Monthly Archives: August 2012

New Pattern Available! – Autumn Gold Slouch Hat

Please welcome the newest edition to my pattern collection – Autumn Gold! This can be knit as a slouch hat or a beanie, depending on what sort of look you prefer.

This is also the first time I have written a pattern which is available for both right handers and lefties! It was brought to my attention that there aren’t that many left handed knitting patterns out there, and I just thought, why not? I have created an extra page with this in mind, and intend to edit the rest of my patterns the same way.

So let me talk about the yarn – Fyberspates Rural Charm. I bought this yarn out at Fyberspates when I went to collect a loom from Jeni a couple of months ago. (Sadly I haven’t had time to play with the loom much yet!) However this yarn is LUSH. It’s a blend of 70% Blue Faced Leicester, 20% Silk and 10% Cashmere and it’s so, so soft!

It was actually an accident that I bought 4ply sock yarn. I’ve never really made socks, so I wasn’t about to start designing them. I was squidging the yarn for about a week or two to figure out what it wanted to be. “What if it sets it’s sights too high?” asked my other half. “What if it wants to be an astronaut?”

It turned out that the yarn really wanted to be a hat. A lightweight hat that’s absolutely perfect for spring and autumn – when it’s warm in the day but then chilly at night.

The pattern is reasonably simple – a mixture of yarn overs and cables, to keep you busy the whole way through the pattern and your fingertips satisfied.

Today was the first time I’ve had the courage to go outside and take photos of myself. It wasn’t too bad, and the fear of looking stupid soon passed! This little cat really wanted to be part of it though – he lives nearby and we call him Socks. So original!

Autumn Gold is now available on my patterns page, as well as on Ravelry, Craftsy and Etsy. If you buy it here you don’t need to have a Ravelry account, it will just take you straight to Paypal, where you will be sent the pattern directly after payment.

For more detailed pattern information please see here.

So Indecisive…

2 Replies

So I still can’t decide on which lace pattern to use (see previous post) and it’s seriously holding up my knitting process! I’ve been looking at the swatches over and over and not getting a lot done.

On a good note though I’ve created myself a handy excel document, so I can just type in my measurements and gauge to give me the stitch counts I need for all the vital parts of the cardigan. I’m guessing everyone already does this but I’m just behind the game?

Here are few photos from the weekend, there was street art event on in Nelson Street so I got a bit snap happy again. For the rest of the images take a look at my Flickr.

This last picture is the inflatable Stone Henge which is currently making it’s way around the country. I was a bit too hot to get on and have a go, but having seen friends photos since, I wish I’d got up there just to get some of my own!

Right, I must make a knitting decision now..

Cardigan Design Part Deux

6 Replies

Warning – Swatch geek alert!

After a week of properly sitting down and planning, I have to say my cardigan design hasn’t got as far as I’d hoped.

Originally in my head I wanted to make a traditional aran style cardigan, with a hood and chunky cables. A similar fit to the one below, I made a while ago, but longer with different cables all the way around.

I started working on the new pattern about 2 years ago and settled on this as the main cable design. Can you imagine that as a hoodie? I can and will!

So this week I got to work on looking at other cable stitch patterns and deciding what I did and didn’t like. This one is simple but you need a couple of basic cables in there, or else it starts to look too fussy.

I also made a honeycomb stitch swatch which I think is totally awesome, but it ran away and hid somewhere after blocking and hasn’t been seen since. If you’re wondering what I’m on about, it looks like this.

However… Late on Wednesday night, after swatching, frogging, blocking, snapping etc, and generally having cables tangling around my head for the best part of 6 days, I thought, “hang on.. those 10 balls I have of Rowan Wool Cotton are 50g, not 100g. How the hell am I going to make a cable hoodie out of that?”

Darn.

So back to square one. I got on to Ravelry to see what other people had made with Rowan Wool Cotton and discovered something great.. This yarn likes to be knit as lace!

For all the cables I had knitted so far with this yarn I had been using 3.25mm needles. But they just weren’t working for the lace. The picture above is one of my favourite stitches, yet you can clearly see the difference between the smaller needles (at the bottom) and the 4mm needles I used for the part above the garter stitch.

I really love this stitch but I’m not sure if it’s a bit close in aesthetic to the cardigan below, Lichen by Lisa Richardson which I made for myself about 2 years ago.

Obviously one is cabled and one just has the effect of cables, but it is the lattice look that I am referring to. And although this pattern will be up for sale once it is complete, the designs that I write are based on things that I want to wear myself. I’m not at the stage yet where I can create something, put hours into it and then sell it or give it away.

So then I tried this stitch out.

There’s something about it I’m not sure about, and I think it’s the fact it’s so uniform. I can just see it draping in lacy rib down the front, and I find that a bit.. boring? Plus there are too many holes to make it warm.

This was the last stitch I tried out it made me happy to knit. The pattern wasn’t too repetitive and I liked how neat it looked after blocking. Initially, I felt, yay! I’ve found the one!

But now I’m not so sure! I’m drawn back to the lattice stitch every time I look at the swatch. So thought I’d ask for help. Imagine a round neck, classic style cardigan in either of these stitches.

Which would you go for?

Stepping into cardigan design territory.. (And some holiday snaps)

7 Replies

This is a quick post, but I just wanted to say hi! I’ve been on holiday for the last week, and only now after 3 days back am I getting back into normal life!

This weekend I’m on the case working on my newest (and biggest) design – a lovely hooded cabled cardigan in Rowan Wool Cotton.