A good place

This top is well under way.  

I am midway through the third lace repeat of what will be five repeats. I think.   But it's exactly what I hoped for.  It's got the ease it needs so that when I wash it, it will hold its  good ease after drying, because I do intend this to be machine friendly.

My hands are in a good place lately, aided by the easy gauge and comfortable needle size, but I can knit a really good part of the day before it's time to quit.  It's wonderful.  

The sun is out and the forecast is forecast is good.  The cherry trees little leaves are not out yet but the tiny almost round budlets are slowly getting looser, ready to unfurl.  The poplars across the way are green but the maples are still looking hairy with their fronds. There is knitting to be done and I am ready.  

Oh my.

This could be addicting.

It's garter stitch squares so how can that be?  I swear to you, it is a lot of fun.

Still, today I will set aside the box of colour and fun and go back to my top.  If I work on that an stick to it, I will have another top in my small summer wardrobe and that will be nice.  

And Now for Something Completely Different

Yesterday morning was spent working on my top.  I did a try on mid morning and I already know I am going to get a lot of wear out of this.  It's turning out lovely.

I had no plans to work on anything else but I had a downturn in energy for the project. I was feeling a bit down.  As Jana from Finnish Knitting Stories would say, life is pretty lifey right now. I needed something different to distract myself.  

I looked at the pile of knitting around me and decided that blanket knitting would be a good idea.  I picked up my Willow World blanket.  Willow World is a blanket pattern that takes designs from tableware to blanket.  Since I love blue and white china, It seemed like the right thing to knit.  

 

I'm only just starting the colourwork border and was having a good time getting the setup row going...till I reached the end of that first row.  There ought to be 15 stitches between markers and, as you can see, this repeat clearly is not 15 stitches.  All the rest are but since this is the first or second repeat of the pattern...harrumph.  

This was not going to soothe my heart, so I went looking for another blanket.  

The other blanket stuff in reaching distance is the very strong contrasts of colour yarn I bought myself after Christmas.  

I purchased the pattern, the Sweet Shop blanket and got down to it.

My first quandary after starting was this:  colours?   The way the pattern is designed to be knit, it felt right to settle my colour sequence first.  As usual, I got out my trusty markers and some paper and colored for a while.

 There.  Now I am ready to sit down and get to work.  

It's just a garter square.  I could have done it without a pattern but this is not just knit squares and sew together.  It is all worked at once and I wanted to see what her secret sauce was.  It's kind of neat.  Interesting too.  You could approach this a thousand ways, but this is not quite what I would have thought of.  

I am giving myself a day off, so to speak and staying with the blanket today.  Let's see where it takes me to. 

Updated.  A treat for your eyes.  Keukenhof 2026 on YouTube.

Sleeves first?

On the weekend, I settled in and did something different and yet, the same. I stayed knitting on my Pleione top but took it in an entirely different way.

Several of the online knitters I watch do their sleeves before they finish the body.  I have not done that before but Pleione has very short sleeves so I thought it would be a good top to try sleeves first on.  

Sleeves first worked okay but it felt very very weird.  Still they are done and that does feel kind of nice.  I did deviate from pattern.  The pattern has you repeat the lace from the front around the sleeve hem instead of ribbing.  In this yarn, at the gauge I am knitting, that would look sort of off.  Too much.  Too busy.  I opted for a much simpler lace, just a row of yarn over eyelets. I think it balances well with the front lace panel.  

Again, I have adapted the lace a bit but it is the scale of it that really changes the way the lace looks.  I quite like it.

I am ready for a try on.  I decided that I will do that when this little bit of yarn is knit.

A try on is so much easier without having to drag along skeins of yarn.  

Today the tasks are to keep working on this top.  It will be a really good summer top.  Plus, my gauge is large enough (I hope) that I will be able to wash and dry this in the machine.  For now, it's time for coffee and a bite of breakfast.  

Task accomplished.

Knitting in the round.  

Two tops

My white and cream Lusk is finished.  All the ends woven in and it's ready to wear.  I am wearing it.

I am quite pleased with it.  The shoulders are just right.  They don't shift back or forwards or pull.  They just stay in place.  To get a fit there that works for this body is amazing.  Yeah the whole hip thing is in another country but that the upper body fits is amazing.  Rebecca Clow, I am in your debt.  Lusk is my favourite sweater ever.

The new sweater, Audrey Borrego's Pleione is coming along nicely.

The yarn is Remix from Berocco.  I decided to knit this on a 6 mm needle, two needle sizes larger than the recommended size.  I wanted a draper fabric not so much for drape but more that as I wash and wear it, it doesn't get too firm to like wearing it.  I knit a previous garment in this yarn and I used it a lot and eventually, it did get firm.  It was like due to me machine washing and drying it.  I didn't want that for this top.  I wanted something that would go the distance. It should be noted that this is giving me z very different gauge than pattern gauge but a little math never hurt me.

The result of the needle size with this yarn is a wonderfully soft and luscious.  It's gorgeous.  It's also knitting up fast.  I am getting very close to where the v neck will join and only a wee bit more to where I split for underarms.  My goal today to to get to knitting in the round.  

That's it for me today.  A new top being worn and another nice one we'll under way.  There is a fierce wind out there, but nothing beyond the usual.  It's worse south of us.  All in all a good day to stay in and knit.

Look for the Little Things

I caught myself sitting by the window in my bedroom this morning, watching the world instead of just opening the blinds and getting on with things. It wasn't planned, it wasn't on purpose, it was just that my world is greening and there is so much to see. 

The maple across the alleyway is setting its seed.  The long fronds of its inflorescence draped down looking a bit like there is a fairy floating in a fabulous dress at the end of each branch.  The buds on the poplars are looking ready to burst. They hint at green.  The cherry buds are looking rounder everyday, getting ready to burst into flowers and joy.  I have no doubt the bugs and bees are waiting as eagerly as I.  It is all such a wonder.  

We spend our lives busy, going here and there so that one day we can just relax.  We drive ourselves nuts preparing for the good life we will have later.  But what about now?  What about seeing all the wonder that is happening at this moment.  All those small things are the things we really need for work like balance or whatever the buzzword is now.  

Look to the little things in the world. Look at the small.    

I think that is part of what makes knitting so fascinating.  It's a small thing.  Each stitch is just a couple movement with some very simple tools and some cordage.  Do it for a while and you clothe yourself.  It's a very small thing that creates big impact in life.   

So much good

I feel a bit hung over this morning. Yarn hungover that is.  My first thought as I woke was gee my bed is comfy and my second  was about touching the really stunning new yarn in the house.  Contrary to the after effects of drinking too many alcoholic beverages, this sort of  hangover is really nice.  

Yesterday was an overall great day.  Not only did new yarn arrive, I cast on something new.  

The colours look atrocious in the picture but it's a soft cross between purple and rose.  The tweedy nature of Remix gives it depth and character.  I said I was not likely to cast this on because of a bit of thumb pain but that was completely gone yesterday so I went ahead and cast it on.  

The pattern I am using is Pleione by Audrey Barrego, though I am blowing up the gauge to work with this yarn.  She came to my attention via My North Knit Corner on YouTube.  Audrey has some lovely little details on her all of her designs.  This one has a nice little lace design down the front and a crisp finish on the neckline.

Today will be a good day.  I finished the Lusk and will weave in ends this afternoon.  I am pleased.  Really pleased. But that is for tomorrow.  Today I have things to knit and stuff to do.  It is sunny and bright and the day looks good.  On I go.

Oops

I have been antsy for the last week or so.  Just antsy fancy pants.  I found it difficult to sit still.  

Because...I ordered yarn.  I didn't need yarn but I needed it.  I bought yarn several times this year and I thought I was done but it seems I was not.  Oline from Norwegianknitter was talking about yarns and I decided to go searching for a Canadian source for some Per Gynt.  

I found it at Wet Coast Wools which has an amazing selection of stuff not available locally to me.  I fell in love.  With SO many yarns.  I couldn't afford it February.  Same in March.  Same in April.  And then I did my taxes and got some funds back.  I scratched that itch and it is oh so good.

 

I have other closer pictures of it but this is the only one where the colour of the yarn is just as it is in front of me.  It's that gorgeous perfect pea shoot green.  Just stunning.  The yarn itself is a little like Jaimesons of Shetland or Jamieson and Smith in the way it looks but is a very unique feel and fibre.  It is a 100 % Norwegian wool and this green is one of the new line of heathered colours dyed on grey wool.  I am completely under it's spell.

I didn't want to pay shipping so I had to, I swear I had to, buy more yarn.  Choosing more yarn was a heavy burden.   ;)

I decided to go with something new to all of us, Fallalopi a new DK version of the inimitable Icelandic yarn from Istex.  A thousand and one things that Iceland does well and volcanoes and yarn are my top two.  I picked this intense blue and added some heathered grey in case I wanted to do some colourwork.  Its an utter delight.

And nary a skein of Per Gynt.  I have to go now.  My battery is at 8%.  3 more and it just stops doing anything.  See you.

So close

It was a really nice weekend.  I was feted and fussed over and it was lovely.  

A little treat from my kids. 

I had a moderately good knitting weekend too.  

Two sleeves!  Only the neckline to go.  

I actually got a good start on the neckband too. I really wanted to finish but I am listening to my hands.  My left thumb is a teeny tiny bit achy but listening to its early calls to stop will help in the long run.  I think it is just the cotton.  Cotton is always a bit harder to work.  The lack of stretch in the fibre means your hands work harder.  

This thumb thing may change what I work on next.  I had planned to whip up something in the gentle purple Remix to get it out of stash but I think I will have to skip it for something in a wool.  I might settle back into my gorgeously bright yellow Hiraeth sweater.  

It's all in the round so it will be a lot easier on my hands.  

I am also thinking about working on my Mashup Top.  It's all knitting too so again, easier on my hands.  My Kauni sweater is under consideration too.  It's all easy knitting too.  

The dreaming continues in a big way.  So many great yarns on hand, so many good things to knit. So much tea.  Sigh.  The tea part does allow a lot of experimentation so even that is pretty good even if it isn't my beloved coffee.  It's not all sunshine and roses but the snow is gone and it's lovely to be able to open the doors and windows again.  And knitting.  I am so glad that I have knitting.

Of Berries and Summer Things.

Yesterday was an utterly lovely day.  It was the perfect temperature outside though sometimes the wind was a bit strong.  It was a good knitting day too.

Ta da!  It's a hem.  Time will tell if I knit it long enough.

Not only that but I made it to sleeves.

I could have striped through this tees secret sauce for short sleeves but I felt comfortable knitting them plain till that section was complete.  I can't wait to wear this!  Honestly, each time I slip on my blue and white Lusk I realize what a great fit this is for me and this top is just the same.  The fit is just right.  Part of it is this more softly fitted style but it also is how Rebecca Clow grades her patterns.  

Yesterday when Keith was putting groceries away, we were chatting about the fruits of summer. There was rhubarb at the store and he brought some home for me.  I love a fresh rhubarb crisp.  I started talking about fruit treats when I was a kid.  We were allowed to pick a stalk of rhubarb after mom had all she wanted.  Mom would give us a small bowl of sugar and we would dip the skinier end in and bite it off.  Yum.  

At Grandma Stuck's we got an even better treat though mom did make it at home too. My first memory of it was at Grandma's.  In peak berry season, we would all help pick June berries (Saskatoons or service berries for those of you who did not come from my part of the Saskatchewan) and when we were done, she would make pancakes for lunch.  She would mash some berries with a bit of sugar and pour some rich, cold, straight from the cow cream.  She would beat it with a spoon for a few minutes and we would piles berries and cream on top of our pancakes.  It was wonderful.  We did this with raspberries too.  Delightful delicious.

Later in life mom had a strawberry patch of every gardeners dreams.  Oh how much I loved helping pick strawberries, popping a few in my mouth before mom noticed.  Her patch was large enough that she put strawberries away for the whole season for on ice-cream as a Sunday desert.  I don't think she made jam though.  Not quite certain why.  

And then even later, there were tiny plums and sand cherries. I remember how good they were at full ripeness, warm from the sun.

It's a shame kids don't get these treats anymore.  They rarely get to pick fresh raspberries from the bush.  A garden now is something to look at or sit in, though we rarely do.  It's about display rather than food.  Sad in so many ways really.  

Ah well.  On to knit.

On Geddy and Lusk

On the weekend, I did spend time knitting a little something else.  

I pulled out my Geddy Tee and set to getting the body started.

I was pretty pleased with how it was looking...however

When I picked it up this week, the fabric felt wrong.  Not bad but not right.  And then I took a look at how the stitches were sitting.

See the ripple?  I had been telling myself that the ripple would block out, one of the biggest lies of all time.  It wouldn't.  It never really does.  

Yesterday afternoon, I bit the bullet and sorted it out.  I pulled back what I had knit and I started again.

Much much better.  

I changed needle sizes, going up a bit from what the pattern asked for.  The fabric feels softer and will have a really lovely drape.  I narrowed the back neck a wee bit.  Tanis does a good job sizing it but I hate a too large neck.  All my favourite, most worn tops have a narrower back neck.  They just sit better on me.  Yes all these things mean that once again, I am winging the body of this tee.  I must love math.  Noooooooo.

Oh well.  

I made good progress on the Lusk cream and white top.  

I should finish with the bottom today, then just two short sleeves and done.  This is such a good time in the making of a sweater.  It's the state of almost.  Almost ready.  Almost yours.

So here I am, ready to start my knitting for the day.  Tea is on and my goodness I still miss my second cup of coffee.  Oh well.  Tea it is.  Some nice Irish Breakfast Tea this morning, steeped for only a short time, plain and black and good.  

The weather is perfectly spring and the doors and windows will be open and I will be knitting some pretty spring tops.  It can't get much better than that.

And next up

As much as I could have written for hours on Monday, today, I have nothing.  It's been that sort of week, full of ups and downs.  

It has been that way in my knitting too.  I can't seem to get started in the morning and when I do get going, it's been pretty lackluster.  Still, there has been progress.

I am on to the body ribbing.  I am going with the white rather than the cream.  It just felt more right.  And if I use the white, it will be all used up when the garment is done.  That matters these days.  

Sometimes when I choose a project, the real purpose is to get the yarn out of my stash.  That was the case with this tee

And it is happening again with this yarn. 

It's a good yarn.  It is very easy care and I do like it.  However, I just really want it out of my stash.  It will make a great short sleeve tee.  I have only 7 skeins so it's a bit less than I usually like.  It will probably be a good idea to knit the sleeves and then go on to complete the body.  It won't be a complicated garment.  Just a nice basic top.  

Besides the white top, and all the dreaming I've been doing, I have done some more interesting stuff on ongoing projects.  More on that tomorrow.  For now it's time to get down to work and finish the white and cream to.

Updated:  I forgot one small find to add to repairs done.  It had slid down into a yarn box and I had completely forgot about it.  

My sweet little Kauni cowl had a problem at the cast off.  There was a pull out that had caused the end of the yarn to come loose. I needed to add a bit of yarn and reset it more firmly in place.  I spied the correct yarn for the repair in the yarn leftover bag and that reminded me to go searching for the cowl and get the job done.  Guess what?  Job done!  Now all the repairs are truly complete.

Books and Good Things

I keep finding interesting stuff on my bookshelves.  That has always been the case with me and books.  Any books.  Books of letters between 18 th century people, collections of short stories, novels, histories, biographies and so on.  Plus anything to do with fibre arts. Books are maps to travel to different places and times.  

As I was wandering among my books, I came across this sweater.

It's a lovely textured crochet sweater.  I made it in the 90s long before I learned to knit.  I wore it as we traveled by ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert.  I had several ladies compliment me on it.  It was one of the best things I ever made.  

I have often thought of recreating it in knitting.  A similar look could be made very easily even if you are not normally a winging it sort of knitter.  The Penta Pillar pullover by James N Watts could be used as the base and then you just need to add interesting stitches to your work.   

Personally, I would use the Lusk as a pattern base and when  I get to patterns, I am thinking of the crisp twisted stitches of the Styrian valley.

Or some of the gorgeous stitch patterns from this tour deforce stitch dictionary.

I mean really.  How lovely.

Now this pattern would be lovely in a summer tee shirt or a winter lacy pullover.  

So many beautiful things to think about and to knit.  There is nothing like knitting to excite all the little grey cells in my head.  Endless possibilities from simple string.

Interesting yarn and pattern combinations.

I feel like I have ten thousand things to talk about and if I am not careful, they will all spill out at once.  I will attempt to keep on track.

I'm not quite where I hoped to be on my cream and white sweater but I am in a good place.  I am almost at the point where I need to decide if the ribbing is going to be cream or white.  There is lots of both yarns.  This is where the top will become cream with white stripes or white with cream stripes.  It's a conundrum, but a fun one.

Friday I talked about looking at yarn in a different way.  A few years ago I did a stash dive and some yarns spoke to me. They actually screamed at MD but nicely.  I saw magic.  I started knitting them into a Starting Point shawl by Joji Locatelli.  I frogged it because I will never use a shawl like that no matter how beautiful it was.  And it was beautiful.  Magic happened when I saw the yarns together and that feeling has never left me.  

So rich and striking.  I have been searching for the right pattern to keep them together for a while now.  I have 5 colours to use and many patterns use more or less.  Five is awkward, but it is not negotiable.  And I am not interested in colourwork for these yarns.  I don't have any single one of them in quantity to play main yarn.   

I have also been looking at my bookshelves lately too. It's nice to do that when my hands are done for the day.  There are so many good things in my knitting library.  Stitch dictionaries of all sorts, pattern books, all kinds of things fibre and craft related,  that fire up my brain, sending my thoughts pinging hither and thither.  I came across a couple of old crochet garment books.  These are not the granny stitch crochet garments that are sweeping the Fibre arts world at the moment.  They go a step farther to make really lovely sweaters in crochet, a far step beyond a double crochet.  

One of them is this one.

Do you see it?  

I have always loved this vest.  I think it will work for my gorgeous pile of yarn. 

It's a shape that is simple and could easily be converted to knitting.  I could just crochet it too but the things I need to do to make it fit me nicely might be easier for me to do in knitting.  YMMV of course but I think my brain is more flexible in knitting. 

The pattern asks for 6 colours but I think 5 will work because of the changes I need.  I am going to colour up a colour placement chart like the book shows for the original design with the changes I need in place.  I will also think about sleeves because I would really like to use up the yarn.  

Anyway that is what I was dreaming of this weekend.  It was fun.  Exhilarating even.  Today I am going to work to getting the Lusk cream and white tee done.

Which reminds me.  Rebecca Clow just put out the perfect new little summer sweater/ vest/ tee for summer.  Check out her Sollas pattern.  

Seeing Something Different in the Yarn

Oh my, this is looking so good.

I am so utterly pleased with this.  It is exactly right.  

Yes it is cheap cotton not often used for clothing but why not? I would use kitchen string if I did not have anything else at hand. I crocheted a top years ago out of Handicrafter cotton and the only problem with it was the stitch pattern I used was too open for wear in the office without a camisole.  But it worked.  A Ravelry search before I started this top shows I am not the only one who makes garments with this yarn.  

The cream is a some ancient 1824 Cotton that I have had forever.  I tried making tops 3 or 4 times with the yarn before but the tops just never happened.  

This entire top is a whim.  I was putting yarn away after my last dive and as I was putting this last box away, I just saw the yarns in it, in a different way.  That sometimes happens to me.  I have a bunch of yarns and one day, magic happens and I see something different going on between the yarns.  I see something new and occasionally brilliant.  

Next week, I will show you one of those.  I can, now that I know what I am going to make  happen.   

Back to the cream and white Lusk top.  I am just going to keep working on it.  I would like to get it done fast because I can really use the top on my spring and summer wardrobe.