Along the Lanes Podcast

Last Friday night was spend in the wonderful company of my friend Vero who has recently started her own Podcast ‘Along the Lanes‘. It’s a brilliant weekly podcast – full of knitting, spinning, crafty chat and tutorials.

I was so chuffed when Vero asked if I would like to join her for an episode to sit and chat about knitting over a glass (or 2) of prosecco – and this is what happened! In the episode we talk about our yarn dying day and some of the colour names we came up with, crochet mishaps, a crazily long shawl and lot’s of other things. Plus there is the chance to win some gorgeous Skein Queen Lustrous yarn!

If you enjoy watching the podcast there is also a Ravelry Group where you can come and join in the chatter! 🙂

Happy knitting x

New Pattern! The Moon and the Sky Shawl

It’s taken me a while to share this but I’m pleased to say that my latest design The Moon and the Sky Shawl is up on Ravelry 🙂

This design came about after the purchase of some Theseus Lace yarn from Eden Cottage Yarns in the Steel colourway. As soon as I got my hands it’s luscious squishyness I had visions of a delicate, cobwebby shawl and I just had to drop everything else and cast on a swatch! Made up of 75% merino and 25% silk this glossy, fine laceweight yarn is a dream to knit with.

The pattern alternates between stockinette and lace panels, with the lace repeat worked over 6 stitches and 8 rows, with little size 8 beads placed with a crochet hook as you go along.

What I also love about this yarn is the way the colour varies in tone to create subtle silvery stripes in the stockinette panels…

As the finished shawl is quite large it be worn in a variety of ways.

Here it is ‘in action’ when I wore it to Mr. A’s annual work conference…

…and with the shoes… 😉

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to Amanda at Dissemiknit for tech editing this pattern for me, and to my lovely test knitters on Ravelry who gave lots of valuable feedback and provided some great photo’s for the project page – do go and check them out!

Happy knitting x

New Pattern! The Beekeeper Shawl

I’m really pleased to say that my new design The Beekeeper Shawl is now up on Ravelry 🙂

The design started last year when I feel in love with the beautiful honeybee stitch. It’s so much fun to work and it looks so pretty! You can find a full tutorial on this stitch here.

The wings of the shawl are worked in a simple ‘alternating leaf’ lace pattern.

I actually finished making the shawl whilst on holiday in Greece last year, it felt strange working on a shawl in 30+ degree heat but I wish I could have that view whilst working on every project!

The trouble was that when I got home I didn’t write up the pattern straight away so it took me an age to decipher my notes and get it into some form of legible pattern. On that note I would like to say a big THANK YOU to Amanda at Dissemiknit for doing such a brilliant job tech editing it for me!

I made my shawl using Jillybean ‘Knot another Granny‘ sport weight yarn, but it also works really well in a plainer coloured yarn. The shawl below was made by Linda (BreezyHDK on Ravelry), one of the ladies that volunteered to test knit the pattern for me. Don’t you just love the colour she chose?

© BreezyHDK (Photo used with kind permission)

This design process has been a massive learning curve for me, but I loved every second of it and I can’t wait to get on and do some more now!

Happy knitting x

A Mobius Fail, a Knitting Group and New Needles!

It’s been a busy week this one but I have still found time to whip out the needles when I can. My mobius cowl didn’t turn out quite to plan, I cast off at the weekend but it soon became clear that I had cast on far too many stitches and after 2 hours of binding off I was left with a cowl that hit the floor when I put in on! I thought it was a bit too thin just before I ran out of yarn and cast off but I convinced myself all would be ok. But it went from this…

….to this! I may be smiling here but inside I was preparing myself for the frog! Oopsy!

So anyway, frog I did and recast on with a lot less stitches. Fingers crossed for attempt no.2!

I am really happy this week as I have found a local knitting group 🙂 Through the powers of Ravelry I found out that there was a group not to far from me, so on Weds evening I packed up my newly cast on cowl and headed down to meet some fellow knitters. There were only 3 of us knitters on this occasion, plus 2 other halves but everyone was lovely and I felt lucky to have met some local like-minded knitterly people.

I have also had a few ‘presents’ through the door this week. During the recent knitting weekend in Ammerdown I was introduced to some 6″ knit pro needles, perfect for swatching! I ordered some from the Knitting4fun website just to try them out. A perfect size for handbags, they are going to be brilliant for knitting swatches on the go.

Speaking of handbags, one of the ladies at Ammerdown was in possession of this little beauty, the Thames Knitting Bag . This is so on my Christmas list!!

I also ordered a fixed Addi Lace needle after hearing some good reviews. I have yet to try it out though.

The other purchase was a Fair Isle knitting book.

So I have lot’s to keep me going. Plus this weekend I really need to knuckle down and finish module 4 of the C&G course. After stalling for so long and seeing what is coming up in the next module I have set myself the deadline of the end of November to complete it. And now I have said it, it has to happen!

Knitting Pretty

I am a little bit addicted to lace knitting at the moment, especially lacy shawls. I have lost hours to Ravelry over the past few months drooling over some beautiful designs and wishing there were more hours in the day I could devote to knitting pretty things.

One design that I just had to drop everything for and cast on was Sweet Dreams by Boo Knits. It just so happened I had the perfect yarn in my stash too – Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace is a dusky pink colour.

I need to take some better pictures, but this is how it turned out.

I chose to make a small size as I wanted it to be more of a scarf than a big shawl and I am really pleased with the results. I used 4mm needles on a laceweight yarn so it is really light and has a lovely drape when worn. I didn’t make it with the beads, but in hindsight I wish I had included them.

Speaking of beads, I have been working on a shawl design for the past 5 weeks or so. There are only 4 more rows to go but I haven’t been able to finish it this weekend as the most annoying thing happened – I ran out of beads! I need about 10 to complete the final row before I start the edging. I ordered them on Thursday so really hoping they arrive tomorrow so I can get this one off the needles this week.

My next project is going to be a lacy scarf in the teal yarn purchased at Ally Pally last week, The gauge swatch is done and the initial design charted on Envisioknit.

The rest of this weekend has been taken up with working on the C&G coursework. I have been procrastinating on Module 4 for ages, but am really excited as on Thursday I am going on a residential weekend with some of the other students. Here is my project box, full of promise and ready to go!

New Pattern! Whispering Pines Beret

I am pleased to announce the Whispering Pines Beret pattern is now available on Ravelry!

 

The beret is worked in the round from the bottom up in a 2 ply laceweight yarn and is made up of a lacy bead stitch and embossed leaf stitch pattern.

Originally inspired by a trip to Paris back in February, the pattern evolved after much swatching and getting to grips with the maths! I used Envisioknit to help with the written instructions and charting. I really do rate Envisioknit, I have been using it for a while now and it is easy to use and has always done everything that I want it to do.

Another great outcome of this design was finding such a great tech editor, thank you Amanda for your help with making the pattern so clear and easy to follow!

And thank you also to Meg, Malena, Sabine and Lisa for test knitting the pattern. This was my first experience of using a test knitting group on Ravelry and your feedback has been really useful.

The pattern is available to purchase here

A Post About Knitting!

I realised that whilst I created this blog to talk about knitting, I haven’t actually talked about it for a good few months! So here is an update on what has been occupying my time and my needles of late.

The 3rd module of my C&G course has been marked and returned, all ok apart from one sample in the joining seams activity. I had seamed 2 pieces of garter stitch but I had joined one side upside down – DOH! So I need to re-do that and send it back off with the next module.

In a recent post I mentioned some yarn that I had bought in America, well the skein on the left (Ella Rae Lace Merino) just wouldn’t leave me in peace until I had made something beautiful from it.

I did a Ravelry search for a pattern that would do it justice and came across Holden by Mindy Wilkes. This is a beautiful shawl pattern with the right balance of stockinette to show off the yarn and a lovely lace edging for some fanciness. Here is the result:

So pleased with it 🙂

Just look at the pretty stitches…the picot bind off just makes it!

Whilst making the shawl I signed up for a Craftsy class ‘Lace Shawl Design‘ with Miriam Felton. I found this course really useful in understanding the different ways of constructing shawls, how to chart the patterns and getting to grips with the maths. I have another skein of yarn in my stash – Jilly Bean’s Knot Another Granny Yarn in the Misty Moor colourway which I really want to use to try a fast increasing point up triangular shawl. I don’t think I will have enough for a regular shawl as I only bought 1 skein..anyway, this will be my next project in between the C&G course.

And in other news, I have finished a pattern design! Ages ago I posted about a design I was working on inspired by a trip to Paris. Well it took many hours of knitting, frogging, re-working, changing design ideas completely and battling with maths to eventually knitting the sample and being happy with it. I have just sent the pattern off for tech editing and then will put a call out on Ravelry for it to be test knit. Here is a sneaky peak!

It will be available as a Ravelry download once tested so do check back for links to the pattern or follow me on Ravelry – jemarrowsmith

Fun with Double Decreases

I had some great news this week. I received the feedback for module 2 of the C&G course and everything was completed and passed – yay! I will post pics of my samples once they have been returned.

With a renewed motivation thanks to the C&G Ravelry Group I have been beavering away at module 3 and the end really is in sight now. I have discovered that the problem I have is that for every module so far I have knit up ALL the samples for the entire module in one go. Which then becomes a bit of a chore when it comes to writing them up as the notes are not easy to find and it’s hard to remember what you have done. It’s taken me ages to get them all written up and presented!

Someone on the group had a great tip for overcoming this which is to attach little tags to each sample detailing the yarn used, needle size, sample size, etc etc,. I will definitely be doing this in module 4.

Rather frustratingly I ended up having to re-knit all of my double decrease samples as I have no idea where I put my notes and I couldn’t decipher what method I had used just by looking at them. however, this turned out to be a really helpful exercise for me. Double decreases are used a lot in lace knitting, but because they are often teamed with a yarn over or 2 I have never really understood the difference of each method – surely 1 double decrease has the same effect as another right? Not so.

I sampled the 3 different double decrease methods that I am using in my Spring Haze wrap.

Sample 1 – K3tog 

Cast on an odd amount of stitches and PM one stitch before the centre stitch. On each knit row knit up to the marker and then insert the needle into the next 3 stitches and knit them all together.

Here you can clearly see that by knitting the 3 stitches together it will create a ridge of stitches that slant to the right.

Sample 2 – Sl1-K2tog-Psso (or SK2P)

Cast on an odd amount of stitches and PM one stitch before the centre stitch. On each knit row knit up to the marker and then slip one stitch knitwise. Knit the next 2 sts together and then pass the slipped stitch over the knitted stitch (as if binding off).

Here the stitches lie a little flatter than the K3tog and the left slants of each stitch are clearly defined.

Sample 3 – Sl2tog-k1-p2sso (or Raised Double Decrease)

Cast on an odd amount of stitches and PM one stitch before the centre stitch. On each knit row knit up to the marker and then slip 2 sts together knitwise. Knit the next st  and then pass the slipped stitch over the 2 skipped sts (as if binding off).

The middle stitch is raised and perfectly centered with no slant.

Of course, there are other ways to do double decreases but I chose these 3 as they are the most common ones I have encountered.

Here are the first 2 samples worked in a lace pattern where you can clearly see the different effect of each method.

Another really interesting single decrease technique I came across was the Bias Decrease. I stumbled across this on the Superneedles Knitting Adventures Blog and it’s such a pretty decrease I just had to try it out!

Bias Decrease

This effect is created by increasing a stitch at the beginning and end of every 2 rows and then making a double decrease to pull the edge stitches together at a slant. Instructions can be found here

So pretty don’t you think?

Farewell 2013!

I am actually quite sad to say goodbye to 2013 as for me it has been a wonderful year. I became a Mrs, spent quality time with friends and family and had some lovely trips along the way. All in all, it’s been fantastic and if 2014 is even half as good I will count myself very lucky.

Throughout 2013 I have been steadily knitting, learning new techniques and developing ideas – there has been a lot of frogging and a little bit of swearing along the way but overall I am really happy with the progress that I have made on my knitting adventures. In April I finished the 2nd module of the C&G course, which explored the theme of ‘lines’ and learning different techniques to create patterns.

From May – July I took a break from the course to do some wedding knitting. One of the ideas that I had was to knit little purses for all the ladies as favours. This was a great way to do some stash busting and also try out some new patterns. Here are a few of the purses I made.

 

I also made some little lovebirds and roses for the card holders.

 

It was an amazing day and I loved every second!

Once back from honeymoon I started on the 3rd module of the course which looks at shaping in knitting and different stitch patterns. I was hoping to finish this module over Christmas but as usual I have got sidetracked…

Another highlight of 2013 was finally taking the plunge and starting this blog. I have always loved reading other peoples craft blogs and seeing some of the lovely things that people make – it never fails to amaze me how a simple ball of yarn can be transformed! I started with the intention of updating every week, and there have been a few times where it has slipped due to work and life but I don’t think I have gone more than 2 weeks without updating so far. If nothing else it’s nice to look back and also a great way of recording what you have achieved.

Finally, in my last post I shared my free Alonni Hat design which I published on Ravelry. I am so pleased with this as on last check I had achieved 155 downloads!! I can’t believe that 155 people have downloaded my pattern – if you have downloaded and are reading this I just want to say a huge thank you!

So what will 2014 bring? For starters, over the past few weeks I have been beavering away at a pattern idea I have had for a laceweight wrap. It’s a huge project for me as I have never tackled a laceweight shawl before and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit daunted. But I do like a challenge… I think I have finally got the overall pattern to a point where it makes sense and I have been working on a couple of samples to check it all works. This will be my ongoing project for a while and I will be posting regular updates on progress.

Thanks once again for stopping by, I wish everyone a very happy and crafty 2014!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alonni Hat – Free Download!

One week to go…and I think I am nearly there…most of my presents have been brought and wrapped, all gift knits completed and I am faced with a lovely quiet weekend – which feels a bit strange being the week before Christmas, I don’t think I have ever been this organised!

I don’t know about you but I am quite looking forward to some time off work this Christmas and indulging in a spot of selfish knitting….I have a long wish list of projects that I would love to get my teeth stuck into, a C&G module to complete, some design ideas to play with and some WIP’s that need to finally come off the needles!

If anyone is after a quick and fun knit over Christmas I am pleased to be able to post up my ‘Alonni Hat‘ pattern, available as a free Ravelry download 🙂

A close fitted unisex beanie, the Aloni Hat is worked in the round and made up of 5 repeats of a cable and zig-zag rib and eyelet pattern.

You may remember that quite a few weeks ago I  posted some pics from our honeymoon in Greece, and since then I have been working on some pattern ideas. I knew I wanted to design a hat and found there were 2 images in particular that I kept coming back to. A sea urchin and a jetty. And so the Alonni Hat was born…a inspired by the summer for the winter!

The finished hat.

Thanks for stopping by, and if I don’t get chance to post again before the 25th I would like to wish everyone reading a very Merry Christmas and  Happy 2014!

Jem x