there has also been knitting

In the form of this hat. From a Finnish pattern - Imitaatio BB:n Tiinan piposta
by Lauran Blogi (helpfully translated into English, and found on Ravelry). I picked up a skein of
Araucania Azapa at the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show at Manchester Central. I really, really didn't need any more yarn, but I decided it was acceptable to buy some if:

a) it's only one skein
b) you cast on for something the same day and
c) you are selflessly making a birthday prezzie for a friend.

So here it is! Nice quick knit and I like the simplicity of this pattern. The yarn is a pleasingly fat chunky single ply wool / alpaca / silk blend, nice and gentle on the fingers. A bit like knitting with roving, or a very long udon noodle. Should be lovely and cosy, and there is enough yarn left from the single skein for a small snood as well. Maybe. Or a very very short scarf.



Last year at the Stitch and Creative Crafts show, I went to buy yarn and came away with loads of sewing stuff as there was lots more of that around. This year, dizzy with the success from the completion of my quilt, I was looking for sewing stuff, but found piles of very tempting yarn instead. There were a couple of sewing stalls, I managed to get a rotary cutter as well. (And managed to cut my finger with it literally seconds after getting it out of the packet - doh!).


I'm also rather pleased with this macro lens which I have sneakily borrowed from my cousin. You can get rather a lot more close-up detail with this thing. Woooah.... look the depth of field on that! it's, like, one stitch...

Happy Valentine's Day everybody. I hope the postman brought you sacksful of cards from admiring suitors.

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rainy day hat

Irritatingly, Elijah the elephant used 1.000001 balls of Rowan Wool Cotton, so I thought I'd use up the remnants on another baby hat. I made this one up as I went along. It struck me when I was making the elephant that this yarn has a soft shininess with very clear stitch definition, so would probably be well suited to cables. This stitch pattern has one-stitch cables in a braided pattern across a 1x1 rib. The idea was to keep some of the stretchiness of the ribbing for a fast-growing small head, and it kind of worked. It was also partially inspired by the British summer - the blue-grey pattern reminded me of the rolling raindrops on the windowpane. And now I've finished it, the sun has come out. So apologies to my compatriots if my knitting this hat brought the rain gods out of hiding.


I did the cabling without a cable needle, because I am a daredevil who likes an element of risk in her knitting. The yarn colour suits a blue-eyed boy, and I was going to try and get a picture of the young gentleman wearing it, but before I could, he had vomited on it approvingly. Fortunately this yarn is machine washable.

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bootie call

So I finally found a use for leftover sock yarn! These only used about 20g of zitron trekking xxl i had left from making these ages ago. Here they are in ravelry - for the unravelled, the pattern is Christine's Stay on Baby Booties. A nice fun quick knit. Living life on the edge as I invariably do, I decided to risk running out of yarn halfway through by just using the leftovers from one 100g ball. There are plenty of options really if you do run out - it would be easy to use stripes or do a contrast sole, or do the laces in a different yarn. Or even if you end up having to frog the whole thing in despair, really there's not that much work being lost there. Just a couple of train-journeys-worth (from Manchester to London, interspersed with gentle snoozings). Interestingly, if you are 8 months pregnant and knitting on the train I've noticed you tend to attract fond, approving glances from fellow travellers - like, phew, there's another stereotype reaffirmed - rather than the usual head-craning intrigued stares from people who can't quite work out what's going on and haven't quite got the nerve to ask.


This maternity leave malarkey is great. So much knitting time! Hopefully the postman should be delivering more yarny treats any second now... *drums fingers impatiently*. Good tinkering time as well, I have spent the morning playing with xubuntu on an old laptop, so I can now blog / ravelry / generally waste time from the sofa rather than having to walk upstairs. (Yes, I am getting that lazy.) So if this post looks weird, it's because I have shunned all software usage conventions for the day. Take that, establishment!

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easter woolliness

I bet nobody else in the UK thought of taking this Easter daffodils-in-snow shot... pretty original hey?!


Well, as you can see, where I was this weekend it was pretty damn parky. Brrrr. Good job then that I had just finished the butterfly
cardigan Seaming Procrastination Project - a nice warm stripy scarf for my fella.


I love wearing scarves, but I've always had a bit of a phobia of making them - I just find the endless linearity a little tiresome. But this was the perfect antidote to all that finger-chafing white 4 ply acrylic in the butterfly cardigan - a big soft colourful lapwarming thing of lovely posh yarn, and I didn't get bored at all making it.

It's made of 4 balls of grey Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk Aran that Santa was kind enough to bring me, striped with the obligatory Noro Silk Garden - 2 balls worth. Just a plain 1x1 rib, 35 stitches, with a slip stitch edge to cunningly hide the yarn being carried up the side. Idea stolen from here. I also discovered the delights of spit-splicing with these yarns - a bit minging, but no ends to weave in - hurrah! Definitely a good thing for a scarf, where there is no wrong side to hide my woeful weaving efforts.





I also made a small pilgrimage on Friday to the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop. What an awesome place... so many nice things to stroke! Piles of soft lustrous curly fleeces! I obviously couldn't leave without a small haul of some lovely wensleydale aran. 2 balls of natural undyed (from a black sheep), which is already a rubbishknitter hatmaking favourite from christmas present time. And some of a nice calming grey-green-blue colour ('fennel').
It was snowing outside, how could I not?! I'm afraid in a rather unknitterly moment, I also succumbed to a pair of woolly lined baby booties. But I defy anyone else not to, having stuck a finger inside on a cold day. If only my feet were about 5cm long! (Although actually, this might make me look a bit silly, and make walking somewhat problematic. If any genies are listening - scratch that wish please - cheers)

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slightly belated christmas present round-up

I made a load of Christmas presents for people last year. It has taken me some time to get off the sofa and post them, because a) it is freezing in the computer room and b) Santa brought me a cornucopia of Nintendo games which have been taking up much of my time. However I do need to stop playing elite beat agents now as every time I blink I see a dizzying succession of decreasing concentric circles, and if I can make these go away before bedtime I feel it would be a bonus.

So here is a quick parade of the stuff I made in December 2K7:

Snowflake hat 1

Made out of King Cole Merino blend DK, with some contrasting scraps of white from the bottom of the cupboard. I just did a plain beanie with a stranded snowflake pattern.

Snowflake hat 2

Yes, I am snowflake obsessed. This is another plain beanie that I embroidered a small snowflake motif onto. I got a bit carried away and put beads on the embroidered bit at strategic points. First time I've really attempted this and I did a pretty rubbish job. It probably took me as long to embroider the motif as it did to make the whole hat. Made out of lovely undyed Wensleydale longwool (from a black sheep, obv). The wool was left over from making:

Boring ribbed hat

For my brother so I toned down the motif-related tomfoolery and went for a more sober item of headgear. It's lovely and soft and warm though. This one is from a pattern - cashmere ribbed hat (or, not cashmere if you're a cheapskate like me).
And finally...

Crocodile mitts

I was quite pleased with these. I made them up completely - started them a while ago. Redid the fingertip bit from the original post to give them a more rounded end for a less sharp-fingered wearer. They are lovely and warm, made of Twilley's Freedom Spirit 100% wool in , er, crocodile colour. I did write down the details after the first mitt, to make the second one the same, so if anyone has a burning desire to make their own crocodiles I could probably attempt to put up some kind of pattern.


Snowflake close up..


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glovely

I finished these endpaper mitts about 3 weeks ago, but it's incredibly difficult to take a picture of your own hands wearing gloves. So after a couple of fruitless afternoons trying to train the dog to be a photographer, I got someone else to take a photo. And here it is! These mitts are made of 4 ply cotton, which sounds like some kind of insanity. And they aren't particularly warm. But for the purposes of cycling around, they are pretty good - they stop my fingers freezing onto the brakes in the morning, and they cushion my hands from the continual bouncing around over loose stones/potholes/squirrels. So I kind of like them. The yarn was on spesh (jaeger discontinued, again) so the pair cost less than three quid. I really enjoyed making them - stranded knitting is great fun, and I need a lot of practise to get to the stage where the work done by each hand looks vaguely even. Rather than randomly creating hotspots of slackness, where i came back from the pub and attacked the knitting with drunken bravado.



There's also one stitch which is in the wrong colour, that I left in because I couldn't be bothered to rip back. You can see it in this photo. One pint of beer* will be awarded to the person who can tell me where it is. I actually thought it would annoy me more than it does in the completed object. A positive feature of these mitts is that they are symmetrical, so you can wear them upside down and never see the stitchy maverick.

*
Terms and Conditions
Prize to be redeemed at any drinking establishment in Manchester, England.
Spot it in under 5 seconds, and I might consider throwing a packet of salt and vinegar crisps into the bargain.

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balticness

There's a bitter chill creeping into the early mornings these days. As I'm cycling into work, I am rather exposed to the elements and can notice this as my fingers one by one cease functioning. Usually starting at the outside with the little finger and working inwards towards the thumb. But I kind of still need to use them, principally to make v signs at motorists who cut me up, so I felt a solution of sorts might be these endpaper mitts. I had two balls of jaeger siena in the cupboard which i'd got for about a quid each in the john lewis sale bin. It's 100% cotton and may or may not actually confer any warmth at all, but I liked the colours and couldn't think of anything better to do with this yarn. I may yet need to make another more heavy duty pair of wool-based gloves for the really bitter mornings. Like these maybe. Still, these are quite comfy and stretchy enough to go on easily. One particularly nice thing about this pattern is that you can keep trying the mitt on as it grows without needing to take it off the needles.

After an extremely disorganised week last week, I also failed to either a) find a smaller size of needles for the ribbing or b) learn how to do italian tubular cast on. So I just did the usual long tail cast on - sorry Eunny. I just had time to grab my usual 2.5mm needles, yarn and shadily print out the pattern on the work printer before leaving for a trip to Ireland last weekend. Approximately 8 hours on the ferry and in the car gave me plenty of time to get started, for the parts when i wasn't driving, feeling seasick or playing dance dance revolution in the ferry games room (in fact it occurs to me that possibly these last two activities could be related).

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fake isle recharted

I was recently asked to share the chart i made up for this hat. So here it is! It's a 12-stitch repeating pattern around the hat. When i reached the top of this chart I switched to fake isle chart 2 for the crown.

I cast on 120 stitches, so did this pattern 10 times around, but be warned - i have a freakily big head - under no circumstances attempt this hat without measuring your own and swatching first! You could easily miss out a row or two if the chart is too big. I think I actually did 5 rows of k2,p2 ribbing, then 2 knit rows one in each colour before i started the snowflake bit, so you could add/remove rows pretty easily here. The hat is quite big even on me, and very warm and snug because of the stranding and 100% woolliness of the Kureyon.

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starlet

I made this hat a while ago too. I think around February / March time, after I'd finished Zelda and emerged blinking from the lounge into daylight for the first time in a while. The yarn had that sort of spring sunset feel about it which I liked. It's from Natural Dye Studio on ebay - can you believe all those nice bright colours are sourced from plant extracts?!? It's just trinity stitch, knitted in the round, with a bit of ribbing at the bottom. I stole the idea off craftster. The yarn is DK weight so my nobbles are a bit smaller. It kind of looks like those old skool swimming caps, like on the cover of Leisure by Blur.
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oh yeah

I made this hat too. Loosely based on Fake Isle. Well I copied the idea of the Kureyon combined with a plain colour, and the chart for the crown of the head, but wasn't too keen on the main pattern so invented my own. It was supposed to be snowflakes. Then there is a small section of oops.. i appear to have some space to fill between this pattern and the top one.. i'm going to have to wing something. And I'm afraid i added a pom-pom too.


Here it is keeping my ears warm. It is reeeeally snug actually because the stranding creates a double layer, and the Kureyon is 100% woolly warmness. The cream coloured wool is some kind of alpaca based thing so nice and soft.

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january hibernation

The lack of activity on my blog in recent weeks can be attributed to two principal factors.

• Santa brought me a Nintendo Wii. I'm afraid this has been rather detrimental to my knitting productivity.


• Over the festive period, I drunkenly dropped my camera from a great height, rendering it inoperable.

But I had a request from my niece to make her a sock for her new mobile phone. So I did. It's from leftover Opal sock wool. And I caved in and bought a new camera in the sales. Check out that macro mode!!1!!!1one

Pretty mindless to make. I knitted it in the round, on 2.5 mm needles, in k2p2 rib. Used a 3 needle cast off at the end, then turned it inside out, so it wasn't flattened.

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invisible stripe scarf

Just finished my version of the invisible stripe scarf. Made out of nice Peruvian laceweight alpaca, on 4mm needles. I made it a bit wider too, 50 stitches. I loved making it to start with - really fun to knit, although I have a tendency to get bored with scarves pretty quickly - just a bit too.. er... linear or something - I'm quite glad it's finished now, and i can get back to my socks! It's for a Christmas present for someone so shhh....

An action shot of it all bunched up and snuggly.

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warm things for your Andes

So we're going on honeymoon next week and doing the Inca Trail. I felt that this auspicious occasion merited some new knitwear. I also stumbled on a load of Rowan Plaid in the bargain bin at John Lewis. I'd already made a hat out of this wool last winter, using this pattern. So i winged a pair of mittens and a scarf to match - pinching the cable pattern from the hat. After a couple of cable repeats on the scarf I realised how looong it was going to take though so i lazily lapsed into a 9x1 rib for most of the length, putting cables at the end bits only! Much quicker. The wool used is a chunkyish merino / alpaca blend so they are nice and toasty warm to wear. So I'm all ready for deepest darkest Peru! Now where did I put my marmalade sandwiches?

Shambolic attempt at pattern follows:

Mittens

Using 4x5mm dpns

• Cast on 28st. Work 12 rows in 1x1 rib.


• K1 row


• Inc row: M1 after every third st -> 37 st


• Switch to working in cable pattern


• next row: k1 on 1st needle, pm, inc 1, pm, k -> end


• next 2 rows: k


• next row: k1, sl m, m1, k1, m1, sl m, k -> end


• next 2 rows: k

Continue increasing every 3rd row until thumb section between markers is about 1 stitch shy of thumb circumference - for me this was 11 sts - put thumb section on stitch holder. K around hand, casting on 3 stitches (cable cast on) to bridge across thumb section on holder. Continue knitting in the round in the cable pattern until mitten reaches end of fingers. Then wing some sort of decreasing. I got down to 14 stitches then sewed up with Kitchener stitch. You then just need to finish off the thumb. Knit a plain stocking stitch tube until it is long enough, decrease a bit, break wool and pull through remaining stitches. Knot and weave in ends, or leave them there to fiddle with.

NB. For second mitten, put thumb on other side :D

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