Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

Giantmonk’s new fair-isle tanktop slid off of the needles yesterday. His new (very fashionable) tanktop was a quick and easy knit, though as I had never knit such a thing, nor had I ever seen instructions for a tank top, it was very much and exercise in improvisation. It was soon quite obvious that Giantmnonk is not made to, shall we say, ’standard’ proportions. Narrow, far back shoulders and a rather rotund cuddly tum, this tank top is tailored to fit.  It is haute couture.

At 130 stitches around, Giantmonk’s tanktop ended up a perfect fit, with a very wide v-neck and small arm-holes positioned far back, where a Giantmonk’s shoulders tend to be, Giantmonk says that his new pullover is ‘very comfy and warm’.

Ladies and gentlemen please be seated, for Flossie Bear is about to make her debut:

Standing at roughly 40cm tall and as cuddly as a cloud, Flossie is complete.  I actually finished the project on Wednesday, with only her little face left to embroider yesterday evening.  I chose to embroider her features rather than use intarsia as I thought I might get a neater finish that way, my intarsia work leaving something to be desired… Also this allowed me to play around with the spacing and placement of the features before committing her to a face she was going to have to live with and which I was going to have to look at.

The most significant deviation from the cuddling bear Flossie was intended as, though, is that she was created with a buttoned envelope style opening in the back, to allow a hot water bottle to be used inside.  As local temperatures dropped to around -19ºc last night, she needs some inner warmth to keep from freezing, and to warm up this Eskimimi’s town-centre igloo.

If you were to peek inside the envelope opening, you wouldn’t find the stark rubberiness of a hot water bottle, though.  No, this Flossie comes with extra comfort – she comes with extra cuddleability. This Flossie, you see, has more than one level of cosiness. Inside her fair-isle knitted exterior she has a plush lining made with a soft fleece baby blanket, hand-sewn into a double-layered covering, which is stuffed lightly with a fine layer of polyfill.

I got the idea of using polyfill from my favourite store-bought hot water bottle cosy, which in the shape of bagpuss.  He (Bagpuss) is similarly stuffed, and the insulating properties of the materials used help to stop the very hot bottle from causing discomfort, giving a beautifully warm heat rather than an exceptionally hot one.  As my other half described it when he gave Flossie a test cuddle ‘it’s like warm cake.’ The padded inner layers also helps keep Flossie at the perfect temperature for a lot longer, as the insulation helps to control the release of heat.  Of course, Flossie’s padded interior also makes her extremely squishy, and being squishy is her other main function.

I’m extremely happy with this project.  As Flossie was made from acrylic scraps and polyfill leftover from other projects, and uses a hot water bottle and buttons I already owned, the only expenditure on this project was for the fleece baby blanket which I picked up for 2 for £1 at the local pound shop, so she came in at a bargainous price and used up some of the acrylic scraps I have been saving for such a rainy (or, more accurately snowy) day.

I love knitting stitch dictionaries.  They are perhaps my greatest knitting weakness.  I can spend (literally) hours leafing through the same pages over and over before beginning a new projects, armed with a selection of sticky-tab page-markers as I whittle down what I think will ‘work’, first marking about 20 or so for further consideration, maybe picking five of these, then going back over the book and falling in love another 20 stitches I didn’t even notice the first time around, rinse and repeat.

So, when I noticed that the Harmony Guide series had a new book in town, and it just so happened to concentrate on my new found love of colourwork stitches, I was clicking my way through the appropriate Amazon pages within a heartbeat.

I then waited, and waited.  I know today is only the 7th of January, and we are experiencing some exceptional weather conditions, but I ordered the book last year, and it was supposed to arrive by the next working day.  Finally though, the book arrived.

There is so much I love about this book.  It is clear, well photographed and uncluttered.  The designs are clearly charted.  The book begs to be flicked through, then orders you to make a cup of tea and then flicked through again.  The edition distributed in the U.K. has a ‘u’ in the title.  Great stuff.

It isn’t perfect, though.  Like the other Harmony guides I own it seems to suffer from a lack of organisation.  The Harmony guides start off in a logical manner – the easiest stitches of the particular type being categorised coming first.  A simple openwork pattern begins the guide to lace.  A progression from garter stitch, to stockinette, reverse stockinette and k1, p1 rib gets the Knit and Purl guide off to an obvious start, and so it is with the colourwork guide.  Single dots on a plain background, placed one stitch apart.  Single dots on a plain background placed two stitches apart, two coloured stitches on a plain… you get the idea.  This very quickly ascends a learning curve into more complex patterns – bands of motifs, various snowflake designs of Norweigan colourwork, intarsia designs, but, inexplicably, possibly the simplest colourwork technique of them all – evenly proportioned stripes, isn’t found until page 200.

There also doesn’t seem to be (or at least I can not discern) any logic to the groupings of stitch examples.  Examples of snowflake designs are scattered throughout the publication, instead of being grouped together, traditional Fair Isle motifs are inter-spaced by designs that used four or more colours per row (shudder).  At least the publishers sought to keep the letters of the alphabet together and in the traditional order.

Once you get used to the idea that you will have to look through the entire guide each time you are searching for something though, you start to regard this as a pleasurable pursuit rather than a chore standing between you and your latest project, and that’s what I am about to do.  I have a good friend waiting to help choose some colours and motifs for his new sweater…

I have been very much enjoying knitting the stranded colourwork rows of the Flossie Bear pattern once I assured myself that I can knit this technique without stress or literally  tying myself into knots, scared to knit alone in the room lest my boyfriend return sometime later to find me bound head to foot in an entanglement of my own knitting, quietly sobbing ‘not the fair isle, it strangles!’

Once I figured out a way of cradling the carriage of both yarns in one hand so that I didn’t have to knit part continental style and part English, but still allowing me the benefit of not having to drop one yarn to pick up the next at each colour change, I could knit at a pace not noticeably slower than when knitting plain stockinette in the round.  I dare say I would be much slowed if I were to try and juggle a third or gulp fourth colour into the mix, but for Fair Isle style techniques my way seems to work just fine for me.

As I neared the end of the colourwork portion of the knit it came time to choose what this pattern was going to be.  Skein Queen’s Flossie Bear pattern is for a cuddly soft toy, quite like a cushion in form, but when I saw the pattern my brain immediately flashed up, in lurid pink neon, hot water bottle cover, and that’s what has been in the back of my mind since I first saw the pattern some weeks ago, but I haven’t given too much thought to how I might actually make it work as a cover for a hot water bottle.

As I knit the last few rows of colourwork I changed my mind seven or eight times as to whether I was going to stick with the tried and tested soft toy, or somehow try and construct it into a hot water bottle cosy, and when I finally reach the plain rows of knitting I decided to take the easy route and go for the soft toy/cushion.  It was easier, simpler, no thinking required, and I knit happily onwards.  Except, a few rows on, I thought how much warmer Flossie would be if she could only be a cosy.  So, I ripped three rows of knitting out, back to the end of the colourwork.  Audere est Facere as they say.  Yes I am a Latin scholar Tottenham Hotspur fan^[1].

I’m attempting to knit an overlapping ribbed section with some buttonholes, to create an opening almost like an envelope. I knit 50 stitches in the centre of the reverse back and forth in 2×2 rib for eight rows before casting those stitches of, casting another 5 stitches back on for the overlap section and then rejoining the knitting in the round, keeping the newly cast on 50 stitches in matching 2×2 rib for eight rows. I’m going to have to insert buttonholes in this ribbing section at some point, and I’ve just got to that bit now, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to quickly write this blog post before plunging onwards. I am quietly hopeful that this hot water bottle cover is going to be great. Well, once I figure out how to line it and make it both cuddly and fit the hot water bottle, anyway, as it is currently decidedly un-snuggly and rather wide…

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^[1] Audere est Facere is the Spurs club motto, and translates as ‘to dare is to do’. See, football is edjumacational.

I’ve never really given stranded knitting techniques much of my attention.  I do absolutely love the effect, but as I pursue knitting as a relaxing exercise I have often not given it much time as I have shied away from the thought of managing several colours, several balls of yarn, at once.  Debbie Orr (AKA Skein Queen)’s Flossie Bear pattern seemed like a good place to start, whilst I await my copy of the Harmony Guide of 250 Colourwork stitches.

The patterning on Flossie Bear is almost Fair Isle, as I understand it.  On all but two lines of the stranded colourwork, the stranding involves only two colours.  The design element that distinguishes Fair Isle colourwork from other stranded colourwork techniques is that no row of knitting contains more than two colours, and colours are limited as to the number of rows that they will knit across in succession.  Many people refer to all stranded colourwork as Fair Isle, whereas other knitters are very insistent on this distinction, some other knitters reserving it further only for certain traditional Fair Isle repeated motifs.

The rhythm of the two-stranded knitting seemed to settle quite quickly, and I haven’t yet had much issue with the tension of my carried yarn, so I am glad that I have given this a go.  I’m knitting this up in acrylic yarn, so I unfortunately will not have the ‘cure-all’ benefits of blocking to rely on, but hopefully Flossie will be beautiful nonetheless.

Welcome to the New Year, everyone!

We saw in the New Year by watching some spectacular fireworks over the River Thames, where it was absolutely freezing and where people had been queueing since about 4pm for a good spot. We had a fantastic vantage point to see in the New Year and appreciate the fireworks – warm and snug on a comfy sofa in front of the tellybox with a glass of something sparkly for that ‘inner warmth’.

I sat a while and thought about New Years Resolutions. Thought about writing this post and if I wanted to make any knitty resolutions, but I decided not to. I decided that the principle aim for my past-time was for it to be enjoyable as a hobby, and so to commit myself now to something I may feel differently about in May, but then still feel obliged to doing, might detract from that, so I decided to just try new things and set new goals as I go along and as they present themselves to me.

My first idea is that I’d like to have a proper go at colourwork. I think maybe some fair isle type knitting to start with. So, I asked my other half to order the Harmony Guide of Colourwork Stitches.  I own three of the other Harmony Guides (Cables and Aran stitches, Lace and Eyelet stitches, and Knit & Purl stitches) but didn’t know that the Colourwork Stitches book existed until the other day, but I thought it would make a good starting point for exploring the tangled web of colourwork.

 

For the meantime, whilst waiting for the arrival of my new Library Fodder, I have been eyeing Eyeing Debbie Orr (AKA Skein Queen)’s Flossie Bear pattern, which I may have a little experiment with whilst I figure out what to do with my lovely hand-dyed yarn (I still haven’t settled on the perfect pattern) which will also allow me to use up the acrylic scraps which I have accrued from when I started learning to knit – 20g here, 15g there – and which I have never thrown out.  The worst that can happen is that I finally chuck away those acrylic scraps in a giant multicoloured knit, with the best case scenario being that I make a really early start on this year’s gift knitting!

Many modern knitters will be accustomed to the feeling of expectation surrounding the postman’s next visit, hoping that it will bring some yarn, or some other knitterly goodies in the next delivery. Not many people could have experienced a delivery of this magnitude, though:

Wit Knits, published 1986, is a catalogue of evil. Actually, it was this blog that was the cause and catalyst of me first learning and then spending good money, which could have gone towards some nice jaffa cakes, on this little snapshot of knitwear in the 80s. When writing about the trouble with colour I started considering who, to me, epitomised colourful knitwear – and Gyles Brandreth, English eccentric and television wit, pushed himself to the forefront of my mind. Googling Gyles Brandreth’s jumpers led me to discover that not only was he a patron of paintbox-knitwear, he actually published a collection of ‘lively and original hand-knitting designs’, all of which are modelled by British stars of stage and screen from a time now gone by. I present to you, for your enjoyment, Wit Knits.

^{Hover over main picture to navigate, click ‘i’ for picture information. ‘FS’ will toggle full screen options, and who wouldn’t want to see Christopher Biggins up close?}

This is but a smattering of the 37 wonderful designs for you to knit and cherish. Should you wish to see them all, or even knit one for your beloved, Wit Knits is available from Abe Books for not much money.

The Nintendo DS has been one of the most spectacular successes in the world of gadgetry that there has ever been. Resting on the coffee tables, desks, and slung into the bags of schoolchildren, businessmen and grannies alike it was the first gaming innovation that crossed the boundaries of age, and as such it is the biggest selling gaming console of all time.  Many people feel very attached to their little travelling games companion, but time spent rattling around in the bottom of a briefcase, rucksack or handbag it is fraught with all sorts of dangers.  Malicious keys, hateful biros, malevolent hair accessories, spiteful football boots – all trying to do your little gaming friend some damage to its smooth and perfect surface.

I say ‘no!’ to DS abuse.  It is true that commercially available DS protective cases are available, but there is no love in their construction, no feeling for the protection of your little dual-screened pal.  We must rally around to change the way people treat their DS consoles, and the change must start with you.  Snatch up your needles, dive into your stash, and press download, download, download!
download the PDF for the Dapper Nintendo DS Lite/DSi Cosy