I feel like I’ve been making fantastic progress on all my projects recently. This is an unusual state of being, but I think it’s been massively helped along by the super-speedy completion of our Telja Sweater in time for Yarndale. I have already shared the finished photo on Instagram and Ravelry, but today is the first time in ages that I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and blog about my knitting, so please forgive me for sharing it again. I’m still really pleased with it! Jim was a fabulous help to get the sleeves done, leaving me to complete the colourwork cuffs, body and then finally the yoke. Jim was so happy with the finished result that he has taken home some Something to Knit With Aran to make himself a Mountain Mist sweater from the brilliant new Tin Can Knits book, Strange Brew (it’s like a Something New to Learn About Yokes with a host of beautiful jumper and accessory designs as well as all the information you need to design your own yoke – we both really love it!).
One of the handy things I discovered as we knitted our way through Telja is that you can join in a new ball of yarn by splicing the old and new together. This not only cuts down on ends to weave in, but also is just a satisfyingly neat way to do things. I’ve put together a short photo tutorial on how to do this. In order to read the captions, click on each photo and it will bring up a larger version with the full instructions. You can then navigate through the tutorial with the arrow buttons at the sides of each image. I’m not sure how well this layout will appear on the blog post emails, so if you have any difficulty following the tutorial, just visit the main blog page by clicking the link in the title (and please do let me know so that I don’t use this layout again!).
I absolutely love joining yarns by splicing. It’s a bit of work as you do each one, but it is so much neater than any weaving in method, that I reckon it’s totally worth it. If you are splicing a stickier yarn than our Something to Knit With range (a Shetland jumper weight for example), then you won’t need to sew the thinned ends back into the yarn, you can just overlap them and rub. This technique relies on the felting action of wool, so yarns with a lower wool content, or superwash yarns won’t splice well as they don’t felt.
I’ve also made good progress on the body of my Ola Yoke and my Ecliptic hat, but I’ll talk more about them another day. I’m so in the groove for knitting at the moment it’s untrue! How are you getting on with your projects at the moment?