Monday 30 September 2013
Sunday 29 September 2013
Minley
Third time lucky. Following some extensive testing, I was pretty sure I had my new pattern sorted. Cascade 220 has something of a reputation amongst my knitting group (okay, amongst me and my friend) as the why-would-I-try-anything-else yarn. And that's a well deserved reputation.
It comes in a stupefying range of colours that is guaranteed to make the most decisive yarn buyer hesitate. It's 100% wool, so it blocks wonderfully. It's reasonably priced and I've never had problems with knots or quality. If you've not tried Cascade 220, do yourself a favour and give it a go, you won't be disappointed.
Anyway, I'd initially ordered a nice dusky purple for my final (definitely, definitely final) draft of my scarf but it was out of stock. I was pleasantly pleased with the duck-egg blue I got instead and enjoyed giving the skeins a good squish before I got started.
As I mentioned before, the pattern is quick and in next to no time I had my final, finished scarf. And after quite a lot of fighting and testing, it was finally the right shape, the right size and generally all-over right.
The scarf is modelled here by my colleague Elspeth in front of out lovely office atrium. The photo might have looked a little better had we not suffered a fire in the office (hence the weird plasterboard hoardings onto which we have drawn fish).
So all that was left was a name. With my other patterns, that has come along with the pattern itself and that was more or less the case with this scarf.
There's a stately home called Minley Manor in Hampshire. It's a quite remarkable building that now serves as the officers' mess attached to Gibraltar Barracks. It's a warren of hallways and contradictory architectural choices but it is stunning. The wikipedia page has a photo that hardly does the beautiful, elegant building justice. The initial house has been added to over time and things don't always add up well but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And I like to think the same is true of my scarf.
As with Minley-the-house, I started with an idea and then just added things until I was finished. I don't think I could have named it anything else.
It comes in a stupefying range of colours that is guaranteed to make the most decisive yarn buyer hesitate. It's 100% wool, so it blocks wonderfully. It's reasonably priced and I've never had problems with knots or quality. If you've not tried Cascade 220, do yourself a favour and give it a go, you won't be disappointed.
Anyway, I'd initially ordered a nice dusky purple for my final (definitely, definitely final) draft of my scarf but it was out of stock. I was pleasantly pleased with the duck-egg blue I got instead and enjoyed giving the skeins a good squish before I got started.
As I mentioned before, the pattern is quick and in next to no time I had my final, finished scarf. And after quite a lot of fighting and testing, it was finally the right shape, the right size and generally all-over right.
The scarf is modelled here by my colleague Elspeth in front of out lovely office atrium. The photo might have looked a little better had we not suffered a fire in the office (hence the weird plasterboard hoardings onto which we have drawn fish).
So all that was left was a name. With my other patterns, that has come along with the pattern itself and that was more or less the case with this scarf.
There's a stately home called Minley Manor in Hampshire. It's a quite remarkable building that now serves as the officers' mess attached to Gibraltar Barracks. It's a warren of hallways and contradictory architectural choices but it is stunning. The wikipedia page has a photo that hardly does the beautiful, elegant building justice. The initial house has been added to over time and things don't always add up well but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And I like to think the same is true of my scarf.
As with Minley-the-house, I started with an idea and then just added things until I was finished. I don't think I could have named it anything else.
Saturday 28 September 2013
Inspiration, Friend and Foe
Who knows where ideas come from? For me, the answer is occasionally yarn.
Quite some time ago (because this is a very belated post) someone brought some spare yarn into work. I know, spare yarn. The concept is strange to me too. I took away a couple of balls of Freedom Spirit in earthy browns. I'd seen it in my local yarn store a few times and the colours interested me. What interested me more was the 100% wool content. Mmmm blocktastic.
I think it was that which made my brain cry out: "LACE!". To which my more rational mind replied: "Worsted?" But my impulsive, ambitious mind continued to cry "LACE" despite my reason's best attempt to point out that I hate lace in variegated colours.
I think it's the fact that the balls were free that gave me the freedom to try things I wouldn't have attempted with yarn I'd purchased. It's not that I always buy expensive yarn, just that it's nice to have something out of the blue that I've not already planned something for. That and the 100% wool.
I've been fascinated by the idea of lace in worsted for some time so I enthusiastically dug out my stitch dictionaries. I was particularly drawn to a German one I bought in Loop last year and quickly found something I liked. The fight to get it into a pattern I loved was long and arduous and, as it turned out, fraught with failure.
I haven't posted pictures of the resultant scarf on Ravelry because, quite frankly, it would be a cruel and humiliating offence to a perfectly good yarn. Needless to say, I learned a lot from that experiment.
The bit I was least happy with was a weird knot/cable combination that could not have worked less if I had tried. The next version of the scarf was held up primarily by my attempts to refine a 8×6 section of the pattern just before the lace joined the short row section of the scarf. I must have tried two dozen variations before I returned to my stitch dictionaries and found something that worked. More than that, it perfectly blended the two sections together.
On a spontaneous trip to Cardiff I bought some luscious Rowan Creative Focus Worsted. Soft and lovely as the yarn is, the truly remarkable thing is the gorgeous range of colours it comes in. Being single ply it was a little splitty but nowhere near what I'd expected, it comes highly recommended.
The result was this:
It was very close to right. But the short row section was still on too large a needle and the points curled irritatingly as soon as I wrapped it round anything. I returned briefly to my practicing but, fortunately, both these problems were easily solved. By casting on plenty of extra stitches then decreasing every row rather than the original every-other, the cast on edge gains the extra stretch it need to wrap more flexibly (with some very pointy points).
By this point, I didn't really feel like knitting it again but, fortunately, it's extremely quick to knit so I trawled Get Knitted for exactly the right shade of Cascade 220, cursed loudly when it was out of stock, then waited patiently to start draft number three. Which I will save for another post...
Quite some time ago (because this is a very belated post) someone brought some spare yarn into work. I know, spare yarn. The concept is strange to me too. I took away a couple of balls of Freedom Spirit in earthy browns. I'd seen it in my local yarn store a few times and the colours interested me. What interested me more was the 100% wool content. Mmmm blocktastic.
I think it was that which made my brain cry out: "LACE!". To which my more rational mind replied: "Worsted?" But my impulsive, ambitious mind continued to cry "LACE" despite my reason's best attempt to point out that I hate lace in variegated colours.
I think it's the fact that the balls were free that gave me the freedom to try things I wouldn't have attempted with yarn I'd purchased. It's not that I always buy expensive yarn, just that it's nice to have something out of the blue that I've not already planned something for. That and the 100% wool.
I've been fascinated by the idea of lace in worsted for some time so I enthusiastically dug out my stitch dictionaries. I was particularly drawn to a German one I bought in Loop last year and quickly found something I liked. The fight to get it into a pattern I loved was long and arduous and, as it turned out, fraught with failure.
I haven't posted pictures of the resultant scarf on Ravelry because, quite frankly, it would be a cruel and humiliating offence to a perfectly good yarn. Needless to say, I learned a lot from that experiment.
The bit I was least happy with was a weird knot/cable combination that could not have worked less if I had tried. The next version of the scarf was held up primarily by my attempts to refine a 8×6 section of the pattern just before the lace joined the short row section of the scarf. I must have tried two dozen variations before I returned to my stitch dictionaries and found something that worked. More than that, it perfectly blended the two sections together.
On a spontaneous trip to Cardiff I bought some luscious Rowan Creative Focus Worsted. Soft and lovely as the yarn is, the truly remarkable thing is the gorgeous range of colours it comes in. Being single ply it was a little splitty but nowhere near what I'd expected, it comes highly recommended.
The result was this:
 |
| (thanks to my sister for modelling it) |
 |
| Now with added pointy |
By this point, I didn't really feel like knitting it again but, fortunately, it's extremely quick to knit so I trawled Get Knitted for exactly the right shade of Cascade 220, cursed loudly when it was out of stock, then waited patiently to start draft number three. Which I will save for another post...
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