embellishment and Punta mohair

Kim Hughston has knit this beautiful hat from the book "Knitting in the Details" by Kim Hargreaves. I picked it up at the Chapters in Peterborough. Can you have too many Kim's in your life? Don't think so.

It is a cloche style, knit back and forth in the British manner. We looked through other colours in our collection and found this delightful combination of the Punta mohair with glitter. Shiny kicks it up a notch as they say in the cooking shows.

Kim used one strand of Punta fine hand painted mohair and one strand of Silk Mohair Glitter with a 4.5mm needle and acheived the right tension. She really enjoyed making the flowers and adding them to the hat. I like the way she placed the small shell buttons in the centres and scattered the knit flowers on the sides. The knit picot cast on edge is very attractive and easy to make.

This smokey Silk Mohair Glitter combined with Punta is also lovely.

My dear Cubano friend/sitiching sister Suset is a master embroiderer.

She makes the lovely tea and table cloths you see in our studio.

The borders are all done completely by hand with pulled thread and hem stitching. Nice to have the young eyesight! My friend Brock at Port Perry Optical has helped me out recently by checking the strength of my current prescription glasses and suggesting reading glasses just a little bit stronger. Wonderful is all I can say, just that little bit of magnification makes a huge difference.

I recently embroidered a similar cloth for my beautiful niece Emily in a different colour. A bit of embroidery make a refreshing change from knitting once in a while. I am so happy to see embellishment celebrated in hand knits. This particular pattern is one Suset found in a Havana newspaper from the 1940's. The herringbone flowers are very economical of thread and quick to do, my favorite is the stem stitching.

getting my ducks in order

Well the yarn tasting is very soon.

I have really enjoyed getting acquainted with all of the beautiful samples provided by Estelle yarns.

It was great fun making the fabric bags for the collection.

Sharion and Marion were in the studio this Thursday, lucky me. We decided modular knitting would be fun to offer to the guild members as a sampling strategy.

I have a scarf on the go in printed sock yarn. Modular knitting allows me the freedom to pick and choose where I will place each segment of the painted yarn, I don't need to work in a stritcly linear fashion.

Edgar is a cute narrow scarf on Knitty and The Modern Quilt Wrap by Mags Candace. I also like the book Domino Knitting by Vivian Hoxbro and Swing Swagger Drape by Jane Slicer Smith. In fact Sharion is making the cover cardigan in Oslo double knitting at this time. You could also find out "How to Build a Log Cabin"

Then of course the chevron effect found in stitch patterns like the one we use for our new shell scarf works great for adding movement and texture. Missoni knitwear is often worked in this fashion.

Other cool sampling patterns I like include the linen stitch bracelet "Pretty Twisted", Belle Flower scarf, the Daisy Chain Kit (Frankie's knitted Stuff)

lumio in cotton as a scarf

Lumio, the super chunky reflective yarn is new of for spring in cotton.

I started a hat, then changed my mind once I looked at the patterns freely available on the SMC website. I think the scarf will be more useful. The name of the design is Yukon

This cowl/scarf is a super vehicle for the robust stitches. One of the pattern rows is what I call a river stitch, where you *knit 1, yarn over* for one round then drop the yarn overs on the next knit round so the work grows even faster.

Before starting,  I noticed this yarn is like a bundle of combined small strings.  Apparently cotton is not as receptive to dye as wool, so to facilitate the penetration of the colour into the yarn, it is made as a bundle of threads rather than a tighly spun cable. I tied a knot at the beginning of the yarn to keep the end together ( and will untie it before I tuck it away when I finish)

Knitting the yarn added a twist to it. So every so often I suspended the knitting to let it unwind, than carried on knitting. The pattern called for 2 colours, but I used one ball, was able to knit extra rows and had leftover yarn.

Quick to knit, big, gorgeous stitches that will reflect light in the evening when I go for a walk along the busy road out here.

and of course the supreme satisfaction of another fine FINISHED project!