Ms. Cleaver Chronicles

I hope no one minds seeing a very woolly pattern with winter in the name in the midst of spring (at least in this hemisphere), but I’m so excited to finally get this pattern out in the world that I couldn’t wait for more appropriate weather.

This hat and glove set is one of those “necessity is the mother of creation” projects. In back in late 2008(!), my dear friend Kasey requested some knitted elbow-length gloves to go with a 3/4 sleeve coat she had purchased. I was happy to oblige and even though I’d only made a pair of Nordic mittens and no gloves at all, I decided that I needed to design the gloves myself.

At the time I was heavily inspired by the winter berries that were adding splashes of color to the otherwise gray trees in my neighborhood and having just finished Stephanie Japel’s Forecast Cardigan I was well acquainted with bobbles – all of which led up to these gloves:

The structure didn’t change all that much from these originals, with the exception of the thumb, which was improved in the final version.  The red gloves were knit in Ultra Alpaca, which was soft and lovely, but was lacking in the stitch definition I thought the cable panel needed and the sturdiness which gloves require.

For the final version, then I chose to knit with Peace Fleece Worsted in Antarctica White, which I found to be a very flattering shade.

With both the Peace Fleece and the Ultra Alpaca, the gloves used a skein and just a teeny bit of a second skein – usually just to finish the fingers on the second hand, so I decide to work up a beret with a complimentary cable pattern. Aside from the cable, the beret is a simple knit, but is just the right size for pulling down over the ears for true warmth.

The patterns requires some cabling without a cable needle, which is fully explained in the pattern notes and the gloves utilize a 8-row cable repeat, with row counts at the end of each section to keep on track.  The gloves are fitted from elbow to wrist and the hat ribbing is knit on smaller needles to remain cozy for a multitude of head sizes.

If you’re interested in making a your own Winterberry set, you can purchase the pattern in PDF form for $7.00 USD  via my Ravelry store or the PayPal link below:

On Sunday my knitting group took a field trip out to the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. Tucked in the back of a former mill along with the Lowell Sun Newspaper and some loft condos, this jewelbox of a museum winds through  textile production, fashion, history, and innovation.

Some exhibits made more sense than others (I guess bicycle frames are a textile…), but it was a fun afternoon and I learned  how baseballs are tested and how linen goes from plant to fabric (Winnowing! Retting! Scutching! Heckling!).

The loom room.

Measuring warps.

A circular knitting machine.

Bloomers and bustles.

We went to the museum specifically to catch the last day of a special exhibit “Aprons: Fifties Functional Fashion.” We all wore aprons in honor of the event (and got a surprise $2 off admission!)

The exhibit consitsted of about 50 or so aprons and I was glad to see the majority of pieces in the exhibit were homesewn, and some were quite dashing,

kitschy,

nostalgic,

or busty!

Some things I’ve been making lately:

Maple Walnut Granola:

• 3 cups rolled oats (not quick cooking)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (or nut of your choice)
• 1 cup dried cranberries (or dried fruit of your choosing)
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 Tbl warm water
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 250°F.

In a large bowl, mix together syrup, sugar, oil, water and salt until throughly combined. Add in oats and nuts and and mix until coated.  Pour oat mixture unto a  lightly oiled rimmed baking sheet or pan.

Bake from 1½ to 2 hours or until oats are dry and brown. Remove from oven and cool. Stir in fruit and place in a sealed container.

© Caro Benna Sheridan

As I hinted at a few posts back, I have pattern in 2010 Spring/Summer issue of Twist Collective.

It’s my first professionally published pattern and I’m thrilled to be in such a great magazine in the company of designers I really admire.  I’m super excited about the whole thing, so I thought I’d talk a bit today about the Carmel Clutch came to be.

It started with a hat.

This hat.

Which I bought on out-of-season clearance at LL Bean a year or so ago. After I bought the hat I spent some time looking at it and realized that it was crocheted. This got me thinking, surely if you can crochet with raffia, you can knit with raffia. So I went out to a craft store on my lunch break and bought a cheap bag of raffia to give it a try.

I wanted it to have a woven looks, so I flipped through a stitch dictionary or two and came up with a swatch of herringbone stitch.

My original swatch had a half dozen knots on the back, since the raffia from the craft store came in pieces of about 3 feet long, but it was enough to know that the concept worked.  So I worked up a sketch, named the pattern after the beach community in California that I visited a handful of times in my teenage years, sent it off to Twist, and crossed my fingers.

I got the okay from the Twist folks and we decided to work up two samples, one in raffia and one in a more standard yarn, which I was more than happy to do. While I waited for the Elann Coto Canapone to come in I ordered a few spools of raffia from Raffit Ribbons and got to work.

Here’s where you may ask, what’s it like knitting with raffia? And the answer is not too bad. It’s about equivalent to working with any other plant fiber yarn I’ve worked with (cotton, hemp, linen).

It’s stiff off the spool and there’s not a lot of give when dry and I’ll admit that the purl stitches in the garter stitch sections of the bag were kinda pokey, but believe me – I’ve never had so much fun blocking a piece of knitting. the texture changes dramatically after it’s wet and softens into something lovely!

I had finished version 1.0 of the bag, but wasn’t happy with the front flap, which was done with decreases. It was too pointy and bumpy – so I set it aside for a day to decide how to fix it. I picked up some personal knitting, and while working on a version of Laura Chau’s Just Enough Ruffles Scarf, the solution presented itself to me – short rows! So I pulled out the front flap and reworked it in short rows with the addition of the garter stitch border seen in the final photos.

Around this time the Elann yarn arrived and it was Christmas and I went to California for a week and did no knitting at all so by the time I was knitting the Coto Canapone version I completely forgot to take pictures. Oops! But suffice it to say, I reworked some numbers for gauge.  We also made the second sample shorter to combat potential flopiness (which if you find is an issue with your yarn I’d suggest lining it with fabric backed with interfacing or putting a book in the bag – both work )

© Caro Benna Sheridan

A big thanks to Twist for including me in this issue and to Caro Benna Sheridan for the lovely photos! If you have any more questions on the Carmel Clutch – let me know!

At work I get a “floating spring holiday” that I can take whenever I want, so on a sunny Thursday last week, I played hooky from work and drove with Mr. Cleaver to New Hampshire to play pinball. Because that’s what you do when you play hooky. Obviously.

I may have mention it before, but I have a thing for pinbal, and this place?

Pinball heaven.

Over 35 different pinball machines, my favorites of which were the 1979 Superman machine seen above and the 1986 PinBot.

Mr. Cleaver spent most of his tokens relishing in DigDug from his youth.

We also played some good old Skee-Ball,

Tried a few rounds on the machine from King of Kong (which if you like video games in the tiniest bit you need to see, because it is an awesome documentary),

We also tried our hand at some newer games, including this Star Wars number that made me feel like a real Jedi.

Don’t worry, we didn’t stay inside all day, we also enjoyed the beautiful shores of Lake Winnipesaukee:

All in all, it was a good day of playing hooky, and thanks to some coupons we have so many leftover tokens we’ll have to take a return trip someday!

Pssst! Check out page 8 of the new Spring/Summer issue of Twist Collective, you might see a name you recognize!