Knitting Colourwork (Wild Autumn Cardigan) // Episode 130 // Taking Back Friday // a fibre arts vlog

hey there so if october was all about knitting socks then november has been all about knitting sweaters so today i want to share with you the progress on this color work sweater that i've been knitting for several weeks now and i have a giveaway to tell you about i have a new book to tell you about i have so many things to tell you about today [Music] hey there thank you so much for being here my name is felicia from sweet georgia and this is taking back friday this is a space where we come every friday and we talk about knitting and spinning and weaving and dying i like to talk a lot about the fiber arts and i like to talk about how important it is to make time to make things now today i'm going to tell you about the thing that i have been making for many many weeks now um actually charlotte at the studio and i we both started the project at the same time and she was done within a week and i am still working on my sweater so i'm going to show you a little bit about this sweater in a little bit so before i go on i do want to mention that sweet georgia is having a sale right now and it's going on until december 1st and i'll give you the details about the sale at the end of this video i also have a giveaway that we're going to be doing in this episode and uh it is going to be for vogue knitting live so vogue knitting live has been hosting virtual conferences every month and so for the month of december i am going to be giving the keynote address which i'm very very excited about and so that keynote is going to be on december the 12th 2020 at 12 30 eastern time or 9 30 pacific standard time and so i'm going to be giving that uh i guess virtually and vogue knitting has been very very generous to provide us with a pass that we can give away to one of our viewers one of our one of our subscribers here so the pass that they are giving away is called the triple knitter package and it gives you three two hour classes that you can sign up for and it also gives you access to the entire virtual marketplace and all the shops in there plus all the marketplace extras including the keynote address that i will be giving so if you are interested in joining the giveaway there's gonna be a link below and then you can follow that link and then go enter your information this giveaway is going to happen actually very quickly just because we want you guys to be able to sign up for the classes that you want and indicate which classes you want to get into if you win so we're we're gonna run this until probably next wednesday uh so it just gives you probably about five days to to go to the link and then enter the giveaway and uh see if you win this pass to the vk live so in the meantime let's talk about sweaters so the sweater that i'm wearing right now this is andrea mary's uh design it's called throwback it's the throwback cardigan she has since made another version of this which is the throwback pullover where you can knit stranded color work in the round but this cardigan was knit with stranded color work flat back and forth and originally i was a little bit uh just i just i wasn't sure about i was not sure about knitting color work flat because well you know typically i knit color work in the round i'll actually go to great lengths to make sure that i can knit color work in the round even you know sticking projects converting projects from flat to to in the round so that i can cut and you know just sneak them and all this kind of stuff but you know this sweater design was just so cute so i just decided that i wanted to knit it as is so i followed the instructions knit it flat and it worked out it was fine um and so i think that that project this project gave me a little bit of confidence around knitting color work flat as opposed to knitting it in the round all the time and so when this project came across my desk i was like oh i don't know but it's so cute so i'm gonna make it so this is a pattern that has just been released by designer abby dahl she is a knitwear designer but she's also a photographer a local photographer here in vancouver and she released this pattern it's called wild fall so you can see that this entire cardigan this is all color work it's all stranded color work but it has been knit flat i mean except for the sleeves the sleeves are not color work but the entire body of the sweater is knit flat back and forth in stranded color work now abby's sweater was actually designed to be knit in our yarn the sweet georgia superwash dk and part of the idea was that if you have tons of you know dk random leftover skeins lying around leftover yarn you can pull together all of your leftover yarn and then make this color work sweater because there's so many different colors in it and you only need a little bit for each one of these sections so each one of these little color bands with a little pattern you can mix different colors you can incorporate random colors you don't have to follow her chart at all you can make up your own color combinations just from the scraps that you have so i actually look through my stash and surprisingly i don't have a ton of dk random stains lying around i don't have a ton of dk i had a whole bunch of dk from when i was knitting that crochet summer crochet blanket but i i'm still working on that so i still need all that dk but what i did have was i had a whole palette of this tough love sock that i had set aside for other projects i was going to weave a whole bunch of projects for the studio space here and they were all going to be in this very common palette so i had selected a whole bunch of colors already and so these are the colors that i had picked so yeah these are all the colors that i already picked for making weaving projects here and they were all in tough love sock and i had even gone so far as to wind them all into balls i was like ready to go but then when i saw this color work project i thought well this could be really really good in a color work sweater so i have here nine colors and i was just gonna mix and blend and combine these ones so the colors i have here are beach house shoreline sticky toffee apple pie mellow which is a new yellow for this fall violet lollipop mulberry which is no it's not the same mulberry and lilac so obviously tough love sock is not the same weight as dk tough sock is a fingering weight yarn and dk's dk weight yarn so what i have been doing is i've been using all of the yarn held double so i wind them into these center pull balls and then i take the strand from the inside and the strand from the outside and then i hold them together and knit them as if they were one yarn so you can see this is how far i have gotten on my sweater so for the sleeves and the ribbing i did decide to use a dk yarn so i got myself some skeins of the superwash dk in mink so this is like the main color i wanted this color for the sleeves and then i wanted the the color work to be a little bit more punchy and then like punch forward out of this so darker sleeves and really bold and vibrant colored body so as you can see this sweater is knit flat back and forth but also uh in one piece so that means that the both the front sides of the cardigan and the back are all being knit all at the same time so you can see kind works like this so it's kind of going to be like that so as you can see where i am in this pattern right now the motif that i'm working on is this motif in the picture which means that i still have a long way to go i still have this much to go before i split for the arm fulls so i think i'm only about 55 through the body section before i do the armhole section yeah but i'm quite enjoying knitting this it's for the most part it's actually been really really easy and originally i wanted to um sort of film a little tutorial on how to knit color work flat back and forth but then the more i did it i was like man this is not necessary because it's actually very very straightforward the way that i knit color work stranded color work is i always hold one color in each hand so typically i'll use the darker color in my left hand and then i take the lighter color and put that in my right hand like so so i knit one color with one cand and then the darker color with the other hand so english style continental style however you want to do it so when you're knitting stranded color work you'll notice that those floats one color sits above the other color so as you're you know knitting both of these colors along your row one color will always float above and one color will always float below and so that's the one thing that when you're knitting in the round is very very simple to do because you have one color as one hand and the other color is in the other hand and you're just naturally going to be consistent about which float is going where but when you are flipping back and forth you're flipping your work back and forth i found that at the beginning i was getting a little bit confused so basically as i knit this flat back and forth i just want to make sure that the the same color is in the same hands all the time so the darker color in my left hand and then the lighter color in my right hand and then what i do is that i always make sure that the floats are the same way whether i'm on the knit side or the purl side so the in this case the lighter float is going underneath the darker float that's what i've just chosen that's the convention that i'm going with and so i'm just trying to make sure that i'm always consistent with that approach so always keeping the lighter float floating underneath the darker float okay so i have my two yarns in two hands my lighter color in my right hand the darker color in my left hand and i'm just knitting across and what i'm doing is with my lighter color i'm always trying to make sure that it is going underneath the darker color so the darker color is gonna float above and the lighter color is going to float underneath so i'm knitting under under and so you can see that this float is going to be underneath and the darker float is going to be on top so when i go to knit my next darker color you can see the darker color is floating on top and then this next color is going to go underneath underneath the darker color okay so let's look at the purl side now so again i have my light color in my right hand and my dark color in my left hand so with this pattern uh this next row i start with the yellow and i do two stitches of yellow and then i'm gonna do three stitches of pink but i don't want my pink to start here i want it to start at the end so what i do is i find a way to sort of tack down that dark yarn right at the selvage edge so i just pull it over here and then knit my yellow and so that pink is going to be carried along that float is going to start from the selvage edge so i have this and again focusing on making sure that the yellow is floating underneath the pink okay so now yellow is going to be three stitches so again floating underneath floating underneath like so to do my purl stitch underneath underneath and then one stitch of pink and then underneath so sometimes it's easier to see the pattern on the knit side so sometimes i'll just flip it over and just double check my work make sure that my pattern is happening the way that it's supposed to then i can continue on the other thing that i found is that when you're doing a float that's about three stitches across or four stitches wide that is no problem but when you start to get to like five stitches wide because of the yarn that we're using because it is super wash it's a good idea to tack it down anything that's a little bit like five stitches wide or longer it just feels like the float is too long it's too loose and it it needs to be tacked down to make the fabric much more secure so that you don't have these floats where you know your finger can catch on them and and then rip out your work basically or pull out your work so if i'm knitting a float that is five stitches across i will tack down the middle stitch so the third stitch and make sure that that's nice and tucked away and not a big long and loose float so with my darker color float here it's going to be the long float and so what i want to do is i want to take my third stitch and i am going to tack down the long float by taking this warmer color taking the lighter color and going over going over that float so i just loop it around over the darker color so hopefully you can see with these five stitches you can see that there is a pink float over two stitches then this third stitch it's tacked down underneath that yellow float and then again two stitches here those are the dark float so this is a five stitch wide section that has been tacked down on the back to make it nice and neat and tidy the inside looks almost just as nice as the outside now in terms of colors you know abby is just given very rough ideas about what the color placement could be but she really encourages you to get creative mix and blend different colors choose whatever colors you want and so mostly what i'm doing is i'm going for contrast so i'm trying to make sure that i can visibly see the difference between the two hues the two colors and also the values so if you were to squint your eyes you know if you were to convert this all to black and white would you be able to see the difference between the different colors and so that's how i've been mixing and blending the colors in each of these motifs so you can see there's you know a high contrast between this sort of golden color and then the lollipop color there's a contrast there there's contrast with a light and dark for sort of this corrugated section light and dark light and dark all of this kind of stuff throughout the piece and then mixing and blending the hue so sometimes maybe the two purples are together maybe sometimes the purple is with a blue all sorts of things like that there's lots of combinations that you can make within these nine different colors the other thing that i have been doing is that for this motif right here i wanted to make a bit of a gradient effect and so what i did was for the bottom three rows what i did was i just used just apple pie and then for the next two rows i combined the apple pie one strand of apple pie and one strand of mellow so that i have kind of like a mixed up gingery yellow and then right now i'm knitting two strands of mellow and then i'm gonna go back to mellow and apple pie and then just apple pie on its own so i'm kind of like forming a little bit of a gradient within those two colors in this one motif if i had a color that was like close to the lollipop maybe a little bit lighter maybe a little bit darker maybe i could have graduated that color as well but i don't and so i just decided to leave it maybe trying to blend these two colors might be a little bit too they're too far apart in contrast and so it would just make more of a marled look it wouldn't make such a gradient look but these two colors uh have graduated very very nicely they've faded really nicely and i am thinking that these two colors would fade really nicely maybe this one and this one these two would probably fade really well as well because they're both on the darker side they're both purple i think that these would fade really well so that's a little bit about what i've been doing with this sweater so knitting the ribbing and the sleeves in dk weight knitting the body in the tough love sock doubled now the thing with the tough love sock doubled is that it makes for quite a thick fabric and i'm totally fine with that i actually did knit a gauge swatch at the beginning of my project i knit it so that i could measure you know what the gauge was for my color work i washed the swatch everything and so with that swatch it helped me determine which size i should make and the fabric is thick it is uh it is very substantial and i'm totally fine with that because i think that once i wash it it will loosen up a little bit but also it's going to be more of an outdoor sweater i think it's more like an over sweater like it has a sweater that you put on almost like as a jacket so that's that's totally fine with me that's it's a little bit more firm now charlotte she did also knit the exact same sweater and she used superwash dk leftovers that she had from her stash and again completely completely totally different look and feel because she chose more of like an apricot grapefruit color for the sleeves and for the body yeah her color choices completely different looks like a completely different sweater altogether the other thing that charlotte chose to do was she chose to shorten the body so she did not knit as many of the motifs before splitting for armholes and so her sweater is a little bit more cropped it's very very cute i want my sweater to be long almost like yeah like an outdoor jacket so i still got a ways to go so this has not been a fast project for me i feel like i knit about three rows a night that's how long it's taken me to do and it's just yeah i'm enjoying it yeah i'm really liking it i really like this graduated effect with the colors super fun so that is the sweater that i am going to be working on for probably the next several months and i have been carrying it around with me in this basket so this basket basically just goes with me from room to room whenever i need to knit this project and uh yeah because it's a it's it's a lot of yarn to carry around with you and so this this way has been good i keep a pair of scissors in here so that i can cut as i need to cut and rejoin different colors so this is my knitting basket right now this is a project that i'm working on basically every night now so if you are interested in her pattern this is abby doll wild fall cardigan you can find this probably on ravelry you can find this on our website and it is available now now the other thing i wanted to share with you is that if you have never knit a sweater before we do have sweater classes on the school of sweet georgia there is a class that tabitha hedrick teaches called knit your first sweater and she goes through all the steps you know doing the gauge swatch measuring all of these kinds of things figuring out the right size and then knitting the actual sweater so she teaches that one there's also a class by rachel smith on the school where she teaches you how to spin yarn to then make into a sweater so if you're wanting to make a hand spun sweater there is that option and then i also teach a class called modern color work knitting which shows you how i knit stranded color work with one color in each hand i also demonstrate how to hold both colors in one hand and both colors and left hand um i demonstrate how to tack down the different stitches in all different sort of situations what you might need to do in order to tack down your floats and we talk about color dominance we talk about all sorts of things in that modern color work class including converting patterns to sticked patterns as well now i had i could have probably knit this sweater in a stinked way but you know in talking back and forth with um abby uh i thought that at the end of the day it would probably be better to just knit it flat back and forth because when you get to the armholes you do need to knit back and forth for the front for the front and then for the back separately back and forth flat and so when you change um from knitting in the round to knitting flat back and forth your gauge can sometimes change and so i didn't want there to be you know one gauge for the the body up to the armholes and then a slightly different gauge for the upper sections so that's one of the reasons why i decided to stick with knitting it flat back and forth now this is very very good timing but a new book has just come out about color work knitting and it is called the color work bible this is a beautiful beautiful book this is written by jesse ostermiller and it is really it's just really lovely there's lovely patterns in here so yeah so she's talking about that idea of value choosing colors that you know when you convert that same picture to black and white that you're getting a contrast of values so you can see light and dark and all these kinds of things and she's got tips for choosing colors i really love that sweater it's it's lovely she also talks about you know working with variegated yarns in here different kinds of yarns different weights of yarns different fibers working with speckled yarns all sorts of wonderful things so she goes through a bunch of different color techniques so you know there's a chapter talking entirely about stripes and then another chapter that is talking entirely about stranded color work and how to do stranded color work and slip stitch and mosaic knitting which is another way of doing color knitting there's a section on intarsia a section on double knitting a section on brioche and so there's all of these different sections for teaching the techniques of how to work with multiple colors and then it goes into patterns so this is this is really lovely this is like kind of like a traditional fair isle vest but it has been made out of hand dyed yarn which makes it just take on a completely different appearance it's really lovely she also did use our yarn our sweet georgia yarn she used our tough love sock to make a pair of socks so those socks are called the wood woodstock socks i'll get a better picture for you there's a picture of the socks that she's knit out of our yarn and she knitted actually in two different color ways so that you can see the difference of how these look so there's the original set up here and then there's a set that's green and blues there's really really lovely patterns in here and lots of very good information so if you are at all interested in knitting color work i highly recommend you check out this book color work bible by jessie ostermiller great so the last thing that i want to mention to you today is our sweet georgia sale that's going on right now and it's called the sweater season sale it's all about sweater yarns and so we have our superwash dk superwash worsted mohair silk dk and also the bfl silk dk yarn so those four yarns right now are on sale for a very hefty thirty percent off from now until december first you just have to go to our website so it's sweetgeoryarns.com shop and then you'll find all of the yarns there those four base yarns are going to be on sale 30 off until december 1st with the coupon code frosty2020 so if you are interested in knitting your very first sweater if you need to get a sweater's worth of yarn now is the time to stock up and do that very thing so that is basically it for today i would love to hear about if you prefer knitting color work in the round if you knit color work flat if you've never knit color work before or if you were inspired to try knitting color work for the first time i'd love to hear about your color work adventures i know different kinds of sweaters go through these highs and lows and trends and things like that and so there's a time when color work sweaters are very popular and another time when lace sweaters are very popular or another time when cabled sweaters and textured sweaters are very popular but right now i feel like color work is going through a it's a very long phase right now lots of popular beautiful color work patterns happening and it's a fantastic really enjoyable way of knitting to knit with a strand of yarn in each hand and to do this double-handed stranded knitting it just makes you feel like you're a master and makes you feel like you're a genius of knitting and so it's something that i really really encourage everybody to try if you have not yet tried it so that is basically it for this week thank you so much for being here if you like this episode please do hit the like button and if you would like to see more content like this please do hit subscribe we try to come here every friday with something new about color and yarn and the fiber arts thank you so much for watching i will see you in the next one all right bye for now [Music] you

Channel: SweetGeorgia

Views: 143,090

Keywords: sweetgeorgia yarns, knitting podcast, knitting vlog, knitting podcasts on youtube, hand-dyed yarn, felicia lo, sweet georgia yarns, knitting yarn, knitting podcasts canada, sweet georgia podcast, hand-dyed yarns, school of sweetgeorgia, hand dyed yarn, fibre arts, knitting vlogs, knitting blog, fibre arts vlog, sweet georgia yarn youtube, yarn stash, hand dyed yarn techniques

Id: MvPDSKO5p2c

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020