A weft yarn

GAAA - Ginette Belanger block

Date: March 2013

Wow. Did we even remember I was knitting this afghan? I love the look of cables with all their structural patterns and rhythmic complexity. By Australian standards, we have a reasonably cold winter, so the idea of a warm cozy blanket for sofa surfing sounds appealing. The Cascade 220 wool is lovely and soft and bouncy and forgiving. Its all good folks. There's really no need to leave this gorgeous project in the cupboard.

In March 2013, I spent 20 hours knitting and have made another Aran square, my fifth. This time, the Ginette Belanger block. I choose to make an 'easy' one and I forgot to check ravelry before I started. It went really smoothly thank goodness. I guess I felt I needed some confidence boosting after my last few experiences.

I have chosen not to block as I go but in some ways I regret that because I'm sure that, while I love this gorgeous block, it will look even prettier once neat. And one more niggly little thing - I photographed this Ginette Belanger block, loaded it up to the internet and then noticed the block is positioned upside down. aack. Doesn't warrant a redo. You'll see it all the right way around, and nicely blocked in some future time, in a universe far far away.

 

One thing I did notice was that I made a note to myself to leave the highlighter tape at the row TO DO. At some stage I came back to the project and found it tricky to work out if the place where I had left the tape, was where I had finished knitting or where I was meant to start knitting. Also was I meant to pick up knitting from the text above the highlighter tape or the text below?  It obviously doesn't matter which way you do it, as long as it makes sense to you and is consistent. As I have a rotation system for my projects, I do put things down and it can take quite some time before I come back to them, particularly if life happens, so its not really surprising that some of my aide memoirs are actually aide confusement.

 

 

Previous posts

GAAA - Janet Martin's block finished (September 2012)

GAAA - Jay Campbell block (October 2011)

Great American Aran Afghan (September 2011)

Oregon Vest: way out west (of the cupboard)

Date: March 2013

Last time we saw this I had done one complete row of the little skeleton trees. You know the little motifs that look like pine trees, that sit just above the colourful v-shapes on the bottom band of the vest.

 

Anyway, by the time I had finished a 10 hour stint on the Oregon vest in March 2013, I had another band of pine trees. Perhaps a Douglas Fir tree - image below from this site.

 Alice Starmore at Virtual Yarns describes how :

I come from a landscape that is virtually treeless, so the forests of Oregon left a lasting impression on me. The memories of a Spring road trip along the Mackenzie River are particularly vivid, and inspired this popular and enduring design. To recreate those memories I designed stylised firs for the main pattern; they evoke the dense, high backdrop of conifers that blocked out the sky.

Well my little forest of fair isle douglas fir trees is growing. One day, I'd like to see those forests in their natural habitat. I'd also like to walk around and smell them. The Australian bush is so distinctive with its hot dry Eucalyptus oil scent. I'm sure the forests of Oregon are completely different. One day.

Previous posts

Oregon Vest: I've been missing you (June 2012)

Knitting through the Australian Open (February 2012)

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore (October 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - a start (September 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch (June 2011)

Fair Isle Cowl progress (April 2011)

My next project - Alice Starmore (March 2011)

 

GAAA - Janet Martin's block finished

I have finished the Janet Martin Aran block. It took 19 hours in total and I didn't have to frog a single stitch!! I am so thrilled. I think when it is blocked it will fit just fine alongside the Hanna Burns and the Ann Strong.

When I was about half way through, I started thinking "why isn't this HARD?" It is rated as one of the five hard squares. And if you've read any of my posts on the three squares I've done already, you'd know I have openly discussed how hard I've found this project. So if I found it hard when I was doing the easy squares, then why didn't this one completely flip me out? I have a theory that this one was easy for me because I just followed the written instructions. The book provides both charted and written instructions and in the first two squares I tried to use a mixture of both sets of instructions - sometimes reading the codes, sometimes glancing at the chart.This time around I also kept a pretty tight record of where I was at, ticking off each row as I went.

Aside from feeling a bit clever trousers with this project....imagine me hands on hips channelling Mr Bean...I rather like Janet Martin's design story as well. Initially she thought of cable jumpers being knitted for fishermen and then thought of what fishermen did and lo and behold a fish caught in a net....or as my daughter said: a fish swimming in the waves. I've been to Galway but did not travel out to the islands. From my experiences of Ireland, I think those fishermen must have been very tough. If you want to see a little of the old and new Aran blended together, this is a pretty interesting site.

Previous posts

GAAA - Jay Campbell block (October 2011)

Great American Aran Afghan (September 2011)

GAAA - Janet Martin's block

Perhaps you thought after reading my previous post that I would not return to this Great American Aran Afghan project. In October 2011, I documented my efforts that led to the banishment of an Aran block into the dark recesses of a cupboard. It was a pretty sorry tale, so you would be forgiven for thinking I would not return. Well, as is the way of the world, I am nothing if not persistent. Sometimes I am persistent to the point of annoyance (to myself and others) but at other times it is a quality that quietly ticks over and moves me along to the next stage. Up sticks and try again. This time I am knitting Janet Martin's fish block. It is technically rated as one of the 5 HARD blocks. So ....what am I thinking?

I'm thinking it's pretty darn easy. hahahahah. How did that happen?

Previous posts

GAAA - Jay Campbell block (October 2011)

Great American Aran Afghan (September 2011)

Oregon Vest - I've been missing you

I was first a knitter. If I'm anything in this handcrafting world, I was first a knitter. I have a quilt from high school, a few dresses I made, three finished embroideries, and dozens of knitted items - scarfs, jumpers, shawls. It was also the one thing I sustained through my twenties and thirties. After high school I did very little sewing, absolutely no embroidery, but I continued to knit. In group houses, as I travelled the world, sitting in cold and damp Ireland I knitted jumpers that I left behind for my hosts by way of thank you. I have a sneeky suspicion that my jumpers, at this stage of my life, were a bit too 80's abstract for their rural Irish sensitivities - but I hope they thought "she means well". Even if they did harvest the wool or take them to St Vinnies after I returned to Australia.

Well I've been missing you, Alice. So in the immortal words of the great show tune Hello Dolly...

I said hello, dolly,......well, hello, dolly
It's so nice to have you back where you belong
You're lookin' swell, dolly.......i can tell, dolly
You're still glowin'...you're still crowin'...you're still goin' strong
I feel that room swayin'......while the band's playin'
One of your old favourite songs from way back when
So..... take her wrap, fellas.......find her an empty lap, fellas
Dolly'll never go away again

It was like picking up with an old friend and I wondered, what has taken me so long to come back to you?

 

She's had her ten hours and I'll move on to a tapestry, but as I pack her away I make a little satchmo promise that I wont take a 5 month break from her again.

Previous posts

Knitting through the Australian Open (February 2012)

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore (October 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - a start (September 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch (June 2011)

Fair Isle cowl progress (April 2011)

My next project - Alice Starmore (March 2011)

Knitting through the Australian Open

Alice Starmore's Oregon Vest kept me company through the final week of the Australian Open (tennis, Australian summer, family habit, two weeks in January, usually hot, hot, hot, but this year not, not, not). You know I am in blog posting catch-up mode. I'm hoping that it wont seem so strange referring to an event long since gone. How was that open though? That men's final. I was in favour of Nadal but really this year's tennis was designed for obsessive people who enjoy sitting still and doing things with their hands - me. I got lots of knitting done while those mad men tried to beat each other, their own demons, win the crowd, grab our attention, impress us with feats of endurance and courage, keep us from our beds - all achieved.

I did discover while I was knitting that (one) I'd been joining in my yarn at the steeks incorrectly and (two) I needed to improve my tension. On the first point, in my defence, I had started off correctly. You are meant to get half way across the steek and then start the new colour. For the first few rows I did this. Then I lost the plot and started joining in the new yarn at the beginning of the steek. I'm not sure how I detected this error, but I've read the instructions again and now I'm back on track. Yarn joined in middle of steek - don't forget.

On the second point, these photos aren't really giving up any secrets but I can point out to you, my reader, that I was carrying the wool at the back a bit tightly. I've made a conscious effort to loosen up. I'm a reasonably tight knitter, which doesn't usually cause me any trouble but with fair isle it seems the key is to be even and loose. I'm working on it. Even and loose. Not odd and tight. Who would like that - odd and tight? Sounds awful.

Strange to knit in summer but I found it easier to knit than to embroider. I can knit without watching my hands and there's a rhythmic nature to knitting that lends itself to long stints and for keeping your eye on the tennis ball (and the crazy young men battling it out until way past midnight).

 

Previous posts

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore (October 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - a start (September 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch

Fair Isle cowl progress

My next project - Alice Starmore

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore

I have been working on the Alice Starmore, Oregon Vest.

There are 17 colours in total in this pattern. So far, I have used 14 of them. The pattern of changing colour has been interesting. As you know, you work with two colours at a time. One in the right hand, one in the left. The most amount of rows that a colour has been used for is: 7 rows and the shortest is: 2 rows. This results in a lot of colour changes. And interestingly, very rarely do you change both colours at once. What usually happens is that first you swap the pale one and then in the next row you change the brighter one. Also, I'd say that of the 17 colours of wool only about 4 balls of wool would be a single colour. The rest are a mix of colours. So while it is predominantly a beige colour say, it is also flecked with green and red and blue and orange to give it a muted and mottled look. Amazing.

Mostly, I do my knitting at night. At the end of a long day of garden, work, after school activities, dinner, homework, blah de blah, I can sit down with the colours and the sticks and loose myself in the soothing clicky click. But on the weekend, I broke with tradition and sat down for an hour in the afternoon and did some Oregon Vest. I was stunned at how rich the colours were in the natural light. In the spirit of trying to communicate this, I've photographed the vest outside on our new deck. Some photos are probably a bit too bright, but you get the sense of the true daylight colours of the vest.

I was worried last time I worked on this, that it would not be big enough. I feel much more reassured this time around. It should be fine. In both tape measuring it and just holding it up to my waist, it seems fine.

Just so you know where we're going with all this....here's the pattern photo. I'm nearly up to pattern B, which is the pine cone, spiky leaf, stylised pine tree symbol that makes up the main part of the vest.

I'm also pleased that this is progressing a bit more smoothly than that other chap....GAAA.

 

Previous posts

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - a start (September 2011)

Alice Starmore - Oregon vest - swatch

Fair Isle cowl progress

My next project - Alice Starmore

GAAA - Jay Campbell block

In October 2010, I managed to knit two blocks of the Great American Aran Afghan in a week of holidaying around Northern NSW and QLD: the Ann Strong block and the Hanna Burns block. In October 2011, in about the same amount of time, I managed to mangle, rip out, and knit one block; the Jay Campbell block. I have to tell you, this is really testing my abilities and my confidence and while I deeply love knitting, I'm having my doubts folks. I'm actually getting worse at this instead of better. And according to the manual - I haven't even hit the hard blocks yet.

Here sits Jay Campbell with one corner ripped back. Then after I examined it carefully, I realised I couldn't fix it without starting over as I am knitting in the round and so the mistake is carried all through the round. Sigh.

So, I cut it off and started again. This was the third time I started again. It was that notation on the decrease. It said S2KP2O - which means, slip two stitches without knitting them, then knit the next stitch, then pass 2 stitches over. This results in a single decrease. And then the next notation is to K1. It wasn't until the fourth time through that I worked out that by doing the K1, I was repeating the Knit in the middle of the S2KP2O.  OK. Breathe. I've spent hours and hours of knitting and have nothing to show for it. It's meant to challenge. It's complex. I wanted a challenge. Remember, this is a voluntary activity. And other mantras encouraging me to cope.

Then, about 20 hours later of knitting in the round; round and round we go, cable this, slip that, decrease here, blah blah, I think its looking pretty good.

 

 

And then check it out. I cast off last night and lo and behold IT IS TOO BIG. (Sorry about the caps lock). Each block is meant to be 12 inches by 12 inches. Ann Strong is. Hanna Burns is. But not this one. Maybe when I block it, I can get it to fit. Or maybe I can use it as a cushion? Moving along folks. There are other things I can do.

Previous posts

Great American Aran Afghan (September 2011)

Knitting toys

A few years ago I joined a lovely group of crafty Brown Owls here in Canberra and I used to attend fantastic monthly meetings where a range of fun and crafty things were trialled. They are still going strong but I ended up dropping out this year as the groups' move to a Saturday was a bit harder for me to manage with kids' sporting commitments and other family and life commitments. And being able to breathe is important.

At one of the meetings in 2010, I sat next to someone who was knitting a little dog and I was very enamoured of the dog, the book she was using and the purpose of her knitting - she was making things for the school fete. She wrote about it here. It is a lovely post and I felt quite inspired to take up the challenge. I decided to start with something easy and so started a curly snake.

I'm pretty sure I had in mind that I would pass these snakes on to her for use at her school fete stall. However, I moved a bit too slowly. By the time I'd ordered the book, bought the sock wool online, started knitting and made anything significant, the day of the fete had long come and gone. I kind of came to a bit of a halt on this project but will breathe some life into it over the next few months because I think there are a couple of little boys who might like these. They need to have their tongues fixed, tails woven in and eyes embroidered on - moments of time needed not hours.

Though Mr Garden slug may need a bit more attention. He has only one eyeball at the moment. That's gotta hurt.

 Garden slug pattern from Ravelry

Great American Aran Afghan

I'm not sure how I came across the Great American Aran Afghan, or indeed its compatriots: The Great American Afghan , The Great North American Afghan and, The Great American Kid's Afghan. I'm pretty sure I bought the pattern booklets from The Wool Shack, although I know they don't currently stock them. I'm also sure I bought them years ago and have been dreaming of this project for a long time.

In preparation for this Aran blanket, I did a practice run - the mohair shawl I knitted for my mum. I started the shawl in April 2009 and finished it in August 2010. It was a reasonably easy project to start learning to knit cables; just a rectangle with lots of repeating cable patterns.

Once that was done, I was free to purchase the wool for the Great American Aran Afghan, which I did, in September 2010. After hours of reading on the Ravelry site,  I chose Cascade 220 Superwash. It has a pop star status on Ravelry (75,000+ projects list it as the yarn of choice). Boy, it would be good to have shares in that one! During my research, I was very tempted by a Blue-Faced Leicester wool from England but the postage was nearly as much as the wool!

After the wool arrived we took off for a trip during the school holidays of October 2010. We rented a campervan from near Sydney airport and drove up the north coast of NSW, visiting my sister and her family in Byron Bay, and eventually dropping the van off in Brisbane before flying back to Sydney and driving back to cosy Canberra. It was over a week of travel and we had a really interesting trip and it was fun to catch up with family and we saw some beautiful countryside shrouded in rain. It rained nearly every single day of the trip, until we got back to Canberra, where it was drizabone. Luckily the days we spent in Byron, which included a walk to the lighthouse and a trip to Wet and Wild theme park on the Gold Coast, were sunny days. All the other days were wet and reasonably cold. At one stage, the Pacific Highway was closed due to rain and of course, later in the year, Brisbane was under water. It was a pretty wet 2010. Looking back, or maybe looking forward, we really should do that trip again, but maybe in the more typical Il Nino.

 

One of the outcomes was that I did a lot of knitting. We had been upgraded in the choice of campervan and the one we got was just way too big for me to drive. I admire my husband and any other person who drives those things, but to me, it was just a great, big, huge truck. It was comfortable inside and we all had a really good time and often I was grateful for the coziness of the campervan while the wind and rain was beating on the windows and roof. But I don't think we'd take a beast like that on a holiday again. It was hard to manoeuvre, park and turn. It was expensive in caravan parks and you couldn't take it to out-of-the way spots because it couldn't travel on anything except a very good quality road. I'd go for something smaller, more nimble next time.

The knitting though...the knitting...well in the week away I managed two squares from the Great American Aran Afghan.

Ann Strong and Hanna Burns. Both are quite pictorial patterns. Ann's is reminiscent of pomegranates and Hanna's is of DNA.

I took notes as I went and the Ann Strong block went like this:

1. ripped out at row 5
2. ripped out at row 6
3. ripped out at row 7

"Wow! going to take me a really long time at that rate!. Didn't follow the pattern carefully enough".

Once I started paying attention to the pattern (ie reading it properly) I was fine and it was done in a day.

The Hanna Burns one though - My notes record that -

OK. Officially humbled by this block. I've made mistakes in the DNA, the trinity stitch (the bobbles), and the single column cables. So ripping out over and over again has been for different problems. [emphasis in the original]. I remember sitting on my sister's couch and ripping out a whole column of stitches back to the beginning, re-knitting those stitches until I rejoined at the top again and pressing on. As my notes indicate, I did this more than once! To make matters worse, both blocks are rated as "EASY". In total, I spent 29 hours on that block alone! I also remember while Tim and Nick climbed around the Adventure Parc at Mount Tambourine in the rain, Tess and I sat at the wood-fired pizza cafe and ate pizza, drank warm drinks and she drew pictures while I knitted and ripped and knitted this block. It was a great holiday. True. I remember the trip very fondly and though daunted by my rocky start to the project, I'm keen to press on. The next block is Jay Campbell.