casting on Madragoa

A few months ago Mum was given a bag containing a half-finished project and the accompanying balls of yarn. 

It was of interest to me because the yarn felt really special. I've temporarily misplaced the other balls and can't check a label but it has a good percentage of real wool.

The natural first thought was to complete the project but there were some problems with that. Several patterns were present but we couldn't establish which was being used. There were some mistakes in the work, and it was obviously being made to a specific size which would be unlikely to fit either of us. 

So I decided to use the yarn to knit a similar cardy in a style and size to suit me. I'm not sure how far the unopened balls will go, whether I'll have to also unravel the unfinished work, or even whether there's enough yarn to finish what I've chosen, but I've started anyway! (I have chosen something very open and light, so I think the yarn should go a long way.)

The pattern I've chosen is Madragoa by Filipa Carneiro. By coincidence the pattern shows one in a very similar colour but the style is one that I'll want to wear. The construction isn't straightforward but this is a plus because it keeps it interesting.  You start with the lacework at the back of the collar with a provisional cast-on, work so far one way and hold the stitches, then work from the provisional cast-on the other way for the same distance before adding picked-up stitches along the side of what you've done. That's where I'm at, and you can see that I'm about to add the markers.

Spellcaster socks - finished

When Pantone announced the colour of the year for 2024, I realised that I had to get a wiggle on and finish these socks before Viva Magenta stopped being the colour of the year.

I love the colour and the pattern. The problems have been distractions by other projects and a new craft and the fact that spinning a 3-ply yarn by spindle took a long time. (A habit such as #spin15aday could have really helped here.)

The fibre is 'Aries' from the Fibre Hut, a wool/silk mix (which I can no longer see on the Fibre Hut site but is available from World of Wool). It was the closest colour I could find at the time to Viva Magenta. Hopefully the silk will give the yarn some strength. It's 3-ply and I tried to spin the singles more tighly than usual.  

The pattern is Spellcaster Adventure Socks by Clair Wyvern. Many of the pattern choices are made with the roll of a die, so no two pairs will be alike. This is a great idea which I enjoyed very much and I'll look for more such patterns.

I did make a mistake on the second sock, the very last of the triangular patterns isn't the right one. That's not very obvious and I was so keen to get them finished in time for the holiday that I didn't want to rip back and repeat so many rounds. 

A tip for anyone making these socks is that if you roll the 'added chaos' option of knitting the charts upside-down as I did, then the cable crossings as charted don't work. It's kinda noted in the pattern and obvious with hindsight but I didn't spot that when I started. I *think* left crosses have to be right crosses and vice versa, but it makes my head hurt to try to visualise it.  Either way, I didn't reverse the direction of my cables and they didn't really work as intended. I didn't realise this until halfway down the first sock and continued with what I was doing. 

Finished handspun Earth Mama legwarmers

 This project started life when an inventive and generous person returned a drum carder using packing that she'd made from bags filled with the most beautiful Shetland fleece. Of course I treated this as a gift, and a very welcome one.

Those amazing and long locks are really from a Shetland sheep raised in the very north of Scotland. The prettiest of the flock, she is nicknamed Mrs White Fleece. They are strong and didn't break when snapped between the fingers (this type of fleece has a 'rise' or natural weakness which causes the fleece to moult or at least be capable of being 'rooed' or plucked by hand.)

I like to be intentional and spin for a project. In this case I spun the fleece first. I drumcarded, crudely split and pulled the batts into nests and spun from the end of the 'roving'.

This yielded around 500 yards of yarn. More than enough for socks but not enough for a cardy. By searching patterns for the right yardage and yarn weight, I chose this project - Earth Mama legwarmers by Nat Raedwulf, which as an added bonus is a free pattern.

They didn't take too long to knit because I was keen to wear them. I broke two cable needles along the way. Bad technique rather than bad cable needles.

In this picture they have yet to be blocked, which will even out the stitches a little, and have to have buttons added on the turned-over cuff. (The pattern includes a buttonhole.)

Ever since casting off I have been wearing them. (So they're still not blocked.)  They are incredibly warm and snuggly. They stay up well and I like the way the lower ribbing opens out over your foot.

Finished Fulton Shrug

The pattern is mad and I love it - Fulton Shrug from the great book Unexpected Cables.

Yarn is not handspun but Norfolk Horn sourced and millspun by my friend Jenn at fibreworkshop.co.uk and then dyed for me by Freyalyn.  More details about all of that in the previous post.

It has taken a long time. The cables added to the time but kept it more interesting than plain knitting. I got into a rhythm of knitting one or two repeats most days (a cable cross round every 8 rounds).

Finished handspun Hafgufa mitts

Mostly photos this time. This project started as some alpaca fleece that I've had for some time; some really beautiful fleece in an inky black, and some equally beautiful locks in a creamy white. I carded batts from both and also mixed the two for a third colour, mid-grey.

It spun nicely, I went for a 3-ply but it was still pretty thin. That was almost perfect. I used 2mm needles but still had to adjust the pattern by a few stitches to get the right size.

Nudibranch socks in hand-dyed yarn

I think this is my first project in a very long while which uses commercial yarn. Having said that, it is hand-dyed, an indie collaboration between babylonglegs and riverknits in a colourway they called 'Shlurple' (yes the name helped me to make the decision to buy it).

I wanted a pattern with lace over the foot and up the leg. It had to be toe-up (so that I could divide the yarn in half and knit until it ran out) with a heel flap and gusset. The pattern I chose is Nudibranch, which happens to be free. It was a very easy knit, with charted lace patterns.

Second Beatrice Gansey - major setback!

Mistakes can be so costly in terms of time.

Which is absolutely fine if you're into knitting for the journey rather than the destination. But in this case I wanted to present this jumper to my Dad as an anniversary present. With a week to go I started to spend whole days knitting and then one night I went through all the way through the night till 6am!

I presented it to him 'unfinished' but blocked and it was mostly all there. Something wasn't right with the neck which I wanted to take out and work again. The sleeves were different lengths (a long story) and I decided to let him try it on before deciding whether to make one shorter or the other one longer.

The fitting was a little disappointing. The length wasn't quite right. They're not meant to be long, but this did need an extra couple of inches in order to look right on my Dad. The sleeves were a little tight. Yes, these jumpers are worn tight but there should have been a little more room in the sleeves, particularly at the top of the arm.

Only after performing some surgery and correcting what I thought I'd got wrong with the shoulders and the neck did I spot what was really up. I was looking at an old blog post about my red one and realised that I'd missed a whole section of the pattern on the front and back! Can you see it?

What an idiot.

Well, I'm not going to do any more all-nighters on it. I'll work on it as I would any project, ie a little each day, and it'll be done when it's done. Maybe before his birthday in August!!

Finished project, handspun socks

This is a very long-term project, partly because I've been putting this aside in favour of other projects, and partly because I knitted three socks in order to get a pair.

The first sock I finished was way too long in the foot (you have to start the heel a long while before you'd think) and too long in the leg (I don't like them too short). I'd then used more than half the yarn!

So after pulling out most of that first sock, then carefully halving my yarn, off we went again.

It's a great pattern, Coralicious Socks, I really enjoyed knitting it (luckily). It's toe-up, my favourite way, I love the lace pattern and the 'flap/gusset' heel has this slip-stitch pattern at the back.

I spun the yarn by spindle (which I always love doing, it's therapeutic, and produces really good yarn). It's a luxury blend from picperfic's club, colourway Monet's Pond. There's more variation in the colour than there looks in the pictures.

You can see that there's quite a chunk of lighter colour in the leg of one sock. I think this must have been before I started 'fractal spinning' or splitting the two plies differently to better mix up the colours in the plying.  

Boreal jumper - biting the bullet

I mentioned in the post about my finished Boreal jumper that the arms were a little tight around the biceps.

This is not due to me being particularly muscular! I'm pretty skinny. It's partly because I wasn't making my floats loose enough at that point, but a friend has commented that she found hers tight around the arms too, so my suggestion if you're planning to make this jumper is to continue increasing as you work up the sleeve. For this remedial work I added an extra 4 stitches before the colourwork, then ignored the 'makes' on the sleeve chart round 27 (leaving me with 2 extra, which I absorbed when I joined the sleeves to the body).

My sleeves were a little short, which was entirely my fault.

So... I was tempted to just wear the jumper for Christmas. Then do the remedial work. But I wouldn't have worn it as much as I want to (ie all the time). And I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. I bit the bullet....

 My magnifier lamp came into its own.

 At this point (above) it looked as if I'd lost a lightsabre battle! pulling that colourwork section out to reclaim the yarn was a breeze. As was knitting an extra two inches of the green, increasing by 4 more stitches. It was easy to just add those extra stitches at each end of the sleeve chart.

 Joining involved kitchener stitch, which I didn't manage as neatly as I'd like. I mostly kitchenered using the white, then used duplicate stitch to add a few green stitches in the right places.

 There was some 'yarn chicken' played before the end of all this. I had plenty of white yarn but didn't fancy dyeing another skein to match.

Et Voila. It's not an invisible repair. but not too noticeable. This is now having a good long soak, and I'm hoping the blocking will improve it a little.

It's involved several extra hours' work, but well worth it. I'll really enjoy living in this through December. Thank you so much for the pattern Kate.

Finished Project : Boreal Jumper, Kate Davies

Another finished project, and I'm celebrating with something appropriate...

I'll take better pictures when there's some light (not easy to catch this time of the year...) and when it's had a soak and block. But you know how it is when something comes off the needles....

The pattern is amazing, I loved it at first sight, Boreal by Kate Davies. The yarn started life as Real Shetland combed top from Adam Curtis. (Well it started life on a Shetland sheep of course, but was processed and then purveyed by Adam before it got to me.) I spun all the yarn white, as part of my Spinzilla effort, then dyed half of it this deep emerald green as per Kate's pattern. Yarn is possibly a little thin for the needle size.

It’s a little tight around the biceps, I did the sleeves first, and I think I was a little tight with my floats there. I definitely made sure the floats were looser while doing the body and that’s great. I may re-do the top half of each sleeve, but maybe not this year, as it’s wearable and there are other projects I’d like to get done for the winter.

[Edit - for completeness - here's a photo of the finished jumper after the remedial work]

Project ravelled.

Ravelympic Games (Ravellenics) finish line

I guess this is now a retrospective, but I did have had some work and sleep to catch up on!

The idea of the Ravellenics (originally Ravelympics, which is a much better name, but outlawed by the Olympic committe - thanks guys) is that you challenge yourself and then craft away while the Olympic Games are on. Ravelry has some clever functionality which recognises your achievement(s) and awards medals and laurels.

This time I decided to make Illas Cíes by Anne Hanson which I'd fallen in love with, finally decided to make in a pale grey colour as per the one on the pattern, and bought some silvery silk/alpaca for the purpose at Fibre East.

This meant that I could enter the  'Synchronised Spinning' and 'Sweater Triathlon'. If I finished, I'd qualify for the 'Fleece to FO' laurel (even though it was processed fibre rather than raw fleece).

Here's my progress in pictures. Initially I was working for half the day and crafting for the other half. During the last few days it became obvious that I needed to put in as much time as I could if I was to cross the finish line.

The beautiful fibre spun from the fold like molten silver:

A few hours' spinning while the opening ceremony was going on and the first complete bobbin (of 6)

I did all the spinning (1200 yds based on the yardage requirement printed in the pattern) before casting on. That happened on the first Weds.

Back and front done, first sleeve starting. There's a lot of fabric in a sleeve! Almost as much knitting as a front or back.

I did flag on the penultimate day. I sat up late feeling very tired and achey. Not fun any more.

Victory! Trying on the finished garment near the start of the closing ceremony. It even fits! (A little tighter than I'd like, but I'm hoping it'll give a little after blocking and then wearing a bit.)

Still ends to weave in here, but I thought I could get away with that.

It's a lovely looking jumper. The lace panels look really splendid and the design is perfect for me. I really wish now I'd chosen a seamless design for this event though. Purling and seaming are both a bit counter-productive when time isn't on your side.