Pine Bough Cowl # 2

And I am back from holidays... For now anyway!

A few days away in Nice, where the sun has not been shining that much actually... But no matter I am not here to talk vacation, am I?

postcard from the Riviera!

I took my Pine Bough Cowl project with me to work on while on the road, aiming to finish it by the time I got back to the UK. And I guess I would have, if I hadn’t had so many obstacles in my way! It has been quite the trial of patience, let me you...

First, and mainly, my needle broke!

It started to split on my train ride to the airport. Not cool! I was counting on that journey to do a fair bit of the knitting... I fixed the problem à la MacGyver when I got to Nice, and got my hands on some thermal retractable sheath (got that wee trick from an old musician flatmate of mine who used to repair his jacks and cables with this stuff), and it did the trick until one of the needle's end completely detached! Even less cool!!! That was time for some proper surgery. Cut, snip, re-sheath, I got myself a needle that just about last me until I got back to my house. When I switched needles, I saw that the other end was starting to split as well... Oh dear, it was well overdue time to be reunited with all my knitting equipment... 

And if this wasn't enough, I also at times didn’t carry enough yarn when taking the project to knit on the go...

But, eventually, I did complete that God forsaken cowl! (Sorry Dianna, I did enjoy knitting your design, and I do love to wear it now, but quite honestly I am glad I am done with it and its lot of troubles...) And with these few drawbacks I did so by the end of the month too, my own self inflicted schedule! So all in all, success!!!

Shaun modelling the Pine Bough Cowl

Time to move on to other knits now...

Hawaiian trunks # 3

This week, I’m away on a little holiday to France. A well deserved break from the horrible winter weather,  catching up with my friends back home in Nice. But don’t you worry, I’ve been bringing my knitting with me! I have this Pine Bough Cowl to finish, remember? And how am I supposed to past the time in transports if not by doing some needle work!

And did you also think I would leave you without the latest updates on the Hawaiian Trunks designs?

The charts are now pretty much ready for me to start on the shorts as soon as I get back to Edinburgh. Well, I’ll need to get wool shopping first, but then I’ll get to the task to bring these crazy ideas to life! No more distractions! (Except perhaps inspiration for other projects... But that's ok.)

(Somehow my subconscious made me choose orange and brown pencils for the palm tree chart... Which, before I coloured the background with yellow, resulted in a striking resemblance to the logo of a certain coconut flavoured alcoholic beverage... Brain, are you trying to tell me something here???)

I'll be back in few days. Until then...

Hawaiian trunks # 2

Ta-Dah!!!!

Here is it, the hibiscus flower sample!

What do you think?

I think it looks pretty good, a promising start... True, the colours aren’t the best to display the design to its full potential. I used some left over wool here, but of course when I’ll knit the actual shorts I’ll be using some white or other light/pastel tone to contrast on a bright and darker main colour.

And I’ll be using cotton, not wool. I always pictured cotton or a cotton blend to do this project. It just seems the right material for a pair of shorts to be worn in hot hot summers.

Also on Friday afternoon, as I was finishing my sample, I have heard a couple of times this : “but, if you go into the water with these knitted trunks, won’t they shrink?”. I reflected about that a little. And I came to the conclusion that you would need to swim (quite erratically too) in a sea water that is 30°C or more for that to happen.  And even for my nephew on his island in the tropics, for whom these shorts are intended, the ocean doesn’t really get that hot. Correct me if I’m wrong...

Right, now I need to work on polishing and adding a couple of leaves and details to this hibiscus chart. And start the other chart, the one for the sunset with palm trees. This is all quite challenging but very exciting! I shall have these draft drawings ready to show really soon!

Pine Bough Cowl

Sometimes, it is good to knit someone else’s design. Especially so when that someone else is a friend who is trying to build a career and a living out of knitting. And who is crazy talented, providing a beautiful and original fair isle pattern!

When my friend Dianna Potter released this pattern, I immediately adored it! And I set myself to work on this project, quick.

A funny thing happened when I went to buy the wool. I have over the past few months used a lot of cold colours in my projects, a lot of blues and greens and greys. So for this one I just wanted some warmer tones, some yellows and oranges with a nice shade of fuchsia or brown for contrast. I spent an hour in the shop, choosing the colours for my “sweater for the neck”, as Dianna calls it. And as you can tell from the picture below, I didn’t buy any of the tones I had in mind, but some green and blue yarns! Unbelievable! What had happened there? Where and how did I lose track of my original plan?

And then a day or two later, I realise that I have lost one of the blue yarns. Dilemma! Do I get another ball of blue, risking ending up with wool from different dye lots?  Or... Or!!! Do I choose a second contrast colour?...

Aaaah, I think this last idea is a good one, and that the white is quite matching with the main green and make the contrast blue stand out a little more too. No?

I am now halfway through this knit, and I’m loving it. However I’m keeping the last 50% for next week when I’ll be flying to France for a few days; it will make a perfect holiday project. Expect to see the end result at the end of the month!

Find the free pattern for the cowl here, and also check out Dianna’s designer’s profile on Ravelry or find her on the Paper Tiger blog (from my blog roll on the right of your screen).

Hawaiian trunks # 1

After the Christmas craziness of knitting for what seems half of my entourage, for the past couple of months I have been working on a few projects that I’m keeping preciously for myself. But now it is time for me to realise that the season of friends and family birthdays is soon upon me again. Starting with my baby nephew’s second birthday.

Knitting something for my nephew’s birthday is always a tricky situation. Firstly because I have two nephews, and although it is the youngest we are celebrating soon, I can’t just not knit for the oldest (who’s 7) at the same time. And vice versa.  So, it is not one project I need to think about, but two. What kind of Auntie would I be otherwise?

Secondly, because my sister and her family live on a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They spend Christmas refreshing themselves in a swimming pool, and their winter is as cold as a Scottish summer is hot. Scarves and big woolly hats and jumpers are rather useless over there...

But recently, exploring Ravelry for some other purpose, I came across this pattern of trunk shorts from the book More knitting in the Sun,by Kirsti Potter. It’s perfect! These two boys have their share of light jumpers already, and these shorts are wonderfully fitting for their environment and their lifestyle – running everywhere barefoot.

But I can’t just knit this in one colour, can I? No no no, not me!

Thinking of tropical islands, with sandy beaches and volcanoes (yes, you read that right) and surfers, I choose to give these shorts a Hawaiian look. I want big flowers, bright colours, possibly a sunset and palm trees! Well, I have to make two pairs of shorts, so I have room for experiment...

But let’s start with the obvious Hawaiian shirt design, the big fat flowers. So on Saturday I’ve been looking at drawing a first chart of a hibiscus flower. I simply typed “hibiscus design” in the search engine, looked at the images results and after selecting one I liked, I drew it by hand on my trusty squared Pukka pad. Ah yes, I draw my charts by hand; no tracing paper, where would be the fun in that!

working station

And a draft hibiscus chart was born!

A trial knit is undergoing, and I’m really excited to see how it will turn out! You will, of course, be the first ones to see the result of this experiment; with a picture posted here most likely by the end of the week.

The first charts

And so Christmas 2012 was approaching. Fast.
But no matter, I had just discovered fair isle and fair isle my friends would get as presents. Whether they liked it or not. And even if there was only a few weeks to spare before D-Day (or Christmas Day).
I knitted 3 fair isle hats in the space of a month (along with a "normal" hat, a cowl or two, and a bolero). It was very much the only stuff I did while hibernating at the beginning of winter.

All hats are based on a pattern found in a old magazine from my Mum's, dated from the 90's I think.
I didn't really keep notes of things completing the projects, I didn't think I'd have to use any of it again! But I think it goes as follow :
Cast on 96 stitches on a 3.5mm circular needle.
Work 8 cm on 2x2 rib
Switch to 4mm circular needle and knit a round, increasing 1 stitch every 20 stitches (100 st)
Knit the 32 rounds of fair isle chart
Switch to double pointed needles, and start decreasing 10 stitches every 2nd round, until 20 stitches remains.
Decrease to 10 stitches.
Close hat.

Now, these are the instructions for a hat that would actually fit someone's head nicely. The first hat I've made (with the lettering) was too small and the second one (with the pandas) ended up too big. But it's like they say, third time's the charm and the green hat was the right size!
I have used Rowan's Pure Wool DK for all three hats, with also some K1 Yarns Scappa wool as contrast colors on the green hat.

1- "I love the beat" hat
I had two charts to do that one. One for the 32 rounds of the hat's main body, and one for the "I love the beat" lettering. The latter looks like a banner, I've worked it on a 50 stitches width basis, so it would be knitted twice to fit the circumference of the hat.

finished!

and of course he has to wear the hat with the change of rounds at the front. ..

2- Panda hat
The reason this one ended up too big is because I liked the black pandas so much I just felt like I'd fit some more and did the blue ones. Therefore extending the length of the hat a few rounds too many. Oops!

pandas in the detail

3- Green hat
A simple fair isle design, but it hit the spot with the friend who received this hat a present. Or so he told me, I hope it was an honest thought!...

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, there wasn't any princess, who wasn't living in a land far far away.
There was me, Sylvie. Born and raised in southern France (which actually is sort of a far far away land, depending where you're reading this post from...), and I've always been surrounded by knits and wool and needles thanks my Mum.
I am a child of the 80's, and in the 80's, fair isle seemed to be all the craze. Or at least my sister and I used to wear quite a few fair isle and intarsia jumpers then, so it was the craze in our household at any rate.

showing some Mummy love, wearing my favorite fair isle jumper she knitted

Funnily enough I never got into knitting when I was a kid, but somehow the failed attempts to learn to cast on and stitch and purl that I made then didn't go wasted when I decided, 2 years or so ago and now living as an expat' in Edinburgh, to pick up the needles again. Success!!!
Quickly I felt like I wanted to move on to beyond basic skills. So I went to a knitting class, and was taught by Vala how to knit fair isle (find her on Ravelry here)...

my first fair isle rounds

the end product of the fair isle class

And an obsession was born...
Obsession doesn't even start to describe it. I went to the class in late November, therefore quite a lot of of my friends ended up with fair isle hats in their Christmas stockings. And I just dived in in creating my own patterns. I went a little bit nuts over this, but I've made it to the schedule. But this, my friends, will be the subject of a future post. Or two.
Although I am far to have become the most skilled of knitters (always progressing!), my mind is buzzing with so many ideas of designs to turn into color charts that I just had to put it out there. Out there being this blog, on the world wide web, an entire world to share my crazy ideas with. What I aim is to share with you the charts and designs I am creating, without pretention. I'm doing it, the knitting and the blogging about it, because I'm having so much fun with it!!! And I'm crossing my fingers that you'll be having fun reading me and trying my crazy fair isle designs!
Until then, my fellow knitters...