I've Always Wanted To Make A.......

Is there something you’ve always wanted to make, or perhaps a technique you’ve always wanted to try, but have never had the courage to give it a go? What if there was someone else doing the same thing at the same time so you could muddle through together?

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Jen has always wanted to make a Pinglewin.

Through November, we’re challenging you to dig out the discarded, the never started, or the vague notion that never materialised into a plan and make something. It doesn’t have to be knitted (whisper that bit quietly), nor should you feel the pressure to finish a project inside a month. The aim is to get you going, even if you end up discarding the project again, although I hope you won’t. There will be a randomly selected prizewinner at the beginning of December.

If I've piqued your interest, there's a Ravelry thread set up for this MAL (it's for making, not just knitting) so you can let everyone know what you'd like to do before the start of November. The idea is that you're not working on your own, but that you'll find someone else with a desire to do something similar so that you can buddy up and cheerlead each other.

So if you’ve never tried stranded colourwork, but always wanted to, or if you have an unopened sewing pattern bought in a fit of optimism, now is the time to say so. I’m sure you won’t be alone.

Please tag your projects #alwayswantedtomake and post to the thread what you’ve always wanted to make. Obviously you shouldn’t set up a Ravelry project page for things that aren’t yarn related, but do post lots of photos on the thread.

What's in a Number?

Last week, somebody on Twitter posted a link to this table from positiveintegers.org (I really apologise for not making a note of who it was). It was billed as a useful resource for designers because it lists all of the factors of the numbers between 101 and 200 so you know at a glance which numbers of stitches will fit to a particular stitch pattern.

But then it really got me thinking. What if you're working on something with a change in the number of stitches in a repeat. Let's say you have a sweater with a 2x2 rib at the bottom and a 7 stitch body pattern, you can find the number closest to the size you want that will give you both. Similarly if you want to decrease evenly, you can see how many decreases you can make and cross reference against the resulting number of stitches to check whether a second decrease of similar size is possible.

I should have been doing other things, so of course I looked through for the really useful numbers - those with a large number of factors. This was when I discovered something that probably everyone else knows: 168 is a really, really useful number. OK, so it doesn't have 5 or 10 as factors, nor does it have the largest number of factors in the range, but, if we can get over our having 5 fingers on each hand for a minute, it does have plenty to work with (16 in total) and it isn't a number that springs immediately to mind.

So will I be changing how I work out stitch counts? Well, in all honesty, probably not. I'm still firmly wedded to using a spreadsheet for grading as exact numbers of pattern repeats (particularly for larger numbers of stitches) don't always give the right interval between sizes and cross referencing is much quicker. I will however bookmark it as a starting point when looking to combine two stitch patterns.

Geeky mind dump over.

PictureThisKAL Prizes

We are into the final weekend of the PictureThisKAL.

Get your photos of your finished objects onto the FO thread before midnight on Monday night and you could be in with the chance of winning one of these brilliant prizes.

Will you be lucky and win a Funyin kit from Kate Davies?

This graphic hat was inspired by John Clappison's 'onion' cruet design for Hornsea pottery (1963). Combining colourwork with cables, it is also a fun knit. During the design process, onion became fun-ion, which in turn morphed into funyin, which translates from Scots as one-that-is-fun or that-fun-thing. 

The kit includes two skeins of Buachaille yarn, a digital download of the patterns and a project bag to keep everything in.

The other prize is a digital download of the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook. This is perhaps perfectly matched with the inspiration behind this KAL. Whereas we asked you to knit something based upon a photo, this book takes you through a process to produce your own colourwork motifs from everyday objects or views.

Containing twelve case studies and three accessory patterns, the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook offers a wealth of tips, tricks and inspiration for you to take your stranded colourwork knitting to the next level. Beautifully photographed and clearly illustrated throughout, this book reveals how everything from factories to fruitcake can be used to inspire knitting projects based on the things, places and plants that you love.

We are hugely grateful to Kate and Felix for donating the prizes and to all of the knitters who have shared their inspirations and projects from start to finish. The lucky winners will be announced on the Prizes thread next week, so if you want to be in with a chance, get your needles going!

A Shetlander's Fair Isle Graph Book

A few weeks ago, the postman delivered a book from Shetland. Jen remarked, "The Wool Week Annual is bigger this year - that's a bit of a surprise," then opened the package. It wasn't the Shetland Wool Week Annual, but something a little different (the Wool Week Annual arrived a couple of days later and more on that another time!).

A Shetlander's Fair Isle Graph Book in Colour consists of reproductions of two notebooks from the second quarter of the 20th Century. These originally belonged to Bill Henry who was in charge of the Hosiery (Knitwear) Department at Anderson & Co. of Lerwick through the middle of the last century. 

Carole Christiansen's introduction gives a great insight into the knitting industry in Shetland and really sets the scene for why what follows is a little special. Usually, if charts were drawn, their purpose was to give the knitter an idea of how the colours should change, rather than which colours to use. What sets these notebooks apart is that they have been fully coloured in, that is directing the knitter to colour choice as well as pattern.

What fascinates me about this book is the air of mystery over who actually drew the charts and what the purpose of the charts was. Is this a record of Fair Isle motifs that Bill had seen coming in from the local knitters, or were they produced by him, or someone for him, to direct knitters to a particular pattern, or a combination of both? Whatever the truth this is an important record of how external influences affected design through the period of the books, from the inclusion in the earliest pages, and thereafter absence, of swastikas to the appearance of Norwegian styles through the 1940s.

The big draw of this book is obviously the huge number of Shetland colourwork patterns to use within your own knitwear, but I think it is more than just that, so if you have an interest in the development of knitting, or are looking for a reference for colourwork, then this is a must-have book.

A Shetland's Fair Isle Graph Book was produced by the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers and is published by The Shetland times. It is available from The Shetland Times bookshop and is priced at £20. 

Disclaimer: We received a review copy of the Shetlander's Fair Isle Graph Book free of charge from The Shetland Times. We have not received any other payment for this review, and are sharing it because we think it's a great book!