2013 in Knitting

Towards the end of 2012 I picked up knitting again having had a year or so off. 

I went to a craft fair some time ago and saw the work of Rachel John. Rachel worked with multiple yarns at a time on very large needles to create large scale pieces of knitting such as rugs and blankets.  I bought some very large needles from her at that craft fair and started knitting a blanket holding 6 or more chunky yarns at once whilst knitting on 24 mm needles.  This project gradually got shelved as I realised the cost of yarns that would go into it.  However it lurks at the back of my stash hoping to eat up ends of balls.

My boyfriend saw the half finished blanket in my collection and when I suggested I knitted him a scarf he knew he wanted something as impressive.  I knitted the scarf below on 15 mm needles holding 6 varying weights of yarns. I chose a simple brioche rib to give the scarf a lovely squishy texture. In the end I reckon this scarf used about a kilometre of yarn.

I was rewarded for my efforts on the scarf with an amazing book on Turkish sock knitting for Christmas.  This was the push I needed to finally finished the Turkish socks I had started a long time ago.  The book included lots of pattern inspiration and quite a few charts that I incorporated in the legs of these socks. The book also detailed the method for a very traditional braided cast off.  This cast off created a neat non-rolling, two colour cuff to these socks. 

I knitted myself a sleeveless jumper freestyle from some gorgeous Colinette wool, Graffiti in colour way Cezanne.  Hopefully one day I will upload pictures to my ravelry project.  I suspect I will frog this jumper at some point and knit something looser.  This is quite a fitted sleeveless jumper knit mainly in stockinette with a cowl neckline and a racer back. The yarn although gorgeous is very bulky and does not really lend itself to being fitted.  I think I will frog this and create a cropped jacket.

My main knitting achievement this year has been knitting my first every sleeved jumper. Tony's Holey Grey'l Jumper. This jumper was knitted from a raglan tutorial whilst incorporating ideas from another pattern for a hole detail on a purl row of a mainly stockinette jumper. Below is a picture of this jumper as a work in progress.  Once again I haven't taken finished photos of this.  I finished this jumper with a braided cast off like the one used on the tops of the Turkish socks.  This introduced a small smidgen of colour on the hem, cuffs and neck edge.