A monthly update of all the projects piling up on and under my coffee table. You can read all previous months here.
This past month I've finished two projects. I'm still only working on a few projects so my coffee table is looking relatively bare.
First finished project is the Cloud Blouse.
Cloud Blouse (available to buy on Ravelry here). is a drop shoulder jumper knitted from the top down.
The pattern is written for two strands of a mohair silk laceweight. I used one strand of Rico Meri Mohair in shade Deep Sea.
You can read more about it here.
I also finished another version of our Mini Side to Side Shawl. No photos of this yet. I still need to give it a wash. I've not written the pattern yet either but it'll be available soon.
Promise.
Last month I mentioned I wanted to knit a Harbour Taxi Shawl by Alla Saenko, and I started and finished it within the month! Just the blocking to do.
Harbour Taxi Shawl - unblocked.
Harbour Taxi is an asymmetrical shawl. It's mostly garter stitch but knitted in different sections. It has lots of interesting bits to keep you motivated but it is quite straightforward to work.
You start with a few stitches and increase up to the full width. You work eyelets, some old shale lace (an impressive but simple lace pattern) and short rows.
Short rows are when you don't knit all the stitches on your needles. You literally turn your needles around and go back along the row.
There are different ways to work short rows - to close the hole made by turning mid row. The short rows in the Harbour Taxi Shawl are worked using the wrap and turn method and it's fully explained in the pattern.
I used a Crazy Zauberball in shade 2542. This is a self-striping 4ply with long runs of colour. It works really well over an increasing number of stitches giving thick and thin stripes. It works exceptionally well in short row sections.
I still need to block this shawl. It'll definitely need blocking wires and pins to stretch open the lovely lace detailing and create a wave edge.
I do recommend Harbour Taxi Shawl for a more-than-interesting-garter-stitch project that's not tricky or if you fancy trying out lace or short rows.
This month I finished the lace yoke and split the body and sleeves on my Salty Air.
40.5"/103cm on a 38"/96.5cm mannequin
The lace yoke is quite straightforward but you do have to pay attention. You can get into a rhythm of the stitches but I'd recommend using stitch markers to mark out each pattern repeat and checking your stitches as you work the simpler alternate rows. There are a lot of stitches on the yoke which make it tedious to 'unknit' to fix a mistake.
I'm about to start the 2nd skein and work round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round on the body.
I may be a while.😆
I also started a new version of our Simple Shawl pattern using My Mama Knits Float Your Goat in the neon pink Blooming Minosa.
I'm using this laceweight mohair with a 4.5mm needle. The fluffy mohair stops it looking stringy.
The Simple Shawl pattern was originally worked in a 4ply and a DK (our latest version is in Rico Painted Power Cotton) and we have a laceweight version too (with an eyelet border).
For this fluffy version I'm not sure if I'll include an eyelet border... so far it's looking soooooo extravagant. Is it the colour or the frothy fluff?
Probably both!
This is just 8g of yarn. So a 25g ball could probably make 2 mini scarves.
Float Your Goat has 50g of yarn. I'm going to knit all it and see how far it will go.
We do have an asymmetrical scarf in the shop which uses 50g of mohair/silk laceweight, so I know it can go really far.
My final project on the table is a Bao Bao Shawl by Isabel Kraemer. The pattern is available to buy on Ravelry.
Bao Bao Shawl, {photo credit: Isabell Kraemer}
If you've been in the shop recently you may have heard me talk about it. But I wanted to wait for the new John Arbon Yarnadelic shades to arrive before I cast on.
The new shades include a very bright lime which I thought would look perfect in this bold and graphic shawl.
I've chosen Ordinary Joe and the new Blue Monday as the main stripes and Toxic (the neon lime) for the contrast stripe and edge.
The shaped stripes use a dip stitch. It's VERY easy to work. You can see a tutorial here. You don't really need to count anything either as the design is so clear you can see what comes next.
Very excited about this one. It's a big project - 3 skeins of Yarnadelic - but I think it'll go quick. I do tend to knit more when it's stripey. 😆
If you like the look of this stitch , Isabell Kraemer has used it in lots of other items including a jumper, cowl and hat.
For the next month, apart from working on Bao Bao, I'll definitely get the Mini-Side-to-Side scarf written and hopefully make some progress on the body of Salty Air.
