A Sneak Preview…
The pattern for the Peapod Sloucher will be available next week in both child and adult sizes. In the meantime, here is a very sneaky peek.
Image copyright Ingrid Murnane
Knitted Flower Recipe
I’m describing this tutorial not so much as a pattern as a recipe: I think that by following the instructions below and tweaking them to you own likes, you will be able to produce a variety of flowers with just these instructions.
In order to make your own knitted flower, you’ll need to knit a long strip of fabric, which is wider on one of the long sides than the other. From this you can form either a single rose-type flower, or a double flower. Even within these parameters there is scope for putting them together in differing ways to make a tightly-furled or more open blooms.
Of course, you might like to make a leaf to go with your flower. As this can be a bit more complicated, I’ve given a couple of links at the end for different types of leaf too.
You will need:
Needles and yarn.
Any will do, but wool tends to work nicely. Something with a lot of drape like bamboo won’t work so well to hold the shape of the flower.
Really, as long as you use an appropriate size pair of needles to yarn, you can use any size. An easy way of making different sizes of flowers is to change to a thicker yarn with bigger needles, and of course vice versa for a smaller one.
Gauge:
Don’t worry about the gauge, as these don’t need to fit anyone, but as a general rule they need to be knitted to a firm fabric rather than an open one.
Abbreviations:
K: knit
P: purl
P2tog: purl two stitches together (to decrease)
K2tog: knit two stitches together (to decrease)
Recipe:
The basic recipe for making a flower is as follows, but you can jig it about as you like for different effects, much like a cooking recipe.
The flower is knitted flat, back and forth.
Cast on 80 to 100 stitches.
Knit three rows in garter stitch.
Next row: P2tog to the end of the row.
Next row: Knit and at the same time decrease by k2tog every 5 or 6 stitches.
Work in stocking stitch from here on, and on every second row (which will be a knit row) decrease by k2tog at appropriate intervals to pull in the work until your flower is almost tall enough for a brooch (I aim for about 5-6cm usually).
Next row: K2tog to the end of the row.
Cast off.
Tip: It is up to you how you’d like to decrease. You can do it in a uniform fashion by decreasing first every 7 stitches, then every 6 and so on, or you could decrease by k2tog every 4 in the first decrease row, then by every 2 in the next, but every 5 in the third decrease row. Of course, your decrease rows don’t have to be every second row either. By playing with the decreasing and how often you space it, you will create differently shaped flowers.
Finishing:
Wrap the knitting around on itself to find how it sits best and for the appropriate flower look for you. Sew it into place using the tails of yarn from the knitting.
Of course, you might like to make a leaf to go with your flower. There are some great patterns available online for this. Here is a good pattern from Crafty Galore. This second one from TikkunArts is a pdf.
You can make them into brooches by adding a safety pin to the back, add them to cardigans or bags, or perhaps make a whole bouquet of them, which I’ll show you how to do in the next tutorial.
Please feel free to knit up the flower brooches to keep or as gifts/charity fundraising, but please do not knit up for commercial purposes or reproduce the tutorial without first seeking permission.
Copyright © Ingrid Murnane 2010. All rights reserved.
Pass it on: A Few Winter Warmers
I don’t know what it is like where you are, but here, today it is -3 celcius. Brrrr. We’re waiting for the snow that is forecast tomorrow and wrapping up warm in scarves and hats. In the meantime, here are a few links to interesting stuff that I’ve come across recently.
Baktus Bravado, image copyright Ingrid Murnane
Are you ready for advent? Do you have a calendar ready to go? No? Well, this is not strictly textiles… it’s not textiles at all in fact, but this gingerbread house tutorial by Pam Harris is hands-down the best idea I’ve seen this year for making your own advent calendar. So much more fun than sewing one.
Another great find, (via Kirsty) is the Ordinary Objects blog which features one woman’s quest to add knitting into everyday things. Not long started, this tumblr blog is an excellent use of the format, and both beautiful and fascinating to look at.
Now, apparantly what can only be described as ‘big knitted grannybashers’ are where it’s at for the winter, if you believe what’s been seen on the catwalks. So will you be wearing Tighty Aran Whities this season? Brenda Dayne’s Cast On podcast asks that very question in a recent episode which you can listen to here.(PS If you don’t subscribe to Cast On, then why not? You should – it’s always very funny and informative).
Lastly, one from me: my own latest endeavour is the opening of a small Etsy shop, so if you’d like to buy a little something as a Christmas gift, do head on over there and take a look. There are buttonhole brooches, knitting needle bangles, and perhaps more suitably for the current climate, snuggly neckwarmers too.
IngridMurnane.com
Huzzah! IngridMurnane.com is fully up and running, and IngridNation will be going into stasis, so please do come and join me over there instead.
If you would like to sign up for the new site’s RSS feed, here is a link for you, or alternatively you can sign up by email from the new homepage.
Hope to see you there.
All Change!
Hello Chaps,
I’m building a new website over at ingridmurnane.com. It will be up and running to its full capacity very soon, but do bear with me – I’m new to all this techy stuff.
See you soon!
Ingrid x
Love your Short Row Shaping
Short Row Shaping by Hannah8Ball. Used under CC licence.
Short row shaping seems to elicit a marmite reaction: you either love it or you hate it. I’m firmly in the ‘love it’ camp, thinking it is a great technique to use and very useful too.
So, what is it? Essentially a short row is a row which is not fully knitted, just as the name suggests. The piece of knitting is turned around before reaching the end of the row, and knitted back in the other direction.
Short rows are included in knitting patterns as a way to shape a garment, whether it is to create a curved heel in a sock or shapely bust darts in a top. The shaping works by introducing extra rows of knitting into the pattern on a horizontal plane, whereas other increases will be introducing extra stitches into the pattern on a vertical plane.
Another place that you might come across short rows is on shoulder shaping in patterns such as this man’s tank top, Maile by Woolly Thinking. They are used at the shoulders or armholes to create a more attractive cast-off edge a slanted edge, which is often cast off using a three-needle bind-off for stability.
Sock by Seevoo, showing short row heel. Used under CC license.
Okay, so you knit a row, not quite to the end and turn back. But what about this abbreviation ‘w&t’?
This pattern abbreviation is all about making the finished knitting neat and tidy. The ‘t’ stands for turn, as we’ve talked about, but the ‘w’ is for wrap. This is the important bit for neatness. In order that the finished piece of knitting does not have stepped holes in it at the turning points, the yarn is passed around the next unknitted stitch.
You do this by knitting up to the point indicated in your pattern, slipping the next stitch to your working needle, passing the yarn to the front of the work (presuming you are working in knit), slipping the stitch back, turning the work and continuing to knit you pattern.
As it is often easier to see what that means, I suggest that you visit Knitty, where Bonne Marie Burns has written up a really good set of instructions with pictures, which you can see here. They include visuals that show how to pick up the wrap and turns, so as not to have holes in your finished knitting.
Socks, undeterred by Short-Row Baby Rats
If you want to try out short-row shaping without the commitment of a large garment, here are some ideas.
Woolly Wormhead’s Going Straight hats (knitted sideways and great fun)
Kathryn Shoendorf’s Calorimetry headband
Lucia Liljegren’s Baby Rat pattern.
Yarnissima’s Sottopassagia socks
Have fun!
Itty Bitty Knitting
Did you see the animated film version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline last year? If you didn’t, I would highly recommend it and if you did, you might remember the lovely little knitted jumper that Coraline wears. But did you know how it was made?
Althea Crome (also known as Althea Merback) knits miniature conceptual clothing using specially made needles in the finest yarn or thread. In the tradition of miniature artists and artisans, she spends months designing and knitting a single garment. She tries to create more and more detail in each piece with her ‘micro-sweaters’ containing up to eighty stitches per inch. You can see more of her work by clicking here for her blog BugKnits.
I don’t think I’ll be complaining about knitting with laceweight again anytime soon…
Learning a Lesson
A couple of days ago I was rooting through my freezer for something to defrost for yesterday’s lunch. I fancied some soup and after looking for a little while found what I was sure was a little container full of yummy miso soup with mushrooms and sweetcorn.
So, yesterday, at lunchtime I was all set to eat said soup (with the addition of some fresh beansprouts – yum). Well. Except what I thought was the lovely miso soup was actually some kind of vegetable and unrecognisable meat stew combo. Really not what I was expecting.
I bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, aren’t you?
Well, I did somewhat the same thing with a UFO a little while ago. ‘Yes’, I thought, having stashed away this particular cardigan for a year because I found more new and exciting things to knit, ‘this cardi is just the thing and I have lots of the yarn left, so let’s get on with it.’
That bit there, the ‘I have lots of the yarn left’ part… well, I had lots of yarn left that looked like the same yarn. In the semi-darkness. While I was watching TV and not paying a huge amount of attention.
You can’t see it so well from this picture, but the bottom half and part of the arms are a rather different shade of red. Not just a different dyelot, but an entirely different colourway. To add insult to injury, I realised that I’d knitted another cardigan for my Mum in the yarn left from this one, instead of the newer, differently-shaded yarn that I had bought especially for it. The upshot of it was that my red cardigan was frogged.
This is the point where you say, ‘…but Ingrid, you seem like a quite well organised person. Don’t you keep a little notebook with all the details of each project, or do the same on Ravelry?’ Er, well I do now! Quite obviously I didn’t before, but the Red Cardigan of Doom has taught me a lesson. It is one that I’ll be extending to my cooking life as well now.
Without sounding like a public information advert, if this is a problem that you have yourself, Ravelry has great options on their project pages to add in the yarn and needles you are using and even the shade and dyelot. Brenda Dayne also gave some great advice on how she keeps record cards for each project she makes a while back on Cast On (I’m really sorry that I can’t find the actual episode).
Another extra, but really useful thing that you could do alongside keeping ‘real life’ notes in a book or card system is to keep some of the yarn that you used for mending. Even better (and to follow a wartime tradition) you could make the buttons for your garment by knitting them and stuffing them with the yarn, so there is always some available and it will have been washed to the same extent.*
So, after the fiasco of the miso soup and the frogging of the Red Cardigan of Doom, the moral of the story is: keep proper records of your stuff, people: you won’t regret it!
(cross published from the knitonthenet blog)
*Thanks to Jane Waller and Susan Crawford for that great advice!
PS I ended up having a marmite sandwich and a banana, if you were wondering.
Friendsock Update 1
Here are just a few images to show how Katie and I are getting on with the first Friendsock for the Mrs Miniver series.
FriendSock in Progress
You can see the difference in the two yarns that we are knitting on this sock in the image above. I started with an aran yarn and Katie’s handspun yarn turned out to be a little bit heavier, so making the sock ‘bunch out’ (technical term, y’know). We’ve persevered with the sock a little further to see whether it would even out: I turned the heel and Katie knitted a little more on the foot of the sock. Frankly it made little difference to the ‘bunchiness’.
Close Up
Ultimately, we have decided that this was our practice sock, and we have made some adjustments to the project (not least with using Actual Sock-Weight Yarn) and are continuing to knit two separate socks, swapping over each week at knit night. Fasle starts nonwithstanding, this is turning into a most enjoyable project. We are knitting two separate ‘normal’ socks, using two differently coloured skeins of sock yarn and two different stitch patterns. I’m turning both of the heels, so I might do both of them differently too.
Katie sporting her 'generic knitting face' 😀
In knitting this fraternal pair of socks we are additionally going to mark, in the knitting, significant (or not so significant) events which take place in our lives as we make them. Katie came up with this idea from a lady who she knew that marked events that happened whilst she knitted a shawl (I think). This lady wrote a note on a piece of paper and attached it in the appropriate place with a safety pin. This idea very much appeals to my geeky museum-collections-management side, and I’d like to catalogue events in our lives during the sock-making with labels. Also probably any problems that I had whilst knitting them. Certainly with this first FriendSock I went wrong a few times with my lace pattern and had to rip the knitting back a few rows!
More on FriendSocks Mark 2 soon…
Brooches and brain work
Blimey, lots has been happening this week. Much of it brainstorming, drawing, researching and article writing. Oh, and quite a bit of plodding along with powerpoint, making slides for a talk that I’m giving next week about my master’s dissertation. But there was some knitting too…
Brooches for Making Merry
I’ve been on a real push lately getting more brooches ready for the Making Merry exhibition in Winchester next month. I sewed all of these together this afternoon whilst watching the marvellous Brief Encounter and drinking many cups of tea.
I was lucky enough to get a review too! My scroll brooches were featured on the Found on Folksy blog this week as part of their Neu Vintage feature. Exciting times!
I’ve been on a real creative kick and much of the research that I mentioned has been in trying to decide what socks would encapsulate the essence of literary characters so I can make more Mrs Miniver socks about their relationships: Holmes and Watson, Crowley and Arizaphale and Jeeves and Wooster are on my list currently, amongst others.
A friend at work lent me The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes so that is proving a great inspiration, not to mention a gripping read. I still can’t quite work out what Holmes socks would be though. He was such a master of disguise. How to get that over in the pattern, material and construction method? (I think Argyle pattern for Watson, by the way: possibly quite loud).
As for Jeeves and Wooster, I found a great 1930s sock pattern in my Nan’s knitting and sewing book, with a false seam up the back of the leg. I will be using that one for Jeeves. His half of the sock will be black, of course. I’m rather tempted to make Bertie Wooster one of those ‘jolly purple socks’ which Jeeves was so disdainful of in The Inimitable Jeeves. Perhaps in silk. After all it was Bertie’s former valet’s theft of some silk socks which caused Jeeves to come into the employment of Wooster in the first place.
probably the easiest wrist-warmers in the world
Here’s a really easy pattern for wrist warmers that is great for showing off your handspun yarn. I started off knitting a much more complicated open twisted rib stitch pattern, but soon realised something. It was almost impossible to see the pattern because the yarn I was using was the star of the show. I might as well have been knitting garter stitch. I started again with a simple two by two rib, which gives the stretch that the wrist-warmers need, and shows off the yarn to its best. This is a great first pattern for knitting in the round, and has a just a couple of easy features to knit. The thumb is simply a large buttonhole, and the only other detail in the pattern is the fluted cast-off edge, which is made by increases.
You will need:
Approximately 100 metres/ 110 yards of aran (worsted) weight yarn.
4.5mm dpns or circular needle.
Stitch marker.
Tip: Divide the yarn into two balls before you start as it is hard to estimate where to stop once you’re knitting. I find that using scales to get it right helps.
Gauge: 5 stitches and 7 rows per inch in rib pattern.
I wrote this pattern to fit my medium sized hands, but the pattern has lots of stretch, so gauge is not vital. Use larger or smaller needles if you need.
Abbreviations:
K: knit
P: purl
Kfb: Knit in the front and back of the same stitch (to increase)
Pattern:
Cast on 40 stitches using the longtail cast on method (for stretch).
Join without twisting and mark the start of the round with a stitch marker.
Work in pattern *K2, P2* until the work measures 3cm.
Next round: K2, P1, cast off 5 stitches, continue in pattern to end of round.
Next round: K2, cast on 5 stitches using the backward loop cast on method, continue in pattern to end of round.
Continue to work in pattern until they measure approximately 19cm (just under 7 inches) from the cast on edge.
Next round: *Kfb, Kfb, P2* to end of round.
Next 2 rounds: *K4, P2* to end of round.
Cast off in pattern and weave in ends.
Then knit the other one (unless you’ve been magic looping them of course!)
Thanks to Lily for modelling in the photos!
Please feel free to knit up the wrist warmers to keep or as gifts/charity fundraising, but please do not knit up for commercial purposes or reproduce the pattern without first seeking permission.
Copyright © Ingrid Murnane 2009. All rights reserved.
IngridNation Folksy Shop
Between knitting a secret commission, designing a winter project and putting together a Folksy shop, I’ll admit that I’ve been ignoring the blog somewhat this week. However, I’m pleased to announce today that the shop is finally open and is stocked with a range of knitted brooches with more designs and other accessories to follow. Here’s a taster, but please go and take a look for yourself!
Cupcake Brooches
Scroll Flower Corsage
getting it all out there
I’ve been drawing a lot today. It is something that I fully admit that I don’t do enough of. I’ve been trying to get some ideas out of my head; to articulate them in the physical sphere. A lot of the time I will work straight with the fibre, but lately I’ve realised that my work is lacking depth. It has been a hard day that frankly has not been all that successful. Nevertheless I’m glad I did it. There have been some unexpected turns which have been exciting and I’ve been coming up with lots of ideas. Extra layers of meaning are starting to appear.
Without saying too much about them, here are a few of the drawings and some yarn that I made today.
Earthed
Hat idea, maybe?
Internal/External
Where is the danger zone?
from hibernation to reinvention
I won some sock yarn in a competition a few years ago, but as I hadn’t tried socks at that point (and the mere thought of sock-knitting scared the be-jesus out of me) I decided to knit it up as a first lace project.
The Leafy Lace Scarf
I chose this pretty leaf pattern, which seemed easy enough and used my new red needles which made a great contrast to the mossy greens in the yarn. It all went quite well to begin with. Well, once I had got the hang of reading a lace chart anyway… I knitted away happily on the train and the bus and in front of the TV. The scarf was to be a present for my partner at the time who liked green leafy things and who had a coat which this would match really well.
So far so good…until we split up. Now, I know what you’re thinking: the infamous ‘Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater‘. Well I don’t really think that I can blame it on that, (or in this case perhaps the ‘Curse of the Girlfriend Scarf’) as I’d already knitted her a bag. But in any case, as you would imagine after the breakup I didn’t want to knit any more of it. Retitled ‘The Lace Scarf of Doom’ it was effectively put into hibernation as an UnFinished Object.
So, why am I telling you this?
Well the other day I happened across the UFO Project Administration Service which is a really interesting art project set up by Rachael Matthews of Prick Your Finger yarn shop.
UFO Project Administration Form
The basic premise is that you can send in a UFO which you have totally given up on, or sign up to finish somebody else’s UFO. You sign up for an invitation and are sent a specially designed form on which you fill in details about both yourself and your UFO (or the kind of thing you might like to knit of somebody else’s). Rachael will then matchmake knitter with UFO. The brilliant thing about this is that you don’t have to continue to knit the original pattern: you can be as inventive as you like. Jumpers with extra arms, parts of tea cosies made into bags, using a totally different yarn to continue, crocheting something that was started in knitting; the possibilites are endless. Of course you can just continue to knit the original too, if you like. As you have probably guessed, I have decided to send in the Lace Scarf of Doom for somebody else to have a try with and I’m also going to ask for somebody else’s UFO to work on.
The Red Round: another possible contender
What I find so interesting to about this whole idea is that the unloved, unwanted knitted object now could gain a new lease of life and its social life and object biography will be added to in an unexpected direction. Every UFO will have a story behind it: that of its making, the yarn that was used, how the pattern was picked, about the person who knitted it, why they made it and what was going on in their life as they knit. As a UFO going through the Project Administration Service it will now have many added layers of history. Who knows what will happen to the Lace Scarf of Doom, but one thing is sure: it will be much more interesting than had I just finished knitting it to its intended pattern. I can’t wait to see what someone else does with it!
There will be an exhibition at the Jerwood Space in London from 10th June – 19th July 2009, which will also tour Britain and which will feature some of the now-finished UFOs.
Co-Modify: the story so far…
I’ve been taking part in the @platea performance Co-Modify this week and it has been really interesting. I’m being ‘sponsored’ by Sirdar, the British knitting company. This has been my profile picture on Twitter, Facebook and Ravelry this week.
I said that I'd be wearing a hat made from Sirdar yarn: I never said anything about it being knitted...
I’ve not taken part in an online art project before and it has been so interesting to take part but also to have been documenting it. I think that I have got much more out of it this way. I’m going to blog about the experience properly in a couple of days to explain what I have been doing across my social media networks; indeed, to reflect on what I have learned from it too. I wanted to just give a quick update of what has been going on first though.
So, enough gabbing on: here is the blog post that I wrote for @platea today, which gives some of my favourite parts of the project so far.
IngridNation 