Knitting Traditions Ep.17- icelandic yarn and a one skein sweater

[Music] hello and welcome to episode 17 of the knitting traditions podcast my name is inga and you can find me on instagram as many traditions and on ravelry as knitting tradition this is a podcast where i talk about what i've been knitting on and a little bit of live chat at the end with them sit and knit with me section and if you're new welcome i hope you enjoy this content and if you're a returning viewer welcome back as you see i'm still um in a temporary home at my cousin's place um yeah i decided to paint the kitchen where in my old apartment that i moved back to and until i have done that and the kind of gases have disappeared i'll be living here for a few more days so uh let's get into knitting uh in the last episode i showed off this comfy gray sweater this is um a sweater that i made up uh top down with some increases on the body part then increases on the sleeve and then at the body again it's sort of like a raglan increase and i did a slip stitch detail on the arms front and side of the body i knitted in the petite wool by we are knitters and it's a very soft yarn it tails a lot um if you can see this it's already peeling a lot and i also used a pill remover earlier today one of those electrical one that kind of eats up the pills um so yeah but it's a very comfy stay-at-home sweater and i just got home from the mountain uh i went skiing for the past week with my family and i had this with me as one of those sweaters to throw on when i got inside and it's been lovely since the last time i've been knitting quite a bit um not as much as usual because i started a new job which i will talk about later but i forgot last time to show you a finished object this shawl and this is a shawl which i have knitted with some hand spun alpaca fiber which i bought when i was driving on the east coast of norway because i live on the west coast and there was this alpaca farm along the road which said that they sold yarn so me and my cousin stopped there and the lady on the farm she has i think nine or 11 alpacas not not a lot and she cuts the wool or the fiber off herself she washes it spins it and then she sells it so the the brown color in this is from the alpaca named ariel and the white from the alpaca named milo and i think this is probably the most expensive uh knitted item that i own but it's all made by hand so it's very much worth it and it's not a really a pattern um i did one of the simplest ways of making a shawl where you increase in the middle on every second row so because you need back and forth right and then you also increase on the side here at the beginning of every row these kind this kind of doing increases i learned the first time when i was knitting the age of steam and brass shawl which is a free pattern on ravelry i just did stripes for this one so that i could use up all the yarn that i had and i had a bit more left of the milos fiber than of ariel's so i did an i-cord edge just along the the bottom not the top because i ran out but that's okay i think it's really nice as it is alpaca fiber is very uh soft to me at least it's very soft um i did wash it i still feel like it has a bit of grease in the fibers so i'll probably keep on washing it until i'm satisfied but it's a nice snugly warm shawl and i wore it skiing underneath my jacket but then i wore it this way because the wind was coming into my jacket and it was -20 up on the mountain so i wore it like this underneath my jacket just to have that extra protection on my neck when i went cross-country skiing and that was great um it has a little bit of like fluffs it's not exactly pills because of the yarn being a bit unspun unevenly spun uh but i think it just adds to the charm so i think i'll wear this because it's a bit cold inside i just got home and my cousin is also up skiing with her family so it's been cold inside the apartment so yeah really happy with this um i hand washed this the first time because i didn't know how the hand spun would behave if i threw it in the machine and i um took a little uh footage of how i hand wash my knits and wet block them and that's underneath the highlights on my instagram profile if you're curious next time i'll probably just throw it in the machine because that's what i usually do on a whole program uh around 30 celsius with wool soap and if i ever felt something by accident i will let you know i was actually felting something on purpose yesterday um i'll see if i could put in a video or footage of it here because i made a felted beer mitten for my aunt she came with a request asking if i could make one for her because her friend had one and so i got some thick wool at the only store who had um yarn up where we were and this is the linda garn fritids and it's basically just a bulky weight it's um 55 meters per 50 grams and the pattern uses or the the beer mitten uses up three so i had a mix of grain yellow made some stripes you start by crocheting a circle which is 10 to 12 centimeters wide then you pick up stitches with six millimeter knitting needles around that circle and you just knit back and forth in garter until you have 23 garter edges and then you join in the round and knit stockinette until that part is equally as long as the garter section then you put that knitted section into the garter one and sew it along the edge of the crochet bottom and that creates a hole on the side where you pick up stitches and then you knit the arm part and it creates quite a big sized mitten so you felt it i felted it in the machine on a regular cycle with 50 celsius and regular soap so not wool soap and i had to repeat it three times so i think it was in almost almost two hours or one and a half i kept checking on it um until the size was perfect and i measured it on my hand and i put a beer can or a soda can or whatever my aunt had inside to see that it fit nicely and it did and she was really happy i also tried to crochet an m on it uh which is her the first letter of her name that one didn't it kind of got a bit wonky with a felting but you could still see that it's an m it's just kind of broad but she was happy with it and i'm going to be making another one but mine will be mainly yellow because i have more yellow than gray and it's gonna be one of my easter mittens so whatever beverage i'm drinking i can drink outside in the sun even though it's quite cold outside oh and yes i forgot to tell you um i'm also wearing my new design the slouchy beanie because uh bad hair day and this one i knit in uh premium merino yak yarn which is actually a sock yarn but my head is sensitive and the merino yak fibers are soft so i can wear it on my head other than that um last time i showed you some lovely yarn that i got from my friend suzanne so i of course immediately cast it on um so i made these fingerless mittens or fingerless gloves the pattern of the braids i got inspired by the free pattern on ravelry which is called the tilda mitts with two eyes after the tea i'll write it below but as i was making it i realized that i wanted to have um fingerless instead of a mitten so i just freestyled it but there's a lot of free fingerless mitten patterns on ravelry as well and i am so happy with these i wear them skiing one day when it wasn't windy and it was perfect because you get really warm when you're cross country skiing and this kind of aired it out a bit i also was able to sit outside and knit because i still had the tactile feel of my knitting needles and one strand of yarn could fit on my finger so that was great and this is knit in the briggs and little atlantic yarn which is a lovely bulky weight yarn and this pattern is made for bulky yarn so it was a perfect fit i still have quite a bit left um i made a hat as well this is the tilde hat so it's the same almost the same braids just that this one is a bit wider as the mittens and i was gonna make a pom-pom but i always told myself i'm never gonna make a hat with a pom-pom because i feel like at least the norway that's what children wear but then as i made this hat i realized this needs a pom-pom so uh i was considering making it with the yarn but then i think i want to save this yarn and use it for something else later so i got one of these faux fur pom poms at a local yarn store and i still need to attach it on the inside it has like one of those bands and i just used a safety pin so that i could show you today but i still need to fasten that um and i can show you the hat so yeah so this is the tilde hat um and the tilde yet modified fingerless mittens gloves the reason i felt like it needed a pom-pom is that because of the braids it kind of got like a pointy shape and i prefer one of like the beanie shape of hats so with the with the pom pom i thought it looked cute so yes and this yarn feels quite hard to the touch when you're knitting with it um it's a rustic yarn it's 100 wool i love it and it softened up beautifully when i washed it after i just knitted this i could almost not get my fingers together because it was so stiff but now it's soft and lovely and also i don't feel like this hat itches maybe if i start sweating it will itch on the forehead but that happens to me with every kind of wool except for cashmere um like this one and the original in the um cardiff cashmere those doesn't it don't itch on my forehead but this one will probably itch a little bit if i get too warm but it's really nice and thick and perfect for the winter days and sadly the snow is melting and we're going into spring but i will have them ready for the next season so i'm really really happy with it and i had two skeins of this breaks in little atlantic yarn and i have this much left so um it went too far away i'd say not sure what i'll make with the remainders yet but i will come up with something that's for sure all right so gonna have to finish that pom-pom and then that will be ready and i also had to cast on something else with the lovely yarn she also sent me a sock yarn from briggs and little the dura sport yarn this lovely light gray color it's a bit heathered and lovely so i cast on a sock and i can put in a sock blocker i haven't fastened the ends yet because i just finished it and i'm gonna make the other sock before i finish it all up completely all right so i think the sock yarn knitted up beautifully i really love the look of this yarn it feels quite rustic yet soft and i think when i wash it it will get a lot softer but it has nylon content in it because it's wool and nylon i think 20 nylon so it will hold its shape up nicely i did the morse hell uh heel from my muscle pattern and on the front i did three braids which are not in the pattern because the pattern is just a vanilla pattern but i just added some braids to the side like a simple twist braid and then this is not the best to show on a sock blocker when it's on the front but one of these braids and another twist braid and they go all the way down to the heel and then i did a rounded heel closure instead of the um kitchener stitch heel which is kitchener stitch toe which is another toe but i've been feeling the rounded toe lately so that's what i did and i have just about casted on the second one and i'm using 2.25 millimeters uh circulars and i think when i measured these from tip to tip there are like 11 almost 12 inches from tip to tip like here and these were a bit painful the first time i made a sock but then after that i loved it so yeah i'm really really really happy with these circular needles um i think this is sanhuskarn um a norwegian yarn producer i think this is their brand but they have these small circulars in a lot of different needle brands and yeah i'm really happy with them i knit a lot faster i started out knitting socks on dpn's then i switched to magic loop and then i did magic loop with two socks at a time and then i started with these small circulars and i don't think i'm ever going back honestly it's my preferred method yes and um what else i did end up washing the body of my cable sweater i measured it before washing it and then i measured it again after washing it because i wanted to see um how much it shrunk up because i had been told that when you knit with holst super soft which i did for this um that the length shrinks when you wash it and wear it so i wanted to wash it before starting the sleeves however it didn't shrink i measured it before washing and after washing and blocking it and it's exactly the same length and i did not measure it when i was like putting it on the bathroom floor to dry so i don't know if that's because i held the yarn double and did um structured work across the whole of the sweater if that's why that is maybe it shrinks more with stockinette and there's no stockinette in this but i'm not sure maybe it will shrink if i keep washing it but i did rinse this out several times so i don't know but i will just make the sleeves a bit longer just in case and see how well it goes and yeah i will have to start those leaves but i still haven't quite decided on how i want to do them but i will get to that if you're interested in this i talk a lot about it in previous episodes so you can always go back i have a playlist on my youtube channel where all the episodes are in a chronological order if you're a new viewer you can always go and check that out but yes this will be done eventually and i went to a yarn store in the neighboring city on the way um up to the mountain and that's where i found the pom-pom and that's also where i found soles for my grandmother's lumi socks i made the lumisock pattern by fiber tails my grandmother wanted them in blue not my preferred color but she loves blue and she has blue eyes and blue suits her so i made the lumi socks but um she's not too good on her feet so i wanted to put something underneath it so that they became less slippery and i was looking for souls in my local yarn store here in the city but they didn't have any they had um they had this thing which i got which is like sock stop it's called you put these drops underneath the socks and let it dry for 10 hours and then it's like an anti-slippery rubbery substance but i didn't really want to use that for my grandmother's socks i wanted it to be more i don't know elegant solution if you will and i think she will like these rubber souls so they didn't have a name they just had them hanging and there was like either men's or women's and no name i don't even know what they're made of but i think they will work for her to not slip it doesn't look like leather to me it's probably some suede fake artificial suede or something like that but yeah i think this will work nicely i had some scrap yarn with me luckily in a blueish color so i sewed them on with that and i can try and show you so i think this will work nicely for her so i'll send them with my dad next time he goes to visit her so she can get her socks before summer comes although i think she'll wear warm socks all year round because she's always cold on her feet and of course when i went to a yarn store i do have problems containing myself when it comes to not buying more yarn are you the same you know we are doing the stash along this year knitting from stash and i do think that i am doing a good job knitting for my stash but this month i've also been indulging myself a little bit in stash acquisitions so i did buy two skeins of yarn from that store and i also went back and bought some more alephos loopy yarn for a sweater that i'll show you soon and i might also have splurged a bit online but that doesn't count until it's here that confession can wait so i got some uh sock yarn from reggia shachenmaier regia stretch uni and color they had a sale on this yarn and i do really like to have some white or light-colored sock yarn to use for contrast toes and heels even though white isn't the most convenient color to use on socks but i think it's pretty so i do use it so i got this one which will go into my sock yarn stash and i got this gorgeous county yarn which is just a gradient with grays from lighter gray to darker gray i have made i designed some patterns uh which uses county as an option for the background color in the cell bucal zigzag cowl and the cafeal cowl and it's just a very slow gradient which is really nice so it's not like a stripy but more like a slowly changing color which i really like and this is the that store is the only one that i have found that carries county and i just had to get this one i have no idea yet what i will make with it maybe i'll make more of those cows for presents or maybe i'll make a shawl at one point because i do want a warm wooly shawl now i have this warm alpaca i have my tinder scarf and i do have my vertices unite but it's in a superwash color a superwash yarn so it's not as warm so maybe i will make this as a shawl we shall see but i will definitely make something from this so this was just an acquisition because i might not be able to get it later from that place so yes now it's mine yeah so i cast it on a sweater i cast it on two sweaters but one of them is downstairs i will have to go get that um but let's do this one first so i had some yarn in my stash to make a sweater which is called the alassook polar it's a thick uh color work sweater from a book oh it's called the marx strike i think yes it's a norwegian designer and i think she's also releasing her books in other languages because i saw that she's releasing the her second book and it's going to be coming out also in swedish russian and finnish and she wrote it in english so i think it's also out in english i think i think it would be weird if not yeah but she she uses a lot of rustic yarns which i personally love um she uses tinder my favorite from hillisbug she uses final my favorite from raoma and she uses uh let lupi and alaphos lupi from istex and these are all woolly woolly yarns which are great for color work and i had bought yarn to make the alizuk polar however i had bought [Music] the contrast colors i had bought were very typical me they were a mossy green dark gray browns orangey very earthy tones but then as i was trying to put them together for the color work there was like the contrast wasn't enough and also i already have um one of her sweaters in a mossy green and i wanted a different version and easter is coming up and every year when march april comes around i get like a color burst of inspiration i just want something bright to welcome spring and the crocuses and the easter lilies and the lighter days and the melting snow and yes so last year i made three super colorful sweaters and this is the first one of this year so i went to the store and i got some extra colors i got this green which is a different green that i had and i got the blue and the purple blue and purple is not what i typically go for but the combination of these colors were just easter to me this is spring this is happy and i think i will love this i was trying to get it finished in four days so that i could wear it skiing but that didn't happen because this is knit on six millimeter needles so it flies by but when i got to this section right here there was a lot of stitches on the needles and three colors at a time and i had forgot to bring my interchangeable set for the six millimeters so i only had a small circumference i think i had 60 centimeters circumference and that was a lot of stitches to have on 60 millimeter so it was all tied up and three colors and trying to get the color work to be even and it was a bit of a struggle so it took a bit longer than i had hoped for so i didn't get to where it's skiing this time but that's okay it will still be ready for easter because i am doing the neck right now and then i will fasten all the million ends and wash it and it will be ready to wear for easter and um honestly my olympus loopy sweater that i already have it's the thickest and warmest sweater that i own and surprisingly enough i don't wear it in the winter i wear it in the summer because i like to go camping and norwegian summer evenings can get pretty cold so then it's really really nice to have this super thick sweater that kind of gives off heat to put on in the evening and i think that these colors will work beautifully in the summer as well so i am really happy with how this is looking i knit the size medium and i think it will be a nice fit maybe a few centimeters of positive ease on me which is perfect because this is almost like an outdoor wear it's almost like a jacket only in a sweater form so it's not something that i wear next to skin so i could wear another sweater underneath to make it even warmer and i opted for just binding off the body and sleeves because it's knit bottom up and it tells you to put these on hold and then probably knit them together but i just bound off and i'll just sew them together because i think that works out just as fine and it's easier so yeah that's what i did i also did a few changes to the pattern not to the how the color patterning is but more instead of using let's say this was supposed to be yellow here and white there i made blue here and blue here i just made some different choices to kind of get the colors to show as much as i wanted them to so yeah this is almost ready to be worn and i'll run down and get my other sweater that i made so i'll be right back all right so suzanne sent me a lot of beautiful yarn and there was this one single skein of silkmo hair which was hand dyed by oh my i think it was handmaiden i'll see if i have the tag still in my bag so i didn't have that tag in my bag but i think it's handmaiden i will write below here the name and it was this beautiful golden yarn isn't it pretty and it has like orangey gold and then yellowy gold tones to it it's beautiful so i asked on instagram because i had heard a rumor that you could make the ranunculus with only one skein of sokomo hair that is 400 meters of silkmo hair that is and a lot of people got back to me saying yes you definitely can a lot of people had made the ranunculus the short-sleeved version with one skein of silkmore hair held together with a fingering weight yarn but i only had the silkmore hair and i only wanted to use the silkmo hair so i decided to just go for it so i got the ranunculus pattern which is a one size fits all kind of pattern i don't really know how you could make it fit all but i guess you would change your gauge and that way it could fit all so i did a small tiny tiny swatch because i didn't want to waste any yarn because i was gonna need all of it and i ended up pretty much hitting gauge with the recommended needle size which was six millimeters and i cast on uh it gives you two kinds of necklines options so i of course did the third one i did the norwegian cast on because i'm a bit lazy and i'm not i don't always want to learn new techniques i used to when i started knitting what i would do is for every new project i would pick a pattern that had one new technique and that's kind of how i improved myself one step at a time but now i have knitted 50-plus sweaters and i have found some techniques that i know are my favorites and that i know work for me and the norwegian cast on is one of those so i did the norwegian cast on i did the yoke um and then i opted for the short sleeve version but i just put the sleeves on hold and i did the body just because i wanted to see how much yarn i had so i did the body to the recommended length which i think was probably here and i bound off and then i equally divided the remaining yarn i had into two balls to make the sleeves and then i made one sleeve i kind of disregarded the pattern at this point and i just knitted the sleeve as long as i liked i tried it on and figured that this was plenty long enough for the short sleeve version because i wasn't gonna have enough for the long sleeve anyways so i figured this was a nice length for me i did the other sleeve and i tried it on and i am a tall person a lot of norwegian people are tall people i'm almost 180 i'm i'm 177 centimeters so the length of the recommended length on me it didn't even hit my waist so it was more like a bralette and that's not really what i was going for and i still had more yarn left so what i did is i spent a good hour at least picking up or unpicking the bind off and then i continued knitting until i had probably like this much yarn left and i tried it on and it was perfect it hits just a few one centimeters below my waist or something too so that when i wear it with high-waisted jeans it has that perfect length for a crop top in my opinion which is at the smallest point of the waist so yeah i did the short sleeve version of the ranunculus with the recommended needle size did the sleeves just a tiny bit longer and the body just a tiny bit longer and i still had a tiny bit of yarn left so this gives me a lot of hope for all my single silkmo hair skeins that i have in my stash and also some hope for leftover silk mohair that i have from other projects that i can make a garment that i will love and wear and i think i i'm at risk of becoming like the lovely heather and hops podcast if you haven't watched it you should see it but i was talking to her about the ranunculus because she has made a lot of them and i think i'm at risk of becoming as addicted to this pattern as she is and i can see myself also making this with other types of yarn as well because it is a lovely structured yoke you will probably see more clearly with a less fuzzy yarn but it still has a bit of interest which i really enjoy all right so that is all of the knitting that i've been doing since the last time and now if you have a beverage of something lovely to drink sit down and knit with me for a bit and i will work on the neckline of my sweater so i'm sitting on the floor again i'm looking forward to moving into my old place and getting organized because i love living at my cousin's place but i'm also looking forward to organizing my life again and not living out of a suitcase and also maybe decluttering a bit i think i have some hoarding tendency when i was looking at my storage room i definitely have a lot of things that i forgot that i had and that i clearly don't need in my life so maybe i can go through it and donate some stuff to a charity shop oh and i forgot to say this sweater uh is a mix of elephant loopy and let loopy because if you didn't know the the let loopy yarn from from eastex is half the thickness of the olives loopy so you can hold it double and that makes it the same thickness and that expands the color horizon because there are a lot of colors in let loopy that they don't have an alaphos loopy and vice versa so i used the beige blue and pink in the alephos lupi and then i used the yellow green and orange in the lat loopy and these i held double so i still have quite a bit of the contrasting colors left which i can use in another project later so yes what was i saying yeah so decluttering is definitely high on the list i just really want to paint the kitchen cabinets because there are no windows in my kitchen so it's quite dark and the whole apartment is from 1989 and all the walls are wood panels and the kitchen is wood and the floor is wood so it's a lot of wood and they haven't been painted but i was they gave me the okay to paint the kitchen so i'm looking forward to get that into a lighter color because it will then reflect light a bit better and it won't be as dark which will be really nice so last time i was talking about how i was starting my new job as a pediatrician and i started there and i really loved the work environment all my colleagues were so so lovely the sweetest people and the children too were so sweet and i really enjoyed that part of the job however it was a lot of computer work and very little hands-on which which is fine but i just realized that it wasn't for me i i prefer to have a bit more speed and to do more procedure kind of work as a doctor and i'm just not a fan of sitting at behind a computer which is unavoidable in today's society as a doctor it's a lot of computer work you have to document everything and sometimes you have to document everything in three different programs just to make it easy and so what happened is i got a job offer from obstetrics and gynecology which is the word right next to the pediatric ward and i just realized that that is what i want to do i would love to be a gynecologist or more specifically i would love to be an obstetrician to work with c-sections and deliveries and fertility and more more of a hands-on approach to the medical field so i switched specialities so tomorrow i am starting fresh again uh in the specialization pathway to become an obstetrician and gynecologist because in norway they are the same field they're not two separate wards you're you do both here so i am really excited about that and i will still get to work with my lovely colleagues because we share we share um the on-call room kind of with the with each other so i think it's gonna be really nice i'm also a bit nervous because it is a lot of new things to learn and a lot of new faces and a lot of new names but i think it's going to be great i feel like it's the right decision so yeah busy week ahead a new job painting a kitchen unpacking when that is done and in the midst of this i also need to get some knitting done but i thought it would be nice to record an episode today because i had an hour to myself before my cousin comes home so i figured it was nice to do it now so it won't be too late um or too long between the episodes so then hopefully hopefully in a week maximum two i will be sitting in my apartment and trying to find a nice spot to record episodes for you so until then i hope you are doing well i hope you're knitting on something fantastic and that you're staying safe and that you're just loving life as it is right now and i will talk to you guys soon bye [Music] so i forgot to draw the winner of the rustic knit along which ran until the end of february i closed down the uh thread on our knitting traditions podcast groupon rivalry on the first of march and there were almost a thousand participants which is insane so if you want some inspiration for some rustic knitting go and check that thread out so i went on google and i put in the number of participants and then i picked a random number which was 563 and then i went on to ravelry and scrolled to find and 563 as you see here is by allison827 she finished her wheat chiefs cardigan using tinder she this was a remit of a cardigan and this lovely pattern that she made is a free pattern by elizabeth mccarthy so allison827 please message me so i can send the lovely parcel to you i see that you're from canada and you love neutrals cool colors greens and purples and then i think this lovely bag from the urban stitcher which is one of the prizes is right up your alley and inside it i have two skeins of rauma finnol which are great for color work and i am also including i'm a mess today i'm also including the pattern for the salvu cowl my pattern as a price in this giveaway and i will send that your way and for the two patterns from istabagul which were kindly donated as well to this giveaway the two winners um were actually drawn from using the hashtag on instagram i spent a good hour calculating and going down the photos with the hashtag to find the random number and those two people have already been contacted um so yeah that was the resting it along price and we still have the stachel ongoing for all of 2021 so if you want to win some prizes you can either post into the finished thread on ravelry i'll put the links and everything below or you can use the hashtag on instagram and i'll also be drawing some prizes from there [Music] alright [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Knittingtraditions

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Length: 53min 22sec (3202 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021