"Darn it!" or Kintsugi

My Cable Experiment Mitts (one of my first ever knitting patterns published back in 2012) were my favorite fingerless gloves to wear - even though they are quite plain and I have knitted far more interesting pairs of fingerless gloves ...

Quite a while ago, I ripped a hole into the upper edge. (In fact, I had to scroll quite far down in my Instagram feed to find out that this happened was in November 2015 - i.e. nearly five years ago).
Back then, somebody pointed me towards the idea of Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery") - a Japanese technique to mend broken pottery with gold in way that the crack is still visible, but beautifully so.
Translated to knitting, it meant for me that I wanted to mend it with a beautiful shiny yarn, that would stand out from the dark brown (and cheap) sock yarn that I had used to knit the mitts.
But to mend something like that you really need your concentration and to be in the right state of mind. So I put the ripped mitts safely away ...

This weekend I felt a bit uninspired (or lazy) to continue any of my current knitting projects, so I thought, I might just try to mend these old mitts. First I had to search for them - I had moved house inbetween - so that was OK. Afterwards, I looked for video tutorials on YouTube to teach me the basics of mending knitware. I found this Video by KNIT Freedom and watched it.

Finally, I started the actual mending - using Araucania Botany Lace (here's the yarn's Ravelry page, leftovers from a Hitchhiker scarf I knitted back in 2012). It is fiddly work, especially since I hadn't done this before - and I had to undo bits of it and redo them. I even managed to sew both sides together once :( But in the end it worked, now everything is secure and wearable again.
Here's how it looks ...

Considering that this is the first time, I've ever tried to darn or mend a piece of knitted fabric, I'm quite happy - even though I had hoped it would turn out a bit neater.
And I'm even tempted to make the patch a bit bigger or to put some more embroidery on the upper edge of the piece, because I really like the contrast of the two yarns.

The Miracle of blocking

Up until recently, I hadn't done much lace knitting. I tried a few free patterns on Ravelry (e.g. enja's scarf stole by Åsa Tricosa, Ella by Wendy Wonnacut and Nori by Carissa Browning - all beautiful and well written patterns that I highly recommend), but I ended up frogging most of them because I was too lazy to count, didn't want to concentrate too much on my knitting or rather wanted a pattern that I could easily remember - thus avoiding to carry the printed out pattern with me. 

About a year ago, I designed a lacy scarf myself (Seifenblasen Lace Scarf), but the lace pattern wasn't too sophisticated (only two different rows, i.e. really easy to remember :).

Just a while ago, I started experimenting with randomly knitted lace and used it to make e-book, tablet and phone sleeves that I really liked (see tutorial here). However, these are small enough projects (i.e. with a knitting time of a few hours), so it wasn't such an exercise in patience to see the crumply piece on the needles and wait for the blocked and lovely looking end-product.  The picture below shows how a small piece of random (or freeform) lace looks before (left hand side) and after (right hand side) blocking.

Moreover, the counting the total number of stitches wasn't much of a problem because there were only about 25 stitches on my needles and I could easily concentrate on the numbers of increases and decreases I had made (the number of increases and decreases needs to be equal in one row to keep the stitch count) or recount the whole row in a jiffy. Plus, there was no pattern to remember, since I made it all up as I went along :)

I really liked the technique and the outcome, so I decided to knit a freeform lace summer scarf or wrap. 

Having found some fingering weight yarn in different shades of red, I cast on 50 stitches and started ... however, I didn't exactly go as I planned. I hadn't anticipated that it would be an exercise in concentration to keep track of the increases and decreases during one row - even though I only counted the difference to the original count (i.e. "minus one" after a decrease and "plus one" after an increase). So I ended up counting each row at least once ...

Moreover, it took quite a while to finish the piece - the random lace pieces I had knitted up until then had measured 40 cm max. A scarf or wrap for an adult of my size must be at least 160 cm long and even though the technique is fun, after a while it got a bit boring and repetitive (this is not an instant gratification project, definitely not), I didn't see much progress ... and while knitting it, it wasn't exactly nice to look at. Here's how it looked about half finished. Crumpled and rather unattractive ... 

But I gritted my teeth, went on knitting and was really (really, REALLY) happy when yesterday I could finally put it on the blocking board. And I do like the look of it now.

The most ironic thing is, that with that kind of freeform lace, I ended up counting MORE than with regular patterns ... and I had to concentrate much more. However, I think the result made it worth its while. I'm looking forward to wear it as a summer wrap and I guess I will publish a tutorial soon.

Let's knit a Pouf!

During a knitting retreat of our local Stitch and Bitch group, we had a class to knit a pouf, held by Anne-Catherine of Knit Kit (or knitsandthings.com - her english Website).

I haven't finished it yet - knitting with 6 strands of cotton is more of a workout than actual knitting :) - but I am quite proud of what I've already made.

 

If you're interested, you can buy the pattern here. 

Yarnbombing-Installation

At a local school - as announced in the local paper, it was part of the school's open day programme.

Ad-hoc Project Basket

I always have a lot of unfinished objects (or works-in-progress) lying about ... ususally I put them in a bowl or a basket to keep them apart. On pinterest I found a nice idea where to put a project when all available bowls or baskets are already in use - an origami box made from a broadsheet newspaper (even though the origami pattern is called "garbage bin" ...). A wider version can be found here.

 

As usual, I'm not sure about the scarf idea :) But I do like the way the colours of this yarn (Arauncania Ranco Multy) show up when contrasted with black.

EDIT: The scarf on the photo was frogged, but the general idea made it into a free knitting pattern - called Nautilina Scarf and available here.

Drop Stitch Scarf

Made based on a pattern I found on Ravelry. It's called #13 Drop Stitch Scarf by Laura Bryant.

 

Nori - 海苔

Lovely "Nori" Scarf (Pattern by Carissa Browning, published in Knitty, Summer 2013). The first time I ventured into a serious lace pattern - I'm quite happy how it turned out. 

 

The only modification I made is that I did a p2togtbl where the pattern said ssp. 

Hyperbolic Crochet

I love the idea that some fancy mathematical ideas can best be explained with a crocheted piece of fabric - hyperbolic planes. Here's a video that explains the idea, an interview and here the paper.

Plus, it makes a great bathroom sponge/scrubby :-) 

How to make it

If you want to crochet such a sponge, it's really easy to do: you only need some leftover cotton yarn and the appropriate crochet hook.

Do a magic ring with 6 single crochet stitches.

After that continue to crochet 2 sc into each single crochet (i.e. doubling the number of stitches every round) ... until it's big enough or you run out of yarn.

Enjoy!

Crochet Dress

Seen in a shop window in Barcelona. I didn't look for a price tag ... ;-)

Guerilla-Knitting in Berlin

Buttercup

My Buttercup sweater (pattern by Heidi Kirmeier - available at Ravelry). I used some lovely Kaléido yarn - bought at La Droguerie in Paris.

Knit Your Own Cat

 Seen in Paris

So cute

Seen in a bookstore in Shibuya.

Variations on the Hitchhiker Theme

This scarf is based on the Hitchhiker pattern by Martina Behm - with some short row waves added.

To create the waves pattern, I used the technique described in the Mixed Waves Cowl pattern, i.e. dividing the width of your knitting into sections of the same length and filling them out with short rows in a random manner. As the scarf gets wider, it is also necessary to make the sections wider as you go along - I started with sections of 10 stitches and increasing them gradually ended up with a width of 20 stitches per section.

Japanese Pattern Books

... seen in Paris - quite appropriate ;-)