Flagel Knitting Files

I have been on the farm with Mom and in Minneapolis with family and friends for the past couple of weeks.  There are so many things to bring to you that you'll find this post is full of lots and lots of pictures. Let's start with an update on my version of Burnished by Tin Can Knits. I took it with me to Wisconsin and wore it with a gray top and blue jeans on a day out with Mom and my aunt Lucille.  One knows the right pattern has been paired with the right colours when all three of us love it.  Lucille was offered my Burnished and she took it, and Mom after a bit of nudging agreed it would be fine if I used my leftover yarn to make her one as well.  It will be on the needles soon.  (Sorry I didn't capture Lucille with Burnished on.) My friend, Jami, is a poet and she recently published a set of poems about her nephew in a chapbook.  She had asked me if I could bring it to Minneapolis and take pictures of it in any artistic way that met my f...

You know I like to knit, to spin and to do beading; all have been recorded here.  Today I want to show you what happens when the three end up being involved in one rather small project. When I spin even when I weigh the roving in grams the split often ends up being imperfect.  A half of a gram can create much yarn when it is spun thin.  When I spun Grouse and had carefully weighted out the roving there remained a fair amount of a blue/green single ply. Some of my leftover Grouse single ply As I was reorganizing my stash I came upon an inexpensive light-weight linen in a colour that looked as if it would work with that leftover Grouse. I think this was a dollar or two from a discount shop In spinning class last week the instructor indicated one could add beads to yarn by simply stringing lots of beads on roving or even beading string and then plying it with yarn to create a yarn that has beads already attached.  At first I thought I might be able to ad...

Last year, 2016, was to be the Year of the Socks for me.  The only problem was my hands grew achy and stiff from using the small needles required to knit socks.  I stopped knitting them, yet there are a lot of sock yarns in my stash. When I found Tin Can Knits's pattern called Burnished ,  published in their book Mad Color or sold separately on Ravelry , I knew some of that sock stash could be used. Several things attracted me to this pattern.  First that lacy edge adds a nice contrast to the striped work and since it is not added until after the rest of the shawl is complete, one has only to focus on lace for a short time.  Second, it requires three different coloured yarns that work together, good for stash busting  And third, it is a brainless type of garter knitting for the most part meaning it is easy.  Below is my triple selection from my abundant number of sock yarns. The variegated is one of Arne and Carlos' sock yarns, Regia, from...

I have had some lovely yarn in my stash and since I've had a big interest in using my stash a particular toque/hat came to be. On the left is 547 yards of 100% merino hand-painted wool by AbiGood, a Nova Scotia company and on the right is some leftover creamy coloured yarn.  They were both worsted weight.  (One of the things about knitting as much as I do is that there is a bin full of lovely leftover yarn.) The concept was to put these two colours together in a way that really allowed the beauty of the variegated cream, brown and pinky/red yarn to show through.  On Ravelry I found a pattern by Jess Knowles called Artist of Pentacles .  (She mentions in her explanation of the name of the pattern the Queen of Pentacles Tarot card.  Should you want to know more about it, click here .) Photo credit J. Knowles Ravelry I really liked the interplay between the variegated blue/turquoise with the light brown in the photo above, but my hand-painted yarn...

Grouse is the colourway name Felicia Lo from Sweet Georgia yarns gave to the roving below. Grouse It is a combination of greens, blues and grays just like the mountain it is named after, Grouse. Image from here Since I am learning to play with colours as I spin and wanted to do more experimentation with roving, I decided to break up the colors into small similarly coloured puffs like this: Some of the blue roving put together in small bits What I ended up with after spinning each of the colours into a single ply was three relatively equal bobbins, one in an aqua blue (like the puffs above), one in green and the third was mainly gray.  The three were plied together and created this rather pretty yarn. The close-up really shows the three colours as they were plied together From a distance the colours appear more green I rather like that the colour of the yarn changes depending on how close or far away you stand from it.  And with all those sm...