Knitting bits

For much of winter I knitted up some yarn my brother bought at an unclaimed post auction late last year. There were two huge boxes of yarn - more than I could ever use, so I chose three modest bags of what I thought most interesting. I've been trying to work my way through it. My new resolution is to use up yarn as far as possible as I buy it, rather than adding to the three drawers I have stashed. I succeeded in knitting up the wool I bought from North Ronaldsay, and some alpaca from Adagio - ands I've been trying to reduce this pile from my brother.

I tackled the easiest one first - a ball of Joy Rainbow tape designed to make a scarf. I adapted a pattern I found online for a scarf, and it knitted up quickly. 

The colours are attractive and the texture interesting. I narrowed the ends and created a loop on one end through which the other end slips.




It's a bit of fun - not really my style, but  someone might enjoy it for a while.












Next I tackled a
couple of balls of this rather attractive Sirdar Aura. These screamed 'hat' to me, so I tried out a couple of patterns, one for a beanie and one for a slouchy.

I rather like these, although I'm not sure it was a good idea to practice a new elastic cast-off on the slouchy. I think, however, some family members who like bushwalking will get good service from them.

I then turned my attention to some silvery Rico which I knitted up into a triangular shawl.

Once blocked, I got Veronica to model it for me. I think it needs to be blocked again, and stretched out a bit further. The yarn is spectacular but I'm not convinced  it works on its own.



I still had three balls left, so I tried a bit of an experiment, matching it with some fine one-ply mohair and a pattern for a chevron shawl that alternates one-ply mohair with four-ply merino. This is taking me a long time to knit, but is coming along beautifully. I think I might save that one for its own post.
In the meantime,  I bought a bit more Adagio alpaca - because Adagio are needing a bit of support through the drought, and I also bought a kit for a scarf from Marie Wallin - because it was beautiful. I doubt I am half way through my brother's wool - so I'm afraid there is no rest for my needles regardless of the heat!

Wattle scarf

I have. over the last seven years since doing an Ottoman Scarf class with Alison Snepp, embroidered a number of scarves. Most of these were Raffal scarves, purchased as a follow-up to Alison's class. They are woven in India from Australian wool. The Raffal story is worth reading, a successful business established by one woman using the expertise she gained from working for the Australian Wool Board, utilising Australia's fine merino and the expertise of Indian weavers.

I am not sure if Raffal are still making perfectly plain scarves, but I had a couple left from my earlier purchase, and wanted to embroider one of them as a gift for a cousin who had kindly invited me to stay during my recent trip to England. I purchased scarves in colours that reflected the Australian bush, so chose a green one, sketched out some wattle branches and got to work.







It is a little tricky embroidering on these soft, open weave scarves. They resemble original Turkish bath towels - which is why Alison Snepp chose them for her original Ottoman scarf design. This means, however, you need to take great care in stitching, not to separate the fibres.

Back

front

You also need to take care that the back is fairly neat - as scarves don't sit obligingly on one side. These considerations limit the stitches you can use.









I limited myself to French knots, stem stitch and fly stitch.

Rather than adding larger tassels to those already there, as I had done in the past, I added gold beads that sparkle. It's not too over-the-top but adds little glints as the scarf moves.









It worked - and is something that will get some use in England!

Perfect Petals

A second project I tried from Issue 75 of Stitch magazine, was one called Perfect Petals, a very clever crewel sampler by Tracy A. Franklin using the shape of a 12-petalled flower. I remembered that amongst the spare Raffal scarves I bought last year was one in a green wool that was not going to lend itself to the Australian flora theme for which they were intended, so I dug it out.

At the Embroiderer's Guild I heard the sad news that Christina's on Prospect Road was closing its doors at the end of February, so I paid  Monika, Rosemarie and Gunter  a visit to wish them well in their move to online only, and to find some thread for this project. As always, they were very helpful and I do hope their business adjusts.

I came away with silk, rather than wool thread - Gumnut stars in light and dark purple and Gumnut buds in light and dark pink.

I transferred the design to one end of the scarf using a sepia pen then raced against the time to get the petals outlined in stem stitch before the pen faded.

Unfortunately, the screws holding the hoop to my seat frame have come adrift and I am struggling to repair it, so I used a hand-held hoop - not good on my wrist.



The stitches, however, are terrific.

Each petal has a different stitch. Most are simple - stem stitch, chain stitch, double chain, seed stitch, closed herringbone. A few, however, are new to me.

I struggled a bit with a stem stitch made  up of bullions - but the effect is still quite good.


There is room to improvise and create your own textures.

I had a plane trip while working on this and it was a good one for taking with me. Once you have the idea and the sequence you don't need to be watching the pattern, but can work within the framework.

It really is a lot of fun. There are endless possibilities using different colours and threads.



This is the first flower finished and I was happy to press on with another on the other end. I'm beginning to think about tassels - will I have the patience to make them for this scarf?

The other end was easier still because I was carrying the pattern on the finished end! I made a few changes, like running the couched lines along rather than across the leaf, and the colour sequences are different.




After talking to a friend in Melbourne, I decided to try a little bit of beading on the tied-off fringe, rather than tassels.





I used 3-4 seed beads on each fringe tie, in the colour range of the embroidery plus green. I like the result. It gives a little flash of colour without taking the eye from the  embroidery.








I think the sampler pattern worked well on this scarf, but it would have plenty of other applications. I might use it again some day.

Wattle scarf

While I was making the Ottoman Scarf from Alison Snepp's January SA Embroiderers' Guild class (http://jillian-alwaysstitching.blogspot.com/2011/01/embroiderers-guild-of-sa-summer-school.html), I decided to try the same techniques on a scarf using a wattle motif.  I managed to buy a black scarf from Raffal after contacting Helen Webster at Raffal.

A hunt through my gardening books gave me a photograph of wattle that I could simplify  and enlarge sufficiently to produce a design that might work on the end of a scarf.

Armed with a very poor photocopy of the original wattle picture (the book was pretty big and I didn't want to carry it around) I went to Christina's on Prospect Rd, Adelaide, to selected threads. As always, they were very helpful and between us we came up with a practical set of threads. I wanted to stay with the Gumnut Stars silk thread. It is lovely to work with and very helpful in achieving the effect of the grey-green leaves of wattle.I used two shades of yellow and two shades of green.

I then began the hardest part - transferring the design on to the wool. These scarves are very loosely woven. 

The plus side of this is that it makes it possible to use a light-table to transfer a design. I tried a black pashmina from another source that showed nothing at all through the light table!

The down-side is the difficulty of keeping a consistent line going across the fibres - especially on a black surface. I used a gel pen and kept turning the light on and off to see what I had finished and where the gaps were, since the white gel doesn't show up with the light behind.

I was able to get enough of the structure in place to enable me to begin to embroider.





I began with the outlines in chain stitch. This gives me a framework before the chalk fades. I can then fill in and improvise around the outlines.The photos below, because of the light I focused on it, bleach out the thread colour.

I used chainstitch for the leaves, as they are so long and thin, and atma stitch inside the chainstitch outlines of the wattle balls. This works well on the loose weave of the scarf.

Although it was a little harder embroidering on the black scarf than on the cream one from Alison's Ottoman Scarf class - just because of the usual difficulty of seeing the threads through the dark background - it was nevertheless fun to do. I could have embroidered over the light table, but chose to work without it.

The french knots were a little tricky on the loose weave, but made a big difference to the overall look.









The final challenge was the dreaded tassels - 58 in this case, 30 at one end and 28 at the other. These scarves are not tied off with same number of bundles at each end. I did more green than yellow tassels, partly because I had more green thread and partly because I didn't want yellow tassels to overwhelm the wattle design.

I don't dislike making tassels as such, but making them around the knots on the threads already hanging from the scarf is quite tricky.


Once done, I teased them up a bit using my handy boo-boo stick.








                                                                                                   


                                                                  I am pretty pleased with the result. It turned out much as I had imagined it