Sometime ago I had a run-in with some Danish knitters. They were asking questions on how to block a shawl and I replied with my usual answer (I include a longer version with all my lace shawl patterns, by the way):

Weave in the ends of your shawl, but do not trim off the ends. Then soak your shawl in lukewarm water for 15 minutes rinsing it gently afterwards. Wrap your shawl in a spare towel to blot out as much water as possible. Do not wring your shawl. Pin it out and leave it to dry for a few days. Unpin, weave in ends, then wear with love and pride.

I was told in no uncertain terms by a series of people that I was wrong. Instead of soaking shawls in lukewarm water and then patting them dry, I should put them into the washing machine to spin them before pinning them out. I don’t mind being told that I am wrong, but this advice ran so counter to logic that I decided to experiment a bit.

In the name of knitting science I grabbed my Mosswell, my version of Elizabeth Freeman’s fabulous Aeolian Shawl from Knitty, and I put it in my washing machine. I chose the absolutely lowest setting possible on my machine and the absolutely gentlest spinning cycle – and then I hoped for the best.

This was Mosswell before my experiment:

This is Mosswell now:

No, the photo is not blurry. My shawl felted quite dramatically and is now roughly the size of a bib.

So, what went wrong? I shall stick to my guns and say: “the washing machine is what went wrong”. Unless you have a really state-of-the art washing machine (perhaps?), I would stick to soaking your shawl in the sink/tub and patting it dry with a towel. You have much greater control over the process than if you were to just stick it in a washing machine and hope for the best.

Also, if you have spent 2 weeks to 6 months on knitting a shawl, why not spend another 20 minutes (of which 15 minutes is the shawl soaking and you drinking coffee) on preparing it for blocking?

Have you any experiences with blocking that you would like to share? Leave a comment – I’d love to hear from you!

Between deadlines, flu and whatnot I have found time to start work on a new shawl pattern. It’s a really relaxing knit – one I can do late at night when my brain is too wired to sleep and too tired to focus – and I’m really pleased with it so far. Tonight I have been tweaking the charts and I had a really satisfying moment when I solved a particularly nagging row. I hate hate hate transitions that do not stack or flow into one another – unless I can see a clear reason why they do not stack, they just strike me as laziness on the behalf of the designer – and this one row just did not look right. The solution was right in front of me: moving decreases from the centre of the pattern repeat to the edges. Hooray!

My favourite bit on the interwebs this week? Reel Scotland speaking to John McKay who directed my favourite Sherlock Holmes-related BBC drama. No, not that one. Nor that other one. This one. The article is full of interesting takes on film-making, on working in TV, and on making things happen in Scotland. And then there is this great throw-away line that just made sense: “..this bit of Glasgow, our San Francisco.”

My other favourite internet bits this week? This fantastic collection of Soviet science-fiction magazine covers. This grey airship bag from Etsy. And you can learn the most interesting feminist lessons in very surprising places.

I have been working on swatches (which I cannot show you) and my Kastanie sweater. I think it’s fair to say that I’ll end up running out of yarn before I can knit two long sleeves. I never get any use out of the short-sleeved sweaters I own, so I am considering ripping Kastanie out.

And I have another reason for considering it. I am tired of the silhouette. I want different pieces in my wardrobe – I want interesting pieces. Granted I have a body shape that lends itself to fitted clothes (think Christina Hendricks rather than Nicole Kidman) but I still want to make things that have a purpose beyond warming me and not adding fifty pounds in the process.

Recently I have subscribed to a great deal of fashion blogs – the kind where ordinary people blog about what they wear. Girl With Curves has a completely different style to me but I find inspiration in how she layers and combines pieces. What Would A Nerd Wear is often too casual for me, but is great for accessorizing ideas. Blue Collar Catwalk has yet another style – again, different from mine – but I love the way she combines prints.

What I am taking from these blogs is something different than what I take from Ravelry (and I think to some degree there is a very distinct Ravelry style too – if you disagree, look around next time you are at a fiber-related event). Suddenly I’m less hung up on knitting the right designers in the must-have yarn – suddenly I am thinking about my knitting in a wardrobe context.

Lightbulb!

And I think also the death knell for Kastanie.

I was given an amazing Danish knitting book: Mere Feminin Strik by Lene Holme-Samsøe. The Ravelry photos do not do it justice – it is well-conceived, clever, and luscious. It is split into four sections: ‘plain’ knitting, textures, cabling, and lace. Each section has garments as well as accessories showcasing the theme. The attention to detail is evident on every page and I really like how wearable the designs are. I have a couple of must-knit garmentss such as the stunning Cecilia which is knitted top-down and Lily, a bottom-up garterstitch cardigan, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be knitting some of the smaller pieces too. So far Mere Feminin Strik is only available in Scandinavia, but seeing Holme-Samsøe’s first book was snapped up and translated by Interweave Press, I’d be surprised if this follow-up book wasn’t given the same treatment.

ETA: Interweave Press will be publishing a translated version in 2012 – thank you to Carol for the info – she’s the translator!

Overall, though, we did try to give presents that would not only please the recipient but also support people we know and love. This included presents from Gabrielle Reith’s Small Stories range and t-shirts from SevenHundred. I was also very humbled to see many people choosing to gift one of my patterns to friends over this festive period. Thank you!

Things are already in motion for a very lovely 2012 – I hope to catch with myself, you and everyone else before the clock ticks over, though.

No pattern, but this is what I did:  I bought two large-ish bangles from a well-known high street shop. I used some bulky pure wool which I knitted to a very, very tight tension on 3.5mm needles (this is rather hard on the hands, I should add, but the result is great).

I experimented with how many stitches to cast on but settled on 14 stitches before knitting away rather happily. Throughout I measured the length of my knitted strip against the bangle – I wanted a snug fit, so I kept pulling at it. I cast off using my usual lace cast-off method which allows for elasticity.

Then I sewed it all together: cast-in/off edges first and then the long edges with the bangle inside. The sewing-up was hard on the hands, but I found using a safety pin helped me enormously by keeping the edges pinned together as I worked around the bangle.

There are some rather amazing jewellery patterns on Ravelry, actually. I spent a lot of time this month looking for inspiration and quick-yet-substantial knits. Some of my favourites include Bevy of Bangles (felted and embellished), Knitter’s Brooch (which I have seen retail for up to £10 at craft fairs!), Blooming Rose (utilising the natural curl of stocking stitch), and Braided Cable necklace.

I have one more handmade Christmas present up my sleeve – except I forgot to take a photo of it before I dispatched it to .. er .. somewhere else. Meanwhile there are five pressies in my living room all wrapped in “woolly wishes!” wrapping paper. I think that means they are for me! Ooh, the excitement!

Today is Winter Solstice and while you can take a girl out of Scandinavia, a Scandinavian girl will always love her pre-Christian pagan holiday traditions. So, I’m off to light some candles and pet my straw yule goat (julebuk). The days are getting longer, finally!

And I ended up making some things that I well and truly love.

A Christmas pudding pin cushion for L.

The pattern is by Freddie Patmore, but I do not think it is available outside Rowan Christmas workshops? I used oddments of Rowan Pure Wool DK for this one. I used toy stuffing for the top and added a tiny bag filled with rice for a bit of added weight at the bottom.

The construction of the holly leaves is really clever, by the way.

I never thought I’d be one to knit novelty Christmas puddings, but we learn new things about ourselves all the time, don’t we? This was actually so much fun to make that I also made one for myself using Rowan Fine Tweed! I’ll try to get a photo of that later..

I made three Christmas baubles for P.

I used Balls Up! by General Hogbuffer (this may be a pseudonym!) as a template, but I did deviate quite a bit as the styrofoam balls I used were significantly smaller than the ones used in the pattern.

The yarn? Oddments of sheepy Shetland type 4ply. Needles? 2.5mm.

The first bauble took an evening to make as I had to figure out my own modifications rather than work straight from the pattern. The next two baubles took significantly less time, although I was still using colourful language towards the end when the styrofoam ball was inside the work-in-progress and I had to work decreases on tiny needles. Again, hands did suffer in the making of these objects!

I absolutely love these – I think they look amazing – and if I had had any more styrofoam baubles, everyone would have received these. I think this is something I’ll make again – possibly for my mother next year and definitely for myself.

(Of course taking these photographs was another eye-opener for any neighbours who had forgotten my quirky ways: “Look, dear, the lady from next door is off the rails again. She’s kneeling in the snow with her camera fixed at something knitted.” They will learn someday.)

I also made something for E. but she refused to open her gift before Christmas Day..

Dear Father Christmas,

Love, Karie x

Last night I cast on for a project that has nothing to do with work nor is it one of my own designs. In fact, it is a completely frivolous project that I only cast on because – gasp – I wanted to knit it. I don’t think I have done that for a very, very long time (and typing that makes me feel a bit sad, actually). Kastanie is going to be a jumper. I bought the first issue of knit.wear a couple of months ago because I loved the simple, wearable Wendy Bernard pattern. Of course it transpires that the pattern is a re-branded Riverstone Boatneck jumper which makes me very angry as a consumer. Pay $5.50 to get the one pattern or pay £10 for a magazine? I know which one I would have preferred.

Anyway. In my stash I had two large skeins of New Lanark Aran in a one-off colourway that I bought on a visit to the Mill back in 2009. The colour is a gorgeous heathery chestnut (‘Kastanie’ is Danish for chestnut) and I am loving up it works up with the stitch pattern. I reckon I have maybe 600g of yarn which may or may not be enough for the jumper, but we shall see. The jumper is a bog-standard, easily-modified top-down raglan so I can play around with fit and yardage. All in all, this is not an earth-shatteringly new direction for my knitting but I just really want a cosy winter jumper that I can knit up fairly quickly and without too much stress.

Speaking of stress, I use WordPress to power this site and sadly their new update makes it incredibly cumbersome for me to blog. This entry has been entirely hand-coded, for instance, and while I do like coding, I am not particularly keen on handcoding every single blog post. It takes too much time. I’m off to find a solution. If you want to see another photo of Kastanie, please visit its project page on Ravelry. No link because that would require about three different windows open and additional handcoding. You get my drift.

• Sort out the unwieldy stash
• Eleven hats in 2011 (or preferably more…)
• Knit up a lot of the random balls scattered throughout the stash
• Finish more than 2.75 garments within a year.
• Relax with my knitting. It shouldn’t feel like a chore

And how did I do? I did relatively badly.

I managed to organise the stash but it became rather disorganised in October when we had to get the spare bed out of storage, thus upsetting my stacks of yarn boxes in the process. Eleven hats? No. I managed three. I still need hats, so I will aim to knit some more with some of the random balls still in my stash. I did knit one cardigan and finished another one which had languished in my knitting basket. I turned a third garment into a shrug and I’m halfway through a fourth garment. Mild success? It doesn’t feel like it.

As for relaxing with my knitting? Here is where I have to come clean. I work within the knitting industry. Although it is the best job in the world, knitting is still work and as such it can feel like a chore at times. Most of my knitting time is spent swatching and I rarely get to finish things. I am not complaining because I am one of the lucky ones who has managed to turn a hobby into a career, but I am now realising that sometimes knitting will not feel relaxing and that is okay.

So, 2011. What did I do and what were my favourites?

• I exhibited knitted art at The Tramway Art Gallery. Yikes.
• One of my go-to- FOs was the Silkwood Cowl which felt like a really carefree project and subsequently has been living around my neck most of the year.
• My other go-to FO has been my Red Cardigan of Doom which took me forever to finish and which I thought looked awful on me. I have practically lived in it ever since. I have to knit a proper long-sleeved cardigan out of Rowan Baby Alpaca because it makes the softest, warmest fabric I have ever worn. I am always cold – except when I wear this cardigan.
• I released a couple of patterns – some free and some not so free. My favourites? Karise was released in July and has just been the subject of a Ravelry knit-along. Tornved was released this month to a quite overwhelming response (gosh). I also did a couple of patterns for a store which I have not yet added to Ravelry.
• I tried a lot of new yarns. I loved working with Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk. It was a lovely heavy and drapey yarn just perfect for shawls. However, it is fair to say that 2011 was the year of knitting Kidsilk Haze. I used that a lot.

So. 2012. What do I spy in the crystal ball and what do I hope for?

• I’m already working on more patterns. I have sketchbook filled with what is essentially 2-and-a-half collections worth of patterns. Hopefully I will be able to devote more time to this in 2012.
• I’d really love to knit a few garments in 2012. Quality over quantity.
• And I still need more hats.
• Keeping on top of the stash. I cannot promise ‘more yarn out than in’ but at least I won’t do the ‘oh, I fancy a ball of that’ thing because that way madness lies. I am getting far better at curating my stash already. May it continue.
• More conscious allocation of my knitting time: what is ‘work’ knitting and what is ‘me’ knitting?

Of course I have a list of things I want to knit, but as 2011 has shown me: I had better not plan too far ahead.

I have divided the guide into three sections: Gifts for New Knitters, Gifts for Experienced Knitters and Whimsical Things.

Gifts for New Knitters

• A nice pair of needles with some nice yarn is always welcome. I recommend buying a set 4mm (US6) bamboo needles such as these or these. These needles go with double-knitting yarn, a common yarn type in the UK. For a funky scarf, two balls of James C. Brett Marble DK would be plenty, a blingy version would take two balls of King Cole Galaxy DK and a really luxurious version would take three balls of Rowan Baby Alpaca DK.
• Why not give your New Knitter a class in a local craft shop to help her skill up and meet fellow knitters? Here in Glasgow, The Life Craft offers great introductory courses on how to knit among other things. You would have to check the directory for your area, but most UK cities have similar places.
• Books! You will want to find a book that has cool patterns which are not too daunting. Sarah Hatton’s “Ten Simple, Cosy Projects” is a great little book filled with totally achievable patterns. You could combine the book with yarn for one of the projects and suitable needles.
• Most knitters love gadgets no matter their skill level. A New Knitter will love finding anything from a knitting gauge or a sheepy measuring tape to fun little project bags or stitch markers (available in all shapes and sizes from fun ones to very stylish ones).

Gifts for Experienced Knitters:

• Speaking of gadgets, a ball winder is top of most Experienced Knitters’ lists. Gift it together with an umbrella swift and you would be the best gift buyer ever. Other Experienced Knitters’ gadgets include sock blockers (available as a cute keyring too!) and blocking wires. You might also consider fun little project bags or stitch markers (available in all shapes and sizes from fun ones to very stylish ones).
• Experienced Knitters will already own a lot of knitting needles, but they can never have too many – especially if they like to work on many different projects at any one time. KnitPro is currently the brand to be seen using and luckily KnitPro caters to all budgets. On a tight budget? KnitPro cable needles. Able to spend a bit more? The KnitPro Starter Set would be ideal. In the mood to spend? The KnitPro Deluxe set is your answer.
• Yarn! If you want to give your Experienced Knitter a real treat, consider buying her some handdyed yarn in her favourite colour. I love Old Maiden Aunt Yarns, but you should also take a look at Juno Fiber Arts, Nimu Yarns and EasyKnits. One hank of yarn is enough for a project, but consider buying two if your budget allows.
• A subscription to a popular knitting magazine is really a gift that keeps giving. One of the most popular UK knitting magazines is The Knitter whilst Interweave Knits is a very popular US magazine. UK yarn company Rowan also offers a subscription which includes two magazines, membership newsletters, and discount on UK workshops.
• And speaking of which, workshop vouchers are a great gift. Many yarn shops offer advanced classes on finishing techniques, sock knitting and a dozen other topics. Booking a class directly may involve some sleuthing, so go for a voucher if you are unsure.

Whimsical Things:

• How about jewellery made from knitting needles?
• Shawl pins will be welcomed by most knitters who have tried to wrap themselves up in a pashmina or shawl only to re-wrap themselves five minutes later.
• Fact: knitters love buttons. Textile Garden and Bedecked specialise in luxury buttons. Why not make a little bag with a selection of stunning buttons?
• You can get a lot of jewellery aimed at knitters such as earrings, brooches and necklaces.
• Tote bags. A godsend for a serious knitter on her way to knit night. Yarn Play Cafe has a huge selection of fun tote bags aimed at your own personal bag lady knitter.
• Finally, you could always succumb to getting a t-shirt made. There are many design out there so you are sure to find something suitable.

I hope you found this guide useful. And I also hope you will make a knitter very happy this Christmas.

All links work as of December 5, 2011. Please note any postal deadlines relevant to your location.

Yes, boys and girls, I finished designing and writing another pattern. Remember the Old Maiden Aunt knitalong? I set myself the challenge of designing a shawl pattern during the KAL (oh, and knitting the sample and writing the pattern too).

I had the idea very early on that I wanted to design a shawl with my childhood in mind. I spent my summers in Tornved, a tiny hamlet in rural Denmark, where my great-grandmother. Lily, lived in a cottage. Her cottage looked out on farmland and I thought I wanted to put that into writing knitting. So, there you have it: birds chasing seeds and flying over unworked soil. I find it oddly poetic.

And on a practical note, I love small shawls with a solid stocking stitch middle but I find them quite dull to knit, so I wanted a lace pattern that would break up the monotony of stocking stitch but remain fairly solid.

Anyway, I eventually decided to take some photos inside one of the glass house in the nearby Botanic Gardens. Some of the statues kindly volunteered to be wrapped up in wool which gave my shawl a faint Gothic feel. Maybe those are not birds, but hearts..Hmm..

I am still unsure about the amount of light, but things are not going to get any brighter for a few weeks (yay, solstice!). Also, the grand prize in the Old Maiden Aunt November knitalong is a complete Tornved kit, so I needed to wrap things up.

Tornved took me three weeks to chart (because charts kept being stupid and big and difficult to knit) and less than four days to knit (when I finally cracked the chart thing). This speed-knitting adventure can possibly be the reason why I’m struggling with a wonky wrist now. Don’t try this at home, kids. And it was an oddly emotional knit (and I don’t do emotions) because I sat there thinking about ways to incorporate memories into a knit without being too specific.

You can purchase Tornved on Ravelry, if you so desire. I used 390 yards of Old Maiden Aunt Merino 4ply in the colour Berry Good and knitted it on 4mm circs. I did not bead this shawl, but I have included several beading tips for all you bling-lovers.

And that is that, I guess. I have lived with this shawl design for a month and now it is leaving the nest. Aww..