Monet Blanket and How to Knit Something Like It (Photo Essay)

I'm chuffed to have finally finished a summer-long project, a full bed/couch-size blanket knitted in scraps that echo the colors in two batches of hand-dyed yarn a flea market buddy gave me ten or fifteen years ago...and lots of knitting memories. I didn't buy a single skein of yarn to make this blanket.

Here's the blanket itself, spread out across three chairs...unfortunately close to a patch of sunshine, which allows the colors to show but also spoils the picture a cheap cell phone can take...

Even the cheap cell phone can do better than that, and it will, with photos of individual portions of the blanket.

The borders were durable Red Heart acrylic...



(It's been sold, but here's what I'd knitted with the batch of "Monet" multicolor-fleck Red Heart when it first came on the market.)



And here it is in the border of the blanket, above a band of Red Heart solid blue.

I made and sold the blue jacket before I had a digital camera; here's the yarn:


Here's the first pattern band, in the sequence in which they were knitted, above the border. (In order to get the borders to match I knitted both borders first, then continued knitting from what was actually the border band knitted second until it was long enough to join to the band knitted first.) Here I used up small scraps of solid colors as contrasts to the first scrap of hand-painted wool.



The multicolor yarns that coordinated so well with each other, and with Red Heart's "Monet" fleck, were Cherry Tree Hill handpainted wool and mohair. The company still offers unusual hand-dyed yarns but now they focus on lighter-weight "Broad Band" yarns that form stripes--nothing like the blanket-weight fleck yarns that formed dots, when knitted, for which the company was known in the 1990s. Check out...

http://www.cherryyarn.com/wordpress/

And here's a nice Amazon link...the founder of Cherry Tree Hill yarns wrote a book featuring patterns designed to highlight lots of other fancy handpainted yarns, as well as her own. Few of the yarns shown are still available, but you'll get lots of ideas about how to use ombre, fleck, and broad-band multicolor yarns that are available now.



The coordinating multicolored yarns became this jacket:

From the scrap bin I pulled out balls of solid colors and a couple of other multicolor yarns that blended naturally with the Monet and Cherry Tree Hill yarns. The patterns alternated garter stitch with texture and color patterns found in Rae Compton's Complete Book of Traditional Knitting; my copy still has the decorative paper cover, but here's the book's Amazon link:



You can find the patterns I used in the first third of the book, but why even bother? If you use blanket-weight yarns that knit up to (on average) 4 stitches per inch, 200 stitches will cover one person, couch, or "twin size" bed or cot, very nicely. Allow 10 stitches at each end of each row for garter stitch borders. This leaves approximately 180 stitches for your "canvas." All the patterns in the book can be repeated a few times within 180 stitches. Plug in your own pattern choices in between garter stitch bands and borders to get a unique blanket of your very own.

Here's the next section of knitting, in which you see the Cherry Tree Hill mohair, at the bottom of the picture in the band of garter stitch. This was followed by more of the light blue, contrasting with the gray cotton I used to knit the Paper Bag Cap (photo below); more of the Monet appears in the blackberry stitch band.





At this point, in order to show the colors, I stepped in front of the patch of sunlight and photographed the blanket from the side. Here's the next part of the knitting, in which Red Heart light blue and Cherry Tree Hill mohair are knitted together in the fairisle pattern.




That shades-of-green yarn was used in a jacket I still have for sale...a photo (and description and buying information) should appear here soon.

Here's the final section of patterns I knitted before joining to the top border you see above.

These yarns, and more of the "Monet" yarn, also appeared in the Faded Ribbons Jacket. 

Some of the other yarns in all of these multi-yarn projects were also Red Heart acrylic, and some were other acrylics (I've forgotten). One unusual yarn that appears in the blanket and the Faded Ribbons Jacket, I remember, was a single skein, bought at an end-of-season sale, of Chelsea Silk (blended) pale blue fleck yarn from Tahki Yarns. 

The blanket can be purchased online for $100 (plus $2 per online payment). It's approximately 50x75" (it will stretch slightly in use and shrink slightly when washed); big enough to cover a couch or twin bed. Wool and mohair sections may feel prickly, but these are top-quality wool and mohair yarns, handmade, with minimal chemicals, so a lot of people who think they're allergic to wool won't react to them. (I've knitted with these materials draped down over my bare legs, so I know for sure they don't contain enough acid residues to trigger that nasty hyper-acidic reaction with human skin even in summer.) The parts that will cuddle around your face as you sleep are acrylic anyway. This blanket should turn snow for several hours, and supply warmth for patients taking blood pressure medication. 

Book Review: Chronically Crushed

A Fair Trade Book



Title: Chronically Crushed 

Author: Randi Reisfeld

Author's web page: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Randi-Reisfeld/707115 claims that a page for www.randireisfeld.com exists, although it's not working today

Date: 1998

Publisher: Pocket Books

ISBN: 0-671-01904-X

Length: 147 pages

Quote: "Amber...was fully brimming with unbridled confidence. 'Tyler...Tyler Sheffield wants me. Cannot, in fact will not, live without me'."

The narrator is, of course, Clueless heroine Cher Horowitz. In all things Clueless a good half of the joke is on Cher for being a self-centered, immature teenybopper, yet Cher is actually one of the brightest and best in her rich-but-ignorant school. Amber is one of the kids who are even more clueless than Cher. (In the movie credits, she was "Nose Job Girl.") Cher and her best friend, Dionne, count Amber as their worst friend, never miss a chance to beat her in any competition, make fun of her and score off her almost constantly, and she's almost dumb and bratty enough to deserve it...yet they did bond as children, and, in a high school social "crisis," they're there for her. And Dionne, the one who has a long-term steady boyfriend, has even been suspected of having some latent common sense.

In the cover picture, Amber is on our left, Cher in the center stage she monopolizes so well, and De is on the right. You can tell them apart because Amber usually makes the most egregious fashion mistakes, but in this book they're all modelling the correct way this web site recommends wearing high-heeled shoes...always in a bedroom, never on the street.

Clueless sequels were all based on plots from classic English novels, adapted to a contemporary high school setting. Which classic novel featuring a heroine whose friends save her from a designing fortune-seeker is this one? There are a few to choose from...anyway, it's high school in the 1990s, so the danger facing Amber is the humiliation of spending a whole weekend at a snob school where her host might be merely using her to make a statement to his ex-girlfriend. Might be, might not be...will Cher and De find out in time to save Amber from embarrassment, and, if so, how?

The whole story is being played for laughs, California style, so no points for guessing how it ends up, but I chortled several times along the way.

If you buy it from the Amazon bookseller who first uploaded the image, in theory I get a small commission, and I'd love to test how well the system works these days. To buy it directly from me, send $5 per book + $5 per package to either of the addresses at the very bottom of the screen. (Scroll past the blog feed.) That "per package" shipping fee means you could throw in five or even seven more Clueless books for a total of $35 or $45 respectively, and I'll send $1 per copy to Reisfeld or a charity of her choice. (Not all of the Clueless books were penned by Randi Reisfeld. The first, and some say the best, were written by the late H.B. Gilmour. If you buy a boxfull, I'll stretch a point in aid of Reisfeld's charity.)

Last winter I designed a doll outfit to match another Clueless book...

https://blogjob.com/priscillaking/2016/02/18/how-to-knit-chers-coat/



...Knitters can still find the instructions on Blogjob. That unique doll, together with a buddy dressed like De on that book cover, was sold last week. I'll dress dolls like Cher, Amber, and possibly De from this book cover, too, if you want them; each outfit will be unique (you can't see much of De's outfit in the picture, but you can see the shade of green and we know Cher and De always wear 1990s teens-only miniskirts) and, assuming dolls 12" high/tall/long or smaller, each outfit will cost $10 online.

How to Knit Cher Horowitz's Coat

(Reclaimed from Blogjob, where I tagged it as: Clueless TV series tie-in novel, hand knitting, knit for Barbie doll, knit for fashion doll, Maxie doll, novels by H.B. Gilmour and Randi Reisfeld, Red Heart Light & Lofty yarn.)

Although elaborate costumes from historical novels are interesting to knit for dolls, Barbie dolls are a twentieth century phenomenon and can seem most at home in twentieth century styles.

The model shown below is actually "Maxie" ...the one with realistic human-type feet, rather than stubs designed to lock into stands, although Maxie's feet are still smaller than a real human's would be and don't really allow her to stand up unsupported. Anyway, as a blonde teenage-type doll she seems a good match for a book from the series that began with Clueless. 

Here's an authentic Maxie doll from 1989. At the time of posting, clicking on this image will open a page where you can buy this vintage doll:

Here's the book, with the link you can use to buy it from the person who posted the image:

On the book jacket, H.B. Gilmour's character Cher is wearing a silky summer blouse, the kind of thing you could actually wear in Southern California. The human's outfit would, in real life, be a super-lightweight machine-knitted jersey fabric. The yarn I had in a matching color was a chunky boucle yarn called "Light & Lofty." Right...so what the doll is wearing is the fun fur coat to match the thin shirt, or dress, or whatever, the character's wearing in the picture.

To my surprise, it is still possible to buy "Light & Lofty" yarn. Here's where you can check out the colors that are currently available...I see a pearly, blue-toned white, but not the pale blue I used, which I bought more than ten years ago.

https://www.redheart.com/yarn/light-lofty#available_colors

If you can't find "Light & Lofty" you can use other blanket-weight yarns, although most of them will be less textured and will give less of a fun-fur effect. The gauge I got is closer to 3.75 than to 4 stitches per inch; if you get 4 or even 4.5 stitches per inch the coat will still fit any 11-1/2 to 12" adult-shape doll, but may look more like a tunic than a fun-fur coat. Two ounces (50 grams) of yarn will be plenty.

This coat is worked from the shoulders down, in two pieces which I joined as I went along, thusly:

1. Cast on 24 stitches.
2. First row (right side): knit all stitches. Second row (wrong side): knit 2, purl to the last 2 stitches, knit 2. Repeat these 2 rows 3 times more: 8 rows altogether.
3. Bind off 6 beginning next 2 rows, and work all rem st in stock st (K on right-side rows, P on wrong-side rows).
4. Bind off 1 beginning next 4 rows.
5. Work 8 rows even on 8 st.
6. Change to garter stitch (K all st on right-side and wrong-side rows) for 10 rows more. Bind off.
7. You have now made the back half of the coat. Hold it with the right side facing you, and pick up and knit 10 st from the cast-on edge along the right shoulder and sleeve. Turn, purl 8, and knit 2.
8. Turn. Knit 10, increasing in the last st. Turn. Purl 9, knit 2.
9. Turn. K 11, inc in the last st. Turn. P 10, k 2.
10. K 12. Wrap yarn 5 times around the needle, then pick up and knit 10 more st from the cast-on edge along the left shoulder and sleeve. Turn. K 2, P 8, working the last P st together with 1 of the wrapped loops in the middle of the row.
11. Turn. Knit 1 st through the back of the next wrapped loop. K 10. Turn. K 2, P 9, working the last P st together with the next wrapped loop. Repeat these 2 rows again, thus using up all the wrapped loops.
12. K 2, P 10. If the center st is slack, pick up a loop and purl it through the back loop together with the center st. P 10, K 2.
13. Picking up 1 from each of the 6 bound-off st from the back half of the coat and working it together with each of the 6 st, bind off 6 beginning next 2 rows, thus joining the sleeves.
14. Work the next 4 rows in stock st, binding off and grafting the first st of each row.
15. Work 8 more rows stock st, picking up a loop at the side edge of the back of the coat and working it together with the first st of each row.
16. Work 10 more rows g st, joining the first st of each row to the corresponding row of the back of the coat in the same way.
17. Bind off, grafting the first and last st to the bound-off edge from the back of the coat.

On the book jacket, Cher wears hair ornaments that match her shirt or dress. You'll have enough yarn left over from a skein of "Light & Lofty" to make hair ornaments, necklaces, belts, or even spool-knit socks/boots, to match the coat, if you want them.

(Update: This doll, and also a doll dressed to match Dionne (the character on Cher's left on the book cover), have already been sold. To order dolls dressed to match this or other books, not limited to children's books if you are or know a grown-up Barbie collector, send $20 per doll and the specifications you want to either address at the very bottom of the screen. To purchase any Clueless novel as a Fair Trade Book, send $5 per book, $5 per package--I can squeeze six or eight of these paperbacks into a package--and $1 per online payment, and we'll send $1 per Clueless novel to Randi Reisfeld or a charity of her choice.)

Little Boy Brown

(Reclaimed from Blogjob.)

Several years ago, about this time of year, Gena Greene and I had set up a display of hand knits in the Montgomery County Farm Women's Cooperative Market in Bethesda, Maryland. A woman looked at the selection of baby and toddler things on the display and said, "Do you have anything for a little boy?"

I did the usual warble about how most sweaters are unisex and we add snap fasteners so the jackets button to whichever side you prefer, for a small extra charge, with purchase. (In the U.S. the only gender difference in many garments is that women's things button right over left and men's things button left over right.)

Since babies and toddlers spend a lot of time lying down, and much of the rest of the time tugging on things and trying to eat them, we don't recommend adding buttons to babies' things, ever. In the U.S. the traditional gender difference for baby things is supposed to be that boy babies are dressed in blue and girl babies are dressed in pink. Of course a lot of baby things are meant to be unisex too; you can tell because they're either both blue and pink, or neither blue nor pink.

Well, this shopper might have been shopping with one specific child in mind, or she might have been one of those people who ask for whatever they don't see on a display in order to end a conversation without buying anything. She said, "I want something that's definitely for a boy, in brown, and he's just starting to walk."

We hadn't thought of knitting any baby things in brown, but why not? We had enough of some thick brown and tan yarns to make a snowsuit for a toddler. We had a book, e-friend Jil Eaton's Minnow Knits, that contained patterns for knitted snowsuits for children just starting to walk; we'd made one for a slightly bigger toddler in green.

That's a thumbnail picture of Jil Eaton's original "Coco Chenille" chunky suit.

That's a thumbnail picture of the lighter-weight "Yikes, Stripes" suit. Full-sized photos and complete instructions are in Minnow Knits, copyrighted; knitters can enlarge the pictures (free) and download individual patterns (possibly cheaper) at https://www.ravelry.com/designers/jil-eaton/patterns?page=4 .

So Gena made the chunky suit, cocoa-colored but not chenille, and called it "Little Boy Brown." We took it back to that market, but that woman didn't buy it.

If you'd like to support this site by buying it, here's the BlogJobStore link you can use to pay online:

https://blogjob.com/priscillaking/store/products/little-boy-brown-snowsuit/

Or mail $25 for the (one and only) suit, + $5 for shipping, via U.S. postal order, to P.O. Box 322...btw, I could probably squeeze a few books into the same package.

(Purchasing update: If the BlogJobStore link turns out not actually to work, like so many sites that initially accepted an "i-frame" and then bogged down in the local Internet service, you can always send the money to the address at the very bottom of this screen. Regretfully, I now have to add a $1 surcharge per online payment; I don't add a surcharge for U.S. postal orders, because the post office does that. Wordpress tags: Greensleeves Handknits,hand knitting, handmade acrylic cap, handmade acrylic snow pants,handmade acrylic sweater,machine washable hand knits, snow suit for one-year-old child.)

Stripey Bag or Cushion Cover

This bag or cushion cover is the sort of thing anybody can make as a first project by sewing two big Brownie Squares together. Gena Greene made it to use up some scraps of chunky wool. The colors are a little brighter than they appear in this photo, but not much; the green has a bronze tone, the blue is a dark navy, the lighter color is straw-yellow.



Size: 15" square

Material: wool

Care: Hand wash gently, dry flat--and stretch it to shape if you want it to cover the same cushion!

Price: $25 for the bag, $5 for shipping

Little Boy Brown Snowsuit

Merry Christmas! (No, I'm not blogging on Christmas Day. I'm using the "schedule" feature...the photo was taken last summer, and this post was finished and "scheduled" during the week before Christmas.)

This three-piece suit shows up in colors fairly close to the real colors--a light brown, and a brown-tan-and-white mix. Gena Greene knitted it after a shopper asked for "something for a boy, in brown." The pattern is a variation on one of Jil Eaton's Minnow Knits.



Size: 18-24 months old; trousers have room for diapers

Material: acrylic

Care: machine wash and dry

Price: $25 for the suit, $5 for shipping

Pine Trees Pullover

In Maine Woods Woolies, Helene Rush included a pattern for a sweater with a different kind of pine tree motifs. Here's Gena Greene's version of the child's size, made by unravelling a damaged adult sweater (not one of ours) and re-knitting the good yarn.



Size: average 8-10-year-old child

Materials: 20% cotton, 80% recycled cotton-ramie

Care: machine wash and dry

Price: $20 + $5 for shipping

Traditional Scraps Mittens

In real life these mittens really are made of scraps--any scrap and any other scrap knitted together from scrap balls...We call these Pineapple Place mittens, in honor of the knitting style explained in Anne Lindbergh's novel The People in Pineapple Place. They're very thick and snowproof.



Size: man's

Materials: mixed, mostly wools and acrylics

Care: These would probably survive machine laundering, but they are mittens. Rinse out the dirt in water that feels comfortable to your hands, then dry them on the register, on the radiator, on the warming shelf above your wood stove. (But not on top of an electric space heater. Please.)

Cost: $5 + $5 shipping. As always, shipping fees include whatever fits into one package.

Turkish Scrollwork Ski Jacket

Meg Swansen published the two-color pattern in Knitter's magazine in the 1980s. Gena Greene changed it by using lots of luxury yarns...literally, fifty shades of gray! This double-thick jacket will turn snow.



Size: 40-42", 5'5"-5'8"

Materials: mixed, predominantly wool and mohair

Care: hand wash carefully, dry flat

Price: $150 + $5 shipping

Yellow Raspberries Cap

The stitch pattern used here is traditionally known as blackberry stitch...





In real life, the yellow color is brighter than it's showing up on this computer, like pale golden-blond hair...about the color of the real fruit known as yellow raspberries.


Size: medium


Material: acrylic


Care: machine wash and dry


Price: $5 + $5 shipping

Lipstick Pullover

In real life, this traditional Guernsey-style sweater is a bright, clear color, like watermelon pulp. The manufacturer called it "lipstick red."





The pattern was adapted from Madeline Weston's first pattern book, which is confusingly available under two titles, Classic British Knits and The Traditional Sweater Book, and is available as a Fair Trade Book.


Sweater size: 36-38", 5'4"-5'8"


Material: Creslan acrylic (looks and feels more like cotton than most acrylics, may retain odors)


Care: Machine wash and dry


Price: $40 + $5 shipping (one shipping price covers everything that fits into the package)


Madeline Weston's Ravelry page: http://www.ravelry.com/designers/madeline-Weston


To buy Classic British Knits (or The Traditional Sweater Book, whichever is available at the moment) as a Fair Trade Book: $5 + $5 shipping, from which Madeline Weston or a charity of her choice will receive $1.

Purple Hood

This hood is designed to fit like a hat that won't blow away in any wind.



It's only one layer of chunky acrylic yarn--it will turn powdery snow. The colors are pretty close to the way they're showing up on the computer I'm using.

Size: medium-large

Price: $5 + $5 shipping. (You can fit other things into the package for that $5...please do!)

Knitted Plaid Jacket

Here's Gena Greene's take on a design from a vintage issue of Elle Knits:



The colors are pretty similar in real life to the way they look at the center of the picture, on this computer screen: jade green, blue, and yellow.

Material: acrylic

Care: machine wash and dry

Size: 34-36", 5'6"-5'9"

Price: $30 + $5 shipping

Aquamarine Shawl

This is a simple triangular shawl, without fringe, knitted in a fluffy, slightly sparkly, baby-boucle yarn in pale aquamarine with a strand of glossy white. It's meant to be light, soft, and dressy rather than blanket-thick...definitely not snowproof.

Size: One size fits adults; can be stretched, can't be shrunk.

Material: Acrylic

Care: Machine wash and dry

Cost: $20 for the shawl + $5 for shipping

Jester's Jacket

Gena Greene's version of a Sue Bradley design from Stitches in Time is all acrylic (with a tiny bit of lurex) and, unlike most Greensleeves jackets, has buttonholes. (We usually recommend fastening knitted cardigans with clasps or snappers.)

Size: 34-38", 5'4"-5'8"

Care: Machine laundry is safe, but pills may form; careful hand washing is recommended.

Price: $40 for the jacket, $5 for shipping

Tribute to Barbara Walker Sweater

Kathleen Power Johnson designed a pattern for Knitter's magazine as a "Tribute to Barbara Walker," using one of the unusual cable patterns and one of the two-toned "mosaic" stitch patterns Barbara Walker collected in her Treasuries.



Gena Greene's version was knitted in a wool blend yarn. The colors are a soft green and a rich copper-penny brown.

Size: 32-36", 5'3"-5'6"

Care: Machine wash and dry, carefully.

Price: $50 for the sweater + $5 for shipping (you could fit a book or two into the package).

Dawn's Early Light Jacket

Gena Greene's inspiration for this multicolor stripey jacket came from Laura Militzer Bryant's Knitting with Novelty Yarns, a book we recommend even to non-knitters as "eye candy." Although the book was meant to inspire knitters to make things with Prism Yarns, Gena's intention was to use up the last of some unusual multicolor acrylic yarn left over from other projects. What she did was strand it together with other cotton, mohair, wool, and acrylic yarns in a chunky blouson jacket that's both fluffy-soft and snowproof.

Size: 36-40", 5'4"-5'8"

Care: We recommend hand washing and drying flat to preserve the fluff, but this jacket will survive machine laundering. (It will "pill" if scrubbed or agitated, though.)

Price: $125 for the jacket, $5 for shipping

Color-Me-Beautiful Spring Jacket and Hat

That's "Spring" as in the warm, bright colors that are currently in fashion...this jacket and hat will be on the warm side after the twenty-first of March. The colors are pretty close to the way they're showing up on this computer, a mix of tans, yellows, leafy greens, soft blue and white.

Size: 36-38", 5'4"-5'8"

Materials: mixed; more than 50% acrylic but including cotton, wool, and mohair

Care: We recommend hand washing gently and drying flat, but these garments would probably survive machine laundering without shrinking or stretching very much.

Cost: $75 for the jacket, $5 for the hat, $5 for shipping either or both (and you could probably fit a book into the package).

Child's Jacket and Cap

This simple toddler's jacket and cap is based on a pattern from Family Circle Easy Knitting. 

Size: Average two-year-old (cap could fit a small adult)

Material: Brushed acrylic

Care: Machine wash and dry

Price: $15 for the jacket, $5 for the hat, $5 for shipping (either or both and whatever else we can fit into the same passage, so you might want to buy a book or two). 

Turkish Carnation jacket

This is Gena Greene's interpretation of the Turkish Carnation jacket from Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Knitting...not quite as fitted or as fashion-forward as the version shown on the cover of the 1985 British edition of that book.

(Click here to see the fabulous Fassett web site; click here to find Glorious Knitting on Amazon. It's available as a Fair Trade Book, as well, for $5 + $5 shipping and Fassett or his charity gets $1, if you want to support the Fair Trade Books system.)

Size: 32-36", 5'5"-5'8"

Material: A mix of everything--but mostly acrylic.

Care: We recommend hand washing and drying flat to preserve the colors, but the garment will probably stand up to machine laundering.

Price: $95 + $5 shipping