needled

I’ve been writing like a mutha for the past couple of weeks, so no blog time at all. But I have managed to fit in a bit of knitting. In fact, I’m feeling extremely virtuous all round. As well as meeting a publication deadline a month earlier than was necessary (ahem) I also finished off something that has been on my needles since (gulp) 2005. That’s right folks, theres been a two year hiatus since I cast on this:

Kate Watson’s ‘fairly easy fairisle’ cardigan. I think the only reason the 2005 version of me stopped knitting was because she got fed up with the acres of stockinette it takes to make the body. That said, its a very speedy knit, so perhaps she was easily bored back then.

The present day me poohpoohed the earlier me’s colourwork choices and stuck in some extra rows of ‘lotus pink’. I also knitted the cardigan a few inches longer than suggested, and inserted a couple of short rows to raise the back of the neck. It is quite a snug fit

….which is unnusual for this kind of cardigan, but I like it that way. It reminds me of a big, pink licquorice allsort.

Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky (5 x onyx, 1 x lotus pink, 1 x rasberry, 1 x victorian pink)
Needles: 6.5 mm
Pattern: Kate Watson, “fairly easy fairisle”

I found the pattern a little basic and uninspiring, but then I now spurn the kindly wisdom of the pattern makers, for I have grown big headed and and far too full of knitting hubris since I started making things to my own specifications. So I fed my unfounded self-importance some more by making this:

A mitten inspired by some fairisle gloves I saw a couple of weeks ago in town. They were in a shop on the Royal Mile that will remain nameless. This is not a shop of yer usual bonnie Scotland tweedy tourist fayre, but an establishment that stocks extremely expensive knitwear and other garments of a type to make your mouth water. In fact, I have become so notorious for doing just that that the shop owner is aware of who I am. Considering that I never have several hundred pounds to spare on any of her small objects of desire her tolerance is quite gratifying. I saw a sweater in there a couple of years ago that still haunts me vividly. Ah me.

Anyway, while it bears little relation to the glove that inspired it, this is a pleasing, well-fitting left hand mitten knit to my own design on one circular 2.5 mm needle. Its right counterpart is currently in production. Having made just the one, and experiencing the satisfaction of figuring out the mitten anatomy, I am now filled with the urge to turn them out by the hundreds. Truly, I am (s)mitten. I don’t have the same feeling about socks, but I imagine its a similar phenomenon.

however, next time I’m designing my own colour patterns, will someone remind me please not to put three in one row?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present razzle dazzle rose:

a sweater created by yours truly in a mere five days. It is, of course, also the name of a lovely, elegaic song by Camera Obscura, who provided some of the soundtrack to our journeys round Skye a couple of weeks ago.

The yarn is the wonderful stuff I recently bought from Shilasdair Yarns. I bought 450g of the rose colour, and 150g - the last 150g - of that nice deep indigo shade. I saved the indigo for the yoke, thinking there would not be enough for stripes elsewhere. I really like the balance of colours in the finished sweater and have enough of both colours left over for a hat…and perhaps some mittens. In the end, the whole sweater only used 400g of yarn.

From start to finish, this was an immensely satisfying knit. I spent several days picturing what it would look like, and anticipating the knitting. After working up a swatch and adjusting a few calculations from existing well-fitting sweaters, EZ and Ann Budd, I knitted a simple seamless yoke from the bottom up, with no pattern, fitting it to myself as I went along. It was incredibly mesmeric to knit. And I was determined I would have it finished before it was time to begin work again on Monday….By lunchtime today, as I worked on the yoke, I had entered a sort of knitting nirvana, coloured rose and indigo, and constituted entirely of goathland aran. World outside? What world outside?

By 6pm I had a perfectly fitting sweater, with no seams to sew up and only a few ends to weave. Huzzah! Yarn rhapsody! Unadulterated woolly smugness!

Its a good job you can’t see my fixedly staring eyes, which have taken on a cartoon-like aspect, composed of woolly pink and purple spirals.

Did I mention the sweater fits me really well? It does.

Yarn: Shilasdair Goathland Aran (300g shade 441. 100g shade 451).
Needles: 5mm and 5.5mm
Pattern: My own, with some help from Ann Budd and Elizabeth Zimmermann.

There was not much time for knitting while on hols up north - but I did manage to get a serious yarn fix…On a very rainy day we found Shilasdair yarns on Skye’s Waternish peninsula. (The name is gaelic for flag iris, one of the many plants used by the company in their range of natural dyes). There was a dyeing workshop and lovely store with a breathtaking range of handspun and hand dyed yarns in the most gorgeous colours. It took some considerable effort to resist rolling around in the extremely deluxe (and correspondingly pricey) baby camel and cashmere blends. The shop also sold the owner’s garment designs as kits and, stocked some locally knitted finished sweaters and cardigans. (I had earlier met one of these knitters in Plockton, who spoke very highly of the company). The best of the designs showcased the range of colours that could be achieved through the dyeing process - there were some wonderful sweaters in several muted hues of green and rose.

I bought some very reasonably priced and excellent quality 2 ply goathland, in two lovely shades:

I spent several hours in the car drawing up a mental picture of the seamless yoked sweater, EZ style, that I would make with it. When we got home, I began:

The deep indigo shade will feature in dense stripes on the yoke. And what a pleasing and speedy knit it is.

I’d really recommend Shilasdair. It is clearly a company with a definite and admirable ethos. This ethos is evident in the beautiful colours and excellent quality of the yarns and garments it sells. On this score, less highly recommended is Teo’s handknits, on the main Skye road through Broadford. There were, again, some lovely yarns here - but I was much less certain about the rationale behind the products. The shop and its stock were much more firmly addressed to a tourist sensibility. This is of course fair enough given the market, but I felt that some of the information about the yarns might be seen as slightly misleading. The signs didn’t distinguish between hand spun and commercially produced yarns, and under a large notice saying “Harris Yarns” they were selling Rowan’s dubious (and discontinued) Scottish tweed range at an inflated price (for an account of the blatant and ludicrous misuse of the Harris name in this brand line see this from the Harris Tweed Authority and Alice Starmore)There was a basket of yarn bargains from which I bought 600g of a heftily reduced aran weight cashmere….but I felt a bit dirty in doing so.

its a much deeper russet colour than it appears in the pic….