Ja'ali Stole

When I was seven, my parents moved my brother and I from Deepest, Darkest Cleveland, OH to New Delhi, India. My dad had a Fullbright scholarship, so we spent a year in a far off and very different land. More then thirty years later, I went back for the first time, with my own seven year old (plus her younger sister). In some ways it had changed completely, but in others, it was just as I remembered it: the light was the same, the sounds of the birds in the early morning, the cows wandering through the city streets, and monkeys sitting on fences, waiting for the opportunity to snatch what ever they could right out of your hands.

We went and saw all sorts of sights in the Golden Triangle, and it was an incredible source of inspiration for my designing. The first design that came out of that trip was the Delhi Beanie, with a border inspired by a series of tombs in Delhi. The second one is in Issue 35 of Knit Now - the Ja'ali Stole.

Photo credit Dan Walmsley for Practical Publishing

This pattern grew directly out of my trip to India: one of the almost ubiquitous features of the numerous palaces and tombs that we visited were pierced stone structures called ja'ali. These were basically the Moghul version of window curtains, and served to let in light and air while making it very difficult for anyone outside to see inside.

This picture makes it pretty clear where the stitch pattern came from! I swatched in a number of different yarns, but finally settled on a mohair blend, in two colors to emphasis the eyelets and the solid hexagons.

The perfect finishing touch? A beaded fringe.

The finished stole is a lovely, lightweight wrap that is perfect for summer evenings, or days when you need a bit of extra warmth.

This issue of Knit Now is on sale starting today, Thursday, 29th May, in craft stores, newsagents and supermarkets across the UK. Outside the UK, you can get a paper copy from http://www.moremags.com/knitting/knit-now, or a digital edition from http://www.moremags.com/digital-editions/all-devices/knit-now. You can also get it digitally via Apple Newsstand. 

As a little celebration of the publication of this pattern, I'm going to give away the yarn and beads needed to knit the stole - that includes 5 balls of Wendy Air (70% mohair/30% nylon) in two colors, and approximately 75 faceted glass beads for the fringe. Please leave a comment on this post between now and midnight BST, on Sunday, 8th June, telling me which pattern is your favorite from Knit Now Issue 35*. I'll use a random number generator to pick one lucky winner. Good luck!

* Note: saying that this is your favorite pattern does not increase your chances of winning ;-).

SWG Recap, in brief

This past Friday I hopped in a car and drove with Alli and Karen to Peddington Manor near Berkeley, for The Small Wool Gathering, an event that grew out of the cancellation of this autumn's Plug-and-Play Pembrokeshire retreat.

I picked the girls up just before lunch and we headed westward, with stops at Avebury,

and a lovely shop in Bath, called (appropriately enough) Wool.

Finally we arrived at the SWG, to be greeted by handknit washclothes and big fluffy beds,

not to mention divine food in copious amounts.


Saturday morning, after a much-longer-then-planned-or-anticipated run (10K does not equal 5K in any universe),

I sat down to Amy's latest sock class - Autopilot Socks (pattern here).

Yarn and fancy Alice in Wonderland stitch markers from Inked Yarn on Etsy, one of the fabulous GLYC sponsors

I've knit a lot of socks, in a lot of different ways, and I think I have a new favorite go-to pattern. This is a toe-up recipe that you knit to your own specific measurements (determined mostly by trying the socks on as you go) and uses a new-to-me short row technique that I love. On Sunday afternoon, I cast on for a pair in handspun worsted weight (more on those later).

Saturday afternoon we had a class on photographing your knitting, aka digital cameras for non-photographers who use macro all the time. Part of the class was lecture, part was practical, which had us wandering around the grounds of the Manor draping knitwear over walls, fences, plants, horses, and (in my case) recycling bins.

Then there was more glorious food and hanging about with yarn. By the end of the evening on Saturday I had a sleeve and a half done on my sweater project:

Sunday morning was spinning, more specifically spinning silk. Aka: porpoise's spinning kryptonite. We learned all about where silk comes from and how it is commercially farmed in China. Then we got to dive into some silk hankies. I've played a bit with hankies before, but this is the first time I've ever gotten real live yarn out of them.

There was also some gorgeous tussah silk top from Sweet Georgia in the goody bags, which is going to be next up.

Sunday afternoon was all about the hanging around and knitting/spinning/napping. We had grand plans to go for a walk with Jacqui (who lives nearby), but come time it was pissing down rain and we all just hung around instead. I cast on a sock, and by the end of Sunday, this is what I had completed:

Sweater for Mom, spindleful of silk hankies spun up, 4 oz of Hello Yarn Finn spun up, and most of a sock. I finished the sock yesterday and am most of the way through sock two, thanks to an after school Year 4 music concert and hanging about watching Harry Potter movies with Boo, who was home sick. Sadly most of my good pictures are on my real camera, which is somewhere in Basingstoke with my spinning wheel, and I had to abandon it to Catherine's mercy when we needed to fit a fourth person in the car on the way home. Plans are afoot to sneak down her way and retrieve it soon.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, with a chance to catch up with a number of P3 almunae, meet some new folks who were brave enough to join us, great classes from Amy, and wonderful catering/organization from Catherine and Jenny. Thanks so much to all of you - I had a blast!

Hi, I'm porpoise and I'm a sheep-aholic

I've become a bit obsessed with sheep lately. Some of you may be less then shocked by this pronouncement, but I'm talking about wool on the hoof, not in the skein. So on our recent trip to the northern portions of England, I found myself taking far too many pictures of sweaters-to-be in their natural environment. This tendency was vastly enhanced by the fact that in Yorkshire, there are just a few sheep to be ogled.

There were sheep on the way to the Reeth Agricultural Show,

BFL!
Not to mention, a few sheep at the show itself.

Texel

Swaledale

A highly groomed Teeswater (I think)

a spectacular Jacob ram

Dalesbred

Hampshire Down, aka the Teddy Bear Sheep

More BFL

A genteel sufficiency of sheep, to say the least. Then there were the fleeces,



knitted items,



and strange creatures made out of a variety of vegetables and Haribos.


We moved on to Northumbria, where there were more sheep, this time amongst the ruins of a Roman fort.



Cheviots maybe?

But things really got serious when we got to the Lake District, because not only were there sheep,

there were sheep that are different colors depending on their age.

These are Herdwicks, the sheep that children's author Beatrix Potter was instrumental in preserving when she donated 4000 acres of land to the National Trust.

Herdwicks are born black, lighten to a lovely chocolate brown over the course of the first year, and finally end up white as adults. I was smitten. So was the Wee Ridiculous Dog, who happily chased sheep whenever he got the opportunity.

Thankfully he's not too threatening, and the sheep were none too spooked. They mostly ran twenty feet away and went back to grazing. These sheep have been bred to be territorial, so they don't leave their designated pasture area. Which explains why there are vast herds of sheep wandering freely on the fells of Cumbria with no fences or enclosures of any kind, except for an occasional stone sheep pen.

It's a magical place, to be sure. Somehow I made it home with out any fleece or wool products of any kind, which has got to be some kind of miracle.

That eternal dilemma:

What vacation knitting to pack? After much deliberation, I think I've decided that this is going to be the holiday of shawls. I'm bringing these lovelies from the Tour de Fleece for the first shawl,

And this all wound up and ready to go for another.

Also a spindle and a bit of fluff (there's a whole bunch waiting for me in the States) just for something different. And that, as they say, is that. Will it be enough?

Holiday

If it's summer, it must be time for Porpoise et al to head across the Channel for some good wine/bread/cheese and some athletic insanity. This year, however, it was just Himself participating in the physical endeavours, while the girls and I played in the sun, went swimming and ate ice cream. Once he recovered a bit from his exertions, there was hiking, tadpole/grasshopper catching, snowball throwing and lots and lots of eating things that were not terribly good for us (fondue with bacon and onions, I'm looking at you) (you too, Cote du Rhone). And there was spinning.

Of course, my husband vehemently insisted that "There is no spinning on Alpe d'Huez!". Clearly his traumatized legs were affecting his visual acuity, because look:

There certainly was spinning on Alpe d'Huez, although in the interests of clarity, I should make it clear that this picture was actually taken on the Col de Sarenne, next to Alpe d'Huez. Perhaps he was thinking of a different type of spinning...

I did discover two things about combing spindling with hiking.

1) It's best not to try to spin silk singles on an alpine mountaintop with a sheer drop off when you haven't spun silk before and are finding it a bit slippery and difficult to manage.

2) Plying while hiking is a much more successful project then singles. So definitely go for plying if you have the option.

There were a few other yarny-adventures while we were away. There was this cute little guy, spied by my children one evening after dinner,

(I believe that's a knitting marmot)

And then there was the realisation that I may have yarn on the brain when I mistook some scarves in a kiosk in Annecy as some lovely skeins on display.



But let's be honest - you all would have made the same mistake, right?