A Flax Round Up
When we created The Simple Collection back in 2013, we hoped it would be useful. Emily and I got our design starts working in yarn shops and teaching classes there. We knew some high-quality, free, beginner knitting patterns with tutorials would be a useful resource that yarn shops and instructors. But we had no idea knitters would take up these patterns with such force! The Barley hat has almost 20,000 projects as of the date of this blog post, and Flax has been a first sweater for so many knitters!
More stripes! I think stripes might be the favourite Flax hack…. From AnnahJ, FogandString, Scitchr, isaida, undone57, tanisfiberarts.
The story of The Simple Collection is a classic example in the story of Emily’s and my partnership. First, Emily suggested we create a great free pattern for knitters to learn with, including tutorials to walk them through each step. But I said no, not just one, we should do 8! A whole series! With tutorials for ALL of them! Swept up in a wave of enthusiasm The Simple Collection began.
Over the years, the Simple Collection has grow to 12 patterns and we have added a few ‘light’ versions too (Flax Light, Barley Light, and Rye Light) for those knitters who prefer working sock weight yarn. If there is something knitterly and new you want to learn, the Simple Collection is here for you!
We think that our Flax and Flax light sweater patterns (and the Simple Collection patterns in general) appeal both to the newbies and the experienced knit mavens who could teach us a thing or two! They have been taken up by both dedicated sweater knitters, and those who just enjoy whipping up a tiny baby sweater or two every year for very special babies. We are so very pleased that the Flax pattern has been an introduction for thousands of knitters to our work!
Cute wee Flax’s from ferguss, kurisan , jennyishi, mcshellyraebelly , dwj1978, and kellymarie2.
It was so much fun searching through the thousands of Flax projects on Ravelry to create this post! There were so many smiling faces, proud in their new sweaters, so many Flax hacks from people taking it as a blank canvas and going wild, and so many gifts for loved ones too.
More awesome Flax inspiration from Anidori, lifeandknits, DammitMax, ichbineinetomate, MissFoliage, strickland66, Kepanie, lavagirlcourtney, Hannaliini, and purltwo.
Tell us, what was your first sweater? Was it a Flax? Share your first sweater story with us in the comments! Also, if you share knit photos on Instagram, we’ll get to see if you include #flaxsweater or #flaxlightsweater – or tag us @tincanknits. We love love love to see what you are all knitting!
Beloved Handspun
I really really really love handspun yarn. A day will come, I suspect, when I will direct a slice of my time and attention to learning and practicing spinning regularly. Now is not the moment, but that doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for the end result of hand spinning! The subtle textures, the colour shifts, the springy feeling of the yarn, and the nubbly texture of a 2-ply handspun all fascinate, tempt, and divert me.
The novel nature of each yard that passes through your fingers can really heighten the experience of knitting – that’s probably also one of the reasons I love Noro yarns so much too.
Enough waxing poetic, Wessel!
When I bought these beautiful handspun skeins from The Sweatermaker ‘Mac’ yarns from Uptown yarns in my old home town of Courtenay, BC, I knew I’d really LOVE working with them. For me handspun is like the triple aged whiskey that someone breaks out on a very special occasion. It’s for SUBLIME knitting.
Last winter, Neve’s outgrew all of her baby sized hats, and so it was imperative that I make her a new Beloved bonnet.
Can you Cast On and Bind Off Before Baby?
Alexa has this personal tradition that she calls the ‘birth hat’. When a friend or family member begins her labour or heads in to the hospital for a cesarean, the birth partner sends Alexa a text to let her know. Then she casts on, and spends the next few hours knitting a baby hat for the tiny person making their dramatic transition from inside to out. It’s a small show of solidarity, sitting with her thoughts for both parents and baby, knitting love into fabric for the new one.
I LOVE this idea, and have done it a couple of times myself. I see this as a ‘snow day’; a delicious moment to step outside the flow of usual work and meditate on parenthood. While knitting, you might think back to the babes who are near and dear to you and about the changes that their lives have made in your own.
I took this on when my friend Rosie had her baby, and this hat was the result. Alexa says she usually ‘binds off before baby’, with first babies, but with second babies the results are less certain! I don’t think she bound off before Max was born, and she certainly didn’t with Neve!
My second birth hat was this little bonnet I knit for my sister’s younger son, Charlie. What a cutie, eh?!
I’ve just recently cast on another Beloved bonnet. It’s always useful to add to the ‘gift box’ in preparation for new babies and birthdays. I also like to do this kind of a project as a ‘palette cleanser’ if I’m feeling stuck in my design work, OR if I have that perfect single skein, begging to be cast on.
For more Beloved inspiration, check out all of the awesome projects on Ravelry here as well as the #belovedbonnet hashtag on Instagram here.
Diverse Voices, Inclusive Images
This winter has seen a flowering of conversations within the Instagram knit community about the impacts of racism. Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) knitters have shared examples of the racism they’ve suffered both online and in real life at knitting groups, yarn shops, and knit events. Vox published a summary of the discussion to date here, it’s a reasonable place to start. Another is the Unfinished Object blog, which “explore(s) how diversity becomes inclusion, how representation morphs into change”.
So many BIPOC knitters and makers have shared their experiences, their feelings, and in so doing become targets of online hate. These knitters have taken big risks and suffered damaging consequences by speaking.
Vulnerability is oh so hard. It’s something you extend to friends, hoping that you will be held, and accepted. This vulnerability is something that many BIPOC knitters are extending to make a safer BIPOC space within the crafting community. This conversation has extended an opportunity to established white designers like Alexa and I, to make change for the better.
We personally would like to thank the following knitters and makers whose stories have impacted us: @su.krita, @ocean_bythesea, @thecolourmustard, @thepetiteknitter, @astitchtowear, @nadiratani, @kindahamaly, @jeanettesloan, @tyneswedish and so many more.
Thank-you for raising your voices, thank-you for sharing your stories.
We are sorry that our Instagram feed and our publications have, overwhelmingly, reinforced white norms of beauty, instead of challenging them. We are sorry that we personally have been ignorant and not educated ourselves beyond a superficial level on issues of racism, nor considered our white privilege critically.
Alexa and I have been listening, hearing, thinking, debating whether or how, as white women designers, we might contribute to this conversation. Unfortunately, waiting for the right words hasn’t lead to them. So we’ll fumble and falter, instead of remaining silent.
“We didn’t create racism, but that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to work to interrupt it.”
Omkari Williams in conversation with Layla Saad on her podcast here.
We believe this. And we are coming to learn what damage is done through passivity, through silence. We strive to learn to act and communicate differently.
Alexa and I have, for the most part, shared only pretty pictures of knitting and our children with you over the past 7 years, staying silent about politics, philosophy, parenting, what we’re reading and what we think and feel except as it relates directly to knitting. BUT for us, this conversation feels DIFFERENT. Different in impact, and different in importance.
In our minds, our work at Tin Can Knits has centered around a ‘you can knit this, we can help’ positive attitude toward making, an attitude with accessibility and inclusiveness as key. Voices speaking out for racial inclusion have shown us the ways which we have failed to do those things, we are sorry and we aim to do much better.
Intent isn’t the important thing; impact is. How our images and words land, how they make our audience feel, that’s what is critical.
This conversation changed my mind about the power of sharing stories on the internet. It also changed my perspective on my own responsibilities.
We are white designers and publishers, and we have a large audience and platform. To that end Alexa and I are thinking critically about the ways in which our content is exclusionary, and figuring out what we can do differently. We’re considering:
- Our privileged positions: the ways in which we unfairly benefit from our white privilege, and from other intersecting privileges we hold.
- The images we create; and other knitter’s images that we share, and how can we create a more diverse and inclusive vision with our work on Instagram and in published patterns and books.
- Whose voices, outside of our own, are we sharing.
- What products do we promote, and who benefits.
- Our own influences, what we read, watch, listen to.
- The education and resources we share with our audience.
- The language we use; how we’re framing ‘normal’.
Some Antiracism resources we’ve found useful in our education process so far:
- Where Change Started Introduction to Antiracism by Glenise Pike – helpful guidance and a place to start, with a glossary of terms.
- Layla Saad – Me And White Supremacy Workbook – a self-guided examination of your personal position within our white supremacist society. Love her podcasts too.
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo – written by a white woman for white people. Read it to learn to avoid defensiveness, to overcome your discomfort around speaking about race, to own your white racial identity, and to learn about interrupting racism.
There are many other excellent anti-racism educators out there, these are simply a few I have personally been finding helpful – Google and Instagram will lead you to many more.
Note: We manually approve comments on our blog, so it may take 6-12 hours before your comment shows up. Criticism is appreciated, we’re here to learn. If email feels more comfortable, you can reach us at tincanknits@gmail.com.
Icefall
When I was designing the Icefall sweater, one of the most pleasant tasks was choosing just the right palette. After quite a lot of stitch pattern development, I settled upon the motif I would work with. But then, which colours to use? Instead of a symmetrical colour pattern, I had this idea to use 4 colours in a different way.
With this in mind I chose a deep rich blacky brown Tukuwool Fingering ’05 anga’ for the main colour of the jumper. Very dark and very light colours for a sweater body make for easy contrast colour choices. Everything pops!
The brights that I chose to set against this as the ‘panes’ of coloured glass were the next thing to choose. While traditional Fair-Isle patterns have a symmetrical arrangement of colour about a pattern centreline (loads of examples of that in this post), I had an idea about a 4-colour palette, with a different kind of symmetry. I thought I’d put the brighter colours, that would have stronger contrast with the body colour, at the centre, with the deeper, more saturated colours on either side. I decided to work two hues, one top, one bottom.
I trialed out A LOT of different options in Tukuwool Fingering (yup, I now have nearly ALL the colours, I love it!). My colour palette trials might give you ideas about how you’d like to work your version of Icefall.
How did I have the time and energy to make so many swatches? Spoiler alert: I used a knitting machine while I was developing both the motif, and then to choose the palette for this design. This allowed me to make slight adjustments to the stitch pattern, and then make a new swatch more quickly than would be possible if I hand-knit every option. And once I had settled on the final chart, I was able to check colour combinations much more quickly on the machine.
While there were many swatches I liked (I’m looking at you top right), I finally settled on the palette we used in Strange Brew, 29 murai, 28 taate, 02 humu, and h31 aava. I was so pleased with the effect of using the lighter/brighter tones in the center, it draws the eye in just the right way.
Alexa’s version of Icefall
While I toiled and debated, swatched, adjusted, and swatched again, Alexa let the yarn do the work! She chose a pretty light grey YOTH little brother ‘oyster’ from her stash and added a precious skein of Spincycle Dyed in the Wool in Melancholia. The light coloured body of the sweater meant the subtly changing teal really popped. Hunter was immediately smitten with the cropped sweater and has asked that all her sweaters be cropped from now on.
So, how what colour strategy will you use for your Icefall? There is always a lot of inspiration on Ravelry too!
Let’s Get Cozy
When the cold winds are howling outside your door and the mornings greet you with frosty window panes, it’s time to get cozy. As knitters, this our prime time, if anyone knows cozy, it’s us! We know how to hunker down wrapped in woollies, a steamy cuppa in hand, working on whatever is on our needles between sips.
We are so pleased to bring you our newest sweater pattern, perfect for wintry weather, the Antler pullover! We knit up in the super cushy Hinterland Range, a warm mix of 50% Canadian Rambouillet and 50% alpaca raised on the British Columbia coast.
The Antler Pullover
The Antler pullover is brought to you by popular demand! There have been more than a few knitters on Ravelry who hacked the original cardigan, and now you can knit it as a pullover too! The pullover has short row shaping to raise the back neck as well as a slightly deeper yoke and higher neckline than the cardigan. We hope you like the latest addition to the Antler family!
Antler Pullover Pattern Details:
Sizing: 0-6mo (6-12mo, 1-2yr, 2-4yr, 4-6yr, 6-8yr, 8-10yr, Women’s XXS, XS, S, SM, M, ML, L, LXL, XL, XXL, 3XL, 4XL, Men’s S, SM, M, ML, L, XL, XXL, 3XL, 4XL)
Finished Chest Measurement: 18.5 (19.5, 21.5, 23, 25, 26.5, 28.5, 30, 32, 34.5, 36.5, 38, 40, 42.5, 44.5, 46, 50.5, 54, 58.5, 36.5, 38, 40, 42.5, 44.5, 48, 52.5, 56, 60.5)”
Yarn: worsted / aran weight yarn
320 (350, 410, 480, 580, 640, 700, 800, 900, 1050, 1150, 1250, 1325, 1400, 1450, 1550, 1600, 1700, 1900, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2000) yards
Hinterland
Hinterland is run by the Hanahlie. After a career in photography and design, Hanahlie came to farming following her desire to make things with her hands. She raises rescue alpacas on Pender Island and Hinterland yarn is a mix of this alpaca fiber and Canadian wool; find her story here.
For the Antler pullover we used Hinterland Range, a wonderfully soft and warm yarn, it was a delight to work with! Hinterland’s yarn line also includes Watershed (a bulky weight yarn) and Dusk (a new fingering weight yarn) all with the same alpaca/wool mix. I picked up a few skeins of Dusk recently and can’t wait to cast on!
All That Sparkles
This little darling! Her smile and that dimple get me grinning every time!
Alexa has gone back down one of her favourite rabbit holes recently (the antler cable… something new coming oh so soon). This kindled in me a desperate desire to make an Antler cardigan for Neve! I’ve made one or two for Max, but poor second child that Neve is, she had thus far been neglected! So this lovely red Madelinetosh Vintage that had been languishing for some years in my stash became an Antler cardigan, and it was the perfect opportunity to use these lovely mismatched gold buttons from my stash too!
There’s a great thrift shop near my house with an EXCELLENT button selection, and I love to go in there and rake through them, picking out ‘similar’ and ‘coordinating’ combinations of buttons. There’s just something so inspiring and intriguing about buttons, especially considering the past history of second-hand buttons… I can take a pleasant journey in my imagination thinking up their stories!
The yarn is Madelinetosh Vintage in ‘robin red breast’ – this is the very same yarn we originally designed the Antler Cardigan in originally. Years later I still love it to bits. It’s a great, robust, hard wearing and delightful semi-solid yarn for garment projects; especially well suited to sweaters for little ones which tend to require more laundering!
Other ‘just for pleasure’ knits that I made recently are these SUPER SPARKLY Barley hats for Neve and Max. Occasionally I spend my morning working at a cafe in a lovely department store here in Edinburgh, and occasionally I’ll peruse their yarn selection. It doesn’t have the great selection you would find at an independent LYS, but it’s still interesting when I want a little hit of colour and inspiration. This is where I stumbled across this outrageously sparkly stuff; it’s Rico Design Luxury Magic Mohair. I thought to myself, well, we’re probably not going to do a design in it, so I let it stay on the shelf. Right. Sensible.
Then the next week, I stopped on by to look at it again, once more deciding that it was impractical, and not buying it. Eventually, I told Alexa about this sparkle yarn I’d been obsessing over, and she laughed at me “That’s silly, if you love it you should get it!” So I felt a bit ridiculous and supposed she was right. Best not to shy away from inspiration! What are a few more balls going to do… ? While sparkles are not my norm, sometimes you need to give in to desire; and perhaps sparkly holiday hats are just the moment for impulsivity and indulgence!
Despite my desire to finish both John’s and my own Christmas jumpers (a leftover ambition from the Strange Brew KAL), I couldn’t help casting on immediately, and these two barley hats were the result! The kids love them of course!
The Simple Collection – Fabulous Free Patterns
Have you knit something from The Simple Collection? We published this free learn-to-knit series of simple modern patterns back in 2013, but have been gradually adding to it ever since! The first 8 patterns were all made in worsted-weight yarn, but we’ve since added some lightweight versions; the Flax Light sweater, the Barley Light hat, and we started this year ‘best foot forward’ with the Rye Light socks. There are now 13 free patterns to choose from!
Rye Light socks 
Nina, dyer at Rainbow Heirloom, made a lovely Flax Light 
Neve, a year previously, was wearing the Barley Light hat! 
This fabulous colourway is Rainbow Heirloom‘s ‘princess rockstar’ 
ALL the simple collection knits!
There is PROBABLY something that you need to knit from The Simple Collection. The Barley hat, for example, has nearly 19,000 listed projects on Ravelry, at the time of this blog post. Clearly it’s a fan favourite, and it’s pretty easy to see why!
How to knit an i-cord
An i-cord is just a little tube of knitting. It is a great way to make tie for any knit item that might require it. You can use this technique to connect up your mittens so they don’t get lost, create ties for the Cable Me Softly booties to keep them on the wiggly baby feet, or make the ties for the Beloved Bonnet.
To make an i-cord you will need yarn and double pointed needles (a circular needle will work just as well, but it’s a little fussier because you have to slide your stitches all the way from one end to the other).
An i-cord can be creating using 2, 3, 4, 5 or sts. For this tutorial I am working a 4 stitch i-cord for my bonnet.
How to knit an i-cord:
- Cast on 4 sts (I used a long tail cast on).
- Slide your stitches from one end of the DPN (or circular needle) to the other. Your working yarn will be coming from the 4th stitch cast on.
- Knit those 4 stitches.
Repeat instructions 2-3 until your i-cord is the desired length.
To keep the tension even in your i-cord, after you have knit the first stitch of the set, give it an extra tug so it’s nice and snug.
That’s it! I-cord is easy peasy once you get the hang of it!
Patterns perfect for i-cord from Tin Can Knits: Beloved, The World’s Simplest Mittens, and Cable me Softly
