wonderwool

OK, i am back now from officially teh_best weekend evah!!11! It's hard to summarise the total awesomeness of the Wonderwool Wales vibe in concise blog format, but I will attempt to do this. With the aid of some fairly ropey photos from my mobile phone. Look! Slightly pixellated daffodils!



Some very handsome sheep, with pretty awesome indie hair

The world's fluffiest angora rabbits

Beautiful antique looms, being actually really used to make beautiful real cloth. Clackety clack... clackety clack...

Bobbins, real ones!

An actual Bobbins magazine mini-stall! I hadn't been organised enough to manage to book a slot beforehand but the lovely organisers let us have a little table next to the bag creche. It's being looked after in this photo by my lovely friends Rob and Amy. That's my knitting bag and flask of tea on the right of the picture. (Surely the least hard day's work out of any day that's ever been loosely categorised as 'work'.)

SOOO much pretty yarn... I slowly squidged my way round the entire perimeter of the exhibition with an inane grin on my face.

But, impossible to show in these pictures and yet utterly central to the whole experience was the unbelievably friendly lovely atmosphere. Everyone you saw had a smile on their faces, and would chat with anyone about anything - knitting, yarn, the keeping of livestock, spinning, the unexpectedly lovely weather, the food. There were people just sitting, knitting and chatting, all over the place. Everyone you saw was draped in beautiful handknitted, hand-dyed, unique and lovely garments, and would love nothing more than to stop and discuss their construction at length with strangers. This truly was the best possible way to spend a Sunday, and I bloody loved it. I can't wait till next year! In the meantime, anyone for Woolfest?!

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adventures in Walesy-land

Soo, tomorrow I am off to Wonderwool Wales! I rarely go on adventures of such magnitude, and am rather excited, so I felt the occasion demanded a new handmade t-shirt. Except I haven't had a lot of spare time lately, so I downgraded its demands to a new shopmade t-shirt with handmade embellishments. It still took rather a long time though, as I have discovered I am utterly hopeless at sewing cotton jersey. My sewing machine manual suggested a ballpoint needle (yes, I really am that much of a nerd that I read mine). I can see why they suggested this, as sewing it with a normal needle is kind of like walking through a swamp in stilettos. (I should point out I have never actually tried this, I am just guessing, I don't own any footwear of this nature). The ballpoint needle does at least get you from A to B, but mine just left a load of massive holes in the fabric along the way. So any sort of backtracking had catastrophic consequences. My attempts at applique look sort of ok if you squint, but peer too closely and you will see the Swiss cheese like nature of the underlying fabric.

There is a 'back print' too, but I can't show you that because I haven't finished it yet - it will quite possibly be finished by hand in the car on the way down. I'm getting a lift down from a lovely local lady, who knows the roads, so it will be a race against time to get it done on the motorway before we hit the windy lanes of Wales at high speed and I add a special vomit-splatter effect to the fabric. At least I should be fairly recognisable, so please do come up and say hello if you're going too. It's going to be my first night spent away from my small child since his conception, so I will probably get a bit carried away and spend it halfway up Mount Snowdon annihilated on lovely Welsh beer and drooling with a pile of roving for a pillow.

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hmmm

Random jumble random jumble random jumble MASSSSIVE POOLS OF COLOUR random jumble random jumble. Is what my proto-cardigan would say if it could talk.

I am beginning to change my mind here... after a bit of Pooling Maths and investigative onward knitting, I feel action has to be taken with the cardigan weirdness. Possibly, with such a confined area of bad yarn behaviour, I could get away with ripping it back to the start of the pooling and replacing that particular bit with a stripe or two of another yarn... am pondering.... I feel I have to act swiftly before I get distracted by another new project and meander off down a woolly avenue of novelty. If I can find a similar solid colour yarn in a suitably matching hue, it might do the trick.



There have been other projects in the meantime, some small gifty things, like these cute baby socks in Green Eyed Monsters yarn. They are really very small, 32 stitches around, so they're exactly half the size of adult socks, to fit a 6-8 month old baby. Sort of made up, based on my notes from these ones last year. So the stripes in the yarn came out two rows wide rather than one. It all worked out quite lovelyly in the end. Sometimes, hand-dyed yarn can be your friend!

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pool party

So I've made a bit of progress with my unstripy Tempest now - I'm halfway up the back, and it is going quite quickly. It's 4ply weight yarn but on 4mm needles, so quite a flimsy lightweight thing - ideal for the british summer (when worn over 17 underjumpers).

But when I got to the top of the waist shaping, something rather odd happened... pooling! OH NOES!!1 I was totally caught off guard here. For some reason, the possibility of pooling just hadn't occurred to me at all, even though I've encountered it before as a phenomenon, and this yarn is hand-dyed. I really can be quite remarkably thick sometimes. I think because the colours are quite similar-ish and quite short repeats, the pooling warning neurone in my brain just failed to fire.

And then an even weirder thing happened... I decided I didn't actually mind. I mean, everyone knows pooling is the enemy. And I generally agree, especially when combined with clown-barf-esque swirly garishness. But here, with the lovely warm hues of Woolmisery in my hands? I actually quite like the little almost-stripes of colour. What's happened to me? Either I've lost all my taste and good sense or I am high on Strickheroin. Or possibly both.

I am, however, slightly apprehensive about what the front parts / sleeves will turn out like. Am considering counting the stitches across in the pooled area, dividing by the number of stripes, and looking for other parts of the pattern where the stitch count is an exact multiple of the Pooling Factor. Is that a bit nerdy?

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nightswatchman

Ok, so the picture on the left here wasn't intended to be a swatch, it was supposed to be the Ten Stitch Blanket, but I abandoned it at this point. The yarn is a lovely present some friends brought me back from South America, some sort of mysterious brandless hand-dyed chunky weight fibre that feels like pure wool and screams that it wants to be a blanket, but the pattern just wasn't working for me. It's weird, I mean even though it's a bit old skool I really like garter stitch for its cheery bouncy warmth, which is what you want in a blanket really. I like the simplicity of this pattern for mindless tv knitting. It knits up super quickly, but the spiralling construction is interesting enough to stop boredom setting in. I even liked the way that the colours of this hand-dyed yarn lined up so nicely in neat little stripes. So I zoomed happily along for a bit. Then something bad happened. When stopping to admire my progress, I would look at it, and get an overwhelming feeling of My First Knitting Project. I think the combination of garter stitch, simple pattern and chunky yarn just wasn't right. I could see dropped stitches in it, even though there weren't any - my brain just filled them in because it thought they ought to be there. Hmm, not a good sign.


So I started again. I spent some time looking at patterns but just couldn't find anything else that grabbed me. Blankets are so infinitely wingable though, and in the end I copied the stitch pattern from My So Called Scarf. I'm much happier with the result - the criss cross pattern breaks up the pooling of the hand dyed yarn, and the fabric is super dense and warm and blanketty. It's slightly slower progress than the garter stitch effort but it's still such an easy pattern that you can pick it up and do a row whilst chatting before you've even properly noticed what your hands are doing.

The red swatch lies at the other end of the brand notoriety spectrum. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I woke up the morning after the Bobbins launch party with fewer magazines in the front room, a bit of a headache and some Wollmeise. I've managed to resist the Woolmisery / StrickHeroin / Fairy Farts hysteria until now, but frankly you can't help but be intrigued by a yarn with so many street names. I didn't know whether to knit with it or roll it up and smoke it. But I'm rather liking this colourway - 'Gazpacho'. It's a bit of a photograph fail, the bright streaks are much more vivid red IRL, not the tomatoey colour they appear here. I have 2 skeins which I am hoping will be enough for Tempest in a solid colour. It's knitted on big needles so is quite summery and drapy and hopefully could be accomplished in less than seven lifetimes.
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laxton's superbs

As a child I was slightly overexposed to Pacman and underexposed to sunlight and fresh air and stuff, so I've always been entranced by glowing brightly coloured fruit. Long term blog readers may have already suspected this. The first thing I planted in the garden when we moved house a couple of years ago was an apple tree, followed closely by a pear tree, a cherry tree and a plum tree. Was strangely tempted to leave a trail of power pills between them all. Anyway, the apple tree was a Laxton's Superb, and I was very taken by the vivid colours of the fruit, with its bright swirls of green and pink. So when I saw the Red Delicious socks in last summer's Knotions I immediately queued them, then pondered about how I could personalise them a bit to pay tribute to my little tree. Tricky. Fortunately Kate from Green Eyed Monsters kindly indulged me in my appley fantasy with some custom dyed sock yarn. It's a 3-yarn stranded sock - the other plain white and dark green yarns were leftovers, Regia I think, from the bottom of the sock yarn drawer.


I loved knitting these, stranded colourwork is so satisfyingly intricate, and the variegated yarn gave it that little element of randomness to make each repeat of the apple pattern feel unique. The soles are particularly pleasing with their dense stripes, and with such a tiny colourwork unit they look relatively neat. My tension for the rest of the socks is all over the shop, even after blocking, because these socks have been my carry-around-everywhere project. I can see from here the bit I knitted in the Kings Arms, which is much more, er, 'relaxed' than the rest of the sock. I have been rather busy of late so have been trying to make the most of what knitting time I get. There are tiny bits that were knitted on buses and trains and platforms and waiting rooms and basically anywhere I got a spare minute, and to be honest it doesn't annoy me that it all looks different because I enjoyed the whole thing so much it pleases me to remember the creation of all its component parts. The dodgiest looking bit in my view is the toe, which is considerably baggier than the rest of the sock. It might just be me, but going back to one colour after the stranded section made the fabric much looser. So for other knitters, it might be an idea to go down a needle size for the toe, as the author suggests for the cuff. I'm not too bothered though as I'm a compulsive toe-wiggler, and this facilitates my irritating habit. And even though the socks are slightly silly it's not possible to put them on in the morning without grinning foolishly.
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fairy yarnmothers

Ok, so I'm a little behind on documenting my yarny adventures, so here's a slightly compressed and rather picture-heavy catchup post. About a month ago, I was invited to a destash party with the lovely Kate from Green Eyed Monsters and Kath from Six Swans. As they are both uberawesome yarn producers, this is the kind of event you would literally drop everything and pelt towards immediately. So I did! Leaving Mr. Rubbishknitter to sweep up the shards of crockery.


And here is the extremely lovely handspun that I managed to swap for some strawberry laces. The multicoloured skein is from Green eyed monsters, the white is from Six swans, and the brown is from an alpaca called Jemima at Black Mountain Alpacas. Good old Jemima. All so very pretty and squishy, and I had the cunning idea of combining all the mini-skeins together into a hat. Just a basic beanie, cast on 108 stitches in the round on 3mm needles, with a stripe pattern reflecting the relative amounts that I had of each colour (I had to double-strand the white, it was a bit thinner than the other two). It's a lot lighter in weight than most of my winter hats, and is probably what the posh knitting mags would call 'trans-seasonal' and I would call, er, not dead thick. Still very comfortable and pleasantly earwarming though, I love it and have worn it a lot. Thanks ladies! Also, I kind of hoped that casting on for a hat in March would speed up the arrival of Spring, a bit like sparking up a cigarette when you are waiting for a train. And it seems to have worked! Almost, if you squint out of the window and pretend it isn't chucking it down today.


In other news, imagine, if you will, how much opening this unexpected parcel would make you grin like an idiot. The answer, if you are in any doubt, is rather a lot! If the impossibly cheerful bright pillar box red colour isn't enough after the sensory deprivation of winter, it is incredibly squishy merino laceweight that you have to stroke against your face immediately, and a 100g skein, which in laceweight is probably enough metreage to knit a jumper for the moon. It also wins the Pleasing Packaging Award for the big smiley face on the label. It's from the incredibly generous Kate B. Hmm, and here on my table is the Winter/Spring issue of Knitscene, with the rather lovely laceweight Geodesic cardigan... *ponders*

So a massive thankyou, to er, Kate, Kate, and Kath! (And Jemima). Your gifts of awesome are very muchly appreciated!

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shawly knot

I've always really admired other people's handknitted shawls, and have quite fancied making one for a while. But I was put off for ages by the wearability factor. Being generally a fairly scruffy urban type dresser, no stranger to a trainer or a hooded top, I just couldn't see me wearing something that made me look like an extra from a tedious tv period drama.

Conversely, I have absolutely no desire to knit a scarf, but I love wearing them. They're so practical and warm, but I just get really bored with the whole always-knitting-in-a-straight-line thing. (I did make one once, for Mr. Rubbishknitter, but only because he asked me really nicely)


Then suddenly, *ding!* it dawned on me, that there could be a solution lurking here... what if I indulged myself in some fun shawl knitting, then just wore it as a scarf? Scrumpled up and tucked into a coat, it's not too rustic - no-one's going to force me to travel in a horse and cart or chase chickens around. And I can have a warm neck! So I went for Aestlight. It's a nice easy sort of Fisher Price My First Shawl, but still looks really pretty. The yarn is beautiful, really soft and cosy and dead warm in springy sproingy garter stitch. I used one skein of hand dyed 100% merino sock from Skeins. And I've worn this thing, like, nearly every day, far more than I thought I would. I'd have been a lot quicker finishing if I'd been able to bring myself to take it off for long enough to block it! I'm a bit of a wuss in cold weather.

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Zips. Apparently there are different kinds.

So after finishing rubbishknitterjunior's duffel coat, I had been rather worried about the gap down the front between the toggles. It's just been so ludicrously cold recently, and the last thing you need is a draughty duffel. And then, late one night whilst rummaging in my Drawer of Haberdashery I stumbled across a lonely zip, not only of a matching colour, but amazingly, also the right length! This was too good to be true - a serendipitous zip find sent from the gods of knitting - it was meant to be! We were just about to start watching the new star trek film so I hastily grabbed the coat, a needle and a reel of cotton and settled myself onto the sofa to hand sew it in. It took nearly the whole film and I may have been a bit distracted by the intergalactic adventures but what did it matter? My handsewing is terrible, but with a thin navy blue thread against big hairy thick yarn, you can't see it at all. I was beginning to feel very pleased with myself. And then, as the credits rolled, I lifted the coat proudly aloft to show to Mr Rubbishknitter, and pulled down the zip. And kept pulling. Damn thing appeared to be stuck. Hang on, let me give it a bit of a yank... this is the sort of problem that a bit of brute force and ignorance would surely solve....

It took an embarrassingly long time to realise that this zip was never going to open fully. It was the wrong kind of zip, the kind that you would use to close a bag or a seam at the top of a skirt. These zips just never separate into two halves, even if you yank them impatiently for about 5 minutes. The knitting gods, they mock me! Well son, I don't have the willpower to buy another zip and redo it, so this duffel coat, I'm afraid will be taken on and off over your head forever as a testament to maternal foolishness.


Ah well I suppose at least he is at least a bit warmer now... this is his current dogwalking attire... there is a child there somewhere under the woolly goods

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it's here!!

Should you be interested in purchasing a glossy craft magazine with knitting patterns, recipes, reviews, tales of woolly misadventures and other foolishness, now you can! There are real proper Paypal buttons on the website now and I have bought envelopes and stamps and figured out the way to the postbox and everything. So help yourselves! It's a limited edition print run, so when they run out you will probably find they're changing hands for literally pence on eBay!1!1
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bobbins

bobbins
Originally uploaded by knitfaced

The printers' proof of Bobbins magazine has arrived, and it is looking good! I am giddy with excitement! Just need to go through it with a fine tooth comb checking for errors, sort out the website, start the print run and get ready to send it out... and plan a launch party... *throws knitting needles in air, does star jump*

I am quite amazed that a Pub Idea of this nature has actually made it into shiny tangible form. Just think of all those other awesome ideas I had that were ridiculed at the time, but might actually have been feasible... like the Naporium, a room full of big cushions for when you get a bit sleepy in town and fancy a bit of a snooze... one day it will be a global franchise, i'm telling you...

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a cautionary tale

If anyone was wondering in the last post how I knew that Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK isn't actually machine washable, it should hopefully become clear now. Yes, it's the amazing differentially felted stripy jumper!1!1 (No, it's not your eyes, the beige stripes really are half the size of the other ones now. Yes, you are allowed to laugh.)


Fortunately in this case I'm not all that bothered - it was a quick, functional knit for the child, and it's still wearable, if slightly odd looking. It could have been an awful lot worse, if I'd machine washed the tank top first. Every time I see this stripe, I am just full of relief that it happened this way round. Also on the plus side, you can see that the other yarns wash marvellously (King Cole Merino, Rowan Pure Wool, Patons Diploma Gold). Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone else was tempted to throw an elaborately handcrafted garment made of Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK in the machine. Don't do it I tell you! Learn from my foolish mistakes...
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how deep is your v?

I almost finished this Deep V Argyle tank top in the summer, but didn't get round to sewing down the steeks on the inside. Having worn it a few times now anyway, I think I can now say with some confidence that this job has fallen off the bottom of my to-do list, onto the to-hell-with-it-don't-do-because-life-is-too-short list. I have ceased to care if the inside is a little untidy, frankly it is too cold to worry about such matters. So, tadaaaa! here it is in its finishedish state.

The pattern is awesome, I would deffo recommend it. Great fun and I love the fit. There was a lot of waist and bust shaping which required a bit of concentration at the time but I think was worth it - it's a pretty thick jumper with the double stranded layer of DK yarn, so a bit of shaping makes it more flattering. The main change I made was to make the V less deep. Hard to believe, looking at those photos because it still looks pretty ruddy bloody deep to me, but I moved it up about one diamondsworth. I am all for a flattering neckline, but IMHO if a jumper doesn't keep at least some part of your bewbs warm it is a fairly pointless artifact. And thankfully it's a blissfully easy pattern to modify, because each size is actually charted out for you in full, so you can just print it out and go crazy with a red pen. Yay!

It's my second steeked garment, the first being the baby norgi, and I am happy to report that this time my blood pressure remained low throughout the process. I have a slight preference for the way the steeks were worked with this tank, by casting off a few stitches the row before the steek started. This made it much easier to do the actual cutting bit without worrying about snipping too far. I didn't, however, follow Eunny's advice and reinforce the steeks with crochet - I did them with the sewing machine. Partly because I did it this way last time and it has held up brilliantly, partly because it was quicker, and partly because I was under the impression at the time that I was using machine washable yarn, so I wanted to go for something megastrong. (Rowan Cashsoft DK, despite claiming to be machine washable on the ballband, has a tendency to randomly felt after about three low temperature washes. Fortunately I found this out before putting this top in the machine.)

So now I have a nerdy new look, sort of woolly cybergolfer / warm librarian...

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duffle trouble

My knitting needles have been in overdrive lately with the advent of the cold weather. For non-local readers, who are wondering exactly how cold that weather is, the answer is Very! -13 degrees C the other morning according to my car, after I had chiselled my way in and careered off down the road to work. I know it's a bit of a maternal cliche but I can't help but worry about rubbishknitterjunior's general wellbeing in such climes. So I am very happy now this little duffle coat is finished. Pattern is Roo from the Twist Collective, yarn is Aragon Yarn Classic Romney, donated to the keep-the-rubbishknitters-warm fund by the lovely Kate B. There was just exactly the right amount, no more than a couple of metres left over. When I first touched this wool I immediately thought of duffle coats - it is a fat, sturdy feeling single ply almost like roving which is super warm to touch.

Modifications: I put an extra half pattern repeat into the hood, because my child has a massive head. My tension was a bit off, so I made a size down, and it came out just right. (More details about these tinkerings on the Ravelry project page should you require them). This was a great pattern, I enjoyed it a lot. Doing the fastenings was fun. Ideally I had wanted leather triangles, but in the local fabric store they only sold what the lady pleasingly described as Pleather. I wasn't sure about it initially but it was both cheaper and easier to sew, and looks enough like leather to fool a blind man on a galloping horse, so it'll do. I cut out equilateral triangles and handsewed them on with thin strips to hold the toggles. It worked pretty well I think. My only slight reservation with this fastening method is that there is a bit of a wind-admitting gap in the middle. If I have time I might put a zip in as well to pull the sides together a bit, although it is possible I am overfussing with such a thick warm coat. Mmmm snuggly, I want a duffle coat too now...


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and a happy new year!

1. super speedy sister socks, 2. marvellous mittens, 3. five fruits, 4. blanket squares all nicely blocked, 5. handspun hat, 6. newborn slip stitch hat, 7. anouk finished, 8. owls back, 9. comfy old man slippers, 10. baby pirate, 11. 1up mushroom ipod sock, 12. ballband dishcloth, 13. pacman dungies: crawling action shot, 14. socks of fire, 15. mini socks, 16. stripy ribby socks, 17. turn a square hat, 18. lacy scarf: obligatory minuscule DOF shot, 19. hoodie back view, 20. grumpy strawberry, 21. comedy bear suit in action, 22. swirly hat, 23. boring ribbed hat, 24. microsocks, 25. big shoes

Happy New Year everyone! It's rubbishreview of the year time again. This is all my finished stuff from 2k9. Mostly knitting but a couple of sewing projects sneaked in there. A couple of things I made didn't make the mosaic - I have a couple of Top Secret projects to be revealed in Bobbins, and one tank top that I sort of finished in summer but failed to photograph. All will be revealed soon...

Looking at that mosaic I have realised I need to make more stuff for me this year, as I only managed 4/25 projects for myself. Pretty hopeless really. Fortunately Santa brought me some nice woollens made by clever people in factories, much needed in this cold weather. (Thanks Santa, if you're reading this!)
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happy christmas

Fortunately for the wee man, last year's christmas jumper still fits. Mostly due to me making it about fifty times too big originally. A little bit snug over that fat belly, he'll have to go easy on the roast potatoes, but he will be glad of its warmth this year... brrr! It looks like a scene from Doctor Zhivago outside, the trees are covered in ice right up to the top branches. Going out of the door is like walking into a vat of liquid nitrogen. Fortunately I have plenty of mince pies, knitting and wine to keep me occupied indoors.

A very merry christmas and a happy new year to you all! May santa bring you a sackful of yarn!
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finiiiished

This, unless I have any more last minute harebrained ideas, marks the end of my festive knitting. Only prezzies for my sisters this year, because one sister asked for socks and the other one would be jealous if I didn't knit her something too. (My brother has fallen off the xmas knitting list because he doesn't wear the nice handknitted-in-wool-from-local-farm hat I made him, favouring a cheap shopbought acrylic one that doesn't even fit his head. Hmph.) My sisters have Very Different Tastes. One likes muted neutral colours, and would consider some shades of beige to be too garish. The other likes her colours as bright as physically possible, and would probably enjoy wearing a garment made of radium.

I highly doubt any of them will read this so ta-daaaa! Above are the rather unadventurous socks for Muted Sis. Made from recently acquired Regia 4ply in shade 'I can't remember'. (Whilst in my possession it was so fleetingly in a unknitted state that I'm afraid I have failed to put it into Ravelry or save the ball band). Just a plain toe up garter rib. Interestingly, though, they are much baggier than the last pair I made, despite using the same pattern, the same needles and almost exactly the same yarn. I don't know what has happened to my tension. Initially I blamed gin, but the second sock is just the same so I think I am just slowly turning into a Loose Woman.

Dayglo Sis is getting these mittens. They are made from some alpaca from the stash, aran-ish weight, multicoloured and brandless but beautiful (a gift from some friends who went to Patagonia on holiday). I've started making various things with it before and abandoned them because they didn't really suit the yarn. I wanted to do it justice - it is very soft and warm and quite short colour repeats, which I think come out rather well in this design. I winged the pattern, they are very simple. I couldn't tell you what I did, I was using a new strategy: 'I can't be bothered to write down what I am doing as I go along, so I will make them fairly soon after each other and trust myself to make the same decisions each time'. It nearly worked, and the resulting mittens will be ideal for anyone with one fat thumb and one thin thumb. My sister doesn't really fit this description, but maybe if I distract her with a small dance while she opens the present she'll never notice...
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super speedy sister sock

So I really wasn't going to do any Christmas knitting this year, as I have been dead busy with various Big Projects lately. (If you are wondering what, there is a hint here! I know, it's all quite exciting). Then my sister phoned a couple of days ago. I hadn't done any Christmas shopping so needed a quick run down on what her eleventy billion kids wanted from Auntie Rubbishknitter. She suggested, as there has been a dearth of income in this house of late, that I could make the kids something. I politely declined, as not only am I a bit strapped for time but they are mostly teenagers and probably excruciatingly embarrassed by my creations. So she reeled off a list of presents and mercifully, as they were all the sort of thing that could be easily achieved on a 10 minute Amazon spree, I was starting to feel a bit calmer and more organised about the whole Christmas thing. Until I asked her what she wanted, and she casually said, 'oh i don't mind, a pair of socks or something'.

To be fair, a non-knitter probably sees this as a pretty innocuous request, easily fulfillable in a supermarket if you're lazy. But someone like me is physically unable to buy socks as a Christmas present for a close family member. Especially when a recent Kemp's sale cleared out a load of Regia sock yarn at £1.20 a ball, some of which mysteriously found its way over my threshold. I may not have a lot of time these days but I wasn't Manchester Yarn Day Speed Knitting Champion for nothing! So I found myself hurriedly casting on for the fastest sock in the West. It's plain toe up garter rib using my old fave knitty universal sock pattern, and I have to say this is possibly the world's quickest sock to make. Look, two days of evening-only knitting in and I am nearly there on sock one! The trouble is, you see, this is a bit of a can of worms I have opened....I have another sister too, who is likely to get jealous. Good job I stocked up at Kemp's really ;)
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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).
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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.
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