I feel as though I have spent most of the day at the garage, but that’s not entirely true. I was there for just under 3 hours this morning while my car was being serviced and during that time I completed the penultimate repeat of my Bargello Aurora Scarf! I can also confirm that the sofas and chairs at Lookers / Kia in Chester are very comfortable.
There are now only 40 rows left to knit!
Unfortunately, on the way home from the garage the car started to judder and wasn’t accelerating properly. One of the warning lights came on briefly too. I got home, we had lunch and then I took Sue out in the car to see if it would behave any better after a run on one of the bigger roads, but no. There was lots of judder, little power and no ability to overtake, so we limped our way back to the garage.
After an explanation of the problem (and the fact that it hadn’t been doing it previous to the service…) the car was taken out by a technician to assess what was going on. Cue another wait on the very comfortable chairs, but I didn’t have my knitting with me this time (I did have my lovely wife for company and moral support though, which in all truth was better!). It was an hour that time, but the problem was identified, the spark plugs all changed and we were able to go on our way home, minus judder and with acceleration! Result!
All this is by way of some explanation as to why today’s blog post is a little later in the day than usual.
But I am so pleased to be nearly there with the scarf. There are a lot of yarn ends aren’t there? Have you noticed that? The pattern will contain a very strong suggestion to weave the ends in as you go. Here I’ve woven each end in on the first seven stitches.
Not only will this shorten the final finishing time, but it add important structural integrity to the scarf as well. Do you remember how firmly I blocked the cowl, so that it went from a corrugated mess to a thing of beauty?
The same intense vertical blocking will happen with the scarf. Not only did I weave in each yarn end separately, I also knotted the new colour on to the old colour. This is to stop the right hand side of the scarf pinging apart and unravelling when under the tension of blocking. Knots can be good! Scroll up to see the wrong side picture of the scarf again – can you see any knots looking massively out of place and awkward? No! It is ok to knot your yarn now and again, and in this case, it’s pretty much essential!
I’m hoping to have the updated version of Bargello Aurora online by the end of July, and I will definitely have printed copies with me at the rest of the shows I’m doing this year. The next show is the Pop Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 18th. If you happen to buy a digital copy of Bargello Aurora before the end of July, you will get the original version of the pattern with just the wrap. Ravelry customers will get an email when the new version of the pattern comes out with a link to the updated pattern. Payhip customers need to ensure they click the ‘please keep me updated’ button when they purchase the original pattern so that I can send you the link to the new version. Or, you could wait until the updated pattern is released and get it all in one go.
I’m knitting all the Bargello Aurora samples in the same yarn. This is BFL Singles (100% Bluefaced Leicester wool – the sheep breed, spun as a single plied yarn) dyed by the amazing Rachael of Cat and Sparrow UK. She has yarn kits for the wrap for £50, which includes 100g of the dark blue and 50g of each of the other four colours. You might be interested to know that this same yarn kit could instead be used to knit both the cowl AND the scarf!
The Bargello Aurora Scarf isn’t the only thing that’s grown massively during the week. My crocheted Persian Tiles blanket, designed by Janie Crow, is now nearly all pieced together!
On Saturday I posted about this blanket’s progress, when there were five octagons joined with their interlocking squares and triangles, and it got a lot of love on Twitter and quite a bit on Facebook and Instagram too. It looks so much more ‘real’ now and I think the pieces may well all be joined together by the end of the evening, which will just leave the 5 or 6 rounds of border to complete.
I have a new pattern coming out on Thursday in the next issue of The Knitter! All I can tell you at the moment is that it’s a cowl, it uses brioche and it has a very ‘organic’ feel to the design. I’ll be able to tell you more about it next week – and you might even have seen it in the magazine by then! Update – the pattern isn’t actually in this month’s issue after all, so the big reveal will have to wait a little longer. I hope to know more about when it will be released soon.
I seem to have a thing for patterns beginning with B. Last week I told you about Bryn, my brioche cowl designed for knitters new to two-colour brioche and its kit that comes in a tin. I’ve just been telling you all about the update to Bargello Aurora and I’m also currently putting the finishing touches on the pattern for Barragán.
Barragán was a wrap that was published in The Knitter last autumn as a four part knit-along, and they were including 300g sets of yarn for the pattern (150g in each colour), hand-dyed by James McIntosh, as a subscription gift.
The rights for the pattern have returned to me now and I’m putting the pattern into a single document in my house style, ready to publish online and have as printed patterns at events. I’m delighted to be allowed to use some of the photographs taken by The Knitter as their photography is so good.
Again, I’m intending to have this pattern ready to go live by the end of the month – it may even be sooner!
By the way – I did make jam! The blackcurrants were picked yesterday afternoon and by 7pm the jam was in the jars! 12 jars, plus one very full bowl which is now in the fridge! The bees did a cracking good job fertilising this many currants on the blackcurrant bush this year – and there are still quite a lot left!
I’m not sure I’ll get to the redcurrants before the pair of thrushes that have taken to hanging out in our garden finish them off, but to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I saw a pair of thrushes, so I might let them enjoy the redcurrants and just use the ones from the freezer that I didn’t have time/jars for last summer.
That’s all for this week. Have a good week, and do some stuff that makes you happy. K x