how I learned to stop worrying and love i-cord

Some quick, not very exciting but very necessary knits. I made a hat and mittens from 2 balls of James C Brett Merino DK, which seems to be the new budget merino in Abakhans, having superceded King Cole. It is both soft and cheap which is important for toddlerwear. The child seems to submit to wearing these quite happily - on a few occasions I have returned from walking the dog and found both hat and mittens to be still on the child, which is nothing short of miraculous. It must be comfortable to wear, or maybe it is just so bloody cold recently he is frozen into inactivity, a bit like Jack Nicholson in the final scene of The Shining. Pattern is winged, idea shamelessly based on Britt's impossibly cute tiny-mittens-on-a-string that she showed me the other day and a similar earflap hat which I had previously made for the child and has mysteriously disappeared. (I checked all the forlorn looking woollens on local railings to no avail).


Both are very simple. The hat is worked upwards from the brim in moss stitch, then in stocking stitch with purl ridges up to the crown where I did an 8 pointed decrease. I then picked up stitches around the brim above each ear and knitted triangles downwards until I had 4 stitches, then went into i-cord. I don't know why but I have had a bit of a mental block about i-cord up till now. I think I just overestimated the time it would take by about a squillion times. Previously I have always gone for crochet chains for ties, on time-saving grounds, but I was amazed to finish both hat and mittens-on-a-string including i-cord within a week of childnaptimes. It took, like half an hour to do the mitten string, which isn't long when sitting comfortably on the sofa in front of the telly. And I think the result is better - the cords are quite smooth and sturdy to the touch, and consequently take a few less microseconds to tie under the chin. Always a win when trying to shepherd a kicking screaming toddler away from the swings and into the pushchair. And I defy him to lose any of this iteration of warm things without a gargantuan effort. Btw if you are wondering, I didn't make the handsome cabled cardie in the top photo, that was Auntie Hilda. (But I did sew the patches onto the jeans after excessive crawling gave him ripped denim knees and a bit of an alarming 80s soft rocker look).
more...

box of delights

This is what the postman brought me yesterday. A big box of treats from my new favourite person Kate B! I think she took pity on me after seeing my jumper made from scraps. It's a ridiculously generous present, with looooads of yarn in this box. There's a whole toddlerjumpersworth of lovely navy blue aran weight wool, and some nice cheerfully bright skeins of sock yarn to bring a bit of colour to a grey drizzly day. I love it... thankyou very much Kate! What with this and my speed knitting win, the yarn cupboard is looking a lot healthier now, and I can start plotting some exciting new warm stuff.... yay! I'm not sure exactly what yet, but the awesome yellowy orangey skein on the left whispered to me that it might want to be a triangle scarf when it grows up.
more...

new things to squish

In case you were worried about the yarn levels in this house after the last post - it's all ok again! I went to Manchester Yarn Day, which was the funnest day out ever. So much lovely hand dyed and handspun yarn around, there were all kinds of opportunities for stroking, prodding and admiring. And lots of sitting around drinking tea, meeting nice people, chatting and knitting. I did a couple of the free workshops. There was one on spinning, by Kate from Green Eyed Monsters which was all kinds of awesome. Unfortunately, though, someone had stolen my fingers and replaced them with sausages immediately prior to the event. Everyone else seemed to end up with yarn, whereas I had an amorphous blob of an unknittable substance that veered crazily from sewing thread to candy floss in consistency. But it was immensely good fun. As was the Speed Knitting event. I got a bit overexcited about this and demanded a soundsystem playing Eye of the Tiger and a satin dressing gown with Rubbishknitter embroidered on the back. Sadly these weren't provided but somehow I managed to win!

The prize was a basket of lovely goodies from the Manchester Yarn Collective - one skein of 'just peachy' sock yarn and a cute cherry purse from Green Eyed Monsters, and a skein of yellow laceweight from Krafty Koala (the label fell off in the excitement but it is unbelievably soft - I think some sort of cashmere blend). I am clearly having an extremely lucky day and should probably do the lottery or something. So amazingly, I almost got away without spending any money, but unfortunately when I went up to the stall to say thankyou for my prize yarn I leaned on a skein of lovely soft chocolate brown merino sock yarn from Skeins and it was so soft and warm I accidentally bought it. Ah well, I managed to spend less than a tenner and it was a pretty awesome haul! And there is hope yet for spinning skillz in the family...


more...

the ghosts of knitmas past

We're still a bit brassic in this household, with neither myself nor Mr. Rubbishknitter currently able to locate any form of paid employment. The child is still a trifle too young to sweep chimneys and the dog has far too nervous a disposition to be of any use to anyone, having spent most of fireworks night trembling and hiding in the cupboard under the stairs.

Being on the rock'n'roll means my credit card is gathering a fine layer of dust and my yarn cupboard is looking considerably less full than usual. So I have resorted to stuff like this jumper, which is made from all the leftover bits of machine washable dk yarn I have been able to find in there. Pattern is Five Fruits by Amanda Kerr (sorry, no non-ravelry link since the demise of magknits), although my colour scheme is a lot more random than suggested and would indicate to me that the fruit should really just be tipped straight into the compost bin. I made mine a bit bigger than the biggest size and made turn back cuffs for extra growing room. It was super easy and quick, just a straightforward top down raglan. The great thing is that, as well as using up a load of remnants, I can play Knitting Reminiscences by looking at the stripes. Most of them are left over from hats from ages ago. I do seem to make a lot of hats. There is a nice soft stripe of Rowan Cashsoft dk in beige left over from my Deep V tank top (which is complete bar the steek finishing, although as I have worn it twice already without bothering to do this, maybe I should give up on the finishing and count it as done.) I have no idea where the purple came from. Kate B if she is reading this will be distressed to learn that I have never yet made anything purple. (Nothing personal against it, just there are lots of colours out there that I like!) I think maybe I bought it ages ago when learning to knit, it was some kind of inexpensive looking wool / acrylic blend.


Anyway, the wee man is warm and so are my hands because I haven't needed to take them out of my pockets! (OK that doesn't entirely work because I needed my hands to knit the jumper, but you know what I mean. And strictly speaking I had to buy buttons and one extra ball of blue but they don't count, right). Apologies for photo blurriness, it's remarkably difficult to photograph a toddler whilst he rampages round the house at high speed hellbent on destruction.

more...

a small treat

Well, after all those wool/acrylic squares for the Macmillan blanket, I really wanted to have a go on something soft and lovely. This hat came from a single skein of 100% alpaca handspun that I bought on UK Ravelry Day from Six Swans. It's so unbelievably soft, knitting with it was like jumping into a river of marshmallows. I was kind of gutted to finish the hat. It was originally intended to be for the baby, but soon after I cast on, I realised it was a little on the big side. Then the voice of Satan started whispering things in my ear like 'he'll only grow out of it' and 'babies wouldn't appreciate the fineness of this handspun anyway'. After a while, I started to agree with Satan. So it's mine! Unlucky, kiddo.

I didn't use a pattern, and kept it extremely simple, I think it's better to let the loveliness of the handspun speak for itself. It's just 80 stitches, knitted in the round, stocking stitch with a couple of rows of garter stitch at the start to stop the edge curling, and an 8 point type decrease at the crown. And now I have warm ears! Hooray.

more...

crafty balls up of the day

Top tip. When attempting to sew a cushion cover, if you have just put in a zip down one side and are feeling quite pleased with yourself. Before putting right sides together and sewing round the other three edges, it might be an idea to open said zip. Otherwise, as any numpty can plainly see, you are going to have extreme difficulty turning the thing inside out. Leaving you with something that is neither decorative nor useful. *Reaches sheepishly for seam ripper*.

I had hoped I could accomplish a simple cushion cover without recourse to an internet tutorial, but clearly I still need google to hold my hand through this area of textile adventuring.
Maybe I should change my name by deed poll to once-rubbish-now-probably-fairly-average-knitter-but-still-mindbogglingly-thick-at-sewing. Catchy! I bet that userid is still available on ravelry too.
more...

field of dreams

It is a lovely day today. The beauty of the sunshine, however, was slightly lost on me earlier this morning. Waking up to such lovely early morning light, Mr. Rubbishknitter had decided to take some photos of the autumn mist, and during the process had dropped my much treasured macro lens out of his pocket and lost it somewhere in a field. They're not cheap, so it could have been an ignominious end for this blog, and my ongoing attempts at taking nice photographs. In horror, I followed him down to said field and scrabbled around in the damp grass for a while. It was mostly a lot longer than the grass in this picture, and quite good at hiding a camera lens. The exquisite morning light shone most elegantly onto our sad faces. Then in a moment of huge relief, I found it. It was a bit soggy and covered in condensation but, miraculously, seems to have cleaned up ok. The lens lives to blog another day!!!1!1

To celebrate, I took some pictures of knitting with an outrrrrrageously shallow depth of field.

So recently, I've mostly been doing a lot of warm but not very exciting stocking stitch squares for a blanket for Macmillan. A few of us from knitting group thought it would be a nice thing to do a charidee project. The website suggests you organise a Coffee Morning to do the sewing up of the different squares, but we thought it might be more fun to have a Beer Afternoon instead.

In the stuff-for-me category, this is the Trellis and Vines Pullover from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Knits. I was possibly a bit rash casting on so quickly after the pattern was released, as sometimes you end up being a bit of a guinea pig, but I couldn't resist. This yarn is Forsell Touch of Silk DK, some ancient long-discontinued line which was mega cheap from Silver Viscount - £4 a cone I think, which is like, nearly as cheap as air, so I bought two. It feels a tiny bit scratchy, but I've heard it softens up after washing. The photos on the website weren't the clearest so I took my chances with the colourway 'Blarney' and bejaysus! It was a pretty tweedy green.

The pattern is great fun so far, nice and quick in a top down raglan stylee. I'm determined to get it done this winter, and break free from my usual pattern of finishing a big pile of warm things in spring when they are no longer necessary.
more...