Juju Loves Polka Dots

Knitted Babies

Babies were invented for knitters! Their little clothes only take an evening to whip up and it they look so cozy and lovely! Just look at this little guy!
I'm trying to start a collection of vintage photos of babies in knits. If you have any for me, please let me know.

My baby is about to turn twelve so no more play-suits for him. But I still get to knit baby sweaters for Loop. The Koigu hand-paints have just arrived and we love the spotty ones. I made this Knitbot sweater with just one and half skeins.

 

I couldn't resist popping the crochet corsage on it. Ah, spring babies!

I've been to a Paris needle fair and Wollmeise in Munich in the last few weeks. I 'll be posting about these trips in the next few days. I have so much to catch up on.

The Pleasure of a New Book

Christmas brought me lots of wonderful knitting books, as my husband found his way to my Amazon wishlist and stress-free Xmas shopping. He thought that Santa was very clever to fill my stocking with books about stocking knitting. So did I!

One of my favourite books was Ann Feitelson's Art of Fair Isle Knitting.

This sits along with Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting as a favourite in my library.
But I also have two new (to me) Japanese books of Fair Isle knitting which I think are really beautiful.
Have you seen these?

 

ISBN978-4-529-04676-3

ISBN978 4 529 03923 9

They are both full of beautiful, contemporary interpretations of Fair Isle knitting. I love the colouring of this vest  from the book above.

These next pictures are taken from the first of the books and show the colours and styling typical in it.

 

Most of the yarns seem to be solids rather than heathers so they look quite different from traditional Fair Isle.

I've been working on a hat for my soon-to-be-50-husband, based on the pattern from the first book's cover. I'm just making up sizes and colours as I go. It won't have any patterning on the top since he wants to fit it under his bicycle helmet. I suggested a head band, but he thinks they're naff.

His head is giant. Beware young women, when choosing a husband, look at the size of his head and remember that you have to give birth to his children! (or not).

 

Fits me fine. Hee, hee!

Pencil Scribbles

This is just a quick post to show off my knitting in the Battle Bird colourway  that I dyed the other day.

Knit up, it reminds me of pencil doodles and old red rubbers and I wanted to make a background to express some of that.

I think maybe, this only resonates with me. No one is ever going to look at these socks and wish they had a painting to compliment them.

But to me, it's like scratching a itch.

Ahhh!

 

Portrait of a Yarn

I've become a yarn biographer. I spend too much of my time lovingly posing portraits, naming and recording the details of my hand-dyed yarns. 

This is my first go at creating a yarn with longer repeating stripes. I had to hand-wind this merino/bamboo yarn into a 6 metre long skein before dying it, in what I hope will be repeating stripes over several rows.

 

I've called this colourway Skinned Knees because it reminds me of the grass stains and ripped jeans incurred while playing as a child. 

 

And the stripes are looking pretty good. This swatch shows how they might repeat over the width of my husband's giant feet in a plain stripe or a chevron. It's a bit of mess because I was playing with different kinds of decreases and increases.

 

The bamboo in the yarn has the crunchiness of silk and a lovely, subtle sheen. My son is campaigning hard for this to become his pair of socks, but his Dad's birthday is first...Speaking of David's birthday, I finished my Love Bird socks for him.

 

I'm pleased with them, and pretty confident he will be too. I'm writing the PDF for them now and hope to post it next week. Once these are done, I promise to go back and complete the PDF's for my other projects. There has been technical computer stuff to learn.

Give me warm wool

Yum, yum! The yarn I was enthusing about yesterday is giving me such a thrill! It looks like a pretty tartan pattern knit up in this quick slip stitch, doesn't it?

 

I've almost finished one sock (it'll be done in the pub tonight).

If anyone wants to join me, I knit in the Rose and Crown in Stoke Newington every Friday night between 5 and 7:30.

Give me colourful knitting

I thought I'd start as I mean to go on; filling the screen with colourful knit. I have been joyfully reunited with my first love, colourwork knitting.

Like many other knitters, I developed intarsia fatigue after Kaffe Fasset's appearance.  Fairisle knitting never appealed to me much because of how quickly and easily it could be done on a machine, leading to lots of cheap and ugly patterning.

But now I have finally discovered the joy of fairisle! I owe this partly to Kate Davies and her  wonderful Neep Head hat. (She models it beautifully on her blog so I won't post pictures of me wearing it.)

And partly to the discovery of the pleasure of using real Shetland wools. These beautiful wools are soft but wiry enough to make colourwork knitting a breeze. They come in a huge range of solid and heathered colours. Combining colours is endlessly fascinating.

These yarns are pure wool and wouldn't be strong enough to run through a knitting machine easily. They are best hand knit. I've tried:

Spindrift from Jamieson's

2-ply jumper weight from Jamieson and Smiths

2-ply from Alice Starmore's Virtual yarns

and Rowan 4-ply Scottish (used to be called Harris) tweed

They are all beautiful and I would love to have some in every colour!

 

Yes, I've been knitting a lot of tams. I've knit many other things too, but tams are such a great way to explore colour and patterns and perfect wear at this time of year. I've even worn one to bed on cold nights!
That's enough tam time for now. I don't want to give you colourwork fatigue. But if you are interested pick up a copy of Alice Starmore's recently republished Book of Fair Isle Knitting. It's a great history and technique book as well as knitter's eye candy.

Just a quick final word for those of you who don't know, I'm working at Loop several days a week now. You can find me there every Monday, Tuesday and alternating Sundays. Please say hello if you read my blog. My yarn passion of the week from Loop is this Misti Alpaca sock yarn:
All my favourite colours in one gorgeous yarn! Yum!

Give me Raindrops

I've knit up two Meret Berets (pattern by Woolly Wormhead) with the merino I dyed last week. It is much too hot to model them so I'll show you flat pictures. This is the Chalcedony colourway.
And this is raindrop:

This merino is softer than cashmere. So lovely!

I'm writing my summer knitting patterns and packing my painting materials for my trip to Canada. I get so busy before I leave!

Watercolour, Wool and Polka Dots

I love dying yarn! It combines several of my passions; colour, painting and yarn! Last night, I demonstrated dying to my friend Dawn.
I took two skeins of Colourmart merino and painted on acid dyes. I then steamed them and Voila, the colour is set. If you you are a knitter and don't know about Colourmart, you are really missing out: great value, (mostly cashmere), high quality yarns.

I call this colourway raindrop. It is mostly pale blue-greens with a sprinkling of lilac.

This is Chalcedony. I was aiming for a semi-solid here, the colour of a chalcedony stone in my friend Henny's (check out her website, she's a great painter) earring. 

 

I think I got it. I'll have to see what Henny thinks.

I've also been to the Hayward Gallery to see the Walking in my Mind exhibition. Not so interested all the junk in the men's minds but delighted to discover Yayoi Kusama and her polka dot hallucinations.

Me so happy!