Jen Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

FO: Summersville Quilt for Jane and Nigel

I can now share pictures of the quilt that I made for my parents-in-law for their Christmas present. They seemed really pleased with it, and once it was in place on their bed, Sid the cat wasted no time in making it his space. That's a pretty good endorsement of a new quilt in my book!

This quilt was quite a long time in the making... I started the piecing at the quilting weekend we had in Frome back in July. Goodness that seems like an age ago!

I played around a bit with the block layouts before picking the final arrangement. Here are the options that I looked at...

This is the classic Furrows arrangement of log cabin blocks.

A few people on Twitter liked this 4 diamond arrangement.

But the winner - by quite some margin - was this Barn-Raising arrangement. So I sewed the blocks together in that arrangement over the quilting weekend, and the top then languished on the side for weeks and weeks, while I steeled myself for making pieced borders for it.

Sometime in November I got some sewing mojo back and completed the borders - even managing to get half of the corners to match up perfectly in my first mitred border.

I'm not sure if that was brilliant technique (thanks for the tips Anne!) or just beginner's luck. I certainly found it more intimidating to do than my normal arrangement, but I'm sure that I'd get more confident with practise though.

Are you ready to see the finished quilt?

This is the back! I pieced together all of the leftover bits, the spare lengths of Summersville, and added them to the plain red. This was just enough fabric to make up the back.

I sewed a label in calico - I used a split stitch over lettering that I traced from a printout I made in Word. Simple, but effective. I fixed it to the quilt with bondaweb and then blanket stitched it down.

Here's a peek at the corner...

And, TA DAAAA! The whole thing.

I finished with the smallest of margins - the last stitches were complete on Christmas Day in the evening, and we exchanged presents with my in-laws on Boxing Day. My Mum helped by holding up the quilt for photographs in the morning, before we drove down to Dorset to see Jim's family.

The quilt used 0.5m each of 8 fabrics from the Summersville range by Lu Summers from Moda. I also used about 3.5m of plan red fabric for the centre squares, framing border, binding and backing. The finished quilt is about 56in square (1.4m square).

SnB: Ornament Swap and other bits and bobs

We had our annual ornament swap at the Frome SnB group last night, and it gives me a good opportunity to share some more of the work of this talented group!

This is the total haul of gifts swapped - what Christmassy delights! I was lucky enough to receive the beautiful mini-Aran jumper in cream at the bottom. This was knitted by the ever-so-talented Mary Henderson (who by the way has a fabby Fair Isle tea cosy in the subscribers' edition of The Knitter this month). What a lucky duck I am!

Among the other handmade treats were some amazing handmade chocolates (top right, made by Jackie and received and enjoyed by Jen - I believe there were more before the photo was taken!); a couple of darling Christmas trees, one sewn and one knitted with beads; and a gorgeous knitted star that's from Rosee Woodland's design in Issue 50 of The Knitter (it has a cunning construction and is well worth checking out).

I contributed the cross-stitched mitten, which is made from the same pattern download as the Red Coat I blogged about previously. It's a great pattern, and I surprised myself by enjoying the cross stitching. I don't mind doing it, as long as I'm in love with the finished item. Too much of the cross stitch I've done in the past hasn't really had a purpose, and I'm as much of a product crafter as I am a process crafter. The process of cross stitching does little for me, so I have to be inspired by the product. And who wouldn't be inspired by this?

Apologies for the shoddy focus - I didn't realise until this morning, and it's now too late as the mitten has been gifted! :) If I had enough soluble canvas left I would be making another for our tree - these are some class A ornaments in Alicia Paulson's Snow Day Ornament Set. Highly recommended. There's nothing left but for me to make the polar bear. Clearly!

The front and back are different, with a totally knitwear-inspired design. I love it! And I'm sure that Sylvie does too. I tweeted a picture of this while it was in progress and Mimi (she also has a great article in Issue 53 of The Knitter about photographing your knits) asked me to comment on the soluble canvas... Well I can report that it was great! I used this DMC product, which I ordered from Sew and So (whose service I like a lot so far - based on two affordable and quick purchases): Soluble Canvas.

You can see that I cut out the design and blanket stitched it together with the soluble canvas still intact - this was really handy for keeping my blanket stitches neat and tidy. I'll take all the help I can get with that sort of thing... Wrapping paper with grids on the back? Yes please!

Once it was at this stage, I simply popped it in some tepid water and swooshed it around a bit. The canvas went a bit sticky, then slimey and gradually dissolved away with no trouble. I did have to rinse it a couple of times, as after the first wash it dried like cardboard, but after another soak and rinse it was fine. It certainly wasn't fiddly, which I've heard that waste canvas can be. I hope that answers your question Mimi! 

Before I sign off for the Christmas break, there are a few of other bits of news to share...

First up, Belinda Boaden and Wendy Baker of True Brit knits now have a group on Ravelry, so do come over and join us there - there will be wittering about all sorts of things, including London, knitting, cooking, cake and G&T! I'm thinking of making London Cowling fairly soon, so I'll be over there chuntering about yarn choices shortly...

Secondly, if you are thinking of making a charitable donation over the Christmas period, please consider donating to Jim's fundraising for Refuge (the UK's largest domestic violence charity, providing both practical support and shelter, and raising awareness of the issue). Jim is running the London Marathon for Refuge next year, and aiming for a frankly bonkers-sounding time (less than 3h 30min?!?). We have some fun knitting-related things planned for the new year, so keep an eye out here on my blog, or over on Jim's own blog: VeufTricot.

And thirdly, Susan is taking pre-orders for the Wartime Farm Sleeveless Pullover pattern. This is being sold to help to raise money for the Women's Land Army Tribute which it is hoped will be created at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. You can read more about the pattern and history behind it over on Susan's blog. I helped to edit the pattern, and it's not only a lovely piece but also a great cause.

So that's all for now folks! Have a very lovely next few weeks, whether you are celebrating Christmas or not. I shall be back around the New Year. Have fun, and happy knitting!

FO: Hampstead Wreath & Christmas delights

I had what's known in our family as a Cave Weekend. I did practically nothing beyond sitting on the sofa in my pyjamas, and working on my deadline craft projects. The sewing is done ready for tomorrow's SnB ornament swap, so I will share that with you once the parcels are safely opened tomorrow evening. I finished off Mum's Socks - head to Ravelry if you'd like to see them, and NO PEEKING Mum! And I went pompom mad with my Hampstead Wreath...

Yes, the pompoms are rather larger than the wreath, but I don't care! It makes me smile and that's the main thing. The pattern by Belinda and Wendy raises money for CityMeals, and I reckon that there's still time to knit and dress your door with one (mine took 2 evenings among other projects).

I've also finally got the tree up and dressed (this is about 2 weeks later than normal - I LOVE Christmas trees!).

I love getting out the baubles as there are so many memories hidden among them. When I set up my first home on my own, Gran gave me a small selection of her Christmas baubles, and these are my utter favourites. Some of them were given to my Mum's family, as gifts from the trading ships that visited Barry Docks, where my Grandfather worked. I think that the lovely little black bauble with the tree on it is one of these (at the top of the photo below). It's certainly my absolute favourite.

Right, I have to be super-focussed this week, as there's still a lot of work to be done before I stop for Christmas! I hope that all of your preparations are going well, if you celebrate Christmas. Sending seasonal good wishes and happiness to all. Jen x

Shetland Heritage Patterns - more news!

When I posted about the Shetland Heritage Fair Isle Jumper last week, eagle-eyed Felix spotted that the design was familiar to her. She pointed me towards Mary Jane Mucklestone's excellent 200 Fair Isle motifs, and sure enough, on page 35 there was a photo of a jumper that appeared to come from the same design!

How I wished I had seen that photo before I wrote the pattern for Jamieson & Smith... But all was not as simple as it at first seemed.

I was lucky enough to have worked with Mary Jane last year, when I edited her lovely hat and gloves for the Knit Real Shetland book, so I dropped her an email to ask her if she knew any more about this lovely Fair Isle jumper in the photo in her book. Despite being in the middle of deadlines and travelling, she was kind enough to email me straight back, to let me know that the photo was from the Shetland Museum Photo Archive. You can see the picture in question over on their website here: Fair Isle Allover Jumper in photo archive.

I was fascinated! On looking closely at the photo, it seemed clear that the design was the same. There are so many different Fair Isle motifs, all in exactly the same positions, that there was no chance that this was a coincidence. However, it was also clearly not a photo of the same jumper before it was worn and cut into pieces... If you look closely at the motifs on the bottom band, you can see that in the cut up jumper I worked on in the archives, the motifs are unsymmetrical and "incorrect", whereas those in the jumper in the photo are correct. I speculated all sorts of explanations for the design similarities!

I fired off an email to Carol Christiansen at the Shetland Museum and Archives, to ask her if she knew anything about the Fair Isle jumper in their photo archive. I received this information in response:

The jumper in the photo of SM01003 is a replica of the one in pieces that you looked at (TEX 8943).  We went through a period in the 1990s of having replicas made of some items in the collection, so they could be used for handling, etc. but they were never exact replicas, using modern yarns in colours that were available at the time.  The replica was hand-knit in 1993 of machine-made yarn and the knitter ‘corrected mistakes’ she felt had been made in the original.  

So the photo is of a new garment knitted from the cut-up jumper in pieces that I worked from in the summer. It is interesting to see where the new photo-archive garment, and the new pattern I've written differ - I think that most of the differences come from the fact that I was writing instructions that had to work as a printed pattern for other knitters, whereas the knitter in the 90s was just making a one-off piece. The charts would have been even more enormous if I had kept to the arrangement of different motifs on front and back!

In related-news, Jamieson & Smith have released the kit for the Fair Isle Cap that I worked on at the same time. This is also a pattern written from an item in the archives.

That's a slightly bonkers-looking picture of me modelling it, when we were at J&S in October! It's knitted with a full lining, so there are 4 layers of fabric keeping your ears warm! Perfect for the icy cold weather we've had this week.

Here's a more sensible flat photo of it, so that you can see the lovely motifs incorporated:

© Jamieson & Smith

This hat also has a bit of story behind it, as it was purchased on eBay and donated to the Museum by Masami Yokoyama (designer of the delightful tea-themed tea cosy in Knit Real Shetland). It's a 19th Century hat, that was most-likely a fisherman's hat, designed and worn for work (unlike the jumper which was more of a fashion item). You can read more about how it was discovered and donated over on the Visit Shetland website here: Fair Isle Cap donated by Wool Week eBayer

As with the jumper, I've had to make some adjustments from the original artefact. The motifs were incomplete and confused up the back of the hat, as you can see below:

And the folded-up brim was just left curling over. In fact, the brim appears to have been knitted at a different time to the rest of the cap, as the colours are not quite the same, and the yarns slightly different. Carol advised me that this was likely to have originally had a knitted lining, so that was the construction that I used in the new pattern.

You can see the Fair Isle stranding poking over the top of the curled brim. There are pattern pages on Ravelry for both the jumper and hat: Shetland Museum and Archive designs

And both can be purchased as kits from Jamieson & Smith.

Happy knitting!

WIP: Hampstead Wreath

Mum's socks are coming along nicely, and I'm sure that they will be done in time for Christmas. I don't think I'll share any photos again until after I've given them to her, since I know that she reads the blog. *waves* Hi Mum!

In the meantime, I've been taken in by more pompom fever, and I cast on last night for a Hampstead Wreath. This is a lovely pattern by Belinda and Wendy at TrueBritKnits, and it's raising money for Citymeals, a charity who have been providing invaluable support to vulnerable people in New York for many years, but particularly post-Sandy there has been even more need for their services. We forget sometimes just how incredible it is to have such a reliable and thorough NHS and social services infrastructure here in the UK. This isn't the case in other parts of the world, and much of what we take for granted just isn't available unless you have the money or insurance to pay for it.

I am slightly nervous that the scale of my pompom may not work with the scale of my wreath... This is made using my EXTRA LARGE pompom maker, has a diameter of 4.5in and used a whole ball of Sirdar Big Softie! I think it will be the centre pompom, with smaller pompoms surrounding it. It's going to be a stunner, I feel sure of it!

I am also lusting after some of the other True Brit Knits designs, and I feel that it's my duty to make sure that you are properly familiar with Belinda & Wendy's work....

© TrueBritKnits

This is my current jumper obsession. It's called Pendleton, and is knitted in Artesano Aran (a lovely yarn!). Every knitter should have this somewhere in their Ravelry queue, surely?! At this time of year (and it's -6C out there today in Somerset) this kind of snuggly warm jumper is perfect! I've been yearning for some aran to magically appear in my stash overnight, but it's not happened so far. You can bet I'll be casting it straight on if I get my hands on some though! It would look fantastic with the Toast cord skirt that I bought in the sale last year...

What I do have yarn for is the Titfer Hat. And this is a great example of one of Belinda's brilliant qualities, and why EVERYONE should follow her on Twitter (she and Wendy are TrueBritKnits over there too). She's hilarious. Seriously funny, and if I'm in need of a giggle, she can be relied upon for a quick quip that just makes my side ache. The hat is lovely, and I have some John Arbon Knit by Numbers in my stash, but the blog post and pattern page talking about the design and naming of Titfer are very funny and well worth a read.

© TrueBritKnits

So, if you haven't already, add Belinda to your list of people to follow on Twitter, friend her on Ravelry (or in her own BelindaBoaden account), like her on Facebook and bookmark her blog (the Monday Mood posts by Wendy are super-inspiring!). And go and give those patterns some love on Ravelry as well. I have!

And now back to my frenzy of pre-Christmas knitting...

Disclaimer: Belinda has NOT paid me, or asked me to shower her with compliments this morning. She has gifted me the odd pattern from time to time, but I would also happily buy them. She's just a genuinely good-egg, and I love working with her too. :)

Pattern Available: Batcombe Hat

Thank you all for the kind, kind comments on yesterday's post. I wasn't really expecting that, so it made me smile all day long. Thank you! Onwards...

I'm continuing in the theme of Somerset villages for the names of my updated patterns. Today's offering is called Batcombe, which I chose, because a hat with two balls, clearly needs to be BATcombe... Well it made me giggle anyway! :)

This is another hat which would be perfect for a Christmas gift (although you'd have to prise this one out of my cold dead hands, I love it so much!).

Jim and I had great fun on Saturday morning, taking photos out in the fields behind our house. Well I had fun anyway - I was thoroughly silly! And Jim... well, he blogged about being a photographer over on his pages: Snapper for Hire.

Pompoms seem to be undergoing something of a renaissance, and have been the subject of a great deal of twittering of late, so it seemed only right that this should be the next pattern to get the once over and release!

(This is a slightly more sensible pose...) The Batcombe Hat is knitted in a long rectangle, and then seamed up each side. This makes it a brilliant new-knitter project, or just a fun pattern to make at knitting night, or in front of a good film. Wearing it just makes me smile! How can you not smile when you have a pair of pompoms on your head?!

There are just two cables to master, and the pdf pattern includes a link to a good cable tutorial if you've not tried cables before. There's also a link to a pompom tutorial, on the off-chance that you've forgotten how to make them the old-fashioned way. You could of course equally use a spangly new pompom maker.

I've done both a chart and written pattern for the cable, so both sides of that debate are fully catered for. It's not a complex cable, but I really liked the effect on the finished fabric.

My sample was made using Laughing Yaffle's Fledgling Sock yarn, which is a lovely 4ply yarn made from a blend of alpaca, merino and nylon. Alison hand-dyes the yarn in small batches, so availability is variable. It's worth looking out for an update, but if you want to get going straight away, you could easily use an alternative 4ply yarn - just pick one with reasonably good stitch definition, so not too much fluff! You want to be able to see the cables once you've worked them.

The Batcombe Hat is available for download from Ravelry, by clicking the Buy Now button, at a cost of £2.00: 

Happy knitting!

FO: At LAST my Still Light Tunic!

It's done, it's done! After ten months of being on the needles, I have finally cast off my Still Light Tunic! It wasn't without one last "when knitting attacks" bit of pain, as my first attempt at casting off meant that it was too tight to walk in... I carefully undid the cast-off edge and redid it using the K2tog method and an even larger needle. Now it is perfect!

Can you tell from the look on my face that I'm pleased with it? I really, really am!

I pretty much stuck to the pattern as written, but I changed the order of working the instructions. As soon as I had split the sleeves, I worked on the sleeves until they were done before returning to work the rest of the body - I couldn't face the thought of turning the sleeves each round with the whole weight of the dress on my needles, and this was (in my humble opinion) much easier! I did the same with the pockets... As soon as I'd separated off the pocket stitches, I put the body on hold and completed the pockets. Quite apart from the issue of knitting small rounds with more than 400g of dress hanging off the needles, I knew that I would want to cast this off and wear it immediately! I've written before about my impatience at the end of a project, and this was a good way to stave it off.

I also just move the pocket shaping a tiny bit closer together - the markers were just moved together by a few stitches on each side. Nothing too significant though.

I do need to do something about sewing the pockets into the inside of the dress, as at the moment, it looks great when my hands are in the pockets (and why would they want to be anywhere else - it's warm and snuggly in there!!!), but they shift around a bit otherwise and the pattern does suggest stitching them down. I have to admit it makes me a bit nervous that I'm going to make a mess of the whole thing, but I'm sure that's not the case! I'll wear it for a bit while I think about it...

Now the only thing to do is to work out how to make the dress super-cat-repellent as he is already looking at me as if he might want to come and snuggle up to the new dress!

The yarn is Fyberspates Ethereal 4ply (65% cashmere, 35% silk; 400m/100g hanks) - the base has changed somewhat since I got mine, but Jeni has some of the new version in the shop at the moment in a beautiful plum colour: 60% cashmere, 40% silk; 400m/100g hanks

It was a pleasure to work with, and my dress took 4.25 skeins. Pure luxury!

The pattern is by Veera Välimäki, and is available for download. I did find in some areas that the pattern was a bit minimal. As a knitter I would have appreciated many more stitch counts, as they help me to decide if I want to tweak sizing, and also help me to check whether I've done the required number of increases or decreases. For such a popular design, I'm surprised that this sort of detail wasn't included. That said, the pattern wasn't incorrect, and I'm very pleased with my finished dress.

As always, my progress notes and pictures can all be found over on my Ravelry project page: Jen's Ethereal Sweater Dress (luckily it's not actually ethereal...!)

I guess I'd better get on with Mum's Christmas socks now, hadn't I?!

Shetland Heritage Pattern Release

Well it's all go around here at the moment! Kate's book (Colours of Shetland) is now on sale, and at some point next week, I shall tell you all about how much I enjoyed working on it! But today I'm delighted to share with you some work that I did over the summer...

Jamieson & Smith approached me earlier in the year to work with them on some patterns for their new Shetland Heritage yarn. I blogged about how much I liked the new yarn when it first went on sale, but now I'm delighted to be able to show you one of the patterns I've written for it.

© Jamieson & Smith

This is the Fair Isle V-Necked Jumper (it is not my own design!). I was asked to study some garments held in the collection of the Shetland Museum and Archives, and to create knitting patterns for them. So the design is the work of the unnamed knitter who created the original pieces. I've not changed the colourway, or the construction; I've just tried to recreate the design as closely as possible. This is thought to be a fashionable men's jumper from the early 1920s (rather than a fisherman's jumper).

While we were in Lerwick in July, I spent a day happily transcribing the patterns, and Jim even joined me to help out in the afternoon! There was such detail in the original pieces!

The V-Necked Fair Isle jumper from which this pattern comes wasn't in the best condition. It had been worn and loved to pieces! Above you can see what remained of the sleeves.

Even the body had been cut into pieces! In fact, when it was first laid out in front of me, it had appeared to be a cardigan...

It wasn't until we laid the piece flat that it was clear that actually it was a jumper that had been cut open up the side seam.

Then began the meticulous task of transcribing the stitch patterns. The motifs appear in a fairly random arrangement, with many of them being knitted "incorrectly" in the lower portions of the body, and later repeated with the mistakes ironed out. Jim noticed that in the band of patterns where the neck split occurs, new motifs are introduced, and the gauge changed somewhat. So we speculated that perhaps more than one person was involved in making this sweater? Or perhaps it was put to one side for a while, and the knitter returned to it having improved their skills on other projects. It was fascinating how much you could guess from just looking at the remains of a jumper!

It was quite a task to decide how best to recreate the design - I took the rib pattern from the cuff fragment and used it at the welt, neck and sleeve cuffs, since the original garment had just a few rows of two-colour stocking stitch and it was curling badly.

In the interests of keeping the pattern to a manageable number of pages I felt it was best to repeat the design on front and back, so the arrangement of OXO motifs that you see on the front in the picture above is repeated on the back. I have tried to keep the feel of a sampler piece however, and resisted the temptation to cut down the number of different O designs. If you wanted to, you could easily adjust the pattern to use just one or two designs, or go the whole way and mix them up with your own patterns, making each one different!

The jumper has been sized to fit chests from 32 to 48 inches (81-122cm), and is only available as a kit directly from Jamieson & Smith: V-Necked Fair Isle Jumper

© Jamieson & Smith

I'm immensely grateful to Dr Carol Christiansen at the Shetland Museum & Archives for her assistance, as well as to Grace Williamson who did an amazing job of knitting up this jumper. Thank you both!

Pattern Available: Penselwood Hat

If you're short of ideas for a quick gift knit then this hat could be just what you're after! I've got the rights back to many of the designs I originally did for Simply Knitting and The Knitter, so I'm working through and getting them ready for release as single pattern downloads.

I've renamed this beanie Penselwood, after a pretty village not far from here. This hat is knitted back and forth, with an interesting lace pattern at the start, ending with a plain stocking stitch top. The decreases form a satisfying spiral and before you know it, you'll be sewing up the seam and wrapping up the finished hat for a friend.

I chose Louisa Harding's Ianthe yarn for this design, although any smooth DK yarn would work brilliantly I'm sure. Ianthe is a lovely blend of 50% merino and 50% cotton, and I really enjoyed knitting with it.

The lace pattern features a clever wrap stitch pattern that's really simple to work, but looks lovely. Full instructions are included in the pattern download, and the lace pattern is given in both written and charted formats.

The pattern costs just £2.00 and is available from my Ravelry download store, or by clicking the Buy Now button: 

Happy knitting!

FO: Red Coat Tree Ornament

Last year I greatly enjoyed sharing the joys of my Traditional Advent Calendar with some friends on Twitter. We used the #traditionaladventcalendar hashtag, and tweeted what we had behind our doors each day. It was great fun, and we decided that not only would we do it again this year, but that we would also kick Advent off in style with a little swap. It was a simple swap - we just had to send a small hand-made Christmassy gift along with a few other treats to our nominated partner.

As soon as the details were finalised I knew what I wanted to make for my partner... It was an ornament that a friend had made last year as part of our knitting group's ornament swap. The Red Coat from Alicia Paulson's Snow Day Ornament Set - available as a pattern download from that link.

The pattern was really well-written and included useful things like instructions on how to work all of the required embroidery stitches. Very handy for those of use whose sewing needles are a little bit rusty! It's all the little clever details that made me fall in love with this ornament last year - there is blanket stitching round the edges of the pieces, but certain parts like the pockets and collar also have a contrast colour running stitch to emphasise the details.

The stand-out RESISTANCE-IS-FUTILE feature though, has to be the adorable little mittens on a string. When I saw these, I knew that at some point I would make this decoration. I just love them! They are even different on front and back, and the instructions remind you to make sure that the thumbs are pointing the right way... Perfection!

I naively thought that this would be a quick little project to whip up - after all it's sewing rather than knitting, and in my head at least, sewing is always faster than knitting! This wasn't the case, but I'm absolutely chuffed to bits with the results, and I think that Rachel (my swap partner) was pretty pleased with it too!

Now I just need to organise myself, and find time to finish making another one for me to put on our tree...