The penguin with the pointy sticks

Fair isle fun

I haven't done much colour work over the last few years - perhaps due to my lace obsession - but a while back I bought yarn to knit Julia by Judy Furlong.     

 

By coincidence a friend also bought yarn for it, in the original colourway shown here - I'd chosen more red/browen tomes so no clash at least.

And that is as far as either of us got. Well no, I had at some point cast on 130-odd stitches and worked a few rows of the 1x1 rib for the back. But that was definitely it.

We occasionally bemoaned this state of affairs with little effect until my friend came up with a challenge. We would make it our knitting for the Six Nations rugby tournament this year. 

With hindsight this may not have been the most sensible combination - it is hard to keep count of stitches when you are leaping out of your seat due to a refs decision or a brilliant try. Also it is quite hard to leap out of your chair when you are knitting one colour in continental and one English style.

But with the back complete I am feeling happy about fair isle again and establishing a smooth technique and even tension. I've becaome more confident with floats - I've worried in the past about carrying yarn over more than five stitches without catching it but having spoken with a friend who is floaring for nine in another pattern (following a masterclass) I'm happily doing seven stitch floats (the most the pattern requires).

I don't know why I haven't been doing colourwork much, now I've returned to it, I'm full of colourful ideas.

 

Meeting a need: manly fingerless gloves

 

The long-suffering Mr Penguin was complaining of cold hands when he was working in our spare room/home office.  I said I didn't have the same problem but he pointed out that this was probably due to my collection of fingerless mitts.

 Ok so mine are fine, often lacy and possibly a bit girly, but eventually a pair of DK fingerless gloves (definitely not mitts - v girly apparently) was agreed on.

But a pattern search revealled nothing suitable. There were few men's fingerless gloves or mitts about and of those that I could find none passed the Mr Penguin test.

So it was out with the measuring tape, plus a sheet of paper where I drew round his hand, a calculator and a bit of swatching. 

And a few days later it was cosy hands all round.

The same day as the gloves had their first test run. we were out with friends when another knitter's partner mentioned he wanted fingerless gloves (with all the same caveats). A definite gap in the pattern market.

So I've written up the pattern and published it - yes really, I've had confidence in my designing and writing skills, to create a simple but hopefully popular pattern.

So if you know of a man with cold hands, help is at hand. Plus in extra good news, these are a stashbuster, using under 200m of DK yarn.

 

Cables - forget your fear

Chatting to new knitters, and indeed those who have been knitting for a while, the fear of cables comes up quite regularly. They'll say something along the lines of loving a particular cable pattern but that they wouldn't know where to start. It's a pity because really if you do stocking stitch neatly there is nothing to be afraid off.

So here is my humble attempt to demystify the cable needle.

Cables are twists, braids or other raised textures created by changing the order stitches are worked. They are typically worked in stocking stitch panels surrounded by reverse stocking stitch (purl on right side, knit on wrong side, so that the "bumps" are on the right side).

 

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The basic cable pattern I'm using here is worked in DK yarn using 4.5mm needles and a cable needle (CN) which is a short double pointed needle which allows you to pick up stitches with one end and knit them on the other - don't worry that will make sense in a moment.

Cast on 31.

Row 1: P7, K6, P5, K6, P7 

Row 2: K7, P6, K5, P6, K7

Repeat these rows twice more.

At this point you have a series of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch and are ready to make your first cable twists.

 

 Row 7: P7, C6F, P5, C6B, P7.

"C6F" is the first cable instruction. The C tells you it is a cable, the 6 that it is worked over six stitches and the F tells you what to do with your cable.

In this case the instruction note for C6F reads: Place the next 3 stitches on the CN and hold to the front of your work (F means front).

 

 The instruction continues: K3 from the left needle, ...

 

  ... then K3 from the CN.

 

 This produces a left leaning twist.

 The second cable instruction C6B means Place the next 3 stitches on the CN and hold to the back of your work; K3 from the left needle, then K3 from the CN.

 

 

This produces a right leaning twist.

 

Row 8: As row 2.

These 8 rows form the pattern.

The final pattern line means you now repeat the 8 rows for the the length of your piece to create regular cable pattern.

 

The pottern after 3 repeats

Cables may also be presented on a chart using symbols - a chart for this cable could look csomething like this where the empty squares represent knit stitches on the right side and purls on the wrong side, dots are purls on the right side and the crossing symbols indicate the cables. Charts always come with a key to explain them and while they may seem daunting at first, they are useful in showing what your knitting will look like.

 This is a basic cable pattern but any type will be explained in the same way, with information on the number of stitches and how many go on the CN either at the front or back.

Once you have mastered this basic tachnique, all types of cable follow the same principles, so the cable world is your oyster. Trust the pattern and enjoy.

 

Having a rubber ball with bangles

 

 It may lead to be hanging about in plumbing supply shops, but inspired by something I saw on my recent travels and by various jewellery trends of the moment I've been experimenting with wire and rubber combos for jewellery. These are prototypes and experiments but they are leading to what will be finished pieces shortly.

 

Silver wire and odd earing

 

 Coloured wire coils

 

 

Torc type necklace with pendant...

 

 

Knitting with hard sums

This week I've been learning about tech editing - the art of checking, editing and grading (sizing) knitting patterns - from the highly regarded tech editor and excellent teacher Jen Arnall-Culliford, who has worked on The Knitter magazine and books such as A Stitch in Time Vol 2.

Tech editing is about making sure knitting patterns work, ie you can understand them, that they tell you the right number of stitches at all times, that they will fit, that you have the right amount of yarn, etc. 

It is about a lot more that just liking knitting, although that helps. It requires an understanding of garment construction, attention to detail, technical understanding of knitting stitches and instructions and sums - and not just the easy adding up ones.

Pythagoras and square roots feature significantly which for me was great - I love sums - but may not be for everyone.

We did have to think and there was lots to learn but we also laughed a lot. I would recommend Jen as a teacher.

For me this was an inspiring course that showed me that I could bring together my organisational, knitting and publishing skills together in a new and satisfying way.

So now I'm fired up to use my new skills and am setting off to promote this new string to my freelance bow.

 

 

Win, win

Look at this lovely selection yarns which I was lucky enough to win in the p/hop Christmas competition.

They were donated by Loop and are Dye for Yarn tussah silk lace (blue), Heaven's Hand Silke (green) and Viola merino lace.

Even better on the day my prize reached me, I also heard that I'd won some stitch markers in the Subway Knits queue clearance KAL draw. This is an effort to actually knit pattern that have been languishing in our Ravelry queues. 

Now some plotting and planning is required.

 

11 shawls in 2011 - or 13 in 11 months

It is done - in January I took up the challenge of knitting 11 lace shawls and stoles during 2011. I followed the rules set by a group on Ravelry that:

"The minimum requirement of meterage is 250 meter (ca 273 yards) whereas 2 must use at least 500 meters (ca 546 yards) of yarn. There are no upper limits to meterage if you want to knit 10 big shawls :) Any shapes will do - but no sleeves and cowls.

The minimum width requirement on scarves, is 10 inches, or 25 centimeters."

In addition, I decided that all mine would feature lace - from complex to v simple - and would be knitted from yarn in my stash on 1 Jan 2011.

So how did I do?

I started on 22 January and finished on 2 December, so that's 11 in 11 months.

I used a range of yarns, mainly wool or wool blends but also silk, cashmere, bamboo and even possum. And a range of shapes rectangle, triangle, hexagon and semicircle.

The yarn weights were cobweb (only the once), laceweight and 2 in 4ply. And I definitely met the meterage requirements: the least yarn used was 360m in the final shawl pictured above and the greatest, just under a kilometer each for the red cobweb stole and the fuchsia pink large semicircle. Only three came in under 500m.

About half have already been given away as gifts so I can't photograph the collection as one but I can at least present a gallery. 

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But why 13? Well I also test knitted two shawls for designers this year.

Was it worth it? Yes, I've learnt a lot about lace, improved my skills and created some beautiful items.

And a new challenge? There are still shawls I want to knit, including a Victorian item that uses 2km+ of yarn. Plus I want to design my own. 

Watch this space.

 

From blank page to bangle: a day of silversmithing

 

As part of my plan to try out as many jewellery techniques as I could, I took a Beginner's Silver day at London Jewellery School early this year. During the day we learnt the basics of cutting, annealing, texturing with a hammer and soldering to produce a ring.

While I was very pleased with my end product, I found the day very hard and wondered if these techniques were really for me. But then I had a revelation - I had been walking round, sawing, hammering, etc with a fractured vertebra (I'd previously been told my back was just badly bruised), which may have impacted on my silversmithing experience.

So I signed myself up for the intermediate workshop. This is a major step up because it isn't a case of following along with the tutor - albeit making your own variations - on a single project. This time each of our group of five had to come up with our own project and design, within the constraints of available materials. Then the tutor Melissa Hunt then worked with each of us to identify the techniques we would need and indeed it the idea was feasible.

The one thing I was sure of was that I wanted to make a cuff-style bracelet.

Plus I like spirals, coils and curves - in metal, fabric, etc - and have often used them. Working in wire recently has seen me play with those shapes a lot.

The question was how to bring this elements together. But as I was sketching and thinking I noticed the ring I was wearing, which had a small coil of wire soldered to it.

That helped me with one element - I would use silver wire to make raised coil end pieces for the bracelet.

On the left you can see a test coil in copper as I played with width and shaping.

But then I was stuck. I wanted to reflect these motifs on the body but couldn't see how.

Melissa had the answer. I could try making a series of scrolls in copper wire and use a roller print technique to impress them into the silver. Roller printing involves annealing (softening) the metal and then placing it and a texture between two large rollers to press the design into the piece.

So the first jobs were to cut the sheet metal to length and to test the roller printing idea on a scrap of copper. I need a lot of sawing practice but with a bit of vigorous filing I did produce a neat piece.

As for my test piece:

 There was some distortion but that was useful in working out the settings for the real piece.

Plus it showed that there is no chance of reusing a a copper motif.

So after a spot of gentle scroll rolling it was time for the moment of truth. I attached my motifs to a strip of sellotape and alligned them on the annealled bracelet metal.

Then the moment of truth - the whole thing went into the rollers. I didn't get it quite right at the beginning - so admit that one end of one scroll impression isn't perfect (the pictures avoid this little blemish) - but over all it worked.

Then all that was left was shaping the ends, crating and attaching the ends and shaping the actually bracelet with all the intermediate heating, cooling and cleaning stages.

Plus Melissa had a new challenge for me. We'd orginally talked about soldering the wire motifs to the bracelet but she now reckoned I should consider riveting them instead. This meant working out how to build pins into the centre of my spirals (as in my test copper cols, left) and drilling holes into my piece. 

The drilling worked with a lot of help from Melissa because we had trouble with fine enough drill bits and then it was time to rivet the piece. The drilling is the scary bit - if the pins fit in the holes (and they did) the rest is about good soldering and finishing.

Silver soldering involves painting your joint with borax flux, heating the area with a small blow torch in one hand and adding tiny pieces of silver solder with tweezers.

Then you snip of the excess pins and file down the bumps. This is another worrying moment. My joints held but one of my fellow students managed to file through one of hers and had to start again.

And then there is plenty of polishing and cleaning up to do before a final shine up in the tumbler to produce a pretty piece.

The domestic goddess needle roll or more than one use for a tea towel

There's something about a new tea towel - the crispness of the fabric and the interesting colours and prints. It is a strange thing that we put so much design effort into something for wiping plates.

In fact my Gran used them for décor as well. Every new year a bright calendar tea towel went into the plastic poster hanger on the wall and the old one entered drying rotation. And as a drama school student years ago I had a tea towel print of Shakespeare’s First Folio on my bedsit wall because I couldn’t find it on a conventional poster.

The designs often catch my eye and I found myself wondering if they could put to other uses. Then I saw one particular design while I was casting about for the perfect project for a handmade gift for a particular individual - and suddenly inspiration struck. 

Fold a tea towel into thirds length ways and you can see it becomes just the tings for storing double pointed knitting needles - well it certainly looked like that to me.

So I embarked on a test project for myself with two tea towels (spotty for the lining), some interfacting and bias binding.

 

It’s a simple design, creating an envelope and flap and then stitching divisions into the pocket.

 

With my own test roll, I found a tea cup button, to secure a ribbon tie. 

All that was left to do was to organise my DPNs - good news for my partner who is now less at risk of a dnagerous encounterwith a stray pointy stick.

It worked so then I could make the gift,. the “Tunnocks Teacake special” – a design chosen because the friend is a fan of the snack.

This one is lined with some toning fabric rather than another tea towel but the same principle applies.

I was so pleased with the result I was tempted to keep both but in the end I delivered the gift to a happy reaction.

 

Isn’t it great when a plan comes together?

 

 

 

Unravelling NHS

This morning the knitivist GingerKnits of p/hop fame had a moment of genius, coming up with the prefect metaphor for everyone worried/angry about the impact of the current NHS reforms.

The idea is to knit an NHS logo - the bigger the better is how one conversation is going - documenting with video or photographs the time it takes to craft something. I'm keen to get a group together to craft a logo while talking (on camera) about why the NHS is important to them. 

And then to show how quickly it can be unravelled - with a giant version for example this could be done outside a hospital, DH building, etc.

There is also the idea that you could craft other objects that show what the NHS means for you - an inhaler, incubator, healthy limbs - using the same recording and ripping approach.

At the moment this is the germ of a protest idea but @GingerKnits, the Undercover Owl (@UndercoverOwl) and me (@lpurplepenguin) are co-ordinating the suggestions on twitter (#unravellingNHS - my major creative contribution so far), via our blogs and on Ravelry. 

I'm paricularly keen to hear about ideas for recording the projects and showing the passage of time, and for help working out patterns for the letters N, H, S - especially for a freestanding S.

If you are angry or frustrated about the NHS changes, this could be the protest for you encorporating as it does the beneficial mental health and calming affects of craft.