I'm trying to keep this blog knitting-focussed. For my ramblings about fashion, plastic people and whatever else pops into my head, go to: http://www.marg101.blogspot.com
The problem with mohair is, well, that it is hairy. Which means that it is likely to shed fine hairs on the rest of your clothes, as though you have been cuddling a goat, rather than just wearing a garment made from its fleece.
The upside of mohair is that it is both lightweight and warm and very soft, unless, of course, you are allergic to it.
I am trying very hard not to behave like an offended sensitive artist just because a friend of mine chooses to wear a store-bought Made-in-China acrylic feather yarn scarf , instead of one of the hand-knitted hand-dyed lace mohair scarfs I had spent hours making.
Because after all, acrylic feathers will never shed, unlike mohair. And I am, after all, the ultimate pragmatist.
So maybe in the future I should stick to gift vouchers instead of trying to find exclusive yarn to make something that won't be found in every discount chainstore.
It's extremely light and fluffy (there is only 100 grams of mohair in the scarf) but it came out at 220cm which is a very decent length. Blocking in this case did not lengthen the scarf but it widened it to 17.5cm.
I'm very happy how it turned out. I was very determined to block and finish it tonight. Jackie's birthday isn't until next Tuesday but she's getting the present early (tomorrow). We've had a sudden cold change so she may as well have the scarf when it will be useful.
On the technical side, it appears that I may have knitted my first piece of (albeit simple) lace, rather than done lace knitting. According to the Knitting Curmudgeon there is a difference and as the alternate rows were not plain purl, it is actually knitted lace not lace knitting...
I got the pattern from this site (Mohair Dreams) so I am not trying to claim credit where it is not due but I am going to put down the pattern (which apparently came from January 5 of the 365 Knitting Stitches a Year Perpetual Calendar) in case the link disappears over time. Anyway, I got a completely different effect using one strand of 12ply Autumn Leaves mohair than she did using 2 strands of finer white mohair.
Cast on 25 sts
Row 1 (RS): K1, *K2tog, YO, P1; rep from * to last 3 sts, K2tog, YO, K1
Row 2: P3, *K1, P2; rep from * to last 4 sts, K1, P3
Row 3: K1, YO, sl 1, K1, psso, *P1, YO, sl 1, K1, psso; rep from * to last st, K1
Row 4: Rep row 2
I am going to destroy my reputation soon. I finished the knitting aspect of Jackie's Mohair Dreams scarf last night, although it still needs some serious blocking. It came out at a good length considering I only had 100 grams of yarn - about 220cm. But it is also very light and fluffy.
I had a love/hate relationship with the lace pattern. It was reasonably easy to memorise in the end but too difficult to keep track of if I was also trying to talk at the same time (I am a multi-tasking kind of girl). I am hoping the detail of the lace will come out once it is seriously blocked.
But not too much detail. There are a few places where I seriously fudged to ensure I had the right number of stitches on each row.
The pattern is what I would call anti-Zimmermann. Elisabeth Zimmermann developed a whole new way of knitting jumpers based on her hatred of knitting purl and sewing up seams (now you can see why I like her so much). While there are no seams, there is a lot of purl stitching in the lace, but surprisingly that aspect wasn't as painful as I would have thought it would be.
The most amazing aspect of this pattern is that I even started it.
What can I say? I'm happy he is happy.
He keeps on pointing out how warm and how high-quality it is. Well, that's the beauty of hand-made knitted garments. You can't buy anything like it. No-one would pay the true cost of making a quality hand-knit garment, so if you have one, appreciate that the maker is giving you more than just something you'd pick up at a department store.
In terms of vital stats, I knitted an extra 24 rows to Sarah Bradberry's pattern but made the fringes shorter. I used pure wool yarn in various brands (Patons Fireside, Panda, Basics, Cleckheaton Country and Harvest) costing $30.50 from Spotlight (some was on discount). It probably took about 15-20 hours over a 3-week period. It taught me that garter-stitch can look good when it is not full of holes, twisted yarn doesn't hold its shape as well as merchanised yarn - but is a lot softer, and made me think about the ethics as well as quality of knitting in cheap imported yarn.
As most people who know me in real life would agree, I am not exactly a walking fashion plate.
But I do have some common sense, which explains why I have never, ever bought a pair of bumster pants, shown the top of my undies to the world, or inflicted an over-flowing muffin top on the general public. Not only would it be cruel, it would make me look stupid.
I was thinking about this when I walked up Chapel Street (very trendy Melbourne street) on Wednesday night to attend the Stitch and Bitch meeting, and was looking at the clothes in the windows, the clothes on other people and caught a glance of myself in a shop mirror and could see the clothes on me.
While my ankle-length black skirt, sensible shoes and over-sized long cotton jumper would not earn me a place in Vogue, it would also not earn me a place on Australia's Dumbest Fashion Victims. I was an appropriately, if unimaginatively, dressed big girl, with a pretty, if pale and unmade-up, face.
Meanwhile a woman of approximately my age, but half my size, click-clacked her way down the pavement, nose in air, the better to not see a fat suburbanite like me. Her skin was a suspicious orange-bronze and had already acquired the leathery look of a woman of a certain age who had spent too much time in the sun. She was wearing orange lipstick, cropped pin-striped 3/4 leg suit pants, a ruffled white shirt, white stiletto fringed cowboy boots and was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag and holding a pair of Chanel sunglasses.
Naturally I assumed that the LV and Chanel accessories were replicas. I wondered how many hundreds of dollars she had paid for the fakes that would fool no-one.
But today it suddenly struck me that it would be even more hilarious if these accessories had been the genuine thing costing thousands of dollars each and everyone assumed they were fakes because of her overall look of a fashion victim.
Money does not buy class.
As a knitter on a budget, I was green with envy when I first heard about Knitpicks. Quality natural yarns at a fraction of the price they were sold for at the local yarn store. But only available to residents of America and Candada.
The free market, however, abhors a vacuum and Spotlight has recently brought out a 'Basics'range. This yarn is described as 100 percent Australian wool, made in China. It costs less than AUD$4.80 for 100 grams. And I'm sure it is only a matter of time before the choice of colours expands and we get the Basics alpaca, and the other natural yarn blends being sold by the likes of KnitPicks.
But just how good is this Basics yarn anyway, and should we be using it?
The Dr Who scarf is an eclectic collection of yarn brands, chosen for colour. For some reason the limited Basics colour section was the only brand to feature the exact shade of light tan I needed for the scarf.
While I am not sure how well it wears, Spotlight's 'Basic' wool is extremely soft and it certainly does not seem to be any worse quality than any other very soft wools I've used (soft yarns in general don't wear as well as the firmer yarns and don't retain garment shape/patterns as well but they do feel better next to the skin and that is why we sometimes use them) ; there is minimal shedding and if anything far fewer flaws/knots than I find in other yarns.
But I wonder about the ethics of using it. The only way that we can buy 100 percent Australian wool for such a good price is if the inputs are very cheap. How much did the farmers get for this wool and did it cover the cost of raising the sheep? And I wonder under just what conditions the yarn was spun in China, what the workers at the mill were paid and how they were treated, that meant I could buy 8ply Basics wool cheaply in Australia.
Just some thoughts.
Sorry, no pics today. Both Blogger and Photobucket are being uncooperative. Blogger won't upload any pictures while Photobucket seems to only want to publish in Jolly Green Giant size, no matter how I edit the pic. Grrr
I measured the Dr Who scarf last night and it is just over one metre in length.
In terms of knitting I am well over half-way through the pattern which makes me wonder just how long (or short) this scarf is going to turn out. According to the pattern it is supposed to be 270 cm in length. I am beginning to suspect that this length includes the fringe, which will add an extra 25-30 cm at each end. So the real length of the scarf should be about 215 cm which I'm still not going to get near.
Unless...
Unless I hang the scarf from one end so the bulk of the 400 grams weight of wool stretches the scarf.
According to the knitting goddess Elizabeth Zimmermann, if one knits a skirt the best way to get the length right is to knit it to about 3 inches (or 7.5 cm) shorter than you want the final length to be, then hang it up for 2 weeks and remeasure the skirt again when it will have miraculously grown to the right length.
Now no-one in their right mind would knit a skirt in garter stitch; they'd do it in stocking-stitch or maybe a rib (OK, no-one in their right mind would knit a skirt in the first place but I have seen pictures of stocking-stitch and rib skirts). And garter stitch is notoriously stretchier than other stitch patterns. So presumably it would grow by a lot more than just 7.5 cm; maybe 15-20 cm.
Which means that I would only have to knit about two metres, maybe even less to get a scarf that will end up approximately the same length as the pattern.
Which means that maybe I am not so far off track as I thought I was.
Jeff at least seems to be very happy with how the scarf is growing. The scarf is very heavy and will be able to be used as armour or a weapon, as well as a cult item and means of keeping one's self warm.
I'm going through a horrible "I have the attention of a goldfish" knitting phase.
So I haven't finished Jackie's autumn leave scarf, let alone Gabi's cardigan. I haven't even started the socks I swore I would after the knitting Olympics. The pink mohair drop-stitch shawl is still in its bag.
Rachel's given birth to a baby boy. I have a baby beanie I knitted a while ago for him if nothing else.
But at least Jeff's Dr Who scarf is going well. I am knitting garter stitch back and forth while watching TV. And as an experience knitted I have managed to do this without gaining or losing any stitches. Whoo-hoo!
In a way it is good to occasionally do this kind of thing. Garter stitch garments can actually look OK when they aren't full of dropped and gained stitches.
I'm probably only 1/4 of the way through - and I am knitting the so-called short version (so-called because although 270 cm is LONG compared to most scarves these days, I am thankful Jeff doesn't want a full-scale 670cm replica!). Only time will tell if I manage to keep my focus on this sufficiently to finish the damn item before starting something else again this week.
Goal for week starting 19/03/06. Finish a WIP. Any WIP. Maybe Jackie's scarf.
And in late breaking news
I decided to put up a couple of items for sale via Etsy, which is like eBay but only for hand-made items. Very US-centric but there appears to be a few Australia sellers. So far 26 people have had a look at my hat but no-one has bought it which is not surprising given I have no feedback and the international postage costs are horrendous. I'm not holding my breath but it's there if anyone is interested.
