A Picture for Sunday - Ranunculus

 

Taken last month in the gardens at Tyntesfield.

Experimental Knitting and a Blast From The Past

Recently I have been bouncing around YouTube finding knitting videos and looking for new techniques to try out, and the result is this little mobile phone cosy.  Oddly enough my husband really doesn't like it, saying it's not my usual colours, too bright, to which my reply is that is the whole point, easy to spot, so harder to mislay. 

I have knitted Fair Isle patterns in the past and never really enjoyed it, so I decided to try again.  I was hoping to find a better way to manage two colours in one row, but failed, so Fair Isle is back on the Couldn't Be Bothered list.  

However, the corrugated rib, the vertical stripes at the top and bottom, alternating two stitches knit with two stitches purl, was a resounding success, and an opportunity to try a few little variations.

                         

On the back (knitted at a right angle to the front) I tried putting a curve in the lines by using a cable needle, which came out a bit tight and not worth the effort.  Then I turned it into an elongated chequerboard pattern, which I loved doing.  Somehow the bendy lines and chequerboard looked weirdly familiar as a pattern, but it l took a while to work it out. 

So let's zoom back to 1967.  Here is the jumper I mentioned in an earlier post, Still Knitting, which I made for my brother and which he still wears.  Natalia left a comment saying it would be good to see a picture of the jumper from when I made it, so here it is!  Of course you can barely see the jumper, black being the hardest colour to photograph, and working from a slide which was loaded onto his computer, this is the best edit I can manage. 

I have made a few repairs to the jumper so he can carry on wearing it without the risk of any unravelling happening.  It is made in a near indestructible synthetic, so seems set to last a lifetime.  It was his favourite jumper in his motorcycling days, a thick thermal layer under his jacket.

Which brings me back to the experiments with corrugated rib.  I have managed to inadvertently knit a tyre track.