Timing is interesting: I just finished meeting some knitting deadlines, have a self-published pattern in the works but no specific release date, C and I are about to acquire a short-term roommate, and my sister’s wonderful (but aged and suffering) dog just passed away.

Like planets aligning, all of these things combined to create the perfect condition for me to work on a project that I have had in mind for YEARS: I have time to weave, I want to do something nice for my sister, and I have to return the floor loom to its owner so its room can go back to being a bedroom.

I don’t remember how I first came across Bonnie Tarses and her horoscope weaving - either in Handwoven magazine, or listening to WeaveCast (a podcast about weaving produced by Syne Mitchell)… but I thought the idea was interesting, and I desperately wanted to try converting her horoscope charts to knitting. I got in touch with Bonnie via email and shared my idea, and she kindly offered to create a horoscope chart for me to use in my experiments.

Bonnie uses a person’s birth day, date, time, and the location of their birth to create an astrological horoscope based on the position of the planets and stars in the sky overhead when they were born. She then converts this into a warping plan that tells the weaver what colour goes where as they are preparing the loom for weaving.

(JARGON ALERT: in weaving, the “warp” is the group of threads or yarn that are pre-strung onto a loom during set-up, the “weft” is the threads or yarn that does the over-under-over-under part across the warp during active weaving.)


I wasn’t able to find my own baby book with all of these details, so I got my sister (or maybe my Mom?) to give me hers, and off it went to Bonnie. Once I had the drafting plan back (along with a cool chart of astrological symbols arranged in a sky-circle) I started plotting my project.

12 colours, in a fairly standard rainbow range? We’ve got Cascade 220 at the store that would work…

A pattern that is simple and doesn’t require lots of darning in of tails at the end of a row? Well, a sweater is out (can’t imagine how I’d do the sleeves), and a scarf isn’t big enough… Hm! Maybe a wrap? Something like the Colourflow Wrap would work well, and it means I just need to knit a giant tube and then I can cut it open, knot the fringe, and call it done. Yay!

Not yay.

Rainbow yarns in a worsted weight held together as three strands at a time doesn’t make the subtle eye-fooling colour blends that rainbow yarns in laceweight do… so my wrap was going to be tragically ugly if I didn’t quickly abandon the idea.

Oh wow.. while composing this blog post, I just came up with another idea for working the horoscope into a knitted garment.. woot, I love inspiration! Not sure if it will work, but I like the vision in my head…

Okay, so aside from THAT bit of excitement that just happened, I hadn’t come up with any really GOOD ideas to make this work using the Cascade 220. Next step: change out my yarn! Lunatic Fringe Yarns has cones of teeny cotton in gorgeous bright colours that they promote for their colour gamp projects or for use with Bonnie’s horoscopes. I loved this yarn, but not for knitting, so the design project was put on hold and I’ve been planning (for years!) to just weave a wrap or blanket for my sister and see for myself how the colours will all blend and work together. Bonnie has always assured me that it would be fabulous, I just need to DO it… so here I go!

(JARGON ALERT: a gamp is a weaving pattern where the colour and/or the stitch pattern changes in a specific way as it moves across the warp AND up the weft)

When I dove into the project today, I realized that I would also need some additional yarn as there is a large amount of the horoscope chart that specifies “favourite colour - your choice” and Heather’s chart already ran pretty heavily through the cone of blue that came with the set of 12 from Lunatic Fringe. I remembered that C had bought some royal blue tencel at a fibre fest many years ago and had never used, so I managed to dig it out of the depths of my stash and got permission to use it (with promises to replace it as he still has plans for it).

These are the “after” cones, once I had taken off between 40 and 100 lengths of approximately 4 yards each. The middle photo up there shows bundles of warp threads chained together (crochet with your hands!) to keep them from tangling between the measuring stage and the actual installation/warping stage. I forgot to take a photo during the warp measuring stage, will try to remember if it turns out that I goofed on my counts and have to do more.

So, I am stopping for tonight, because I think it is a good idea for me to go to sleep fairly soon, after a brief look through my Learning To Weave book to see if there are any hints on sleying the reed when I have more warp ends than I do slots in my reed.

(JARGON ALERT: “sleying” = threading the warp threads into the slots on the thingy (”reed”) that keeps them spaced at a particular distance AND helps to press the weft threads into place)

More photos to come tomorrow! I’ve just figured out how to blog from my iPad, photos and all (assuming this works!) so there will be updates over the next few days.. hoping to finish this by Friday!

photo copyright Jane Heller

Candlewick is a knitting pattern that can be purchased via Twist Collective for $7.00.

C fixed my computer for me, and I have now backed up everything I’ve worked on in the last three months AND committed to moving things over to my external harddrive on a regular basis [pausing here to add an Event with reminders to Google Calendar] so now I have access to all the photos I snapped back in December!

This sketch was first submitted to Twist Collective for Fall 2011 (when they chose Boundless and Asher (!!)), resubmitted for Winter 2011 (when they chose Corinth and Thornia (!!!), and then held for Spring 2012 (!!!!!) The mood boards prepared by Kate and her team are always so inspiring that my head is overflowing with ideas. Sometimes I will be sending them just a ton of swatches and sketches, other times it will be photos of a fully-made thing (like my purple Boundless) that fits their theme.


My original design idea was something like, “If a Bond girl wore handknits, what would it look like?” - I think I had been watching Casino Royale while working on another project, and this began drifting around in my head. It would be black, it would be close fitting, it would have a high collar but a plunging neckline, and it would be sexy. I had also been noticing that the lace patterns on Ravelry that were sticking in my head were those with a fair amount of texture to them, made by combining decreases, plain stitches, and yarn overs in ways that created changes in fabric height, not just opacity.





My laptop had been suffering from a cracked case for several months, and just before it was time to start writing up the pattern, the screen decided to die… so my new glam writing space was a table in our living room, with a HUGE old monitor taking up most of the table while I still used the laptop’s keyboard for typing. (my current setup is slightly better, still have the busted laptop in use, but with a flatscreen monitor and external keyboard and mouse hooked up - much more elegant!) The pieces of graph paper you can see here are bits of chart that I had printed and cut apart, so I could figure out the spacing for every size that would keep the main Honeybee motif in the right place while removing or filling in extra stitches for larger or smaller bodies. Sandi Rosner and the tech editing team at Twist Collective deserve special credit for this pattern, as it got a major rehashing of the charts that resulted in each size having its own page, instead of YOU the knitter having to do all the manual cutting and pasting!





Candlewick is written to be worked in pieces, from the bottom up, and then the fronts are joined to the back with a saddle extension from the sleeves. This is what the piece will look like when you get to the blocking stage.





To get the collar to stand up during blocking, I propped it around the lid from a small wicker basket that has been living in my collection of containers for years… see? There’s a reason why I don’t like to get rid of things, they might be useful some day!





Post-blocking, the sleeves are ready to be set in, then seams worked from hem to armpit and cuff to armpit. (do you know that trick? Start at the outer edges because they are most visible, and leave any end-of-seam fudging for the hidden armpit area!)





I love these buttons. I wanted something with a bit of subtle glam, but knew that cut glass would be too heavy for the sweater. These are made from mussel shells, and I found them at the glorious Button Button shop in the Gastown section of Vancouver. The yarn from Elann is wonderful too - I’m making a second version in MY size, using the same Peruvian Baby Silk in the same colour.

Final photos here were taken on the shop mannequin at Three Bags Full (thanks Francesca and Zoe! [best bosses ever]) You can see that the stitches are expanded a fair bit, especially on the upper back.. the mannequin is a 36 bust, the sweater is a 34ish, and the model that Twist Collective used for Jane Heller’s photos was probably a 32! This is the joy of knitting for yourself, getting to choose the size you make based on the amount of ease (positive/extra ease aka bigger than your real chest measurement = looser fitting, zero or negative ease means it will be skimming your body or stretched to show off your curves! The size I am making for myself is the 46″, with short rows in the front to give my 38Es a bit more length but not adding any extra width (I’ve made that mistake too many times before, and have the baggy-busted sweaters to prove it!).. so it will be fairly close-fitting at my bust, and hang from there. Photos can be found on my Ravelry project page whenever I finish it!

Are you thinking of making Candlewick? I’d love to see your projects! Please share your photos on Ravelry (I watch for User Activity on my patterns pretty regularly so I will spot them when you post) or drop me a note in the comments if you are sharing your photos and project notes elsewhere!

(insert a ton of detail photos I took before sending the sample off to Twist Collective for photography)

(also please include some text telling you all about my design process and enthusiasm for this cardigan)

My computer crashed tonight… In a big, no-whirring, no-display kind of way (!!!!!!!!) and while the recent addition of a shiny new iPad to my house (reward for a week of teaching lifeguard courses during Spring Break) lets me at least look at the pretty pictures over at Twist Collective and on Ravelry, it doesn’t let me access the stuff on my hard drive.

Please wish me luck - in the grand scheme of life, this is no biggie, and I am totally aware that I have been gifted with a wonderful life… But it would be nice to have my hard drive and desktop machine back. Hope C can work some magic for me tomorrow!