expectation

Pattern: Expectation (mine)

Yarn: Sanguine Gryphon 'Eidos' in Zeus and Thales

I am really happy to finally show you this cardigan I was working on a few months ago. It's in the new Sanguine Gryphon collection of patterns for spring and it's the first time I've been published by someone other than myself, so I'm pretty excited. I took very few photos of it back in January before entrusting it to the postal gods, but you can see their lovely photos at the link above. They always have inspirational themes for their calls. When I was in Fine Arts, one of my favourite periods was Art Nouveau - the theme for this collection.

Gustav Klimt's Stoclet Frieze paintings inspired the curvilinear colourwork in this sweater. The paintings are 'Expectation', the 'Tree of Life' and 'Fulfillment' - the 'Expectation' portion is the female figure on the left.

The talented people at Sanguine Gryphon were really wonderful to work with and their yarns are amazing. They also donate regularly to Heifer International - an organization which provides animals to families in need worldwide and they're also donating 50% of all pattern sales until April 15th to the Red Cross for aid to Japan.

My kids are on spring break, so we're having fun relaxing this week. They're riding their scooters on the still-ice-encrusted sidewalk, hoping to encourage the warmer weather to arrive. I can't post photos of plants sprouting out of the ground like many of you have, but we did roast hotdogs and marshmallows and spend 3 hours outside yesterday afternoon, so that's not bad.

Happy Tuesday. :)

some people do crosswords...

I really adore pretty much anything to do with the act of knitting, knitting tools and knitting techniques. But were I to be stranded indefinitely on a desert island and could only bring one knitting project with me (totally plausible)...it would be something complicated, super time-consuming and stranded. Thin yarn and charts provide such great entertainment value per dollar spent and per hour knit.

Speaking of which, the uber talented Kirsten just released her Urban Mandarin pattern and I am really looking forward to doing this one. It has fabulous style and I absolutely LOVE this motif. It's in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport, one of my favourite yarns. There are some great FO's, too. This is going to be a fun knit.

(photos by Kirsten used with permission)

I'm currently test knitting these wonderful socks by Susi, who is another designer of fabulous stranded knitwear. I love Latvian braid and the crisp contrast of the black and white. It's very exciting to me that there are so many knitters doing really interesting things with colourwork design right now.

I'm also working on this. Which is part of a humble sock I have ripped and re-knit a couple of times but which I think is finally getting somewhere in the vicinity of where I want it.

Hope you're having a great week. Spring is coming. I can almost feel it.

pattern release - Hibernate

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I thought it was fitting to release a green sweater pattern today and I'm hoping the weather will warm up enough in the next few weeks I can shed my parka and just wear this outside.

Pattern: Hibernate (see sidebar)

Yarn: 8 (8,8,9,9,10,10) skeins Quince and Co. Puffin (100% American Wool); 112 yds/102m per 4 oz / 100g skein). Shown in #129 ‘Parsley’

1 skein Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran; 100 yds/91 m per 50g skein). Shown in #300008 (dark brown) or about 60 yds of any aran or worsted weight yarn

Notes: The body is knit from the top down with the upper body worked in pieces to the bottom of the sleeve openings and then joined together, then worked in pieces for the pocket openings. The sleeves are worked from the top down using short row caps.

I recommend wearing it with 2-4” of positive ease, as it's a bulky yarn. It's suitable for a beginner knitter.

As with many of you, I'm sure, my heart and mind have been with the people of Japan this week and the horrific situation that they are continuing to be faced with. For the next month I'll be donating 50% of sales from all my patterns along with my own donation to Doctors Without Borders to assist Japan.

Happy Spring to you! Here's hoping a green sweater will encourage some new green shoots of life through all the snow.

cardiganizing

So last year I finished this lovely Lopi pullover and have worn it periodically in situations where I know the temperature will remain cool, such as inside hockey arenas. Because it's a pretty warm sweater and not really conducive to wearing at the office, inside my house, etc. I really love the colours in the yoke and like the icelandic wooliness of it (and I forgive the pattern's shortcomings such as lack of shortrow shaping in the yoke and waist shaping).

So last night I decided to make it into a cardigan because cardigans are the greatest things in the world and because it would give it a cooling factor for indoor situations.

Sorry I didn't take photos (it was evening), but all I basically did was rip back the collar (which was folded and tacked down) to about 6 rounds and bound it off again. Then I found the centre column of stitches on the front, ensuring it was in the middle of the yoke motifs. This happened to correspond to the decrease rounds in the yoke, so it was not so much a strict column of stitches up there as a vertical line. Then I took some slippery superwash sock yarn and my big needle and stitched a quick line where the middle is.

Then I took the sewing machine and did a row one and a half columns to either side of the middle for reinforcement, though this yarn is as sticky as Shetland and they wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway. I just like to make my sewing machine feel loved once in a while.

Then I took out the sock yarn and cut straight up the middle. Picked up stitches along each side and did 6 rows of seed stitch like the cuffs and collar, buttonholes on one side. Added buttons. Tacked down steek sts to the inside. Et voila!

I am going to wear this a lot more now.

fibre.yarn.idea.

I've been spinning. And charting. And notemaking. A bit of knitting.

This is some wonderful Old Maiden Aunt superwash merino in 'Crest of the Wave'. 100 grams spun into about 260 yds. of sport weight 2-ply. I'm thinking about combining it with some solid teal yarn I have - maybe in the yoke of a cardigan?

This is part of 16oz of Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino in 'Touch Me'. It came to about 644 yds. of worsted weight 3-ply. My daughter has drawn up what she wants me to make with it for her. I have another 16oz I can spin if I need it.

More tree charting. This is a bit of a(n) preoccupation (obsession).

happy weekend!