In Which the Pirate Plates Up a Scarf. Two of the coned yarns I bought at a destash/downsizing sale earlier this year were ~100g each of laceweight alpaca-silk from Valley Yarns in Peach Blossom and French Blue. They seemed like the perfect thing for some plated rib, so I made a quick swatch. Fresh off the machine, it was very sproingy… But after a bath and pinning out to shape, it dried flat, drape-y, and oh so soft. I did the math and knit a whole scarf, swapping the colours for about four inches at each end… …and then I pinned it out with blocking wires to dry. It’s a little longer than I’d intended (78 inches!) but because it’s so thin, that’s actually kind of perfect for wearing in this looped-through style. And it only weighs 122 grams! https://www.knittingpirate.com/2026/11/01/in-which-the-pirate-plates-up-a-scarf/ #pirateplates #frenchblue #peachblossom #valleyyarns #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

In Which the Pirate Returns. It’s been a while, hasn’t it! I’ve been making steady progress on the Calluna Pullover despite having to knit each of the sleeve caps twice due to my own failure to line things up properly. There’s only about 120 rounds to go on the second sleeve before the whole thing is done! If my math is correct, I’ll get to the end of the sleeve before I get to the end of the fourth ball of yarn. (I do have a fifth. It doesn’t really match.) The shoulder seams land in just the right place on my body, so I know I picked the correct size, but for a perfect perfect fit I think a little bit of shaping might be called for. The back fits more loosely than the front. Do I need bust darts? Shaping on the back? Or just to move the sleeves back a few stitches on each side so the front has more space and the back less? I do not know. I’ll assess it again after it’s done and washed. As usual, I have a pair of road trip socks on the needles. I’m calling these the Gumball Socks because, well, look at this colourway! Last weekend we traveled to Ohio for my cousin’s wedding, which meant lots of time in the car (about six hours each way) to knit. I finished the first sock and started the second. And oh, it was so good to see my extended family again! These socks should be finished before Thanksgiving, which is the next time we’re all planning to get together. https://www.knittingpirate.com/2026/09/07/in-which-the-pirate-returns-6/

In Which the Pirate Finishes the Calluna Sweater. My Calluna Pullover is finished! And it fits! The sleeves grew in length with washing, but perhaps they will bounce back up with wearing. I have the cuffs folded back here, which is fine as I tend to wear my sleeves a bit pushed up anyway. Amusingly, although I skipped eight rounds of sleeve towards the cuff, they do match the length in the pattern schematic… which is still too long for me. Maybe I have short arms? Who knew. The sweater pattern has no waist shaping; it’s knit straight up in the round from the hem to the armpits, then the front and back yoke are knit flat while you do the armscye shaping. After the shoulders are seamed together with a three-needle bindoff, stitches are picked up around the armscye for top down sleeves. Overall I’m really happy with the pattern and with the finished sweater. There are a few things that I think could have been written more clearly, especially the short row shoulder shaping, but I made my way through and if I made a mistake, the speckles will hide it. And there are a few things about the pattern are very clever: the short-row sleeve caps to make a set in sleeve without seaming, the way the decreases come together on the arms, and putting a removable stitch marker in the underarm that can be pulled during finishing to tighten up the picked-up stitches around the arm. After much waffling I picked my size based on shoulders, rather than full bust measurement, and that was the correct decision. The other change I made, besides the aforementioned slightly shorter sleeves which came out long anyway, was to knit the body a little longer than the pattern suggested. The sweater looks a little cropped on the model and I prefer mine to more than cover my belt. I alternated skeins to minimize any pooling or obvious colour changes, because the nature of speckled hand-dyed yarn is… well, four of the five skeins I had matched reasonably well, and the fifth did not. So I was very glad that I only needed four to make this sweater, and didn’t even have to unravel my swatch. I’m not a fan of the 1×1 ribbing for the hem and cuffs (it always looks loose and floppy, even at tight gauge), but it is the right choice for this stitch pattern, which I absolutely love: The yarn is a wool/nylon blend from StitchinWithYarn on Etsy in the “Football Season” colourway, which seems very fitting as the NFL season just began this past week. It’s not yet cool enough to actually wear a sweater yet, but I can feel some autumn in the air in the evenings. I’m looking forward to some cozy football-watching afternoons with a cup of tea and this sweater keeping me warm! https://www.knittingpirate.com/2026/09/14/in-which-the-pirate-finishes-the-calluna-sweater/

July: from green to brown Wowee, it has been such a hot and very dry summer here. There has been no proper rain for months now and we’ve just had a drought declared, despite having had a very wet winter. The countryside is currently looking completely parched and out in the woods the trees are showing signs of stress with a lot of leaf drop and branches dying back, it’s a desperately sad sight and I keep hoping for cloudy days with rain, but they just don’t arrive here in the south east corner of England. The woods are so very quiet too, completely devoid of the birdsong that chimed through the trees during springtime, perhaps it just takes too much energy to sing in this heat when you are a very small bird fighting to survive. The birds are still there though and July is a great time to find feathers out in the woods as many birds moult after breeding. I regularly find 2 or 3 owl feathers on each of our woodland walks because by day the meandering pathways through the trees may be human-trodden byways, but when night falls they are owl-swooped flyways. To me these fallen feathers are marvels of nature, with beautifully intricate structures of interlocking fine filaments and each individual feather has it’s own unique markings. I treat them as woodland treasure and bring them home to admire them. The collection above were all found during July this year. Out in the countryside there have been a lot of i and butterflies this year, and judging by their prevalence the dry conditions must favour them. And back at home in the garden I’ve seen several hummingbird hawk moths, they’re so wonderful to watch but utterly impossible to photograph as they are never still but constantly darting around on the move. There have also been Jersey Tiger moths this year, these are so striking with their black and cream upper wings and in flight they flit with bright orange flashes from their underwings. Apparently they are quite rare and their range is restricted usually to the very south of England, many years go by without us seeing them here but this year we’ve had several in the garden. Lacking from the garden for a while however has been lovely Katsue. After not seeing her for quite a few days we discovered that our new neighbours had blocked up the wildlife corridor between our gardens. This gap in the fence has been there for over 30 years and during this time it has allowed the passage of many hedgehogs, foxes, frogs and toads. I am so upset by this but the new neighbours have an elderly cat that they don’t want to wonder too far, and at the end of the day it is their right to not have a hole into their garden if they do not wish it. Sadly they have also decimated and destroyed the beautiful wildlife-friendly garden that existed next door to us for over 40 years, with all of the mature trees and shrubs cut down in favour of lawn. This garden was so carefully planned and loving tended by our original neighbours, who both grew old and sadly passed away. I so wish that more people valued and treasured the wildlife that we share our gardens with, sadly not many of the people who have recently moved in around here do. Anyway, we have managed to solve the lack of access for Katsue by opening our front gate at dusk, and after a week of me patiently coaxing her she now independently comes through that way and then round to the back door to trip the security light so I know she’s there. I then carry her food out to the front garden, as I don’t want her stuck in our back garden when I shut the front gate at bedtime. So at least I still see her each evening, though she no longer has access to come and go as she pleases, and with her not being able to come during the day it’s harder to take pictures of her, though she has started coming into the kitchen while I chop her food. I am still sad though as it means there will be no access to our garden for other foxes in future, or for the hedgehogs, frogs and toads that we’ve enjoyed seeing so much over the years we’ve lived here. There’s no knitting news this time I’m afraid, it’s simply been to hot here. But it’s also because we are having a little building work done on the house to create some much needed extra storage, which I’m excited about, and a downstairs loo, which I’m even more excited about, as 4 adults sharing one bathroom has made for some eventful times since Amy moved back with us. It’s chaos at the moment, but I know it will be worth it once everything is done. Anyway, instead of knitting I’ve been sorting my stash and planning projects for when cooler weather arrives. This collection of yarn is my most favourite sock yarns from The Knitting Shed, it pleased me mightily to see all these beautiful shades laid out on my bed and I’m looking forward to some autumn sock knitting and getting on with my new animal design. Well, I hope you have a good August where you are, please waft a little rain my way if you have any to spare. See you at the end of the month, hopefully with some news of knitting and wetter weather, ’til then keep well and keep finding small joys wherever you can, J x https://littlecottonrabbits.com/2026/08/03/july-from-green-to-brown/

In Which the Pirate Goes Pink. You may recall that when I started the Green Sweater, I had to choose between the green and the pink sets of yarn I’d put together. Green won the coin toss and got to go first, but now it’s time for Pink Stuff! Based on my notes, I made some adjustments to both the shaping and the fading and got started. Here it is at the start of the third colour, laid out with the green sweater under it for scale and as kind of a progress bar… but at this point I tried it on and had to admit that there are problems. I love the striping fade, but I’m not happy with the fit. I seem to be getting 7 stitches/10 rows to the inch, not 8/11 – which is what I’d done my math on, based on the green sweater’s gauge. That said, the sweater fits well across my chest but is still too loose across my back… which means my adjustments weren’t adjust-y enough, regardless of gauge. Then, there are ripples where the increase rate speeds up for the body. I smoothed them flat for the picture, but you can sort of see them on the right side of the body, close to the armpit. They don’t fill out when I put the sweater on. And because of the difference in row gauge, I need fewer plain rounds between fade sections so the length comes out right. I re-mathed everything (again) with better increases (I hope) and decreases on the back for a more tailored shape. Since the sweater fits well across my shoulders and at the armscye depth, I’m going to move the extra body increases on the front piece to below the sleeve split, which is really where they need to be anyway, and turn them into a vertical dart. The only thing left is deciding if I’m going to try ripping back to the neck and figuring out where I am in the pattern (probably do-able, but fussy), or starting over from scratch (easier, but adds another coupl’a days of work). https://www.knittingpirate.com/2026/09/24/in-which-the-pirate-goes-pink/

Yarn-overs on double pointed needles A "yarn-over-izing" trick for lace knitting A recent e-mail asked how to deal with leading or trailing yarn-overs (YO's) when starting lace projects on double-pointed needles(dpn's). The problem: a YO as the first or last stitch on a dpn wants to slip off, plus, the needles themselves want to slip out.I'm guessing others have these problems too.This repeating pattern of *YO, K1 means a YO has to be the leading or trailing stitch when https://techknitting.blogspot.com/2026/07/yarn-overs-on-double-pointed-needles.html

August & September: dry & hot, then not Hello, and sorry to have been absent for a while, I hope all has been good with you over the last couple of months. Things here have been a little overwhelming due to the building work we’ve been having done, more so than I imagined truth be told. The builders have been really wonderful in taking into consideration Toby’s needs and sensory issues, but even so it has been extra challenging at times. The work is now coming to a conclusion, though we still have bare floorboards and bare plastered walls, but we do now have a little downstairs bathroom and extended hallway storage, both of which are going to be invaluable in a small house with 4 adult occupants, and the new house frontage looks so lovely, replacing a very outdated and tired looking 1980’s plastic porch. Anyway, my brain is still reeling a little from all the upheaval and the meticulous planning aimed at minimising the impact on Toby, and so it’s taken me quite a while to write this post and I’ve struggled stringing the words together. It is lovely to at last have some cooler and damper weather after this very dry and hot summer. The woods are beginning to look a little refreshed and there is new greenery coming up in the meadows, though a fair bit more rain is needed to compensate for the summer drought. The fragrance of the woods has changed too, from a summer potpourri smelling a little like a mix of hay, dried herbs and raisins, to the earthy damp and slightly mushroomy smell that follows rain and signals the coming of autumn. And in the last week the first few fungi have started to appear, including this impressively large chicken of the woods (I think), which is around 2ft tall. I’m so looking forward to the unfolding of Autumn and all it’s delights, I know I say this every year but it is one of my favourite seasons. August and September have had some delightful moments though, in particular the partial eclipse (around 90% coverage here) on August 12th, which we watched in shadow form, diffused through the leaves of the plum tree and projected beautifully in multiples on to our little shed. In the pictures above you can see the progression of the moon shadow across the face of the sun from right to left, the first picture taken at 18:56 and the last at 19:17. Another highlight has been watching hummingbird hawk moths come in to the garden and laying their eggs on a patch of sweet woodruff, and there’s a little video above of one carefully laying her eggs, one on each leaf. The eggs were tiny lime green spheres and from these emerged tiny pale yellow caterpillars (there is one in the very centre of the leaves on the picture above with the egg). Over the last 3 weeks they have grown enormously and are now around 5 cms long and as thick as a pencil. There are between 20-30 of them and during this last week they’ve been starting to run out of food, so voracious is their appetite for leaves. Happily we have a second larger patch of this plant in the garden and I’ve been carefully carrying some of them over to this so that they will not starve. I expect them to each begin spinning a cocoon in the next week and then beginning to change into their adult moth form – natures magic at work. It’s been a small joy to watch them grow to this point and I really hope to see at least some of them emerge as adults in a month or so. We don’t often see hummingbird hawk moths here, it’s probably been 8 or 9 years since I last saw any in the garden, but apparently this year has been a great year for them and there have been lots of sightings. There’s no knitting news this time I’m afraid, with only a little simple sock knitting going on here, but now the building work is coming to an end I hope to begin working in earnest on the new animal design that I put aside back in July. I so look forward to sharing that with you once it is ready. Thanks as always for continuing to visit here with me, even though I’ve been a bit quiet of late. I hope to be around a little more as the Autumn arrives and there’s a little more calmness in my days, ’til then keep well and happy, J x https://littlecottonrabbits.com/2026/09/16/august-september-dry-hot-then-not/

In Which the Pirate is Pleased. So, I started over. I re-mathed, re-figured, went for a different type of increase, took careful notes, tracked what I was doing round by round, and stopped to try on a lot. I added a pair of decreases down the back that makes the whole thing much more fitted: And instead of doubling the increases in the raglan line for the front piece, I continued to increase on the front after splitting off stitches for the sleeves. My full bust measurement falls below that line, so why increase too much above it and have bulges of fabric at the upper chest/armpit area? Then I decreased some of those stitches away so that the sweater won’t be too large around my waist, which is… well, not nearly as many inches around as my chest. I still have a few more rounds to knit of the fourth colour before I go into the ribbed hem, and then of course collar and sleeves – but I’m so happy with how it’s coming out so far and how much I’ve learned in the process! At some point my personalized pattern will diverge enough from its origins with the Extra Lite Bright that I won’t tag it anymore, but for now I still followed the raglan part of it so closely that I think it should still be credited. The next one won’t be a fade, but it will incorporate a lot of what I learned here. I think I’ll make it a v-neck, to change things up a little. And it will have even better math for the raglan increases, possibly with row-by-row instructions for which sections get which shaping. https://www.knittingpirate.com/2026/10/07/in-which-the-pirate-is-pleased/

Placing markers with yarn-overs: the trick of tumble-up tails in lace knitting In lace knitting, markers and yarn-overs just don't play very nice together. Yarn-overs make markers slide around. The marked column wanders away, trailing after the sliding marker. As knitters frequently complain, it's a very common problem.A sliding marker and the column it marks, wandering off togetherSo, the problem is, how to keep the marker in a fixed location, so it https://techknitting.blogspot.com/2026/09/placing-markers-with-yarn-overs-trick.html