swatching – Daily Fiber

Cast-on Monday, She Shrugged

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Laura Kate

I pulled one of my stash project bags out of the yarn closet for today’s cast-on.

This group of yarns is mostly sport-weight cotton. The marled white is left over from my husband’s sixteen-thousand-stitch pull-over (aka jumper to the Brits) made more than ten years ago. The Berocco Remix yarn was purchased two years ago to make a summer vest for Lu. I ended up using only the red and blue. The yellow seemed such a dreary color. I couldn’t think of who would want to wear it. Then I came across this charming pattern by VersaciKnits.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sequences-shrug

It is knit with the broken garter stitch in two colors. I began to see how the yellow yarn could be a background to more interesting hues. With cuff-to-cuff construction, the stripes would be vertical while the textural changes ran horizontally. My enthusiasm for the project rose quickly after I worked up a swatch.

Other elements of this design include I-cord edgings and button closures on the sleeves. To make it even more interesting, the garment can be worn three ways: shrug, shawl or scarf. I couldn’t wait to cast on.

I like what I see so far. This could be a good travel project, assuming I can manage the constant switching between purl and knit stitches while riding in the car.

knitting

Friday – Out of Order

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Laura Kate

Those expecting to see a Finished Object today will be disappointed. No, I am out of sorts and out of sequence in writing this post. Instead, I will start with the above photo and move on to share a little design process for a knitted garment in progress.

During our travels over Thanksgiving week, I visited a new-to-me yarn store. It was little but crammed full of beautiful yarns. I was surprised and delighted to find a yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners. It is their Signature 4-ply fingering yarn spun with 35% Bluefaced Leicester wool. I had read about this British yarn maker in posts by my knitterly on-line friends. To find a source of this well-crafted fiber in the heart of the U S of A was unexpected. Even more so because of the price – only $13 US for a 100g ball. As you can see, I wasted no time in getting a swatch made.

The yarn will be made into a pair of socks for my husband. He highly approves of the color, which corresponds to one of his team’s colors. (He supports Westham United, “the Hammers,” who play in claret and blue.)

The design work I refer to is for the little green vest I started on October 17th.

Notice the stranded colorwork on the shoulders. The chart provided by the designer is perfectly fine, but I was not in the mood for snowflakes. Instead, I wanted something a little bit floral and seized on this opportunity to design my own chart.

The yarns I pulled from my stash were cream, lavender and deep pink. These will show up well against the dark cool green main color. My new design starts with a pattern called Michaelmas, which somewhat resembles a purple coneflower. This motif went into the center of the design. Next I needed a border. Working in the same number of rows as the one in the pattern, I drew a sort-of zig zag, worked in a few more flowers and then added some sprinkled stitches of cream.

Reasonably satisfied with my chart, I proceeded to swatch it. Ultimately there were a few modifications made to the design as I knitted along. Here is what I came up with:

The design was tweaked slightly as I worked it into the left shoulder.

You will see it soon. With that bit of knitting done, finishing the body of the vest won’t take long.

knitting

Cast-on Monday: Socks Project 2 of 4

Posted on August 15, 2022 by Laura Kate

Moving on – no time like the present! You see here the beginning of the next sock in my holiday gift-giving series. This time I will be making knee-highs for my daughter. The two yarns I have selected are Bare Hawthorne dk by KnitPicks and Soft Twist in bronze by Hayfield.

This project has two experimental facets to it. First is the yarn selection. I am marrying together a mostly Highland wool superwash (Hawthorne) with a mostly acrylic (Hayfield.) I have no idea what that will do to the quality of the socks in the long run. I made and washed a good-sized swatch, which appears to have survived with little impact to its look and feel. That’s a good omen.

The second experiment is the pattern. (And the fact that I haven’t knit a pair of knee-highs before.) This vertically striped pattern is European, therefore written using metric measurements. But that’s not the real problem for me. It’s the shaping. In order to fit comfortably around the calf, the circumference must be greater than typical. Using the bigger circumference suggests to me that stitches must be decreased while working down to the ankle. Otherwise, the foot will be too wide. And yet the pattern is written without the necessary decreases.

I will need a plan to make that happen.

knitting

Wednesday WIP

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Laura Kate

This project got its start as an example for a shawl design class I taught in August. It is also a response to the situation I’ve been griping about called Left-over Sock Yarn.

Some of you may remember this photo.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Once I truly looked at the yarn that was in the bowl, I realized that I had the makings of a multi-color garter ridge shawl. After discarding the red and green yarns, I took a cue from my own advice about color value and separated the leftovers into two piles – darks and lights.

The medium blue ball in the center is the connector between the lights and darks. I also tossed in the very pale blue full skein with a thought that it could make a good border.

The light yarns went into one bag, the darks into another. Starting with the medium blue yarn I cast on about 30 stitches and worked three ridges of garter. Initially I chose yarns by randomly drawing balls from each bags, alternating light and dark and knitting as many rows as I felt like before changing colors. But very quickly, a desirable pattern emerged – four ridges of light alternating with three ridges of dark. The extra ridge of light separated the color changes.

After working the black yarn, I started over with the darks – blue, brown, royal blue, teal, black.

I call this my Sea and Sand shawl.

Once I get up to around 300 stitches, I’ll choose a color to make the border. My creative juices are flowing as I consider pattern options. Since it’s a shawl border, the pattern must be very stretchy. First I thumbed through Barbara Walker’s fabulous “Treasury of Knitting Patterns”(published in 1968) where I spotted a few possibilities. Here’s three that meet my criteria: