musings of a male knitter

Okay.  So sometimes you  have to knit something that is just darn cute.  I saw these duck feet booties in Cute Knits for Baby Feet by Sue Whiting and had to make them.  (Act fast, and you can get the book for 60% off from Amazon.  Appears they have it at a bargain price with only eight left.)  I used Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk DK, Color 224, Marmalade.  I really liked working with this yarn for both the hat and the duck feet.  It is soft, springy,  and machine washable.  The hat is called Aviatrix, and is a free pattern on Ravelry.  It’s a great little knit, and the pattern is written from size 0-3 months to adult, and gives directions for sport, dk, and worsted weight yarn.  What I love about this pattern is that it is knitted flat, and all shaping is accomplished with short rows. Once the main hat body is done, you pick up and knit stitches along the short edges, knit the wedges, and then continue to knit I-cord for the ties.  You can easily knit this hat in a weekend…or perhaps a day if you get to knit all day! Just to let you know, the recipient is happily wearing the hat and duck feet in our wet, winter weather here!

Museum Meet Up Vest

My newest sweater vest design was just published in the Winter 2012 Issue of Love of Knitting.  I am super pleased with the styling of the photography and the model that was selected.  I had been wanting to introduce some mosaic knitting into a design, and the seed of inspiration for this black and white vest popped into my head while watching the movie, Phantom of the Opera.  During the Masquerade sequence, there are masquerade ball dancers who have black and white painted on opposite sides of their faces.  In profile, when turned quickly, you get the coolest visual effect from the black and white faces switching back and forth.

This vest is knitted in the round up to the armholes, then the front and the back are knit back and forth.  The sloped shoulders are shaped with short rows, retaining live stitches, which are then bound off with a three needle bind off.  The front and back alternates between the mosaic section and the striped sections.  Because mosaic knitting draws in a bit, additional stitches are added for the mosaic sections to maintain comparable width, and any differences between the sections vertically counterbalance each other because both front and back have equal numbers of  striped and mosaic sections.  The result is a balanced garment.

Museum Meet Up Vest Back

Black and white really emphasizes the contrast.  But I’ve seen a dusky purple with a burnt orange combination that was stunning (on a test knit of the hat pattern to be released soon to match this vest), as well as a lovely gray and blue combination.  Another interesting effect with mosaic is to use a solid color paired with a complementary variegated color.   I would love to see some of your finished vests with your choices of color.  Send them to me and I’ll post them!

Coming soon…a hat pattern that matches the vest.  It will have options for either a squared off crown or concentric circles crown and will be available on Ravelry.

Image of Boardwalk Vest from Love of Knitting website

The summer issue of Love of Knitting has my vest pattern available free as their web bonus.  Here’s two other images that show the diamond pattern more clearly.

Close up of Diamonds

Full Frontal View of Boardwalk Vest

I wanted a summer vest that looked good with a t-shirt and jeans or could be worn as dressy casual on a summer’s evening to an outdoor restaurant.  Early on, I knew I wanted it to be open in the front and made with Cotton Classic Lite by Tahki Stacy Charles Yarns. This is a lovely yarn with which to knit, and the garment weight is perfect for summer layering.  The yarn would be great in a summer top, such as a tank or t-shirt.  The diamond stitch pattern came from Barbara Walker’s Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns, but I altered it so that the diamonds at the top of the front panels move off at a slant in mirror image from each other.  I love I-cord edging, and worked a 3 stitch I-cord all along the vest edges.  The vest front edges did decide to curl inward, so you can’t see the I-cord edge there, but I still liked the look in the front.  This vest was designed with standard ease, and length, and the pattern sizes are written that way which go from small (44″ chest, finished size) to 3x (54″ chest, finished size).  I’m thinking about working up a version that is cropped, and has shorter armholes, with a narrow decorative rib around the vest front to make it more pronounced and lay flat.  It will be interesting to see if the front panels will accommodate those size changes, or if I’ll have to rewrite the diamond pattern stitch a bit.  I suspect the last upper diamond near the armhole will have to be removed.

Don’t be alarmed by the length of the pattern.  Because the regular diamond stitch pattern repeat had to be altered on both tops of the front panel, it required a lot of lines to be written out.  But it’s all pretty easy knitting, and the lines are all spelled out stitch by stitch for you!  I hope you enjoy knitting and wearing this vest!

Harmonia's Rings Cowl

A manly cowl pattern is not an easy find.  This moebius cowl pattern is Harmonia’s Rings by Sivia Harding, with a slight alteration, a color choice, and a yarn choice by me to make it more manly.  The alteration is that I chose to do an I-cord bind-off when she calls for a beaded picot bind-off along the collar edge.  I chose a heavier yarn (chunky rather than aran) to give the cowl more volume (definitely the trend this fall) and a charcoal color for a manly hue.  The yarn is Cocoon by Rowan, a roving yarn made of 80% Merino Wool and 20% Kid Mohair, Colorway is 805, Mountain.  The yarn was wonderful to knit and the cowl is so comfortable to wear.  Unlike a scarf, it stays put and warms both neck and upper body.

Cowl Back

The moebius cast-on is not hard if you follow this video step by step, and a moebius is so fun to knit.  Unlike most knitting, where the knitted fabric grows from one edge of a knitting needle, a moebius project grows from the center outward along two opposite edges.  This is due to a loop you form in the cast-on with a long circular needle, and deliberately twisting the cable one time, so you have twisted knitting.

Close up image is lightened so you can see the detail in the cowl pattern.

If you want to find out  all the things you can do with moebius knitting, you should take a workshop with Cat Bordhi and/or try to locate her two books, A Treasury of Magical Knitting and A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting. Both books are out of print, but you can still find the Second Treasury available at its regular retail price here and there.  If you can find the first Treasury at the regular retail price, snatch it up!  It is almost impossible to find, and now regularly sells for several hundred dollars.  Rumor has it that Cat may release these books electronically in the future, or at least portions of them.  So you should check out her website for updates.  However, be warned!  Moebius knitting can be addictive!  You can do everything from cowls and hat brims to felted baskets and  pet beds.  I want to experiment with more moebius cowls, including designing a few.  The key is finding a great reversible pattern, since a moebius shows both sides of the knitted fabric, and a repeat structure that can accent those patterns.

By the way, the Northcoast Knittery, Eureka, CA  will be hosting Sivia Harding for two workshops on July 21 and 22, 2012.  She is a fabulous teacher, and the two workshops are going to be fantastic.  Here’s a description of each one:

Fill a Triangle with Lace Workshop: Sivia gives you the tools to access your inner designer in this gentle and supportive workshop. You will learn all the skills you need to design your own top-down triangle shawl. In this class, we examine the structure of the basic top-down triangle shawl and insert our choice of lace patterns to create an original design, with an eye to shaping, esthetics, and flow. Charting patterns, shaping lace in pattern, modulation from one pattern to another, and types of edgings will be discussed. Students receive the benefit of Sivia’s years of experience in designing innovative lace shawls and exceptional beaded lace. This workshop is the perfect blend of lace design skills, inspiration and discovery.

Harmonia’s Rings Sweater: The Harmonia’s Rings sweater uses Cat Bordhi’s Moebius cast on to achieve the mysterious spiral neck shape, features an easy and addictive self-pleating knit and purl stitch pattern that creates concentric rings reminiscent of ancient architecture. This class includes many techniques: the Moebius cast on, beaded picot bind off, knitting the texture pattern in the round, shaping within the Moebius structure, including how to separate the body and sleeves, along with ways to customize the pattern to fit any body type.

Contact Northcoast Knittery at 707-442-9276 or info@northcoastknittery.com to request more information and/or to sign up.

CraftsManShip--Star Book #233 from the American Thread Company

Yes, here it is!

Avocado Knitted Tank Top, called "Striped Pullover", p. 8

In fact, it was the featured front cover item on this little vintage book of knitting patterns for men.  It is so much fun to take a peek at what was considered sexy and masculine then.  On the other hand, one person looking at these patterns said to me–no wonder knitting was not the rage in the 1970s!  I’m guessing at the age of the pamplet–there’s no publication date, but it is published by the American Thread Company, and is Star Book # 233.  Check out the wide belt and white pants!

Most of the patterns in this book are, well let’s face it, pretty awful.

Okay…I take that back.  A few are traditional or classic, just dated in their colors or styling, especially the length of all the knitted tops–sweaters, jackets, tank top–they all come way down and have belts on them.  But a couple of the patterns are worth a try.  There’s this nifty helmet that covers the  face somewhat like a ski mask, but converts into a hat with a visor.

Presto Chango--Helmet to Hat

And there is a slip stitch vest that I am definitely going to make–in fact, I think I’ll try it in two of the beautiful muted colors of Second Time Cotton by Knit One Purl Too for a summer vest.  That’s quite a contrast from the gold and black used in the original pattern–too bad it was pictured only in a black and white photo!

Slip Stitch Vest, p. 30

Definitely click on the above image and enlarge it.  You can see the wide striped corduroy pants, and you also realize this guy has on a long sleeved stretchy knit shirt, likely made out of polyester.  UGGH.  Gotta love that scarf and the glasses!  ( Really, I always wanted a pair of those glasses.  I even endured hard contact lenses in the mid-seventies just so I could wear them.  Okay…now you know I actually remember the seventies!)

The final pattern in the book is a knitted bathrobe…out of sport yarn.

Man's Robe, p. 32

It’s says “Wintuk” Sport Yarn, which I assume is the same 100% acrylic yarn as today.  Why would anybody want to put that much effort into that much knitting with an acrylic yarn?  I’m so glad we have more knitting yarn choices today!

I have scanned this entire booklet into a pdf file.  It is available here for download (47 MB), since there is no copyright information in the booklet and as far as I can tell from my brief research, the American Thread Company no longer exists.  If anybody knows otherwise, or if you are the copyright owner, please contact me here.