Articles

Oct 27 2021

Pattern suggestion: Halmstad Sweater

Author: Mairi McKissock

Posting date: 27 October 2021

Today’s sweater suggestion is the Halmstad sweaterby Todd Gocken.  It is available as a free pattern from Knitty.com.  Men are notoriously difficult to knit for.  Maybe your favourite man is an exception, but they do have a reputation for not liking anything that’s actually fun to knit.  This pattern is the answer!

The colourwork patterns are conservative enough for average male preference, but interesting enough for average knitter interest.  Plus, there’s a surprise in the construction.  A fun surprise.  You work the sleeves and body together in one piece, then cut it open at four steeks.  And then sew side and arm seams.   Take a look at the pattern to see how it’s done.  If you’ve done any stranded colourwork before, you’ll know that this makes the knitting very, very easy.  And the stripes are guaranteed to line up.

A steek, for those unfamiliar, is an area of a few stitches on every row that form a bridge between different parts of the garment.  It becomes a safe place to cut the knitted fabric for a seam to be added later.  With a nice, ‘sticky’ yarn like BC Garn Bio Shetland, it is easy to stabilize the fabric before cutting – any method will work, without special precautions.

BC Garn Bio Shetland is a slightly lighter weight yarn than used in the original pattern.  You can use it without modification at the specified gauge, just be sure to check your tension before you start, and modify needle size if needed.  The finished sweater will be lighter in weight, but still warm and comfortable..

 

 

Oct 20 2021

Pattern suggestion: Raglan Sweater

Author: Mairi McKissock

Posting date: 20 October 2021

This top-down raglan sweater pattern is a must-have.  It was written by our own Michelle Porter. 

We don’t want to forget basic essentials when we’re posting pattern suggestions for our Bio Shetland promotion.  And this one is super-flexibile.  Make it in any size, and at any gauge.  Make it with long sleeves or short.  Give it a turtleneck, or a crew neck, or a scoop neck.  Knit it in one colour, or in stripes.  Use lots of different colours, or just a few.  Add cable details, perhaps down the arms or along the raglan lines.  Or use eyelet increases for the raglans, like in this picture, for a really easy tough of elegance.

The possibilities are endless, and a good, basic pattern like this gives you a framework to build on.

The basic pattern is written for aran-weight yarn, but you can hold two strands of Bio Shetland together as a substitute.

We think that BC Garn Bio Shetland makes wonderful, light sweaters.  There’s a lot of yardage in those inexpensive skeins, and a lot of warmth in that woolen-spun yarn.  So, here’s a raglan sweater pattern to help you make that sweater-to-live-in that everyone needs.

Oct 08 2021

Edna’s ‘Wake’ Sweater

Author: Mairi McKissock

Edna knitted this beautiful sweater recently using BC Garn Bio Shetland.  The pattern is Wake, by Veronik Avery.  Bio Shetland has similar characteristics to the yarn used for the original design.  So, it can be substituted without modification.

Edna used just 6 skeins (300g) of Bio Shetland.

We love the bias-knit cables in this design, and the extra length in the back.  It’s a nice, easy-wearing casual style that’s great for layering.

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Apr 25 2014

Set-in sleeves, simplified

Author: Mairi McKissock

Skill level: Intermediate/ExperiencedSet-in Sleeves
Date: Thursday, 19/Jun, 6:00pm – 8:30pm (1 session, 2.5 hours)
Instructor: Michelle Porter
Cost: $30 + HST

Do you struggle with knitting patterns for sweaters and other garments designed with set-in sleeves?  You’re not alone.  Many of us have unfinished sweater projects in the backs of our closets; projects that ‘don’t seem to be working’, but we’re not sure why, or what we would need to do to fix them.  Perhaps the pattern is unclear, or poorly designed for different sizes, or we just need to make changes for our specific body measurements, and set-in sleeves can make it hard to understand how to read a pattern and modify it to fix specific problems.

Join experienced garment designer Michelle Porter for this workshop on set-in sleeves.  She will be teaching the design aspects involved in creating the sleeve cap and the armhole of a set-in sleeve sweater.  How the measurements and shaping of the pieces should correspond and come together to fit each other and the wearer exactly. This class is mostly theory, using measurements from our bodies and a tension gauge from a swatch.