Turquoise is one of those colours that just about everyone loves, and the gemstone Turquoise does not disappoint in the rich variety of its shades of light bluey-green. It is the birthstone of December, bringing colour and light to the dark months of the year.
The chemical composition is aluminium silicate which also contains copper, although the turquoise found in North America actually contains iron rather than aluminium; the latter tends to have dark veining.
Two types of Turquoise are commonly available: African and Chinese, although the stone is mined in many places around the world. African Turquoise tends to be a darker blue/green than Chinese, with darker threading throughout. Both types take polish well and gleam and glitter in jewellery.
Turquoise has featured in jewellery for thousands of years; it was used by the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs in jewellery and as a decorative stone; King Tutankhamen’s burial mask and tomb was inlaid with turquoise as the stone was a symbol of regeneration; the Mesoamericans created turquoise mosaics; the Chinese carved turquoise into ornaments; it was used by Native Americans in works of art and jewellery; the Tibetans believe in its healing properties and have valued turquoise jewellery for centuries.
African Turquoise knitted into a delicate bracelet
This month’s new listings feature lots of new stitch markers, a brand new stitch marker set, and some fabulous earrings.
First of all, thank you to all my customers who have bought the Dreaming of the Sea and Sun Moon and Stars marker sets; it’s wonderful to see that themed sets of stitch markers have struck a chord with people in many countries. Today’s new stitch marker set is called Deep in the Forest. I love trees, the stillness in a forest when you can almost hear the earth breathe, the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth, the earthy smell of woodland after rain. I have tried to capture this feeling in Deep in the Forest, a set of six stitch markers featuring gemstones and glass beads in shades of green, and charms that represent the elements of a forest that I love.
Gorgeous greens from the Fancy Jasper, Aventurine and glass beads, earthy tones from the Smoky Quartz and the Jasper again. This set is available as both knitting and crochet markers.
There are lots of new single markers, too, some with a 5 for the price of 4 option. Continuing the forest theme, there is a large solid acorn marker and an owl marker. And a stylised tree etched onto a round charm with a reverse stating Save our Planet, a sentiment I’m sure we can all subscribe to!
Linked to last month’s sea themed stitch markers comes a large decorative dolphin, a beautiful charm, ideal for those who like a larger stitch marker (or perhaps a project bag charm!)
Another large stitch marker added to store today is the beautiful spiral goddess, a real beauty.
The final two markers added this week are a pretty combination of charms and gemstones. The Lotus Flower is a popular and familiar symbol and I love searching out new forms of this icon. This double-sided charm has an opening so that a bead can be inserted into its heart. I have used blue banded agate in this marker, with lots more lovely gemstones to choose from if they prove popular!
The Hamsa Hand, or Hand of Fatima, is another favourite symbol, and I have found a charm which again has a hole in the centre just right for a small gemstone bead. This one feature Lapis Lazuli, one of my favourite gemstones, glinting with specks of golden pyrite. The beads in both the Lotus and the Hamsa are free to move, and turning them is a great way to meditate whilst you are knitting or crocheting.
New items of jewellery are always fun to design and make, especially those pieces involving knitting or crocheting with wire. And adding gemstones is just so satisfying! The Moonstone Flower earrings were no exception. The pale grey Moonstone I have been using has an exceptional glow in its depths as well as a beautiful sheen. These were crocheted using 99.9% pure silver wire and each earring has fifteen glowing milky grey chips in its five petals.
The last item for today features a gemstone new to me: Kambaba Jasper, also known as Crocodile Jasper. It comes from Madagascar, and has a very distinctive colour and patterning, not unlike the skin of a crocodile, in fact. As with all Jaspers, it is a spotty stone, although the spots here are rather larger than, say, in Dalmatian Jasper. The main colour is a moss green, with the spots and streaks in black or very dark green. These chips are square cut, giving the earrings a contemporary look.
I hope you have found something to delight and inspire you in this week’s new listings. Keep checking back for new items, or follow me on Etsy to get all the latest updates.
Over the past month I have been busy developing lots of ideas for new jewellery and stitch markers. I released the first couple of new stitch marker sets a few weeks ago – Dreaming of The Sea and Sun Moon and Stars – and they have been very well received.
Last month, I released the next themed set, Deep Blue Ocean, and I think it is gorgeous! It features dark blue and brown Tiger’s Eye, an intriguing stone with the same luminous striping as the more common brown/gold Tiger’s Eye; Amazonite, a fabulous turquoise blue gemstone; Mother of Pearl; and Blue Banded Agate, the colour of the Mediterranean. But that’s not all. Fish swim, Dolphins sport, and Whales flip their intricate tails as they breach and dive.
Cat and Moon is a new single stitch marker that has already proved popular. A shiny crescent moon hangs in the sky, and sitting on its edge is a cute little cat, tail curled around the curve of the moon. This is a pretty marker for either knitting or crochet, and comes with a special offer – buy five of this marker for the price of four.
The third new item is a Knitting Queen single marker. This is similar to the Knitting Diva marker already in the shop, and joins Yarn Ball, Yarn and Needles, and Knitting Diva as the specifically knitting-related charms that I offer. It also has a five for four offer.
The final new item released in November is a sweet piece of jewellery, a necklace featuring a curved bar suspended on a chain. The bar features a beaded rainbow. It is offered in both Silver Plated and Sterling Silver versions, and joins several other rainbow influenced pieces in store.
There will be more updates soon. To stay up to date, either follow this website, or follow me on Etsy.
Citrine is the birthstone for the month of November. It is a quartz, and its chemical composition is silicon dioxide coloured with iron. It is not as flashy a gemstone as lapis lazuli, or malachite, or emerald, but it does have a quiet beauty all of its own.
It ranges in colour from light yellow to golden brown, and is only found in a transparent form. Natural citrine is rare, and most commercially available stones are actually heat-treated amethyst or smoky quartz; heat-treated stones nearly always have a reddish tinge to them, enabling the discerning to detect that the stones are not true citrines. Natural citrine is found mainly in Brazil, Madagascar and the United States, with minor deposits in Argentina, Myanmar, Namibia, Russia, Scotland and Spain.
Citrine makes lovely delicate unusual jewellery. See the Granary Knits store for these and other designs.
Knitted onto silver wire, citrine chips make an attractive and unusual accessory
Tourmaline is the birthstone of October. The name is derived from Sinhalese, Turamali (meaning stone of many colours); it was mined in Sri Lanka for centuries, but first imported into Europe by the Dutch in the early 18th century.
Tourmaline is actually a group of gemstones, rather than a specific single stone (like lapis lazuli or peridot), and depending upon its colour its name can vary, from Achroite (colourless) to Verdelite (green). The chemical composition distinguishes the different forms of tourmaline; so Dravite is named after deposits found near the river Drave in Austria/Carinthia and contains magnesium; Elbaite is named after the island of Elba in Italy and contains lithium; and Tsilaisite is a local Madagascan name and contains manganese.
Tourmaline is found in a huge range of colours and is usually sold in mixed strings or bags, so that the jewellery made from it has a vibrant look and feel. The stones polish well, and the colouring is rich in each stone. Earrings made from tourmaline are unusual and intriguing!
Simple but effective Tourmaline earrings, available in store
Tourmaline earrings knitted using silver wire, available in store
After a few months of finding my feet on Etsy, I am now ready to open up to customers worldwide! The new items in the jewellery section are already available internationally, but I have now decided to make the knitting and crochet stitch markers available also. As of 4th September 2016, all items in store can be shipped anywhere.
Knitting and crochet stitch markers in both charms and semi-precious stonesSets of stitch markers
The beautiful, rich blue Lapis Lazuli is the birthstone for the month of September.
Of all the gemstones I have worked with over the years, I think Lapis Lazuli is my favourite. All gemstones have a certain something about them – the variations in colour, the surprise of interesting inclusions, the mystery of their origins – but lapis has something else, a sort of inner glow. The name is derived from Arabic, meaning blue stone, but there are lots of naturally blue stones and what is sold as lapis is not always lapis. Lapis is an azure blue (coloured by sulphur) rather than the deeper blue of Sodalite or the mid-powder blue of Azurite; it is lighter in colour than Dumortierite (which veers off towards violet-blue), and it is opaque, not transparent to semi-transparent like Lazulite. The best examples have an even colour distribution and some (but not too much!) well distributed inclusions of pyrite – looking like golden speckles within the stone.
Lapis beads in various shapes and sizes
It has been mined for over 6,000 years in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan; in Russia it is found near Lake Baikal; in Chile it is mined north of Santiago. It has been used for jewellery since prehistoric times; in the Middle Ages in Europe it was used, ground up, to produce the pigment Ultramarine, an essential colour in mediaeval religious art; palaces and churches have lapis panels and columns, and are decorated with vases and urns sculpted from lapis. Today we still make rings, necklaces, earrings and bracelets out of it.
Lapis Lazuli knitted earringsLapis lazuli chips form a simple but effective earring
The beautiful translucent bright green Peridot is the birthstone of the month of August. It is also known by the names Chrysolite and Olivine. The best examples come from Egypt and from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The intensity of the colour of the stone depends upon the amount of iron it contains. Its chemical composition is magnesium iron silicate.
Peridot chips
The origins of the name ‘Peridot’ are obscure; some authorities say that it is derived from the Greek word peridona which means ‘giving plenty’; others that it comes from the Arabic word faridat, meaning gem.
Schumann notes that there are historically important deposits on the Red Sea island of Zabargad, where it has been mined for over 3,500 years; it is also found in Burma (Myanmar), Queensland Australia, Brazil, China, Kenya, Tanzania, and Arizona. It has even been found in Norway.
I cannot say, with hand on heart, that blocking is my favourite part of the knitting process. It is marginally more interesting than sewing up a finished garment, which must rank as my alltime pet hate!, but less enthralling than actually knitting. However, it does make such a dramatic difference to the look of the finished item that it is well worth the effort of practising blocking on everything you knit (or crochet).
Blocking smoothes out wrinkles like an age-defying cream. It make lace lacier and Fair Isle fairer. It aids in sewing seams on sweaters, it shapes shawls, it smoothes socks into foot shapes and hats into head shapes. I now no longer ponder whether I should block something but instead wonder how many things I can block at once!
Tools for Blocking
If you knit a lot (and therefore block a lot, because by the end of this article you will be a committed blocker!), Â it is well worth investing in some really good tools to help you get professional results.
Blocking mat
The first essential is a blocking mat. You can buy blocking mats aimed at knitters but really these are just overpriced interlocking playmats so why not just buy playmats? Mine are black, but you can buy multicoloured sets of interlocking squares from toy shops at a fraction of the cost, and you can always buy more sets once you start knitting 6ft diameter circular shawls! They stack neatly against a wall until required, then can be formed into squares or rectangles depending upon your requirements. Once set out to the size needed for your item, lay a large clean towel over the mat to soak up any remaining water.
Next, a set of blocking wires is enormously helpful in making your square shawls square or your triangular shawls triangular. The set comprises two sizes of stiff wires for straight edges and a couple of bendy wires for curved edges.
Blocking wires and pins
To keep the wires in place you need stainless steel pins, and the strongest are T-pins, easy to press firmly into the blocking mat and won’t rust all over your delicate lace. Even if you do not use wires, you still need the pins to pull your work into shape and hold it there until it dries. You can also buy KnitPro Knit Blockers now, which are quick and easy to use, being a number of very sharp pins embedded into a solid plastic handle.
Other useful tools are sock blockers, mitten blockers, jumper blockers and hat blockers, and you can spend a lot of money equipping yourself with these. But if you only knit a couple of pairs of socks a year or the occasional sweater, the expense is not really worth it. Rudimentary sock and mitten blockers can be cut from stiff cardboard to your exact requirements, and hats can be blocked over inflated balloons (beanies) or dinner plates (berets or tams).
Items being blocked, especially Fair Isle and knitted lace, benefit from a thorough soaking in lukewarm water containing a no-rinse detergent such as Soak or Eucalan. Once they have been thoroughly immersed for at least 20 minutes (careful not to agitate or stir), very gently squeeze out the excess water and gently roll it in a clean towel. The item is now ready to block. To illustrate the blocking process I have blocked and photographed two typical items; a lacy triangular kerchief and a Fair Isle Tam.
Blocking knitted lace
Unblocked kerchief
To open up the lacy pattern of a shawl, or indeed any lace garment, it is essential to block. The first photograph shows the lacy kerchief hot off the needles. The yarn used here is a wool/silk 4ply/fingering. As you can see it is crumpled, and the pattern is not very clear. For a triangular shape such as this, with no individual points to be highlighted, a set of blocking wires and some blocking T-pins can be used.
Having soaked the kerchief for twenty minutes in lukewarm water and Soak, I gently
Wires threaded along the hypotenuse (left), and one of the sides
squeezed out the excess water, rolling the kerchief in a towel. I then set out my mat and clean towel on a nice flat surface and gathered my wires and pins.
First, thread a wire of sufficient length evenly along the hypotenuse of the triangle. Â If there are lacy holes along that edge you can thread in and out of those, otherwise choose an even row of stitches. In the case of the kerchief, the hypotenuse edge has an i-cord cast off so I used this for the wire.
Next, thread wires evenly along the other two sides of the triangle.
Knit Blockers holding the wires in place
Lay the whole thing down onto the mat and begin pinning the wires in place, gently stretching as you go to form it into a right angle triangle. I needed to be especially careful with this kerchief as it is a piece if entrelac (pattern coming soon!) and I did not want to distort the entrelac rectangles as I blocked. Some patterns, particularly those for shawls, give a blocking diagram, which is extremely helpful when trying to pull the shawl into the correct shape.
Pay attention to corners to ensure they do not sag
Leave the shawl for a couple of days to thoroughly dry out, then remove the wires and pins, and admire your lovely piece of knitting!
Blocking Fair Isle
Before blocking
For a square piece of Fair Isle, such as a blanket, blocking wires and pins can be used much like any other piece of knitting, but for illustration I have chosen a smaller but more complex piece to really illustrate the difference blocking makes. Here is Winter Forest Tam as it came off the needles. The tam is lumpy and misshapen and the pattern is difficult to see. It was knitted in Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal, a 4ply/fingering weight mixture of wool and cashmere. A tam is a beret, and therefore flat, so I need a flat form that is about 10 or 11 inches (26 to 28cm) in diameter and solid enough that it will not bend when I adjust the tam. Medium sized dinner plates are ideal, being slightly convex to help form the top of the hat. Most tams are knitted to that size, so plates are ideal.
As with everything else, the tam was soaked for twenty minutes and then gently squeezed and rolled in a towel.
Tam soakingGently squeezed with plate at the readyPlate inserted convex side towards the top of the tam, and cotton 4ply run through the welt to gather and pull gently
The purpose of the cotton 4ply stitched around the bottom edge of the ribbing is to keep the hat in place on the plate whilst it is drying. I tugged gently and tied it then checked that the pattern was evenly distributed around the rim.
The top of the tamThe underside of the tam
Once satisfied with the blocking I stood the plate on a small bowl, which held the plate off the table top and allowed air to flow all around the tam.
The plate standing on a bowl
Drying
Depending upon your drying area and the size of the piece, complete drying may take a couple of days. Natural drying is best, but you could also place a dehumidifier in the room with the blocked piece to speed the process. Never leave the blocked item in direct sunlight.
Conclusion
Blocking is really a matter of common sense, knowing your knitting shape, and having a few simple tools to help you. I hope that you will give it a try, I promise you will be amazed at the results!
Beaded shawl on the blocking matClose-up of Asterope shawl showing the attention to detail bringing out the delicate lace points
Here at Granary Knits we have been busy designing and developing a new range of jewellery – for you rather than for your knitting! Pendants, earrings and bracelets are first on the list of items to be added to the GranaryKnits Etsy Store; but anklets, shawl pins, and lots more bejewelled delights are in the works.
