Aran Cushions

Aran patterns have a charm all their own: so much dramatic impact for often minimal effort - cables being easy to memorise by reading the knitting itself. So, a series of cushions for the cottage. The point here is that heavy usage would soil these quickly, but a cottage only has intermittent use so these stay fairly clean.
This is a pattern from Alice Starmore's "Fishermen's Sweaters" - an absolute feast of complex designs. How wearable such an encrusted pattern would be, is another matter, but as a cushion, all the interplay of light from the textural interest is ther. And I can admire it, which I couldn't if I was wearing it.

Strippy Throw

A sampler throw for the cottage. The idea here was to build in a number of design elements: alternating large, complex patterns with small textures. Barbara Walker's stitch pattern library gave me most of the designs. Then two colours were chosen to echo the colours in the room, which has striped wallpaper on the chimneybreast. A further reference was the strippy quilt, where the quilting forms a textural interest on the alternating colours.

It was nowhere near as easy to knit as it might have been, because different stitch patterns alter the size of the resulting block. There were several reknittings of difficult strips to adjust for this.

One square has the date and my initials.

Giant jumper

Walking in Cumbria in the depths of winter decided me to reknit an old pattern, but in a much larger size. This would accommodate not only a bigger me, but also several layers of lighter jumpers. Knitted in Balmoral, a chunky yarn, it knit up quickly. This is a pattern I've used several times before.

Kid Mohair

This is the black version of the kid mohair cardigan. Knitted from this very light fibre, it is still floaty after all these years. The lace pattern was easy to read and memorise. The design, as I recall, had a variant with gold bobbles at the centre of each diamond, and a big floppy collar. Very Eighties.

Lace from the Auvergne

Last summer we were holidaying in th Auvergne and I came across this wonderful lace doiley at a flea market. It was three Euros, which I find astounding as bobbin lace is much prized in the region - but of course this is knitted. It measures about fifteen inches across and does remind me of a particular shawl in "A Gathering of Lace".

Pompeii Jacket

The pale version of the Kaffe Fassett jacket. this must be about twenty years old and has seen hard wear. It's a really comfortable shape. When new, it went over a beige dress to look really smart. Now it never leaves the house.

This is the curous thing about some knitwear: it becomes indispensable while other, equally credible, items fail to endear themselves.

Comfort zone.

Jaeger Shetland Style is the yarn used in this very easy shawl. It's such a soft yarn, but I was still not sure what pattern to use. I tried a small cable and then a catspaw. In the end the tweediness of the yarn suggested a double moss stich, which works well with such a bulky yarn. I'm not really a shawl person, but it is very useful as an extra wrap on cold evenings, or on car journeys.

Print of the Wave Stole

The Pattern for this came from Gladys Amedro's book on Knitting Shetland Lace. It is lovely as a piece of fabric but I am not sure whether it does not look like a bedjacket in reality. Partly it's the colour, but there is something about the texture and the way it hangs over the shoulders which suggests the grandmother in Red Riding Hood.

Tumbling blocks

A Kaffe Fassett jacket, originally done in very pale colours as from a mosaic in Pompeii. This version used a variety of evening yarns some with glitter.
I wore it to the V. and A. exhibition of Kaffe's designs in, I think, 1988.

Not really wearable now, but I can't bring myself to throw it out.

Heirloom knitting

Some more pictures, this time of items knitted for my mother, and worn with great pleasure by her and subsequently by me.



First, a waistcoat of my own design, knitted all in one piece. The idea here was to include a significant piece of text, in this case lines of verse. I'd already done one for myself with proverbs. In two ply jumper weight, from Jamieson and Smith these are at least fifteen years old.



Then, the Kaffe Fassett waistcoat in browns.



This is also in very good nick and perfectly wearable. Kaffe's designs are classics, though not to everyone's taste.

Blue dogtooth

A litle waistcoat knitted for my sister out of scraps of two-ply jumper weight.




A lovely Kaffe Fassett pattern, because it looks very complex but is really simple to execute. Millions of ends to weave in though.