Brioche Hat Madness and Plans for 2016

Brioche Hat Madness

The last couple of weeks I was rather productivly knitting! Hats are great projects for gifts, they are finished in a reasonable time and give this feeling of accomplishment :)

I discovered the pattern Liguria by Katrin Schubert on ravelry, and immediately had to try this. It was my first time knitting two-color brioche and I fell completely in love. If you have never tried this, you really really should!
What came afterwards was that my family  asked for getting hats like that one too, but in their favorite color.... so all in all I knit three Ligurias!

My second Liguria in "The Grateful Dead" colors for my dad (Madelinetosh DK Baltic and a leftover red yarn from my stash)

the first Liguria I made in Madelinetosh DK Baltic & Grasshopper

my third Liguria made for my mum in Madelinetosh DK Lepidoptra

After that I wanted to have new hat for myself as well, and I dyed some DK weight yarn in two beautiful browns for it. I also used 2color brioche, but this time without a pattern, just started knitting:

dunkel dk in "old leather book"

dunkel dk in "my boyfriends guitar"

improvised 2color brioche hat in my favorite browns

 In between all those hats, I even managed to knit a pair of socks, which I really love! I used the very popular free pattern Hermione's Everyday Socks from ravelry and my own plant dyed sock yarn:

plant dyed sock yarn (birch leaves and indigo) photographed in summer 2015

plant dyed socks photographed in winter 2015 (the summer colors are more accurate for sure!)

"Dunkel yarns"

Recently I also got much more into yarn dyeing with acid dyes. I am having so much fun with it, and I love the layered semisolid look of the yarns.
Not so much spinning, as spinning only white fibers can be quite boring. And I want to dye yarns this time around, not rovings :)
Maybe soon there will be some handdyed yarns in my etsy shop, it's long overdue that I revive that shop again!

dunkel dk in "rainy day", "my green sofa" and "hay bale"

my absolute favorite: "rainy day"

"rainy day" photographed in the sun

Plans for 2016

I will spend the beginning of the upcoming year once more in the hot summer of Brazil! Nevertheless I have plans for knitting, especially during the 12 hour flight. I am planning to make a stripey cardigan out of my handdyed dunkel dk yarns. Just top down, raglan increases, a bit  of bust shaping and color changes, similar to the paulie cardigan on ravelry.

Other than that, I have the goal to make more garments in the next year. I just love knitted cardigans, and hardly ever make any, because I am afraid it would take too long. So that should change!

A beautiful pattern on my radar is the hooded cardigan Kerrera by Gudrun Johnston. Such an amazing design! I am planning to knit it out of Madelinetosh Vintage.

Other plans? Be happy and enjoy what I am doing. And to finish my PhD :-P

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

"Sunray Shawl" - Free Knitting Pattern!

Wohooooo I just published my design "Sunray Shawl" two days ago as a free ravelry download.
Somehow it has become super popular... thank you all for your comments, and for taking the pattern into your favorites!
I can't believe it!

More than 800 hearts already and Top 3 position in the ravelry "hot right now" click charts...

Find the pattern here:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sunray-shawl-2

Many people keep asking me about the yarn that I used. It is my own handspun yarn, from a roving out of Polwarth/Silk dyed by the wonderful Sidi from http://sidispinnt.ch/

** Epona **

By the end of 2014 I took the Craftsy online class "Shawlscapes" which is taught by Stephen West.  I really enjoyed this class, Stephen is such a funny instructor and I had to watch all the lessons at once!

In the class you learn how to design your own top-down shawl with Stephen West's techniques. He talks about how to use increases (yo, m1r/m1l, ktbl etc.) and distribute them in order to achieve certain shawl shapes (triangle, long wingspan, semi-circular, shawls with more than one "point", etc.). How to play with color, how to go crazy and improvise a bit. And finally there are a lot of helpful tricks that you can use also in other projects than shawls.

Well, after watching this, of course I wanted to design a shawl. And I wanted to make it for my sister!
I took notes of it too, but I'm not sure I could write a pattern out of them :-P
I'm not even sure if I could knit it again to be exactly the same... :- S


Here it is:

The yarn is  Merino 150 from Lang Yarns (Sport weight) and I used 4.0 mm needles.

I did "double increases" at the beginning and end of the row to get a wider wingspan. In the beginning I used yarn-overs and decreases to create this wavy "peacock" pattern. Afterwards there are some garter stitch sections, along with intuitive color changes to create the stripes. The shawl was finished by a section of seed stitch followed by two ribs of garter stitch in contrasting colors, and finally a pretty i-cord bindoff (was my first time, and I loved it!)

The finished scarf got the name "Epona".

I like to generate random names using this website here: *click* 

When it came up with the name "Epona", I thought it couldn't be more perfect. My sister is the biggest horse lover I know :)

I also made some fingerless gloves for my sister, to match the shawl, but forgot to take pictures of them...

They are in the lavender purple shade and are finished with a dark brown i-cord like the shawl.

 

Here's the link to the shawl in my ravelry projects. If you also watched "Shawlscapes" and got inspired, I would be happy to hear from you and see the shawl that you produced :)

Bulky Mini Poncho

And another update today :)

This is what I made from my first handcarded batts using my new drum carder...

 100% fine Merino wool, dyed in a rainbow gradient by myself

then carded, first each color separately, then blended to get a striped batt

These are the batts, which were spun into thick slubby singles

The bobbins before plying

And the yarrrrrrn, 2ply colors a bit random... 

And this is what I knit out of it: a cute mini poncho with strings for size adjustment.

Below are two pictures of me showing to different ways to wear it:

The wonderful texture of the knitted fabric

Soo this was a quite fast project compared to others, as it was spun very thick (100g, 216 m) and then knit with 10 mm knitting needles. I cast on 66 stitches and knit in the round until I almost ran out of yarn. Then I added one row of purl, on row of *k4, yo, k2tog* and another row of purl stitches. Afterwards I bound off loosely. Through the holes created in the yarn over round, I put a string with two wooden beads. Finished!

Hope you like it and it inspires you. Knitting bulky is so much fun!