Knitting Update: Works in Progress – Page 5 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

It’s Fun To Knit A Hat

Posted on August 16, 2016 by elliebelly

There is nothing quite like knitting a fairisle hat. For a quick knit that leaves you feeling accomplished, there is nothing as satisfying.

I noticed this for the first time when I knit the Peerie Flooers hat last year, a multi-colored adventure into stranded knitting. I really wanted the finished hat and resigned myself to taking ages to knit it, but it was impossible to resist watching the colors weave in and out of each other and it knit up surprisingly quickly. In bad romance novel language, I was seduced by fairisle.

Vitsippa is turning out to have the same sort of allure. Although I put it down for a couple of weeks after knitting the ribbing to focus on Oak Park, in just the weekend, I'm half way through the body.

A few quick links if you are new to fairisle (or stranded) knitting:

It's worth watching the Philosopher's Stone video and feeling awkward for a bit to teach yourself to knit fairisle with two hands. I'm a confirmed English knitter and almost never knit Continental, but I love how it keeps my yarn from tangling to be able to knit fairisle with both hands And, it's surprisingly easy after about an hour of (frustrating, you will likely use language unsuitable for the ears of small children) practice. Trust me on this one.

How to catch your floats neatly (scroll down to the section on wrapping the yarn while you knit). Yarn dominance – it's important to understand this for consistent patterning.

Stranded knitting is almost always written in chart form. No matter what you think, I promise it is not scary. You can master a fairisle chart with a few markers and some color coding. Or, better yet, use Knit Companion. The free one hour overview class revolutionized my knitting life. No affiliation, but I use it for all of my knitting and find I make far fewer mistakes. You owe it to yourself!

Vacation Knitting — A Wrap Up

Posted on August 5, 2016 by elliebelly

Knitting on vacation is a joy. And an agony, when you don't have the right tools. Midway into our trek through Glacier National Park, with nary a yarn store in sight, I realized that the 6" DPNs I have brought along to knit Vitsippa, my fairisle hat, on, were going to be too short to accommodate all the stitches once I finished up the ribbing and added additional stitches called for in the pattern to begin the stranded portion of the hat.

So here I am, rather unattractively sweating and knitting away, trying to recover from the hike up the Highline Trail, whilst coming to the sad realization I'm going to have to put Vitsippa away until our return to civilization. The view was compensation (and if you've read my earlier post, the knitting really liked the view too).

Next, I pulled out my Oak Park, renamed Glacier Park in honor of the trip. Oak Park is a triangular shawl, knit in a devious pattern that is constantly shifting. I had been looking for a pattern for my three skeins of The Plucky Knitter's Cachet (aran weight cashmere) in Slumber, my most prized yarn, for a really long time and was so happy when a friend suggested this pattern. I was one repeat in when we emerged from hiking the Swift Current Trail in Many Glacier and made our way on up to the Prince of Wales Lodge on the Canadian side of the park, only to discover that they served a very nice tea.

I knit away on Oak Park/Glacier Park for the rest of our hiking time, and ended up just shy of three repeats in at the end. It's an absolutely lovely pattern and precisely what this yarn wanted to become. I'm going to be so happy with it as soon as it isn't 90` that feels like 100` degrees with the humidity in Alabama. (Let me digress and say it was 40` when we flew out of Kalispell, Montana, and I really wish I was still there!)

Amazingly, there was a yarn store when we made it to Whitefish, Montana, our last stop. And, a day of rain that was perfect for exploring town, eating some delicious crepes, watching the huge logging trucks roll in filled with freshly cut timber, and stoping by the local yarn store, Knit 'n Needle where the lovely proprietress encouraged me to pick out a circular rather than longer DPNs. I fell in love with the store yarn, Polka Dot Sheep, and engaged in a little stash addition. And we discovered that the fabulous Huckleberries we had been picking and eating along the trails were used for all sort of pastries in town. What a wonderful place to end our trip!

Armed with my new 16" circular needle, I returned to Vitsippa on the flight home. After picking up a few stitches that had dropped off the overloaded DPNs, I was back in business. Sorry about the bad airplane lighting on the picture, but I'm so excited about the colorwork on this one that I can't wait to share it. That's The Plucky Knitter's Oxford in Waxing Poetic (the gold) and Bedrock (the gray). I love knitting fairisle and am really enjoying this one!

Truth be told, I love my day job and our life in Birmingham, but there is a little part of me that would love to remain under Montana's Big Sky, knitting and hiking. It was a wonderful vacation and it reminded me of decades ago trips with my grandparents, which not too surprisingly, featured hiking and knitting, along with some fishing. It's fun to come full circle like that.

I can't end this post without a few trip pictures. First off, this lousy camera phone picture of a BEAR who was swimming casually across a LAKE about 40 feet away from us as we drove to the trailhead to hike Bertha Lake in Canada. It was a moment — we could see him skimming through the water, magnificent and large.

Hiking in the alpine meadows was spectacularly beautiful.

And being able to see the waterfalls and lakes, as well as the animals and flowers, made it worth several of the more challenging, steep portions of the trails. I would do it again in a heartbeat, knitting and all!

Adventures in Knitting

Posted on July 29, 2016 by elliebelly

The arrogance of a sedentary desk-worker, hiking seven miles, a good bit of it straight up hill and at 7000 feet is sort of astonishing. The fact that I hurt all over and I'm exhausted? Not so astonishing. And it's only day 2 of summer vacation.

But knitting at the top of Montana's Highline Trail was really worth it. Really, really worth it.

Not a lot of progress on Vitsippa, but I'm liking Waxing Poetic and Bedrock, both on fingering weight Oxford 2.0 from The Plucky Knitter, together.

Knitting in Montana

Posted on July 28, 2016 by elliebelly

This week we are hiking in Montana and trusting on our grown kids to keep the home fires burning in our absence. We don't have a lot of Internet but we've got something even better, this gorgeous view. Featuring my just started Vittsippa Hat.

Summer Knitting

Posted on July 4, 2016 by elliebelly

Usually, summer dampens my fervor for knitting a little bit. Once the mercury hits 90` and the humidity lobs on another 20 or so in feel, the idea of sitting beneath a pile of wool is less appealing. But, not true this year. Perhaps that's due to the fact that my two primary projects at the moment are both knit in linen, but I'm also looking forward to picking up my Summer Moon, knit from Merino, and finishing it, as soon as these two are finished.

Happy Fourth of July to the U.S. knitters among us and happy summer knitting to everyone!

I'm still playing yarn chicken with Mithril. My current plan is to finish out the sleeves with ball four and then use what is left to pick up the neckline and finish it. There is a little bit left in ball three so I can add some length, but I'd like to make this as long as possible and am hopeful there will be a bit left from ball four as well. The silk linen blend is beautiful and I really love the pattern. I might knit the neckline a bit less generously if I were to do it again, but it's a simple pattern, perfect for a first sweater. The stockinette never gets boring, as you're always looking forward to the next cable and watching that pattern grow.

This is Jamie Thomas's Vested Interest, knit in Quince Kestrel. I've just started in on it. If you're coveting all of the beautiful Eileen Fisher summer linen knits, this is a great pattern for you. And it's the ultimate in public knitting projects — all stockinette with two very simple armholes. I'm reserving this one for knitting with friends. One quick note if you decide to knit it — grab an extra skein or two. I started out with four skeins per the pattern, but picked up two extra, which I will clearly need, along with a third for insurance. Kestrel is reasonable priced, so even with the additional skeins, this is still a moderately priced project.

My Knitting Weekend

Posted on June 18, 2016December 19, 2016 by elliebelly

This weekend, I'm dyeing some yarn. That's "Blossom," the palest pink that I dye.

I'm knitting away on Mithril whenever I get a few free moments.

My doggies are showing their support by sleeping a lot. That's Trouble and Miss Fig, the Boxer.

I finally got a good picture of the beautiful Ivette Cardigan my wonderful friend Rita knit for me. We've known each other since we were pregnant with our now 17 year old daughters, and she is one of my knitting heroes. She knit Ivette in Elliebelly Angel Fingering. It's a blend of Alpaca, Silk, and Cashmere, and I wanted to see how it would knit up for a sweater. Other than having to use sharp point needles to avoid any issues with splitting, she seems to have had a great time knitting it, and it's stunningly gorgeous. I have cleverly blocked it out a little bit so that it's really too large for anyone other than me to wear.

In other knitting news, I managed a quick hour at In The Making, my local yarn shop, to try and pick out buttons for Lake Effect.

While there, I got to visit with Jamie Thomas, who writes really beautiful, wearable patterns. Her newest pattern, Vested Interest, is knit in Quince's aran weight Linen ribbon yarn, Kestrel. It's the perfect, light weight summer piece. I sat in the shop and knit for a few minutes while I pretended to deliberate, but I knew I had to buy the pattern and the yarn on the spot. I'm looking forward to casting on when I finish Mithril. Isn't the yarn gorgeous?

Inspiration & Knitting

Posted on June 16, 2016 by elliebelly

After an unexpected few days of early summer rain, our garden is beautiful. We have a small urban lot, full of shade from trees in the back, so our garden is a small strip of border in the front yard that I cut in by hand when we bought our house, almost 18 years ago. Yearly work on the clay soil has made it rich enough to support my plants. When we bought the house, there were some scraggy bushes and a very sad tree growing. Now, it brings me inspiration for knitting and dyeing, and a lot of smiles when I discover its secrets. I thought I would share some of it, beautified by the rain, this morning.

This surprise growth zucchini vine is causing me a lot of amusement and also, providing dinner for tonight.

Sweet woodruff, with it's tender whorls, is my favorite ground cover. I've been nursing some tiny cuttings I planted under our cherry tree, in hopes I'll end up with a big swath of it.

And because this is apparently the year of the ant in Alabama, I have Tansy, two large stands of it, growing on the path that leads to our front door. Not sure it deters the ants, but it's certainly pretty.

Every garden needs a lion-guardian. Harry is mine. And because Maine Coon Cats are curious critters, he's always very engaged in my knitting.

The rest of the week I'll be knitting on Drachenfels, my forever project (on the left). I'd like to finish it in the next few weeks, but since it's all garter stitch and I'm in the long stockinette portion of my Mithril sweater, I may have to cast on something a little bit more fancy — some brioche or some lace — for those times when you need to be all wrapped up in the knitting. I've just wound the yarn for Mithril's sleeves (on the right), but I'm enjoying the silk & linen yarn so much, that I think it will give Sleeve Island a good name for a change.