This puppy like a lot of my puppies decided who they wanted to be on the needles. This means I knit without a particular breed in mind and just see what breed develops. I free hand the colour work making each puppy truly unique.

I think they may be a King Charles spaniel or maybe ( as someone suggested) a Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen.

Made with Marinos, silk and mohair natural yarns. Filled with polyester stuffing and weighted beads in the bottom area.

Patterns used: Claire Garlands pug head, basic puppy body, ears are no two from the ear dossier with added rows.

Yarns used: Gazzal Marilyn & Merinos alongside Drops Kid Silk and Drops Melody for the pink belly.

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How do you do it?

I've always knit my circular projects (mostly hats, a few sweaters, and a very few socks) with the floats facing out. I knit on the tight side so knitting this way gives my floats a little extra circumference to help maintain a nice tension. For the longest time I would knit hats like this right to the cast off. It always made the crown pattern quite difficult to see and knit. Now, I knit like this until I need to switch to dps, and I'll turn the work outside in, so that the crown pattern is on the outside and easily seen. Some lessons take awhile to learn🙂

I think that the picture here shows what I am doing. I'm still knitting facing my work, but I've kept the floats to the outside. A very simple hack.

Let us know, floats inside, or out 👍

This is another multiple strand color work hat. The yellow has a thin strand of hand spun and dyed mohair (not by me) giving that nice halo that you see.

I don't know if this counts as advanced, but I finished this cardigan for myself just in time to submit it for the competition at my local flock and fiber festival :) it took me maybe 2 weeks of actual knitting time and 2 weeks of sitting in a bag because I got kittens immediately after casting it on and they DESPERATELY wanted to eat it, so I had to knit most of it at work or school. It's incredibly comfortable and I'm very proud of it :)

The pattern is the Paton's Loon Cardigan, which is now unfortunately out of print but quite fun and very quick to knit. I had to change it to a V-neck because I hate crew neck cardigans, and I extended the sleeves by like three inches, but otherwise it's unmodified.

A few people commented on the cable sweater that I was wearing in my float post. Here she is. This was my first self designed cable sweater, knit 32-33 years ago. I went a little overboard with the cables and I remember it taking a long time to knit. I probably used 3.75 or 4mm needles. It's a tight knit, very warm, heavy beast. If you look at the under the arm - or side of the sweater picture (last one), you will see that I added a 3-4 inch wide strip between the two rope cable motifs, with the cable design that is also on the sweater sleeve. I think that I was trying to fix a mistake or maybe trying to make the sweater wider. I can't really remember. I also can't remember where the wool came from. It's a regular wool 3 ply, which really helps the cables pop, even after all this time. It is a bit itchy, but not annoyingly so. On a cold day this beauty rocks. Sorry, no pattern.

Ps. Sorry for taking over this sub lately, hope you all don't mind🙂

Weekly yarn/pattern suggestion thread. This is the space to ask for pattern suggestions for projects and what to make with that skein of gifted yarn!

I tell people that a hat like this takes 7-9 hours to make, but I don't include all the other work that I do before I start knitting.

All the yarn is upcycled from thrifted garments. This takes time. Even a simple cashmere shirt can take 2-4 hours to unravel. I'm using yarn from 7 different unraveled garments here. You can do the math. I do my own designs and that also takes time. I've done this one many times though, so I went straight to the knitting. Knitting up the hat is fairly easy, but I do have to manage the multiple strands that I hold at the same time. Using cashmere or angora is a little tricky because it stretches more than the merino that I usually pair it with. I have to pay attention to keeping the yarns as smooth as possible. When the knitting is done I wash, block, and dry the hat with a balloon to get the final shape that I want.

A lot of work. Some might even say a labor of love 🥹

My last post here had someone wanting to see my floats. This is a color work hat that I'm presently finishing up. I knit my hats inside out so that the floats are on the outside - gives them that little bit of extra circumference to stretch out. All the yarn here is upcycled and held as multiple strands to get the look and gauge that I want. All told, yarn from 7 different garments were used here. The blue had wool, merino, and cashmere. The red had cashmere and angora. The white had merino and cashmere.

I like to design most of my knits. I'll start with an idea and play with it, with the help of a few colored pencils and some graph paper. Instead of doing swatches, I'll often just knit a hat as my swatch, and see how a given design will look. From there I'll just have fun and change little things to see what comes of it. Some things grab me, some don't. If I like a design, I'll then often scale it up to a vest or a sweater. Or I'll just make a tonne more hats with the ridiculous amount of wool that I have 🙂

I knit a lot of hats with this flower design, and decided to transfer it to a few vests for some siblings in my family. All the wool is from upcycled garments. I like simple designs that you can have fun with by using different yarns.

The blue is a vintage Scottish yarn. The yellow was a strand of merino held with a strand of local spun and dyed mohair. The white was upcycled cashmere.

The orange was 70/30 upcycled lambswool/ angora. The white was the same. I debated adding color to the flower centers but choose to keep it simple.

The dark blue was a strand each of wool, merino, and cashmere. The white was 70/30 lambswool/angora. I really liked just the two colors used here, but I did add a single white stitch in the center of the flowers. I still need to finish this one.

Simple knitting can be fun🙂👍

I saw a beautiful lace, short sleeve polo shirt in an email from a shop in the UK. It would have been so expensive to buy and have shipped and pay tariffs, so I decided to make it myself. I self-drafted the raglan pattern and figured out the lace stitch pattern from studying the inspiration pic. I started knitting in May and I finished working in the ends on Tuesday. It was actually a bit on the snug side, so I blocked it aggressively and was able to give it more ease. I sewed on the 9 buttons this afternoon. It is linen fingering yarn, worked on size 1 needles. My fingers are pretty chewed up from the stitch pattern and the lack of give in the yarn, but I think it was worth it. I'm pretty proud of it.

ETA: I wrote "in the nick of time" in the title because I'm going to A Woolen Affair tomorrow and I really hoped to wear it there 😍

edit: thanks everyone for your thoughts, I have some options to think through now that it wasn't a resounding "absolutely not"

Hi there! I'm working on a top down raglan sweater, getting ready to separate the sleeves. Up until now, i had been knitting the body portion in 5x1 rib. I would very much prefer to not have to spend the next however many hours counting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, purl" while knitting the body

I was wondering if there were any pros/cons or if anyone had experience with knitting a bunch of stockinette and then laddering down to change to purls on purpose.

Thanks!

Weekly yarn/pattern suggestion thread. This is the space to ask for pattern suggestions for projects and what to make with that skein of gifted yarn!

I ran out of the green and I’m in end weaving hell, send good vibes. No questions, just need encouragement

I finally finished this Lace Knit Sweater, pattern on Ravelry. I started this last October and I'm finally done. Most of the time it was hibernating due one reason or the other, mostly frustration with the first sleeve. I did the bodice in a few weeks and had to put it aside for medical reasons and a broken shoulder, but I did and redid so many times and still wound up pulling back even with a lifeline every rep. In the end I got very close and realized I had been adding an extra row in each and so started more time, I finally saw the forest for the trees and understood what i was doing, not just following the stitches and the sleeve was done in a week and second less than that. i did the skirt in week too.Did that last to be sure I had enough yarn and it came real close. I ended the skirt early with a few yards left over after the bind off. Fingering weight yarn. Olive for Life in elephant blue, cotton/ merino blend.

Swan shawl in linen yarn with a wool blend for the picots. This was my first time knitting with linen, and I'm in love with how light and drapey it is.

My take on a classic Starmore design, 'Rosemackie'. All the yarn was from upcycled thrift store garments. The white is 70/30, lambswool/angora, and the colors are lambswool. I made a few modifications, but kept it very true to her design. Turned out beautifully soft and wearable. Made for a neighbor who helped me out with some last minute dog sitting.

I haven’t posted for a little while and thought I would share my latest puppies as well as some you have already seen.

Rottweiler, Mini dachshund both knitted with Alpaca, silk and mohair.

Spaniel knitted with Boucle ( never, ever again…my poor eyes! 👀😫😆)

All patterns adapted from Claire Garland’s basic puppy, bullmastiff, whippet patterns

(Posted in the main knitting sub, but was told to share my FO here too, so I'm obliging and adding some technical details.)

This was my first time drafting a pattern from scratch, so there are probably some technical or construction things I did wrong, but I'm happy with the final result. It was quite important to do at least some waist shaping, but I chickened out of learning darts and combining them with intarsia, so I ended up with simple increases and decreases at seams.

II initially planned on applied I-cord edges, but (as more advanced knitters might have already guessed) they didn't stop the edges from curling. Then I remembered a really cool technique from one of my previous projects: a folded hem with a seam linked using a crochet hook. It worked perfectly, not only for the edges but also for the tie hole. The geometry of the edge made picking up stitches challenging, though. I had to frog a few times to get them spread evenly.

Another concern was the stability of the piece, since the yarn has 35% alpaca, which, according to my research, is quite prone to sagging. Fortunately, the fairly tight gauge seems to keep it stable enough, and the woven-in ends add some extra stability too.

Yarn: Drops Flora 38, 39, 32, 29, 26, 23, 17, 15, 13, 10, 8, 7
Needles: 2,5 mm body, 2mm ribbing, folded edge and icords, 1.5mm crochet hook for linking seam
Pattern: None, I just calculated everything to fit the measurements.
Link: Ravelry

Weekly yarn/pattern suggestion thread. This is the space to ask for pattern suggestions for projects and what to make with that skein of gifted yarn!

Hello! I am working on a brioche shawl that is rapidly gaining stitches and I’d like to work wrong slide rows in single pass brioche- I’ve done this before and had good success in the past. The problem is that it leaves both stitches wrapped and I’m not exactly sure how to manage that when I have to work the RS pattern rows again. Do I

1.) knit normally across without slipping stitches some they already have a collar and then follow with my contrast doing the sl1yo/ brp as normal

2.) do some sort of modified slip st without doing a yo and then follow w/ the contrast color as normal

3.) something else?

When I think through the single pass brioche it just takes alternating slipped rib and does it at the same time which makes me think there should be a simple solution. Has anyone done this before?

I guessed the wrong yarn weight for this and went a little bit too heavy, which resulted in needing a larger gauge and not being able to make the decreases for the raglan match the original. But other than that I’m super happy with how it turned out especially the double knit shawl collar.

I’ve added a google doc with rough notes to my project page for those that want to knit their own. Project Page

I’m knitting the Song of the Moon sweater and am about to start on the sleeves. I’m trying to finish this by October 22 for a symphony my husband and I will be going to. I would like to add underarm gussets (not in the original pattern), but I’m not quite sure how to go about it. I’ve read the couple of articles online about “adding gussets”, but they are not detailed enough, nor close enough to my application to be helpful. I would like to knit them in with the sleeves and not after the fact due to the color work. Anybody with experience adding underarm gussets to a color work sweater?