Oolong knits

A lovely sweater named after a lovely song by Sting. Practical Arrangment [sic] is not a proper pattern, but a project on Ravelry. However, if you have some experience on knitting a sweater from the top-down with raglan-shaped shoulders, the notes on this project are detailed enough that you can easily follow them as a pattern. Easy project with beautiful results thanks to the beauty of the yarn used (and some nice shaping too).

I've been using the Stash2Go App and I highly recommend it. The App is available both for Apple and Android devices and it is at quite an advanced stage of development. The shortest way to describe what this App does is to say that it's pretty much Ravelry on a App. Its name is a bit of a misnomer, because it provides a lot more than a stash database. After you log on to your Ravelry account through Stash2Go you'll be able to check and edit most of your Ravelry page, including projects, favourites and stash. You'll also be able to search Ravelry patterns, projects, and yarns. As I said, you can do almost anything you can do on Ravelry from it. The one feature I love about this App is the ability to upload photos directly from my phone camera to my Ravelry's project page. In only a few minutes I have a photo of my latest FO uploaded, no more excuses to leave an ugly "No featured photo" white square on my projects page. But as I think I made it clear eno...

Stacked increases and decreases is a knitting technique that yields amazingly beautiful, intricate colour-work. Most patterns that use this technique are paid, and well worth the money if you take the results into account. Today I chose a free pattern instead, since, even if it's not as visually striking as other patterns using this technique, it is a nice introduction to the technique itself. Stack Overflow is a cowl (the other half of the cowl is barely visible under the top one, if you look at its photo carefully), which is knitted flat, then grafted in the end. So the pattern is perfectly adapted to be knitted as a scarf too.

Picking the right yarn for a project is often the most challenging part of knitting one. I say this because I think that knitting is a lot more pleasant than difficult, and as for picking a pattern, Ravelry has made it really easy. There are so many beautiful patterns available for any type of project to choose from, that, even if you don't get the perfect pattern, you're sure to get something you'll love to wear with only a bit of effort and time. Sure some patterns are badly written or too difficult for your skill level, that is where again Ravelry comes to the rescue. I highly recommend checking the comments, the ratings, and even read through some of the project notes other ravelers have written on any pattern before you cast-on. Now you've picked your project, what yarn to use? That lovely yarn you've just added to your stash? The one recommended by the designer? The many substitution recommendations, based on what other people have used for this pattern, y...

General Hogbuffer is one of the most creative of sock's designers out there. Her/his (hard to know) work includes the more standard lace, cable and colour-work socks, but also a lot of funky construction involving unusual geometric shapes. Today I chose Jurga's Broken Jack for eye-candy because, guess what!, I've got the same yarn she used in my stash and I think I'm going to knit myself the same socks. In Broken Jack , General Hogbuffer had the brilliant idea of using self-striping yarn instead of the colour-blocks that the construction suggests. This yields pretty nice results, since the simplicity of the lozenges is surprisingly compatible with the complexity of nearly-random stripes. In addition, in order to avoid working intarsia in the round or knitting socks flat, hard choice to make, but I surely don't recommend attempting intarsia in the round, even in a small project such as socks, this sentence is turning out really long, but here is the conclusio...

When last week, Barack Obama has said the fatal shootings of two black men by police is "not just a black issue - but an American issue", he was right in more ways than he meant. The problem of police brutality in the US is a lot broader than race. It is a problem with a culture that believes the police is above the law and above the citizens it is meant to serve. Actually, the concept that the police is meant to serve seems to be quite absent from this culture. It seems quite innocuous and irrelevant, but when I lived in the US, I knew a Norwegian female university student who got arrested for "contempt of cop". She was shortly released afterwards (it helps being fair-skinned and blonde), without much more ado than wasting a few days of her life and getting quite a scare. Her story was quite common among European expats in that country and I heard a similar story shortly afterwards that had happened to a visiting scholar (a respected foreign university professor ...

Veera Välimäki is a Finish designer I particularly like. Her designs have the sort of understated beauty and elegance that defines Scandinavian design. The Plain and Simple Pullover is one of her free patterns, but I'll probably choose one of her tunic-like sweaters for a future post. They're absolutely lovely.

This is the last post of this series. Whoopee yay yay! In the last post, we're knitting a straight tube that corresponds to the centre part of the foot. At some point we'll have knitted enough as to reach the toe region. How do you know you've reached this region? Put your sock on and check that it reaches the beginning of the big toe. If you're knitting for someone else, you're in trouble... Just kidding. You have two options, if you've the measure of this persons foot, go ahead and use it, if you don't you should get a standard medium sized sock by knitting about 48 rounds (approximately 13cm or 5in) after the end of the gusset, which is about 60% of the total length of the foot. Now we'll start working the toe decreases: Odd rounds : k1, ssk, knit to last 3 stitches of the first half, k2tog, k1, repeat. Note: the first half corresponds to the sole stitches, the second to the top of the foot stitches. Even rounds : knit straight. This sectio...

Rosa Pomar is a little known Portuguese designer. Her most important work is not design, but the research of traditional Portuguese yarn handicrafts which are in the process of becoming extinct, with a focus on knitting. She has written a book about the Portuguese knitting traditions, Malhas Portuguesas: História e prática do tricot em Portugal . The book is, of course, written in Portuguese and not translated to another language. To make a living, she owns a shop , where she sells among many other things, her own yarn brand produced from the fleece of Portuguese sheep breeds using traditional techniques. In addition, she teaches fibre arts and her quilt designs are also pretty amazing. Funny enough, I first heard about them from an Argentinian quilt maker who lives in Buenos Aires. So it seems that even if Rosa is little known, her reputation has travelled far. The pattern I chose for today's candy is Gorro Montanhac . This design is inspired by traditional handwoven blankets f...