Introducing the Bellringing Jumper

Work on my bellringing jumper has begun in earnest. This follows on from my Cambridge Surprise Minor Headband and the idea is to have it featuring 8 different Surprise Major methods known as the Standard 8. these are Cambridge, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Superlative, Pudsey, Rutland, Bristol and London.

Not the most useful swatching in the world…

I did a bit of swatching to begin with. I tried out a tubular cast on to give a pretty stretchy edge to my ribbing. I used the provisional tail method from TECHknitter which worked brilliantly for me. I also tried out a few vertical border patterns for each side of the cabled method column. At the very top of the swatch I tried out a few simple textural patterns to fill in the top section of the jumper above the complex cables of the lower section. I tried to swatch in the round with loose floats carried round to the beginning of each row. Unfortunately this didn’t go quite to plan so I can’t block the sample properly at all. I don’t want to cut the strands in case I need that yarn so I’m just hoping for the best when it comes to measuring the gauge!

8 changes short of a lead

Despite this I’ve started on a sleeve anyway and am going to cross each bridge when I come to it. At the moment I’m 8 changes (24 rows) away from finishing the cable pattern on this sleeve and when I get there I’ll probably make a start on the next.

Sleeve in action

I’m pretty pleased with how my stitch guesswork has gone so far.

Last Friday Ma’s friend Sandra came and gave me a crash course on measuring and drawing up schematics for knitwear shaping and design so I hope I can put some of that to good use in this project!

FO: Cambridge Surprise Minor Headband

To most people, the jumble of words up there at the top probably don’t mean anything at all. I will explain…

One of my major hobbies is church bellringing, that is, yes, that racket you hear from your local church on a Sunday morning and often a weekday evening is made by real people, hauling around massive lumps of metal on the end of ropes. It looks like this.

Many bellringers ring “Methods” – seemingly complex patterns where neighbouring bells switch places in the ringing order to produce different music, although it can be considered more mathematical than musical. Each bell will only sound once in the change, that is, all the bells will ring once in a certain order, before each bell can ring again with another position in the order. The diagrams we use to help use to do this are much like the one shown below for Cambridge Surprise Minor.  

Following the lines for each bell from left to right, you should be able to see that the first part of the pattern corresponds to the pattern of cables on the headband. 

I was introduced to the idea of combining knitting and ringing by another knitting ringer and thought it was a genius idea! This headband was ideal for a practice and it knitted up fast. I knitted it in the round  on 4mm dpns and joined the tube at the ends using Kitchener stitch. Two repeats gave the perfect length for a headband. It’s a perfect thickness for keeping my ears warm on these cold days!