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WRAPPED IN COLOR
By Maie Landra and Taiu Landra When you’ve finished absorbing the amazing patterns in Magazine 7, get even more Koigu joy in our latest book, Wrapped In Color, published by sixth&springbooks! It’s full of extraordinary wrap and shawl projects, from the simple chic of Kersti Landra’s bulky Kiki, to the gorgeous color and fine detail of Melissa Leapman’s Tabitha, to the engineered lace of Brooke Nico’s Valentina, to Zabeth Weiner’s beautifully odd Woodsong, all the way to Maie Landra’s intense, energetic color juxtaposing in lovely Elizabeth, color-jammed Dash and Rhapsody In Color. You’ll also get a chance to catch up with some classic favorites, like Charlotte’s Web, presented in new ways. Wrapped In Color contains 30 designs in Lace, KPPPM, KPM, Kersti and Bulky. Don’t miss this chance to explore exciting thinking in color and design! By Kathryn Merrick Publisher: Sixth&Spring Books (March 17, 2015) ISBN-10: 1936096846 ISBN-13: 978-1936096848
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Pe r u o Y KOIGU DYEING:
Art such as Koigu’s hand painted colorways doesn’t happen overnight. From start to finish, it takes three days to create a finished dye lot, and each one is a unique work of art -no two are ever exactly the same. There are many forces that can influence the final outcome of a dye lot: the personality and mood of the artist painting the yarn, feeling and thoughts, the weather, temperature and seasons. Dye lots are small, consisting of just one kilogram of wool (roughly 20 skeins ). The yarn is carefully painted, subjected to heat to fix the dyes, then rinsed and hung on rods to dry. Once the wool has dried, it is reeled into 50g skeins, twisted and labeled with a colour number and dye lot number.
Koigu
®
magazine Issue 7
Contributors: Lynette Meek, Bridgett St Meave, Janice Sumpton, Carol Sulcoski, Monika Evans, Jenny King, Marji La Ferniere, Unjung Yun, Kathy Merrick, Melissa Leapman, Elke Schroder, Jamie Fascinato, Holly Melsom, Kersti Landra, Maie Landra, Taiu Landra How to reach us for editorial, or pattern questions Email: koigumagazine@gmail.com For advertising and marketing - Taiu Landra 1-888-765-WOOL Email koiguwool@gmail.com Manufactured and printed in Canada Koigu® Magazine, Issue No.7 Offices are Box 158, Chatsworth, Ontario, N0H1G0 Canada www.koigu.com ©All rights reserved. 2015 No part of this magazine may be copied or reproduced by any means without written permission from Koigu®. Recommended price - Single copies $12.95 US and Canada
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Changing and Adapting Lace Shawl
Patterns for Heavier Weight Yarns “What if....” “Could I....” “What are my options? I love this lace shawl pattern but it is knit with a lace weight yarn – I don’t do lace weight!” Working in my local yarn store I get questions like this every day! The easy answer is always YES! But the real answer is yes with questions. There are a few variables to consider before making changes; • Do you want your lace piece to be the same size or bigger? If bigger, how much bigger do you want the piece to be? • Do you want the lace to have the same appearance as the original? For example, do you want the knitting to appear as lacy and airy as the original or do you want it to appear more solid and substantial than the original? • How much heavier is the yarn that you want to use? For this article I am going to focus on Lace Weight yarns to 4-ply fingering yarns; ie – Koigu Lace to Koigu KPPPM. Though the questions are the same no matter the weight of yarn you want to substitute. • How difficult is the pattern? Would it be easy to adjust if adjustments were needed? How many changes can you handle to a pattern, while
working the pattern? • The easiest patterns to adjust are simple scarf or stole shapes. Also usually easy to adjust are top-down triangular shawls. There are also a few basics to know about knitting lace before starting to make changes.
Needle Sizes: Lace yarn pieces can be worked on any needle size. The average needle size range is usually from about 2.5mm US#1 ½ to about 3.75mm US#5. Some extremely airy pieces of lace can be worked on needles as large as 5mm US#8 to 6mm US#10! If working lace pieces with fingering yarns, the needle sizes can vary from 3.25mm US#3 to 4.5mm US#7. There is an overlap in needles sizes in the ranges I just gave – quite often, depending on the results desired, the pattern can simply be knit in the heavier yarn with no changes at all. The results would be a slightly larger, heavier article with more body to it and less of a lacy feel. When knitting lace with Koigu KPPPM I usually work with a 4.5mm US#7. Yardages: Lace knitting usually requires some significant yardages; while yardages usually decrease with the heavier yarn, the physical weight of the yarn will usually increase – always make sure to have the extra weight or extra yardage. Even for a straight through substitution, ie; same size required, same needle size used, extra yardage is always a good idea. I always recommend an extra 10% in yardage. Why is extra yardage needed if nothing has changed? The extra yardage may not be needed, but because changes have been made; because the yarn is heavier, each stitch is slightly bigger, everything takes just that little bit more; the yardage could change – it would be horrible to get to the finish and be short a few yards! An average stole, about 18” wide X 60 inches long will take between 800 - 1000 yds. A small shawlette will require about 400 to 500 yds. And a full size triangular shawl will take about 1000 yds. For example Koigu Tapestry in Koigu Lace took 7 hanks of Koigu Lace – 350gr, 2044 yds; Tapestry II was knit with Koigu KPPPM. It took 480.5gr. Some lace scarves make great stoles when they are reworked with a heavier yarn. If the lace scarf was created with a simple repeating pattern, a lace stole could be created by adding more repeats of the original pattern. A big lace wrap would result with even more repeats! If you are comfortable adding a lace repeat or two, the results would be beautiful. Work the pattern with 4 –ply yarn and a needle size at least 2 sizes bigger. For example, a lace weight scarf, knit on a 2.75mm US#2, needle is 6 inches wide and 5 feet long – work the same pattern in a 4 ply yarn with 3.75mm needles and the scarf is suddenly a wider scarf at about 10 inches wide and as long as you want it to be – depending on your yardage. Add extra repeats across the
pattern and you will have a stole. The beauty of any top-down knitting is that once the yarn is done, or more correctly, close to being finished, the remainder of whatever yarn is left can be used to finish off the piece. There is no waste or left-over bits. There are some beautiful small shawl triangles, knit in lace weight yarns that would translate very well to larger shawls if worked in a heavier yarn and a larger needle – the options are myriad. What to do with a large shawl in lace weight yarn, it cannot be knit in a heavier yarn without making some significant changes to the shawl pattern itself. Gauge, Percentages and Proportions If you want to change something more complex: a large square or pi-styled shawl, or a shawl knit with an unusual shape, the changes from lace weight yarns to a heavier yarn become more complex. Elements may need to be shrunk, changed in some other way or completely removed, all the while trying to keep the original “flavor” or feel of the shawl design. Knowing the gauge of the yarn that you are substituting – and the gauge swatch needs to be done in the yarn and needle size and pattern that you want to work. Don’t forget to block the swatch before you start figuring the changes that need to be made. Most large shawls have “elements” that are used to create the pattern of the shawl; a center, a border and an edging. The elements can be resized or removed entirely to make the changes that are necessary to create a shawl with similarities to the original version. Changing a shawl – Tapestry I, Knit with Koigu Lace and Tapestry II knit with Koigu KPPPM I wanted to keep the proportions of the shawl – the size and grandeur – the movement – and the elements – as much as possible. Tapestry I has a large lace center comprised of 3 sections: two matching ends and a connecting band of lace, a wide border – the focal piece of the shawl, and a narrow edging. The goal was to take the elements of the lace shawl and create a shawl of equal size and beauty in the heavier fingering weight. First I swatched the border – it was the largest element – and swatched in fingering it was almost a foot deep – too large for a border. It would have to be changed or removed. I looked at changing the center element – but it was complex and would have required a lot of adjustments. The only change made here was to shorten the lace connecting piece. It could have been removed entirely as the horseshoe-shaped end pieces could have been seamed
together for a shawl that would have been only slightly shorter, but I felt that would have removed a certain “grace” that the visual connecting lace gave the shawl. I decided to remove the border entirely. To help balance the edging to the body of the shawl as the edging was too narrow without the border, I widened the border by introducing one of the patterns from the horseshoe ends of the center element, the waving ribbon pattern. The edging needed to be wider to keep the proportions balanced. It didn’t work at first – the edging was still too narrow, so I tried mirroring the waving ribbon pattern – it totally changed the feel and look of the edging and made it “work” with the rest of the pattern. By Lynette Meek
About the Yarns
The following yarns from the Koigu Collections were used in this issue Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino (KPPPM) 100% Merino Wool; 175 yds/160m/50g
Koigu Mori ;50% Merino & 50% Mulberry Silk ; 185 yds/168m/50g
Koigu Bulky Merino 100% Merino Wool; 93yds/85m/50g
Koigu Premium Merino (KPM) 100% Merino Wool; 175 yds160m/50g
Koigu Lace Merino 100% Merino Wool; 292yds/267m /50g
Koigu Kersti Merino Crepe 100% Merino Wool; 175 yds/100m/50g
Koigu Sparkle ; 94% Merino Wool 6% Lurex; 164yds/150m/50g
2. HEXAGON LEAF DESIGN BY UNJUNG YUN - KPM & KPPPM
3. MELA VEST DESIGN BY MAIE LANDRA – SPARKLE
4. ALL TIME HOODIE DESIGN BY UNJUNG YUN KPPPM & KPM
5. NEWSPRINT SWEATER DESIGN BY MAIE LANDRA – KPPPM & KPM
6. SIMPLE SHADES SWAETER DESIGN BY MAIE LANDRA -KPPPM
7. FOTOSHOP SWEATER DESIGN BY MAIE LANDRA KPPPM &KPM
8. WALKAWAY PEPLUM TOP DESIGN BY LYNETTE MEEK - LACE
9. MUSKOKA JACKET DESIGNED BY TAIU LANDRA -BULKY
10. COLORSCAPE SWEATER DESIGN BY MARJI LA FRENIERE -KERSTI
11. COLOR LATTICE DESIGN BY CAROL J SULCOSKI - KERSTI
12. EYELET SHIRT DESIGN BY ELKE SCHROEDER KPPPM SELECTION OF MINIS
13. SAILING AWAY WRAP DESIGN BY MONIKA EVANS - KPM & KPPPM
14. CROSSOVER DESIGN BY UNJUNG YUN - KPM & KPPPM
15. CARMINA CARDIGAN DESIGN BY MELISSA LEAPMAN - KPM
16 TAPESTRY II SHAWL DESIGN BY LYNETTE MEEK - LACE
17. BELISSIMA SHRUG DESIGN BY JENNY KING - KPPPM
18. OMBRE SHRUG
17. BELISSIMA SHRUG
18. OMBRE SHRUG DESIGN BY BRIDGETT ST MEAVE - KERSTI
19. ALANA SWEATER DESIGN BY MELISSA LEAPMAN - KPM
20. CABLED HOODIE DESIGN BY MELISSA LEAPMAN - KPM
21. I HEART FAIR ISLE DESIGN BY MONIKA EVANS -KPM & KPPPM
22. KATABATIC WIND DESIGN BY UNJUNG YUN - LACE
23. MIMOSA DESIGN BY MELISSA LEAPMAN - KPM
24. ROMANCE SHAWL DESIGN BY MARJI LA FRENIERE - KPPPM
25. SPARKLE SCARF DESIGN BY MAIE LANDRA - SPARKLE
26. PEERIE BOXES HAT DESIGN BY KATHY MERRICK - KPM
27. KATHLEEN’S CAPELET DESIGN BY JANICE SUMPTON - KERSTI
28. KRISTINE’S ARMWARMERS DESIGN BY JANICE SUMPTON - KERSTI
29. ALICIA SWEATER DESIGN BY MELISSA LEAPMAN - BULKY
30. TOBERMORY BLANKET DESIGN BY MAIE LANDRA - BULKY
31. PEBBLE FLOWER SWEATER DESIGN BY KATHY MERRICK LACE
31. PEBBLE FLOWER SWEATER DESIGN BY KATHY MERRICK - LACE
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