cardie photos

OK, so finally the cardigan is dry.. yippee! And the rain held off for long enough for us to squeeze in a quick dog-walk between thunderstorms. One plus point of the recent biblically atrocious weather in this country is that it has now become baltic enough for the new cardie to be worn. So here is some evidence of it in action... thanks to Toast for his clever photography, and the rain gods for shutting up for 5 minutes.

As I can't seem to follow any kind of instruction without a minor act of futile rebellion, I should point out that I made a couple of modifications to the pattern, as follows:

• Couldn't decide whether to make 34 or 36 inch. So it started out as a 36 round the yoke, as i have rather big beefy shoulders. I then went down to the 34 inch size after the under-arm split, and vacillated aimlessly between both measurements for the rest of the pattern.


• Used the same 4mm needle throughout, rather than switching to a 3.5mm needle for the button band, because, er.. i didn't have one, and was too lazy to go and buy one.


• Widened the button band a bit, so i can continue to eat pies with reckless abandon, and breathe at the same time without fear of propelling a button across the room at high speed.


• The cuffs. I didn't like the original cuff design, which was so flouncy as to make Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen's shirts look tastefully understated. So after row 65 of the sleeve cable chart, I switched to the chart for the body and did rows 32 to 36. I finished the sleeve by repeating the section at the top of the sleeve cable chart: purl 1 row, knit 2 rows, purl 1 row, ..., knit 1 row, purl 1 row. Then I cast off. This gives a much gentler and less ostentatious flare that you are less likely to accidentally dip in your curry.

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blocking adventures

So I finally finished the elizabeth bennet cardigan - hooraaaay! And as it was a just a tiny bit smaller than I would have ideally liked - I thought I'd try my hand at this blocking malarkey. And the results? I'll be jiggered if it hasn't magically transformed itself to the exact right size! It's now a whole 10 cm longer!!1!1 How does that happen? I think magic knitting pixies have sneaked in while i was out of the room and glued in a bit more fabric. It's even 5 cm wider around the previously slightly taut cabled middle section, which is excellent news!! *opens beer, phones curry house*
Marvel at the pin-based wizardry! I'll put up some pictures of it in action once it has dried out nicely. I am quite excited... have been coming in at 5 minute intervals all day and patting it impatiently.
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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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calorimetry

So i've recently signed up to ravelry* and i'm taking the opportunity to catalogue my big pile of knitted tat. This is a Calorimetry i made on a boring train journey down to London last month. I forget what the yarn was now, but if my brain returns i'll make a note of it. It does kind of look like someone threw up on my head, but it a nice, earwarming sort of way. Even I had to make it a bit smaller - casting on 104 stitches instead of 120 - and i have a big freaky head (like an orange on a cocktail stick**) so I would definitely recommend getting out the measuring tape and swatching for this one. The button I think came off a dressing gown I had when I was about five. It upsets my biological sensibilities a little, as I don't believe any ladybird species currently known to science has six spots.


* don't do this if you want to have a tidy house or maintain friends and a social life - it is Knitters' Crack - teh_most_awesome knitting site ever!!1!!!1!one

** apologies if you haven't seen So I Married an Axe Murderer
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cardigan craziness

Yeah, i'm still alive, just a bit lazy. I've been mostly making this recently. It's the Elizabeth Bennet cardigan from Fitted Knits. Not really a fan of Pride and Prejudice I have to say - we did the book in school and it was alright but I generally prefer films with a lower bonnet count. However i do like this cardie very much.

A month or so ago, just after getting this book (Fitted
knits, not Pride and Prejudice) I came back from the pub and with drunken bravado ordered a load of Cascade cloud 9 from some American site where it was on spesh. The exchange rate made this sound like a not unridiculous purchase, however in the cold light of day a couple of weeks later I discovered that an extra 15 ding had been slapped on by customs and excise, and i had to settle up with the post office before they'd hand over the goods. Doh! It's soo soft and warm and snuggly though. And I love the cabley bits. I've made a couple of modifications - mostly due to some indecision on which size to make, it started off as a 36 then i decided it was too big, so it kind of morphed into a 34 after the raglan neck, then decided it was too tight, now adding a couple of extra rows into the button band :) i know, it would have been much more straightforward if i'd stuck to the pattern. But where's the fun in that?!
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cthulhu fhtagn!!

A friend of mine likes Cthulhu so I thought I'd make this for his kid. I thought it would be more fun to make it up myself so resisted the temptation to google image excessively and only really looked at this picture. Not the easiest of starting points for woolly creativity. I sort of made it up as i went along. May have been partially inspired by The Host which i was watching while i did the head (ace film!!). I hope it doesn't give the kid nightmares.



The yarn i used had been nicked out of my mums haberdashery cupboard about 15 years ago so I couldn't tell you what is was - some sort of dodgy cheapo DK boucle acrylic, which was a bit of a nightmare to work with - you can't really see what you're doing and I used finger-wreckingly small 3mm needles to get a tight knit, so hopefully the stuffing will be resistant to battering by small children.

From the side you can see the wings and slightly silly pointy head. I used my new-found rubbish crochet skills to do a knobbly edge round the bottom part of the wings, so it looks a bit like the wings you used to draw on dragons when you were a kid - doesn't show up particularly clearly in this yarn though.

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illusion knitting is fun

Just your common-or-garden stripey sock, nothing to see here, move along now, *whistles*.

But wait! What is this devilry?

One sock done now... will post proper photies when finished.
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hook line and sinker

I've often vaguely thought that one of the few half decent looking ways to use up scrap yarn is to make one of those big multicoloured crocheted blankets. Made out of what the internet has recently informed me are called Granny Squares. I have loads of scrap yarn, so I'm halfway there! Only problem is i can't actually crochet. But today I was quite bored and have mild knitting RSI, so i sat down with the Readers Digest Guide to Needlework (huge hardback book written in the seventies or eighties, procured from a second hand bookshop for about 2 quid) and had a stab at learning crochet. This was more tricky than i thought. The book assumes a certain basic level of needlework proficiency that women probably all had in the more self sufficient times the book was written, but I unfortunately have ten sausages for fingers and a head full of broken biscuits. Amazingly the result turned out vaguely identifiable with the picture, despite a giddy variation in stitch size and tension and a somewhat laissez-faire attitude towards dealing with ends that led to a couple of near-catastrophic unravelling incidents. And I have calculated that at my present crocheting speed, if I give up work, sleep and food it will take me approximately seven lifetimes to create a blanket big enough to cover one knee.
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like a socks machine

Fortunately I have just finished Zelda so can spend more time with my knitting now that I know the future of Hyrule is looking rosy. So I finally finished pomatomus, in trekking xxl, that i started last summer. Phewph! About time really.
Am pretty pleased with these socks but I think to be honest these are the last pair I'm going to make out of self-striping / self-patterning yarn. Individually they are pretty but together they don't look very similar - I think my sense of mathematical orderliness would be appeased more if they looked like they matched.

To be fair it did say on the ball band to knit with 2 strands from 2 balls at the same time, which would do a good job of jumbling up all the colours i reckon. But I only bothered to read this when I got to the heel on the second sock, by which time it was rather too late. Perhaps my footwear would have benefitted from slightly more forethought and less diving straight in.

Mmm warm toes.

Need to think of something else good to do now. Cos I only have one thing on the go now - these socks. I know, more socks, not very imaginative, but I'm doing a lot of train travelling at the moment for work so they are handy to carry round...

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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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christmas presentfest complete

Unless in a moment of eleventh hour madness I decide it would be a great idea to start something else. I doubt it though - am looking forward to a nice few days of trivial pursuit based arguments and drinking gin in my pyjamas. At least Rupert will be nice and warm in his stylish new scarf though.

I think i possibly did the checks in the worst possible way - the yellow bits were sllllightly too wide to carry the black wool up at the side so i ended up with about 9999 black dangling ends to weave in. I thought of lots of easier ways once i'd already started and couldn't be bothered unravelling - i think if i did it again i'd do a stocking stitch tube so any ends could hang happily inside.

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mario madness

It's another DS sock - for my nephew for Christmas. Hark at the lovely Mario in all his marvellous 8 bit Super Nintendo glory.

Duplicate stitched on after doing a basic stocking stitch tube, whilst drooling in front of 'the life of birds' on sunday, finishing with a 3 needle bind off. I copied off this image:

If only the pixellated heroes of today were so easily reproduced in knitwear. I would love to immortalise the protagonists of 'guitar hero 2' on the playstation in wool, but i fear Lars Umlaut is too high-resolution for my skills. Sigh.


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christmas presentfest

I've been busy as a bee making some rubbish gifts for people for chrimbo. Including biiiiig socks for my fella, and a small rupert the bear. He'll look more like him when i've finished the obligatory yellow checky scarf, honest.


Sock pattern is universal toe up sock from knitty. He likes dark boring plain socks so i made them ribbed to try and prevent myself falling asleep knitting them and accidentally poking my eye out with the needles in a freak accident. Rupert is out of the Debbie Bliss Toy Knits book. The bear looks easy cos it's so small but it was knitted in the flat and there was soooooo much fiddly sewing i got a bit scunnered by the end. He's the wee bear on the front cover without the wellies on. The little jumper is from merino wool and is so snuggly warm i am quite jealous. The middle stripy sock is one for me that i started making several millennia ago but am awaiting the post-festive season knitting lull to be able to make a friend for it.

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Mr. McGregg

It's for my friend's as-yet-unborn baby, so made out of a robust acrylic yarn out of this pattern. I have a sneaking suspicion i may have inadvertantly interchanged limbs from the arms and legs piles whilst entranced by an episode of the day of the triffids on telly last night, so it is a little wonky.

*sings in Dr Nick Riviera voice* Well, if it isn't my old friend, Mr McGregg: With a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg.



Here he is, standing up and ready to take over the world.

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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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Donkey Kong DS sock

Due to popular demand after the success of the shroom, I made another DS sock for my fella. This one has Donkey Kong's head cross-stitched on. I've never attempted embroidery before so don't laugh. But it looks a bit more blocky and pixel-like than the intarsia attempt, which i feel is more fitting with the general theme. And it was probably a little bit easier. I think. Less tangly-thready anyway, cos you can just do one colour at a time for the monkey bit.



















This is the image i used for the embroidery. You could only really fit a 16 pixel wide image onto my DS-sized piece of knitting otherwise i might have gone crazy and put the whole monkey on, limbs and all. I used scrap yarn for the whole thing. The gauge of the main yarn used is somewhere between double knitting and aran weight.

How to make one, knitfaced style

• cast on 40 stitches of background colour wool, using 4mm dpns


• join and knit stocking stitch tube, whilst drooling in front of telly


• when DS fits snugly in tube, do 3 needle bind off to seal one end


• find even more scrappy bits of wool in appropriate colours


• cross stitch piccie on, using one cross stitch across each knit stitch


• tie off ends of embroidery wool in half-arsed knots on the other side

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socks on the beach

Off to South America tomorrow for 3 weeks! This is what i'm taking to occupy myself when not wandering round Inca ruins, or doing romantic stuff and that (look, he packed his nintendo DS before I packed my knitting, OK?!) I started a pair of Pomatomus socks in Trekking XXL, shade 100 - mmmm pretty colours - i am very much enjoying making these so far.







A close up of the lace pattern on the sock, which was found sunbathing in my back yard yesterday.


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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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