Blog – Page 6 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

More Than Halfway There

Posted on February 11, 2017 by elliebelly

The only good thing about the flu is all of the knitting time once you get to the point where you can hold your head up and watch bad tv for a couple of hours in between naps.

The whole deal on this sweater is knitting miles of stockinette. The front and back on each side grow out from the side seam. Each piece needs to measure 12.5″ from the side seam to the end, so a total of 25″ for each piece, before I can start the necklines. After a day of on and off sick person knitting, I’m at 14″ & 16″ and I figure I’ve knit about 8″ today, so I’m hoping the whole sick but able to knit thing holds up and I can make progress on this sweater over the next few days.

It’s All About The Sleeves

Posted on February 6, 2017February 8, 2017 by elliebelly

I’ve been devoting most of my knitting time to Two Track, a sweater with an unusual construction. Although it looks like one piece up above, I’m actually knitting two separate pieces. You start at the cuff edge of the sleeves and knit in. And, you’re knitting both the front and back at the same time (there was a bit of excitement in the cast on). I’ve got miles of stockinette to go, and then there is a bit of magic to put in a neckline before using a three needle bind off to connect the two fronts down the middle and then do the same for the backside.

I’m knitting with The Plucky Knitter’s Lodge Worsted: 60% Merino, 20% Cotton, 10% Silk, 10% Linen / Flax. It’s a very lovely yarn, and the dye uptake with this particular fiber mix makes for soft, heathered colors. Although this is my coffee shop knitting at the moment, because I can knit stockinette and talk, I am really looking forward to wearing the finished sweater. It gets ribbing on the bottom and a nice full cowl on the top, so it will definitely be a while, but it’s so lovely! I really love both the yarn and the pattern.

Something New: How To Shop For Elliebelly Yarn

Posted on February 4, 2017 by elliebelly

Despite the best laid plans, we are still working on site design. In an effort to making it easy for you to buy a little Elliebelly Yarn in the meantime, my wonderful designer, Nicole, has added a direct link at the top of the page that lets you “shop.” For now, it takes you to Elliebelly on Etsy, but I expect to have the shop relocated here in the next week or two. Please come and visit me on Etsy in the meantime. I’ve added a few items there, but if there is anything in particular you would like to see, let me know in the comments below or feel free to let me know using the contact form.

This is a sample of a few of the yarns that are available. You may recognize Lyric in Catherine, Are You Weeping, on the top left from my Rob Roy Hat.

Rob Roy Hat Knit in Elliebelly Lyric

Sorbonne, one of my newest colorways, is the main color used in the hat I’ve just finished; available in Etsy and used in the hat on aran weight Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) yarn.

Hat knit with Elliebelly Yarn

I’ve tried to put a few things in the Etsy Store, without taking time away from the work we are doing on the site (some pesky, pesky bugs and an unexpected glitch with a plug in), so if there is anything you’ve seen on the blog that you JUST HAVE TO HAVE NOW, let me know, and I’ll be happy to add it in for you over the weekend.

Thanks for your patience. I love you all for the support you’ve been sending and am looking forward to getting this baby across the finish line!

Knitting A Hat Without A Pattern

Posted on February 1, 2017February 1, 2017 by elliebelly

This week, I knit a hat without a pattern. This isn’t something I’ve done before – I’m not crafty like that. But, I’m in love with my newest Elliebelly colorway, Sorbonne (see this post), and, in the course of playing with it, I ended up with a hat.

Hat knit with Elliebelly Yarn

I started out with a tubular cast on, and since I knit with this yarn, Elliebelly’s Aran Blue Faced Leicester, a good bit, I knew enough about my gauge to feel comfortable going ahead without swatching. Tubular cast ons always feel tight, and I was second guessing the stitch count I chose for the first few inches. It looked small! But sure enough, it looked better the further I knit, and now, with the hat finished, the size is perfect. I love the tubular cast on – it has a professional looking rolled edge with no apparent beginning and it’s very stretchy.

Tubular Cast on

The tubular cast on starts with waste yarn. I just happened to have a scrap of some farm yarn I had dyed in the “Little Girl in the Big City” colorway lying around that was long enough for a provisional cast on, so I used that. And, as I knitted the 2×2 ribbing for the band, I kept stopping to admire how nicely Sorbonne, the main colorway, set off the bit of Little Girl on the edge. My original plan was to knit some arched cables all the way around the hat, and after sketching it out and knitting the hat about halfway, I realized I was still focused on how the two different colorways looked together. There was nothing for it. I wanted stripes. So, I frogged back to the end of the ribbing and started back in stockinette, this time, with the addition of the stripes as I got about the halfway point. No pattern, so I knit until I had just the pop of color I wanted from each of the stripes.

I did some decreasing at the top. I started with 96 stitches, and used three decease rows, separated with 5 rows in between them, to get down to 50 stitches, with I threaded closed. With the addition of an oversized pom pom, my hat is complete.

Pom Pom

What Should I Knit With It?

Posted on January 26, 2017 by elliebelly

Sorbonne on BFL Aran

I am very, exceptionally, head-over-heels in love with this yarn. It would take a lot of adjectives to tell you just how much. This is “Sorbonne,” one of the new Elliebelly colorways, and it pretty much takes my breath away on aran weight Blue Faced Leicester. The only question I have about it is, what does it want to become?

Elliebelly Sorbonne on BFL Aran

I think I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities, both cowls. One is Present, a simple free pattern on Ravelry. It has been in my queue for a very long time, and I think the simple stitch pattern would work nicely with these skeins.

The other is a pattern that was released in December 2016, Point of Origin. It involves Brioche, which I’ve not tried, but want to. Julie Hart is a pattern designer I had not known about before seeing this pattern, but I’m newly in love with all of her designs. And, she includes fabulous directions for trying out Brioche.

Brioche

The bottom line is, I may need to knit one of each because I’m having difficulty deciding between the patterns. I think I’ll warm up on Present to double check my gauge — BFL Aran is an old friend of mine, so I don’t usually swatch with it — and then try to conquer Brioche at long last. What would you knit with this yarn? You may get the chance, as I’m planning on adding a few skeins to my store tomorrow.

On the store front, and I’ll try to avoid TMI, the website is still a work in progress. There was a bug — a bad one that locked us out of the control panel for several days. It’s been resolved, but there are still a lot of design issues to work through. I plan on dealing with that challenge head on and as quickly as possible. While that work continues, you can find Elliebelly yarn for sale in my Etsy Shop. I hope you’ll drop by for a look. There is some yarn and roving in the shop, and I’m adding to it a few times a day. I appreciate all of the early support and your kind words! It’s great to be dipping my toes in the water again, but I’m really looking forward to the real opening when the new website is ready.

Not Your Granny’s Shawl

Posted on January 25, 2017 by elliebelly

The Grannie Annie shawl has a lot of old-fashioned virtues to recommend it. It is based on a feather and fan lace pattern and is a traditional crescent shape. But it is definitely not a shawl your granny would have knit, although I feel quite certain she would have loved it had she had the opportunity to.

The fabulous color play and scalloped shape! And it’s absolutely a piece of fluff, knit in Plucky’s amazing Cashmere aran, “Cachet” yarn.

In a last little bit of serendipity, I ran short on the pale blue yarn and did the bind off in the gray colorway. This little finishing touch really makes the shawl for me, framing the colors and giving it a bit of stability it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’m thrilled with this shawl and can’t wait to give it the gentle steam blocking it needs to open up the lace so I can wear it.

We Are Back (Sort Of)

Posted on January 23, 2017 by elliebelly

Bad news first: the Elliebelly.com website isn’t quite ready yet. It’s a little buggy, and we are working on that.

But, I’m stocking a bit of yarn and roving in my etsy shop today, just to get the hang of it. There will be everything from single skeins of sock yarn, to sweater quantities of yarn, to roving showing up periodically today, so please drop by for a look.