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scuba

Scuba is a simple yet stylish triangular shawl knit sideways on the bias. The combination of garter stitch and simple lace makes it a perfect choice for that skein of gradient yarn with long color runs. With its generous size of 195 cm (76 ¾ inches) along the upper edge and a depth of 61 cm (24 inches), it is perfect to wear as an elegant scarf.

The pattern contains both fully written out as well as charted instructions for the lace section.

Pay what you want: (minimum €6.50)

€

Difficulty level

Stitches used include knit, yo, k2tog, kfb and a centered double decrease. This pattern is suitable for the intermediate knitter.

Sizes and finished measurements

Finished dimensions of the sample shawl: 195 cm (76 ¾ inches) along the upper edge and a depth of 61 cm (24 inches), measured after blocking.

Enlarge the shawl by adding more repeats of the garter stitch and/or by working more repeats of the lace section. This will, of course, increase the amount of yarn needed.

Pattern details

Scuba is written for a gauge of approx. 14 sts / 20 rows = 10 cm (4 inches) over garter stitch, measured after blocking. Gauge is however not critical in this design.
Pattern languages included: English and Dutch (Dit patroon omvat zowel een Nederlandse als een Engelse versie)
Digital PDF has 4 pages (letter size)

Materials

Kauni Wool 8/2 Effektyarn (100% wool; 560 m (612 yds) / 140 g) in blue-green. Substitute any fingering weight yarn with long color runs for a similar result.
Size 4 mm (US 6) / 80 cm (32 inches) circular needles
Yarn needle

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pink monarda

Pink Monarda is a shawl in 2 sizes, designed to use that skein of speckled yarn you just couldn’t resist. The shawl pictured is size L. In this design, it is paired with the lovely flower lace border in a contrasting solid color. Go wild with the color combinations!

Knit this shawl from the top-down in one piece, starting at the neck edge with a garter tab. The patterning in the edging is worked on both right and wrong side rows. The instructions for the edging are provided charted and written out.

Pay what you want: (minimum €6.50)

€

Difficulty level

Patterning in the edging of the shawl is on both RS and WS rows. Stitches used include knit, purl, skp, k2tog and yo. This pattern is suitable for the intermediate to advanced knitter.

Sizes and finished measurements

Size S (L): Wingspan of 145 (185) cm (57 (73) inches) and a depth of 70 (86) cm (27 ½ (34) inches), measured after blocking.

Pattern details

Gauge of approx. 13 sts / 24 rows = 10 cm (4 inches) over stockinette, measured after blocking. Gauge is however not critical in this design.
Pattern languages included: English and Dutch (Dit patroon omvat zowel een Nederlandse als een Engelse versie)
Digital PDF of the Pink Monarda pattern has 4 pages in the English version and 5 pages in the Dutch version (letter size)

Materials

Nurturing Fibres Supertwist Sock (100% merino wool; 320 m (350 yds) / 100 g) in the following colors and amounts: MC: 170 (320) m (186 (350) yds) / 53 (100) g in Humbug, CC: 235 (306) m (257 (336) yds) / 73 (96) g in Odette.
Size 4 mm (US 6) / 80 cm (32 inches) circular needles
Yarn needle
2 stitch markers to indicate the center stitch
Stitch markers to use in between lace repeats (optional)

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dyeing cotton with onion skins

After I finished dyeing the skeins of wool in my recent onion skin wool dyeing experiment, quite a potent dye baths were left over. A shame, of course, to let it go to waste. I decided that dyeing cotton with onion skins was in order! Fortunately, I have some, that has been lingering in my stash for years.

This cotton yarn is an unbleached coned yarn, that I originally bought for dishcloths and such. It turned out a tad too thin for that though, so it has been lingering in the stash ever since. I perfect candidate for some dye experimentation!

Materials

In this experiment, I did not have to prepare the dye baths themselves because I used the leftover ones from my wool dyeing experiment. Also, I decided not to mordant the cotton yarn, despite the fact that I read that plant or cellulose fibers are more challenging to dye than protein based fibers like wool or silk. I also read, that there was no need to mordant cotton with onion skin dye. So I decided to take the plunge and go ahead without!

I used the following materials:

Cotton yarn, 4 skeins of 100 g each
Detergent (without enzymes)
Yellow onion skin dye bath (second dye bath)
Red onion skin dye bath (second dye bath)
Rubber gloves, stainless steel spoons
Water
A way to heat the pots, I just used my stove

a. Washing the cotton

1. First as explained in this post I skeined up the yarn.

2. Next, I washed the cotton yarn to remove any lanolin, spin oil or other debris still present on on it. You can’t see it in this picture, but my washing water turned yellow! A very needed wash it appeared…

b. Dyeing cotton with onion skins

1. In the case your yarn has dried before getting to this step, you have to soak it first in water again. In wet yarn dye distributes itself much more uniformly. About half an hour of soaking is usually enough. If the yarn is still slightly wet, you can skip to step 2.

2. In each of the dye baths, I have put 2 skeins of cotton and made sure to completely submerge all yarn. The picture below shows the yellow onion bath on top and the red onion skin one on the bottom half.

3. I let the cotton simmer for about an hour in the dye bath. Next, I let it cool down in the dye bath overnight. The picture below shows how the cotton looked next morning.

4. Rinse the yarn off with lukewarm water, add a dash of vinegar kitchen to fix the color. Rinse as long as necessary until the water runs clear. Remember to put on rubber gloves, if you do not want to stain your hands! Then you can squeeze the water out of the dyed yarn and hang to dry.

And this is how my cotton looks like after it has completely dried up:

On the left 2 skeins of red onion skins on un mordanted cotton, and on the right yellow onion skins on again 2 skeins of un mordanted cotton. The red onion dyed yarn is now some sort of brownish cream. The yellow onion dyed yarn turned a pinkish cream. All in all, not a very dramatic difference.

I must admit being a tad disappointed with the result of my dyeing cotton with onion skins experiment. These colors give me unpleasant associations with old underwear, the type of color that, makes me look like I just crawled from underneath a rock. Was it because I used a second dye bath? An unbleached yarn? Or perhaps because I didn’t mordant the cotton beforehand?

I really don’t know. One thing is sure though: there will be a next experiment sometime in the future overdyeing this cotton!

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tutorial: knit rick rack rib in the round

I’ve written it before in this tutorial on how to knit the rick rack rib flat: sometimes a less boring finishing of a project than plain old 2×2 rib is just what the doctor ordered. In this post, I’m going to show you how to knit rick rack rib in the round.

As with the flat worked version of this stitch, the characteristic zig-zag texture is obtained by the knitting the stitches in a different order than they appear on the needle. Rick rack rib worked in the round is knitted as a multiple of 3 stitches. The main difference with the flat worked version is, of course, that there are no WS rows when working the round.

In short, the instructions for this stitch worked in the round consist of the following 2 rounds:

Round 1: *Purl 1, skip the first stitch, knit in the back loop of the second stitch (do not slip this stitch off the needle), knit into the front loop of the first stitch and now slip both knitted stitches of the needle; repeat from * to end of the round.

Round 2: *Purl 1, skip the first stitch, knit in the front loop of the second stitch (do not slip this stitch off the needle), knit into the front loop of the first stitch and now slip both knitted stitches from the needle; repeat from * to end of the round.

Repeat rounds 1 and 2 to the desired height.

How to knit rick rack rib in the round step by step

Round 1
1. Purl 1 stitch.

2. Skip the first stitch and insert your needle int the second stitch on the needle in the back loop.

3. Wrap the yarn around the needle as usual…

4. … and pull through to complete knitting this stitch. Do not slip this stitch off the left-hand needle just yet!

5. Knit into the front loop of the first stitch that you skipped in step 2.

6. Then slip both knitted stitches from the needle. Do you see how the 2 stitches combined slant to the left?

7. Repeat steps 1 to 6 the end of the round.

Round 2
8. Purl 1 stitch.

9. Skip the first stitch and insert the needle as if to knit in the second stitch on the left-hand needle. This can be a tad fiddly!

10. Twist the right-hand needle so that is behind the left-hand needle and wrap the yarn around.

11. Next pull the yarn through, but do not slip this stitch off the needle just yet!

12. Knit the first stitch that you skipped in step 9….

13. ….then slip both knitted stitches from the needle. The 2 knitted stitches combined in this round produce a right-slanting result!

14. Repeat steps 8 to 13 to the end of the round. And this is how to knit rick rack rib in the round!

On the outside of the work, it will look something like this:

In case your project ends with rick-rack rib, you can bind-off after row 2 by binding off in purl 1, knit 2 pattern.

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dyeing wool with onion skins

I read that onion skins, both the red and the yellow variety can be used to dye wool or other protein based fibers pretty well. I’m very curious on the colors this will give and have therefore spent the last couple of months saving onion skins. I want to try out dyeing wool with onion skins!

Gathering yellow onion skins proved to be not that much of a problem. Red ones, on the other hand, were, because we appear not to be that much into eating red onions. Anyway, onion skins were saved and I’m ready to tell and show you what I did!

Materials

Collecting the required materials is obviously an important step. In my experiment, I wanted to use yellow and red onion skins in separate dye baths to see what differences in color that would yield. To make this possible I collected the papery, outer skins of the onions. I stored these in two separate paper bags, one for each color. It’s important to store the skins in a breathing container, otherwise, any moisture still in the skins may cause everything to mold.

Also, mordanting also has an impact on the resulting color, so in each dye bath, I wanted to have 1 mordanted and 1 non-mordanted skein of yarn.

To make this possible I used the following materials:

Wool yarn, 4 balls of 50 g each
Pieces of waste yarn to tie up the wool into skeins
Detergent (without enzymes)
33 g yellow onion skins (for dyeing 100 g of wool)
33 g red onion skins (for dyeing 100 g of wool)
A mordant, I used my leftover mordanting solution from my madder dye experiment
2 stainless steel pots
A sieve
Rubber gloves, stainless steel spoons
Water
A way to heat the pots, I just used my stove

a. Washing the wool

First as explained in this post I skeined up the yarn and washed it to remove any lanolin, spin oil or other debris still present on the yarn.

b. Mordanting

Mordanting of the wool is usually required with natural dyeing to ensure that the wool fibers are all opened up so that the dye can penetrate into the fiber. With onion skin dyeing this is however not really needed. Mordanting does have an impact on the resulting color though.

This is the reason I mordanted 2 of my 4 skeins of wool with an alum mordant. As written above, I used the leftover mordanting solution from my madder dye experiment. This time though, I didn’t leave it overnight at room temperature, but let it simmer on the stove for an hour.

c. Preparing the dye baths

1. An important step in dyeing wool with onion skins is of course preparing the dye baths. For each of the dye baths, I put 33 g of onion skins in the pot together with 2 L of water. This I let simmer on the stove for an hour.

2. After the full hour had passed, I used the sieve to separate the onion skins from the dye bath. The colored liquid was then returned to the pot, minus the onion skins.

3. Here you see a picture of the resulting dyeing solutions. It’s a tad hard to see because it’s just so dark, but the yellow onion one is a dark orange. The red onion skin dye is a dark red.

d. Dyeing the yarn

4. In the case your yarn has dried before getting to this step, you have to soak it first in water again. In wet wool, dye distributes itself much more uniformly. About half an hour of soaking is usually enough. If the wool is still slightly wet, you can skip to the next step of this tutorial.

5. In each of the dye baths, I have put a skein of mordanted wool as well as a non-mordanted one. I made sure to completely submerge all wool. The picture below shows the yellow onion bath on top and the red onion skin one on the bottom half.

6. I let the wool simmer for about an hour in the dye bath. Next, I let it cool down in the dye bath overnight. The picture below shows how the wool looked next morning. Do you see how dark the red onion skin dye bath and the yarn in it (bottom part of the picture) has become?

7. Rinse the wool off with lukewarm water. Rinse as long as necessary until the water runs clear. Remember to put on rubber gloves, if you do not want to stain your hands! In this picture, only the yellow onion skin dyed yarn is shown.

8. Then you can squeeze the water out of the dyed wool and hang to dry.

And this is my result from dyeing wool with onion skins, after the skeins of yarn have completely dried:

From left to right: red onion skins on non-mordanted wool, red onion skins on mordanted wool, yellow onion skins on non-mordanted wool and on the far right yellow onion skins on mordanted wool.

The mordanted colors are more bright than the non-mordanted ones. It really surprised me though, that red onion skins give green yarn!

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mustard and slate

Mustard and Slate is the shawl to knit when you just don’t want to choose… Simple or lace? Gray or Oker? Using two colors, Mustard and Slate has a simple textured body and a delightful lace edging. You can really have it all!

Knit this shawl from the top-down in one piece, starting at the neck edge with a garter tab. Mustard and Slate is finished with an edging that is knitted on sideways and attached to the live stitches of the body as it is being worked. The instructions for the edging are provided charted and written out.

Pay what you want: (minimum €6.50)

€

Difficulty level

This shawl is started with a garter stitch tab. Stitches used include knit, purl, skp, k2tog and yo. This pattern is suitable for the intermediate knitter.

Size and finished measurements

One size (easily adjustable): span width of 152 cm (60 inches) along the upper edge and a depth of 75 cm (29 ½ inches), measured after blocking.

Pattern details

Gauge is not critical for this design, for the sample shawl: 13.5 sts / 25 rows = 10 cm (4 inches) over body pattern after blocking.
Pattern languages included: English and Dutch (Dit patroon omvat zowel een Nederlandse, als een Engelse versie).
Digital PDF has 4 pages for the English version and 5 pages for the Dutch version (letter size).

Materials

ONION knit Nettle Sock (70% wool, 30% cellulose; 185 m (202 yds) / 50 g) in the following colors and amounts: MC: 352 m (385 yds) / 95 g in Gray, CC: 260 m (285 yds) / 70 g in Oker. Substitute any fingering weight yarn for a similar result.
Size 4 mm (US 6) / 80 cm (32 inches) circular needles
Yarn needle
4 stitch markers to indicate the center and edge stitches

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fixing a mistake in lace knitting

This post is all about my recent confrontation with fixing a mistake in lace knitting. As you may have seen if you’re following me on Instagram or Facebook, I’ve been happily knitting along on my latest design using Nurturing Fibres Super Twist Sock in “Odette” and “humbug”. I got mine from Wol zo Eerlijk, a lovely store with lots of environmentally friendly and fair trade yarns. Anyway, there I was, in the home stretch, with only 10 more rows of edging to go before the bind off. It was then that I saw it: a mistake in my lace, 9 rows down!

When I found the mistake in the pink border of my Pink Monarda shawl pictured, I had about 320 stitches per row. So no, I was not going to rip out all that work! Instead, I dropped down only 8 stitches to the place where I made the mistake. After that was correcting the error, followed by knitting everything back up to the row I was on.

In this post, I’ll show you exactly what I did!

Helpful materials

To start, it is pretty handy to have some tools available to make fixing the mistake easier. I used the following:

A set of DPN’s (double pointed needles) in the same size as the needles used in your project, or smaller.
A crochet hook.
Some pins.
A pillow.

Fixing a mistake in lace knitting with La Visch Designs

The pillow and pins were used to make sure that your work stays exactly where you need it to be. Also, it helps to see the mistake better when pinned out, instead of all scrunched up like lace tends to be before blocking.

On to the fixing!

1. To start, I pinned out my knitting on the pillow. I did this in such a way that I could clearly see a repeat of the lace pattern that was knitted correctly, as well as the one with the mistake in it. I slipped some of the stitches on one of the DPN’s to help fixate the whole better on the pillow. Can you see in the picture below where the mistake is?

2. The mistake is in the left half of the repeat, near the 4th yarn over, counted from the needle. Can you see it? In the picture below, I have indicated it with the circle.

3. In this particular case, it wasn’t necessary to drop down the whole repeat. Instead, I only dropped the 8 stitches on the left half of the repeat. I dropped down until I reached the purl row exactly below the row with the mistake in it.

When approaching the row below the mistake, I stopped ripping back and started to carefully tink (tink = knit backward!) further back, catching the released stitches with another DPN. It is especially important to do it like this when working with very slippery yarn. If you don’t take care, the knitting may run deeper down than desired, thus increasing the amount of fixing to do.

The yarn from every row dropped, I pinned to the pillow, going from left to right. This made sure nothing got tangled, and I could easily count the number of dropped down rows. This, in turn, made it easier to see where to pick up the chart when knitting it back up.

4. Then it was a matter of knitting back in pattern. As you can see, you use the free loop of yarn, just as you would use the thread running to the ball of yarn. If you find it challenging to catch the thread correctly to pull it through a stitch, you can always use the crochet hook to assist with this.

5. Because of the way I manipulated the yarn through the stitches, some of the stitches got mounted twisted. In the picture below, you can see that the left leg of the stitch is in front of the needle, instead of at the back. This really is no problem, but it is something to pay attention to. To correct this, I knitted these twisted stitches through the back loop.

6. And here you see the result: all fixed! The loose stitches you can see next to the re-knitted stitches are because of the tension on those threads when manipulating the dropped down stitches. This should, however, correct itself during blocking. If it’s still a tad visible, you can redistribute the excess yarn a bit over the various stitches.

7. And this is how to go about fixing a mistake in lace knitting. Now on to knitting those final rows of this shawl…

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heuvel en dal

The Heuvel en Dal lacy chevron wrap is designed to give both texture and color to your outfit. Make it in greens or your favorite color combination. Heuvel en Dal is written for the size as pictured, however, the width and length are easily adjusted for further customization. This design is suitable for any lace weight or fingering weight yarn.

The instructions are both fully charted and written out. This pattern is written using American English crochet terminology.

Pay what you want: (minimum €6.50)

€

Difficulty level

Techniques used consist of foundation single crochet, sc in back loop only and various sc and dc decreases. Stitches used in this pattern: ch, sc and dc.
This pattern is suitable for the intermediate crocheter or the advanced beginner.

Size and finished measurements

One size (easily adjusted) – measurements after blocking: 50 cm (19 ¾ inches) wide and 143 cm (56 ¼ inches) long.

Pattern details

Gauge is not critical with this design, for the sample stole: 14.1 sts and 9.6 rows = 10 cm / 4 inches over pattern after blocking.
Pattern languages included: English and Dutch (Dit patroon omvat zowel een Nederlandse als een Engelse versie).
Digital PDF has 4 pages (letter size).

Materials

Ístex Einband [100% wool; 250 m (273 yds) / 50 g] in the following colors and amounts: C1: 250 m (273 yds) / 50 g in 1764 Vivid Green, C2: 250 m (273 yds) / 50 g in 1763 Green, C3: 250 m (273 yds) / 50 g in 9112 Dark Green.
A size 4 mm (US G/6) crochet hook.
Yarn needle
Removable stitch marker (optional)

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how to work the knit and garter stitch

by La Visch Designs — How to work the knit and garter stitch

In this post, I’m going to show you how the knit and garter stitch is worked. The knit stitch is the basis of most knitting stitches and therefore often the first one beginning knitters start with. When knitting a flat piece in the knit stitch only, you get a fabric in what’s called “garter stitch”. Usually, a piece knit in garter stitch will be shorter and wider than the same amount of stitches and rows worked in other types of stitches. Garter stitch has a wonderful texture, is very squishy and elastic and best of all: it lies flat when knitted back and forth! Truly a wonderful stitch to have in you knitter’s tool box

In this post, I’ll show you how to work both the basic knit stitch and the ins and outs of garter stitch when worked back and forth (flat). Working garter stitch in the round also involves purling and will, therefore, be addressed in a different post.

Working the knit and garter stitch back and forth step by step

1. I’m starting with a number of stitches already cast on. What you see here, is done with the knitted on cast on.

2. To start, take your second needle and insert the tip into the stitch with the needle under your main needle. Insert at an angle so your needles cross as pictured.

3. Hold the crossed needles together, take the yarn connected to your ball and wrap it around the bottom needle. Begin by going around, and then over. Depending on your knitting style this can be done with either your left or your right hand. The end result is however always the yarn wrapped around the needle as pictured.

4. Take the bottom needle and bring it back through the stitch pulling the yarn with it.

5. Now slide of the original stitch you inserted your needle in (step 2) and tighten the yarn a bit. In the above picture, you see the original stitch on the right of the second needle. You have now knit a knit a stitch!

6. Repeat steps 2-5 until you’ve worked all stitches on your main needle. The second needle which now has all the stitches on it looks something like this:

7. Now switch the knitting needles around: the needle containing all the stitches becomes the main needle and the empty one becomes the second needle. I know I could also call them the left-hand and right-hand needles, but this could become confusing for those holding their needles differently.

8. Make sure your yarn is behind the needle and again follow steps 2-5 until you’ve worked all stitches on your main needle. The second needle now again has all the stitches on it:

9. When switching needles again, you can now see the characteristic ridges of garter stitch starting to emerge:

10. When I’ve knitted a couple of more rows we have a small swatch of garter stitch fabric! And this is how to work the knit and garter stitch.

Tips & tricks

Garter stitch comes out in ridges and each ridge is 2 rows. To know how many rows you’ve knit you can just count the ridges and then double the number.
Garter stitch looks the same on both right side (RS) and wrong side (WS) rows. There is, however, a trick to determine what side you are: Did you see in the picture with step 1 above where the yarn tail from casting on was? With the first row, I knit (which is usually called the RS) the yarn tail was on the bottom left. This means that every time I have my knitting on the main needle and the yarn tail is on the bottom left, I’m about to knit a RS row. You can of course also use a stitch marker or safety pin to see easily which side is what.
In this tutorial, I showed you how to work garter stitch by working knit stitches on every row. By purling every row, however, you also get garter stitch!
If you want to work in multiple colors, you should know that in garter stitch, if you switch colors on a right side row, there will be a line across the wrong side where you can see the loops of stitches connecting. This can, of course, be a design feature. If you don’t want this line visible, make sure to start the new color with the RS facing.

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the knitted on cast-on

The knitted on cast-on is a very strong and reasonably stretchy cast on to start your knitting project with. It’s the cast on I use most often because it is just so easy to do. Personally, I wouldn’t use it for a knitting project that would be blocked heavily. For all other applications, though, it makes a very nice edge. Think for example of edges of garments, non-lace blankets etc.

This particular method is also great for the beginner knitter because it is basically the knit stitch that is used to cast on. In this post, I’ll show you how to do it!

The knitted on cast-on step by step

1. Take a length of yarn from your ball of yarn.

2. Make a slip knot….

3. ….and insert the needle into the upper loop and tighten the slip knot onto the needle. This is the first stitch. Make sure to leave enough on the tail of the yarn to weave in later.

It is also possible not to use a slip knot and just loop the yarn around the needle for your first stitch, thus avoiding the knit in the corner of your work. For the sake of this tutorial, however, I’m going with the slip knot version.

4. Take your second needle and insert the tip into the stitch with the needle under your main needle. Insert at an angle so your needles cross as pictured.

5. Hold the crossed needles together, take the yarn connected to your ball and wrap it around the bottom needle: go around, and then over. Depending on your knitting style this can be done with either your left or your right hand. The end result is however always the yarn wrapped around the needle as pictured.

6. Take the bottom needle and bring it back through the stitch pulling the yarn with it in a loop.

7. Now transfer the new loop from the bottom needle to the other needle and tighten the yarn. You have now cast on a stitch!

8. Repeat steps 4-7 until you have reached the desired amount of stitches on your needle.

And that is all there is to it! The knitted on cast-on looks like this after a few more stitches have been cast on.

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