Roineval
After today, no blogging here until August 7 (or thereabouts; depends on when we get in). In the meantime, We'll have a Sweater From the Past.
Once I'd learned to knit like everybody else (see previous installment, July 17th), and had therefore opened up my knitting horizons, I decided to try intarsia. Now, one can certainly knit intarsia using "Reverse Left-Finger Knitting," but I hadn't ever learned how to do it, anyway, being stuck in my ways, uninventive and cowardly.
So for my first intarsia design I did this:
It's "Roineval," from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection, 1992. My dear friend Ann in London bought the yarns for me and sent them over to the States. The design's now pretty near impossible to do as it was conceived, since so many of the various yarns in it have been discontinued. Very, very occasionally you see the collection of yarns it requires come up for sale on eBay. If you were so minded, you could make collecting its various yarns a life's project, finding them one by one, on eBay, at estate sales, at little yarn shops that hadn't got rid of all their discontinued Rowan yarns, or through trading yarns with online buddies. It would take you years.
Little did I know, when I made it, that Roineval would become the Holy Grail of Starmore aficionados. I chose it partly because I loved the design, and partly because it was one of the few Starmore designs I could actually wear -- I was at the time quite large, though I would get larger (and then smaller, but that's another story). The design is given in one size only, to fit a medium sized man, and it fit me fine back then. Still does, though it's big on me now. I like it on weekends with jeans.
I learned a LOT from knitting this design -- color use, for one; I learned that the jewel-like tones stood out because they were put next to dull ones. I learned how to knit intarsia, obviously -- that's useful.
Also I learned that I probably don't want to knit again a piece with such different yarns put together -- not if I want hard wearing out of it. The sweater is weak at the joins in between the worsted and the mohair -- the shift in weight is too great. And the chenille is weak in and of itself, not to mention the fact that it "worms" out to the front continually, and the sweater therefore requires frequent grooming.
But I do love it -- it's so extravagant.
Here's a close-up of the spirals:
Yep. I love it. It was worth the trouble it first took -- you can't knit it without following the pattern every row; it's not the sort of project you can do without thinking -- and the trouble it takes now.
Currently, I'm done with the knitting on "Oriental Flower" -- I'll post pictures after it gets blocked and buttoned up. For my vacation knitting, I'm taking a Totally Mindless cotton sweatshirt that I am knitting only because it's done in Fox Fibre, and I want to see what it looks like when it washes up. That's the cotton that has color bred into the cotton boll -- the color is supposed to get deeper as time goes on and you wash it. I'm looking forward to that, but the sweater itself is boring, and it's been hanging around as my office knitting, and I think I'll just finish it up. Knitting with cotton. Yecch.
And since I don't think that project will last the week, I'm taking socks, too. I seem to have acquired five different socks projects -- don't know how that happened. Elves, probably. So I'll take the Fortissima that Julie bought me last Mother's Day (or was it birthday, Julie? I can't remember now, and they happen at about the same time). Julie will be practicing her knitting, too, at the beach; she's been learning, and doesn't want to forget, so, sensible woman that she is, she also will take advantage of the air conditioning, artificial extender of the Knitting Season.
And, so, on to South Carolina, the home of Sam's people and Excellent Food. See you later.
Once I'd learned to knit like everybody else (see previous installment, July 17th), and had therefore opened up my knitting horizons, I decided to try intarsia. Now, one can certainly knit intarsia using "Reverse Left-Finger Knitting," but I hadn't ever learned how to do it, anyway, being stuck in my ways, uninventive and cowardly.
So for my first intarsia design I did this:
It's "Roineval," from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection, 1992. My dear friend Ann in London bought the yarns for me and sent them over to the States. The design's now pretty near impossible to do as it was conceived, since so many of the various yarns in it have been discontinued. Very, very occasionally you see the collection of yarns it requires come up for sale on eBay. If you were so minded, you could make collecting its various yarns a life's project, finding them one by one, on eBay, at estate sales, at little yarn shops that hadn't got rid of all their discontinued Rowan yarns, or through trading yarns with online buddies. It would take you years.
Little did I know, when I made it, that Roineval would become the Holy Grail of Starmore aficionados. I chose it partly because I loved the design, and partly because it was one of the few Starmore designs I could actually wear -- I was at the time quite large, though I would get larger (and then smaller, but that's another story). The design is given in one size only, to fit a medium sized man, and it fit me fine back then. Still does, though it's big on me now. I like it on weekends with jeans.
I learned a LOT from knitting this design -- color use, for one; I learned that the jewel-like tones stood out because they were put next to dull ones. I learned how to knit intarsia, obviously -- that's useful.
Also I learned that I probably don't want to knit again a piece with such different yarns put together -- not if I want hard wearing out of it. The sweater is weak at the joins in between the worsted and the mohair -- the shift in weight is too great. And the chenille is weak in and of itself, not to mention the fact that it "worms" out to the front continually, and the sweater therefore requires frequent grooming.
But I do love it -- it's so extravagant.
Here's a close-up of the spirals:
Yep. I love it. It was worth the trouble it first took -- you can't knit it without following the pattern every row; it's not the sort of project you can do without thinking -- and the trouble it takes now.
Currently, I'm done with the knitting on "Oriental Flower" -- I'll post pictures after it gets blocked and buttoned up. For my vacation knitting, I'm taking a Totally Mindless cotton sweatshirt that I am knitting only because it's done in Fox Fibre, and I want to see what it looks like when it washes up. That's the cotton that has color bred into the cotton boll -- the color is supposed to get deeper as time goes on and you wash it. I'm looking forward to that, but the sweater itself is boring, and it's been hanging around as my office knitting, and I think I'll just finish it up. Knitting with cotton. Yecch.
And since I don't think that project will last the week, I'm taking socks, too. I seem to have acquired five different socks projects -- don't know how that happened. Elves, probably. So I'll take the Fortissima that Julie bought me last Mother's Day (or was it birthday, Julie? I can't remember now, and they happen at about the same time). Julie will be practicing her knitting, too, at the beach; she's been learning, and doesn't want to forget, so, sensible woman that she is, she also will take advantage of the air conditioning, artificial extender of the Knitting Season.
And, so, on to South Carolina, the home of Sam's people and Excellent Food. See you later.
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