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

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 :-()

reknit nr 5, cardigan nr 2

Here'a one of my newer re-knitting projects, well it's sort of last year, but I just didn't post about it yet. But maybe first a short recap about what re-knitting is. You take yarn that has already been used for something and then un-ravel it. You can i.e. buy a sweater at the salvation army or you can take some of your own old projects that are not "fresh"  anymore and then use the yarn for a new project. Sometimes I just get old sweaters from people because they think they are ugly and then I knit something new from it.

So I had this quite nice twin-set made from a beautiful linen yarn. I probably made it 20-25 years ago, wore it a lot. But I haven't been wearing it for the last 15-20 years. It has just been lying around in a drawer, couldn't throw it away, cause the yarn was too nice.

well so I unravelled it, even though it hurt a bit, it was a very difficult, intricate ajour pattern, and I turned it into a sort of plaid wrap-around extra long cardigan, knitted in a brioche-stitch with a turn to make it a bit tighter.

photography by Inge Noordijk

New cardigan, close-up of "natural" water-fall collar

new cardigan, showing how the linen-yarn and horizontal knitting makes it fall real heavy

new cardigan, laid out flat, you really see how the plaid-pattern is worked out.

old twin-set, sorry for bad picture quality

blouse of the old twin-set

close-up of the complicated ajour-pattern of the old blouse

what has the Knitbitch been up to?

You have not heard much about the work of the Knitbitch herself lately. Let me tell you about a project that I have been working on, it's not finished, but well on it's way.  The poufs. There are 2 of them now, still working on the 3rd one.

After. 2 finished poufs.

If you have read some of my earlier posts you would know that my stash is not just a stash, it's a mountain that has accumulated over many, many years. Many people would say throw it all away it's worthless. I'm thinking this is a nice challenge for me, to bring all this yarn to use. Some of the yarn that I have accumulated is not exactly human body friendly. It's really itchy, actually I think it's carpet yarn. So for a number of times I started making poufs. My two first attempts where failures. The yarn was just not thick enough to make the crochet fit the proportion of the pouf, and once I started knitting a tube and filling it that was just too fat.

Then I suddenly remembered my mum's (again it's her) old trick for faking spool-knitting, and I started knitting a tube that way. And then it worked. However the tube became so thick that I could only do the crochet by hand. Not such a big problem as the crochetting itself is not work compared to the tube-knitting work which in this case took ages, spending nights in-front of telly. Working off all the daily stress through knitting.

How-to megacrochet a pouf

the projects are not really re-knitting projects, except for the grey pouf which is half re-knit. Half of the yarn came from a sweater-jacket that i had made almost 20 years ago. It was still beautiful, but I have not worn it for 18 years, so I set to un-ravelling it to create the pouf from it.

Before. Jacket I knitted appx. 20 years ago.

will show you the whole collection once pouf nr.3 is finished. It might take a little while!

Reknit Project Number One

Also for project number one there was too little yarn for a complete sweater. That's why it became a poncho. One day during the christmas holiday I suddenly knew it, a poncho would be just the right thing to make. Probably made several attempts before it ended up like it is, but it wasn't too bothersome, because the yarn is very thick, so it knits away very fast.

it's a very warm and comfortable poncho, that you can really hide away in.

I used my moms basic way of creating a garment starting from the neck, just increase 2x4 stitches every 2nd round and it will fit, after having passed the width of the shoulders, increase less. As with everything else, I crafted it as I found fitting as I went along, so there is no real recipy. Because it's reknit out of an old sweater-jacket I also cannot tell you what yarn, but I assume hand-spun.

reknit project number 2

Reknit project number 1 and 2 are closely related as material for both of them came from the same old sweater jacket. This was a found and lost jacket that was lying in the cupboard in a villa I once occupied. The owners had left the house full of stuff, they where off to the retirement home, so no time or energy for cleaning up. I was happy enough to move in as a house caretaker for a while for a very modest price. With the occupation came the care for all the stuff, and I went through it all to decide what to throw away and what to keep or sell. 

The sweater jacket was horrendous, but made out of a combination of beautiful handspun un-died sheep wool with pockets and detailing and accessories in brown tweed. I quickly decided that this yarn was suited for re-use. This is from before the time that I decided to record all these steps in more details, so I don't have a picture of that sweater-jacket.

The brown tweed was tricky because there wasn't really enough of it for anything. I worked a bit on a brown woolen jacket for my husband with tweed pockets etc, but it didn't really work out the way I wanted it. After having made several trials with needles and stitches I decided that the yarn worked the best in "patent" stitches. (not sure this is the right English word for the stitch) and then it suddenly came to me, and I decided to make a bodywarmer with little or no sleeves (not yarn enough) and then knitted in the horizontal direction.
    

I do admit that this was a rather complicated knitting piece, and I would be rather difficult for me to explain to anybody how I shaped it. But let me try; I created the surplus space in the shape by knitting rows stopping halfway, which is extremely tricky in "patent" as you work with slip-masks.

reknit project number 3

 I have started this backwards chronology of reknit projects now, so I better stick with it, but when I get to think about it there has been many more of them than this. I have just never recorded any of it with photographs etc. And even now as I get to number 3 my recording starts to get poorer, it was probably only as I went along that I realized that it was interesting to keep the traces.

This project was initially a sweater that Jitske tried to dump on Queensday, the famous Dutch holiday where everybody can sell their old crap on the street for 24 hours. It's like the whole country turns into a short and intense flee-market. Well this sweater was so unattractive that she didn't manage to get rid of it, even at the very end when people tend to just give things away nobody wanted it. Well not so strange, because it wasn't very nice, very old-fashioned model and really not very flattering because it was completely straight. But I liked the quality of the yarn, so I begged her, give it to me, thinking that some day I will make something out of it.

And there it went into my endless piles of salvaged second hand clothes, in a black binbag under my bed. It stayed there for quite a long time. Some years probably. Then one day I though, hey that would be a nice yarn for a pouf, so I first knitted a pouf/cushion with a cable pattern. But I wasn't satisfied with the result, I just thought it was too boring. So then I thought how about some mega-knit, and I started crafting the yarn into an i-cord filling it with fluff. Well also that didn't look very nice. Then Jitskes birthday came closer and suddenly I thought, I will make a nice poncho for Jitske. Some of the process you can see on the picture to the left, and to the right Jitske wearing the result. Some day I will make a better picture...

.... there was a also a cap to go with it....

Reknitting manifesto

The magic thing about knitting and crochet for that sake is that it's made out of one uninterrupted line of thread. In principle. Of course much of the knitwear you can buy in the shop today is cut into shape. Such a pity. Chops the thread up into little pieces. Makes it useless for recycling. Or re-knitting.

I have been re-knitting for ages, for many reasons. Practical ones like I'm just a frugal person, so why would I go out and buy new yarn, when actually I have heap loads in stock, lying in my cupboards in the form of unused sweaters that went out of fashion etc. But another reason is also that much of the yarn you can buy today is really crap, it's just not nice, not a nice texture, mainly made of artificial material, whereas I prefer, cotton, wool etcetc. 

If you unlike me, don't have the cupboard full of old knittings, you can just go to the salvation army and buy some nice old sweater etc, unravel it, and make a nice new piece of work. Supercheap and absolutely fashionable way to get through the recession, frugal or not.