Tira's Fibercrafts

Knitting finished as of last night! Still need to weave in a few ends, wash, and block.

Thank you so much for all the nice things everyone has said about this blanket! Unfortunately, I do not have a pattern, so much as I have several patterns and some back-of-the-napkin style math notes that won’t make sense to anyone but me - but I do have a picture of this planning piece (since frogged to reuse the yarn in the blanket itself.)

As a few people in the notes pointed out, the dragon pattern is Tahesha the Dragoness by Ina Wendrock

But it's on a plain reverse stockinette background, and I wanted this as part of a complex cable afghan. It's going to be a wedding gift for two friends in my DnD group, so I knew I wanted it big enough that two people could reasonably share it while watching TV together on a couch, and for a dragon to still be visible when folded and draped over the back of a couch or chair, in case that's how they store it. So I knew I was committing myself to knitting 5 dragons (one in the center and one in each of the four corners), and figuring out myself how to plop the dragon in to a larger cable blanket pattern.

Back in November, I bought the dragon pattern and knit a test version of it so I could see how it worked and measure the dimensions. (You can see from the curled up edges that I did this before I found the part in the pattern notes where Ina Wendrock helpfully informs us that the dragon is knit over 45 initial stitches, to help us add it to our own projects, but ah well.) Then I started trying to figure out the other cables.

I knew I wanted some traditional cables so that it had an heirloom look to it (but with dragons), but I thought that the dragons would look too out of place if everything else looked copy-pasted from a classic fisherman’s sweater. Fortunately, there are a number of knitting designers right now doing cool things with trying to make cables that resemble Celtic knot motifs, so I went to the public library and borrowed a bunch of cable knitting books and started bookmarking what I liked. My favorite patterns were all coming from this book:

Which looks like it's out of print now, but wasn't in December and I was able to ask for and receive it for Christmas. (Designer Melissa Leapman's ravelry store is here in case anyone wants to check it out):

I narrowed my bookmarked cables down to patterns that had 1) an odd number of stitches; 2) a central "crossover" cable in multiple parts of the pattern so that I could "open" it up to create the medallions that the dragons would sit in; and 3) a stitchcount of less than 45, by enough that I'd have room to drop a traditional cable on either side. My favorite two would then be the center cables for the central dragon panel and the left & right dragon panels (when I wasn't doing the dragons), and then I decided on a very simple c4b twist between the panels and a tight 5-rib cable braid on the edges. I loved the first two patterns from the book that I tested and didn't have to try any of my runner-up bookmarks - but if you zoom in on the picture, you can see that for the traditional cables around the Melissa Leapman cable for the center panel, I tried and discarded a honeycomb cable and an Xs and Os variant before deciding on the one that I'm not actually sure of the name of that made it into the final pattern. For the side panels, I had thought it might be nice to incorporate a hearts cable since it was for a wedding blanket. I'm not sure how traditional these heart cables are, but I've seen them unattributed in more than one published pattern from different sources, and they're published in a number of cable pattern guides online. They worked next to the Melissa Leapman cable I wanted for the side panels, so they went in the pattern without me trying anything else.

While practicing the dragon cable, I had noticed that many of the cables started with an increase, so on the back of one of my chart print-outs, I graphed a rough plan for what I had decided to put where in terms of the traditional and Leapman cables that would go around the dragons, and numbered out the stitches if I worked the first cables in each pattern as increases instead of cables to mimic the start of the dragons. Then I added up the total number of stitches and cast on, and it worked surprisingly well! After completing one repeat of the side-panel central cables, I started "opening" up the circles where the dragon would be through improvisation (the left and right panels that were parallel always matched each other because I was doing the same thing in each row - other than that, I wound up doing it slightly differently every time, and that was ok. They look the same enough.)

I had planned to either leave it un-bordered or add the full mitered border that Ina Wendrock (who designed the dragon pattern) has on her store depending on how it worked up, but after I'd knit enough to see what it looked like, I decided that the mitered border was overkill, but it did need something, so when I finally got to the end I did an I-chord bind-off and then went back and picked up stitches along the cast-on to do an I-chord bind-off there too. If I had it to do over again, I might have done a folded hem on each side instead, but we'll see how the I-chord blocks.

So, that's how you make the dragon blanket. Either get the patterns I mentioned and try to duplicate, or just buy the dragon and add your favorite cables for the rest!

[Sorry I'm not more help, but I cannot stress enough - I did not write any of this down as I went.]

It’s blocked! The dragons came out so nicely after blocking, and you can see the hearts better.

Today, I decided to give myself the task of spinning as thin as I possibly can on my wheels. So I picked out a collection of mystery mill ends and jumped straight in.

First off we have something that I think may be corriedale or something related. Spun up pretty thin and I decided to try out chain-plying again for added challenge. It's a pretty sturdy yarn, if still slightly too thick for what I had in mind.

Next we have some sort of rough wool, perhaps norwegian or italian? Spun up not as fine as the blue but I chose a two ply here, so they are comparable. It's really sturdy though, would make for great rope with a lot more strands.

Next I picked up what I am certain is green dyed mountain sheep of the southern german variety. It was carded, not brushed like I am used too, but turns out, that is absolutely no problem. Funny enough, I unconsciously switched into longdraw and only woke up from the trance halfway through to realize I had been using a technique I had never done before. Considering this, it turned out fantastically well! Did do another chain ply here, two ply would probably have been thinner.

At this point, I was already really happy with what I had made so far, especially considering I had done this all in one day. However, there was still one bit of fiber waiting to be tested out: Shetland.

Some little pride hearts I made to give away at a local pride event! I made several rainbow and trans hearts and dropped them off at the table for my local pride org to give away alongside the free stickers they were alrady giving out. Then I made the nb one while I had some coffee at the event and dropped it off too!

hand dyed and spun

merino

lighter for scale

Little inky paw print bookmarks I'm working on as part of my scriptorium cat collection! Based off the picture on the right of a 15th century manuscript.

I call her Sew-phie 🪡

Cute lil peep bunnies i did for easter!

This was my first sweater knitted in the round, first stranded colourwork project, and my first time steeking. It was definitely my most challenging project so far, and a lot of learning and research was involved. I used a colourwork chart created by the very talented Molly Gifford, which is available for free on Ravelry

For reference, this is one of the fragments uncovered from the gravesite:

Some scholars think that the Oseberg tapestry includes the earliest known artistic depiction of Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn. So I added them to the sleeves as a little Easter egg.

Cute lil peep bunnies i did for easter!