in the Di Gilpin crazy cabling class at Edinburgh Yarn festival to make the cables really pop. First up is a shawl pattern called N-ogee and then a cardigan that incorporates the circlet shrug stitch pattern, but in a garment style that suits me better!

Nordic arrows and some geometry

When I saw the Nordic Arrows pattern in the first issue of Laine Magazine I was immediately drawn to the low contrast look, and interesting triangles within a triangle design.  The pattern is described as ‘overlapping triangles in syncopated brioche – inspired by Norse Runes and Symbols – are the focus of Nordic Arrows’. 

The knitting starts at the pointy end of the triangle with just a few stitches, and the increases happen relatively slowly in order to create the long isosceles triangle shape.  

However, I knew I wouldn’t wear a shawl with such a wide base because I couldn’t see how to wear it.  I modified it to turn it into an offset diamond shape – that is, after the 5^th (of 6) brioche triangles in the middle of the shawl I started decreasing at double the rate of the increases. The increase portion was net 2 stitches over 4 pattern rows (I say 'net' as there was other increases and decreases involved in a set of 4 pattern rows).  This meant that I did decreases at the rate of 4 stitches over the 4 pattern rows (with no other increases or decreases). 

This resulted in a shawl that is overall a diamond shape and the first part is a long isosceles triangle (that is, both sides are the same length and the base is not) and then an equilateral triangle, which makes up the short end of the diamond. 

I really love the cream on yellow in the middle as it maintains the low contrast look of the original, without being all grey.  And the dark grey edge means that I can actually wear such a yellow item as usually yellow doesn’t look good on my skin tone - though despite that I have decided to give this to someone who looks far nicer in yellow!

A few notes on the delicious yarns that I used - first the JC Rennie lambswool above. A friend had purchased this colour (called Pistachio) and I just had to have some, even though the colour is pretty awful on my skin tone!  JC Rennie traditionally makes wool for machine knitting (and weaving) and are a relatively newcomer on the hand knitting market.  It's a light 4 ply/fingering weight with close to 500m for 100grams, likely explained as it's a very lofty yarn.  Probably great for colourwork - which I will test out with my leftovers.

The John Arbon Devonia is quite different as it's a blend of 3 long wools.  This means that the yarn itself is quite compact, and smooth, and comes with 388m for 100grams, though the diameter of the yarn is very similar to the JC Rennie. This yarn has a good amount of sheen (likely due to the combination of Wensleydale and Bluefaced Leicester wool in the yarn blend). This would be incredible in a lacey shawl, as it is so drapey.

The Knitting Goddess is a well known British dyer with a really amazing colour range of semi solids.  I had already purchased the other 2 colours and the KG herself helped me choose the right border colour in her lovely British wool & nylon blend.  I started looking at lighter colours, but the KG steered me to this coal colour, and I think it's the perfect way to finish the shawl!  This yarn was a lot plumper than the other 2, so suited being knit separately to the other 2 colours.