I am thankful for many things, but at the moment especially so that I finished these. They are Hillwalker pullovers, with a simple Icelandic style colorwork “sketched” into the yoke, an easy modification for which the simple circular yoke is an excellent canvas. So until the time on a late Autumn day when I will give them to my nieces, they will waiting, tucked in nice & tidy. Autumn Sweaters 2019 are done & dusted.
Forthcoming are a very late couple of Autumn 2019 sweaters for my nieces. Here the first one is blocking, that is, washed and drying to shape, on the bed in the loft room across the sunlit stairway landing. The other of the two is in the last stretch of knitting, soon to be blocking in this same space by tomorrow.
The house is feeling like its old self again, regardless of the lack of finish floor and trim, and so the settled place of things brings on a settled feeling of calm, and I am very happy about the way my creativity is slowly returning.
I’m soon to be hoisting up my sails for a run of ideas that have been brewing while I have had to wait until these sweaters were done & dusted, so I am almost there. One down , one to go!
Solstice Lanterns is a colorwork tam with original motifs depicting lit lanterns glowing in the festive time of deep winter when the earth takes a nap and we all make merry.
Jolly wee lanterns hang in the base of the crown above the ribbing, and the color changes are close together so you can carry the colors upward without having to snip the yarns, making the finish work of weaving in ends minimal . . .
. . . and elegant chandelier lanterns in the upper crown, cozy with scrolls and checking and the detail of the lights casting a glow is rather delightful . . .
However, as these sort of things go, it doesn’t much matter what they are, because the kaleidoscopic affect of the design is quite transfixing. I knit this tam in a lovely Elemental Affects Shetland 2-ply yarn , which I am a big fan of. But by the time knitters are able to get their yarn to needles for this, it will likely be only a few weeks left to the Winter Solstice .
So speedily gather your Shetland 2ply yarns of choice, cups of tea, mugs of coffee, plates of baked goodies, and a lot of spiritual calm and please do knit one of these up for yourself before the holidays are past.
Poetically speaking, the lanterns have a deeper meaning for me, and that is ~~ a light in the dark is hope, and from our hearts shines a beacon for the future.
The pattern is available HERE.
♥ ♥ ♥
Now, just in case you are thinking, what about the grey-scale tam that I knit up in Jamiesons Spindrift ? Well, it is a bit of dark humor (excuse the pun) as I knit it during a Public Safety Power Shut-off during a very windy few days in October (power lines and wind are a major cause of wildfires in California) , and which in fact lasted a week in the mountainous areas north of the bay. Then, due to falling trees there have been still more power outages, and furthermore, the power is OUT as I post this!!! With a bit of irony, I introduce to you my slightly sinister ” Lights Out In California ” . . .
Adorned with a tidy wee felted toorie which I made & posted about yesterday . . .
Equally as good looking as the festive prototype! However, now that I’ve posted the “Lights Out” version, I have a mind to stitch in colored lights. I’ll think about it. In the mean time, please do check out all the details of Solstice Lanterns over on Ravelry, as it is now live! Thank you ~ xx Jen
A little something that I call ” the felted toorie ”
or tourie (ˈtʊrɪ )
noun Scottish
2. Also: toorie bonnet
C19: from Scot toor tower
Toorie is just a Scots name for the little ball that goes on top of many of their hats, often looking like little red cherries.
I just made a regular medium-sized pompom, entirely in Jamiesons Shetland Spindrift — color Sholmit. I snipped the fresh pom pom right off of the cardboard, then it went through a wild hot & soapy wash while being rolled in my hands, and ended up really bumpy , felted, and generally unappealing (you can see my tutorial if you want to see all the steps.)
Until you take scissors to it!
Trimmed to perfection , it is ready for this tam.
Two tams are waiting back stage …. nervous, nearly forgetting their lines.
Good morning ! My day was started early this morning finishing the last rounds of the tam, and doing all the finish work, and left with a minimal pile of trimmings for the birds’ nests , as I was able to carry the yarns upward as I went, making very little in the way of ends to weave in. Now the tam is blocking to dry, inside-out, with many pins to shape it into a slightly taut disc, which later will be turned outside-out and steamed ever so gently to set the fabric and soften the brim crease.
I have had so much enjoyment designing and knitting this tam that I’m thinking I need to allow myself another tam to design, you know, just binge with it for a while. Nevertheless I am almost done with it, and as it has been quite warm lately, I am hoping it will be dry and ready for a photo later today . . . and you know what that means?
In a blink this tam pattern will be ready to fly!
About five and a half weeks away is the Winter Solstice, and I am working like an ox to get this here tam up and running ahead of the holidays so knitters can knit it for the holidays. As soon as I finish knitting the prototype here I’ll be done & dusted ; I’ve got the pattern all ready to go, charts are drawn and redrawn, then drawn again, and so I am confident that the Up & Coming is going to be ready in a blink. It is certainly a significant personal accomplishment in the wake of a couple of years where my creative brain seemed to be on vacation somewhere far away. It will be knit, blocked (that is, put into a lovely tam shape and un-wrinkled so to speak), then photographed . . . all in the next couple of days.
I’ve been feeling like knitting design has taken a back seat for so long that it was becoming inconsequential to big things going on (so many big big things), so I decided to get focused again and design a tam during the week-long power outage in Napa last week. Here it is blocking inside-out on a blocking board drying into shape with a lot of pins. The motif is quite apropos to the power situation, but I won’t be showing it off right-side-out yet, as it is a test-knit to an upcoming pattern idea. That is, I am waiting for my order of Elemental Affects Shetland yarn to arrive for something heart-warming and cheerful for the holidays, but having wanted something to ‘sketch’ the motif with, I dug into my yarn drawer and pulled out four balls of Jamiesons Spindrift to make a grey-scale version of the colorful holiday one forthcoming, but with a little bit of a sinister spin on it. And that is all you get to know for now.
♥ ♥ ♥
Oh! And I’d like to mention that it was ten years ago about this time of year that I was becoming obsessed by Fair Isle colorwork, having knit my first ever Fair Isle tam, and so I decided to get stranded out in the colorwork rounds again after a two-year colorwork hiatus. It has been thoroughly delightful and introspective!
We’ve been hunkered down through a week long power out and biting our nails while Kincade Fire raged in Sonoma County very close by, and my friends from around the world have been worried about us from hearing about it on the news. California is once again the crazy Wild West, its been a rough last week in October, but November is at long last here. Oh, and today is Emma’s half birthday.
As a little celebration of Emma’s fourteenth half birthday, I am having a little two-for-one pattern spree for Walking With Emma (a collection of eight sock patterns) over on Ravelry , and for details on that, please check it out on my forum post here.
In any case, we’re busy hanging doors, tiling, and in general making our house more of a home every weekend. I suppose soon I ought to post some house project photos, but here is one ~~ the laundry line is up!
