French Quilt Shawl Update

After a very long break to let a neck strain heal, I’ve finally made progress on the French Quilt Shawl.

As a reminder, I’m adapting a counterpane pattern from Weldon’s Practical Needlework into a shawl/stole. It’s been interesting, translating the Victorian instructions into modern abbreviations and then knitting, with only a drawing to show what it might look like. Not to mention completely changing yarn thickness and needle size.

This is the center (and excuse the messiness of it, some parts are blocked and others are not). I need to sew all the parts together and then knit both a border and an edging and sew those on.

I think I’ll overdye it blue to harmonize the colors once it’s all done. The colors looked good together in the skeins but not so much now, at least to my eye.

Yarn is cashmere (pink) and merino (green and blue) reclaimed from commercial sweaters, plied and dyed by me.

Finished Shawl

At last, a finished object.  600 yards of handspun Icelandic yarn from 9 different sheep.

It’s a tiny bit damp. This yarn takes forever to dry in Winter.  It’s very dense.  It’s a large shawl and weighs more than 2lbs.  It’s very very warm.

I want to give it another day or two to dry and then it and the matching hats will get shipped off to the sheep owners.

With this shawl done, I finally got back to the French Quilt Shawl.  Turns out I was nearly done with the 6th octagon.  I will finish it up on Wednesday and get it blocked.  After that it’s figuring out the filler pieces and the layout and getting those knit and the whole thing sewn together.  After that it’s the border and edging.

I’ve got the other 6 Weldon’s Practical Needlework on their way to me so I’ll have the complete set of 12.  Plus a few other knitting books.  We buy our own Christmas presents around here since it’s extremely difficult to buy for each other.  He doesn’t know knitting/fiber things without an extremely detailed list and I know even less about hobby electronics or brewing.  Not to mention, I’m home all day and bring in the mail, which would rather ruin the surprise if he bought me anything.

This and That

I dyed the yarn as planned on Tuesday and I have to say I’m quite pleased with the colors.

Unfortunately, I managed to strain my back again in the process.  Different part of the back than the previous strain and I know exactly when it happened.  I was fishing the blue-green yarn out of the dyepot and it came up in one big clump.  Instead of dropping it back in and poking around until I found the 3 separate skeins I just lifted the whole mass up to let it drain.  This meant I was holding several pounds of weight as high as I could reach while leaning forward a little.  Very bad idea.  Fortunately, it’s not a very bad strain and it already feels better.  But it does mean knitting is off the schedule until late next week.

It’s annoying to lose all that knitting time but honestly, I probably wasn’t going to knit much early next week anyway.  My husband and I share a birthday, which falls on Tuesday.  He took Monday – Wednesday off from work.  We’ve not yet made plans but history tells me I likely wouldn’t have a lot of knitting time while he’s home.

I’ve been filling my time going through old (mostly Victorian) knitting books on pdf.  I’ve transcribed/translated some d’oyleys (doily) and counterpane squares as well as a few stitch patterns.  I did a whole set of stitch patterns that had no pics.  I’ve no idea what they will look like but they’re all pretty simple.  It’s amazing how many of these old books have no pics at all.  You just knit and hope it comes out ok.  Even large items, like sweaters, petticoats, waistcoats don’t have pics.  That’s an awful lot of knitting to do on trust and hope.

Of course, photography was still pretty rare at that time and I imagine drawing knitting was a specialized skill, plus it probably added cost to print either one in the books.  It’s just interesting to me that back then people thought nothing of knitting from a pattern without a picture of any kind and these days, if there’s no picture or a bad one, no one wants to knit the pattern, no matter how amazing the pattern may be.  Even the colors of the yarn in the picture can affect someone’s willingness to knit a pattern in today’s world.

I use the word pattern a bit loosely in some of these cases.  Today’s patterns are detailed and exact.  Clothing patterns are graded to allow you to make the size you want.  Those old pattern leave a lot up for interpretation and usually are just one size.  It’s up to you to alter it to fit.  Keep in mind that there was no pic so you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like.  I’ve no idea how one would do it.

Still, for all the flaws and differences, it’s quite fascinating to see what people were knitting and a challenge to read the pattern and try to imagine what the item should look like.

French Quilt Shawl Part 2

Today I started the third octagon for the French Quilt Shawl.  Since this is the third of three I figured it was about time I went stash diving for the next color.

I dug around but didn’t find anything appropriate in the right amount of yarn.  You’d think with a stash the size of mine it would be easy but nope.  So then I turned to my “to be dyed” stash and came up with these:

I’ll dye the blue to purple and the whitish to something blue-green/teal which will be for the connecting bits and the border.  I’m hoping to have enough of the blue turned purple for the edging. (There’s more of both of these yarns.)

Here’s my terrible, a two-year-old could do better, quick drawing of the colors of the finished shawl.

Pathetic, isn’t it? Drawing is not one of my skills.

Anyway, there will be 3 octagons in each color, arranged checkerboard fashion.  The connecting bits in the middle are squares and all of these pieces are sewn together.  There are triangle bits to fill in the edges except for the corners which are left unfilled. Then there’s a border which is sewn on and an edging as well, also sewn on.  I may or may not alter one or both of those to be knitted on.

Now these octagon have turned out bigger than expected as well as used more yarn than expected.  I know from experience that borders and edgings take more yarn than you’d think.  I may end up leaving off the edging, depending on how much yarn is left.

These are the two finished and blocked octagons.  Badly and unevenly blocked.  Mostly I just wanted to make it easier to sew together/pick up stitches.  And get an idea of what size they will be.  It’ll all get blocked again once finished.

They are about 15 inches across.  So two wide is 30 inches and 3 long is 45 inches.  I can expect to add another 8-10 inches per side with the border and edging.  So 50 inches wide and 65 inches long.  So much for not making a blanket.  It’ll at least be lapghan sized.

I’ll probably dye the yarn tomorrow.  It’ll take me most of the week (4 days on average so far) to knit the third octagon.  By then the dyed yarn will be dry and I can start the next three.

In other news, there was sweater knitting over the weekend.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to run out of yarn before the body is finished.  Not to worry.  That just means I need to spin and dye more.  I have plenty of the fiber.  When I have to set that sweater aside to wait for yarn, I’ll start the colorwork sweater.  And maybe one of the other sweaters I have planned.  Colorwork may not be good tv knitting.

French Quilt Shawl

 

The first octagon finished and blocked for my French Quilt shawl, adapted from a counterpane pattern in Weldon’s Practical Needlework.

This turned out much larger and used more yarn than anticipated.  I estimate that I can make 3 more in this yarn.  I had planned on 8.  But I now think 8 might be too big.  I think 2 more, for a total of 3 is better and I’ll have to find a new yarn to do 3 more in for a grand total of 6, laid out in a checkerboard.

I had debated doing half octagons and having the shawl be one and a half octagons wide but I don’t think that will look good.

Then I’ll have to find a third color for the in-between bits and the border and edging (or perhaps a fourth color for those.)

This is turning into a bigger project than I thought it would be.  Luckily, the octagons are fairly easy.  I’ve done 31 of 54 rows of the next one just today.  I’m up to 128 stitches per round and it’ll grow to 224 stitches per round so the rest will take a bit longer.

I’m still quite excited about this project despite the issues and despite my dislike of repeating my knitting.  Somehow these octagons don’t feel repetitive.  And there is the satisfaction of finished objects as each part is completed.

 

New Swatch and some misc

Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible pattern #43

So I did need an extra stitch.  But I only need it for one row so in the future I could borrow it from the edge stitches.  I wouldn’t need it at all if I was knitting in the round.

The first octagon in progress for my French Quilt shawl, adapted from a counterpane pattern in Weldon’s Practical Needlework.  By adapted, I mean not as big.  I’m estimating two rows and 4 columns of octagons, plus the little squares and triangles to fill in the gaps.  There is also a border and an edging.  An interesting though occurred to me while I was knitting this.  I could substitute any doily or round pattern, as long as I could block it into a octagon.  The gap filling bits could be anything I like as well.  I may play with this concept in the future.

I also went thrifting this past weekend.  I found 4 sweaters – 2 cobweb weight men’s merinos in green and brown plus 2 heavier weight sweaters.  I estimate sport to dk weight, both in lambswool.

Both are already unraveled and the black is washed.  I’m planning on dyeing the hot pink.  It’s not my color and is even brighter than it looks in the pic.  I’m thinking about some shade of purple or a toned down red/pink.  I want it to stay fairly light as I want to pair it with the black for a colorwork sweater.  Those vertical stripes on the black sweater were a pain.  Thankfully they were only on the front.  The good news is that they were intarsia and the yarn was not cut.  The bad news is that the yarns were twisted together at every color change on every row.  So I had to untwist them.  It took forever.

My Olympic spinning plans have gone right out the window.  I have spun a little but not nearly as much as I had planned.  I keep getting distracted.  But I am accomplishing things and I’m happy.  That’s all that really matters.