Cool yarns for hot days: 1

(ETA: faulty links in the post have been fixed...sorry about that!)

Only the first of June, and much of North America has already had its first heat wave (although our West Coast spring has been cool and damp). Knitting with wool or alpaca isn’t very appealing when the mercury’s over 90, so how about some linen, hemp, or bamboo?

Yarns in these fibers aren’t hard to find these days, but many of us haven’t tried them. I find them cool and pleasant to handle – just the thing for hot-weather knitting.

Elann Canapone (hemp), Euroflax Paris (laceweight linen)

Hemp and linen garments are soft, drapey and cool to the touch – wonderful to wear in hot weather, especially if they have a bit of ease so they don’t cling too tightly. An added bonus is that they may be machine washed and dried – the more you do it, the softer they get. This Lacy Little Top I made for my daughter several years ago took a lot of punishment and always looked and felt great.



Good yarns for projects like this are Louet Euroflax Sport Weight (at left, 100% linen) and Hemp for Knitting Allhemp 3 and Allhemp 6 (100% hemp, fingering or DK weight). Elann has a pure linen sportweight coming on June 8 (Lino Pura). There are also some great blends – Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy (cotton/hemp/modal, DK weight); Knit Picks CotLin (cotton/linen); and several DK cotton/linen blends by Elann (Cotone Lin, Sula, Camila). When you touch these yarns in the skein, they feel a bit crisp and stiff – but the process of winding the yarn, and handling it as you knit, softens it. Keeping your tension on the loose side will make knitting with them a pleasant experience.


Simple shapes and stitches look good in linen and hemp; so do unusual “architectural” details. A few pattern suggestions: Julie Weisenberger of Cocoknits has a talent for sheer, summery designs in linen and cotton yarns – how about the sleeveless Liesl tank top/dress in Euroflax linen? Very chic design – sheer stockinette stitch with an asymmetrical handkerchief hem and pockets. Then there’s the pretty button-back Kathy’s Knot Garden Tank (right) in Allhemp 3 and last summer’s hit Buttercup (free pattern), a top in Hempathy with short puffed sleeves and feather-and-fan lace yoke. Olga Buraya-Kefelian’s Petal Halter is a tank top in a DK cotton/linen blend with curving tiers of stockinette, but it could be knit in any blend containing linen, hemp or bamboo. Here’s a beautiful version by soknitpicky in three colors.

If you’re up for a larger project, skirts and dresses are a possibility. Gudrun Johnston’s Little Black Dress  and Hip in Hemp elastic-waist skirt are two good options, both in Hempathy, both free. Hip in Hemp uses rippling stripes in several colors – very exuberant and summery. Sized for girls or women.

Both Knitty and Interweave Knits have published patterns for bamboo, hemp and linen yarns over the years – to find them, check the Knitfinder pattern indexes and type “bamboo” “linen” or “hemp” into the yarn column search box. Hemp for Knitting has great pattern support for their yarns, and you can buy any pattern online over at Patternfish and download it immediately – find all the patterns here.

Linen in particular is great for lace garments or accents, especially in finer weights.  Need inspiration? How about wakana’s Butterfly camisole, Khakigirl’s Fancy summer tank, Aniko’s Counterpane Blouse from the current (Summer 2010) issue of Interweave Knits (Ravelry pattern link) and knittwopurltwo’s Wakame Lace tunic?

Designs featuring texture and color techniques work too – just take a look at Aniko’s Linen Eastlake and the Roped Shells by u22grumpy and titianknitter.

I don’t want to sign off without mentioning an unusual cotton yarn I love: cotton gima from Habu Textiles.  It’s a narrow, light cotton ribbon that almost looks like paper. Knitted up, it looks crisp, but feels soft. This is color 53, called "oak.”

There are several elegant top and cardigan patterns for this yarn. The Leah Tunic (free over at Purl Bee) is a long tank top with a draped neckline knitted at 7 stitches to the inch. Julie Weisenberger’s Gretel is the same idea, but knitted at a sheer open gauge of 19 stitches/4 inches:


The Gisela cardigan, also from Cocoknits, uses the same yarn at an even more open gauge (17 stitches/4”). Photos do not do this design justice; I tried it on once at a Habu trunk show (along with several other people) – it looked great on everyone. Cotton gima is inexpensive, and at these gauges it goes a long way – the yarn for these designs in average sizes may be had for under $30.

More ideas for these hot-weather yarns in the next couple of posts – non-clothing projects, lace, and more. Stay tuned—and keep cool!



Almost forgot: in case you missed the news flash elsewhere, I did finish my handspun shawl. Ugly duckling that it was, blocking turned it into a swan. Here’s the Ravelry link.

The Perennial Question

Can she do it?

49 rows to go on Miralda’s Triangular Shawl. It doesn’t look promising, even though they get shorter and shorter. If I run out, here’s my option:

I’m knitting with my handspun for the first time, and that there is the remains (appropriate word) left on the second bobbin after plying all of the first one. I wound it off into a ball thinking I’d ply the rest of it from the two ball ends, but that didn’t go well – you can see why! “Energized” would be a kind word here.

(Furthermore, when I went over to the Ravelry pattern page to get the link for this post, I saw the errata for the first time. I wondered about that bit of asymmetry in the nupp diamond chart, but didn’t wonder hard enough to go looking for corrections.)

Wish me luck.

Tuesday pattern roundup

The roundup was AWOL last week, but we’re back! First, Julie Nandorfy’s pretty Bell Flower Boogie socks (free Ravelry download).  A lacy Japanese stitch pattern that stands out beautifully against a garter-stitch ground. Knitted toe-up with a gusset and heel flap; written in two sizes.


Next, incredibly cute overalls for toddlers from Whit’s Knits (Whitney Van Nes) at the Purl Bee – knitted in 2 skeins of sportweight Euroflax linen. Surprisingly stylish, and think how comfy and cool they would be! Tough enough to stand up to toddler play, too. Simple stockinette stitch with hemmed edges and buttoned straps; legs are knitted in the round. Free pattern on the website has great tutorial photos. They’d be cute with short legs, too, like an old-fashioned sunsuit (remember those?)


Here’s a new shawl from Sivia Harding – Ophidian, a refined triangle that combines undulating textural lace with beads and garter stitch. Knitted neck down; uses 380 yards of either fingering or DK-weight yarn. $7.50 download. Here’s a closeup of the stitch pattern:

photo: Alex Tinsely

Now, a floaty cap-sleeved or 3/4-sleeved cardigan that looks like it came straight from the pages of an Anthropologie catalog – Carol Feller’s Adrift. Knitted in Malabrigo lace – wouldn’t that feel wonderful? - from the neck down in stockinette stitch with raglan shoulders, a bit of waist shaping, and long front panels that hang in graceful points or may be pinned closed. I have a similar long-sleeved cardigan that really did come from Anthropologie that’s one of my favorite things to wear. Irresistible in rich orange. $5.95 download; there’s a knitalong just starting, too. Here’s the Ravelry page.

Closing with another sock pattern. Did you see these knee socks with contrast cables from the Prada fall runway show? Jen Molloy has reverse-engineered a free pattern. Ribbed sock with contrast cuff, toe, heel, and front-center cable. Knitted from the cuff down; the cable is knit at the same time, but with no intarsia-style twisting of yarns. When you get to the cable stitches, the yarn is at the wrong side, but she simply carried it across the back to the right – brilliant. Here are Jen’s socks, in elegant black an gray Regia silk, but how about black with a red cable, or charcoal with mustard, like the others in the show?


Until next time…happy knitting (and queueing).

TGI Sunday

I’m in the home stretch of what’s been a month of difficult, brain-busting book indexing projects – still another week to go, though, and today’s my only day off for the foreseeable future. I started the day with coffee on the porch, listening to the quails talking to each other, and did a little gardening – I can’t stand the idea of spending much time inside, let alone in front of a computer screen, today, so I’m just going to show you the bit of knitting and spinning finished up this week.
First the Brandywine shawl. Rosemary Hill’s design is simple , quick and elegant, and better yet, most of the pattern sales go to Doctors Without Borders for Haiti relief efforts. She’s already sent them $10,500, just from the sales of this one pattern! If you haven’t already done so, go buy it and knit one for yourself or to give away. Our local knit group has finished a dozen or so total – we’re hoping to enter them to be displayed en masse in our county fair.

Mine is knitted in Habu Tsumugi silk – a laceweight tweedy raw silk. I have no other shawls in this kind of texture – love the way it looks and feels. The shawl is knitted from the lower point up and out to the top edge. It’s finished with an interesting purled i-cord bindoff that perfectly matches the weight of the slanting decrease lines and the K2tog that forms the last stitch of the side edgings:

Last night I finished plying the Corriedale wool I’ve been spinning this last couple of weeks – after coffee this morning I wound it off and washed the skein. It’s by far the most evenly spun and plied yarn I’ve managed to produce – I’m thrilled. The colors are gorgeous (the fiber was bought from Royale Hare). And I’ve got about 300 yards/150grams of nice worsted weight for some small project. Because it’s 3 colors, one after the other, I’m thinking I’ll wind it into a center-pull ball and knit stripes, alternating ends as the whim takes me.
What should I knit with it – got a brilliant idea for me? ETA: Ilga Leja's Haiti Scarf might be just the thing. Or how about a BSJ? I haven't knit one yet - is 300 yards enough?
Signing off to head back outdoors – with tea and knitting.

Tuesday pattern roundup

We begin with a beautiful, original colorwork design - Robin Melanson’s Gothic Snowfall sweater, first published in last fall’s St.-Denis Yarns magazine, now available as a single-pattern  download from Patternfish. It’s a seamless modified raglan – worked in the round, but without steeks. It has waist shaping, stylish bracelet-length sleeves (which I love – I’m always pushing my sleeves up), and color patterning with a strong vertical panel effect. And the deep waistband, cuffs, and striking yoke/collar are done in two-color brioche rib (called Shaker rib in the pattern). Written for sportweight wool (St.-Denis Nordique), but I’m thinking about knitting it in fingering=weight yarn for a slightly lighter sweater. $7.00 download, only at Patternfish. (The magazine is still available as well; you can get it here and probably elsewhere too.)


Now, some socks – I’ve been remiss about including sock patterns in these roundups (I knit very few of them myself). I love stripes, and here’s a great striped sock pattern with a couple of twists from Susan Luni – Burning Stripes. Done in two colorways of Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball, or any sock yarn with long color changes, it’s a cuff-down design with a cool boomerang heel (a short-row heel with some refinements, explained here) and a nifty back “seam” stitch that hides the color jog in a creative way. $2.50 Ravelry download until later this week, when a revised pattern with more sizes will be published at $3.99.


OK, now I’m going out on a limb. This next design won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s lovely and original, even if not wearable by just anyone. It’s Bells by Maria Leigh, a graceful cropped, short-sleeved cardigan in ethereal mohair (Rowan Kidsilk Haze, Elann Silken Kydd or the like) patterned all over with bold, textural  - well, bells.

It’s worked from bottom to top, seamlessly, with a garter-stitch yoke and a single button to close it at the front neck. I think it would be great on a slim person like my 19-year-old daughter; a girls’ version would be cute too. $8.00 download; here’s the Ravelry link.
This week’s lace: more mohair, a lovely free pattern from Elann.com, the Dancing Crane stole by Shui Kuen Kozinski and Benne Ferrell. Knitted sideways in Japanese Feather lace with 3 balls of Silken Kydd – you can buy a yarn pack for it for $15.00 here.


Another sweater – this one a versatile short-sleeved “layering piece,” as they say – the Lilas Cardigan by Hilary Smith Callis. It’s a top-down, seamless raglan cardigan with short sleeves, handsome texture details, and a big, flattering foldover collar. Knitted in worsted-weight cotton. I’d throw this on all the time. $5.00 download here.


Let’s finish up with a little whimsy – these Felted Flower Bowls from Meg Myers are irresistible and would be really handy around the house. Great way to use up leftover bits, too – they take about 65 yards of worsted-weight feltable wool. Knitted from outer edge to center in the round; free Ravelry download.

Tuesday pattern roundup

I’m migrating the pattern roundup to Tuesdays, and keeping it on the small side – hopefully that means I’ll have time to write it every weekend!

Since the last roundup, new issues of Twist Collective and Knitty are out. Both have great patterns and you’ve probably been through them already. My favorites are Jennie Pakula’s Celandine, the Twist cover design, and Miriam Felton’s Anthemion wrap.

For this post, an assortment of mostly smallish projects – cozy sweaters that fill my lap aren’t what I feel like knitting in spring. First, an unusual new shawl pattern, the Leaflette shawl by Stormy Autumn Designs:


It’s a delicate tracery of twisted stitchwork on a purled background, plus a leaf lace border. I love lace combined with texture – what a beautiful design! Available as a Ravelry download for $4.00; uses 450-500 yards of fingering weight yarn.

Next, a brilliant little pattern for those one-off skeins of handspun, the Wabi-Sabi Handspun Mitts from Kristen TenDyke. These fingerless mitts with a turned-back cuff are designed to be knitted at the same time from two ends of a center-pull ball so you can use every bit of your yarn. Knitted flat and seamed up one side. Free download; uses about 100 yards at a gauge of 16 stitches to 4”.



Here’s a pretty cardigan for girls aged 2 – 12 years, Melissa LaBarre's Tiny Tea Leaves. It’s a sized-down version of the adult Tea Leaves Cardigan from Madelinetosh. Written for worsted-weight yarn, but I think it would make a beautiful baby sweater in a finer yarn. $4.00 download.


How about a summer hat? I love Roxanne Seabright’s Flower Frog Hat in Artfibers Bistro, a cotton/nylon ribbon yarn with chenille edges (although I might dispense with the embellishments). Uses 150 yards; knit it for $15 (the pattern is free). Worked in the round from brim to crown, stiffened by sewing the brim edge over a hoop of millinery wire.



Linden Heflin’s pretty Fresh Mint is just the thing for summer – a stockinette tank with a bit of lace, in DK cotton. It’s worked top-down, beginning the the lace yoke sections – once they’re knitted, you join and knit the body down to the lower edge in the round. $5.00 download.



Until next time – enjoy!

Retreat, and the lure of spinning

My knit group retreat last weekend was short, but idyllic. There was a foot of snow on the ground in the Sierras, but the weather was sunny and gorgeous. Most of our Saturday was spent on the deck:


Knitting was the excuse for the expedition, but there was also just lots of good company, great conversation – and delicious food and wine. What a blast!

I didn’t do much knitting (although I did finish binding off my Brandywine shawl), but my trusty wheel rode with me and I did do lots of spinning. First some plying to clear my bobbins:

Softly-spun merino-wool in lavender, silver-gray, and sheep’s black. I spun all of each color before going on to the next, then made a two-ply. Where the colors don’t match exactly, there are marled black-gray and gray-lavender transitions. I think it’ll make a nice color-banded hat or mittens.

Then I spun this Corriedale in three coordinating colors the same way (these flash photos are quite accurate):


The fiber is from Royale Hare - a mixture of dyed and natural gray carded together, for a lovely, complex heathered effect. It has yet to be plied, but should make a nice slightly fuzzy worsted-weight 2-ply.

It’s time for me to tell you my spinning story. When I started knitting, I thought I should give spinning a try, and eventually I had a drop-spindle lesson from a friend a couple of years ago. It was a group lesson, and several folks were instant spinners. Not me – hopeless. With some relief, I decided I didn’t need to spin after all. One less enthusiasm to complicate life.

However. I’ve got a great virtual knitting group – we’re friends who’ve been talking knitting, and other things, for years online.  Many of the group are longtime spinning enthusiasts, and enablers par excellence. After that spindling lesson, I told them I’d been there, done that, no thank you very much. But they knew better. Last summer, a great deal on a preowned Matchless cropped up in the discussion. I seem to have expressed some interest, because before I knew it, the wheel was delivered to my door. As a surprise, the whole group got together to make it happen – and over the cliff I went.

Here’s Ms. Matchless on the day she arrived:



I still haven’t figured out what I did to deserve this incredibly generous gift, but it has proven to be the beginning of a love affair.

My day job is serious left-brain work. Indexing is reading, writing, and analyzing; often I’m thinking about abstruse, complicated topics like identity politics in the Caribbean or the emergence of modernity in the Middle East. Knitting is a great complement to the work I do, because it’s about handling real materials and making real objects. But knitting is just a little bit technical. The lure of spinning for me is that it’s so elemental and so different from my paying work.

A long time ago, I baked for a living for a few years. Knitting is like pastry making; spinning is like sourdough bread baking. Oh, I know, I could be a technical spinner – but I prefer to spin intuitively. It’s simple in some ways, but mysterious and complex in others – so there’s always something to learn. And when spinning, I feel connected to a tradition that goes back thousands of years. It’s satisfying in the same way it is to grow food, or make wine. In short, it makes me feel human.  So thank you, dear friends, for making this adventure possible.

Resurfacing

Long time no see! I’ve been mired in book indexing work, and sick, and well…there hasn’t been time to blog.

There hasn’t been much knitting either. The two current shawl projects are both stalled. I started to bind off Brandywine, eager to block and wear it – and discovered an errant yarnover that I can’t live with:



It’s been sitting in time out ever since, but I’ve decided that designer Rosemary Hill is right – don’t ladder back and fix it, just bind off and sew it closed. Actually there’s another mistake you can see in the photo – but that one I’ll just live with.
Then there’s this one:



Miralda’s Triangular shawl, in my own handspun (Targhee from A Verb for Keeping Warm). Love the pattern, but there are some nupps that need repairing, and I don’t have the patience for it right now. Not loving the quality of my yarn – I think it’s overplied – but will stick with it anyway.

There has been a little bit of spinning. I reward myself for finishing work quotas and taxes and the like with spinning time. I recently finished this skein of Lisa Souza BFL (in Aww-tum):


and I’m working on this one:





This is some nameless wool/merino/nylon I was given in small quantities. The colors are related – a bit of the lavender runs through both the gray and the black, so I divided each color in half, and am spinning all of each color in turn. Hoping that they will come close to matching when plied, with some interesting marling at the transitions, and make a nice color-banded hat or something. I’m trying to teach myself to spin (and ply) a bit more softly.

I’ll be belting my wheel into the back seat of the car tomorrow – I’m off for a mini-retreat in the Sierras with a dozen friends from knit group. We’ve never done this before, but it’s going to be a great time!  Here’s what the cabin surroundings looked like a couple of days ago:



Looks like perfect knitting-and-spinning-by-the-fire weather to me - I’ll report next week! [ETA: no cell phone or Internet either. A true vacation!]  I hope to be bringing back the Pattern Roundup soon, and to have some Knitfinder news for you before long too.

Color knitting links & inspiration

The Knitfinder resource section is coming along slowly – I’m trying to build it into the be-all and end-all of knitting bookmark collections, so you can start there to find ANY kind of knitting info you happen to be looking for. I’m working on a color knitting resource page now and thought I’d share a few tidbits.

Nanette Blanchard’s blog Knitting in Color has been around since 2003, and it’s full of great information and inspiration for stranded color knitting. You’ll find tutorials, patterns, and lovely photos – Nanette lives in photogenic New Mexico. She’s self-published several how-to booklets including Stranded Color Knitting, Glove Knitting, and Mittens in Color. At left, one of her mitten designs – the lovely Tijeras mittens. Find all her booklets and patterns in her Ravelry shop.

Here’s a great resource from Nanette’s blog: a list of the best yarns for stranded color knitting, organized by weight and linked to their Ravelry pages. Yarns were chosen for their quality and wide color range. The list is a year and a half old; there are some new yarns that would be good additions, like St-Denis Nordique and Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light.

If you’re embarking on your first stranded color project, there are plenty of how-tos out there. There’s a list of the best here.  TECHknitting has a great tutorial series on stranded knitting:  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 as well as one on slip-stitch color knitting. If you’ve never been over to TECHknitting, you’ll be amazed at the wealth of information. If you learn better from video, the KnitPicks tutorial section is a good place to start. There’s a collection of colorwork tutorials, including stripes, intarsia, Fair Isle, and color theory. Here’s one showing different methods of handling yarns for stranded knitting.

My friend Janine Bajus aka Feral Knitter is a brilliant colorwork designer and teacher. Her 3-day “Design Your Own Fair Isle” class is scheduled for March 26-28 in Berkeley, California – I don’t know if there’s still space available. There’s also a one-day class in May at Web-sters in Ashland, Oregon.


Here’s a swatch I knit in her class; she teaches a simple swatching technique for evaluating color combinations. This swatch revealed one I hated (the green and yellow in the middle), and several I loved (red and lavender, red and mint green, olive and coral). And you’ll find great tips, patterns, and color inspiration on her blog. Janine’s Celtic Pillows (free PDF from Two Swans Yarns, a great source for Fair Isle yarns and patterns) are meant as a canvas for playing with your own color choices.

There’s going to be an “Around the World” section in the Knitfinder resources, and color knitting leads us right into that. Scotland, Norway, Estonia, Sweden, Turkey, Peru…all have their own color knitting traditions. You’ll find the whole world of color knitting at unionpearl’s Knitting Letters A to Z. Many photos, great writing on knitting traditions, lots of links.

Some more photo inspiration:

Swedish Bohus Stickning on Flickr (read more about Bohus here)
Annemarie Sundbo’s collection of Norwegian mittens, stockings and sweaters
Latvian mitten galleries – from a project associated with the NATO summit in Riga, 2006
Let’s not forget modern colorwork designers: Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably, Alice and Jade Starmore.

More to come when the color knitting page goes live. I’m behind on other work this week, so there will be no pattern roundup tomorrow – look for it again next week. I may move it to Mondays or Tuesdays so I have time to write the posts over the weekend.

Friday pattern roundup

Some of this week’s most original and creative patterns are in a new book from STC Craft, Comfort Knitting and Crochet: Afghans. This book has 27 knitted afghan patterns (and 24 crocheted ones)  by Norah Gaughan, Margery Winter, and the rest of the Berroco design team. There’s an amazing variety of color, texture, and techniques to choose from. You can see photos of all the designs here on the Berroco website. Here are two of my favorites:

Danish Modern

Floret

All the patterns are written for Berroco’s acrylic/nylon blend Comfort® yarn in various weights. If you prefer to knit with natural-fiber yarns, it shouldn’t be difficult to substitute – or to shrink patterns to baby-blanket size. **Edited to add: Berroco is giving away 50 copies of the book, plus yarn - click here to enter the drawing.

Patternfish added its 5,000th pattern this week. This site is a fantastic source for patterns past and present – 40+ new ones added every week. More info about them here. Number 5000 was the Kathy Zimmerman coat in Classic Elite Waterlily on the left, knitted sideways in strong knit-purl texture. There’s also a new stole by Catherine Devine with handsome stylized flowers on a mesh ground, and a ladylike cropped cabled vest by Michelle Porter for Lana Gatto (check out the cable detail around the armholes).

Waterlily Sideways Cardigan

Andrea Dogwood Blossom Wrap

Cable V-Neck Vest

Prices for these patterns range from $4.95 - $6.00 – all available instantly. By the way, did you know you can order Classic Elite yarns directly from their website? Waterlily info/colors here.

Here’s a brand new design from Fiddlesticks Knitting – Flair, a  coat-length  vest in feather-and-fan lace with neat, wide seed-stitch bands. Simple, elegant vertical lines, meant to be closed with a pin. A short version would be very nice too.  The yarn is DK-weight raw silk; there’s a special kit price until April 11. Or, buy the (printed) pattern only for $12.00

More lace – an unusual shawl design from Tiziana Sammuri called In Spring Shawlette.  It’s knitted from the bottom up, shaped as four steep triangles with wide embossed-leaf panels on a lace ground. Available as a Ravelry download for € 4.00 EUR. Requires 600-650 yards of fingering-weight yarn. Tiziana has several other beautiful lace designs in her Ravelry shop.

A small free project: the Honey Cowl from Madelinetosh. Reversible slip-stitch texture pattern shows off the semisolid yarn beautifully. 225-450 yards of DK merino wool, may be made short or long, wide or narrow. This would be lovely in silk or a silk blend, too.

Finally, a couple of months old but new to me, Rachel Russ’s incredibly cute Pixie Poncho, designed for Spud & Chloe Yarns  - it’s published in their leaflet no. 9508. A short hooded, fringed poncho with exuberant colorwork in a cotton-wool blend.

I’m working on a color knitting page for the Knitfinder resource section, which is still in its infancy. I’ll post some of the great links I’ve found for you in a few days. Meanwhile, enjoy this week’s patterns!