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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Mario mushroom DS sock

I love my DS and don't want it to get scratched... so i made it this sock... out of supercheap 99p-a-ball unspecified fibre from the bargain bin and leftover scraps (all about DK thickness). The image is the old skool 16x16 pixel version. It's just a stocking stitch rectangle sewn down two sides with a bit of intarsia (the other side is a bit messy, but i feel life is too short to worry about such things)

this is roughly how i did it:

a) Knit small swatch of background colour yarn. DK weight is the ideal gauge to fit the mushroom on one side.
b) Measure no of stitches in 5 cm of swatch.
c) Measure long side of DS in cm
d) cast on number of stitches = (b x c)/5. I added a couple of stitches to this for luck so the DS fits in snugly.
e) Knit about 10 rows of background colour in stocking stitch (as a flat piece, not in the round).
f) For the intarsia - i used scraps of old wool and i think this was easier than using big bits that are attached to balls as they get less tangled - you can sort of shake the ends loose. I twisted the yarns together whenever i added a new colour. For the bits where the new colour was only one stitch, eg. the eyes and the edge of the face, i stranded the old colour over. The rest of the time it was easier to pick up another scrap of yarn.

This is the chart i used.

g) Knit the other side in background colour in stocking stitch, until edges meet when wrapped round DS
h) Cast off and sew up long edge and short edge

i can recommend trying it, if anyone is tempted, as it only took one day to do (when fitted in around other activities, rather than 24 hours solid knitting!). And its pretty handy!

Now I can throw it in my bag wherever i'm going, with barely a second thought for its safety. Ideal for Pub Mario kart sessions!!
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FP

First post! w00t! I totally pwn this blog!1!1

Oops forgot where i was for a minute there. My mistake. This is going to be a nice, civilised, public-spirited blog about knitting. With lots of nice pictures of warm things, and advice on how to knit badly in the ancient tradition of the 'wing-it' school. Best viewed with a brew and hobnobs.
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