A Finished Object and lots of plans.

Been enjoying doing lots of painting and having all the lovely Christmas decorations out, the little smoking man in particular!

I finished my Juveler cardigan! I'm really pleased with it, it's an open-fronted cardi, reminds me of a bolero or shrug, something to pop on over dresses in the Summer or if you're a bit chilly.
It was really quick to knit and took less than 5 balls of Noro Silk Garden (on 5mm needles). I knit the medium but could easily have made the large and been comfortable, I didn't do any sleeve decreases till I was past my elbow as I worried my sleeves would end up too tight.

I'm currently working on a testknit for a knitter whose work I love. It's going ok, I was really worried it wasn't going to fit how I want it to but it seems to be alright now. I'm working hard on this testknit as I'm keen to cast on a couple of cardigans... The first is Leitzel by Alison Green (pattern from Twist Collective, Fall 2015).

I fell in love with this one afternoon while I was idly trawling Ravelry... I then spent a fun evening looking at yarn and chose Jamieson's Shetland Heather in the end, and after much debate over colour I went for Mist.

Mist! It's a subtle lilac/grey/blue with pink flecks - I LOVE it. I was saying to Rich that I wanted to get back to buying yarn for a project, then knitting it up fairly quickly (he raised an eyebrow when yarn arrived the other day!).

Another pattern I decided I want to cast on soon is a pretty colourwork cardigan. I was watching The Box of Delights with Rich (a family tradition, every Christmas!) and Miss Maria was wearing a corgeous colourwork cardigan, it had moss green, dark blue and red... BBC production so I'd not be surprised if the cardi lives in their wardrobe department and has made an appearance in other 1930s/40s period programmes. I've had a bit of a google and I can't find any images so I'll snap one on my phone this evening when we watch episode 5. Here is the cardigan I chose last night...

I like the fit on this one, also the fact that the sleeves are knit separately and seamed, I'm not keen on steeked sleeves. I think that I'll not make the shoulders quite so wide, I'll make it more like my colourwork cardi (below). Most of the versions on Ravelry have fairly big shoulders (true to the pattern and the style of the time), there are some fab versions on there - here if you're a Raveller.

By the way, I bought the pattern from this lovely lady - the Vintage Knitting Lady - she has so many gorgeous patterns to choose from, her site is a real treasure trove!

The other pattern I've been resisting (because it is massive) is Find your Fade by Andrea Mowry. Definitely a good pattern for subscribers to yarn clubs! There's a lot of knitting in it though, I think about 1400 metres which is nearly the amount I used for my colourwork cardigan above. A month's solid knitting for me as I'm slow, also, I have 3 shawls and don't wear them as much as I wear all my cardigans. Sorry, this is me telling myself that I don't need to cast on Find Your Fade (although I have enough pre-wound Life in the Long Grass yarn)...

It's so pretty though!!!! Let's see how I do over the Christmas period, like I've said before, I really don't do so well with multilpe WIPs...

Thoughts about hand dyeing yarn

I've recently (impulsively) decided to give hand dyeing wool a go here at home. I've been feeling increasinly disillusioned with the art world, under pressure to produce things for people (lovely people, lovely things), taken advantage of by too many art galleries & dealers, and I just want a little change, to combine two things I genuinely love, yarn and painting.
The knitting community is very different to the arty ones, it is very supportive, friendly and relaxed. For example, lovely knitters adding me as a friend on my new Instagram account, even though I only have two posts and not a lot else, simply because I've added them. Now, I know this makes good business sense, and some are dyers but it's still friendly and welcoming and appreciated. I'm not sitting here behind the laptop crying because nobody loves me or appreciates my art by the way (lots of kind people say kind things), I simply want to get more into my yarny pursuits & see if my painterly ways would translate to skeins because I am literally obsessed with skeins of yarn at the moment. Obsessed in the sense that I lie awake at night matching skeins to patterns and wishing I had more hours to do more knitting and also lying there smiling about the colours in a skein. With Hedgehog Fibres for example, I see the colours in Beata's yarns everywhere, particularly in the skies over the moor (where I live). I love to think about yarns while I'm walking although I'm not sure it's normal to be quite so obsessed with yarn. But then I think about Birthday Cake!!! I have enough Birthday Cake for a third Oblique cardigan, took me ages to decide which cardigan to knit with it because variegated yarn sometimes needs texture & lace to allow it to really shine. Oblique has it all and I can't wait to get started. But then there was a post on the Hedgehog Fibres destash page on Ravelry, of their Merino DK in the Monarch colourway (previous post, last photo), 7 skeins, enough for a good sized cardigan and destined to become White Pine by Amy Christoffers. Leftovers from the two colourways are going to become a thick pair of socks.

Anyway, coming back to hand dyeing here at home, me on my own, who knows, it could be a massive disaster & totally not work for me. We'll see, I'll keep an open mind and an open heart as they say!
One thing I worry about (and do so with my paintings too) is that I might unconsciously emulate somebody else's style. If that happens and is blatantly obvious, embarrassingly so, then it may be time to go back to the drawing board, leave it to the experts so to speak. Fingers crossed I can make it work and make something that is me and not a mish mash of my memories of everyone else's amazing yarn.