Multi Magic

Multi magic is a big st made of many yarns held together. I use it as a yarn ‘Bank’ and pull this or that yarn out of it, while continuing to carry the rest right there in my ‘bank’. I also use it to avoid CO, BO and weaving-in tails and other knit clean up (it works well in crochet too).

The multi magic shawl, was fun and easy knit. It also makes it easy to use more of the yarn I have a lot of, and less of other yarns.

Below left: right side, on the right – the wrong side. The pattern is available here.

 

It was so much fun, I had to knit a hat to go with it:

 

Then I thought the hat is an Elfy hat (Elfy comes from a children book husband & I wrote, called ‘The mushroom under the Elf‘. The book has knitting patterns right in the middle of the story).

 

And then I saw a 3 needle BO that I just had to try and thought the easiest would be to do it in a slipper, and out came these Elfy moccasins! So my patterns for the next Elfy book are almost ready.

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Rainbow poem, 7 steps.

This scarf is a continuation of rainbow poem shawls. The name I call it for short is Karma. It has 7 squares, symbolising our journey towards God:

• Starting with all colors, as I believe we have everything in us from birth. The first step has more red, to symbolise more earthiness, attachments, me mine & I. And very little sky blue, which symbolises God.
• The second step has more orange, and no red, To symbolise loosing the heavy sanskaras/karma, and moving more towards light.
• The last step is all sky blue and is knitted in only one direction: UPWARD! There is no confusion/sidesteping.

It took me 5 tries to get the look that gives what I mean. This is the last and finished one:

Knitwise: start with all yarns, metered/modular knitting, and loose a yarn/color each step.

If you are interested in the pattern (knit or crochet ) let me know.

Here is the front and back side:

and here are some of the previous attempts:

 

and another:

 

 

Yarn Play – free knit pattern

This pattern is available as a free download

This is a fun & easy way to work with color: it’s not exactly intarsia, nor stranding.
Start with 5 yarns and drop them in place as you CO.
Continue by playing with the yarns as you knit, moving them here and there to your heart’s delight.
Then, pick up all the yarns as you BO to create the fringe on the other side.
In the end, there is no finishing work to do,
no tails to weave in, just comfortably snuggling into it.

• THERE IS NO NEED TO STRAND or TWIST YARNS,
instead use the ds st is a color switching point. After knitting it, you have a choice between 2 colors: would you like to continue with this yarn or the other? That’s what gives the freedom and ease of color in this pattern.
The more freely you use this ability to switch color at a whim, the more fun and unique your shawl will be.

I made it into shawls and scarves, but it is perfect for a pet blanket or lapghan/afghan.

Beginner: just do it all in garter st and don’t worry.
Advanced: use it as a base to do different patterns on.

Magic sts

Recently I’ve been playing with 2 ways that make color knit (and crochet) easier, and also eliminate the need for finishing work at the end:

MULTI ST  is knitted with all the yarns held together. I use it at one edge of the knitting (but plan to try it in the middle too). At the beg. of a row, I can choose any yarn I want from my multi, and knit 2 or more rows with it.  I can hide a certain yarn for half a shawl, and then – pop it out of thin air! I can knit a 2 color pattern (mosaic, sl st etc), and then move to 2 totally different colors without any effort. I can use gradual color change, or rainbow, like this: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Purple, Blue, Sky blue, and back to Red, or, instead of Red I can retrace and follow the Sky blue with, Blue, Purple, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red.

I avoid finishing work by letting the yarn be as and where it needs to. The easiest is to start and finish with a multi st, and use the yarn tails as a fringe.

The other trick is similar, but the sts is only double stranded, and used as a border between 2 bordering yarns. That eliminates the need to twist/cross. strand etc. I use this st in the middle of the fabric, as it’s not needed in the edge (that will make it a multi st, even if it’s just 2 yarns). To enhance it, I always knit it as st.st even in garter st knitting. It makes it bold and textured.

So, here are examples of using the multi st (see it on the side, in the asymmetric  Karma shawl):

 

The ds st:

Few more examples:

 

 

Rainbow Poem, Landscape. Very big showy shawls.

This pattern is available for $4.50 USD buy it now

This pattern is for an extra large, showy shawl. Add colors to your heart’s delight, and don’t worry about mistakes. Instead – incorporate them into the knitting.

Knit upwards, starting with one yarn, adding one at a time, and ending with 7 yarns.

Knitted with short rows for shaping, and garter st for the edge-stripes, and the upward bands.
Special effect: on WS rows, when knitting the upward garter bands, carry the yarn on the right side of the
knitting.

Size:approx. 77×26” 195x66cm”, depending on the yarns.
Size is easy to adjust by knitting less sts and less rows.

Materials:
1 st marker
Yarn: 7 med/worsted – bulky yarns, approx. 75/85m each.
• The key is to use novelty yarns, or any other yarns with special texture.
• Have a big variety of yarns, and alternate them. Example:
if you have 2 eye lash yarns, put a boucle or self striping yarn in between them for better effect.
• Don’t worry about running out of yarn. Instead, be adventurous, and substitute a different yarn whenever you run out. This will make the knitting and the shawl more intriguing.

Needles: US 15 / 10 mm

Gauge: 8 sts X 12 r = 4”/10cm.
Using different kinds of yarn makes the gauge more an average than an exact number.

Skill level: intermediate. Pattern includes mix of st.st and garter, inc, stranding, intarsia, and short rows.

Hope you’ll enjoy it!

Rainbow Poem Shawls

The rainbow poem is a series of showy shawls/scarves,

with little variations in how they look and how they are knit.

It is still work in progress, but the first 2 are ready as a pattern.

Rainbow poem. Mild.

Photo above and below, knitted with 5 yarns. Starting at one tip with all yarns, knitting them together through the whole piece, and finishing at the other tip with all 5 together. This shawl has a lot of sweetness to it, and sits beautifully on the back.

See more details here.

 

Above, the pattern is called “Rainbow poem. Wild”.

These shawls are bigger, knitted from side to side like the Mild version, but with 7 yarns and a different stripe width.

For more details, look here.

 

 

The third is called: “Rainbow poem. Landscape”. It is the easiest one to knit as it is knitted upward, starting with one yarn and adding one more with each stripe. It’s size is L-XL, and the pattern will be ready in 2-3 weeks.

 

The forth is “The bird of paradise”, and its the most complicated one:

 

And I’m ashame to say that I have few more version of it that I would like to try… Oh dear!

More of Meher Baba’s Real I

 

 

‘The Real I’ scarf is based on Meher Baba hand writing from the book ‘In God’s Hand’.

Through the whole book, Baba never uses the word ‘I’ for Himself, but only as ‘the real I’, ‘the infinite I’, ‘the limited I’, etc.

The scarf – very rich, soft, double stranded, with some double knit, is huge.

It’s almost like wearing a soft dress that reaches nearly to the ankles!

Pink Lily Shawl

Water Lilies are very big with me. I have so many photos of them just waiting to be knit. This is an experiment in making a simple lily – only 2 colors, and at the same time experimenting with shawl shapes (looking for a shape I really like, that permits picture knitting on it).

Knitted sideways in st.st with small short rows at the bottom hem, and one big short row section across the whole thing in the back (as an upside down V. Starting with very short rows, inc. all the way to the top then dec back again.)

Shawlderet

My recent pattern is up! And I am all excited and happy about it. There are still patterns to come out of it, but that will have to wait.

This pattern is an ‘all purpose’ pattern, and it works well for:

A Cowl – medium # of sts (medium height), and knit enough to cover the neck.
A Scarf – use less sts, and knit on and on…
A Shawl – CO enough sts for the height you need (depending on the person’s size).
Shawlette – which makes a great skirt too.

and a Hat.
The difference will be in the number of sts, but the same pattern works for all.

Patterns enclosed:
A general/all gauge pattern.
Example of 2 color version for 25 sts.
Example of 3 colors version for 25 sts.

Yarn and needle size are not specified.
To start, decide what you wish to knit, and how tall you want it to be. This will be your CO line (the CO will be the height of the hat/cowl/scarf…), and the number of rows you knit will give the width of the garment).
Then choose your yarn & needles.

Gauge does not have to be perfect. You can knit a gauge piece, or:

1. Estimate how many sts you need, based on the info from the yarn wrap or previous knits you did with similar yarn & needles.
2. Start knitting, and check the size after knitting a few rows. Redo if needed.

What if you run out of yarn? Fun. Change to a different yarn… It will make it into a more interesting and artistic garment.

Hope you’ll enjoy it too.

Going Elizabeth

Husband and I been watching pride and prejudice, and remembered our friend has a different version of this movie. Off went the husband to borrow it so we can watch and compare movie notes – what they kept, how the characters were portrayed, and so on. But, on arrival to our friend’s house, in came her neighbor who has 4 versions of this movie. Back came the husband with all these pride and prejudices that we thoroughly enjoyed watching and arguing about :).

So, little wonder that my knitting turned out a bit Elizabethan (as in Bennet):

What started out as the Sahavas hat pattern in double knitting, ended up as a bonnet! And the caplet – the photos do not do it justice (probably because of the pink pajamas underneath!), the caplet makes me feel like Queen Elizabeth – it is SO NICE to wear.

Being a double knit, here is the other side (of the story?):

And a little side view:

And on to serious matters:

In a way this is a continuation of ‘Meandering Randomnesses’ (see previous post). In the bonnet I used 2 variegating yarns, with the decisions that the pink always goes to one side, and if there is no pink – the lighter color will go there.

The result in my eyes is different to what I get knitting with self changing yarn, that tends to be more stripy.

I used this technique a little bit in the shawl too, but not enough as I came to it towards the end. A way to use it for example is when double knitting with one yarn that variegates from white to black, and one solid color (any color). Then having the white on one side of the knitting and the black on the other. The color change in the yarn dictates on which side of the knitting it will be. So that one side will be white + solid, the other = black + solid. This will be good for background, but not for image double knitting.

And that’s my meandering for today :).