Spencer - progress report

I loved this pattern from the moment I saw it in Anna Wilkinson's great book - I think it is mainly down to the bright colours that I simply couldn't resist. After some hunting and gathering, including a trip to Latvia and some gift-skeins that my mom brought back from Estonia last summer, I finally had the palette of colours that I needed.

I cast on the required number of stitches both for the front AND the back to knit in the round and make it an cardigan instead of a vest. It's not "real" fair-isle, at least according to my definition, but it's good practice for the next project which I'm planning to base on Mary-Jane Mucklestone's "200 Fair-Isle Motifs" collection of Shetland patterns. 

In terms of construction I opted for a steek with knitted-on button band as well as steeked armholes (a first time for me). The idea was to knit as much as possible in the round to avoid doing the annoying purl-side colourwork, including the sleeves. I used a different technique for my last fair-isle cardigan where I knitted in the round to the beginning of the arm holes and then separated the front and back to knit them separately and flat. This has the advantage that you can shape the armholes more nicely and it is easier to fit the sleeve caps, but i also means that the sleeves then have to be knitted flat and that's what I want to avoid.

So far, so good. The bodice has been done for about 2 months now but I haven't plucked up the courage to get started with the sleeves, partly because I worked on my Petit Poisson Rouge in the meantime and I was a bit fed up with the thin yarn and tiny stitches. Also, I'm running out of the light grey yarn so I have to think of another option for the sleeves and button band. I made one attempt at continuing in the fair-isle pattern over the sleeves but that was a disaster so I think I will opt for a single colour on the sleeves - maybe dark blue?

While my musings continue, I'm also working on a Miette (a cardigan this time, not the skirt - this seems to be a popular name for patterns) and a hat. New pictures here soon!

P.S: I think homemade rasperry-sorbet-pink is now my favourite summer colour.

Vier Fäustlinge und ein Halleluja!

As usual, I needed a little bit of a relaxing project in between the more complicated cardigans and with Winter approaching I had just the thing in mind: mittens. My mum had brought me a really nice little book from Estonia in which Aino Praakli documented patterns from original mittens found in different regions in Estonia.

At first glance they resemble the Latvian mittens that I learned about at the workshop earlier this year but I while I was knitting, I actually saw the differences. The Estonian patterns are more abstract and geometrical and consist usually of only two or three contrasting colours. In any case, both are beautiful. And so fast to knit!

I knitted them on the smallest needles I had that I usually use for socks and I cast on 52 st (my hands are quite small), increasing to 60 st after the cuff. The thumb is attached afterwards with the most simple method, picking up 18 st around the thumb-hole - just remember to cast off the stitches on opposite sides of the two mittens, otherwise you end up with two left-handed or two right-handed ones... (and no, I'm *not* speaking out of experience).

Another little piece of advice would be to join the rounds of the pattern at what will be the sides of the mittens (I don't know how to describe it better but I mean the place which is not the palm or the back of your hand when you imagine the finished mitten). I didn't pay attention on the first mitten and now I have the ugly jog on the back of the mitten where it is much more visible - probably only to the trained knitters' eyes but anyways. 

Rhubard root dye

After my first experiment with avocado dye and following the great workshop on dyeing with plants this summer I decided to try one of the recipes at home. I really liked the colours that we got from working with rhubarb root, especially when we did a test with an older dye bath (already a bit smelly and covered in mould) which gave a very surprising dark red instead of the orangy-yellow of the fresh bath. While I didn't manage to recreate quite the exact colour it was still a nice result.

I got a whole root - which is huge, by the way - and chopped it up in very small pieces. I then left them outside in the sun to dry for a few days until they were really hard and felt like wood. I wanted to preserve them for future dye-projects and my freezer was to small for these quantities of root-chips.  I think the result is the same but maybe the colours are a bit more vibrant with the fresh root.

I used my hand-spun yarn (the first attempt ever so excuse me if it looks more like a rope than actual knitting yarn) and I divided my skein to be able to work with different shades. I also used alum for mordanting as I did with the avocado because I forgot to buy the citric acid - less "natural" but it worked just as well. As you can see, the first dye-bath resulted in a  much darker, mustard yellow shade.

The second dye-bath produced a lighter shade of yellow but had patches of much more orangy colours as well. I wonder if it had turned into something even more reddish if I had left it longer?

Now it's just the question: what to knit with this unreasonably chunky yarn?

Finally, a note to myself: When dying yarn in cooking pots on the kitchen hob next time, wash them properly and stash them FAR away from actual cooking pots. I'm not sure how poisonous alum is but the boyfriend was definitely not happy when he noticed that he had been cooking (and eating) spaghetti from a pot that I had mordanted my yarn in.... and I was worried that I might have damaged his health permanently. My bad!

Petit poisson rouge

I fell in love with this cardigan the first time I saw it on Sigrid's blog. I knew I wanted to knit one but the pattern was not published yet so I contacted her for a test knit and, hooray, she shared the draft pattern with me.

The actual knitting process was quite straight forward: after I managed to find the right needle size for my stash of red and white Latvian yarn (and one failed attempt to do so) I just followed the pattern which is very detailed and well written. The basic chart is repeated many times so I knew it by heart pretty quickly and could take it everywhere to progress faster on my knitting.

The only thing I changed was the construction of the sleeves. Sigrid suggests picking up stitches around the armholes of the bodice and knitting the sleeves top-down but I had a bad experience with this method on my "Spencer" cardigan. It's difficult to knit in the round because you have to keep turning the knitting, including the bodice which is quite bulky at that stage, so it gets annoying.

Instead I reversed the instructions and started at the cuffs, knitting my way up to the shoulders and sewing the sleeves tot he bodice instead. Works just as well,  except that my sleeves turned out a tiny bit short in the end (but that's my fault and can be fixed easily). It's also a bit tight but that is a result of me messing up the gauge I think and I still like it a lot.

My verdict: I love my "petit poisson rouge" (little gold fish) and it does not take as long to knit as it looks like! 

Summer in the city

 

Even though we have a beautiful autumn at the moment, summer is clearly over when is starts getting dark at 5 pm. But I did manage to snap a few nice pictures of  moments and places in Brussels (when I wasn't traveling for once). Of course I also forgot a lot of things like my favourite ice cream place, drinks on sunny terraces with friends, picnics in the park, festivals, concerts, general fun. But it happened and that's the most important thing.

Now I'm enjoying the sunny autumn with all the colourful leaves and still enough sun to have coffee on my amazing balcony - can you see how much my plants have grown since the spring? I'm seriously proud of my mini-gardening effort. And somehow I still found time to knit, I'm surprised myself when I'm looking back at the results.

In 2 months, it's already Christmas and I'm not at all prepared for winter. In the meantime, we also have to find a new flat and manage the whole business of moving house, something that I'm not particularly looking forward to. But for now it's still time to enjoy.

Montenegro

 

 

Just back from Iceland and we're on the road again (at least that's how it feels) - this time in.... Montenegro!

It may sound like a bit of a random destination and, indeed, it is. We were basically looking for something a bit warmer than Iceland to make up for wearing knitted jumpers in August but not the traditional Southern European holiday destinations with beach hotels and "all inclusive" deals. That was a a compromise we made when planning our trips for this year and I have to say it worked out remarkably well: Montenegro has a little bit for all the tastes.

Not wanting to do the job of the Montenegrin tourist board but this place was perfect for us, especially now off-season. We had the beach part and could even still swim in the sea, we had some nice towns and cities (Ulcinj, Kotor, Cetinje, Podgorica) and we had the mountains and lakes. All that is within a 2-hour drive radius of the capital and unbelievably cheap on top of that.

We even had the time to make a little detour to Albania which was great, even though I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a stamp in my passport when crossing the border (ok, I might be bit obsessed with that). I would have expected a more chaotic and disorganized trip considering that we planned zero in advance but the Balkan clichés were (almost) not fulfilled and everything worked out super smoothly. Except....

...when we got home and had just landed at the airport, Thomas got a bit too enthusiastic running for the bus and hit his head against a lamp post. Ouch. 3 hours later and a short stint at a Charleroi hospital's emergency room for fixing up the laceration on his forehead and the holiday was truly over.