Showing posts with label Richard Rutt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Rutt. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

"The early bird gets the worm...

but the second mouse gets the cheese." I read this hilarious addition to the proverb recently - perhaps it's commonplace and I simply haven't come across it before? Anyway, it would have come in handy a few weeks ago when I taught knitting in Kiruna in the far north of Sweden, the perfect time of the year if you want to see the midnight sun.

Fortunately, I never had difficulties falling asleep when it's light - and anyway most nights were cloudy - but it was rather confusing suddenly waking up and worrying I was late for my class before realising it was only perhaps 1.30 am and plenty of hours left to sleep.

Getting there from Stockholm (ca 1200 kilometers) takes quite a few hours, not least if you decide to travel by car. A great opportunity to spend time together with three friends! There was a lot of time to knit too, except when I was driving, of course - here's one reason to pay attention as documented by friend, fellow traveller and car owner Eva. (I'm not like a multi-tasking friend who once showed me his way of tatting while he was driving - something I found equally impressive and unnerving.)

Mini projects are great in a car, even in an unusually spacious one. I've practically finished my twined project based on charts in Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting. For quite a while it came in handy as its own project bag:

self-contained
The light is strange, but I'll blame it on the midnight sun - this was rather late at night.

As usual, one thing leads to another, so I decided to knit a couple of mini cushions combining two of the same ingredients, namely charts from Rutt's book and twined knitting. For the smaller one (similar to a mini tube I wrote about in a previous post) I used 1½ mm needles and for the bigger (or less small) one 2 mm.




I'm going to give the blue and white one to my mother as a surprise. She likes this colour combination, has a thing for small objects and is fond of birds, so to me her name is practically written all over it.



You may wonder why I write a post if it's meant to be a surprise. Actually, she's on her way here for a few days' visit as I'm typing, so she won't know before I give it to her later this afternoon.




Monday, 13 June 2016

Twined & brioche projects



Today my friend Andrew gave me a charming tatting book from 1944 - there are many beautiful patterns in it, so I feel like getting my shuttles out again. I don't have the nails to match them, but at least I do have a new twined knitting project to match the cover.

The patterns are from A History of Hand Knitting by Richard Rutt, actually the very same cushion I got last post's pattern from, but I'm using thicker yarn and needles. Or, rather, not as thin: 500 metres/100 gr wool-silk blend and 2 mm needles.

Gauge curious? 54 stitches = 10 cm/4 in

Yesterday I added a finishing touch to a pair of twined mittens I finished last year. They were slightly too wide, so I felted them by hand and now they fit perfectly - and the fact that I love both grey and stripes doesn't hurt.


For the mittens I used wool from Östergötlands ullspinneri. It works beautifully for brioche knitting too, and I've made two brioche scarves recently using their variegated wool. (Knitting with 4 mm needles almost felt like cheating now that I've been into 1.25 - 2 mm for a while.)




With felted twined mittens and two scarves I should be well prepared for Midsummer - it normally gets rather cold then, or perhaps that's just my impression?

Tuesday, 7 June 2016

Happy new year!

Yes, I know we're in June, but I realise this is my first blog post this year. Not that I've been hibernating, but I've mostly been swatching for new workshops and suppose I haven't really felt like blogging about them, even though I do enjoy swatching. However, here's one of them: it's for a two-week course starting on Friday at HV in Stockholm.



No, I'm not a giant (anyone who has met me will be able to testify) although you might think so comparing the stitches to my hand. This is my personal gauge record, 70 stitches to 10 cm/4 in, which I managed by combining twined knitting and 1½ mm needles. The pattern is from Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting.

Speaking of books, here's a photo of a treasure, a stunning collection of Latvian mitten patterns available from Sena Klets. Actually, I've seen this book before, but now that I have an English copy I can read about culture and traditions too. Extremely highly recommended! (Time to go back to planning and proof-knitting, but hopefully it won't be another five months before next post...)