...but now I have got most of my stash (not all) and projects current and past
on there - back here I come!
Taking pictures of old projects is pretty entertaining - and I see I have, in fact, knitted quite a bit over the last couple of years particularly. I'm going to do a few posts now about different knitted items.
First one - this cotton rowan thing I made in 1990? 1988? Something like that. I remember it was on the back of the summer magazine, with a beautiful Black girl - in front of a tree, maybe? and I loved it. Might have been a Fasset, not sure, I no longer have that magazine.
I think it was meant to be in Rowan cotton glace - or a precursor - but I was a student, and all those balls of different colours would have been EXPENSIVE. So - I went to
John Lewis in Sheffield, a department store, and rummaged. I ended up with two rowan yarns - a dark and a lighter teal - two Jaeger - black and red - and then some Jonelle, an own brand they used to do. This is where the error happened - I went with a dark peach and a lighter one, as well as an off white. Hmmm. It was quite a square jumper (of course, of its time), with one row stripes of different colours to start, then what i know now is stranded knitting doing zigzags with the pale teal and white. The bulk of the sweater was then made in intarsia blocks, with zig-zag edges - all the same, so that I didn't need the pattern with me all the time, as I could copy from prior rows. the neck had a stand up collar (not very tall) that would have been better if I had changed down a needle size, but worked, and the cuffs were like the hem of the body.
I'm pretty pleased with the knitting I did then - I don't think I'd ever heard of intarsia or stranded knitting, so I just did what seemed to make sense, and it came out really very well, not pulled in by the colours, no holes etc. A few knots on the back, but what the heck! I think I did pretty well!
I did wear it, but not as much as I would have if I had used lovely rather than cheap collars overall! I carried it round Australia for 5 months, almost never wearing it (a fleece was much easier and lighter). So recently, I thought - I'll overdye it, that'll work, then I'll be able to wear it all the time! Hmmmm. Orange. Looks much worse, and I took no pictures of it before dyeing it. I'm so sorry about that, as (retrospectively) I loved the light summeriness of it!
I might try to reproduce it in lighter weight yarn - cotton, or hemp, or maybe wool. One day, when I'm over the self-induced tragedy.
C bought me this great bagful of yarns from
Di Gilpin's shop in St Andrews (a wonderful den!) I was planning to make a coat, knit tight (nicking stitch patterns from Jean Frost's Jackets book) so it wouldn't sag, and arranged interestingly. Voddy kindly helped me to make a calico tacked version to use as a pattern guide, and I swatched then kind of launched into the left shoulder bit. Haven't done any now for about 15 months... I really must!
These (above and right) are some of the yarns - above is handspun Wensleydale locks; right is handspun baby alpaca and some Yorkshire tweed aran; the long swatch above is also yorkshire tweed aran, as is the above right start of L shoulder in YTA with a boucle from Texere held with it.
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