Knitting short rows

Small knitted bag curves knitted with short rows

Despite all the assorted yarn in generous amounts sitting around the place waiting for something to happen to them I have been taken up with looking for ideas of what to do with a small mountain of short lengths of rug wool from the back of the cupboard. They are warp ends from the woollen mill at  Solva, near St. David's Wales, the colours are lovely but none of them are even a metre long. Great for pegging a rug but I really wanted to weave them. This hasn't happened yet but I thought I would just see how they knitted.
I have tried my hand a little at "free knitting" in the past and quite enjoyed the effect of knitting short rows, (turning back before the end of the row). As you can see you can get some lovely curves going so I put some in too. Eventually my little experimental pieces have become a small zipped  and lined bag.

Knitting Feathers

As ever I have spent the first week of the year tidying up last years accumulated bits and bobs which have found a temporary Christmas home or a more permanent lodging in my workshop. Had to do something a bit more radical this year to better accommodate the extra craft related gear I have also acquired.  So have been shifting tool racks and making space for more shelves.

While moving things around I came across a little square of knitting I did on two feathers. I remember having a go at this after I read an item on the web about knitting on the West Coast of Ireland.  I had been trying to find some Aran wool from Achill Island, the article described learning to knit on goose quills and other makeshift needles such as sticks of willow and bicycle spokes.

I didn’t have any goose quills but there are always pigeon feathers in the garden so I had a go on two of these. They worked quite well, smooth with just a little grip too and the curve made them easy to hold. Even less excuse now for not getting on with some knitting even when the needles have been left at home.

You can read more of the article about traditional knitting in Ireland at

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/aemblem/sweaters.html

A little sheepish - baby blanket auction for Save the Children

Little baby blanket for Save the children

The troublesome baby blanket is finally completed and the finished article is rather sweet. A little image of Woolly Facade appears in the corner.  The pure Shetland wool in cream and the super soft naturally coloured yarn spun from Cashgora and 30% Manx Loghton rare breed wool are rather special. It's made a lovely cosy little cover up for a small baby - just right for a first size car carrier/seat.

As Christmas is coming up I decided to auction it for charity via EBay. A 100% of the proceeds will be going to Save the Children. The auction is running now and until 11th December Item 290640589687

Knitting at the ready - a little reflection for Poppy Day

I love old books. The other day I was searching the bookcases for a crumbling copy of Winnie the Pooh I knew I had somewhere. But when I opened a rather dusty book I had put my hand on it took me by surprise. Not A.A. Milne but a war time fictionalisation of  real life on a RAF station in World War II entitled Readiness at Dawn by "Blake". I flipped through the black and white photographs peppered through the book - on the last page one paragraph caught my eye.

The year was 1941. It was the early hours of the morning in the operations room....
" The map was empty. The W.A.A.F. with the gasp was reading her poetry again. Two others were knitting service garments, and one a baby's jacket. The men sat and read, or wrote letters or just sat and smoked and did nothing. The hard light beat down on the scene. The telephones were quiet."


The power of a simple task like knitting to calm the nerves, to provide the bare necessities for war heroes and to add to the little tinge of expectation for a new life to come just struck home to me. These days you often come across great nostalgia for the 1940's vintage style but the tragic reality of the era is not one we should forget.

Back to square one with joined up knitting - don't forget to plan your knitting

Baby blanket reverse side

Oh dear! Sometimes its just the basics that trip you up. I have a habit, not a very clever one I know now, of setting off with some random knitting without really knowing what it going to become. This happens most often when we are setting off somewhere in the car and I haven't had chance to organise some knitting to do while in the passenger seat. I often end up just throwing an odd ball of wool and some knitting needles in my bag and start casting on... Something like this happened a few weeks ago.

I had half an idea about making a baby blanket  with little sheep motifs and I some nicely toning shades of cream, brown and grey. But I had already knitted a small mountain of  4" stocking stitch squares before I realised that adding  a 1" border between all the squares was not going to be a very neat idea. And that the grey wool - an early attempt at hand spinning - was far too rough for a baby blanket. So three tone became two tone and half the squares had to be re-knitted.

Joining up the squares remained a problem.  Montese Stanley's Handknitter's Handbook couldn't help me. She devoted a whole chapter to edges and joining emphasising over and again  the particular importance of  formation of the edge stitches on any piece of knitting. I tried several methods of joining with contrast wool but none were really satisfactory. James Norbury's single and wise suggestion was to begin and end each square with 2 rows of garter stitch and begin and end each row in the same way. Making it possible to join with a simple flat seam.

Joined up squares

Some progress has at last been made. I liked the idea of having ridges around the squares on one side and I have finally achieved this by using my linker and my sewing machine. But all those ends to sort out - what a chore and what a time waster!

I will never go down the road with small squares again or set off without a proper plan and preparation. My old Grandma, who knitted all those huge blankets, will be laughing her socks off.

Spare the rod! - first steps in natural dyeing with Golden Rod

Golden Rod dyed wool with the very plants it came from

Its wool week in the UK and I have finally put some time aside to have a go at natural dying. It seems a long time ago now that I first came across Michel Garcia founder of  Couleur Garance*, a botanical garden of dye plants, set in the Chateau de Lauris in Provence. I heard about this magical place via a podcast from the fascinating website of the MAIWA foundation** a Canadian organisation set up in 1997 by MAIWA handprints to help eradicate poverty in rural villages in poorer countries. Sadly I have not been there yet but it inspired me to see what I could do in my own back garden. Its taken me a while but I am pleased as Punch that I tried it out.

Looking round the garden for suitable plants earlier this year I was a bit miffed to find out that the massive yellow plants I had been trying to eradicate for several years was Golden Rod. A perfect plant for dying yellow it's really hard to control once it's on your patch. This years outcrop had to be spared and ideally I had to get it used while the flowers were at their best. I just made it.

I had been looking out for a suitable dye pot for quite a while. Dye pots must be either stainless steel, glass or enamel if you do not want it to affect the finished colour and I wanted it pretty big . I couldn't find anything in my usual haunts for second hand bargains. But a couple of weeks ago a chap round the corner was having a garage sale. He had some lovely antique woodworking tools which were hard to resist and while we were talking I asked if he happened to have any large stainless steel pots he wanted rid of. Next thing he has hopped off to his kitchen and I'm left in charge of the garage sale. He came back with a rather posh steamer complete with inner bowl, strainer and lid. Rather smaller, more complicated and more expensive than my original idea but he turned out to be a right salesman and I left £15 lighter clutching the said pot.

As it turns out the pot with all its extras is ideal. I managed to dye about 4 ozs of wool at a time and it would probably do more.  I decided against throwing the wool in with the flowers and boiled up about 4 or 5 heads for 45 minutes or so before straining. I had forgotten about mordanting the wool so the dye was left outside in tub for a week before I found the mordant kit purchased from George Weil  many months ago. The alum mordant didn't seem too scary, so another 45 minutes of wool simmering ensued before my white Shetland wool finally went into the dye pot for a further 25 minutes.

Getting the wool so hot for so long seemed counter intuitive but luckily I remembered reading that felting is caused by agitation and sudden changes in temperature. So you rinse in hot water first and gradually reduce the temperature of the wool.

I was really chuffed with the results, I was expecting it to be a bit murky but it came out a rich yellow. A second batch in the part exhausted dye pot gave me a lovely primrose.

Next up the onion skins, I have been collecting for a year.

Wooly
*You can get a flavour of the dye garden at  http://www.frenchgardening.com/visitez.html?pid=12016936941558680
**http://www.maiwa.com/foundation/index.html

Come fly with me - butterfly slip stitch

Gate keeper butterfly - photo Peter Morley

We seem to have had a lot more butterflies in the garden this year, maybe its the presence of the runner beans which are knitting their way up the old  aerials, internet and TV cables at the side of the living room window. I had a few early plants in pots, intended for the allotment but other things got the better of me and before I knew it they were completely enmeshed. I put the roots in a big tub they are a bit muddled up but  they are romping away.

Butterfly slip stitch

I have been having a little look at butterfly stitches. There is a  lacy, quite fiddly one, but this really easy butterfly slip stitch pattern is really effective. I came across it in an old (1951) Foyles Handbook by Eunice Close. The stitch pattern for the motif is on the stitch pattern page.