Fall 2010 classes

What have I been doing for all this time? Well, I've been working on the classes that I'll be teaching at Spirit Work for the coming fall and winter. Classes are posted on the shop's website, and as far as I know there are still openings in all of them.

This season there are two sweater classes - a Traditional Gansey pullover which I should clarify as being traditionally constructed out of a specified worsted weight yarn, rather than the fine 5-ply British gansey yarn, in the interest of students being able to finish the sweater or close to it by the end of class!

The other sweater class is in collaboration with my fellow knitting teacher, Jeannine, and is an Aran made from the bottom up with the student's choice of raglan or modified drop-shoulders, cardigan or pullover in a specified worsted-weight yarn. While Jeannine and I both love making top-down saddle-shoulder Arans, we also like to mix things up! ;)


It's been a couple of years since I last taught a vest class and have a beauty planned for this year. The Classic Vest is the basic V-neck, cardigan-style, stockinette stitch vest in a specified tweed yarn. Depending on their skill level and what they want to do, students have the choice of adding a cable panel going up and down at the shoulder, and if needed for the fuller-figured, short-row bust darts.


Colorwork mittens are always popular. Simple Two Color Mittens are again being offered, and there is a new one, the Tofta Gauntlet Mitten, also offered.

A completely new project for me is the Half-Glove. These are not fingerless mitt(en)s, but are actual gloves with the fingers ending just below the first joint, so they will be warm and should stay put. If they so choose, students could make them as regular gloves too. I'm rather pleased with them myself, and have been thinking that they'd be nice for gift-giving.


Photos have been taken of most of these items and should be up on the shop website soon.

About Cottage Craft

About Cottage Craft yarns which I used for the Blue Spruce Aran, caveat emptor or buyer beware. There have been problems with people placing orders and not getting them or having to wait for MONTHS. This is not an acceptable situation for most of us knitters because when we order something, we usually have a particular project in mind and want to get started on it.

So instead of ordering yarn from Cottage Craft, I highly recommend ordering from Briggs & Little. The Regal line of yarn is the EXACT same yarn as CC's 2-ply, and I'm as certain as I can be that Briggs & Little is the manufacturer of the yarn. If you go to Briggs & Little's website, you can request color cards for all of their lines of yarn via email. The price may be a bit higher than CC, but what good does it do to save money on something that never comes?

Blue Spruce Aran

The Grape Trellis cardigan isn’t quite done, but it was getting to the point where I needed a rest from it, so I started another Top-Down Saddle Shoulder Aran – yes, I know I’m crazy. What can I say, sometimes I just need to start something new while I’m inspired. The new one will be a pullover out of Cottage Craft 2-ply in Blue Spruce.

The saddle cable is a 3-rib lattice, which I think you can see has been mirror-imaged for symmetry. The two major cable patterns in the body are out of Annie Maloney’s book, The Cable Knitter’s Guide. The center cable is #66, and the cables going down from the shoulder are #22. These are a bit more complicated, so I do have to pay attention to what I’m doing, but I love how they look.

The cable layout from left to right is:
Wave of Honey (or Little Chain)
Eccentric cable
#22
Eccentric
Wave of Honey
Little Twist Cable (Barbara Walker’s first treasury)
#66
Little Twist
Wave of Honey
Eccentric
#22
Eccentric
Wave of Honey

When designing with cables, I like to make them so that the ones on the right, lean to the right, and the ones on the left, lean to the left when seen on the body. This creates a V-effect which I think is flattering to the figure by emphasizing the shoulders and de-emphasizing the waist. This photo shows them as they were knit. The sweater is knit from the top down so the photo is upside down from the way the finished garment will be worn.

I've also started swatching for a cabled vest, which I hope to start shortly. Obviously I don't worry about having more than one project going, because sometimes I feel like working on one thing, and other times like working on something else. I don't want to confine myself to just one project, losing whatever inspiration or idea I might have for another when it strikes! ;)

Snowstar Gauntlet Mitten

The Snowstar Mitten is now done, and I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. I tried a new yarn, Lanaloft from Brown Sheep. It's a variegated wool and is the background or main color in the mitten. The contrast color is a variegated monotone of Lamb's Pride.

When using two variegated yarns for colorwork, one must be very careful to NOT match a color common to both colors being used or you can lose the patterning.

As I mentioned before, this mitten evolved rather quickly, and I really enjoyed doing it. It starts out with a few rounds of the contrast color in purl at the edge, then goes into the colorwork. The gauntlet on this mitten is a bit longer than on the first gauntleted mitten I did, and I was concerned about getting low on the Lanaloft since the skein is only 100 grams and therefore has less yardage than 4 oz of Lamb's Pride, but I weighed the skein both before and after making the first mitten, and I didn't use more than half of it. The only problem might be if someone wanted to make a larger size, then they might need another skein of Lanaloft in the main color just in case.

This time I tried shaping the mitten tip differently, and I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. Anna Zilboorg's book, Magnificent Mittens & Socks, has a couple of mittens where the mitten tip shaping occurs along the sides of a central band on the back and palm of the hand. The end result is a nicely rounded mitten tip. Since I make mittens from the cuff up rather than from the tip down like Anna, my mitten is finished with kitchener stitch to keep the tip smooth.

Due to the colorwork pattern, the handout directions will be sized for adults only, which is the case for the Ram's Horn mitten as well.

There are two sessions of the Snowstar Gauntlet Mitten class. One is on Wednesdays, starting 1/13, and the other is on Sundays, starting 1/24. There is only one session of the Ram's Horn Mitten class, starting on 1/24 also. The Ram's Horn class precedes the Snowstar, so folks can have a whole afternoon of mittens if they want! ;) Class information is at the Spirit Work website.