Minimalist mini vest

Here it is

As we continue living in Canary Islands, my need for knitted garments is minimal. On the other hand, I still have some balls of yarn bought years ago, purely because they were beautiful. The knitting process pleases and soothes me, so I keep making stuff I don’t need.

This time, I decided to make a one-ball project with the last remaning Schoppel-Wolle Laceball. At least I think, I may even say hope, it was the last one. As the name indicate, it is lace-weight self striping yarn, 100 grams per ball.

The project itself was extremely simple — knitting in rounds, ribbing 1x1, till I had very little yarn left. I divided the remains in two to make straps. I still have about 10 grams worth of yarn left.

Things I learned while making the project:

1. Cast off with i-cord, which you can see on the lower edge of the vest. Note to self — i-cord needs to have less rows than the ribbing has stitches, otherwise it creates a visible ruff effect. Maybe next time I will try to work out the correct ratio.

Casting off with a needle

2. Cast off with a needle, which I used for the straps. Creates very neat elastic edge. The edge is flat, unlike i-corded one.

Finished edge

Details were joined together with a crocheting hook.

Possible styling

As the vest is just a cylinder with some straps attached, it can be worn as a circular scarf.

And that’s all for now.

I still have a few balls of yarn left, so stay tuned.

Knitting pics on Shutterstock — here.

circular ribbed scarf

How cute is my model? Well, he is of unbearable cuteness, if you ask me.

I can't explain why I keep knitting those scarfs. We still live on the Canary Islands, and this winter, for example, presented no reasons to muffle up.

One possible reason is that I still have some Schoppel Wolle Lace Ball yarn. I still have some left, btw, so there might be more scarfs coming up, who knows.

In process.

As before, the tendency of stockinette stitch to curl in and the reverse stockinette stitch to curl out was used to create ribs of different colors. The scarf was knitted in stripes of stockinette stitch and reverse stockinette stitch from two different balls of yarn. One has a gradient from cream to very dark brown, another bright teal to grey. Each side of the scarf has its own main gradient but I can twist it so that they both show.

Like this.

Height of each stripe is 7 rows. Two 100 g balls were almost completely used and I ended up with 27 stripes altogether. The circumference of the scarf is about two meters. It can go quite a few times around my neck.

Our teddy is wearing it wound three times around his.

Just a couple more pics

And here I stop

Knitting pics on Adobe stock — here

Knit your fears, quarantine knitting project

It is still drying. It has been drying for a day now.

I can’t explain why I made this model of the virus that brought the most of the planet to a standstill. Maybe it is an attempt to domesticate the wild and fearsome, sort of like like what we do with bears, having teddies in our houses. I thought about making at night, and when I woke up, went and checked, and yep, some people thought of it first. Made it anyway, ибодабы.

The pattern is simple and based on usual 6-ray symmetry knitted ball. Ball is knitted first, and then the tentacles are crocheted on. I will record here the process and numbers, so that my next attempt, if any, has better proportions.

Round rabbit

The description that follows is for brown rabbit on the right

Since I first made my totoroid breakfast companion, I've made quite a few more, ranging from conical, through cylindrical to round, as shown. Now I decided to redo the description in a somewhat more precise manner. I was writing things down as I went along, so that you can see the exact result.

Renaissance ruff collar

I keep thinking up and trying out various types of 3D-knitting where the volume is created by the tendency of stockinette stitch to curl in and the reverse stockinette stitch — not unexpectedly — out. My previous attempt to utilize this property of the basic knitting stitches can be seen here.

This time I decided to do something a bit more complicated. I find the result interesting and reminiscent of a Renaissance ruff, but I think I need to a) overcome my dislike of knitting samples next time and b) generally work more on the idea. As with the previous version, it is reversible. Explanations to follow.

two-sided ribbed circular scarf

This is my second attempt to make a two-sided scarf using long-section dyed wool. First time I tried to make one, I bought just one 50 g skein, which was enough to make a collar, but it was not what I wanted.

Totoroid breakfast companion

At some point when we were in Finland, I had ordered a bag of hollowfiber stuffing from amazon. I honestly don't remember what sort of project I wanted to do at that point, and the bag was laying unopened for a few months. When Kirill had left for Gran Canaria in the beginning of June, I suddenly had an urge to finally use it for this little critter that later proved to be an excellent breakfast companion — not very talkative, but who is in the morning?

“snowed under” coat

"I don't know how it is, Christopher Robin, but what with all this snow and one thing and another, not to mention icicles and such-like, it isn't so Hot in my field about three o'clock in the morning as some people think it is. It isn't Close, if you know what I mean — not so as to be uncomfortable. It isn't Stuffy. In fact, Christopher Robin," he went on in a loud whisper, "quite-between-ourselves-and-don't-tell-anybody, it's Cold."
"Oh, Eeyore!"

When we were coming to Finland for a winter, it was pretty clear that we will need some warm clothes. Warmer than ones we had in Canaries for sure; warmer than ones we used in the UK. But, while I like to shop, I hate to waste money on something that possibly will serve one season.

So, soon after moving over, we discovered a few second-hand shops that we started to comb methodically. The problem we encountered is that you can find quite interesting brick-a-brack there, but not so much clothes — it appears the Finns tend to get the full money worth out of theirs before finally throwing them away or trying to sell them on. No matter, eventually I found this heavy canvas padded coat (which reminds me in general idea of телогрейка, "bodywarmer", except that telogreikas usually came in "one size doesn't fit anybody", while this one fit me rather snugly. Thick leather belt was soon found for it, and I could have stopped here I suppose.

Except I wanted something a bit more interesting. My original idea was simply to paint something bright, possibly floral, in acrylic over the canvas:

Extra thick snood

During our Gran Canarian Christmas holidays, we spent two nights in Ingenio. Our first day, I've noticed this shop: Mercería Loli. Naturally I had to get in.

There were two types of yarn that I felt a sudden urge to possess: the variegated felting wool and very thick Italian yarn. I decided to sleep on it, since we still had another day (the Christmas Eve) in Ingenio.

Next morning, the choice was made. The thick yarn won. (I took the last 200 g skein they had.) The thick yarn required the thick needles — the label said 13 to 15 mm. Unfortunately, the largest size of circular needles they had was 12, and I needed circular needles for the project I had in mind. So I bought size 15 straight needles and size 12 circular. Armed with this gear, I could start on my holiday project: an extra thick snood for me.

Peacock baktus

I had this yarn sitting in my basket for so long, I can't even recall what sort of mix it was. The only thing I am sure about is that it is a silk mix, bit that as far as it goes. I tried searching, but can't find anything that rings a bell.

And Kirill managed to find it! It's "sea silk" by Hand Maiden Fine Yarns, 70% Silk, 30% Seacell 400 m, 100 g.

Anyway. It's a thin soft shiny yarn, warm to touch, dyed in a shortish sections of raspberry, purple, green and blue, so it's quite a large spread of colors. Overall effect it's more or less dark blue. From the website it looks like that particular set of colors is not done any more.

I tried different types of stitches, but in the end went for simplest all-knit — more complicated stitches didn't go well with the yarn.

As a nice little bonus, and unexpectedly for me, the short sections did form two "pools". They formed in two places where the width of the scarf is about fifteen cm, and disappeared naturally as the baktus triangle widened/narrowed.

I should probably stop knitting scarfs now :)

Knitting pics on Shutterstock

a feat of extreme slouchiness

I've made this top almost three years ago, buying the "organic" cotton and a set of bamboo needles  in a Danish supermarket. The holidays were lazy, as summer holidays should be; and I bought the knitting articles for the want of something to do with my hands while enjoying the emptiness of the head to the full.

Somehow I never got to wear it before now. Now I do though.

It's an extremely simple thing, just a strip of Shaker ribbing (at least, I think that's what it is called), sewn into a tube, with a trim extended into straps. The organic cotton proved to be an extremely soft, with no twist to it; it doesn't hold shape at all, but stretches very well in the ribbing. The funny little tie belt for the trousers is made of the same material.

The reason why I am standing on one leg most of the time is that we had an extremely hot few days; and the sunroof tiles felt rather like hotplate.

Knitting pics on Shutterstock

anti-calima baktus scarf

We had a small sandstorm a few weeks back, possibly calima, possibly something more local. Timur requested a scarf in his school colors to keep it over his mouth and nose if it was ever to occur again. I made it for him very quickly, and today he worn it again — more for coldish strong wind than for sand.

I couldn't find the origins of a "baktus" scarf, but that seems to be the right spelling at least. If you never seen them before — they are very long narrow triangles, very easy to tie. This is a very basic model, all-knit keeping to shape.

Knitting pics on Shutterstock

moebius scarf

This time is a simple Moebius scarf I made. It's proved to be surprisingly easy once I found this excellent video for the cast-on part. There's no pattern to it, just simple "knit-all" — that is, till I got somewhat bored and decided to do a ruffled edge. I didn't want my ruffle to be too obvious, so I decided that I will add one stitch per each three in every second row. However, even that adds stitches very quickly. Say you start with 200 stitches, you have 267 approx after the first row of added stitches, 356 after the second one, and 475 after the third — that is, more than twice the original amount of stitches. I like how the edge turned out, but it's a lot of knitting to do.

moebius top-waistcoat (a top with a twist)

For a while I felt that some of things that I want to show in my blog don't fit very well into original format of "Pics and other stuff", which was planned as a picture blog. Things that didn't fit very well included mostly what I made by hand — knitting, cooking, small home design arrangements. I decided to make a separate blog for those. I don't expect to publish here that often — things that you really make tend to take a bit of time, quite unlike things that you photograph.

Here is the first real entry

I was explaining the idea of infinity of Moebius scarf to Kirill when he came up with the idea that it's not only scarves that you can half-twist, and you don't have to half-twist when casting on only. He came up with two possibly designs of a top with a twist — one with a twist to the back, one with a twist to the straps. Since the result was somewhat unpredictable, I bought cheap thin acrylic yarn (it cost about 3 euros, I think) and started to knit. I interrupted the knitting to make a blanket, but now finally it's finished. It was knitted as one piece, front first, over straps and then joined into the back, so there's no shoulder seams. There are partial side seams — partial because I joined front to back and made a few rows of round knitting at the edge.

What can I say. Next time I try to do it, I must knit a swatch, make measurements and try to really calculate what I will end up with. It started as a top, but due to a big(ish) mistakes in sizing, it ended up with altogether too big holey areas — the neckline ends down around the waist, the underarm edges are down there somewhere too. So it is a waistcoat really, but an interesting-looking one.

test post

I want to start this blog solely for things I've made by hand, be it knitting, cooking, embroidery or whatever. This is just a cross-post from Pics and other stuff to see how it goes

Ok, that blanket I was knitting turned up to be veeeery long, so we can cover ourselves with it all four of us when we watch TV or something. It can also be used for fun photoshoot :)