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I have a fairly new coworker named Bonnie. She was hired last Autumn to replace someone who relocated to another state. A few days ago, I found Bonnie is tears at her desk. Her daughter had been deployed to Afghanistan and was en route. The travel time is about 48 hours total. It broke my heart to see Bonnie in such distress, but I am relieved to report that her daughter arrived safely. She will be away for about six months.
Yesterday, I wore a knit scarf to work. The pattern is called Augustine and is shown in detail above. The triangular scarf is knit with a fingering-weight wool sock yarn, KnitPicks' Imagination. The color is called Looking Glass. Bonnie admired the scarf and I offered to make something for her. I had already planned to make something, planning for have it ready for her birthday or Christmas. In other words,
plenty of time.
I should KNOW better by now. Don't try this at home. I think from now on, I will keep my mouth shut and knit things as a surprise, on my own terms. When I asked Bonnie what she might like, she told me that she wanted fingerless gloves, in off white. No problem. Somehow, that changed into a green infinity scarf to be completed by St. Patrick's Day. Today is February 27th. There goes all my free time for the next 2 weeks!
The green yarn that I will be using is also from KnitPicks. The color is called Frog Prince, now discontinued. The yarn can be seen in the small photo above, taken from a previous project.
The Augustie pattern has a real bonus in that it expands wonderfully due to dropped stitches. I haven't done a pattern like this in a long time. I am hoping this is a VERY quick project.
This is Professor Barbie Ralph Kraken, in her new home out West.
I knit this from Hansigurimi's Nudibranch pattern. It was a very fast knit that I was able to complete pretty easily in about two days of watching football. The colors used were grass green and oddments of blues and purples from my stash.
While this certainly isn't the only project I have knit in the past couple of months, it is definitely the most interesting. Most of my time has been spent making rather mundane things to warm the hands. My husband and kids let me knit these things in any color I choose as long as it is black or gray. Boring.
That being said, I have amused myself by keeping notes and taking photos with the hope of writing and posting a pattern for fingerless gloves. I have learned just how much I hate doing this. Publishing knit patterns is not in my future.
Wow, I knit this some time ago, at the end of the school year. Then I think the weather got hot and knitting wool hats was just not the thing. Now, football season is upon us, the weather is cold, and I am feeling guilty about not mailing this to the recipient. For the record, the pattern is called Scrap Metal Hat, and it is and absolute joy to knit. A fast, easy knit.
These are the (essentially) finished Holiday stockings shown next to examples of the Morrison tartans. On the left is the Morrison Hunting/Ancient Tartan, which is the prettiest sett. The blue stocking I knit actually resembles the darker, Morrison Society/Modern tartan. The darker blues and greens were used because those yarns were available. If I were to knit kilt hose to be worn, I would dye the yarns to match the fabric. That will not be happening any time soon. My husband refuses to wear a kilt. I am not about to hand knit tartan hose to be hidden under a pants leg. On the other hand, our eldest son does wear a kilt. He may get a pair of textured kilt hose....when he graduates.
The right hand sash and stocking are the Morrison Red sett. Technically, the tartan has dominant red and green colors, but it does not read that way visually. I knit the stocking to look like a better match for the sash. Both stockings were knit flat and then seamed. That method is necessitated by the intarsia diamonds and commonsense. These patterns may also predate circular needles.
Snarky note- My mother-in-law, from Edinburgh, never learned to knit anything in the round. I suspect, also that she considered circular knitting an unseemly American practice.
This is my second attempt at a tartan stocking. The first try was essentially a swatch, using stash yarn. That swatch taught me that colors need to be chosen carefully. There was nothing wrong with the knitting. I just hated the colors.
On to the swatch in the picture..... My husband, Ian is Scottish, born in Edinburgh. His grandfather came from the Isle of Lewis,which is the hereditary home of a branch of the Morrison clan. According to the Scottish Tartan Authority, there are two main Morrison Tartans, a Green Hunting Tartan, and a Red Morrison Tartan. In addition, each major tartan has modern and ancient versions that vary in color.
The photo shows the leg portion of a tartan/argyle stocking being knit according to a traditional, two-needle, flat pattern. Tartan hose are knit flat because the colored diamonds are knit using the intarsia (block) method. I'm knitting this piece using two strands of fingering yarn throughout. The doubled strand of yarn is an important design feature in tartan stockings. Argyle patterns feature diamonds. Tartan patterns may be distinguished from argyle, by the addition of "marls" which are combination of two colors to give a heathered effect. I knit this project with two strands of yarn in order to create a custom marl yarn as needed.
The blocks of a tartan pattern are knit in solid and marled patterns, which are taken from the main colors of the woven tartan. Additional colors used in the woven tartan have been added as diagonal "rakers". I chose to add the rakers using duplicate stitch. Rakers can be knit directly into the diamonds. I chose not to do this, partly for simplicity. A secondary reason to stitch the rakers in later is that I can change my mind. I like seeing how the main colors work together before I add additional colors.
Those miserable scraps at left are the result of my learning to tat.....again. Actually, I'm almost pleased by this.
I have been curious about tatting since I was in high school. During my freshman year, we had a German exchange student, Karen Volker who was the buxom, sexy, blonde of the high school boy's dreams that year. She was a sophisticated 16 years old to my lowly 14 years. She had a German accent. She could act! Woecakes and jealousy. She was the student aid in my first year German class. Poor girl must have been bored to TEARS! I don't think I ever had a real conversation with her all year. What I DO remember is that she started tatting during class. That got me fascinated. In German, the word for tatting is Schiffenarbeit. It means "boat work" and refers to the shuttle used.
I did learn how to make the basic tatting double stitch many years ago, probably as a college student. I never did much with tatting, though. I did buy some books, which are collecting dust in the basement. The problem is that classic, Victorian tatting patterns are just horrific. They are poorly written and the designs simply say "outdated, fussy". I simply could not find anything I wanted to make enough to bother.
Admittedly, I did not see the potential in tatting. Next post will have more info.
The photo at left shows a project I made up on the fly. It is a small baby blanket/receiving blanket.
I made it simply from a pattern for a decorative small leaf. Now that I think about it, the shaping is very similar to that for a shawl. In this case, I just kept increasing far, far beyond the size of a normal leaf. This became truly mindless knitting. I made the project the size of a receiving blanket because that was the smallest size that fit within a reasonable standard. Final dimensions are about 28" across the center of the leaf. I think it is perhaps 40" long. Those numbers are guesses. I knit the leaf to get a gauge of at least 28"
I used Red Heart Recycled yarn for this project. Originally, I bought the yarn for a leaf-themed baby sweater that I am just starting. The blanket part was a sudden inspiration. Baby things get made in acrylic yarn so that they are machine washable and hypoallergenic.
For once, I have no recipient for this gift. I may just keep this one myself for a while. I am hoping that the next couple of baby projects are pretty special.
