A crochet blanket that I can wear

I'm not an accomplished crocheter. I can crochet, but not well. My tension has issues and I can't yet read charts. Overall, I prefer knitted fabric compared to crochet, so I haven't had much motivation to improve.

And yet - two of the most-used handmade objects in my house are my crochet scrap blankets. I have one for the sofa, and one for the office chair, and in the winter I basically always have one or the other draped over my lap or around my shoulders. 

They were both made of 'free' (leftover) yarn and were quick and simple to make so I don't feel precious about them getting stained or worn out. And there is something marvelous about items crocheted from fingering-weight yarn - just chunky enough without being too heavy.

For a long time, I've pondered how I can go from 'blanket draped over my shoulders' to 'perfect relaxing-at-home cardigan'. Last year, I gathered some leftover sock yarn in autumnal colours (mostly Drops Fabel along with some others) and started to crochet some oddly shaped rectangles, aiming to make the blanket-igan of my dreams.

At some point, the rectangles got shoved into a box onto the shelf, life moved on, and I forgot about that project but I didn't forget about my dream. Every time I threw my blanket over my shoulders, I knew there had to be a better way.

Enter: Crochet YouTube, and the granny stitch hexagon cardigans that have become ubiquitous.

(It's very strange, returning to crafter social media after several years off. There are designers I've never heard of becoming total juggernauts. There is a stockinette hat at the top of Ravelry's pattern list. Everyone is adding mohair to everything and everything has 10 inches of positive ease. It's a culture shock.)

If you haven't seen these, the idea is simple but ingenious: it's a granny square with an extra side, which allows the wibbly hexagon to fold into an L shape. Make two of these and join them together into a T shape for an easy and quick cardigan or pullover.

People are casting these on in worsted weight yarn and finishing them in a week. Mine was finer but still flew by in about 3 weeks of not-particularly-concentrated work.

It works beautifully with stripes and it looks so very handmade - which is part of the appeal. Crochet is getting trendy, and this is a garment that shouts I made this.

I loved making this. It was easy, it kept my hands busy, and the semi-random stripes of sock yarn were extremely satisfying. And, since this is a cardigan for home, I didn't worry a bit over how it would fit - I only worried about how comfy it would be.

With this simple shape come limits in the amount of customisation. All sides of the hexagon grow at the same rate which assumes a certain proportion for sleeve circumference, sleeve length, and body width & length.

Many talented crocheters have come up with various solutions for these problems - Sarah Maker's version was most helpful to me for exploring the different options. Ultimately, I decided not to taper or lengthen the sleeves, and only added a few rows to the centre back and three rounds of border after I joined the two sides.

I did add cuffs to the sleeves - rather than working crochet ribbing, I picked up the stitches and added k1p1 rib and a tubular bind-off. IMO this is the ideal finishing touch, and I actually love the balloon sleeve effect.

So did I achieve my goals? Well, this cardigan has been living on the back of my office chair ever since I finished it, and I am rarely seen on a Teams call without it! It is my perfect crochet blanket, as a cardigan.

~Joyuna

How to knit a sweater in 10 days

1. Dive deep into stash. Way deep.

I bought this yarn in 2008. It's been sitting in storage, half-knitted into a cardigan, for well over a decade. It's made a transatlantic move with me.

The cardigan it was originally destined to be - Sylph Cardigan from Interweave Knits - was never going to get finished. Flounces are just not for me anymore. But let's take a moment to admire the eyelet ribbing and the subtle twisted stitch columns - there's a lot to like about this pattern, even though it isn't for me anymore. 

I gave it the Marie Kondo "thank you, goodbye" and ripped it all out. 

The yarn is Knit Picks Elegance, 70% baby alpaca, 30% silk.

It's been a long time since I knit anything big with alpaca. Alpaca blended with wool, absolutely - I love the softness and warmth it adds. But not on its own. It's too loose, too heavy, too unpredictable. To me, the bounciness of sheep's wool is the perfect pairing to the stretch of knitting. I want my stitches to spring back into shape. Alpaca is soft, fuzzy, lovely... and saggy.

(I have a woven blanket made of 100% alpaca which is one of the most lovely things I own. The weaving has so much structure, letting the alpaca have all the softness and drape it wants without compromising on shape. I do believe some fibres are better for some crafts than others.)

So I would not have bought a new sweater quantity of an alpaca-silk blend. And yet, here I have it. And yes, the sleeves stretched out several inches after blocking, but that makes it even cosier, with the cuffs riding down over my hands.

2. Embrace Betwixtmas.

I didn't take a lot of time off work during the holidays, but I still had plenty of time to myself and a lot of dark evenings. I brought it to Christmas Day and I worked on it continually. Miles of stockinette went down easy. Somehow, the sleeves finished themselves before I could even blink.

3. Find beauty in simplicity. 

The pattern is All Day Everyday by Nadia Crétin-Léchenne - a baggy, drop shoulder, straight up and down, simple but very effective design with a few tiny cables down the front for interest.

An open cardigan with no buttons (or button-bands) to worry about - I know I will get plenty of wear out of it, being able to throw it on without thinking.

It's knit all in one piece from the top down, and the cables are crossed every right side row, so there was very little to keep track of and very few ways to mess it up.

4. Fall slightly in love.

Even if the alpaca turns out to have been a mistake, it was gorgeous to knit with. Watching the cushy fabric grow beneath my hands was addictive.

It really feels luxurious to wear - plush and fuzzy, drapey and very warm. The sunny colour - a medium yellow that's not too bright, and light, but not pastel - cheers me on through the winter greys.

5. Follow instructions, but trust your instincts.

I first cast on a size with 5" of ease - and very quickly ripped it out and cast on again two sizes smaller.

The designer recommends 10-20cm (4-8") of positive ease. But I knew, personally, I wouldn't be happy with that.

The alpaca will grow, and I don't feel good in clothes I'm drowning in. I made a few more modifications based on knowing my body and what I like to wear. But I resisted the urge to add shaping to the body or anything else too fancy. 

I added my own custom sleeve shaping which I'm very happy with - increasing the armhole height, it just skims my large upper arms, then the decreases ramp up from the elbow while keeping extra ease around the wrists in a way that I think is very flattering.

6. Add some drama.

I really thought I was going to run out of yarn. The pattern called for 1500yds, while I had 1200 of a long-discontinued yarn. By all accounts, I should be 3 full balls short. 

But I decided to carry on: The design assumed 10-20cm of positive ease, and alpaca will stretch, and I'll embrace the cropped look if I need to. And I can unravel my swatch.

I didn't need to unravel my swatch. But something about the added pressure, wanting to see how far I could get, urged me on row after row. 

I knit the body down to the armholes - then I knit each sleeve - and then, carefully counting each centimeter, I knit as much of the body as I could.

So I finished with 11 balls and 10 days. Knitting more than 50g per day. It's a decent length - I might have added an extra inch or two if I had had the yarn, but it's definitely not cropped!

7. Get excited for the future. 

Now that I know I can go from idea to finished garment in two weeks, so many possibilities open up to me. 

I have at least 5 sweater quantities of yarn in my stash - I rarely get through them because a sweater in my size feels like a mammoth undertaking. And yet! Ten days. It's possible. I can fill my wardrobe with beautiful sweaters.

(PS: Happy 17th anniversary to the blog.)

~Joyuna

Oh no, I love it

Do you ever do something in hopes that you'll be proven wrong? That you'll find out that doing things the hard way isn't worth it after all?

I cast on a sweater on 2.5mm needles. I've knit sweaters out of tiny yarn before - I've made a laceweight cardigan, but it was tiny yarn on great big needles for an airy wisp of a sweater. Not this. This is substantial fabric, not a hole in sight.

Tiny, tiny stitches. Delicate little stitches in stockinette and twisted rib. Over 300 stitches per row.

Reader, I'm heartbroken to say that I adore it.

I don't really wear most of my handknits. Even DK feels too chunky most of the time. I overheat, or the thick fabric gets in my way, or it doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of my outfit. Whatever the reason, I just don't wear them that often. (Not never...but not often enough, and not as often as they deserve.)

I'm ashamed to say that most of the knitwear I've been wearing the past few winters has been shop-bought. So thin and versatile!

I had stashed away some seriously beautiful sock yarn. I say sock yarn, but it doesn't have the qualities I like in a sock yarn. It's too soft, gently spun, squishy. The ball begs to be petted. I can't see it as socks, but it's a beautiful yarn nonetheless - the sadly discontinued Regia Angora Merino. The colour is a rich purple, a saturated yet dark aubergine. It's soft and smooth with just a tiny haze of bunny hairs sticking out.

It's the kind of yarn that I am happy to be running through my fingers for a few hundred thousand stitches.

So I have a special yarn, and I have a lovely pattern (simple, elegant, with just enough interest - Oolong by Laura Chau), and I have a light but warm cardigan to look forward to.

Sure, it's a little disheartening to knit for an hour and a half and only have 2cm to show for it... but if I can just sustain my momentum a little while longer, keep admiring the fabric, keep petting the skein, I'll get through it and I'll have a sweater I can actually add to my everyday wardrobe!

~Joyuna

An assessment of WIPs

On a lark the other day I decided to check if some of my favourite old blogs were still updating. Turns out, the Yarn Harlot is still going strong.

I found this post of hers rather inspiring: An airing of UFOs and taking a good hard look at them.

The beginning of the year brings out a decluttering urge in me. Or if not decluttering, at least surveying my hoard. I'll never be a minimalist (not even close), but sometimes it feels good to let go of things that are burderning you, rediscover lost loves, and just get a sense of where you are with everything.

I keep a lot of things on the needles. I have a short attention span and a fickle heart. I know this about myself and I don't try to restrain myself too much - knitting is my hobby, after all, and in the grand scheme of things, a halfway-finished project isn't a tragedy.

But I lose things, and I forget things, and my body changes shape, and my tastes change, and worst of all, sometimes the moths come. So it feels like a good idea to take out all those projects and get a sense of where they are.

PS: If like me, you haven't been keeping up with Yarn Harlot, I highly recommend this post about the whole family knitting a wedding blanket. It chokes me up a little.

Now, on to the WIPs!

---

Angostura Vest

I'm surprised to see I only have a few inches done on this, because it felt like I had put a LOT of work into it already. I spent a long time planning it, trying to figure out how gauge works between ribbing and negative ease and a yarn that will stretch.

Its fate: So long as I can find my notes, I'd like to pick it up again, hopefully before next winter. But with the fiddly cables plus the fact that I'll need to seam it, I might not actually finish it this year.

Sheep Heid

Love this in theory, but there are two problems:

1. I didn't check gauge, it's too big, I'm planning to felt it but I'm scared about how that will go.

2. Moths have struck. I took the project off the shelf and one of the little things flew right in my face. Now it isn't as bad as it could be - they only just started to nibble, there are a couple of broken threads but no big holes. It's fixable.

Its fate: I'm putting it away for long enough to get over the moth trauma, and then we'll see what I can do. It's halfway done! It's handspun!

Hexipuffs scrap blanket

This project is stored on a shelf just above my bed, so I see it all the time, just staring at me.

It's a weird one - one of my oldest projects, and every time I re-visit it I think that I'm very close to finishing it, and then something else comes up. I'm running out of stuffing. Or it's not quite big enough and I need to add some extra columns. Or I need to mend it. Etc.

Its fate: Yeah, I'll finish it off one of these days...

Un-puffed Hexipuffs

What kind of monster am I, casting on a second project in the same pattern before I finish the first one? My fickle heart. In a moment of weakness, I hunted down every variety of beautiful honey-coloured yarn I could find, to make this honey-themed honeycomb blanket. I love it, it's my dedicated on-the-go project.

Its fate: I adore it. There's a hole in my life when I don't have hexipuffs to work on.

Kalajoki socks

Picked this up again just recently, after thinking about how much I loved the yarn. This is The Fibre Co Cumbria Fingering, a wool/mohair blend in a very heavy 'fingering' weight which makes a beautiful cushy fabric. And oh, that colour! A bright red-leaning purple with just a hint of heathered dimensionality.

Its fate: Back in the saddle! Nearly finished the first sock.

Garter Stitch Mashup Blanket

This project isn't bad, I just have a glut of blankets in the house at the moment, so there's no urgency. I have two crocheted blankets in the rotation, I received a nice big one for Christmas, I have a really beautiful quality woven alpaca blanket from my mom, and we have one for every chair and sofa space. We're not wanting for blankets. So I'm not compelled to work on this, even though it's reasonably fun.

Its fate: Save for later.

Leighton House mitts

Beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. This pattern, and this yarn, makes me wax poetic. The way the colours shine on Wensleydale. The delicacy of it. The way it's silky, but woolly at the same time. I'm smitten. But I know exactly why I put this down. The colourwork is too much for my tiny brain to handle.

Its fate: I'll keep it in mind for the day when I want more of a challenge.

Dreambird shawl

I've gotta pick this back up sometime. I know why I bounced off it - the instructions are funny, and I made some mods, so each row was a lot of thinking. But if I can get into the swing of it, it could be something really fantastic.

Its fate: Read some other people's project notes and try and make sense of things.

Rainbow Scale Mitts

Wow, how 'bout this one. I made one mitt already! I'm half way through the second! Why did I drop it?

This was intended to be a design. I love this stitch pattern. It won't be worth it to publish this pattern, but I owe it to the mitts to finish them. It would only be the work of an afternoon or two.

Its fate: Pick it back up when I need some instant gratification.

Pink socks

OK, *this* is probably my oldest WIP. Look, it's on double-pointed needles! I haven't knit a sock on DPNs since... I can't recall. I don't love the yarn, I don't love the colour, and I think I was only knitting these to get a chance to re-photograph this pattern (one of my own designs).

Its fate: This one is on notice. I'm not frogging it, yet, mostly because I don't think I could do anything better with the yarn either.

Handspun Romney shawl - Emanuela

I have complicated feelings about my lace projects. My style and identity have evolved since my days of wearing lace shawls. Dang, this is pretty nice though. Handspun Romney, the yarn is thin but strong.

Some of the edge stitches fell off the needles and laddered down, so I have to do some restoration work before I knit this again.

Its fate: Save for later.

Lady Russell shawl

Oh. *Oh*. Hello, beautiful.

(Forget what I just said about lace. This, I would wear every day of my life.)

I didn't get to keep the sample of the original Lady Russell shawl from Jane Austen Knits, so I cast this on pretty soon after finishing that so I could have one of my own. Decadent yarn, big lovely shawl, with a real weight to it. If I remember right the lace pattern is relatively intuitive. I'd like to make this one of my projects this year.

Its fate: Put this one on deck for after I've finished a couple other things.

Icelandic Shawl - Lambton Panes

Good yarn and pattern combo, I just need to get into the headspace for it.

This is Einband yarn that I got in Reykjavik 4 years ago, and now I've since been to Iceland once again. Oops. Well, at least I didn't bring back any yarn this time.

Its fate: I can't see myself working on it at the moment, but I want to finish it eventually.

Peaks Island hooded scarf

It's a scarf. A seed stitch scarf. Dear god.

Its fate: I'm halfway done, so I'll consider picking it up again soon. But if that doesn't stick, then it's off to the frog pond.

Missing in Action

I know I have these projects in the house somewhere, but can't locate them at the moment.

Oolong Sweater (rav link)

How do I lose two finished sleeves and a sweater's worth of yarn? Just Joy things. I would like to pick this up soon if I can find it, as a few miles of stockinette in tiny yarn would do my soul good.

Ten Stitch Blanket (rav link)

Garter stitch blanket of handspun wool samples. It's been hit by moths before and it probably has again, wherever it is. It can stay in its corner until I feel like doing some mending.

Queen Anne's Lace (rav link)

I don't know about this one. It's beautiful, and I mean beautiful. The yarn is gorgeously delicate, and a great colour. But I don't wear my lace at the best of times anymore, and I certainly wouldn't wear a circular shawl. It'd be one of those projects that I cast off, block, look at lovingly, and shove into the back of the wardrobe. Even if I find it, I don't see myself finishing it, at least for now.

---

I am really glad I took this opportunity to take stock, and I've been inspired to pick up a few of these projects or slot them in later in the year. The temptation to cast on new projects is great, but I was really losing sight of everything I already had!

~Joyuna

Finished: Combospin, Harvest cardigan

It is finished! I blogged before about casting on my Harvest sweater, and the process of spinning it from various braids of different kinds of fibres.

The pattern is Harvest, a brilliant seamless and free pattern from Tincanknits. This pattern is lovely and straightforward, and there's something very satisfying about how little finishing there is to do at the end - since the buttonband is knit at the same time as the body, once you've bound off, you're done. This also makes it perfect for stripy handspun yarn, since the stripes wrap around the entire garment.

I did do a few mods that I picked up from some other Ravelry projects - one was knitting the sleeve cuffs perpendicular to the sleeves, which gives a nice mock-ribbing effect. Another is adding knit-in pockets - this is my first time using this technique, and I'm really pleased with it. Basically you knit waste yarn over the area you want to place your pocket, then slip the stitches back and re-knit. Then, you have two sets of live stitches - one to knit the ribbing over top of your pocket, and the other to knit the back lining. Then I sewed the lining against the front of the cardigan to finish the pocket.

This was a very quick knit - just over a month from cast off to bind off, and I was working on other projects during that time as well. Stockinette and garter stitch go quickly, even more so when I can't wait to see what stripe will appear next.

I did use one psychological trick to keep me motivated while knitting: after I separated for the sleeves, instead of continuing down the body, I immediately knit the sleeves next. Sleeves are a bugbear of mine: I always underestimate how long they will take, and I find them very tedious. Especially when they're the one thing standing between me and a finished sweater. So, by knitting the sleeves in the middle of the project, it prevented a good deal of frustration and made the project go much more quickly.

The sleeves are the only part of the sweater where I alternated skeins - I knit them in 3-round stripes. This is because I wanted the width of the stripes to roughly match the body, and if I had just knit from one skein the small circumference of the sleeves would have caused much wider stripes. The effect is subtle but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

All in all, I am really happy with this cardigan! I took it out for a test drive yesterday and it was perfectly cosy. I can tell I'll get a lot of wear out of this one.

So, to summarise, I went from this disparate pile of fibre:

To a huge plying ball:

To this yarn:

To this sweater:

Project page on Ravelry

~Joyuna

The one-ball sweater | Combospin and embracing chaos

I've been working on a really interesting project for the past several months - a Combospin. I'm a little late to the boat on this method, but I was so excited when I found out about it, and saw the amazing results of other people on Ravelry.

Combospinning is a way to combine individual braids of hand-dyed fibre into a cohesive yarn for a larger project. If you have a habit of stashing 100g here and there that you never know what to do with, this is an ideal way to turn them into a sweater-quantity of yarn.

The process is very simple: Take all your fibre (in braids, in batts, or any other put-up) and break them up into smaller pieces. Mix them up in a big bag or box, and just spin one piece after another.

So I shopped my stash, and I filled in the gaps with some extra purchases, and found 750g of fibre along the yellow-orange spectrum. It wasn't an exact process, and in fact, having a few braids that don't quite 'fit' added more interest to the project.

This is spinning by embracing chaos. You do not plan out a sequence of stripes, you do not (need to) match up colours or fibres or even drafting styles - you can combine combed top and carded batts, and no one will arrest you. The spinning police aren't coming for you.

The resulting yarn is perfectly "conspicuously handspun". The plies blend together in some parts, toning each other down, while at other spots a stripe of bright colour will pop out when the plies align. It's a similar effect to fractal spinning, on a large scale and more random. Embrace the barber-pole.

This is a sort of polar opposite project to my just-finished handspun sweater. In that project, I was focused on consistency: all the same fibre, all the same spinning technique, all the same thickness. I was, more or less, trying to imitate a factory-produced millspun yarn. In this combospin, I am letting go of consistency and order, and creating something that you couldn't ever buy in a shop.

I spun them up, and the spinning process was addictive - just one more length of fibre, just one more bobbin...

Each one of my three plies nicely filled up my set of 5 bobbins - very satisfying. When I mixed up the bobbins and wound them off, I decided to wind each ply into one continuous ball. Why? Just to keep things organised, really.

And when I finished each ply, I thought I might as well wind them all into one big plying ball...

Why? There isn't a good reason. I just felt like being extra. I wanted to see what it would look like. It was glorious!

Yes, that's nearly 750g of yarn in one ball as big as my head.

Of course, I had to break the yarn into separate skeins when it came to plying. And just like the spinning, the plying process went by very quickly because it was so gratifying to see the colours combine in such interesting ways.

And then I had this yarn: yellow and orange, but also flecked with lengths of red, and brown, and green and even purple. Crunchy downs wool and silky rayon and buttery-soft merino. A fabulous buffet of colours and textures. View my stash details on Rav.

This is my third handspun sweater project. I've enjoyed them all, but I've definitely had the most fun with this one.

I've already cast on. Now, I just have to keep on knitting!

~Joyuna

Spinning for pleasure | Polypay Polar Dip Pullover

I finished a sweater. It was a long, long time in the making.

Do you remember when I bought the wool?

Since I first spun the Polypay breed, I was enchanted with it. So bouncy, with just the right balance of softness and 'woolliness'.

And the carded roving was a true pleasure to spin long-draw.

Sometimes I feel like the reason I have continued to knit and spin after all these years is not because I particularly love sweaters and hats and socks - it's because I love the sensual aspects of yarn. The colours and textures, the spring in my hand.

This project has certainly been an example of that. All through spinning, and all through knitting, I took immense pleasure in this wool. Every few rows, I would look back at the fabric under my needles and couldn't help but smile. It's soft and elastic and just a little fuzzy.

I'm really happy with the fit, and the sweater overall. I've come a long way since my first handspun sweater!

This yarn is thinner, and more consistent, while still having a 'homespun' character. I love the texture it gives.

The pattern is Polar Dip, a basic top-down raglan with some simple but attractive colorwork at the yoke. It was easy knitting with just a few details to test my skills - I am an expert at the tubular bindoff now! Grafting is always a little bit of a pain, but it does give an excellent clean and elastic finish to the edges.

By the way, Shady Side Farm is still selling their wool roving on Etsy. I can't recommend it enough :) ShadySideFarm on Esty

~Joyuna

Woolly selfie

It's finally starting to feel like springtime, but I was very woolly the other day:

Around my neck is a recently-finished small shawl, Wandering the Moor - which I spun in several shades of grey from a Shetland sheep's fleece.

On my shoulders is Layter, a sweater I finished quite some time ago and have worn many times, but have somehow not gotten any decent photos of yet. It was an easy and fun knit, and it's a great finished object as well - easy to throw on and nice and warm.

I have to wear the wool while I still can - and in the meantime, I'm knitting lots of socks to keep myself in handknits through the spring and summer.

~Joyuna

A swatch is a start

My knitting mojo has been in... a bit of a slump lately, to say the least. There are a lot of reasons for this: my job, other hobbies, the feeling of creeping dread every time I discovered another moth-eaten skein in my stash... For one reason or another, I just didn't have the opportunity or the inclination to pick up a set of needles for several months.

At Fibre East last year, I picked up some Excelana yarn from the John Arbon booth on offer. I was thrilled; I couldn't resist - I had admired this yarn every time I had seen another person in my knitting group working on it and I had always wanted a sweater out of it. It's a lovely "woolly" yarn with just the right amount of fuzz and just the right amount of sheen.

So naturally, when I had the opportunity to pick up a sweater quantity of this yarn, I jumped at it. And when I got home, other things came up, and it just sat. The yarn sat, lonely in its bag, my initial excitement depleted.

Months went by. Every once in a while, I would see the bag of yarn lying in the corner, and feel a twinge of guilt. I had my excuses: I'm too busy, I'm too tired, I'm doing something else. One day I finally decided to pick out a pattern, pick up some needles, and just work a swatch.

I looked at it. I ran it through my fingers. I remembered what I loved about knitting, and why I had been so excited about this yarn.

A swatch is a start, and it was enough to get the ball rolling. I was so impressed by the hand of my swatch after it was blocked that I was inspired to cast on right away. (Blocking can do magical things sometimes - it can be a subtle difference, but it just made the fabric lay nicely flatter and feel more cohesive and finished)

It's a simple pattern, a striped stockinette cardigan - but it's just the pace I feel like going right now.

~Joyuna