Tag: knitwear design

More Thrums

Leave a comment

I have been one busy lady lately. All work and no play makes me fairly happy actually, but I must confess that the meals I’m putting on the table have been a little lacking. Tonight I boiled some pasta and threw in a jar of sauce. Everyone knew better than to complain too much.
But, I am getting a lot of stuff done. A little over a week ago I managed to finish another pair of thrummed mittens for my friend’s other little boy. The boys are very close in age and their hands aren’t that different in size so instead of adding another repeat to the pattern I just went up to a size 6 needle (rather than the size 5 I used for the smaller ones). This gave me an extra 1/2″ in width and height, which was just about what I needed. I chose another random stripe pattern but with the same colours, so the mittens would be similar but different enough that they would know whose were whose. I delivered them last week, but apparently the boys are not big fans of the feel of the thrums on the inside so we are considering lining them.
Last week I worked and worked and worked on my kids’ cowboy costumes. I am pleased to report that the damn shirts are finally done. I am not going to rant now about how painful the process was, I’ll leave that for a future post. For now, the mitts…

Thrumming Along

1 Comment


I was recently commissioned by a friend to knit some thrummed mittens for her and her two boys. They are wonderfully warm mittens, perfect for these frigid Cow Town winters. I still had lots of bright colours of Cascade 220 and some taupe-coloured Merino roving left in my stash  so I was able to start on them right away. I decided to do them in a random stripe pattern of four colours. Since I’m terrible at being random or overly creative when it comes to these things, I hit up the handy-dandy Random Stripe Generator, input the colours and rows I wanted, and refreshed away until I found a pattern I liked. Also, since I have a terrible memory, I looked up the Yarn Harlot’s thrum tutorial. Then I did a swatch to figure out how many stitches and rows per inch (aka stitch gauge and row gauge) I had for my yarn and needle choice and did a little math to determine how many stitches I needed. I made a chart in Excel and added my stripes, thrums, thumbs and decreases and badda-bing, badda-boom, I had myself a pattern. I’ll include the chart here for anyone who might be curious, but with the warning that you have to do some reading between the lines (or just go ahead and ask me questions) if you’re going to try and make a mitten from it. I’m also going to show a little detail on how to make thrums.

Lets start with the chart…

The V’s represent where the thrums are added. Dashes are purls.

And now a brief tutorial on how to make a thrum. The usual advice is to make up a bunch so that you can just reach for them when you need them, and that is certainly most efficient, but I am neither usual nor efficient. I usually make enough for a row when I get to a thrum row, it breaks up the monotony.

Pull off a small piece of roving about 3 inches long (our lovely Queen for scale).
Fold each end in to the middle.

Give it a twist. I like to give mine a little more twist just as I’m about to use it as I find they like to untwist if left to their own devices.

And then a little about how to add the thrums…

Insert needle into stitch to knit, place the thrum over the needle, bring the yarn around like usual…
…then pull the yarn and thrum through the loop as usual.
On the next row, knit the thrum and yarn together through the back of the loop.

And then you knit and knit and knit some more. And then you have oh-so-cute, oh-so-warm mittens.

Furry on the inside
Happy on the outside.


Giddy’up

4 Comments

Since it is mid-October I’m having a bit of a crafting crisis. On one hand, we woke up to an inch of snow here yesterday so I am kicking mitten and hand production into high gear. P’s head and one hand are covered, but that other hand is still out in the cold for now. I’ve come up with new hat and mitts designs that are being tested right now. They are fairly simple and quick so I’m hoping to release them as free patterns that I’ll post on the blog as well. More on that to come.

On the other hand, it is getting awfully close to Halloween and I’m really hoping to be able to make the kids’ costumes this year. For the first 3 years of motherhood there was just no way I was going to go out of my way to make costumes when they had perfectly cute ones at Old Navy for $15. Last year we did make A a pretty cool costume out of a box – he was a construction worker…

But this year I own a sewing machine, and even kinda know how to use it. So I went out the other day and picked up this Simplicity pattern and plan to make the kids cowboy/girl costumes. I figure they can double-up as Stampede outfits next year. I’ve decided to skip making the pants and skirt, they can just wear their regular jeans, so I’m only making the shirts. As I was looking through the fabrics I realized that if I’m going to be making a shirt, why not make it something durable and nice that can be worn everyday. So I bought these beautiful fabrics and I’m going to use buttons or snaps instead of the velcro the pattern calls for. I’m hoping to get working on them this weekend, so maybe next week I’ll be able to post the finished product.

A Little History and Clarity

1 Comment

Since I started this blog I have had a lot of friends and family ask me what it is all about. The general consensus is that they really enjoy reading it, they love the projects, but don’t really understand what I am doing. So this post is going to answer some of those questions and give a little bit of back story

I was taught to knit a few times when I was younger, mostly by my grandmother, if my terrible memory serves me correctly. It never really stuck though as I would knit for a bit, make a mistake, not know how to fix it and get frustrated. This girl has a lot of give-up in her, so when I’m not really good at something right away, I usually don’t push on. Unfortunately I see that trait in A, I’ll have to figure out how to get him to try a little harder than his mom does.

The first time I started knitting and actually stuck with it was in my final year of university in Fredericton. I was living with my friend Tamara in a freezing cold house, and we were broke. The funds had pretty much dried up over our extended stay at school, though somehow we always managed to scrape together enough money to keep our White Russian supplies replenished. That Christmas we decided to make presents for our families, a cross-stitch for her mom, and a scarf for mine. When I made a mistake Tamara would show me how to fix it, or I would call my mom and she would talk me through it. I eventually finished the scarf, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her wear it.

There were a few more hits and misses over the next few years of knitting: a beautiful cabled sweater that is still in pieces in my basement; a hat for a boyfriend that caused me to burst out laughing when he put it on; a false-start on a uterus when I couldn’t quite get the hang of doing i-cords. But eventually I discovered the joys of knittinghelp.com, Ravelry and the gauge swatch and things improved from then on.

Fast-forward about 10 years. I wanted to knit a little hoodie for P, nothing fancy, just a plain hoodie that she could wear over her shirts on cool Calgary mornings. I searched through available patterns on Ravelry (an online knitting world, aka my happy place) but couldn’t find anything that fit what I was looking for. It occurred to me that I could probably figure out how to make one without a pattern, and I had just found a hole in the market that I could probably fill. Fast forward another 6 months or so and you have the Everyday Hoodie pattern I just released.

So what does that mean anyway? I took my idea, did a lot of math and trial and error, and wrote the pattern and instructions for other knitters to make the sweater. I uploaded it onto Ravelry where knitters can find it and buy it if they are interested. I get paid through PayPal and Ravelry distributes the pattern to the buyer. If someone finds the pattern on my blog, they can click the “buy now” button, which will take them to Ravelry where they can buy it even if they are not a Ravelry user.

A lot of people are also asking if I am selling my knitting. While I am flattered, and very willing to do it, the fact is that there is a huge amount of time involved in hand-knitting things. While a pair of booties takes anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, an adult sweater can take up to a month of working in all my spare time. The going-rate for production knitting is 15 to 20 cents per meter of yarn used, plus the cost of yarn, which can work out to as little as $25 for the Boot Cuffs, but $125 for P’s hoodie. A person who understands what goes into the process and values the quality of a hand-made item will generally be willing to pay that price, but others may be offended.

So, to make a long story long, that’s the gist of what I am doing. The blog is here for entertainment, community and advertising purposes, with the added benefit that I seem to be reconnecting with people I haven’t talked to in years, and meeting new people every day. I hope you all continue reading as it truly makes me happy.

Everyday Hoodie

4 Comments

Okay, I couldn’t wait any longer, it’s time to release the Everyday Hoodie. Although the Boot Cuffs were my first published pattern, I actually wrote this pattern first (it just took a LOT longer to get right). I’m not sure exactly when I started it, but it was sometime in late spring. Then I had to write it up from memory and reverse engineering since I wasn’t very good about keeping notes as I went. Then I had to do the grading (figuring out the pattern for multiple sizes), followed by knitting a second one in another size just to make sure it was okay. Then I had others test it, followed by having a technical editor go through it with a fine-tooth comb to be sure I didn’t make any errors. Since this was my first pattern, and not a simple one at that, the whole process took a lot longer than it should have. Hopefully future sweater patterns will go much more quickly since I have some experience now.

This pattern came from a desire for a simple, top-down hoodie with clean lines for easy toddler wear. In order to keep the fabric sleek, ribbing, garter and seed stitch have given way to hemmed edges. To keep the look of a basic hoodie this pattern features a zipper closure and front pockets. The optional ribbon draw-string is not particularly functional, it just gives the sweater a little extra personality. The fingering weight yarn makes it a nice, light, versatile sweater to throw on for extra warmth.

I’d like to give a big Thank You to: Jodi and Ian for letting their adorable baby pose for some pictures; Ryan Barr for the wonderful photography; Pat Bostwick (aka “Mom”) for brainstorming and testing; Eleanor Dixon for technical editing; and C for helping me every step of the way.