There is a story in every part of the process and in every item I make.
When I knit something it is always in a certain context. Perhaps I am talking to someone, listening to a podcast or thinking of something. Next time I pick up the needles, my mind brings that context to life again in the feeling of the structure and the muscular memory of the motion. It’s like the context gets caught in the thread and woven into the garment. A parallel process of the time, space and events of that moment is created and recreated.
I may be thinking about when I prepared and spun the yarn or remembering what the fleece felt like. Perhaps I am thinking of how the dye didn’t turn out the way I had planned but how I still loved the result.
I may remember the last time I was knitting at a coffee break at work, letting my co-workers choose the next colour.
Perhaps I remember a heartwarming conversation with a curious subway passenger asking me about my project. I may smile at the memory of seeing other passengers watching the repetitive movements of my hands, and getting helplessly enraptured in the motion. I imagine they are positively affected by my serenity.
I may definitely remember all the mistakes I have made in the process, how I have dealt with them and what I have learned from them.
When the garment is finished and all the ends woven in, I wrap myself in it, like a story book. And I walk on, a little richer in memories.
Sides and stripes sweater by Veera Välimäki. Photo by Dan Waltin
I have finished a sweater! It is the Sides and stripes sweater by Veera Välimäki I mentioned in a previous post about the designer.
The design
The sweater is knit seamlessly in the round. The yoke is quite fitted but the body has lots of positive ease. There are short rows at the bottom of the back body to make the sweater a bit longer at the back. The sides are purled to make a reverse stockinette stitch. The hem of the body and sleeves are in garter stitch.
Short rows at the back of the neck and at the bottom of the hem. Reverse stockinette stitch side panels. Photo by Dan Waltin
The yarn
The main colour yarn is the 3-ply finewool yarn I have been spinning during august. It’s spun woolen from hand-carded rolags on my spinning wheel. I’m really happy with the result. I spin lots of 2-ply and like the result, but 3-ply is just so round and beautiful!
I dyed it in a jeansy colour. As usual, I’m way too cheap when I dye, so I try to press too much yarn into a pot that is too small, resulting in an uneven dye. But I do love the result, it gives the yarn a variegated finish.
Dyed finewool yarn
For the constrast colour I used a 2-ply yarn spun woolen from the fold on a supported spindle. I dyed it in a warm, dark orangy shade.
2-ply Jämtland yarn spun woolen from the fold on a supported spindle.
The orange yarn is thinner than the blue, but since the sweater is striped it doesn’t really matter, the difference just adds texture to the striped section.
The knitting
Knitting was just a pleasure. There is a lot of stockinette, but the stripes and the reverse stockinette sides make the knitting more interesting. When I got to the sleeves I feared that there wouldn’t be enough blue yarn. I decided to knit both sleeves at the same time to avoid ending up with different length sleeves. When the sleeves were not at all finished, I ran out of yarn. I did have one undyed skein left though, and the dye. I figured, that if I managed to dye the last skein in a similar colour, I could get away with it. If I didn’t, I had to solve the problem somehow.
The setback
I dyed the last skein, and it ended up a clear moss green colour. I have had some problems with this dye, I had added some yellow to it earlier to make a turquoise shade, but somehow the yellow didn’t show. But now I found it, in the last skein. There was no way I could use it for the hem of the sleeves. So I knit 9 of the 12 garter stitch rows for the hem in the final meters of the blue yarn. Then I made a turned hem. I knit a purl row of orange and continued in stockinette stitch for 8 rows and cast off while at the same time fastening the bind-off to the wrong side of the sweater. To do this, I used a smaller needle to pick up the purl bumps on the inside of the garment, just at the height of the fold. From that I made a 3-needle bind-off. This way I used as much as possible of the blue yarn (and there were only inches left of it after the garter stitch hem) and still got a nice finish of the sleeves.
My panic solution to running out of blue yarn. Photo by Dan Waltin.
My friend Anna is a master drop spindle spinner and she often plies on the fly. Ply on the fly is a technique to spin a yarn on a spindle and ply alternately. You spin a bit, secure the end of the single, and chain-ply the part you just spun. I have never practised it, but it is a smart way to finish a yarn without having the trouble of unwinding the spindle in between. I have seen a few videos on this technique, but only on drop spindles. So today I made a search on plying on the fly on a supported spindle. And I found Ioana’s video. She has a good technique and explains it very well.
The basics are: you spin clockwise and wind onto the temporary cop and butterfly the single onto your fiber hand, just as you would normally do. For plying, you pick up a loop from the bottom of the shaft and chain-ply counter-clockwise. When almost all the butterflied single is plied, you secure the loop at the bottom again and go back to spinning.
I wanted to make my own video, soI went to the allotment with my garden chair/camera stand and started spinning! I put in explaining in text and slow motion sections to show the technique as clearly as possible. However, there are many steps in a short segment of time and you might want to watch it more than once to get the technique. Also, look at Ioana’s video for additional explanation of the method.
In my series of favourite designers the turn has come to Kieran Foley. He makes extremely complicated designs, mostly shawls, in lots of vibrant colours, using several intricate techniques such as intarsia, lace knitting and stranding, preferably all at the same time. All the designs make you breathless, both by looking at and by knitting, like the Kurdish shawl and the Oceania pattern. I have made a few of his not so exhaustingly complicated designs. Well, one of them really was quite complicated, the Daisy crescent shawl. A regular crescent shawl, but with flowers knit in intarsia. Using 69 mini skeins.
The Daisy Crescent. MC is my handspun, Daisies are scraps of handspun and commercial yarns. Photo by Dan Waltin
My first Kieran was less difficult, though, the Shetland crescent. He was inspired by the colour range of Shetland sheep when he designed it. I was at the time equally fascinated by the same in alpaca, so I knit in in my handspun alpaca yarn.
Shetland Crescent, by Kieran Foley. Yarn is my handspun alpaca. Photo by Dan Waltin.
I also made the Echo beach shawl with very interesting ladder patterns. So simple an idea, yet so exquisitely designed.
In a recent post I told you about one of my favourite knitting designers, Kate Davies. Another favourite designer is Veera Välimäki. She has designed a lot of sweaters with brilliantly smart and yet simple yoke constructions, preferably using short rows. Many of the designs are in garter stitch which gives handspun yarns an extra opportunity to show their perfect non-perfectness.
My first Veera was a shawl, though, the Color affection. You can read more about it here. I knit it in my handspun alpaca yarn in natural colours and I love the result, it has a wonderful drape.
Color affection, by Veera Välimäki. Yarn is my handspun alpaca. Photo by Dan Waltin
When I changed jobs a few years ago, my colleagues gave me a gift voucher at a local yarn store (boy, did they know me well!) and I bought the yarn for and knit the Still light tunic, a garment I could live in.
One of my favourite Veera designs is the Shift of focus sweater, which I altered a bit. Instead of a buttoned front, I made it closed and I really loved the result. The yarn was a different matter, though. I wasn’t very used to making consistent grist, so the skeins were quite different in thickness. Also, I had spun too little yarn, so I had to make some more from another fleece. Fortunately I had the same dye bath left, so nobody knows the difference.
Shift of focus, by Veera Välimäki. Yarn is my hand dyed and handspun from Jämtland sheep, Swedish finewool sheep and some silk. Photo by Dan Waltin
Right now I’m working on the Sides and stripes sweater. The yarn is my handspun from Swedish finewool sheep (blue) and Jämtland sheep (orange) and hand dyed with Greener shades.
Yarn for Sides and stripes sweater by Veera Välimäki
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a lottery at the Woodland woodworking forum at Ravelry. The turner Carl had made four beautiful one of a kind wand supported spindles in the colours of the Hogwarts houses – Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. All you had to do was to post which spindle you were interested in and Carl would draw the winners. Each winner would be able to buy their chosen spindle. I really wanted the Ravenclaw spindle, but it was already spoken for by the person who had originally suggested the idea of the house colour wands. Instead I chose the Gryffindor spindle. I didn’t really believe in winning, since most of the posts were on Gryffindor. But – like magic – I did!
So, a couple of days ago an owl landed at my doorstep with the wand in its beak. And I made a short video. Don’t forget the sound!
I wanted to make a video on supported spindle spinning with all the segments of the spinning and with good close-ups and slow motion pieces. Hope you like it!
The spindle is from Malcolm Fielding and the bowl from the Skansen pottery. Fiber is merino/Tussah silk from Vinterverkstan and the sweater is Fileuse by Valérie Miller, knit in my handspun yarn.
One of my all-time favourite knitting designers is Kate Davies. She is from Scotland and many of her designs are influenced by the landscape and history of Scotland and Shetland. She has written several books, where she often combines and integrates stories of the area, history, tradition and beautiful photography with the patterns. Like the Moder Dy hap, where she tells the story of how these giant shawls were constructed and why, the origin and purpose of the different parts of the shawl and how she has adapted it to modern techniques and yarns. You can read more about the Moder Dy pattern in Kate’s blog. This hap is on my waiting list. I just have to spin a little more yarn before I can begin.
I don’t know what it is about her patterns that is so appealing. Perhaps it it the foundation in traditional techniques that she has adapted to a contemporary context. One example is the Paper dolls sweater pattern, a traditional sweater with a Fair Isle construction but with a more contemporary motif. I knit it a couple of years ago for my daughter. She complained that she always got hand-me-downs. But this one was only for her. Knit in my handspun, of course. Another such example is the Oa sweater. Also a Fair isle pattern, but knit as a modern hoody. It is also on my list and also in need of yarn being spun.
Connecting a pattern to a story is also something that gives a design an extra meaning. Like the Stevenson sweater and Stevenson gauntlets that origin from the story of a famous light house engineer. I knit it in my handspun yarn, but obviously I didn’t check the gauge properly and I had to make lots of adjustments to get a good fit.
Stevenson sweater and Stevenson gauntlets, by Kate Davies. Yarn is my handspun. White and blue is Jämtland wool, fawn is Shetland wool. Photo by Dan Waltin.
Or perhaps it is just because her designs look so darn good and are so ingeniously smart constructed. The Northmavine hoody is one such design. The clever striping that looks just like blue stripes, but actually contains four different shades of blue and turquoise (you find the same stripes in the Northmavine hap as well). The clever hood construction that is so obvious when you think about it. And the super smart edgings and finishings that don’t have one single seam. That is an ingenious pattern.
Northmavine Hoody, by Kate Davies. Yarn from Jamieson & Smith Shetland woolbrokers. Photo by Dan Waltin.
And as you may have seen on several of my videos I wear my Northmavine hoody a lot. I bought the pattern and the yarn in Shetland at Shetland wool week 2015 and I’m longing to go back. Perhaps the hoody takes me a little closer.
I recently published my new video, Slow fashion 2 – from sheep to shawl. There is another aspect of this video as well. I saw the Starz TV-series (on Viaplay in Sweden) and read the book series Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and loved them. The short version is: A combat nurse in post-ww2 Scotland is on her second honeymoon with her husband, when she happens to walk through time in a circle of stones to 1743. The long version is 9000 pages so far (and worth every page!).
Series plot
The mid-18th century was before spinning mills as far as I know. Which would mean that every garment in this time was made from yarn that someone had spun by hand. If not, people would not be clothed at all. I don’t think every household had enough space and money to have their own spinning wheel or buy fabric from someone else, a lot of it was probably spun on a spindle, at least in more remote areas as the Highlands. Just the thought of all the work, skill and effort behind one single great kilt or dress makes me speechless.
Textile crafts in the series
There are a few places in Diana Gabaldon’s books that cover spinning, weaving and dying, which all warmed my heart. Below is also a metaphorical description of the relationship between brother and sister Jamie and Jenny:
“Their shared childhood linked them forever, like the warp and the weft of a single fabric, but the patterns of their weave had been loosened, by absence and suspicion, then by marriage. Ian’s thread had been present in their weaving since the beginning, mine was a new one. How would the tensions pull in this new pattern, one thread against another?” From chapter 27 in Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
In the TV-series, costume designer Terry Dresbach has been extremely true to the time in creating all the amazing costumes. As a lover of all things woolen, I especially loved the parts in Scotland.
My outlander inspired shawl
In the TV-series the heroine Claire is wearing a plaid shawls when she goes through the stones. She leaves the shawl on the ground beneath the center stone in the 18th century. Later, she comes back to the stones and the shawl is still on the ground, all wrinkled, weathered and forgotten. I wanted to make a similar shawl, from scratch. I spun yarn and wove a plaid shawl in natural colours (I didn’t want to dive into the process of 18th century plant dying in Scotland). The tools I’m using are from my century, but the same kinds of tools were probably used in the 18th century.
Hobby vs real life necessity
This is a dear hobby to me, but during the whole process I kept thinking that this was real life back then and skills that people needed to feed and clothe themselves to stay alive. So in that aspect, it was not slow fashion at all. It was a necessary part of life.
In the video, there are a few parts where I’m flirting with the Outlander theme. If you are familiar with Outlander you will recognize them.
