Odd Ball Knitting

Swallowtail ...

2008-08-19T10:39:40+01:00

...the last butterfly of summer?

This is Evelyn Clark's Swallowtail shawl from Interweave Knits Fall 2006. I started (and finished) it in April, but I've only just got round to blocking and photographing it - too many other projects on the go.

Quick details - knitted using one skein of Kraemer Yarns Sterling Silk & Silver (bought from IKnit London) on 3.5 mm needles. Replaced the nupps with silver lined glass rocaille beads. I also chose to demarcate the changes between each stitch pattern with a purl row, as it looked better.

International Sheep Shearing - Aragon Farm, Sissinghurst, 13/7/2008

2008-07-13T17:07:25+01:00

For those of you not in Kent, you may not know that the Sheep Shearing Contest was dropped from the programme of events at the Kent County Show, due to people complaining about the sheep getting shaving nicks ...

Enter Hugh Skinner, of Aragon Farm in Sissinghurst, who came to the event's rescue by offering to hold the contest on his own farm. Holly, Emily and I had a good time there this morning watching the sheep-shearing, ferret racing, Loose Women Morris Dancers, watching sheep-dog trials, hand-spinning demonstrations, clambering on tractors, and eating locally made sausages. Nice to meet up with Saira, and Jan, as well.

Overall, looked like a really successful event - see the rest of the photos here - and at under a tenner for the three of us, a bargain day out (cf. Kent County show - family tickets £45 ...!!). Hope they'll do it again next year ...

Appledene Alpacas Open Day 22/6/2008

2008-06-23T10:32:06+01:00

Open Day at Appledene Alpacas, Little Underlyn, Maidstone Road, Marden, Kent, TN12 BG9.

Emily and I enjoyed a pleasant hour or so, and discovered loads of interesting stuff about Alpacas, as well as the chance to see them close up, chat to the lady doing the handspinning demonstration, and admire the UKAlpaca yarns on sale (Appledene are a supplier to them). For the handspinners among you, there were also some fleeces on sale, priced between 20 & 30 quid.

Emily hadn't known what an alpaca was before (can this be possible? - a knitter's daughter too, tsk!), but following the death of her beloved hamster last month is busy nagging to have an alpaca .... When we win the lottery and can afford a field and a pair of alpacas, eh?

Anyway, for those of you interested, Open Day dates for this year are

22nd June (yesterday)
13th July (clashes with the Sheep Shearing trials at Aragon Farm)
20th July
27th July
10th August
24th August
31st August (also a Basic Husbandry day for those of you lucky enough to have a spare field and money to buy a couple of alpacas!)
7th September (another Basic Husbandry day)

Opening hours will be 10am - 4pm

They're expecting cria (babies) in the next month or so, so it looks like good dates might be the ones at the end of July / beginning of August.
Phone number for further info 01622 831119

I am aware that I have not updated for some time, and yes there has been knitting (lots!) ... just been too lazy to organise any photos. Hoping to address the problem over the next few days.

Addictive ...

2008-05-14T20:59:20+01:00

guess what I've been playing for the last few weeks?

2008-05-14T20:55:17+01:00

Mary-Lou Quick

Kauni cardigan finished ...

2008-03-30T18:20:11+01:00

... will post full finishing details in a day or so, but for the moment, here are a few photos

Pythagoras for Knitters pattern

2008-03-19T13:38:15+00:00

And so to the pattern itself:

- 4 balls Veritas Colorado (between 200 – 300 yards of aran weight ribbon yarn)

- 2 balls of Zettl Cotton-Classic Cable DK (200 yards of Cotton DK)

- A pair of 6mm needles

- A 4.5 – 5mm crochet hook

Note that crochet terminology is English. US terms are given in brackets. Also note that tension is not terribly important for this piece. It should be loose to allow for the springiness of the yarn, so although the recommended needles given for Veritas Colorado are 4.5 - 5mm, I opted to use 6mm to give it a bit of drape.

With ribbon yarn, and 6mm needles, cast on 2 stitches by the e-wrap method

- Row 1: Knit

- Row 2: (K1, K1tbl) in the first stitch, K1 – (3 stitches)

- Row 3: (K1, K1tbl) in the first stitch, K to end – (4 stitches)

Repeat Row 3 till you have 10 stitches altogether

- Nexr Row: K5, yo, K5 – (11 stitches)

- Next Row: K5, yo, K1, yo, K5 – (13 stitches)

- Next Row: K5, yo, K3, yo, K5 – (15 stitches)

Continue in this way working 2 more stitches each time between the yo’s until you have just enough yarn to cast off. Cast off loosely.

Now work the edging: With crochet hook, and cotton DK, starting from the cast off edge, work 1 dc (US, work 1 sc) into each cast off stitch across the cast off edge, then work 1 dc (US, work 1 sc) into each garter ridge along each of the 2 short sides. Join to the first dc with a slip stitch. Turn. (the remainder of the edging will only be worked along the short sides)

1^st Row: *Ch 5, skip 3 dc, dc into next dc*, repeat to last 3 dc before corner, (ch 5, skip 3 dc, dc into corner) twice, *ch 5, skip 3 dc, dc into next dc*, repeat to end. Turn. (US: *Ch 5, skip 3 sc, sc into next sc*, repeat to last 3 sc before corner, (ch 5, skip 3 sc, sc into corner) twice, *ch 5, skip 3 sc, sc into next sc*, repeat to end. Turn.)

2^nd Row: Ch 5, dc in first ch-sp, *ch 5, dc in next ch-sp*, repeat to corner ch-sp, work additional ch 5, dc in corner space, *ch 5, dc in next ch-sp*, repeat to last ch-sp, ch 3, dc in last dc. Turn. (US, Ch 5, sc in first ch-sp, *ch 5, sc in next ch-sp*, repeat to corner ch-sp, work additional ch5, sc in corner space, *ch 5, sc in next ch-sp*, repeat to last ch-sp, ch 3, sc in last sc. Turn.)

Repeat 2^nd row once more.

Make a fringe from 8 inch lengths of cotton DK. Knot lengths using double hitch knot with 2 lengths of fringe through each chain space. Trim fringe if necessary, and darn in any loose ends of yarn.

Pythagoras for Knitters ...

2008-03-18T19:10:18+00:00

... or how a little knowledge of Geometry can be a Good Thing, especially for Stash-Busters ...

Recently, I was doing a spot of stash-busting, and I decided to knit my sister a little shawl from some ribbon-y yarn in stash. It's a straightforward matter to knit a triangular shawl, especially in garter stitch, and we probably all know how it's done ... cast on 2 stitches, and knit them, then on each following row, increase one stitch at the beginning of the row, usually by knit 1, knit 1 tbl, then knit to the end of the row. When the resulting triangle is big enough for what we want, we cast off. So far, not very difficult ... but how do we know if we have enough yarn for what we want to do?

And that's when Geometry can be our Best Friend ... I had four balls of Veritas 'Colorado' (bought in Veritas in Mons, Belgium), that's this stuff here

no yardage on the ball band, though I would guess it was around about the 60 yard mark, it's a type of slightly glittery 'railroad' ribbon, with little tufts along the edges, and when knitted up, it looks rather like this

I had originally intended to knit a scarf with it, but decided to be a bit cleverer ... hence the shawl, but I wasn't really sure just how far the 240 yards would go, and I didn't want to end up with something too small to be of any use. Enter Pythagoras, and one of the only two formulas that most people know (the other one is e=mc^2)! Knitting the shawl in the way I've described gives you an isosceles triangle (two sides the same length, two angles the same), but more importantly, the angle between the two short sides is a right angle, like this

and once I knew how big a triangle one ball would make (12 inches on each of the short sides and about 17 inches on the long side), it was a relatively simple matter to work out that 4 balls would give me a triangle twice as long on each side (ie 24 inches for each short side, and about 34 inches on the long side), like this

each right-angled triangle in the diagram represents one ball of yarn. Interestingly, to make that triangle three times as long on every side as the original, you need 9 balls

... I will leave it to you to work out how many balls you need to knit a triangle 4 or 5 times as long on each side, but here's the sequence - 1, 4, 9, ..., ... - see if you can fill in the missing numbers - no, there is no prize for this (just a sense of satisfaction).

That's all well and good, but what if I'd had only 2, 3 or 5 balls (or some other number of balls of yarn not in that sequence?) Thanks to knowing a bit about right-angled triangles and their properties, I can work that out too, based on the dimensions of a triangle made from one ball of yarn, with the aid of a calculator that can do square roots, or using MS-Excel.

And just so that you can do it too - here's how: Use your calculator to find out the square root of the number of balls you have, eg. the square root of two is a nasty number that goes on for ever, but the first few digits are 1.414213562 (in case you're interested, this type of number is called an irrational number), but you can round it to something more reasonable, say 1.41 (to 2 dp). Now multiply the sides of the triangle you get from 1 ball of yarn by 1.41, ie. if the sides from 1 ball are 10 inches, 10 inches, and 14.14 inches, then 2 balls will make a triangle with sides 14.14 inches, 14.14 inches and 20 inches.

If you want to do the same thing in Excel, type this formula into the first cell (cell A1) in the top left corner of the spreadsheet, '=sqrt(x)' (leave out the quote marks, and replace x with the number of balls of yarn). That gives you the multiplier you need. Now type into another cell '=A1*y' where y is the length of one of the two short sides of the original triangle, and hit enter. Do the same sort of thing in another cell for the long side of the triangle, and now you know how big your finished triangle will be.

(ETA - It occurs to me that some people don't have access to either the right kind of calculator, or MS-Excel, so just for you, here are the square roots for the numbers 1 - 10 (where these are irrational, I've simplified them to 2 decimal place which should be quite sufficient for most purposes)

1, 1.41, 1.73, 2, 2.24, 2.45, 2.65, 2.83, 3, 3.16)

It's a Boy!

2008-03-13T23:45:36+00:00

For those of you that haven't already heard ... text of e-mail from Susoolu ...

"Baba, a boy, finally came out, 5.26pm, weighing 7lb 14oz. He has Tom's hair, so chilled he can fall asleep feeding (and has no problems there either), and is just fine. Ruth is very wiped out, her mobile battery is dead, and a bit dopey right now. But all are fine and well. And they should all be home in a couple of days."

Congratulations to Mummy & Daddy, and welcome Baba!

Awwww ....

2008-02-17T15:10:33+00:00

I wonder if you can guess who these are for ...?

Just for those who like these details, the yarn is Phildar Pure Laine 3 1/2 (a machine washable pure wool DK), the booties are from this pattern by Brooklynhandmade, and I made up the patterns for the matching hat and jumper.