New Pattern And FO: Christmas Stocking

I designed this stocking for the 100th Issue of Simply Knitting. Included in this issue is a supplementary booklet of Christmas knits. Included among the various colourful novelties are two designs of mine, both Christmas Stockings, but each very different from the other.

This particular stocking is just all-out Christmassy. Knit in shades of red, white and green it epitomises the season with motifs of snowflakes, ivy and reindeer. The colours chosen reflect the richness of the season and the wish to bring the outside in, deck the house with boughs of evergreen to keep spirits buoyant through the coldest season. Some of the motifs take inspiration from traditional Scandinavian colourwork, so popular over recent years on wrapping paper and Christmas decorations, yet nothing beats the real thing in knitted form.

The shape of this stocking is wholly modern. A lot of the patterns for knitted stockings that I have previously seen are very narrow in dimension. What I want most from a stocking is for it to look good as a piece of decoration in the run up to Christmas morning, but also to be functional as a carrier of gifts and treats. So this stocking has a modern, wide shape, to hold all manner of small toys and teddy bears, boxes of sweets and other small gifts. The stocking also incorporates a hanging loop so that your handiwork can be enjoyed in the lead-up to Christmas day, because it’s a shame to hide handcrafted items away when they should be displayed, especially at a time when many people like a feeling of homely warmth around the house.

The stocking is also knit from one of my favourite yarns – Debbie Bliss Rialto DK. This gives a lovely, smooth finish to the knitted colourwork and the vibrant colours make the design pop. I had been a little nervous when it came to blocking the stocking as I know from experience (and reports from others) that some of the red shades of Rialto can bleed quite shockingly. I did my best to get around this by blocking the item in cold water to cause less loosening of any dye with a little Soak branded wool wash (which avoided the need to rinse the item and leave it in the water any longer that was necessary. I also stuck two colour-catcher sheets in the sink for good measure. I gave the stocking a quick swish around in the water and then took it out and placed it between towels, standing on them to remove as much water as I could, as quickly as possible. Luckily there was not any noticeable bleeding with the yarn, and the lightest areas remained a nice crisp white.

You can find the pattern in issue 100 of Simply Knitting, in the Christmas Knitting booklet, out now.

Pattern: Star Stocking by Mimi Hill
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Rialto DK in Scarlet, Forest, White, Emerald & Maroon (1 ball each)

An Interview With Me, By Simply Knitting

A couple of weeks ago I agreed to a short interview for the Simply Knitting section of The Making Spot website, ahead of the publication of a couple of patterns I had made for the 100th issue, which also happens to be a bumper Christmas issue, and the interview went live today.

Hopefully I will write about the two projects in full over the next few days, but for now there are a couple of previews of the two project that I designed for the issue, as well as some Mimi-babble. Blush.

FO: Puffin Apple Hat

It wasn’t until I was about 70% into the knitting of my Puffin Apple hat that I finally conceded to myself that the beautiful cabled design wasn’t only softened by the yarn, but pretty much erased from view. The appearance of the cables is softened further by the textured background, which looks perfect in the recommended yarn, but less effective in the single-ply, loosely spun fluffy yarn which I had used.
I had tried the hat on and concluded that in some lighting the cable pattern was quite discernible, though in others I struggled to see it clearly, and if I hadn’t have known it was there I might have thought it to be some curiosity of the knitted fabric.

Still, I knitted on because I was enjoying the actual physical act of knitting the hat, with its mixture of interesting cable panel followed by the Easy Street of the checkerboard patterned broken rib.
The hat has sat, finished, by the side of the sofa for the last few days. I have enjoyed putting it on my head because the fit is sublime. It has just the right amount of ease not to squish my hair yet not slip around, and is just the perfect depth for a hat, but it was a shame that the showpiece element of the design was so obscured.

I sat at lunchtime yesterday thinking what I could do to make those cables pop just a little more. I thought about running a zig-zag of stitches over the backs of the cable lines and pulling them tight to make the cables stand proud, or maybe backstitching along the edges of the cable to draw attention to them, but decided against each idea as I was in a bit of a despondent mood.

Then, on the way home, I decided that I wanted to add a touch of needlefelting. Or maybe beading. Or why not both?

Using an odd length of another single-ply yarn (in this case a couple of metres of Lamb's Pride Worsted) I very simply needlefelted an outline to the cables, following the lines that the cables had formed and cutting the yarn to the appropriate lengths. I then sought out a few pearl-style beads in three sizes – eight very small, four medium and four large, and decided on their placement before sewing them into position, and I’m really pleased with the result. On its own, the needle-felting was enough to bring the cable design alive, but the touch of beading just made it even more special. I try not to go too overboard with elements of embellishment, for fear of gilding the lily, but in this case it just made the hat a piece that I wanted to wear immediately (and as such I wore it to work today).

I’m now totally smitten by the finished piece and I can see that it is going to get a lot of use over the following months.

Pattern: Puffin Apple by Jen Arnall-Culliford
Yarn: Rowan Creative Focus Worsted in shade 01265

FO: Wild Rose

A colleague at work asked last week if I would possibly consider knitting a flower for a hat of hers. All of her favourite walking hats featured flowers, but she had one particularly warm hat without a floral decoration on and wondered if I'd mind knitting one to adorn it.

The hat was blue with a little white detailing on the edge, so we decided on a white flower with a yellow centre to coordinate. I had a few flowers to choose between from the book '100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet' by Lesley Stanfield, but the one that looked prettiest to me was the anemone. This flower turned out slightly differently to the one in the book as I knit the petals in a single colour, and I think that it ended up looking like a wild rose (or dog rose).

I finished this quick 60 minute knit by sewing a brooch back onto a 3cm circle of white felt and sewing this onto the back of the flower. I could have blocked the petals of the flower to make them lay flat, but I thought that the slight cusp on the petal edge made the finished item look more organic and gave it an extra dimension of detail by creating a natural shadow between the petals which highlighted the way that they overlapped.

My colleague appeared to like the finished flower when I handed it to her this morning, so hopefully it will adorn her warm hat on a few winter walks now that winter has started to settle in.

Pattern: Anemone by Lesley Stanfield
Yarn: Un-dyed white 4-ply sock yarn (75% wool, 25% nylon)

I've Never Been So Desperate To Knit!

Today I took delivery of even more brand new yarn! I’m even more excited by this yarn as it is one of those lines that I have wanted to try for ever such a long time: the well praised Jamieson and Smith 2-ply Jumper weight yarn. This yarn is perhaps best known for its suitability for colourwork. The yarn has a grip to it that makes it the perfect candidate for steeking and smooth, even colourwork.

It arrived in a perfect little project bag, all the way from Shetland, conveyed by the ever-wonderful Jen who went away to Shetland for Wool Week and was simultaneously dispatched as the prettiest yarn mule that ever there was.

I’m particularly excited about this yarn as I have the right quantities and colours to make a project that I spotted in a book a few months ago and have coveted ever since: the Märta Embroidered Bag.

There is nothing I do not love about this bag – from the colours chosen, the shape and form of the finished item and the motifs used, which remind me simultaneously of modern Scandinavian design and retro kitchenware.

The whole knitted design is lifted by small but perfect elements of embroidery which just give the perfect amount of detail without being fussy.

In the perfect world I would be casting this on right this moment, but due to a freak moment of disorganisation I appear to not have any 3mm needles, other than DPNs. So, this project is now on hold until the new Knitpro 3mm needle tips that I have ordered arrive. Woe, indeed, is me.

New Yarn Purchase - Rowan Creative Focus Worsted

After the most wonderful of weekends with friends I got into the car yesterday lunchtime to travel home with a slightly heavy heart that all of the fun was over. As it was Monday and we had the day off, I asked Mr Awesome if a slight detour would be possible, and as I have no local yarn store to soak up my sadness, the closest thing I could think of was Hobbycraft.

Now, I know that there are those that like to point out the relative failings of Hobbycraft in comparison to an LYS, but if you aren’t lucky enough to have a well-stocked shop of yarn near you, or your pockets aren’t too jangly with money, it’s an alternative, and yesterday it was somewhere that offered a buy two get one free offer on all balls of yarn.

So, I picked up six skeins of yarn, including some Rowan Creative Focus Worsted in four different colours. Firstly, this yarn is pretty good value anyway, at about £7 for a 100g ball of natural fibre yarn, but on offer it worked out to £14 for 300g of yarn, about £2.30 per 50g. The colours are bright and vibrant and it’s brilliant to have an available source of worsted-weight yarn here in the UK (usually I would substitute Aran or DK depending on the drape I wanted the project to have, but it’s nice to at least have the option). The yarn may be better known to US knitters as Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Worsted, but it has recently swapped labels and is now available on UK shores.

When I got home I decided to cast on the Puffin Apple hat, as I had decided before the weekend that the yarn I I had originally decided on just wasn’t working, and I really wasn’t fond of the colour, and the weight, structure and shades available in this yarn were far more what I was looking for.

Looking at the comments on Ravelry this yarn would appear to have a rather mixed reception. As with many areas in life, people are most vocal when they have something to complain about, so though the yarn has a 4 out of 5 star rating, the comments are almost wholly negative. It seems that the main consensus in the comments is that the yarn is rough and 'splitty'. About a third of the way into the hat I am not finding it unpleasant to knit with and am not finding the resulting fabric rough, either. Despite the fibre content and structure of the yarn it is rather ‘crisp’ when knitted up, but the surface is soft, with a slight halo. The wool and alpaca used in the fibre blend don't appear to be the finest of fibres, but they are smooth and pleasant to work with. The effect of the cables are softened in this yarn, much like in Jen's version, so I can only hope mine comes out anywhere near as beautifully.

As for it being splitty, it is a relatively loosely spun single ply yarn, so if you are a knitter or crocheter that finds loosely spun single-ply yarns splitty, this is going to give you the same problems. Luckily, I don’t, and I think it is fab.

I'm knitting Puffin Apple in an attractive apple green shade, partly because of the apply-ness of the colour and partly because when I was being las and dispatched Mr Awesome into the bedroom where I had been taking pictures of my new purchases to bring me back a skein in the colour of his choice, this is what he brought in. It's like we're joined at the brain, or we both have fabulous taste.

Yarn: Rowan Creative Focus Worsted 
Shade: 01265

Treats And New Projects

A short while ago there was a lot of excited Twittering about the launch of a new collection of patterns, a joint venture between Jen Arnall-Culliford and Kyoko Nakayoshi of a collection of nine accessories called ‘Cloudy Apples’. The first couple of patterns released for the collections were gorgeous, so quite early on I decided to treat myself to the collection. It’s especially lovely the way that Jen and Kyoko have decided to release the collection incrementally over a few weeks. This makes it almost like a mini version of a magazine subscription in that you look forward to new instalments for just long enough to forget that they are due, and then a new surprise arrives in your postbox (or, in this case, your Ravelry library).

I especially love the Dunkerton Sweet socks from the collection (though I am not allowing to cast on another sock until my two single socks have siblings), and the Puffin Apple hat.

Feeling a little bit restless in my lack of knitting over the past few days I decided to cast on a new project last night, and really fancied beginning the puffin hat. Unfortunately the only yarn I could find in my yarn box that would knit to a similar tension as the Puffin Apple hat was a couple of skeins of Rowan ‘soft baby’ yarn, in a shade that a friend once described as ‘the colour of glow-in-the-dark things when they’re not glowing’ which is just about an accurate description of a shade as I have ever known. It is an off-white with not-quite-delicate overtones of greenish yellow (it is a colour that is extremely difficult to capture accurately with the camera, too). The yarn handles extremely softly. It is almost cloud-like in its softness with a fuzziness that means that you have to keep your hands well-manicured and moisturised otherwise the fine fibres would catch on every rough piece of skin or un-tamed cuticle you dare not to have properly tended to.

As the yarn is rather ‘fuzzy’ in its softness this will mean that the wonderful cabling on this hat will not be as defined as it might otherwise be in a yarn that would give crisper definition. However, Jen mentioned that for her original knit for the pattern that she really appreciated the softened effect of the cabling when she knit the hat in Jamieson & Smith Shetland Aran, so I am going to hope that the beauty of the cables won’t be entirely obscured by the hazy outline of this yarn.

Though I am only a few rows into the pattern I am very much enjoying the project so far. There is enough detail and challenge in the cabled panel to keep the project challenging, yet as soon as you are past the cable panel there Is a wonderful break for free, quick knitting as you reach the broken rib that makes up the rest of the hat. It’s pretty much the best of both worlds as far as knitting projects go.
I actually have a few more balls of this yarn (I was completely without funds for knitting and found it on sale for 10 skeins for £6, so was understandably unable to turn the bargain down) but have a friend who is expecting soon that I want to knit a treat for, a recipient which I think this yarn will work perfectly for, so I’m interested and hopeful for some success with this project so that I can go about planning for what kind of project to knit for my friend’s impending arrival.

In the meantime I shall keep a hopeful eye out for the last treats from Cloudy Apples and see if anything else demands knitting as soon as possible.

The patterns from Cloudy Apples are available separately or as a collection, and if you’re quick you can pick up the entire collection for the special introductory price of £7.

Details, Details

The first of the patterns which I envisioned forming a little collection long, long ago is off the needles and complete. I don't have a final picture to share and won't have one until the rest of the patterns are devised, knitted up and finalised ready to publish, but I do have a little detail of the first completed project to share and enjoy.

This band of colour is mostly ornamental, but it does perform a function in that it serves to add a base for an optional row of contrast buttons - a small and unobtrusive detail, but one of those things that in moderation can lift an entire design.

I don't have the perfect buttons for this knit, but I do hope to be able to visit the famous Duttons for Buttons in a month or so, and though I have no plans or means to go crazy shopping in the Aladdin's Cave of button jewels, I do think that some well-chosen buttons for a particular project might be in order. My other option would be to make some buttons myself from polymer clay, something I have done for a number of projects when I couldn't find something perfect in either style or colour.

I also now have a small challenge in what to do with the remainder of the yarn in these two colours. I want to knit small companion projects to release alongside the main patterns, and so my next task will be to sit down and squish some yarn around until an idea pops out.

Knowing When To Just Rip It Out

A couple of months ago I designed a hat. I thought, the time, that this hat was going to be stunning, and so I cast on and started knitting. It's a 4-ply colourwork hat with an intricate and yet easily knit design which I was really proud of and looking forward to having finished. But after having knit the first two inches I just stopped knitting it.

I remember the reasons behind stopping. I was having a slightly difficult time at work and wanted to come home and just lay my hands on some knitting that didn't require me keeping track of what line or stitch I was on, or having to refer to my place on the chart on my laptop. I don't have a printer, you see, and that's something that makes knitting from patterns (even my own) kind of awkward.

The thing that really made the hat unpleasant to knit, though, was the needles. I love to knit with my harmony interchangeable, and my stainless steel DPNs. I'm not all that precious about knitting needles, but the only needles of the requisite size I could find to knit this hat without having to buy new ones was an old Pony powder-coated steel circular needle. Every stitch seemed to drag and knitting just felt a tad uncomfortable.

So, I could have ordered a new needle instead - found a Knitpro or Addi needle to suit, but I didn't. Instead I cast on new and immediately satisfying projects and knit those instead, telling myself that I would get back to this hat at a later date.

But I haven't. I haven't come anywhere close to looking for a replacement needle, and I don't know when I will. True, the yarn could sit in its part-knit state for years, but I think there is a point at which you just need to rip out the work.

The thing is, I still really, really love and want to knit that hat. I've even fully charted it out in my graphics program, ready for when I do. But I'll cast it on afresh and knit it all at once, rather than let this same project drag over months or years, and if I want to use this yarn for something new in the meantime, then it is ready for action.

New Edition Patterns and Limited Time Pattern Sale

I am pleased to announce that I have finally, after many, many hours, finished something I have been working on for really quite a long time. I have re-formatted and published new editions of all my patterns and replaced all of the PDF files with a new, clearer modern style.

Though it has taken many more hours than I had anticipated (as I no longer had access to the original documents, only the PDFs that had been created from them) I am so glad that I have completed the task as they just look so much more professional and match the website to a degree.

As I am so happy to have finished these I have put all of the patterns I have for sale into a 'buy two, get one free' sale. No coupon is needed to take advantage of the offer, simply add three items to the cart and the discount will be automatically applied. Patterns can be found on the 'My Knitting Patterns' page or on my Pattern Store on Ravelry. This is a limited time offer and ends on Saturday.

The Return Of The Lonesome Yarn

Don't you worry, when the time is right they will not look forlorn, but leap onto your needles in haste to become *something*.

Vivianne was right. After a few days of wondering where my inspiration had gone to, those balls of yarn did leap upon the needles a couple of days ago and the idea was fully formed and on its way to becoming an actual design.

This is actually a great starting point for me. For a couple of years now I have had an idea brewing in the back of my mind for a collection of patterns that take their starting point from various traditions in history, each pattern with an accompanying accessory.

I'm so glad that this idea, after two years, has taken its first tentative steps to maybe, just maybe, becoming a reality. So, maybe this yarn didn't want to work last week, because in the back of my head I perhaps knew that it needed to be used for this design.

Maybe.