A Green Walnut Hull Dyebath used for Dyeing a Silk Ecobundle Leaf Print

This bowl of walnut hulls resurfaced when I was clearing up in the garage. Originally, the walnut cases were green and must have fallen before they were ripe, because we picked them up off the grass last July, while visiting the gardens at  West Dean.  I put them in this bowl with some water and they stayed green for weeks, til I rather forgot about the whole idea of dyeing with them.

"I'm sure I have heard stories of princesses smearing their faces with walnut juice to darken their skin."
"What, like spray tan?"
"No, Elinor, it was a cunning ruse to disguise themselves as simple country girls while running away from wicked stepmothers."
My companion looked sceptical.  She stood her teacup back on the saucer and said firmly,
"Never mind the bedtime stories. Chuck that lot on the compost heap."
Where would I be without Elinor to supervise the garage clean up?   
"Mmm, well, I suppose a princess would have had to lay her plans well ahead if she did want the juice out of this lot." I slooshed the thick black residue round the bottom of the bowl. Then, just to assert my independence, I took it to the kitchen and poured in a kettle full of boiling water.

The fluid appeared very dark, as if there were a good deep brown dye in there.  I simmered the old hulls for an hour with a small amount of alum mordanted fleece, unmordanted wool yarn and a scrap of unmordanted white silk. Yup, it all ended up more beige than San Tropez.  Brown wool I can get straight off the sheep, but the silk gave pale beige a sophisticated sheen.  This walnut dye bath seemed fit for an experimental silk leaf print.

Last autumn, I tried painting the fluid from my jam jar of water, vinegar and festering rusty nails, onto various leaves before rolling them up in silk and simmering in a dye bath.  Few actually made a recognisable pattern.  One of the better effects came from alpine strawberry leaves, which are presently growing faster than I can weed them out of garden paths.  
When they are simmered between two layers of silk in a dyebath with iron in it, my usual geranium leaves make a  clearer iron dyed outline from their upper

surface and let more of their own greeny yellow dye colour out from the underside.  It's hard to be completely sure which side was which, after an ecobundle has dried out and can be unrolled. The strawberry leaves didn't give any dye colour last time, so in hopes of jazzing this scarf up, I fetched

out some dried coreopsis and dyer's chamomile flowers and some dessicated flakes of fermented Evernia prunastri lichen and soaked them in hot water before laying them on the wet, alum mordanted silk.  Some of the strawberry leaves had iron water painted on the topside, others on the back, though this takes a bit of brushing as the fluid tends to bead on the undersurface.

Rather than rolling the piece longways, which means there are many layers of silk for the dyebath to penetrate, I folded it end to end, putting more layers of plant material on, before rolling it sideways round a big plastic flowerpot, so the innermost silk only had three layers above it. Tied up with garden string, after

an hour or so simmering in the walnut dye bath, a night left in there to soak and a couple of days to dry out, my ecobundle looked like this.  The silk then had all the plant material picked out of it and three warm rinses to get the loose dye off, before going through the washing machine on a silk and wool 30 degree cycle with a pH neutral detergent.  Pressed while damp with a medium hot steam iron, finally, I could have a proper look at the prints.

This bit comes from a folded part, it shows that a leaf with iron painted on its underside gave a spotted print where the iron water beaded, below it is an outline from its top surface, showing where the iron leached over the edges. The yellow flower print comes from the dyer's chamomile, the orange from coreopsis and the pink from the Evernia prunastri. Leaves painted on their topside gave the most detailed prints, this might be formed by the walnut dyebath coming up deeper where mordanted with the iron.

My daughter kindly put the scarf on so we could admire the full effect.

"I think printing a band along both ends of the scarf worked out fine, because you don't really see the bit round the back of her neck."

Elinor Gotland was unimpressed.

"Hmm, well, I didn't see mummy's little princess helping clean out the garage.  I think that scarf would suit an older person better."

"Someone with grey fleece?"

"And timeless natural chic, Beaut.  Get that girl to put the kettle on."

A Trial of Dyeing with Sweet Woodruff Leaves and Roots

Chelsea Flower Show is on next week.  This means that it must be nearly time for planting out all my seedlings from the greenhouse.   Rain is forecast for the next few days, the moon starts descending next Wednesday and I will have Thursday off work - what a perfect conjunction of events.

Much of the garden is getting replanted with plants that give dyes. When I got round to reviewing the official 'Dye Garden', which was left bare last autumn, the alpine strawberries and sweet woodruff had struck back, stopped lurking down the shadiest end and surged forward to get some Spring sun. 

Such a lovely, fresh, green carpet.  I hardened my heart, being a woman with special needs and a lot of pots of coreopsis and dyer's chamomile to find homes for.  Much digging later, there were only a couple of oriental poppies spared and a few tulips left to die back naturally.

From the name 'sweet' woodruff and the Latin version Galium odoratum I expected the plant to have a strong perfume.  It doesn't actually smell of much til it has wilted.  I've read that the roots give a red dye, like a weaker version of madder.  Shaking the dirt off, they did have an orange tinge to them, so I spent ages untangling woodruff from all the associated weeds, til I had half a bucketfull.

I couldn't find any details of dye methods, so I separated most of the roots out and treated them just as I did the madder, alkalinising the bath and adding calcium carbonate before warming gently, while the plant tops had the usual hour at a simmer.  There was a fair orange tinge to the root bath plus a lovely scent.

I have mordanted a great length of superwash Merino with alum, planning to dye my own tops for spinning.  Even after the gentlest sloosh in a cold mordant bath, the fibres were getting disorganised, but at least they don't seem felted by heating in the dye baths. Palest pink came from roots and a soft green from the leaves.  My photos never do show the green properly.

I transplanted other clumps of woodruff into a bare area revealed by himself, brutally pruning back a camellia bush. Going to see if they had survived the move, I found Elinor Gotland making her own inspection.
"Wow, that hat is special."
"Just trying on my outfit for Chelsea."
"OOO you lucky thing!"  I paused for thought.  

"Wouldn't you be better off with comfy shoes and a rucksack?"
"Hardly.  I shall be attending the Charity Gala Preview.  All I need to take along is fresh lipstick, as Alan Titchmarsh will probably want to interview me."
Back in the house, it dawned on me that her outfit had been co-ordinated to match a silk scarf I dyed in the remains of the root bath, with hardy geranium leaves and some dried up bits of fermented Evernia prunastri.  As she waltzed off in a swirl of pure Habotai silk,  I called after her,
"At least take an umbrella, Elinor.  It is definitely going to rain on Monday evening." 
"Not in the President's Marquee, Beaut.  They don't let rain dilute the champagne."  
I don't think there will be any point asking her about the Show Gardens.  I'll just have to wait and see them on telly.

Making Stitch Markers for Lace Knitting

I was told last year that lace knitting is not intrinsically difficult and have found it true that lace really does only use a limited range of combinations of stitches and forms of yarn over to draw in parts of a row of knitting and leave spaces elsewhere.  While the craft is simple, one lapse of concentration, one yarn over missed and everything thereafter is thrown out of kilter, scrambling into chaos instead of building harmony.  The second lace scarf I completed had me fascinated, despite the 

amount of time I spent unpicking it.  I'd say the art lies in imagining a new pattern, creating balance and intricacy within the final shape of a piece. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Which means following lace knitting instructions is a discipline leading up to the thrill of a result that cannot be fully anticipated. The plasticity of knitted lace amazes me.  Even when you have finished knitting, the lace effect cannot be properly appreciated until the piece is washed and blocked to stretch out the web. 

I have heard about 'life lines', where you run a thread through all the stitches of a row you are sure is correct, so that if you go wrong later, the work can safely be unravelled back to this level.  Somehow, I never could be arsed to set a life line up.  Luckily for me, I saw a friend's Dragonfly Wings scarf and thus discovered Boo Knits patterns.  The one above is called Sweet Dreams from the In Love Collection.  I call mine 'Root Map', because I started it on a road trip to Glasgow, changing from one shade of madder dyed yarn to another, every time we changed motorways.  Boo patterns not only come with reminders about how to do the stitches and yarn overs, but also advice on placing stitch markers.  These can be used to divide up the stitches into pattern blocks.  When you know there should be twelve stitches between markers, spotting an error tends to happen while working within that small section and if it doesn't, counting back soon shows where the problem lies.

First off, I just used safety pins or little loops of wool in bright colours as my markers.  I worked so slowly that the extra few seconds spent transferring each narrow safety pin or wiggly, knotted bit of wool from left needle to right didn't slow me up appreciably.  Then I was given a couple of pretty wire loops with beads dangling from them and I realised how much easier they were to slip across.  Only problem was, tiny jags of wire around the beads tended to catch in my loosely plied, low twist handspun wool.  So I asked Mum for some plastic, safety pin shaped markers for my birthday and they were a big improvement, though awkwardly rigid and not aesthetically pleasing.  It is a joy to use tools that combine elegance with function.  When I saw this truly beautiful oak yarn bowl on the HillTop Cloud stall at Wonderwool, I decided buying such a thing was not self indulgence so much as becoming a patron of the arts.  I said this to my companion, Elinor Gotland.

"If that bowl was art, there would have been an extra couple of zeros on the price tag and it would be up on a pedestal, not sitting on the carpet with your wool in it."
That ruddy sheep thinks she can play the cultural guru, just because she's actress.
"Elinor, if I call it art, then that is what that bowl is." 
"Ooo, who's come over all avant garde?  I'm afraid Grayson says that kind of statement only works if you are the person who made the thing and other people agree you are an artist."
"So a pile of bricks can be art, but my lovely, useful bowl can't?"
"Well, Beaut, it could be art if Mr Perry had made it, but HillTop Katie's dad hasn't won the Turner Prize.  Or been on telly."

 I myself have been suffering creative torment with the button machine, attempting to express myself through the medium of the stitch marker. I discovered that the little bar can be twisted out of the back of the button shells, leaving two holes for a loop to be threaded through, so the knot is covered once the top of the button gets clamped on.  My prototype was made with a fuse wire loop, like the beaded markers, but the knots in the wire unwound

themselves or broke after I flipped them about while knitting. Silk, wool and cotton loops do stay tied, but they are a bit too floppy to slide the tip of a knitting needle through quickly. Short loops keep the button head too close to the stitches and long loops are a pain to fetch back over on a purl row. By trial and error, I ended up with 2cm loops of necklace cord, the 1mm diameter kind is stiff enough to keep loops open and doesn't catch on the working yarn.  With a padding of cotton interlining, scraps of plant dyed silk cover the tops, each one different and all of them lovely.

"This is not a production line, Elinor, it's a limited edition."
"Well, Beaut, I'd believe that if I didn't know the bead shop just changed hands and became a dog grooming parlour.  You just keep up the artistic struggle and I'll find you another necklace cord supplier online."
"Ooo, could you get me some in white?  Or maybe green, to match the silk?"

I've now got two dozen pretty much perfectly functional stitch markers, light weight on the needle, yet substantial enough to shift about easily.  It takes that many to divide up the long rows at the end of the New Beginnings pattern.  This is undemanding lace intended for worsted weight yarn and I thought the instructions looked boringly repetitive, but suitable for the dentist's waiting room, where I have been spending far more time than I'd choose. The version in the photo on the right has the alternative ending with the lacy tips and I'm calling it 'Root Work'.  The cumulative effect of the simple structure pleases me immensely. So much so, I made another one straight away with more of my practice at handspinning straight from the end of Bond wool tops.  Which still isn't much finer than double knitting weight.

This one has the plain edge and it's for a bloke who makes silver jewellery and big forged sculptures.  I consider him quite enough of an artist to wear a bit of lace and I name the scarf 'Metal Work'.  Some of the copper wire he gave me is now bent into a holder to keep all my best stitch markers together.  

"What do you reckon, Elinor?  If I hang them on the wall and call them 'Neogenesis', does that make them art?"

"Maybe.  But you'd have to shave your head, get some facial piercings and never, ever let on about the knitting."

A Trial of Fresh Madder Root Dye

Most of my madder seedlings were planted out into a raised border, two years ago.  Three have been living in a pot on the patio.  At the end of March, I spotted a red root growing out through the bottom, which I took as a sign they needed potting on and a great excuse to see how much they had grown.  In the books, it says that madder roots grow to pencil thickness in five years and should not be divided and harvested for roots until at least their third year.  These three plants turned out to be coming on ok, despite being cramped in a pot.  Rinsing one of them in a bucket of rainwater  

exposed an orangey red root system, though paler than in pictures I have seen.  I potted two plants on, adding some wood ash to the fresh compost, as an alkaline soil is supposed to encourage the production of alizarin pigment. You probably guessed that the third plant never got back into the soil, falling victim to my flaming desire to have a go at madder root dyeing.
I chopped up the whole thing with secateurs and rinsed it again to get off all the earth.  I've read that pouring boiling water over the roots will clear them of the more orange dyes, leaving the best red.  When I did this, colour just poured out into the water, leaving me panic stricken there would be none still left in those tiny pieces.  I scoured and mordanted some finely spun white Wensleydale and portioned it out into small skeins of random length, all less than 10g dry weight.  The smallest skein went into the first 

hot rinse water, so as not to waste a drop of madder.  I gave it half an hour on a very low heat, just to get it started. By all acounts, madder reds can easily be destroyed by overheating.  I got a bit mixed up, flicking from Jenny Dean's book Wild Colour, to Theresinha's online instructions at Wild Colours and missed the point that the whole dye process can be done without heat.  I could have saved myself constant pot watching for the hour I spent warming those rinsed roots in fresh water in a bigger pot with the largest skein of Wensleydale.  Then I realised I had forgotten the chalk and added that. Then I tested the pH and found it was still neutral, so I added enough soda ash to bring it up to pH 9-10, hoping for the best possible red.

Had to wait for a couple of days to see my first result.  Madder takes much longer to be taken up than any other plant dye I have tried and patience is not my forte, but there was a heartening increase in depth of colour, noticeable even when checking every morning and evening. The biggest ball near the top right is the skein from the first bath, the smallest ball, lower right, came from the first hot rinse water, so it definitely did take out the orange tones.  The pink ball at the top went into the main afterbath for the second phase of waiting a few days, then I poured in the remnant of the hot rinse water and dyed the last two skeins, which came out peachy.  Adding some iron water, one of the peach skeins went back in the pot for a little more heating and turned that pinky beige on the top left.

While I was weeding round the main clump of madder in the border, a few roots fell off into my hand.  They went into the left over dye bath and I contact dyed a piece of heavy Habotai silk by rolling hardy geranium leaves and daffodils into it and tying the bundle up with string soaked in iron water.  My companion, Elinor Gotland, spotted me steam ironing the fabric and suddenly started paying attention.
"That beigey peach is almost a flesh tone on silk, Beaut."
I tweaked it back out of her hoof.
"You have grey fleece."

For a small sheep, Elinor has a powerful grip and a devilish fetish for silk.  To avoid an unseemly tussle, I spent some time in the garden, admiring all my madder dye colours in natural light.  Those geraniums leaked out a good bit of green too, pleased to find the iron had picked out the tracery of their leaves, even though I kept the heat low in the silk dye bath.  

Back in the house, I was staggered to find my friend enthroned on a heap of the most glorious red wool I have ever seen.

"This is what I call Madder Red."
"Wherever did you get that wool?  It's sumptuous, look at the depths and tones in it, that has to be naturally dyed and I know you didn't do it."
Elinor leaned back, playing it very cool.
"Did a bit of shopping at Wonderwool, Beaut, and I got chatting with Sue, who runs Native Yarns. Pure madder dyeing this, she does it herself, one to one weight ratio of root to fibre." She bounced up and down. "This is called Brigantia and it's much softer than your Wensleydale."
I squeezed the skeins and sighed.
"It must have cost you a fortune!"
"Not half as much as you'd think and a hell of a lot quicker than gardening."
"You know that silk scarf I've got?  Interested in a trade, at all?"

A Trial of Dandelion Flower Dye

The roadside dandelions look outstanding this April. As I crouched on the verge of the A48, snapping off flowers and ignoring the cars whipping by, I was joined by an ancient itinerant who hopped off his bike, asked what I was doing, then lay down for a sleep in the sun. I have a way to go to be as free as him from concern about who might see me and what they might think. Bit more uncomfortable than I had supposed, just taking this small step off the beaten track, inwardly debating which of us was making best use of our time, given the probability I was collecting material for yet another natural beige dye.  Still, there were heaps of flowers and pretty quick to pick.

Anyway, back in the privacy of a suburban kitchen, 900g dandelion flowers were simmered for an hour or so in 7 litres of water, leaking out a clear yellow colour. Remembering that flower dyes often come out stronger at an alkaline pH, I filled two jam jars and added soda ash to one til the pH came up to 10.  Since the dye colour got visibly deeper, I alkalinised the whole bath.

The subjects for this dye trial were 50g fleece mordanted with alum, 35g wool yarn premordanted with iron and 35g premordanted with copper and 20g cotton jersey mordanted with aluminium acetate. Overall, the ratio of fresh flower weight to wool and cotton was about 6:1.  The things were soaked beforehand then simmered in the dye for an hour or so and left in the pot overnight.
After a couple of rinses in plain water and a chance to dry out,

this is how they looked.  Only all a bit greener than the camera will pick up and you'll have to take my word for it that the cotton was a stronger yellow and the iron mordanted skein less red in tone, though it was nearest to the dreaded beige.  
Hardy geraniums have been making the most of this April sun too, putting up new leaves.  I did not realise how well they contact print til halfway into last summer, so I took the chance to see what the spring leaves would do on a strip of alum mordanted silk, bound up round a length of 
drainpipe with string

soaked in iron solution and simmered in the remains of the dyebath.  The ochre splodges come from a few dried up petals of yellow cosmos I found gathering dust in a dish, the background silk took up a pale green and the leaves printed quite clearly with iron, but didn't add much colour of their own.  While I count the weeks in linear time, my imagination has been jumping through a wormhole to another dimension when my life can be immersed

in plant dye baths.  Now for a bold step forward, to discover the exigency of dyeing fine wool fabric, which is actually heavier and more expensive than good silk, but I think might sit well as a stole or wrap.  Truly daring, I cut a piece 1.5m long by 50cm wide, scoured and mordanted it with 10% alum, then laid out a band of geranium leaves sprinkled with dried coreopsis flowers, folded the other end over, added some more leaves and flowers and tied it up with the iron soaked string.  As the wool fabric weighed 100g, I picked another 400g dandelions and simmered them up in the previous afterbath, before giving my creation a simmer and an overnight soak.  

Next morning, I headed off to work sad at heart, as the wet wool looked like that dingy brown I got on iron mordanted yarn.  Which of course, I could have predicted, had I paid attention to the original test bath findings.  When I unrolled the 

dry bundle, it was a real lift to find the geranium leaves had given up a green gold.  I think that may have happened because I alkalinised the bath again, to get more colour out of the second lot of dandelions.  The main colour also came out more of a subtle olive green than the photo shows, so my piece of wool fabric is not quite as dull as it seems.  
"I don't think the time and the dandelions have been wasted, do you, Elinor?
"To be honest, Beaut, I'd say you should have laid down and made the most of that sunshine.  Don't know how long we'll wait for some more, they're forecasting rain all next week."  
"Right now, I care nothing for the weather.  At last it is Wonderwool Wales !"  I skipped about, slinging a change of underwear and a toothbrush into a holdall, leaving plenty of room to bring home all my shopping. "Is your bag packed for the weekend and have you taken some cash out?  Remember lots of stalls don't take cards."
"Oh, I only go for the atmosphere, Beaut."

Elinor Gotland is economical with the truth, if nothing else.

Hand Spinning Combed Wool Tops

Wensleydale sheep have long stapled ringlets.  I managed to process my first bit of Black Wensleydale fleece by flicking each of the locks open and spinning them one by one. Thanks to some helpful tuition at a spinning weekend, I have now learned that the butts don't just pull straight off the comb if you slide them onto the tines with a couple of centimetres sticking out at the back.  
The other hand comb pulls through the fibres much more smoothly if the locks are misted with a little water spray.  Though they get less electric, you still have to take care not to let the long fibres loop back on themselves.
"I'm not going to lie, Beaut, I reckon you are slower with those combs than you were with the flicker."
"Elinor!  Leave that perfume bottle alone, I've just repurposed it as a fleece sprayer."
"You've put lavender oil in this water.  Thought someone's Nanna must be visiting."
"I'd rather have lavender scented yarn than whiff like an overripe tropical fruitbowl."
"I'm experimenting with a new shampoo.  Might be a little heavy on the coconut, but I can just feel it nourishing my fleece.  You're as stuck in a rut as the Rolling Stones.  If they were driving in the slow lane with a flat tyre on their tour bus."

It did take me a couple of evenings to comb these little nests of Black Wensleydale. Although they were far easier to spin evenly than drafting from one lock after another, after all that work, I overplied the singles and ended up with a rather wriggly skein of fingering weight yarn. Elinor beckoned me over to the computer where she was researching on the information highway - or online shopping.

"Weight for weight, that raw fleece cost you as much as mill combed white Wensleydale.  Was it really worth the effort?"
Just for comparison, I did buy some full Monty, superwash processed Wensleydale. Both had a the same staple length, but unlike my combing, the tops had no neps at all.  And all I had to do was draft out the white braid in 

advance before spinning a finer and more even yarn.  
"It feels different, though, Elinor, there's less crimp, less life in the wool."
"What could be less lively than your dingy plant dyes?  Walk on the wild side, lovely girl, give yourself a treat and try a braid from Colourful Designs."  
This fibre is called 'Very Berry', a wonderfully soft Falklands Superwash Merino dyed by Bex. I've watched spinners turning out laceweight singles just working straight from the top of a braid.  

My drafting kept pulling down one side, til I was shown 'wafting'. Just break off and flap the end of the braid about til it comes back to a point.  No struggling for solid colour, even the plying was an adventure, watching the berry shades in the singles mix and match.  Knitting Elizabeth Zimmerman's classic Baby Surprise Jacket was my final

venture into the unknown.  The pattern is all worked in one piece and even with the supplementary instructions, I must have been half way through before I could see how it would fold to make a human shaped garment. I'm calling this one Sabrina's Aubretia. It is machine washable, which I consider essential for babywear if you are any kind of a friend to the mother in question. I made the newborn size, but since my spinning came out double knitting to aran weight, she looks a little lost inside it at two months old.  It is going to take perseverance to learn to spin fine yarn from tops without predrafting.  Wonderwool is on next weekend, oh the excitement - it is just possible I may succumb to buying another colourful braid.  Got to keep up with the times. 

Elgin Jumper Knitting Pattern

After some tribulations, my hand spinning of an Exmoorino sheep fleece only produced a moderate length of bulky yarn.  I calculated that I must have spun enough to make a medium sized jumper with a very open neck. My sister (see photo) likes wearing things off the shoulder.  Once the jumper was washed, I dried it flat with the body smoothed out widthways - only gently, no blocking pins. To my immense delight, this resulted in a looser fit than the unwashed version had led me to expect.  More by luck than judgement, the shape has worked out close to my original idea of 'fall from the neckline' knitwear.  I want to make one for myself now and I have considerably more spare tyre to hide, so I'll find out soon enough if the pattern below works out as well using other wool. Though the yarn took ages to prepare, this is a really quick knit.

Elgin Jumper Pattern 

Materials

80m cream aran/chunky yarn 
(8-9 wraps per inch)

400m marbled colour bulky/superbulky yarn
(6-7 wraps per inch)

8mm and 10mm circular needles

darning needle for weaving ends

You'll have to forgive me for the imprecise weights of yarn, my handspun was thicker and thinner in places.  How many wraps of yarn fit into one inch space on a ruler depends very much on how tightly you pull the yarn while you are wrapping. If you are bold enough to have a go at making up this pattern anyway, my 'aran' yarn is on the thicker, fluffier end of the spectrum of commercial balls of aran I have at home, more like the UK yarns designated chunky.  My 'bulky' yarn is a bit leaner and firmer than Sirdar Indie.

Tension

10cm square = 8.5 stitches and 12 rows before washing in the machine at 30 degrees Centigrade on a wool wash programme and after the wash, when smoothed gently widthways while laid out to dry, 10cm square = 8.5 stitches and 15 rows.

When I try this again, I will knit a large tension gauge and adjust the needle size to make it come out right, because I really am pleased with the final shape once it is put on. 

One Size - Medium to Large

Chest 122cm, Body length from armpit down 45cm, from neckline down 60cm.
Sleeve from armpit to cuff 43cm

Making the Body

Cast on 100 stitches of the cream yarn on an 8mm circular needle.  I used the long tail cast on method, then worried because while it was stretchy, it seemed so much tighter than the knitting above it.  In the event, the rib band did not fit snug around the hips, but the way the cast on edge drew the bottom edge inward gave a nice bell shape instead of a straight drop.

Place a stitch marker and join the cast on stitches to work in the round.
Border - 12 rounds of knit 2 purl 2 rib.

Change to 10mm circular needle and the thicker, marbled yarn and knit rounds until the work measures desired final length to armpit, plus the extra length calculated according to the length your tension gauge sample lost after washing and spreading out.  I wanted 45cm and knitted an extra 7.5% = 49cm.

From the start of the next round, knit 48 stitches, cast off 4 stitches for the right armpit, knit 46 stitches cast off 2 stitches, remove stitch marker and cast off 2 more stitches. 

Making the Sleeves

Cast on 24 stitches of the cream yarn on an 8mm circular needle.  Place a stitch marker and join the cast on stitches to work in the round.
Cuff - 18 rounds of knit 2 purl 2 rib.
Change to 10mm circular needle and the thicker, marbled yarn and knit 9 rounds.
At the beginning of the 10th round, make one stitch left, then one stitch before the end of the round, make one stitch right and knit one (26 stitches).
Knit another 11 rounds and repeat the same increase on the 12th (28 stitches).
Knit another 13 rounds and repeat the same increase on the 14th (30 stitches).

Continue til work measures 44cm + 7.5% = 47cm.  I might do shorter sleeves, possibly even three quarter length next time.  On the last round, knit to 2 stitches before the marker, cast off 2, remove marker and cast off 2 more stitches (26 stitches).

Making the Yoke

Knit 46 stitches across the front of the body, hold the 4 cast off stitches of one sleeve against the four cast off stiches of the body and continue knitting round the 26 stitches of the sleeve, then knit across the 46 stitches of the back and round the 26 stitches of the other sleeve (144 stitches).
I did the reductions under the armpit by knitting 2 together through back of loop then knitting 2 together at each junction of the original body and the sleeves on the next three rounds, then knitting a plain round and after that, a final reduction round.
Reducing 8 stitches per round 4 times reduces the stitch count to 120.  
My method left little gaps in the fabric between each pair of reductions.  Nice ventilation on a warm day and not awfully noticeable, but when I do this again, I will reduce two stitches at each junction of body and sleeve using a centred decrease - slip two stitches together as if to knit, knit one and pass slipped stitches over.

In the next round of knitting, I placed markers every 12 stitches starting at the front of the left armpit.  Next time, I will put the first marker 6 stitches from the centre of the front to make the yoke reduction stitches look symmetrical.  Ten stitch markers divide the whole round up into sections of 12 stitches each and you need one to look different to remind you when you reach the beginning of the round.
Next round, knit two together after each marker (110 stitches).

Knit another 5 rounds and on the sixth, knit two together after each marker (100 stitches).
Knit another 3 rounds and on the fourth, knit two together after each marker (90 stitches).
Knit another 2 rounds and on the third, knit two together after each marker (80 stitches).
Knit another 3 rounds and on the fourth, knit two together after each marker (70 stitches).
Knit 2 rounds.

I had a brainwave while wondering how to finish the neckline.  This i-cord stops it from stretching and makes the whole yoke hang well.

Change back to 8mm needles and the plain yarn.  Knit one round and cast off using the i-cord bind off.  I followed the instructions on this video.
If you prefer a narrower neck opening, (as I think I might, my bra straps not making a very fetching accidental display,) you could do one more reduction round bringing it down to 60 stitches, then knit one round more before changing to the plain yarn for one round and casting off.
Weave in the ends and sew up the armpits, wash and dry flat after smoothing out widthways.



Happy Birthday, Pip!  Hope you get back to Greece this summer.  I may get as far as the British Museum to see the real Elgin Marbles.

June 2015 - I tried those modifications making another one of these, blog here.