Woolfisher Festival
March 6th, 2009 § 1 Comment
There’s a Festival tomorrow, at St Abbs. It’s a tiny fishing village on the coast, just into the Scottish Border.
We’re promised llamas, and angora goats, sumptuous throws, and skeins of handspun alpaca labeled with the names of the little creatures who gave it. There will be hot tea and cake, and deep lung-quenching sea air, and laughter. We’ll be wearing our latest handmade designs, and seeking out trimmings and notions. We’ll also be taking a few photographs.
Come along, if you can.
Adapting patterns, and a sneak preview!
March 6th, 2009 § 3 Comments
I was taught to knit by my mum, who is an expert at adapting patterns for different yarn, body shape, or any other requirements. I clearly remember the first pattern I modified, which was a wool jumper I knitted whilst on holiday with my family. I changed the length of the ribbing, and the length of the jumper, by adding in a few rows. It felt a bit scary since I was leaving the trusty path of the pattern and venturing off into the unknown!
Since then I have never looked back, and now I am able to design my own patterns never mind adapting others! One of my most successful pattern adaptations is a hat I made a number of years ago. I love hats, especially quirky ones, and as I’ve established on here I love sari silk! Unfortunately sari silk is not a great yarn for a hat – it has no stretch or memory to it. If I had made a hat entirely out of sari silk it would have to be exactly the right size to fit on my head, and would soon stretch a bit, making it too big! So I decided to combine the colour and shine of the sari silk with another yarn – Twilley’s Freedom Wool. This is a wool yarn and is non-plied just like the sari silk. I chose it because it knitted up on the same size needles as the sari silk, and because the matt black look would really make the colours of the silk stand out. In addition since it is made of wool, it has warmth, stretch and memory – perfect for a hat!
I found a hat pattern I liked – Cotton Candy by Not Martha. This was before the days of Ravelry (the horror!) and I had a folder full of patterns printed out from the internet, as well as a bookmarks folder full of free pattern sites that I’d found online. Luckily the gauge required for the pattern was about right for the two yarns I had.
I decided that the best way of combining the two yarns would be using colourwork. The pattern says to cast on 84 stitches which is handy because its divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 12! So I could use any colourwork patterns that were 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 or 12 stitches wide. Out came the graph paper and I came up with a few nice geometric patterns. From there it was pretty straightforward, here is the result! As you can see I added a tassle too :-D
Hopefully you found some of that helpful! Let me know about how you have modified patterns :-)
And just to finish off… since I’m not quite ready to post my next pattern I thought I’d give you a sneaky peek at what it is going to look like… can you guess what it is? Can you even guess what colour it is??
- picture by KingOfTheFrogs
