mmmm, delicious jumpers

A Bad Thing happened the other day. Bit of a chill in the air lately, I thought, time to dig out some of those nice woollens. So I skipped merrily into the child's bedroom and pulled open his jumper drawer. As I did so, the tiniest, most insignificant looking winged creature flapped lazily from its resting place and perched on the windowsill. I'd never seen one of these critters before, but my blood ran cold as our eyes met. Mine simple, hers compound. We both immediately knew we were mortal enemies.

CLOTHESMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH!

A ferocious battle followed, which thanks to the difference in body size I won pretty easily tbh, using a judiciously squishing finger. And then there was a frenzy of activity while I assessed the extent of the damage, removed the creepy crawlies, threw some dettol around and washed quite a lot of jumpers. Once the initial panic had subsided, I had to concede that it could have been an awful lot worse. My own woollens and yarnstash are mercifully untouched. The only jumper that was eaten was the five fruits I made last winter. It was stacked between the painstaking 4ply stranded efforts of the baby norgi and an heirloom jumper that had been mine as a toddler, so I was really very relieved that the moth had gone for my yarn-scraps-busting project. Having read a little bit about the habits of these insects online, I think I had it coming. They like damp, grubby clothes with food stains, so the jumper drawer of a toddler must be the moth equivalent of the curry mile. The most delicious yarn, it appears, was the Rowan pure wool DK. The moths had good taste really. Interesting, the damage stopped exactly at the edge of the stripe, so they obviously weren't so keen on the Patons Diploma Gold wool/acrylic blend below. Which was really very fortunate, as I happened to have a teeny tiny bit of the Rowan left, and none of the purple at all.

I did wonder whether it was really worth repairing the jumper, as there's not much growing room left in it and it's partially felted in the wash. But it just seemed a bit of an ignominious end for a handmade garment, and it does fit the wee man perfectly right now. And it does seem to have suddenly become baltic outside. Then I found the leftover matching yarn, and did a happy dance. This jumper was clearly destined to be rescued. So I knitted another neckline. And I am glad I did, because I actually think I prefer it now to its original state.

It's weird, because it was a top down raglan, and I reknitted the green stripe upwards, so I thought it would look really obvious. Which is why I did a fold-over collar, to disguise the join. I basically unravelled the green stripe, put the purple stitches back on the needle and did a couple of rows of stocking stitch then went to 1x1 rib which naturally wanted to fold back on itself. But actually, you can't see that there was a change in direction at all - you can just see that the collar is slightly less worn than the rest of the jumper. This hurts my brain a bit trying to work out why (it doesn't take much!) but the results are pleasing. It means you can get away with having the collar turned up, if required to give extra protection from the elements, or pretend to be a supersleuth.

So all in all, I am really not too upset. The child is still warm, his jumpers are clean (until the next teatime), I have been given a much needed kick in the arse to sort out my woolly hygiene, but in a remediable way. Knitters, heed my cautionary tale and learn from my foolishness before it happens to you! Maybe wash stuff occasionally, and keep yarn in ziplock bags!

rubbishknitterjunior wears: (a) partially scranned jumper (b) two hour toddler trousers for the full on dressed-embarrassingly-by-mum look

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bride comes before a shawl

[WARNING: long, picture heavy post. This one has an actual story. Make brew now.]

The mind of a knitter, I have long suspected, works in a different sort of way to that of a normal person.

So a very lovely friend of mine got married a couple of weekends ago. It was a few days before the hen do, approximately 10 days before the happy event, that I received an email from the bride to be, containing the excerpt shown here.

Now to the ear of a non-knitter, this is a fairly innocuous enquiry. You might have a quick look in your wardrobe, realise you don't have a lot in the shrug department, and leave it to a better dressed friend to sort out. This would have been the sensible way to take it, and I'm sure how the email was intended.

To a knitter? This is nothing short of a call to arms. It's like someone has blown the Horn of Gondor. Before I'd even finished reading the email, I'd unplugged the laptop, raced to the yarn cupboard and starting rummaging in the posh yarn section with one hand, whilst scrolling down reading the rest of the email with the other. I sent a quick reply to ask what shade of red, because i was already stroking some beautiful pillar box red merino laceweight. This, it turned out, was the required colour exactly.

So many things were whizzing around in my brain at this point. Should I just come clean and say to the bride, look, I could make you something, you can give me exact specifications if you like? But then it wouldn't be a surprise, and it's the week before her wedding, she probably has a billion other more important things to worry about. Also, and rather more worryingly, what if I can't actually do this in 10 days?!?

I am a novice lace knitter, and don't think I would have attempted it except that:

a) I was going to the hen do in London, this meant a 4 hour train journey of valuable uninterrupted knitting time

b) Thanks to a random act of kindness from Kate B, I knew I had a skein of the perfect yarn already and

c) Said yarn was already wound into a ball and ready to go

It just felt like the gods of knitting were on my side, and I knew I had to at least attempt it. So evening 1 was spent looking for a pattern. I looked at shrugs and boleros for a while, but just couldn't find anything that looked sufficiently weddingy. A shawl seemed like the ideal use of this yarn, and there are so many beautiful shawl patterns out there to choose from, so in the end I went for Annis. It seemed sufficiently intricate for a wedding day and yet there are people on Ravelry who have knitted this in 3 days. It must be easy! (Or, as it turned out, they are a bit quicker at lace knitting than I am.)

So I printed out the pattern, made extra sure I had all the right needles, yarn and notions, and set off for my journey to London. I'd probably have it half finished on the way down. Line one: cast on 363 stitches. Blimey, that's a lot. OK, let's try. No wait, that yarn tail isn't long enough. Oh no, now it's all got really tangled up. Let me just recount that: oh, I missed a stitch. AARGH! Really, Stoke already?! Blood pressure rising... RISING! On the fourth cast on attempt, I managed it, and as the train pulled into Euston I was just about to finish Row 1. Gulp. Maybe this was foolishness of the highest order...

During the hen weekend I asked a couple of discreet, carefully chosen questions. Is red your favourite colour? Do you like surprises? What if the surprise is a bit rubbish? Do you know what a nupp is, and are you able to spot a poorly executed one? The responses were all encouraging. So I got leathered and had a lovely time, then knitted like a demon on the way home.


And for the whole of the following week, I went to Knitting DefCon One. Flies buzzed around the towering stacks of laundry and dirty dishes in my kitchen. My hair was so greasy it crunched. The child took to playing trains with the dog, after the dog had got back from walking himself. I got the bus into work instead of cycling and knitted in my lunch hour. I even marginally reduced the time I spent arsing around on Ravelry and Twitter. And I am really glad I did, because in the end, I cast off the shawl at 10pm the night before the wedding.


Hastily washed and blocked it, and thanks to the fineness of the laceweight, it dried overnight. I exhaled deeply. I even had time to snap a couple of photos before I wrapped it up. Result!



So, er... would the blushing bride like it? I felt a little foolish going up to see her on the morning of her wedding, clutching my homemade offering. I mean, you know, whether you like surprises or not, your wedding day is quite a big occasion, and you're fairly likely to have already decided what you're going to wear by, like, the morning of the actual day. Deep down I suspected that I had got ridiculously carried away with this little adventure. A normal person would probably just say thanks, put the shawl in the pile of other presents, and that would be that.

My mate Debs isn't normal though, she's really pretty amazing.
She opened the present, looking rather pleased with the contents...



... tried it on with her dress...



... and then actually wore my knitting, on her wedding day, for reals!


And looked ruddy bloody beautiful in it.


It all made me a very, very happy knitter indeed. *Dabs eyes with hanky*

(PS. Pretty wedding photos courtesy of Mr Rubbish, who would like to add that he is currently available for all your wedding / civil ceremony / bar mitzvah / funeral photog needs for a very reasonable fee. He stipulates that I add the slogan 'Putting the fun into funerals')

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the shawl of indecision

No, it's not a bad folk band, or a new Harry Potter book. It's my first Proper Lace shawl! I finished it! I've been wanting to have a go at something like this for ages, but hadn't quite worked up the nerve until now.

I got this gorgeous hand-dyed purple merino sock yarn from Wild Fire fibres at Woolfest. Which I just realised I completely failed to post about when I went in June. So if you'll bear with me a minute, I'll just backtrack a little bit to set the scene. Yes, Woolfest was as awesome as it sounds!!!1! A day out in the Lake District, with a busload of lovely people from Bolton Knitting Noras, fluffy rabbits, scenic mountains, delicious Jennings beer and SO MUCH beautiful yarn. The combination of the last two things caused me to get a little bit carried away. I bought this yarn, borrowed a swift to wind it immediately, then cast on in the Woolfest cafe tent. (Don't believe anyone who tries to tell you knitters are patient people. I needed to start NAAAOOO.)

Thinking I'd make a shawl, I initially went for Aestlight, because it's a nice easy garter stitch thing, with low ballsup potential for social knitting, and more importantly because the pattern printout was still at the bottom of my knitting bag from the first one I made. After a very pleasant day of sitting around and chatting, and a bus journey back, I'd got quite a lot done.

But it was not to be. I think after finishing Tempest, with its acres of stocking stitch, my fingers were itching for something a bit more intricate. Aestlight's also a pattern I'd done quite recently, and while I enjoyed the first one I'm not a big repeat knitter of patterns unless a fair amount of time has elapsed (apart from that one time I went a bit mad and knitted three pirate hats in a row). I just feel that variety is the spice of yarny life, and if you aren't feeling it with a particular pattern, and there are so many fun ones out there to choose from, why persevere?

It was in this frame of mind that I saw that Marina had just been published. It was perfect! Beautiful, but not too difficult looking, it could be my stepping stone into the world of Proper Lace. So after a bit of unravelling, I was off again. And this time the whole process was twenty times more fun. The yarn withstood the frogging and reknitting admirably, I think it maybe even enjoyed getting into some new shapes. I love the way you can extend the pattern easily to suit the amount of yarn you have. I did 7 pattern repeats out of one skein so it's more of a shawlette / pointy scarf really. It's going to be a birthday present for my sis. Who doesn't read this blog so I am safe. But she does like purple a lot.

At the risk of sounding obvious (I am a lace n00b) I love the way the beauty in the finished product comes from the bits missing. It's like the best parts of it are where you didn't do anything. HOLES IN STUFF FTW. *Dons string vest, eats swiss cheese*.
(PS. I enjoyed this shawl so much, the reason it took me so long to blog about it is because I knitted another more elaborate one immediately afterwards, barely pausing for breath... this really was a gateway drug for me! Lock up your laceweight!)

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two hour toddler trousers

*Drum roll*... it's another poorly executed cheapsk8 sewing project!!1!

So Rubbishknitterjunior was badly in need of another pair of trousers, and Mr Rubbish had recently discarded a well loved old pair of cords. I dived and caught them before they landed in the bin because apart from a couple of threadbare patches, there was a fair bit of usable fabric there. Then last night, there was flash of lightning in the house of Dr. Frankenstitch, and these toddler trousers were created! I didn't use a pattern, as you can probably tell. They're not very neat, and one leg is possibly a bit longer than the other, so they're ideal if your child is a haggis. But they are wearable, potentially durable for the lifespan of a toddlertrouser and look quite comfy. I'll attempt to put together a set of instructions to explain what I did, as much for myself as anything cos I might make more of these - they are so quick, easy and cheap.

Rubbishknitter's recipe for a top quality Friday night in

• You will need: 1 sewing machine, 1 beer, 1 pair of big trousers, 1 piece of wide flat elastic, 1 pair of scissors, some thread and a piece of tailor's chalk.


• Get pair of childtrousers that fit. Lay one small trouser leg within a big trouser leg and draw round it with tailor's chalk, from the crotch to the ankle, across and up to the waistband, into the middle of the waist, then lift up the trousers and draw a freehand curve downwards, joining the line up with where you started. Flip the small trousers over and draw round the other side on the other big trouser leg, so you have an outline of the back piece on one big trouser leg and an outline of the front piece on the other. The back piece should be a bit bigger than the front piece, especially if the kid is still in nappies.


• Draw another line around each shape which adds a seam allowance of about an inch, to allow for ballsups, and a couple of inches at the waist for the waistband. Cut round this outer line, cutting through both sides of the trouser leg, so you end up with 4 pieces: 2 trouser leg backs and 2 trouser leg fronts.


• Optional: Make a pocket by cutting out a pocket shape from cardboard. Draw round it on the fabric, and cut out a piece of fabric with 1/4 inch seam allowance around the curved edge and about an inch at the top. I added a small applique at this point by cutting out a shape from a scrap of fabric and zigzag stitching round it with 0.4mm stitch length. Fold and press all the edges in around the template. Topstitch the straight top edge, then put the pocket where you want it on the trouser leg, fold the seam allowance under and sew round the curved edge as close as you can to the edge without falling off.


• Take a swig of the beer. Sew both back pieces together then sew both front pieces together. Wonder why you have one wide leg and one narrow leg. Smite your forehead and rip out all your seams. (For expediency, you may want to omit this step)


• Lay one back piece on one front piece, right sides together. Sew long straight side seam, then sew inner leg seam from crotch to ankle, so you have a leg tube. Repeat with other back and front piece, so you have two unjoined legs.


• Join the legs by sewing front and back crotch to waist seams.


• Fold waistband over an inch or so all round, then sew it down, leaving enough space at the top to fit a piece of elastic in. Stop just before you've sewn all the way around and thread in the elastic. This is easiest if you put a safety pin in both ends of the elastic, pin one end to the trousers and work the other end through the waistband tube. When the elastic is threaded all the way round, sew across both ends of the elastic. I left the small opening in the waistband unstitched in case I needed to make any adjustments after trying the trousers on, when the child was awake.


• Press up hems at ankle. It might be an idea to measure leg length at this point to get them equal rather than getting impatient and doing it by eye. I used blind hem stitch to do the hems because it seemed like the funnest way.


• Finishing seams is for suckers! Go and finish your beer instead.


• The next day, because of the superspeedy half arsed job you did, you are fresh as a daisy for toddler adventures! Win!

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tempestuous

Yay, Tempest is finally finished! (Just in time for the hottest weather evah, when you really have to be some kind of masochist to don a woolly cardigan. I had to wait till evening, eat seventeen icecreams before taking these photos, then jump into a bath of icecubes afterwards.)

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out in the end. This sock-yarn-on-oversize needles idea is full of win. Because sock yarn is so pretty and fun to knit with, it quite literally flies by. Especially when it's lovely handdyed 100% merino Wollmeise (colourway Gazpacho). The stripe is Debbie Bliss Rialto 4ply. It really didn't feel like it took all that long to make a cardigan out of it at this gauge. Even though I made a couple of modifications:

• First, and most obviously, I missed out the stripes. I wasn't planning on having any at all but a catastrophic pooling issue made me go for a sweep-it-under-the-carpet monostripe approach. A sensible person would probably just have gone with the stripes as suggested in the original pattern, and would have been completely fine. In many cases, the pattern is written in reference to where you are in the stripe sequence, saying things like 'start decreasing after you've done 3 stripes'. This makes for a lot of unnecessary mental arithmetic if you're doing it in a single colour, which is fine as long as it isn't too late at night. (i.e. Count 58 rows. Laugh at a funny thing on the television. Lose your place and start again. Repeat until bedtime)
• I also made it longer. By quite a bit actually - the straight bit below the waist shaping is twice as long as it should be. I'm very glad I did this, as I feel that my midriff is best kept under wraps at all costs, and in a light fabric like this it adds very little extra weight.

Stuff I like:

• The delicateness of the fabric - see, it floats, like a butterfly! But doesn't sting like a bee! Swirliness in knitting I consider to be a Good Thing.
• The seams. These are about a billion times tidier than normal, thanks to Audrey and Corinna from my knitting group. They basically talked me out of the evil ways of backstitch and showed me the delights of mattress stitch. Why, why did it take me so long to realise how awesome this is! So neat, and you can do it on an angle really easily. I have attempted it before but I somehow reached the conclusion that it was slower than backstitch so not worth it. Everybody: it's not truuuuuue! Backstitch is soooo 2k9! Srsly.

Stuff that's rubbish (there's always something):

• The buttonholes. They were done horizontally, by casting off two stitches then casting them on again on the next row. I foolishly used backwards loop cast on for this, which is far too loose, and means there is an annoying strand of yarn lurking around to snag an unwary button. With hindsight, i should have cast on by knitting-on. It's possibly fixable. I mean, I am almost certainly too lazy to frog back past the problem area, but I might try buttonhole stitching round each one, it may help prevent excessive cursing as I attempt to free myself from the cardigan's embrace.
• I also sewed most of the buttons on slightly wobblily on my knee whilst approaching the end of a long car journey from Stranraer, because the child was asleep and you have to seize these opportunities, even though a voice in my head was saying 'nooo, wait till you get home and you will do a better job, you clown'. I ignored the voice by turning up the stereo.

Ah well, at least with my new woolly creations I have neutralised the weather-related damage caused by making that sundress... you can all relax and fire up your barbecues again... phew!

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red and green should deffo be seen

I'm having a bit of a red and green phase at the moment. For some reason I only seem to be interested in things with at least one of these colours, preferably both. I could spend hours grinning inanely at traffic lights. I blame this pot of lilies in my back yard, that waited until just before i went on holiday for a week before flowering gloriously in my absence.



My new job, right in the middle of the old textile district in town, is also proving rather dangerous. I can see Abakhans from the door, its massive piles of ubercheap fabric and yarn grin temptingly at me as I nip out for a lunchtime sandwich. So I tend to accidentally return to my desk with random pieces of fabric like this, because it has a nice shade of green in, and makes your eyes go funny in a good way. Blink a few times and the pattern bounces around all over the place. Hours of fun.

But the most exciting event of the week by miles is... look! Guess where my cardigan is?

Yeeeeeah it's in the sink, being washed.... that means it's really nearly finished.... it's all sewn together, just needs blocking and buttons and we're there... WOOHOO!

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oops, i broke summer

Ok, I can exclusively reveal that the reason the bank holiday scorcher failed to materialise in northern England this weekend isn't anything to do with the Met office messing up their climate prediction models. In fact it has nothing to do with patterns of precipitation and airflow across Europe at all. It's because I sewed myself a sundress! Sorry about that.

The clouds began to gather last week when Mr Rubbishknitter bought a tent on ebay. And now the sewing action, I fear, has sent the sun packing from our skies, and it is unlikely to return until the new dress has fallen apart in the wash. (But don't worry - according to my garment lifespan prediction models, this may happen rather soon.)


I don't know what the fabric is, a lovely friend of mine donated it to the rubbishseamstress cause a while ago. I am a big fan of checky print and was very pleased to discover that the gridlike nature of the pattern makes it relatively easy to sew in a straight line. Although you may detect some wobbling, particularly around the zip area. Zips, in the context of sewing, give me the fear a little bit. I dealt with this using beer, which had a very beneficial effect on my general sense of wellbeing, but not so much on the rectilinear nature of the seams.

I picked a pattern which purported to be Very Easy. It's Butterick 5180, and I would recommend it for other sewing numpties looking for a quick easy dress. There are only 4 pattern pieces, and I managed to join them all together in roughly the right places. It's not amazing, but my expectations were pretty low. There was a minor disaster when I pulled a thread turning it inside out, but this turned out to be fixable using only a knitting needle and some swearing. It's a very basic straight up, straight down shift dress with no shaping so is a bit baggy and not tremendously flattering. The pointy bits at the neck are a little floppy, possibly because the interfacing I used was too lightweight. And if I'd had enough common sense to centre the pattern around the neckline, it would have looked much better. But to be honest I'm just pleased that I managed to complete a wearable garment on a sewing machine without permanently attaching any of my fingers to it. Now, if you will excuse me, i'm off to put a jumper on...
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social knitting

So I've been working 9 to 5 recently *pours self cup of ambition* which unfortunately has been taking its toll somewhat on my knitting productivity. Throughout winter I commuted to faraway grim industrial estates, sitting zombielike in motorway traffic for hours before arriving home knackered in the evening, making lame attempts at parenting, then collapsing face down onto the sofa. But I recently started a new job in town, within cycling distance, which has all been working out rather nicely in these summer months. I feel energised, revitalised! The rubbishknitter-shaped dent in the sofa has gone! And working nearer home, I have a little more time in the evenings to devote to Fun Stuff. In this last week, I have quite literally been living the dream, by going to no less than three different knitting groups. THREE! I KNOW!!1!

So I've made a little more progress on the Tempest cardigan. I decided in the end to go for a monostripe around the waist, to get round the pooling issues. I know, i know - if i'd just followed the pattern as written to start with, and done the suggested stripe pattern, I'd have been fine. I'd like to say I've learned my lesson, but I doubt I have tbh - I have a long and messy history of failing to follow instructions, and meandering off along illadvised detours. I've done the back and two front sides now anyway, so I'm feeling a bit more along the road to having an actual garment. Just the sleeves and a loooad of finishing to do yet, so I'm probably about halfway. But the nice thing about this garment is that it's basically all been made whilst sitting and chatting, either at wonderwool or at knitting group. This is quite unusual for me, I generally knit alone in a darkened room slumped in front of the telly, so I like the way I can look at parts of the knitting and it reminds me of different people and places. Good times. Although I have to admit it's a little scary trying to concentrate on the tricky bits of the cardie whilst chatting. I was knitting in a cafe on Friday and noticed, just as I was about to attempt the armhole shaping, that they were playing Play with Fire by the Rolling Stones. It was so apt that a couple of stitches fell off my needles immediately, in deference. But I seem to have sorted it out and got to the end ok now... we'll see how the sleeves/seaming goes..


Oh, and I also celebrated the new job a little bit with another skein of Wollmeise. Ahem. Got a bit carried away with the cheeriness of the colour... oops. The colour is called 'Frühling'. (What a nice word - it feels so much more appropriate for acid green than 'Spring'.) I have no immediate plans for it - it just looked like a big ice lolly or something, I wanted to sink my teeth into it, but was worried they might go numb.
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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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