Synth Green Art Walk Cardi

Finally when I saw a picture the Art Walk Cardi by Hannah FettigI knew what to make with the yarn from my half unraveled synthetic green sweater from the 80's. I had come a long way of endless swatching in search of a nice stitch that would work with this yarn and colour. Seed stitch variations turned out either too vintage, old-fashioned or boring to work with the colour. More textured swatching made the fabric look like a forest or lawn. Now here was something (the Art Walk Cardi) in a super simple texture stitch which just worked perfect.

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi by Knitbitch

I admit I totally copy catted it. To buy the pattern on Ravelry I had to buy an e-book with a total of 13 patterns, so I simply looked at the pictures and played it by "ear" or in this case rather eye. Also I decided to just finish all the yarn, so the Cardi became a bit longer. The cropped version looks younger and fresher, but this longer version probably fits my figure better.

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi by Knitbitch

Synth Green Art Walk Cardi by Knitbitch

this is my sweater from the 80's that I unravelled

Happy Husband cardigan

"Happy Husband" cardigan now finally finished,  I have been searching and trying for years. It feels quite selfish to only ever haven knitten him a scarf. It was design by trial and error. Total time more than one year,  If I count the times I started off with other yarns and design ideas it took a decade. But here it is and he is happy.

I have tried off in 3 different yarns, first it was too thin and soft (feminine) then it was too thick and coarse (tchy). I started over many times, to get the needle size right, to get the pattern right (finally settled on seedstitch) and to get the design/proportions right. I wanted to knit something that was fully fashioned and slim fit, as I hate oversized sweaters. The design is contiguous top-down principle developed for this yarn size and with sophisticated fully fashioned detailing. By the way I'm also happy that my idea has now finally worked out and it's finished. I thank this last yarn to the kind donation from @Ivo and @annemarie who collected this vintage Hema Fisherman Wool from and old lady. Delivered to me by @inge_noordijk. Combined with a couple of skeins Drops Andes. I used pensize 6mm, thinner than recommended for Drops Andes, but that gives the work more body, and hence creates a more masculine result



This model is worked seamlessly from top-down using the contiguous sleeve method developed by Susie Myers, (“SusieM” on Ravelry)

Happy Husband cardigan by Knitbitch

Happy Husband cardigan by Knitbitch

Happy Husband cardigan by Knitbitch

Happy Husband cardigan by Knitbitch

Happy Husband cardigan by Knitbitch

Inge's wrap-around

I also knitted a very chunky wrap-around blanket cardigan for my friend Inge. She had herself been working on a blanket for a very long time. and eventually given up. so she brought me the blanket for unravelling. It was a massive amount of Lana Grossa Regazza Lei yarn. Beautyful soft merino wool. so we settled on a design for her blanket cardigan and I went away and knitted it. Job easy done on needle size 12 :-)

Wrap-around blanket cardigan, the original

The first pilot knit of the wrap-around cardigan was knitted out of my old stash of off-white wools, a bit a mix of everything, no labels, carried it around for years not being able to decide or figure out what to do with it. Later on I died it green, and the different kinds of wool are enhanced by the fact that they absorbed the die differently.

Kingsday knitting in public

Here I am knitting in-public on Kingsday / Koningsday, a national holiday and supa dupa big party in the Netherlands. Particularly in Utrecht as we are allowed to start the night before, which makes it a 24 hrs. go-crazy folks party. The general rule is, anything is allowed, but preferably it should be funny, entertaining, wacky and creative. Welcome to have a royal under-tone, or be tungue-in-cheak about the royal family.

Lo and Karin kindly let me sit in-front of their house in the Korte Lauwerstraat, which is right in the cosiest part of the festivities. as you can see I'm wearing a couple of Queensday rings, a pattern I developed last year, whilst I was knitting Kings Balls, some new patterns I had developed for this years Kingsday, based on the infamous Christmas balls by Arne & Carlos. You can see some of them in the background, I promise I will release them very soon, I just have to fix some flaws that I found whilst working. The balls are very labour intensive and complex, actually I didn't sell a single one. Not that I was really there to be a shop and sell, I was more there for the fun and to see the surprise in people's face when they realize that I'm actually REALLY KNITTING. this is something that causes people's big surprise, some people stop to tell stories about their grand-ma's and other people just stop and stare in awe whilst I work.

I did sell a couple of Queensday rings, here are some of the happy receivers :-) actually I had to stop knitting at a certain point and crochet rings, to keep up with the orders.

The first customer of the day. This was the guitar-player of a live acting/singing band housed around the corner

Kingsday party-mood girls

Very friendly and enthusiastic neighbor

Super friendly and supportive neighbor

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Easy Peasy necklace

Spool-knitting a necklace is super-easy, and it creates quick decorative results, like this necklace I'm wearing here. Probably made it in an evening, using some scrap-yarns that I had lying around. Using these two tints of mustard yellow and olive green which I like very much right now.

Knitted throw-around blanket jacket

You would think that something as simple as this needn't take very long to make. But this very simple, straight throw-around blanket jacket has been on it's way for a long time. I got this old sweater from my mum which was not exactly pretty, but I liked the yarn, the blend of colours it had in it, so I decided to un-ravel it and create something new with this yarn. something I have done many times, you can read more about that in my re-knit manifesto. Anyways it took so long, since every time I tried something it didn't work out. But finally setting on such a simple model, with just a plain regular stitch it worked. (just very boring to make) all the complicated stuff just didn't work with this yarn. and I'm glad my sister liked, it was her christmas gift.

The throw-around is just a plain flat square, to emphasize the simplicity I made no ribs at the extremities, so it rolls a bit, and I added a bit of yellow edge at the bottom, that has become a bit more orange on the picture than it is reality because of the beautiful autumn leaves in the background. Only made a little bit of rib on the vertical edge to prevent too much inwards rolling. It's the outwards rolling that I like. It's so super simple it has no closing, it's just two slabs of fabric one over the other, keeping them together with a supersize safety pin. I did put on pockets in the end, of course it would have been more simple without, but pockets are so practical, and as you see she likes to stick her hands inside them.

here's a picture of one of the previous attempts, was trying to make sort of ladies tailored jacket, as you can see the texture of the beautiful in-out ribs are just not at all visible at all. also had an attempt where a brioche stitch was going to create some puff sleeves (the Isabel Marant way) also just didn't work. probably ended up knitting this piece 3 or 4 times before ending up with this the final one.

Space-invaders (sort of) finger-less gloves

These gloves are part two of the finger-less gloves re-knitting project. Last week I showed you the open twisted rib version, this time it's an intarsia version with bright coloured pac-man sort of pattern, which is the simplified space-invaders that I developed for Sandy's mini-me amigurimi. It's a super small pattern that looks like a little face, and by repeating it like this it could easily be thought to be some cute flower, whilst actually it's more like something out of a very early computer game. I always really liked that pattern, just couldn't really figure out where I wanted to use it.

These are not the most easy gloves to make, it's really a work of patience and precision. The gloves are knit with re-purposed (see below where the yarn came from) Marianne Isager Tvinni single strand on 5 sock needles size 2,5mm. It's a rather old-fashioned gloves pattern which I make based on my memory, it's fully fashioned including an "indent" to create space for the thumb and I also actually really knit the fingers, whilst many fingerless gloves are made without actual fingers.

Here's what the gloves looked like from the inside before I worked away the ends. What a terrible mess that looks like! as you can see, all the yarns ends are curly because the yarn was re-purposed.

Here's a picture of the border of a sweater that I salvaged when I had to throw the rest of the moth eaten sweater away. One day I just suddenly thought this would be the perfect material for fingerless gloves with space-invaders.

Those funny running men are soooo '80'es. Exactly the time when I knitted the original sweater. 

Sensual or punk? fingerless gloves

These gloves are based on a very old-fashioned glove pattern that I know by memory, unfortunately the real written pattern is lost somewhere in a pile or box. It's not the easiest piece of work, as I work with a single strand of Marianne Isager Tvinni on 5 sock needles 2,5mm, so it's a work of precision and patience. In this case I cast on 60 stitches, and after quite a long piece of rib, switched to an open twisted rib on the front and plain on the backside of the hand. I matched out the amounts of open twisted rib so it would exactly match up to run 2 onto each of the fingers.

a little side-note; as I almost always work from my stash of yarns and old knittings as I have a mountain!! This is a re-knitting project, this Tvinni yarn has been recycled from a project that I knitted when I was 15, which is many years ago. More about that later in the post about the 2nd pair of fingerless gloves that I was able to make from this yarn.

Anyways I memorized the couple of tricks or interventions you need to make to create a more neat and "fully fashioned" pair of gloves. First thing is to increase stitches for the thumb. increase 2 stitches every 4th round will do. I place the thumb in-between 2 purl stitches to really mark the place. second thing that makes these gloves more finished is that I actually knit the fingers, unlike many of the fingerless gloves that are being posted, were you simply close off the round. open twisted rib

what more can I say, they are really nice and warm and I just hope I won't loose them in my commute any time soon (which I did with the previous pair pretty quickly :-()

Men's scarf

Here's the scarf I made as a last minute gift to my hubby just before Christmas. It's very simple; a chain mail like stitch made using a Tunesian sort of crochet knitting stitch. I have made endless test and trials in the past trying develop or find a stitch that I found male enough. There are surprisingly little to be found on men's knitting on the internet both in terms of inspiration of stitch, patterns and models. Let alone men that knit. But at a certain point I came across this absolutely hilarious video of an Icelandic man knitting. He is explaining how to knit the Tunesian stitch.

Used a Little yarn from my stash turned out I had 3 skeins of greys and blacks that made a perfect "ombré" gradient color scheme. And was even so lucky that the mid grey contains a little mohair which makes it nice and soft against the throat.

some advise; if you decide to try this, remember to use a way too thick needle, the stich makes the texture very thick and dense. I used 1,5-2mm too big hook.

Mixed the mohair with some acrylic/wool yarn from the Zeeman

Nice mohair mix that I got from my mom, unfortunately she doesn't remember where she bought it.

Think I might want to try out this stitch for a jacket/vest soon, so keep watching this space :-)

Repair, why not?

My beloved typical Nordic rag socks were broke. The foot part of the sock was full of holes. Holes so big that they seemed impossible to repair. But the biggest part of the sock, the shaft was perfectly fine. Seems so stupid and inconsiderate to throw the whole sock away just because a relatively small part is broke. Yes I know it's the most important part :-) But what a waste of material.

So I thought why not just knit in a new foot instead of trying to repair those unreasonably big holes. I set out on a mission trying to find yarn that would match, turned out to not be easy, but thankfully my mom had some leftover in her stash that ought to be able to the job perfectly. 

Here's a picture of the repaired socks, you of see a slight colour and texture change between shaft and foot.

In hindsight I was thinking that it could also have been really cool if I had used a contrast colour instead of trying to match the existing shaft. 

I wish I could do this more often. I wear a lot of panties, and the softer the material/wool, the faster the holes develop. I always try to mend them, but there is only south you can do. But the panties are too thin, no way I could knit in new feet. 

Queensday ring galore

Just posting some after-party pictures here. Eventually the weather on queensday turned out great, so it was fab to sit outside and crochet-in-public. Sales didn't go very well; queensday is really about bargaining and having fun, but I definitely had lots of people zooming in on me crocheting. It was great fun to chat with these people. And I had a perfect spot right in the middle of the Plompetorengracht party.

Queensday rings. The lot

decided to make an alternative, more simple ring and bracelet based on the flag colors,
this turned out to be quite a popular model

Here is one that @Aniettweet made, following the instructions I gave in an earlier post

very positive and happy queensday ring carriers