FO Friday: Katie

I had forgotten that I hadn't blogged about this yet! I'm very pleased - it's a new sweater.

Rav project page
The pattern is Katie, a top-down raglan with a colorwork band and a few other thoughtful details.

The yarn is called Ethical Twist - a 70/30 wool/alpaca blend. It's sadly discontinued - it has just enough alpaca fuzz and softness, while still being light and elastic. Plus it came in all natural colors - the brown, called 'Mink', is this fabulous heathery brown that I really love. If you can find it, I recommend it (and you might be able to find it at a discount).

I did make some modifications - I used a thinner yarn and a tighter gauge, so there was some math involved. I didn't use yarnovers for the raglan and I made up my own waist shaping, including moving the colorwork band up a little higher. I had intended the line to hit at the waist, but it doesn't quite - starting the colorwork at the waist meant that the visual line of the gradient effect fell somewhat below that point. Doh! I don't mind though :)

I also added the colorwork motif to the sleeves - the original pattern just has totally plain sleeves in one color, but I wanted more balance between the light and the dark.


It was a fun knit - I thought the stockinette would get boring, but the small amount of colorwork did a great job of breaking up the monotony. It knit up quite quickly.

My favorite bit of the sweater has to be the thumbholes in the sleeves. Ideal for cold weather - I finished the sweater just before the last cold day of winter, and loved rolling down the sleeve cuffs when I went outside. It's really cozy.

One thing I did, and I'm very glad I did this, to make sure the sleeves would be the right length: I blocked the sleeves before knitting the cuffs. My sweater sleeves have a tendency to stretch out during blocking, so I knit both sleeves to the point of starting the cuffs and put the stitches on waste yarn. Then, I washed and blocked the sweater as I would normally, and then finished knitting the cuffs after it dried. That way my sleeves were the perfect length, rather than my thumbholes reaching past my fingertips! ;)


I also made a matching hat, with which I am somewhat less enthused. Maybe I didn't shape it right, or maybe the slouchy look just doesn't suit me. Ah well, live and learn. I'm really thrilled with the sweater anyway! Fun knit, good fit, lovely yarn. What more can you ask for, really?

~Joyuna

Sheep in my Heid

I'm dreaming of sheep in all sorts of colours.

I've decided to spin some yarn for a Sheep Heid, a colorwork beret in 9 natural sheep shades. The nice thing about it is it only needs about 10g of each color. So, it was the perfect opportunity to dive into my spinning stash and pick out some great British wool.

My nine shades are -

White: Shetland, from J&S
Cream: Kerry Hill, from Rosewood Farms
Beige: Boreray, from Spirit Trail (RBST 1 - Critical)
Grey: Bluefaced Leicester, from Wingham
Light Moorit: Castlemilk Moorit, from Spirit Trail (RBST 3 - Vulnerable)
Dark Moorit: Manx Loaghtan, from Parvabrook (RBST 4 - At Risk)
Brown-Grey: North Ronaldsay, from Scottish Fibres (RBST 2 - Endangered)
Very Dark Brown: Soay, from Parvabrook (RBST 4 - At Risk)
Black: Hebridean, from Parvabrook

Everything is from my stash except the 3 breeds from Parvabrook. They offer whole fleeces, prepped fiber, and yarn from several different breeds, and purchasing from them was a smooth process. The Hebridean and Manx were both smooth and great to spin. I especially liked the Hebridean - it's somewhat scratchy, but something about it makes it really pleasurable to spin. The Soay is more of a challenge, being shorter, more bitty, and having more veggie matter in it. I don't mind, though - for such a hard-to-find breed, I will take what I can get!


A couple of the other breeds I'm using were sourced from Spirit Trail Fibers during my last visit to the US. It did feel a bit silly bringing home British wool from America, but I was placing an order anyway and these were some breeds I hadn't encountered in an already-prepped form back in the UK. (I also picked up some of their Hog Island, Gulf Coast Native, and CVM roving.)

The spinning is going quickly, but I'm not sure when I will actually be able to cast on. I have a lot of projects on at the moment, and a lot more I want to make... It's only a hat, so hopefully it will be pretty quick, but it is an intricate stranded colorwork hat, so maybe not.

~Joyuna

Getting my Groove Back

I've lost my mojo in a major way.

Since I started working, of course, I've had less time to knit. I've also taken up other hobbies and been going out more. So naturally, something had to give, and that thing was non-essential knitting.

It started innocently enough: Instead of knitting on the bus, I'd read a book or use my phone. Then, instead of knitting while watching TV, I'd do my nails or just sit there (imagine! Watching telly without anything to keep your hands busy!). Eventually, it got to the point where any given week, I wouldn't do any knitting at all.

My mojo was gone. And when it's gone, how ever does one get it back?

I tried picking up a WIP - a pair of mitts with one glove completed - but I just got frustrated with them and my gauge had changed since I last worked on them.

I tried carrying my knitting with me everywhere - but it just felt like an albatross around my neck.

It turns out, in my case anyway, the kick in the bum that I needed was a deadline, a big event, and some shiny new yarn.

I knit a pair of mitts for the Glasgow School of Yarn design competition - that was the start. No matter how I felt, I needed to get those mitts knit, photographed, and posted in time for the competition deadline. And I did - and I enjoyed it!

Then, I cast on several new things - including a pattern I've been meaning to knit for some time now, Bombella's Bunty Mitts. Being able to cross something off my queue and develop a new technique (my colourwork is still shaky) was also a great motivator.

And finally, after spending a weekend surrounded by knitters at GSoY (more on that later!), my enthusiasm is back in leaps and bounds. I feel like a knitter again - the mojo's back, baby.

~Joyuna

Pinstripes & Chains in Knit Now

The Pinstripes & Chains set is my latest design, in issue 12 of Knit Now - it's at newsagents now in the UK, and should be at select shops in the US next month.

This hat & mitts set makes use of stripes and slipped-stitch colorwork to create vertical stripes - optional cables add an extra bit of interest. Best of all, the above hat & mitts set took just one 50g ball each of the two colors! Time to shop the stash...

I loved knitting these - the slipped stitches are so simple and I love the pinstriped effect. Carrying the yarn up the inside of the work means a minimum of ends to weave in. While knitting the two sets of mitts (one with cables and one without), I had a serious case of "one more round"!

You can find the Pinstripes & Chains Mitts and Pinstripes & Chains Tam pattern pages on Ravelry.

~Joyuna

Woohoo, an FO! Flora Hat

With all my secret knitting and long-term projects, it's been a long time since I could celebrate casting off. Enter the instant gratification colorwork hat, Flora by Margaux Hufnagel.

It's a free pattern, though it has some errors and confusing bits - read the Ravelry project pages before you make it. I also modified it a little bit, changing the garter edge to ribbing and changing the size. If I did it again, I would make it longer.

This is going to be my running hat for the cold days to keep my head warm. The best part about it, is that I bound off 15 sts after the ribbing, and cast them back on the next row, so my hat has a hole for my hair!


It was a super quick project - only took me 2 days! - and it allowed me to practice my two-handed colorwork. The yarn is Knit Picks Merino Style, in Dusk (blue) and Crocus (yellow).

~Joyuna

Swatching for Pemberley

I've just swatched for a rather ambitious project - Pemberley, a colorwork sweater by Ann Kingstone. I fell in love with the pullover the very first time I saw it, but I thought I could never make it myself. After meeting Ann at the Glasgow School of Yarn, I let the idea percolate in my mind, and I've decided I'm going to make it - even if it kills me.

I got the yarn from Knit Picks recently - Palette is a nice yarn available in a whole bunch of colors and easy on the wallet, even with a recent price increase. The only problem with it is there's a high turnaround in terms of colorways - so it wasn't possible to see if anyone else knit with these two colors together. Luckily I think the two colors, Regal and Lantana, are a great combination and just what I had in mind. I don't wear a lot of purple, but I think it will suit me.

You may notice a slight difference between the top section and bottom section of the swatch - I was testing the effect of color dominance on the pattern. I learned about dominance in stranded colorwork only just recently, and I'm glad I did.

In a nutshell, the position of the yarns affects the prominence of the colors - in two-handed colorwork (knitting one color English and one Continental), it means that you should always hold the colors in the same way - MC in left and CC in right or vice versa. If you keep switching, things will look odd. And, which color you hold in which hand can have an effect on the work.

As you can see in my swatch, on top the lighter color stitches appear a bit bigger and looser, while on the bottom they're smaller. On the bottom, the dark criss-cross pattern in the center appears more defined. I'm choosing to use the MC yarn as dominant, as shown in the bottom half of the swatch - I like that look better. Your mileage and preferences may vary, which is why it's important to swatch!

~Joyuna

Another Knitpicks Haul

Since I'm back in the US visiting my family for the holidays, I've made another USA Knitpicks order.

In case you didn't know, Knit Picks is discontinuing several popular yarn lines this season including Telemark, the sportweight wool yarn, and Merino Style, the 100% merino yarn. I love Telemark - it's a hardy yarn that softens up great after a wash. I used it in a steeked sweater before, where the stickiness of the wool came in handy, and I think it would be great for colorwork as well. I hadn't tried Merino Style before, but I'd heard very good things about it.

So, I made an order - I wanted to practice my colorwork, so I got some Merino Style in Dusk from the website and some in Crocus from a Raveler's stash.

I splurged on a sweater's worth of Telemark (it was on sale) in Alpine Frost. Not certain on what pattern to use for this yet... It's got great stitch definition, and would be lovely in cables. I already know it makes beautiful solid stockinette fabric.


And finally, the big one... I purchased enough Palette in two shades for a colorwork sweater. Ann Kingstone's Pemberley, to be precise, from her Novel Knits book.

I was very worried about my color selection - even with only two colors. Imagine if I had to choose more colors which all coordinated with each other... I chose two red-purples, Regal (dark) and Lantana (light). Happily, they go together lovely, just as I had imagined. With Knit Picks' annoying habit of switching up their color selection every season, it's difficult to find other people's pictures of the yarns to make sure that the colors go together right. But my leap of faith succeeded (and even if it hadn't, I'd only be out $30 or so).

~Joyuna

First stabs at colorwork

I've been practicing my colorwork recently. The reason is I was inspired at the Glasgow School of Yarn to knit Ann Kingstone's amazing Pemberley jumper. However, the only stranded colorwork I've done so far has been very basic, and a very long time ago. So, in preparation for this knitting marathon, I have been in training - working a few more basic colorwork projects before tackling the big leagues.

First, I dug a project out of my queue that I've been planning for quite some time. I wanted to knit a jumper that had some colorwork, but not too much. I wanted to knit a jumper out of handspun, but I didn't want to spin a whole sweater. Enter my Caitlin pullover. It's a simple free pattern for a pullover with colorwork on the sleeves, bottom edge, and yoke. I spun up four natural colors of Shetland top as well as some orange top for the colorwork sections, and I had some Lang Shetland Soft yarn (also in orange) to use in the plain sections. I can have my cake and eat it too - work a handspun colorwork sweater, but not have to spin it all or knit it all in colorwork!

The colorwork pattern is also deceptively simple - most of the colorwork is done through slipped stitches, not stranding. In fact, there are only a handful of rows in the chart which use stranded colorwork instead of slipping stitches. The end result is much easier to knit than it appears.

Next, to further practice my stranding/Fair Isle colorwork, I'm making Ella Austin's Intrepid Fox. This is an absolutely adorable toy that uses some simple fair isle patterns on the body and legs. The stranding pattern on the body is optional, but I think it adds a very nice touch! Though, to be honest, pink hearts on a gray background reminds me of Companion Cubes more than anything else :)

I plan on working a few more small fair isle projects (such as the Endpaper mitts, maybe) before tackling Pemberley. I am really, truly awed by that design but also a little intimidated by it. But, I'm confident that if I take it step by step, I can conquer it!

~Joyuna