Smalrand - Twined knitted hat with crook stitch pattern

This is a design by Karin Kahnlund, and a favourite of mine. I have knitted this pattern once before and that hat has been used a lot. The pattern is a two-coloured crook stitch pattern.

The design is clear and with a nice finish. Here you can see the decreases at the top of the hat.

After casting on I made a small alteration in the beginning of the pattern. Apart from that I followed the instructions as written.

The beginning of yarn

In March I was gifted a bag (marked Gustav) of wool  from a friend who owns sheep. My guess is that it was about 700 grams of wool. That is a bit much to take care of indoors, so I have been waiting for a weekend with nice weather and some spare time.

A lot of the wool was very dirty. Gustav is obviously not the cleanest of sheep, but I think that he knows how to have a good time. Before washing it I had to part with some of the fleece that I could not use. The weather was fantastic!

After washing it (and rinsing it), I let the wool dry. A warm dry wind helped a lot, and on the second day the wool was dry.

Our drum carder has ceased to be, so hand carding is the only option at the moment. This is not my forte and I felt a bit rusty at first.

The wool is very nice and I will have to find out what breed it is. The washed wool weighed about 500 grams. For me that means a lot of hand carding, and it will take me a lot of time. So it will probably be a couple of weeks before I post about spinning this. Good, because I have not yet decided how to spin it (z-ply, s-ply?  2-ply, 3-ply?, dyeing?).

White Mittens - Man´s size

Man´s size mittens in twined knitting featuring decorations in crook stitch. Using crook stitch is very rewarding with white yarn since the patterning gets very visible.

These patterns are from Dalecarlia (Dalarna) and I thought combining them on a pair of mittens fitting . The variations with crook stitches are uncountable and I can imagine many  different developments of these stitches for new mittens.

My only concern is that they will probable get dirty as soon as I start wearing them. I am thinking that perhaps it would be better to dye them. I will leave that decision until autumn.

As usual the yarn comes from Wålstedts. These mittens were knitted with dbpns 2,5 mm and I used about 160 grams of yarn.

White Mittens - Traditional Twined Knitting

White mittens in traditional twined knitting. I have never knitted white mittens in twined knitting until now. I don´t know why ... I love the traditional aspects of twined knitting, and white mittens with crook stitch patterns often gets to represent twined knitting.

The model of the mitten is a traditional one with a thumb-gore. All crook stitch patterns are from Dalarna (Dalecarlia). The yarn is Wålstedts 2-ply for twined knitting, a total of 110 grams for these mittens (Woman´s sized). Dbpns 2,5 mm.

Knitting crook stitches is actually fun, and not difficult at all. While knitting, the pattern may not always stand out as it will in the finished item, so you need some patience until you can judge your finished result.

I used three threads of white yarn in the cast-on. Traditionally it is common to use one red and two white threads for the cast-on. But this time I decided to stick to an all white mitten.

 A fairly quick knit and very few ends to take care of when I was finished knitting. I will definitely knit more of these.

Striped mittens in twined knitting

Twined knitted mittens with stripes.  The first time I saw mittens with this pattern was when taking a class in twined knitting lead by Karin Kahnlund.

The rows in white and red makes it very easy to keep track of the number of rows and you get "identical" mittens without any effort.

Always make a thumb-gore - it improves the fit enormously.

The yarn used in these mittens comes from Ullcentrum.