Short & Sweet

A short and sweet story: This morning I found a handknitted shawl in Glasgow City Centre. I worried because if I had lost a shawl, I would be absolutely heartbroken.

I picked up the shawl and sent out a tweet: Did you lose your knitted shawl in Glasgow city centre this morning? Nip into John Lewis Glasgow haberdashery dept & describe it!

A lot of lovely people retweeted me, but I still fretted. I posted on Ravelry too and though I got some lovely notes, I did not get any leads.

So, after work was done, I sat down to look through the Ravelry project database. The yarn was easy to identify: 218 pages of projects!? Ughr! I decided that it would be quicker to look through the Ravelry pattern database and thankfully the shawl pattern was fairly distinct with just 52 projects to its name. Using the combination of yarn and pattern I found the project - and the knitter.

The knitter is in Germany which threw me. However, I twigged it was a knitter with Scottish connections and I sent her a tentative Rav message: I know this is a long shot but..

And you know what? It was the right knitter! And the knitter's mum will be reunited with her handknitted shawl! Isn't the internet (and especially Ravelry) a wonderful, wonderful place?

Coffee & Bagl

Spring arrived and so did a little baby. A good internet friend had a baby boy and in the grand tradition of knitters everywhere, I made a little something for the baby. I knew these things before I started knitting: 1) the little family lives near the sea, so I wanted a nautical flavour to the project; 2) it was going to be a boy; 3) plenty of people would be knitting for the baby, so I would be wise to knit something slightly bigger than a new-born size; 4) the mother expressed a love for modern Scandinavian-style childrenswear; and 5) the mother is a knitter so she'd appreciate whatever I made.

With all these things in mind, I narrowed down my pattern choices quite quickly. The Latte Baby Sweater was a big contender but I had problems sourcing a 4-ply yarn with a suitable colour range here in the UK. Denme was released just as I was pottering around on Ravelry, but the style was very much geared towards newborns as was the sizing, although the sizing issue would not have stopped me. Beach Baby ticked so many of my boxes but I was unsure about how much knitting time I would have on my hands and how much I would have the alter the yoke shaping (the notes on Ravelry were very helpful).

So I ended up choose Elizabeth Smith's Little Coffee Bean Cardigan and I am so very glad that I did. It was a very easy knit - it is a top-down raglan cardigan which is as easy as it gets - but it was made even easier by how much attention the designer had lavished on the tiny details that are easy to overlook.

An example: when you move from ribbing into stocking stitch, you have a row of fabric that is ever so slightly distorted. Elizabeth Smith knows this and works around this in her pattern, so your stripe sequence is not distorted. It is a tiny detail - just one row - but I really appreciate the designer caring about this one row. If she cares this much about a free pattern, I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with her commercial patterns.

Back to the Coffee & Bagl cardigan. So, I chose my pattern and as it was written for worsted-weight yarn, I quickly decided to use Cascade 220 which is available in a gazillion colours from Get Knitted (among other places). It is a good workhorse yarn and for baby items that is exactly what I want.

Going back to the nautical theme, I decided against the obvious navy/white colour scheme and plunged for a softer, more vintage-looking combination of beige and muted teal-blue. I really like the combination - it is subtle and looks classy.

As for the buttons, I opted for some coconut buttons I once scored in a really good eBay deal. I have used them before and I still have a few left. I really do like how they pick up the brown tone of the beige yarn.

As you can tell, I really liked this project and I was very happy with the end result. It came out exactly how I pictured it. How often can you can that? I took my time getting the finishing just right so all-in-all I probably spent about a week's knitting time on this little nugget - and finished it just in time for another little nugget to enter the world.

Welcome to the world, Baby Bagl.

Eurovision Knitwear

Earlier this week I was doing some Eurovision punditry for ESC Insight (the podcasts will be available soon). As a result I can bring you Eurovision knitwear. Iceland's promotional video offers great knitwear alongside its top-tipped, but slightly dull song. Enjoy.

PS. I'll have a proper Eurovision blog post up closer to the actual contest. However, I can already say that I am tipping Sweden, Italy and Azerbaijan as the biggest scoring countries on the night.

Frontier & A Bike

My knitting mojo seems to have returned - although I probably jinxed it by saying that. I have finished two things - neither of which I can show you right now - and I have cast on for a new project. Luckily I can show you this one.

This is going to be Frontier by Julia Frank. Julia is a knitwear designer that works within the realm of deconstructing traditional knitwear ideas: she works with relatively fine yarns knitted at very loose gauge and with dropped-stitch patterns worked across large areas. Her work is a tiny bit more commercial now she is designing for Rowan: Frontier interprets the loose gauge and the dropped stitches within the context of a cropped summer cardigan. (Oh, and I also really, really like Julia Frank's Clara jumper from the recent Studio 26. Knitted bottom-up in the round with a yoke .. but this traditional construction just seems so fresh in Frank's hands.)

Anyway. Frontier. I am using Rowan Pima Cotton in "Bark". I am always wary of knitted with inelastic fibres like cotton or silk, but my hands are doing just fine. It has been a quick knit due to knitting a DK yarn on 5.5mm needles using a drop-stitch pattern. I had to adjust to the double whammy of a loose gauge and dropped stitches (either is fine, combined they are interesting). It helped when I changed from my customary circs to straight (bamboo) needles to stop the wraps getting tangled. I am just one ball into the project but I'm already at the arm hole shaping for the back.

In lieu of any photos of my two FOs, here is a photo of the delicious vegan date cake I had at Artisan Roast during one of my bike trips.

Yes, the bike arrived this week. I cannot begin to tell you what a difference having a bike has made to my emotional wellbeing.

When I lived in Denmark, I used to bike everywhere - it is simply part of the Copenhagen lifestyle - but I have been reluctant to get a bike here for a number of reasons (traffic & health being two major ones). Recently I have seen a rise in the number of people biking around Glasgow and I decided I might as well join them. I am so very glad I did. Apparently I never feel quite at home in a place before I can navigate it on a bike. Glasgow belongs to me  now.

I am also very amused by the male bikers on their 17-gear racers who look at me with disdain as they race past me - and whose facial expressions turn positively green with sourness when this skirt-wearing lass on a three-gear classic ladies' bike catches up with them at the red light.

And, yes, I wear a helmet and I am significantly less suicidal on a bike than I was back in Copenhagen (where everything goes if you are biking). Don't worry.

Happiness is a red bike.

Objects Finished, Begun and Planned

Did you know that March is Ravelry's National Crochet Month? While Ravelry is not a nation (and I think the nation in question is not mine), it does coincides with me finishing a big crochet project. If you are a relatively experienced crocheter, you will know that crochet works up a lot faster than knitting. I spent less than two weeks making this shrug and I reckon I could even have had it finished within a week if I had worked on it exclusively.

The pattern is Fifi from the new Rowan Holiday Crochet book. (You can actually win a signed copy of the book on Ravelry right now. Go here for details) and I used just over four hanks of Rowan Creative Linen in "Leaf".

Interestingly, Creative Linen is technically a worsted weight, but I used a 4mm hook as called for in the pattern and it worked beautifully. I made no modifications and I crocheted a size L as I tend to do with Rowan crochet patterns. As I noted on Ravelry, I worried that the cotton/linen content of the yarn might wreck my hands, but my hands are absolutely fine. I would love to work with the yarn again - the colours are really saturated and it's very soft.

Seeing as Elsinore is off flying free in the world (and thank you to everyone who made it a trending pattern on Ravelry - that blew my mind!), I have cast on for a new shawl project.

But, Karie, you have way too many shawls!

Yes, but I also have a lot of shawl designs stashed away in my head and I need them to get out!

This shawl will be the very last in my planned 'Danish collection' and it will be offered in various sizes. Unlike the other shawl patterns I have released, it will be shown in two different kinds of yarn: 1) a smooth indie-dyed sock yarn and 2) a rustic 2-ply yarn. I am always amazed at how different designs can look depending upon the yarn choice and I really want to showcase this with this pattern.

I have cast on with Navia Uno, an interesting Faroese yarn that I have previously mentioned.

As you can see, the construction of Navia Uno is unusual (at least to this non-spinner) with two very different plies: one very tightly spun and one almost unspun. The resulting fabric is very bouncy and soft.

I have also played around with needle sizing a tiny bit. My go-to needle size for most lace is 4mm - indeed the last time I knitted with Navia Uno I used a 4mm - but I wanted something just a tiny bit firmer. So far I cannot stop putting my needles down just to caress the fabric. It is a bit disturbing, I know.

And I predict more shawls in the future. After all, I just picked up these two beauties from the post office.

Remember how I 'settled' for Navia Uno because I couldn't find my favourite Faroese yarn in Copenhagen? Well, I found an online vendor for Snældan yarn.. I know, I know..

Yarnia is based in Norway and carries a really nice selection of Snældan yarns. Somehow I managed to contain myself and only ordered two colourways in the 1ply: one is undyed dark grey and the other is surprisingly enough an olive green version. I am not quite sure how I managed to up yet another olive green laceweight.. but someone somewhere must be trying to tell me something because I ran into a hailstorm blizzard when I went to pick up the parcel.

Well.

Pattern: Elsinore Shawl

Remember yesterday when I mentioned a photo shoot for a new pattern? Well, I can show you the results now!

The Elsinore shawl is now available to buy from Ravelry which is why I can now show you some of the amazing photos we shot in Copenhagen.

I had long wanted to shoot some photos in Denmark as I gather so much of my inspiration from my old homeland. Elsinore proved the perfect pattern: I designed it with a persistent idea of 'flatness' in mind: the stitch patterns are quite pared down in order to showcase the fabulous colour of the yarn. Flat and pared down .. all are words that I could use to describe Nordic light, especially during the winter months.

That is not to say that I think Elsinore is a minimal shawl. I started out wanted to capture 'flatness' but the simple lines turned out to be really flattering once draped over a person.

I was really lucky that my old friend Kirsten Marie agreed to model for me. She sings, she knits, she reads, she translates, she sews - and now she models too. And Kirsten Marie introduced me to a photographer who was interested in the challenge of shooting lace shawls in the depth of winter. Win-win.

The original sample is knitted in OMA superwash merino 4ply in "strange rock'n'rollers". It took roughly 390 yards to knit the sample but I recommend 400 yards in the pattern just to be on the safe side. And as always I recommend using a 4mm (US 6) needle to give the shawl a good deal of drape. The yarn was phenomenal to work with and the colourway was very interesting: it kept changing colour dependent upon where and when I was working on it.

And the last chapter in this story belongs to my poor test knitter, S. She kindly offered to testknit the pattern whilst I was gallivanting in Denmark. Unfortunately this meant she actually testknitted most of my next pattern. Amazingly the wrong chart worked really well with the Elsinore charts and she did not suspect a thing. I felt horribly guilty when I realised what had happened - but it's intriguing that the chart worked!

Elsinore was such a joy to design and knit. It came together very quickly and proved a really relaxing knit for me. I hope you'll enjoy it too.