Making Easter - knit bunnies and chocolate eggs

When I was a child we always made things for Easter - usually paper Easter baskets and dyed Easter eggs. In the US the shops carry Easter egg dying kits, but it's not so easy in the UK - there are no kits, it is virtually impossibly to find white eggs, and anyway, most of them have a big red stamp showing their origin.

Instead, Easter in the UK is all about chocolate. So instead of dying eggs I have started making chocolate eggs. And by excellent timing, I also happened to be knitting a bunny for a friend's child, just in time for Easter. So now I have a knit bunny AND chocolate eggs to enjoy during Easter.

For the bunny I used the Karel pattern by Annita Wilschut. This is a really clever pattern for a child's soft toy, because it is knit in one piece, so there is less danger of limbs being pulled off. I made mine in Plassard baby alpaca, for extra softness.



Wilfred bunny

I made the overalls from some leftover Blue Sky Alpaca Royal Petites, which is the softest baby alpaca ever. The overalls are fastened with a vintage button from my husband's granny's button box.

I made chocolate Easter eggs in a simple mold I bought in Finland last year. My decorating attempt was less than successful, but never mind, I used Lindt chocolate, so they are very tasty!

Dreaming of a Noro spring

We are experiencing an absolutely dreadful spring. Snow, bitter winds, the works. It feels like spring has been delayed by at least a month. So, even though it is most definitely still wool weather, to cheer myself up I bought some Noro Taiyo sock yarn (50% cotton, 17% wool, 17% polyamide, 16% silk) in shades of green and blue, to knit a spring cowl.

I wanted something like the September Circle or Betty Mouat cowls, but I didn't want to purchase yet another pattern. So I decided to (finally) create a design of my own.

I went with a feather and fan lace pattern, which I thought would show off the self-striping Noro yarn well. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. It is a perfect pattern for one beautiful multi-coloured Noro skein, and knitting the light cotton/silk blend reminded me that the cold weather will eventually pass.

Sakawa Surf cowl

I'm calling it Sakawa Surf because the colours remind me of a Hiroshige landscape scene along the Sakawa river. The similarity is so striking, I'm convinced the Noro designers must have been inspired by this exact picture.

Image from the Phillips Collection

And appropriately for this spring, the hints of white can represent the regular dustings of snow we've been getting!

Knitting with fine yarn

I've been trying to do more of my garment knitting with fine yarn, by which I mean 3- and 4-ply yarn, or fingering yarn. Not lace yarn - I'm not completely crazy! There are several good reasons to knit with fine yarn, not least of which is cost.

Yarn is packaged by weight - usually 50 or 100 gram balls or skeins, while I tend to think of garments in terms of yarn length - around 1000 metres is plenty for a small to medium sized sweater. The thicker the yarn, the less length you get in a ball - essentially you trade thickness for length. So, for example, a 1000 metre sweater knit in Rowan pure wool aran (£8.50 per 100 gram ball, 170 metres per ball) will take around 6 balls and cost £51, while a similar sized sweater in Rowan pure wool 4-ply (£4.95 per 50 gram ball, 159 metres per ball) will take around 6 balls and cost £30.

Of course, thinner yarn is knit on smaller needles, which create smaller stitches, so your garment takes longer to knit. But for me this is an advantage, because I already have too many sweaters. I actually need to slow down my knitting productivity!

But the most important advantage of thinner yarn is fit. Thicker yarn has volume which adds thickness to your body. Basically, garments knit in thick yarn make you look fatter. Also they are stiffer and don't drape as nicely. Sometimes this can be an advantage if you want more structure, but alternately there is the danger of looking like you are wearing knit armor.

Tvinni 3-ply from Isager

I've decided my optimum weight is 3-ply, a weight which is relatively unusual in the UK but very common in Scandinavia. I'm slowly knitting through yarn I picked up on various trips to Scandinavian, and when I need more I order it from Holst Garn (also carried by my favourite yarn shop in Paris, Le Comptoir).

I just finished a pattern from Cookie A in Finnish Ohut Pirkka-lanka. Cookie A is well known for her sock patterns, but her first foray into garments, Cookie A Knitwear Volume 1: Shapes + Form, is a resounding success, in my opinion.

I started with her Conic shrug, and although it took me about three months of actual knitting (plus several months sitting in a bag untouched) I am incredibly pleased with how it turned out.

You start out by knitting a cabled panel in the back, then cast on and pick up stitches around the edges and knit the arms in a decreasing cone shape. Then you go back and pick up stitches all around the arms and body to make a ribbed border. Knitting the cable panel was tedious (hence the several months in a bag), but once I gritted my teeth and finished it, knitting the rest of the garment was a breeze.

Pine Conic

The garment photographed in the pattern was knit in a lime green - usually my favourite colour, but I prefer my choice of a dark colour. The dark green makes the ribbed panel in the back less prominent, creating a elegantly subtle effect. Also, my 100% wool yarn has better structure than the merino used in the original, so the garment is more boxy and slightly less drapey. It is absolutely stunning (if I may say so myself).

This success has made me eager to start another knitting project with 3-ply yarn. Patterns in this weight are not that common, but fortunately I own one book with a large selection - Japanese Inspired Knits, by the Danish designer Marianne Isager.

I've already started swatching with my Tvinni 3-ply for the Summer in Tokyo pattern.

My yarn selection is too similar in shade so the fair isle pattern is not an option, but I'm thinking a nice stripe pattern will work perfectly. Stripes will also knit up quicker than fair isle - though even so there is no way I would finish this before next winter. Never mind, I'm sure it will be amazing.

Visiting museums: Quilts in Paris

In honour of my quilter mother, I always try to visit quilt shows when I have the opportunity. Opportunities are less common in Europe than in America, so I was delighted to find a quilt show on at the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture in Paris (13 Feb-19 May 2013) during my most recent visit.

The Mona Bismarck American Center is in the 16th arrondissement, a wealthy part of town I don’t visit much – it has a cold, grand feel to it, and is generally devoid of the quirky architecture, pleasant parks and shopping I prefer. The streets are mostly named after important individuals and there are quite a few with American connections (Avenue New York, Rue Benjamin Franklin, Avenue du President Wilson, plus the Franklin Roosevelt Metro station). So I guess the American Center is appropriately located.

It is housed in the Paris home of Mona Von Bismarck, a Kentucky-born socialite named best-dressed woman in 1933. She came from humble origins but married into wealth (and occasionally nobility) five times, which must have helped to keep her in fancy dresses.

Mona Von Bismarck in Balenciaga
© The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

The Center she founded is dedicated to presenting American art and culture in Paris - and what could be more American than quilts?

It turned out the quilts were actually part of another collection with the same cultural aim of presenting American art and culture – to the British. They came all the way from the American Museum in Bath, another museum started by flamboyant characters – antique collectors this time.

The show displays a wide selection of different quilting techniques from the 18th to early 20th centuries. Quilting specifically means the technique of sewing two or more layers of material together to make a thicker padded material, usually creating a regular surface design in the process. But quilts themselves vary greatly in the technique used to create the top layer, which can be made from a single sheet of fabric or created by piecing together different sized and coloured pieces of cloth, appliquéing fabric shapes to a sheet of fabric, or even embroidering designs.

Pieced quilts are probably the most familiar form of quilting. They were made by sewing together small, regularly shaped pieces of cloth, traditionally often cut from old garments. The design possibilities are endless, depending on the shape, size and colour of the fabric pieces. Some popular patterns become standardised and are given names.

Detail of Star of Bethlehem quilt
© the American Museum in Britain

One of the appliquéd quilts was instantly recognisable from my last visit to the American Museum in Bath (made with my mother many years ago, but the quilt in question is too stunning and unusual to be forgotten).

Queen Kapiolani’s Fan Quilt
Image borrowed from the Magazine Antiques

But my very favourite piece was the Baseballs quilt, probably from Cooperstown New York, appropriately the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. You definitely can’t get more American than quilts AND baseball.

Detail of Baseballs with appliqué and embroidery,
borrowed from the exhibition catalogue