Twisp of Fate

We returned home last night, from almost a week away at the Coast (aka Seattle/Anacortes).  Took the cats with us and they traveled very well – we stayed at the La Quinta Inn near the Seattle Center, which is a pet-friendly hotel, and very comfortable too.  Spent a lot of time with friends and family, and we saw The Hobbit in 3D at the Imax Theater at the Seattle Center.  Loved it!

While we were gone, I had an inquiry about the Mosaic Mojo Hat pattern from a blog follower.  So I made it a first order of business today to get my designer and store information set up, and put the PDF pattern up for sale on Ravelry.

Here is the link:  Mosaic Mojo Hat

and it is also listed in my blog sidebar under “Where to Find My Work.”

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As promised, here are pictures of the more recent handknit hats – “more recent” meaning from early October to date.  Most of these are from my own “Mosaic Mojo Hat” pattern, which I sell locally in hardcopy.  And yes, I do intend to get it out there on Ravelry but I haven’t set up my designer account yet.

I never really intended to knit these to sell, but had a few hats displayed with the pattern at the Winthrop Gallery so people could see how it turns out.  People started buying them, and  I have odd balls of nice knitting yarn laying around (and picked up more at the stash reduction sale at knitting retreat – real cheap!)  So for now I am having fun coming up with different color combinations and putting them out at the two galleries for sale.

So here they are, more or less in chronological order:

Mosaic Mojo Hat – handspun dark brown with silk flecks & rust Rowan Kid Classic

…and a vintage button on top! SOLD almost immediately.

Mosaic Mojo – violet Cascade 220 & Rowan Tapestry (soy silk & wool) – SOLD

Crown of Leaves in Welcomme lambswool & angora tweed yarn I have had for about 30 years – SOLD

… had to finish with darker lambswool yarn and a vintage metal button

Mosaic Mojo in Noro “Silver Thaw” variegated wool/angora & pink Rowan “Kid Classic”

Mosaic Mojo in Noro “Silver Thaw” variegated & olive Rowan “Kid Classic”

There was another one right about here, but I failed to get a picture, and it was sold last weekend.

Mosaic Mojo in bright purple Cascade 220 & Noro “Kureyon” variegated wool – SOLD

Mosaic Mojo in dark red Cascade 220 & Noro “Silver Thaw” variegated

Mosaic Mojo in olive Rowan “Kid Classic” & Noro “Kureyon” variegated wool

Earwarmer hat knit with hand-spun yarn from a merino/tencel roving I dyed at a workshop

They sold 3 hats last weekend at the Winthrop Gallery, so I am just soldiering on here – until the end of December, at least.

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Before I left for spinning camp in late February, I realized I had never finished up spinning and/or plying some of the projects we had undertaken 2 years previously.  Ridiculous!  That year the theme had been “Spinning for Traditional Knitting.”  We spun different kinds of fleeces different ways, to make yarns suitable for Cowichan style sweaters, traditional Aran knitting 5-ply, and Icelandic lace.

We had worked from 5 or 6 different Icelandic sheep fleeces, in a range of colors from white to gray to brown to black.  Judith showed us how to use the electric carder to de-hair the locks, then the undercoats were carded into spinning batts.  The goal was to produce a 2-ply yarn suitable for lace knitting, in a variety of colors.  I had prepared all the wool and spun some of it, but still had a number of batts left to spin.  So I finished those up and plied them all.  Before I left for Orcas this year, I went through a number of my knitting books, including the wonderful Three-cornered and Long Shawls by Sigridur Halldórsdóttir (in Icelandic with an English translation provided, and available from Schoolhouse Press).  I liked the look of those shawls, but knew I didn’t have enough yarn for something that large, nor was my handspun yarn that fine a weight.  Then I remembered seeing a wonderful scarf which is a free pattern on Knitty:  Fleece by Kieran Foley.

So here is my version of Fleece, which is written for a sock weight yarn.  I cut the size down by 30 sts (one full repeat) as my yarn was a little heavier and I had a limited amount.  I changed the colors whenever it seemed time, with the goal of using up everything I had!

I had also spun, but not plied, the wool from a Clun Forest sheep (a down breed).  We were supposed to make a 5-ply for aran knitting, to get a smooth rounded yarn that would show cable and other stitch patterns well.  Before this year’s camp, I went to work on plying it up and knitting it into a hat (I have to admit I cheated and only made a 4-ply).  I didn’t have quite enough for the whole hat, so made the initial ribbing from a charcoal gray handspun I had laying around.

The pattern is Crown of Leaves by Faina Goberstein, available from Twist Collective as a PDF download.

I made the largest size, and also added one additional cable repeat at the beginning of the crown section, so the hat would be a little taller.  It fits me well and is my new favorite hat!

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Here’s a “finished object” in the knitting department.  I started it the first weekend of November while at knitting retreat.  It’s an adaptation of a pattern called “Bobble Shirt” by Carol Lapin in the first Jamieson’s Shetland Knitting Book (I have added a link because it is still available both new and used).

My version of the Bobble Shirt

The main yarn was a lovely handpainted Blue Face Leicester DK from Fleece Artist, a dyer in Nova Scotia.  I bought two skeins in the Ebony colorway at Knit Purl in Portland, OR several years ago.  It’s time had come!  Each skein was 250 gms, 450 meters – so I had about 1000 yds of DK weight, which knits up at 5-1/2 sts per inch on a US 6 (4 mm) needle.  For the two bottom tiers or layers, I rummaged through my box of discontinued Rowan Designer DK and found the cocoa brown and dark gray that seemed to work with the handpaint.  I needed two 50-gm balls of each of those colors, but only had one of the gray, so I had to substitute something “close but different” to finish the bottom layer – but it is hidden underneath the cocoa layer and you will never see it.

So here are the changes I made to the pattern.  This is a BIG drop shoulder design so I knit the “smallest” size which was a 45″ circumference.

• Changed number of stitches for the smaller size to adjust for gauge difference (5-1/2 instead of 5 sts to the inch)
• Split the hem on the bottom tier or layer (dark gray in picture) with a seed stitch edging around the bottom and up the sides of the split hem
• Added “purl darts” (column of purl stitches every 10 stitches) to the two bottom tiers to keep them from curling.  The pattern has you knit the bottom tiers in straight stockinette, which you know is going to curl up like a roller blind if you don’t do something to keep it hanging flat!
• Knit the body in the round to the underarm
• This is the big one – changed it from a drop shoulder to a set-in-sleeve design.  I used my method for knitting and attaching the sleeve cap directly into the armhole, then knit the rest of the sleeve in the round to the cuff.
• So overall, not knit in flat pieces and then sewn together – knit all in one piece with no sewing.

There is some “pooling” of colors in the handpaint at different points throughout the sweater.  I struggled with this a bit but decided to just not worry about it in the end.  It has to do with the interplay of the width (flat knitting) or circumference (knitting in the round) of the garment at some point, versus the length of the color repeat in the yarn.  If I had knit the entire sweater in flat pieces to be sewn together, I am pretty sure I would still have had some color pooling on the sleeves, at least.  And possibly also in the yoke, since the width of the body above and below the underarm became different after changing it to a set-in-sleeve design.

Also, this being a handpaint, the two skeins were not exactly the same; one was a little more muted in tone for at least part of the skein, so I had to break the yarn and wind off sections and rearrange them to get transitions that were not glaringly obvious.

I am really happy with this sweater, it is really comfortable and fits me well.  And it is a little different, more whimsical, than what I usually knit for myself.

This is how much I had left of the handpaint yarn!

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