The Day of Wool at Csillaghegy

At Sarurday we will held The Day of Wool at the Csillaghegy center again.



I will be there with spindles , wool, handdyed yarn and all stuff. There also will be a lot of other activity, carding, spinning with spindles and wheels, felting, dyeing and whatnot.
Come and enjoy the day with us!

Details here and here.

Poppies and prototype

The invitation to participate in the Motolla e-book gave me the perfect opportunity to try out an idea, I was toying around for some time.I planned a flowery beret, with lowers in graduating shades of red, vith wide corrugated rib. No long after I was drawing up a chart in excel, and done the prototype with some leftover sockyarn that I have in insane amount in my stash.  (The hat ended up as a late Xmas present to my friend's daughter who loves it to bits).

Afterwars the patternhad to be written up from my nonexisting notes and excel chart,then  it had to be knitted again from Barka yarn, from which we choose the Vasárnap (Sunday) that is lovely and incredibly soft (it has cashmere in it as well), and comes in a wide range of beautiful colors.Thankfully we could select colors that were very close to the original idea.

Pattern: Poppies, at the moment it is available in Hungarian, but soon the English version will be up as well. If you can't wait until then, I think the chart in the pattern speaks for itself, and it is easy to find the nubmbers, even in the Hungarian mumble jumble.

Yarn: Barka Vasárnap

Wondering stripes

Over the weekend we made some photos of the cardigan that appears in the e-book (Motolla) newly published by Barkafonal, especially to show, that it looks fine in figures that are far from being modell-perfect.

I was really happy and excited when Luca asked me if I would like to participate in their (then only planned) e-book. I had a few ideas, and we selected this stripey cardigan.

Mainly because for the first time I wanted something that though describes a technique (top down-raglan) that is new to some, but at the same time simple enough so that not too seasoned knitters would also attempt.Something that could be done in many variations, with different striping (or even without any stripes) with the wide cuffs I love, or with the normal, narrower ones, in which different color combinations can be tried. It was almost self evident that from the Barka selection I would choose their tweed yarn.

Sweaters knitten in one piece have many advantages, and one of teh most important of those that the cardigan can be tried on while knitting it, and changes (for example lengthening, shortening sleeves adding or leaving out decreases for better waist shaping).

The cardigan is sporty, the tweed yarn and the stripes add interest while knitting and gives it casual elegance. In these blue/green colors it goes well with jeans. As soon as there will be enough light to photo I will show you the same sweater an other color selection.
I have to say a big thank you to the testers for their help and advice.

Official announcement: Its PUBLISHED!!!!

The electronic Magazine MOTOLLA by Barkafonal.

The striped cardigan on teh cover and two berets are my work...

At the moment the patterns are in Hungarian, but they will be available in English as well.

Enjoy!

Dots

The moment I saw the pattern page in ravelry for this I fell in love, I ordered the magazine within a day.

I did had to dive into the stash (umm dismantling a little castle built of IKEA boxes full of yarn... only to find these in a totally different place. As I meantioned knitting a whole adult sweater out of fingering/sport/sock weight yarn is bordering on masochism, on the other hand there is a definite advantage, that less yarn is enough for a sweater in terms of weight. For this I used three hanks of 100 gramms of the beige one, sith a small ball eft over, and a little bit more than two 50 gramm hank of the red one.

The pattern is wery well written, cleverly constructed (knitted all in one piece in the round, but decreasing at the shoulders so it looks like set in sleeves. The little three row repeat dot pattern is lovely, and it is just slightly addictive... I mean it was like ah, here comes a dot row, a little diversion, then ahh just one knit ow, that goes fast and closes the stranded one, and then ahh just one more row and I have a full repeat... and then the whole thing starts again... Also it is a perfect thing to practive stranded knitting, simple enough, not to get lost in the pattern...

I just looove the contrasting picot edges...

Mods: Didn't do the side seam stitch, but only because I didn't read the pattern throughly before starting the sweater, and made full length sleeves (I just do not like 3/4 sleeves)

The yarn I had was about sport weight (one of my ancient second hand shop finds, hiding away in teh stash for years, one of them (the beige) having a strange name of ALRÖKA, and the red one is a Schaffhauser Wolle all around, both are 100 % wool) making my gauge a bit off, but I usually knit the sizes going with the 38 inch bust, and this had a size slightly above 40 inch wich made up for the difference in the gauge.

This knitting was my companion though the lates exam period, sometimes I even knitted instead of studying... thankfully this is not showing in my results.

Masochism???

Can knitting a whole adult sized not lace sweater from sock/sport/fingering weight yarn count as masochism?

And I can't even say never again, because I have about a ton of this type...

Knitting what I preach

I really knit swatches... to almost everything.. This is just some of them.. I use them to get familiar with the yarn, how it knits up, how it behaves after washed, to determine gauge, figure out which needle to use

To try out certain patterns...



 

To see if a color combination works or not, or which one is better.. (with this I went with the lighter red).

And this is just for my current project...I am pretty excited about it :-)

Nordic

I've already knit this pattern last winter from red and white, which I can use very well with my grey, black and jeans skirts and pants, but I wanted something to o with my red skirt as well.

The whole thing is knit in one piece (pattern is from  2011/2012 winter Vogue), and since this yarn was thichker, the sweater also a littel more generous sized.

The yarn came from Ice Yarns, Unico Alpacca from a last winter sale.I used the whole 8 baéé package from the dark one and a little bit more than one from the light grey one.

In the shoulder pattern I used a different 5 row chart, but otherwise went with the pattern basically, except for the button band, which I did the same way as last year.

Photos: Christopher Laurent Deli
Place: Barkafonal

Newstime: Shop is updated!

filled up my boxes with handdyed fiber and yarn again. From the side bar you can find all the new colors to fill these dreary winter days.
Just a few to give you a taste