Another song / Òran eile

Good news this morning: our work is done and the Wester Ross book is away to the printers in Glasgow, which means we should be able to publish it around the middle of next month. I’m sure that in time, with the benefit of distance, I’ll be able to feel proud of this book – because it is a very good one – but at the moment I just feel glad to have it done. One of the many unfortunate things about getting ill when I did was that I was unable to share the design stories of some of my favourite patterns for the project with you, so I thought I’d take a moment, in this hiatus between manuscript submission and publication, to do that.

This is Òran Eile

My starting point for this design was the work of the Gairloch bard, William Ross (Uilleam Ros), and the love poem for which he is perhaps best known: the unusually raw yet extraordinarily accomplished Òran Eile / Another Song [on the same theme]. I’ve written more about Ross’ life and work in our Wester Ross book, and I would encourage anyone who enjoys reading poetry to spend an hour or two with Òran Eile: even if Gaelic is completely new to you, you can, with the help of Learn Gaelic’s excellent online dictionary, puzzle out Ross’ sonorous phrasing and deft wordplay, alongside the sense, of his powerful song. Who knows: maybe you’ll feel inspired to learn more Gaelic?

For a poet who wore his heart on his sleeve, I began my design with a motif of four interlocking hearts.

I spent quite a lot of time playing around with this heart-y motif last year, and some of you may remember this tutorial about the challenges of “keeping pattern correct” when knitting stranded colourwork (which arose directly from developing and knitting the Òran Eile chart). My experiments eventually resulted in this vest:

This top-down design begins by knitting two epaulettes, which are a sort of sneaky way of working short-row shoulder shaping without ever noticing you’ve done so:

Each epaulette is an elongated isosceles triangle, whose two long sides create a nice slope along the shoulders. The short edge of the triangle, meanwhile, neatly enable an opening for the neck.

After picking up (and casting on) stitches from the long edges of the epaulettes, the vest is then worked top-down, thereby eliminating the need for any short-row shaping (which can be a tricky prospect when knitting stranded colourwork).

This is a design created with the knitter’s experience in mind: inserting two steeks at each shoulder edge means that the vest can also be knitted seamlessly in the round, and the only shaping “in pattern” occurs towards the bottom of the armscyes. I’ve designed this across every size to be as straightforward as possible. When you reach the underarms and bind off your steeks, you’ll find that each chart motif matches up neatly across the front and back, allowing the allover pattern to continuously wrap, uninterrupted, around the body.

The vest can then be knitted to your preferred length and fit: I’m very short waisted, so prefer a garment body length that would be quiet cropped on the majority of knitters, but which works well for me. The given measurements in the pattern are (like all of my designs) graded to an averaged standard (ie, to bodies that are not mine) but do make sure to check the sizing table and adjust the garment length to ensure sure you get the fit you want.

Unlike other top-down designs, you can’t try on Òran Eile for size while the body is in in progress (because the steeks, forming an arm-impeding straightjacket, get in the way): I suggest measuring the length of a favourite sweater whose fit you’d like to replicate and use this for reference.

The fit of vests can, in general, be quite tricky, being not only dependent on your body dimensions but those of whatever layers you intend to be wearing underneath. The armscyes are key here: if you have a rather blousy-sleeved shirt in mind (like I did before knitting my sample) it’s a good idea to measure the shirt’s armscye depth, compare it to the given measurements in the pattern sizing table, and make adjustments while knitting, if necessary, to ensure there’s enough ease for your vest to sit comfortably on top.

I really enjoyed designing Òran Eile: this particular top-down construction – whose nifty epaulettes solve a whole host of shoulder-shaping conundrums – is one I’d not tried before, and which I’ll certainly use again.

This construction allowed me to create a contemporary boxy shape which sits nicely on the body and fits really well around the shoulders. The resulting garment feels fresh and smart, but is also really easy and comfortable to wear.

Òran Eile was also a genuine joy to knit: it was the first thing I’d designed with our new Ooskit 4 ply in mind, and I found combining it with the Lochan shade of Milarrochy Tweed particularly pleasing.

Ooskit is a worsted-spun yarn with a characteristically smooth hand while Milarrochy Tweed is woollen-spun, nubbly, and (in the skein, at least) somewhat uneven. On paper, this yarn combination shouldn’t work, but it somehow really does.

Using the Ooskit 4 ply for the background shade and trims lends Òran Eile a really neat, clean finish, while the tweedy neps of the Milarrochy Tweed create little pops of light and shade which add character and interest to the fabric. I love the end result.

Òran Eile is a design which knits up surprisingly quickly (no sleeves make a big difference!) and is an ideal layer for this rather changeable, transitional time of year. If you’d like to try your hand at knitting it, we have kits in all sizes in the shop and the individual pattern is also now available for purchase on Ravelry.

Happy vest knitting!