Oolong knits

Emmaline by Jennifer Wood. I saw this pattern and I thought: What a beautiful and original chest for a sweater. Then I looked at its projects' page on Ravelry and saw how those who knit were looking so good wearing it. This is more unusual than you would think, but Emmaline looks good on everyone, from the flat-chested to the busty. And it is free.

Where I live, yoghurt pots are not recycled. No, this is not the 3rd world, this is one of the richest towns in northern England. We eat a lot of yoghurt in my family. One way we have been reducing our own generated plastic trash is by buying the big tubs of 1kg of yoghurt. But, recently, I have had an even better idea: homemade yoghurt. It is super simple and quite fast to prepare. Because yoghurt lasts forever in the fridge, I can prepare a large amount each time. It is cheaper than store-bought and, more importantly, it is delicious . Here is my simple recipe. Homemade yoghurt Ingredients: 1l of whole milk 6 tablespoons of plain yoghurt Special equipment: a food thermometer Preparation: Heat the milk up to 85°C, stirring it as it gets hot (if you don't have a food thermometer, heat it up until it is just below boiling temperature, it should be smoking and foaming). Let it cool to about 46°C (it should be warm, not hot) and mix the yoghurt. Put it away in a warm plac...

Morse Code Sweater by Valentina Bogdanova. I know I'm being bad, but I have got to say it: I think the author of this pattern has never seen Morse code in her life. Still, beautiful lace work. I say it, even if I am usually not a big fan of lace. The green version was taken from this project and uses two yarns with slightly different shades of green and held together. One is hand-dyed and the other a luxurious combination of mohair and silk. Exquisite!

This is the perfect time to start knitting Christmas decorations, if you haven't yet done so. They are fun, quick knits and you still have time to finish before it's too late. Today I have a cute little pattern for you. Needles and yarn: Drops Big Merino and 4mm/8UK/6US needles. Gauge: 20 sts = 10 cm, 4 inches. Note: this yarn's recommended needle size is 5mm, but by using 2 sizes below I obtain a stiffer fabric that hangs flat. If using another yarn, use a smaller needle than recommended as well. It is easy to adapt the pattern by continuing to increase until the tree is the desired size and binding off a proportional number of stitches in each section. Abbreviations: CO: cast-on (long-tail or your favourite). st(s): stitch(es). kfb: knit front and back, 1 st increase. k: knit. slkwyf: slip knitwise with yarn in the front. BO: bind-off (loosely, your favourite one). Note: this pattern includes a selvage stitch (slkwyf). This is optional and I think the tr...

Just like last week, here is combination of cream, brown and blue. I do love these colours together. Ambershore by Inese Sang is a triangle scarf. I really like the simple colour work of this project and, as you can see in its project's page, there are many colour combinations that work beautifully with it.

Ages ago I wrote a post about knitting books for beginners. In it I reviewed (quite negatively) the most well-known books written for the absolute beginner. I have just read it again and I was a bit shocked by how nasty I was. I must have been having a really bad day. Although, I must admit that I haven't changed my mind, that nothing that I wrote then is not still my opinion, I could have put it less bluntly. Still there was a reason I was so angry after reading those books. They really are a waste of time. If you are thinking about learning to knit, learn the very basic from videos and then buy a good reference book (that is what this post is all about). Here are a few posts I wrote while I was learning and that are still, in my humble opinion, really useful if you want to learn to knit: how to choose yarn and needles that are appropriate for learning, the videos I used to learn the basic stitches (I'm sure there are much better videos out there, but these ones are good ...

Fossveien by Inga Semmingsen has (almost) everything: colour, cables and texture. If I am going to be honest, I chose this pattern for this week's candy because I love the colours of this sweater. The pattern itself is still quite beautiful. And with so many different feaures, you are sure to avoid the boredom of miles of stockinette that knitting a sweater usually entails.

As promised, in this post we will convert the Embellished Microplastic Ban Pattern that we created last week in a pattern better suited for Portuguese-style knitting. We will follow the same procedure as explained in the first part of this tutorial (published two weeks ago). First, we will use a stitch dictionary. That is pretty trivial. Then, we can follow two routes. The straight-forward one: invert the order of each stitch. The clever one: deconstruct the pattern and alter the order of its parts in order to obtain an easier pattern. This last route is pretty similar to designing a new pattern like we did last week and you will see that we will follow the same steps as we did then. Let's start by analysing a typical increase row on last week's pattern: k2, yo, k3, (yo, k2tog) x 3, garter stitch, (yo, k2tog) x 3, k2, k3. As explained then, the first and last 3 stitches, namely k2, yo and k3, form a sort of eyelet selvage. Inside those stitches there is a 3-stitch garter band...

Bohus was a Swedish knitting cooperative working in the mid 20th century and famous for producing beautiful hand knit sweaters with a very specific type of design. The sweaters were made of high quality fibres with a blend of wool and angora and had a circular yoke with beautiful stranded knitting geometric motifs that included purl stitches. The beautiful Lunenburg Pullover by Amy Christoffers is a beautiful example of a pattern made in the Bohus style.