Fall Time Hat Knitting

Yesterday was actually the first day of Fall, which is absolutely my favourite season. I do really love summer because it's the only time that we get reasonably warm weather but watching all of the leaves changing, getting to light fall candles, wear cozy wooly layers, and make fall type foods is totally worth the brisk mornings. 

To be fair, so far this has been the warmest fall I can remember. Yesterday we actually got to 26 degrees celsius which is like a hot summer day and, while I really hope that this lovely warm first week of fall is the foreshadowing of an uncharacteristically mild winter, I also do realize that the weather is going to cool off a little bit in the near future so I've decided to knit a quick wooly project for my husband to enjoy.

He's recently mentioned that he really doesn't have a winter hat for this year, and I figured that rather than buying one, I would make him one. I went through my yarn stash and found some "Briggs and Little" worsted weight yarn to make a striped winter hat for him and I've been following Jared Flood's "Turn a Square" pattern that is actually free on Ravelry, and it's turning out really well so far! I think I'm at least as excited as he is to see how the hat turns out, but it's kind of a nice feeling that he's also excited to be getting the handmade hat once it's finished.

Broken Needle Dilemma

The weather has (sadly) been cooling off very quickly these past couple of weeks so I've been working full steam ahead on getting my Braid Hills cardigan done. Yesterday I ran into an unfortunate problem when, while working on the first shoulder, the part of the interchangeable needle that screws on the the cable needle broke off.

When it broke I just sat there staring at it, not even really sure how the cable had come away from the needle that I had in my hand. It was kind of a tricky spot for the needle to break, because I really didn't want to leave the shoulders on waste yarn until I could get a replacement needle in. So I decided to press on, seeing as these are fairly short rows anyway, so I've now finished all but the last shoulder that I'm knitting now with one needle being no longer than a cable needle.

After I finish these shoulders, however, I'm for sure going to have to wait on my new needles to start the sleeves, but at least I've got them ordered and on there way. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm working away on it again.

Working with Cables

I definitely go through phases when it comes to the different kinds of knitting that I love, for instance I went through a really long lace phase where for months I would knit nothing unless it was in a lace pattern, and made a crazy long worsted weight lace scarf. Then I went through a colorwork phase where I was literally not interested in texture at all and could only be happy if I was using two or more colours at a time.

The phase I'm currently in has probably been the longest yet, with no real foreseeable end in sight. For the past six months I have been entirely caught up in cables. I've been making cabled socks, working on my braid hills cardigan, and have been staring shamelessly at all kinds of lovely cables on pinterest. I've even been going through stitch dictionaries to pick out different cables that I really like to swatch up just to see how they look.

These were both done up in Louet 'gems' which I loved using and was really happy with the stitch definition. I loved the middle panel on the first one so much I used it again in the second swatch to see how it looked with different stitches. Playing around with these cables has got me really inspired and I'm even considering the idea of trying to make my very own cabled pullover design. Hopefully that will be in the works over the next little while.

Thanks for reading!

Starting My Braid Hills Cardigan

This summer has absolutely been flying by! I'm shocked at how quickly both July and August have gone, and can't believe we're staring down September and the start of Autumn. Lately I've been trying to get out as much as possible to go camping or to the beach to enjoy the warm weather while we have it. I recently finished spinning that yarn I was talking about a couple posts ago and so I got to start my new cardigan while we were camping recently. I'm so excited with how my handspun yarn is knitting up, and I'm in love with this "Braid Hills" cardigan by Kate Davies. I can't wait to see how the finished sweater looks.

I'm so loving the cables beside the button band! Although summer is coming to an end faster than I'd like, hopefully I'll have this new cardigan done by the time it starts cooling off.

Icelandic Fest 2014

Over the weekend we took a bit of a trip and went to Gimli where they were having there annual Icelandic Fest. Now, I'm not really sure why, but I am entirely too taken with Iceland. Over the past few years I've learned a bit about it here and there and I'm just in love with their culture and their heritage. It helps as well that I love Icelandic knitting and Icelandic sheep are certainly the prettiest and cutest looking sheep I've ever seen and would love to have a whole flock of them if I only had a good sized plot of land.

When we got there in the morning the "Village" that they set up was still closed, so we went to the coffee shop in town to kill some time and get some much needed caffeination.

It was getting close to 30 degrees celsius  outside, so we all opted for Iced drinks, but I'm curious what an "Icelandic Fog" is and think I will have to give it a try the next time we are visiting that town. 

After getting some coffee we went one of their larger shops that has really nice clothes and books and gift type things and I discovered they also have a whole wall of Icelandic Yarn! 

I've never tried Istex's Einband yarn, which is there light fingering weight yarn, so I decided to grab a couple natural looking colours to try out. 

I'm thinking this will be my new winter hat for this year. I'm really excited to work with their Einband yarn as I love the Alafoss and Lett Lopi already. 

Finally the Village was open and we got to go in and look around! They have many different tents that are set up to look like what a house would have looked like back in the Viking days.

I am so in love with the blanket on this bed! It really makes me want to get into embroidery.

Next we saw some chairs covered in furs and some wooden shields.

Some women in costume who were cooking some traditional looking food.

More women in costume who were cooking fish on one side of the fire, and naturally dying Icelandic yarn on the other side! 

Some beautiful Icelandic Yarn. I didn't get a chance to ask, but I'm thinking that they maybe spun and dyed this themselves.

We also saw a woman doing a type of weaving I'd never seen before. This is called Tablet Weaving, and instead of using the kind of loom I'm used to seeing, they have yarn threaded through holes in the corners of square tablets that they can flip and change which yarn is on top to create a pattern in their weaving. Because the projects on this type of weaving can only be an inch or two across it seems, they use it to make beautiful wool woven ribbons that are used to decorate tunics. I was quite excited about this and while I was hoping to try weaving one day, this makes me want to get a loom as soon as possible.

 It was just a really incredible day, and we had such a fun time getting to look around and see all of the traditional looking displays. And now I have a new project in my line up, so hopefully I'll have a new hat to show you soon.