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.

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the owls are not what they seem

Well I've finally got to the end of the baby gift knitting, for now! I couldn't resist this little pattern. So cute, and yet so much less effort than the adult version. It's Owlet, by Kate Davies. I knitted it in exactly the recommended yarn, Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran, in exactly the same colour as she used. This may have displayed something of a poverty of imagination on my part, but the mother of the child likes both mustardy yellow and owls, so when I stumbled across this pattern I knew it was spot on. The yarn isn't cheap but it is very lovely - it's really springy soft superwash merino, and I only needed three balls for the 6-9 month size. It was a super quick knit too. I've never done a bottom up raglan before and it was a little fiddly joining the sleeves in but worked pretty well and there was almost no sewing up at the end.


The only departure from the prescribed pattern was the owl eyes. I had intended to use buttons as the pattern suggested, and got some of the smallest ones I could find. But they still looked a bit big for their faces, and not in a cutesy manga type way. The impression they gave was more like, I'm a top predator with super bionic night vision and I'm going to swoop down and break your arm. This wasn't quite the right sort of ambience for an item of baby clothing. So I rummaged through my drawer of craft related tat and found these plain wooden beads, which had a much less sinister air. It would probably have been easier if I'd thought about this during the actual knitting bit rather than when I'd cast off, then I could have had the option of knitting the beads in somehow. As it was I strung them all onto a piece of thin but super strong quilting cotton and sewed it invisibly round the circumference of the jumper afterwards, tying it in about 150 knots so the eyes don't all simultaneously fall off if the baby sneezes.

Not possible to get modelled photos yet unfortunately, so I don't know how the fit is. But the jumper does look like it would accommodate a fat baby belly quite nicely. It was great fun to make - I may even have to do another one for my wee man.

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Trotting to Avalon

Hooray for rain. Sun, begone! Because the recent chilly murky windy weather makes it ok to wear my new hoodie. All the time. Indoors. With the hood up. I seriously may never take this off.


This is definitely my favourite thing that I've made so far for comfort value. The yarn, Sublime Extra Fine Merino, feels really, really nice next to the skin - light and soft like cotton, but warm like wool. When I die I want to fall into a big pile of this yarn, maybe with some puppies mixed in.

The pattern is Riding to Avalon, although for me it was accomplished at something of a trotting pace. I set off on the journey last autumn and dismounted several times along the way. On some occasions the horse went backwards and it only really managed to break into a gentle canter in the last couple of weeks. This final burst of speed only happened really because it was getting quite embarrassing pulling out the same jumper again and again at knitting group - the hood had only grown by about an inch during the time it took a friend to make an entire wrap cardigan out of 4 ply. So essentially the hood is knitted from Shame and sewn up with Rubbishness. And it shows! The hood is a bit wonky. Unfortunately I think this happened at the point where I picked up stitches around the neckband - I must have picked up more on one side than the other, because the centre line is a little off-kilter. So to fix it I would need to unravel a good couple of months worth of telly knitting, and now Mad Men has finished I'm not sure I have the inclination to redo it. So for now, it will remain wonky. It doesn't bother me that much - if I have to have the hood up, I'm probably out in extreme weather conditions, in which case I am not too worried about my appearance. Or doing a drive-by, and I wouldn't be too worried about it then either.

Cock-eyed hood aside, the most remarkable thing about the making of this jumper for me has been the incredible series of strokes of luck when making it. It's almost impossible to even believe the first thing. I accidentally knitted the sleeve cap the wrong way round on the first sleeve, making the buttons on the outside cuff instead of on the inside as the pattern dictated. This is not a particularly obvious mistake, and happened because I mixed up the start-of-row and middle-of-row stitch markers. I looked at it and thought about frogging but then, on reflection, decided that I actually preferred the buttons there. Later when I looked at the pattern page on Ravelry, I noticed with horror that there was an errata. (Erratum?!). But in a stroke of unbelievably good fortune, the errata suggests doing exactly what I had accidentally done. Unfreakingbelievable! And I hadn't seen the errata before so I couldn't have subliminally absorbed and processed this information. I think the gods of knitting were smiling upon me.

As if that wasn't enough, another mindbogglingly fortuitous event occurred. When I got to the hood, I was on my last ball of wool, and starting to panic. There clearly wasn't enough left to finish the thing, and I had bought a load on spesh that was probably cheap because it was discontinued or something. I was too scared to even think about what I was going to do. I mentioned the problem to, like, one person - my friend Britt, who said, Oh I happen to have a couple of spare balls of that exact yarn in that exact shade that I don't need for anything and you are welcome to have. I mean, really... how awesome is that?!? I couldn't actually bring myself to believe it was true until I had seen the evidence with my own eyes... and it was *exactly* the amount I needed to finish the jumper. Britt, you are a superstar... thankyou very very much!

The only thing that I modified (intentionally!) about the jumper was the button loops. The pattern suggested crocheting 16 button loops separately and then attaching them. The idea of this was a bit hair-raising, so I was relieved to discover this method for crocheted button loops (about halfway down the page). I basically slipstitched along the edge, at intervals doing a short chain, slipstitching it down and double crocheting back along. I really like this finish: as well as being much easier to do, it neatens off the slightly raggedy edge and gives a bit of extra sturdiness. My loops are a little twisty as I think I may have been crocheting into the wrong bit of the chain. Yes, I really am that much of a crochet numpty. But I did them all wrong in the same way so at least it's consistent! I quite like the overall effect.

Also probably worth mentioning for anyone else who attempts this is that there was a bit of a roll at the bottom of the jumper despite the few rows of garter stitch - I don't think there were quite enough there to weight down the natural curl of the stocking stitch section. Following Katie's wise advice I gave it a stern blocking and it obediently lay down. I dunno though, if I end up having to do this every time I wash it, it may end up being quicker to add a crochet edging. I am crochet edging queen now! I'm going to edge everything in the world with crochet! Really.

The fit is a little baggy. I don't know whether this is because of my inability to swatch properly, or because I measured myself for this quite soon after giving birth, or more probably a little bit of both. I don't mind though, I think with a casual jumper of this nature you need a bit of positive ease. Well, a lot in my case. *Puts trayful of pies in oven gleefully*.

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four ply foolishness

Q: What do you do when you already have a jumper and a sock on the go, a quilt to finish, lots of Christmas shopping to do, a baby who has recently decided sleep is for the weak, and you've internally sworn not to do a) any Christmas knitting and b) any more baby jumpers?

A: Clearly, you need to start a suitably complex Christmas-themed baby jumper in incredibly fine gauge yarn. Because you saw it and it was cute. And because you've got your sewing machine back from the repair shop and want to have a go at steeking.

Pattern is Baby Norgi from Knitty. Yarn is Dalegarn Baby Ull. It is quite lovely, 100% merino but couldn't be more different from the Sublime 100% merino I am using to make my brown hoodie. It is much more sticky and warm feeling - the other is smooth and cottonlike. The stickiness comes as something of a relief, as I will be cheerfully cutting up this jumper later... *gulp*. It purports to also be machine washable, which I find difficult to believe... not sure I would have the nerve to do it, but we'll see after Rubbishknitterjunior has regurgitated his Christmas dinner down the front. Because it will be finished for Christmas - otherwise it will be completely useless - it won't fit him next year. No pressure then! Even though I'm using 2mm needles for this, which feels a bit like doing keyhole surgery. Lots of fun though I have to say. Haven't done any colourwork for ages, so I had to try and remember how, but it is very satisfying, and the yarn is very forgiving of my sausage-fingered blunderings.
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