beady, aye

I think I might have a bit of a shawl problem.

This is bitterroot. I loved making it so much I knitted far too fast and gave myself tendonitis. For 2 weeks I was in ouchy-wrist hell, unable to wave at people over the road, or use a mouse.



I was quite grumpy for those two weeks. What does one do when one can't knit or code? I tried to remember Hobbies Of Old. I did a bit of gardening. And grumbled quite a lot.



Then, one day, waking up in a haze of ibuprofen and gin with my arm in a tubigrip with a shatterproof ruler down the inside, it was all ok again! Not having learned any kind of lesson, I picked up the shawl and knitted continuously without pausing to eat / make tea / sleep until it was all finished.



It's for Purl City Yarns, I made it using just under 2 skeins of their gorgeous Manos Del Uruguay Serena, colourway 6977.

I am totally in love with this yarn. If it was human I'd buy it pints and laugh at its jokes. It's a very subtly variegated, soft dove grey alpaca/cotton blend. There's a nice crisp cottony stitch definition but the alpaca softens it and makes it warm.



I got some beads from The Bead Shop in Afflecks Palace. They're clear with a silver lining - these ones i think. (If you've not been to this place, you should. Sweetie jars from floor to ceiling, full of SO MUCH SHINY.)



I made the small size, but it turned out pretty huge, and really didn't take very long at all. I'm a big fan of DK weight yarn for shawls.

It's off to be displayed in Purl City tomorrow (but I can have it back when they get bored of it. bwahahahaaa!)

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the castoff of adventure

My friend Amy (cross stitcher extraordinaire, creator of this lovely Mr Men wall hanging and Buffy themed awesomeness) has recently enjoyed a birthday. I am a big fan of both Amy and knitting shawls. So I knitted her this shawl.

It all happened because a couple of weeks previously, in the pub she had been describing a new posh dress, made of bottle green and black shot silk. I sipped beer and nodded whilst excitedly traversing the Purl City yarns laceweight section in my mind. It's getting dangerous to even mention colours in my earshot these days.

The next day, I sprinted excitedly to the LYS, had a rummage around the shelves with Vikki and Cara and found a perfectly coloured Schoppel-Wolle Laceweight Zauberball. I cast on straight away for a Citron.

It may be stating the bleeding obvious to point out, that if you are the kind of person who gets bored by large expanses of stocking stitch, it's probably not the pattern for you. But I'm a big fan of keeping stitchwork simple where a multicoloured yarn is involved, and Citron fits that bill nicely. I think the thick/thin textural stripes add just enough visual interest to stop it being boring to work on.



As I had quite a bit of yarn left over (laceweight just goes on forever doesn't it? i love it) and I am a knittingmasochist, I even added an extra pattern repeat. This involved increasing to 636 stitches, using my longest ever Knitpicks Options cable, and developing arms like Mr Tickle. I managed about 8 Stakhanovite rows of the final ruffle before collapsing to the floor begging for mercy. I'm glad I did this though as I think the small size of the pattern as written leaves it just on the cusp of wearability. I don't have any modelled shots unfortunately but this size will stay on your shoulders quite nicely, or you can wrap it comfortably around your neck in a scarflike fashion.

I had just enough energy left to incorporate a beaded cast off before expiring, hooking a small black bead on with a wee tiny crochet hook every 10 stitches in the cast off row. I was worried about getting some of the old stocking stitch roll at the end, so I thought the beads might counteract that. This sort of worked, and where the edge still manages to curl upwards, at least a viewer can be distracted from any structural failings by the shininess of the beads. Look at the beads! look at them!


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northern skies

I am ridiculously excited this week, because this silly hat I made won the Purl City yarns design competition accessories category and customers' choice award!

It's called Northern Skies, with apologies to I am Kloot, it can't do much for your rock'n'roll street cred to have a song commemorated in knitwear. I designed and made it in January to enter the Purl City 'Inspired by Manchester' design compo. I couldn't think of anything more typically Manc than a row of terraced houses, and I liked the idea of having them go all the way round a hat in a continuous circle. I also liked the idea of having stars in the sky, people always say you can't see them in a city, but it's not truuuuue, I should know I spend a lot of time in the gutter looking up at them.

It was a little daunting to knit, the houses are all done in stranded colourwork so there's not a lot of stretch, but fortunately the fit around the head is pretty spot on. (Fits my head too, the model above has a pretty much adult sized head now!) The bit with the windows was fun, I just went for a random pattern with some lights on and some off. As a rule there aren't more than two windows next to each other in the same lighting state, as this makes for tricky long float/weaving in issues, which I prefer to avoid as much as possible. All my fingers were occupied by coping with three colours at once anyway. Yikes! Turns out it's quite doable, but a pretty immersive task. Good job I managed to get through those few rows without needing to answer the phone / scratch / point at anything.

The sky is Fyberspates Sparklesock in Midnight, which is dark blue with little silver spangles in, so it's just perfect. I embroidered a few extra stars on with this Drops Metallised silver thread, and also backstitched up and down between the houses in grey to outline them a bit. The grey is a slightly heavier weight, it's King Cole baby alpaca dk, and the brickwork is Lang Jawoll sock, but I quite like the way this gives the houses a strong, cartoonish outline. The roofs are purled to make them stand out a bit against the sky.

I might get round to writing up the pattern some time soon, but I am quite bad at finding the time to do this, and tbh I'm not sure anyone else would be daft enough to make such a thing anyway. Rubbishknitterjunior likes it a lot though.

Thanks everyone who voted for my hat, and Purl City for the awesomely generous prize! :)

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lots of tiny socks

I made these baby socks for a bring and buy sale today, to raise money for the premature baby unit at the local hospital.
I had a drawerful of tiny scrag-ends of left over sock yarn, so this seemed like a good opportunity to use it up. I quite like doing this sort of thing, you feel uberthrifty, and it gives you a chance to reminisce about Socks of Old.


The yarn line-up, from left to right in the picture above: Cygnet Wool Rich 4 ply (light brown), random nasty acrylic I scored in a bargain bin in Peru for about 1p (navy), Green eyed monsters supersock (pink/green stripy), Opal from the first ever pair of socks I made (green/pink/blue stripy), Violet Green supersock (purple). Apologies if you bought the navy pair, I'll admit you drew the short straw.
Pattern is my own.

I wanted to try and package them as appealingly as possible, using words like 'unique' and 'handcrafted' and not words like 'mindlessly churned out while watching Breaking Bad on the telly'. So I got these cute little handmade paper bags from Fred Aldous and labelled them up nicely.

I think most of them sold, i wasn't around at the end to check. It was fun to make them all, although I must admit it was getting a tad repetitive by the 5th pair - I was going to sleep counting turned heels instead of sheep. I think it's safe to say my next project will be bigger, and not socks :)

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cardie win

I almost forgot to post pictures of my finished cardigan! Probably because I did my usual trick of finishing a winter garment just in time for spring. I need to knit faster, or maybe just plan ahead a tad better. I had to go to Cumbria for the weekend to make sure extra sure I was somewhere cold enough to be able to wear it. Here I am, keeping warm while standing on an old midden. (This would have basically been a toilet for livestock in olden times - I know how to pick a glamorous spot for a picture.)



The pattern is Audrey in Unst from the Twist Collective, and the yarn is Austermann Alpaca silk, that I got from Purl City yarns on opening day. This is, like, megaluxury yarn, i love it! Putting it on is such a comforting treat, it's just so soft and warm, with that slight alpacay hairiness that makes it like a favourite pet.


I also think it's the best fitting thing I've managed to make myself so far, it's loose without being comically baggy, just really comfortable and wearable. Yay!

The only modification I made was to make it a bit longer. In the pattern it's quite cropped, but I like jeans and jumpers to safely overlap. Particularly as I cycle around a lot, I feel it's both more comfortable and more considerate to keep one's arsecrack under wraps. I basically cast on the 36.5" size and lengthened the twisted ribbing by an inch or two. Then carried on decreasing to the waist for the 34.5" size, then followed the pattern for the smaller size.

It was loads of fun to make, and really easy, all knitted seamlessly from the bottom up. The twisted rib / stocking stitch section was mindless enough for tv knitting, and the unst lace panel at the front was an interesting diversion before nice easy short row sleeves. The sleeves were super quick to knit, I've not done a short row sleeve cap before but it really was a lot less faff than a set-in one. (Once I'd worked out how to pick up stitches tidily). Another new thing for me was the i-cord cast off round the neck. I have totally and completely fallen in love with this cast off method. It just looks really solid and pleasing, I really don't mind that it takes loads longer.

The only slight downside is that one side of the lace panel was knitted on my bus commute to work, and the other side in Port Street Beer House. I didn't notice until blocking that this had affected my tension rather noticably - I was considerably more relaxed in the pub! I kind of like that though. One of my favourite things about knitting a big project like this is the way you can look at different bits of it and remember where you were when you were knitting it. I'm in no danger of forgetting with this one ;)


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japan love

If you were wondering, we raised over £400 at Purl City on Wednesday for the British Red Cross Japanese tsunami appeal!

And a jolly fine time was had by all. I did lots of knitting, chatting to friends, won some ace prezzies and had wasabi peas and sake for my tea. What more can one possibly want from an evening?

There was a raffle in which I won this ball of Noro Kureyon sock, in nice restful natural shades of green. And a book of amigurumi robots! How good is that? Such as this handsome devil. I'm going to be all over this just as soon as I've reminded myself how crochet patterns work.


There was also a closed bid auction, in which I managed to get my hands on this very lovely Noro hat knitted by Vikki. Beautiful sunsetty colours - rubbishknitterjunior is very taken with it.


Thanks to the organisers for the yarny treats and a fun night out!

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tsunami relief

Just a quick one to mention to any Manchester based people that tomorrow night at Purl City Yarns is Japanese Tsunami Fundraiser night.
Sounds like it will be fun, with lots of auctions and raffles for all kinds of goodies.

There will be exclusive hand dyed yarn from Wild Fire Fibres, and 50p from the sale of each ball of Noro goes to the Red Cross. That's right, you can actually really help people by buying yarn. This is all kinds of win in my book <enable, enable> :)

I've also donated this pattern for baby socks which you can buy for £1.50 on the night. If you're not in Manchester, you can buy it on Ravelry too and all the proceeds will go to the Red Cross. I wrote it ages ago but it has taken me rather a long time to get my act together and publish it. The cute baby foot in the above picture now belongs to a clodhopping two year old. I'll maybe get round to publishing the pattern for the jumper he was wearing today by the time he goes to university.

seeya there knitterfriends!

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buttons and blocking

Guess what I have just been pinning out?!

I'm very excited... the cardigan's all finiiiiiiiiished! Last night was spent weaving in ends and sewing on buttons. I've gone for these vintage buttons that I picked up from some random haberdashery stall at a local craft fair a while ago. I really love this kind of dead simple, super shiny, boiled sweet type buttons.



Even the retro button packaging I find really pleasing. I'm really glad I'm not expected to remove them all before washing. Can you imagine?! People must have had considerably more patience in the olden days.



Better photos will follow when it's dry. Can't wait!! If anyone needs me, I'll be impatiently wandering around the spare bed with a hairdryer... What? don't look at me like that, it's forecast to freeze tonight, tomorrow morning I want to be clad in snuggly alpacay goodness!

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wild fire fibres trunk show

There will follow a small and probably quite welcome interlude in The Saga of the Cardigan to show you some pretty pictures of the Wild Fire Fibres trunk show at Purl City Yarns!

Wild Fire Fibres is the yarny adventures of Salford's finest handspinner, indie dyer, designer, mindbogglingly intricate lacy shawl knitter, pompom lover and all round thoroughly bloody lovely lady Vikki. She's been rather busy of late preparing a selection of very beautiful handcrafted woolly treats for all our recreational delight. I wandered down to the welcoming glow of Purl City after work on Wednesday to squish them on your behalf.

There was a dizzying selection of colours, fibres and weights. Difficult to know where to begin really.

This picture shows the handspun at the front. Some breathtakingly gorgeous skeins, all so different in character. Some shiny, some sparkly, some fluffy, some glittery, prethreaded with beads. There is handdyed sock weight in the middle, and at the back, shawl lovers were in paradise with all the luxurious lacey goodness. I particularly love the Pegasus alpaca/silk blend, with its metallic shininess. And the Angora laceweight, which is spun tightly enough to minimise shedding whilst still obviously being as soft as the sneeze of a baby unicorn falling into thistledown.

Some colours were mouthwateringly sweet-shop bright, some were natural world inspired neutral shades. All were eminently squishable.



Some (mostly the pink ones) were snaffled by IDreamOfCrafts before anyone else turned up.



Being a bit of a Shetland fetishist (Shetishist?!) I knew immediately which of the handspun I was going to have trouble leaving without. Then there was also free wine, a very interesting talk from Vikki about her work, and a couple of hours of knitting and enjoyable banter with friends. I overrelaxed, and became powerless to resist. This is the sight greeting mr rubbishknitter as he caught me on the cctv trying to smuggle yarnz into the house. (joke (c) audreym, twitter, 2011 )

(there is a bonus terrible handknitted pegbag in the background of this photo from my very early days of knitting, definitely pre-ravelry, possibly even predating this blog!)

So in summary, both Vikki and her yarns are lovely and you should definitely buy them, either from her website or you can catch up with her at Wonderwool Wales this year.

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pickup fail

I've been steaming ahead with the Audrey in Unst cardie lately. Was feeling quite pleased at how well the sleeve was progressing. It's a short row sleeve cap, with the stitches picked up round the armhole, then shaped with short rows and knitted downwards in the round. I'd not done one like this before, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it had been. Why, I'd barely needed to give the thing my full attention! This knitting lark is easy!!11! I was at the edge of the precipice of Knitting Cockiness and poised for a great fall. And then, today the sun came out and I looked a little more closely at my recent handiwork. And realised I'd actually already stepped over the edge and been freefalling for some time, but been too dumb to notice :)


Can you see the problem?!

What about now?
Unfortunately, no amount of squinting and pretending will make it go away (I've tried!). I oh-so-cleverly made a nice slipped stitch edge at the front to facilitate picking up stitches, then oh-so-stupidly picked up stitches on the wrong side of it. So there is a plainly visible row of slipped stitches at the join. Doh! One of those late night sessions where you think, Awww just a little bit more... maybe I could actually finish this bit, wouldn't that be ace... Hmm, my vision might be a little blurred with sleepiness and/or gin but I'm having fun dammit... Then end up doing loads of damage and setting yourself back waaay further than if you'd just gone to bed at an appropriate hour. Be warned, knitterfolk!!

Weirdly, I did it right for the back half, then lost the plot at the shoulder seam. This is what it should have looked like!


I'm off to do some frogging and maybe also a sacrifice of cheap acrylic to appease the knittergods...

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bus knitting misadventures

My trusty bike has been suffering from an unfortunate spate of punctures recently. This is mostly due to me cycling round Manchester city centre a lot, where it seems drinkers actively seek out cycle lanes to smash their empty pint pots. So as Grandmaster Flash would probably point out, there is broken glass everywhere. With my bike out of action, I have been thrown back into the world of Bus Knitting.

I do enjoy my bus commute with my knitting on my lap. However, I've reached a stage in my Audrey in Unst cardie where it's becoming a little awkward to hoist around at the end of each row without stabbing adjacent commuters in the eye. I'm on the lace bit by the neck shaping, as you can see in the pic, and it's knitted in one piece so it's getting quite big. I've also had a couple of unfortunate bus knitting incidents recently. Once, when the driver braked suddenly, the ball of yarn on my knee flew forwards and rolled under about 5 rows of seats in front. Horrified, I wondered if it was possible to crawl forward and retrieve it. But fortunately, the jolt of setting off again sent it rolling back to my feet where I was able to swiftly scoop it up again and carry on nonchalantly, as if nothing had happened.

More alarmingly, I'm finding it harder and harder to put the knitting down in time to alight. My internal mantra of 'one more row..' gets louder as the bus approaches my destination, and my knitting gets faster and faster and more frenzied. The other day I'd cut it ridiculously fine. As the other passengers were getting off I was scrabbling around hastily to cram my knitting into my bag and leg it off the bus. I breathed a sigh of relief as I made it through the door and walked down the road towards work. After about 10 paces I noticed a teal-coloured woolly strand hanging out of my bag. It was attached to a ball of yarn. Which was still on my seat on the bus. Fortunately, I was able to retrace my steps before the bus departed, and a very amused passenger handed me the ball of yarn.



So I've downsized my bus knitting a bit, for health and safety reasons. This is a headband I made out of a teeny tiny bit of leftover Wollmeise from my Tempest cardie. I'm all about the woolly headbands right now. It's surprisingly warm because it covers your ears, it tames unruly hair, it fits under a bike helmet, and unlike a hat, nobody at work mithers you if you continue to wear it indoors. Pattern is Panta from this epic thread on craftster. I have one already that I made aaaages ago and I wear it all the time so I decided another was in order. I used 4 ply yarn though and I had to omit some of the central increases because of weirdass pooling, so the new one's a lot skinnier. Here is rubbishhound modelling the original back in 2006.



I'm also making Mr Rubbishknitter a tie. He has been dropping hints lately and I am unable to resist such things. I was going to make it a Valentine's day surprise but I thought perhaps I should consult him. I'm glad I did, because my first attempt was deemed Too Pointy, and I was advised to go and look at a tie. So the second attempt is less pointy. To get the acceptably sloped version, I started at the bottom and increased 1 stitch either side each row. The stitch pattern is from My So Called Scarf, and I think it is quite suitable for a tie, cos it makes quite a heavy, woven-looking fabric that doesn't roll at the edges. And the rows are short enough that there's always plenty of time to squeeze another one in before I get to my stop. Everyone's a winner!

pointy	nonpointy

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hatty gifts

So I finally got round to delivering all the Christmas gifts that I epically failed to finish and get to the correct recipients before they disappeared for the festive season. The prezzies sat under the Christmas tree for ages then, even more pathetically, just alone on the floor after the decorations had been taken down. Now, at last, I have managed to actually give them to the correct people! So I can put up some piccies.

The top picture is Koolhaas, made from random aran weight merino I picked up at woolfest. I am such a fan of this burnt orange colour. And it was a great pattern, I thought. Simple enough to memorise for bus knitting, but engaging enough to make the commute to work fly by. The resulting hat is pleasingly tactile, and it didn't take long at all.


Neither did this one - it's Into the Valley from Bobbins magazine, designed by the very clever and lovely audreym. It's for blokes, but I am modelling it here on my massive heid and it fits me quite nicely too. Also in some aran weight merino I picked up from the same stall at Woolfest, wound immediately and lost the label for, so I can't tell you where exactly. (Could have been the yarn yard, or the stall next to it!) The pattern is ace, the staghorn cable pattern has that elusive quality of looking quite complicated and skilful whilst actually being mega easy to do.

I do like a woolly hat. Was very difficult to give both of these away! But I feel there will be more hats in the not too distant future...

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happy new year

1. kid & grownup xmas stockings, 2. aestlight warmness, 3. festive socks, 4. chunkystripy hat front view, 5. ladybird mittens, 6. colourful pirate hat 2, 7. Newborn slip stitch hat, 8. dragon hunter, 9. jumper moth damage repair, 10. newborn slip stitch hat, 11. annis shawl nupp detail 3, 12. marina detail 3, 13. two hour toddler trousers, 14. tempest button detail, 15. stripy baby socks, 16. fruity sock toe wiggle, 17. handspun hat, 18. mmmm snug, 19. 'Hunter' baby tank top, 20. medusa side view, 21. bobbins, 22. deep v 3, 23. what's this white cold stuff

It's RubbishReview of the year time again! This is all the stuff I made in 2010. Well, ok, including some stuff for Bobbins that I made in 2009 but only photographed in 2010. And I cheekily put Bobbins in there too, cos I reckon a magazine sort of counts as handmade. Even if I didn't actually sit there writing out all the words with a pen and manually inserting staples, I did faff around in InDesign dragging text boxes around and moving images one pixel to the right for aaaages.

Difficult to summarize a whole year, but looking at the pictures all together I seem to have a bit of a penchant for stripes, lace and colourwork.



The first picture is something I failed to blog about in the slightly hectic run up to Christmas. I think it was Dec 23rd I found some cheap red fabric in the bargain bin of my local fabric shop and got the crazy idea to sew Christmas stockings for everyone. When I was a nipper, my mum, who was a much better seamstress than I, made stockings for all us kids out of fabric leftovers.



I still have mine with its pleasingly 70s patterns - it's the sort of stocking that makes you want to have a fondue party.

Anyway it struck me when I saw the cheap red fabric that Mr Rubbishknitter and Rubbishknitterjunior were stockingless, and this wouldn't do at all. So I bought it, took it home and started work. I bravely ignored the fact that the heating was broken in our kitchen whilst it was about -10 outside and warmed myself with sloe gin as I sewed. What could possibly go wrong?



Fortunately, it was a fairly easy project and I managed to get two stockings done while Mr Rubbish was out and Rubbishknitterjunior was asleep, so I could surprise them both on Christmas eve.



I just basically drew round mine in chalk to get the shape on two pieces of backing fabric (like this Paddington print - how cute is that? thanks to Kate from GreenEyedMonsters again, from her destash sesh!). Then selected some scraps of fabric which were big enough to piece into another stocking shape, and the colours went ok together. This was the bit that took the most time tbh, it's a difficult decision to make, and I changed my mind several times during sewing. I went for some sober, grown up type fabrics for Mr Rubbishknitter, with a little bit of red to cheer it up a little. And the boy got a sort of brown and green theme, with old shirts and fragments of pretty quilting fabric that was a present from audreym (thanks!).

I love the muted christmassyness of this fabric - 'A Partridge in a Pear Tree' from Abakhans bargain bin.

Once I'd pieced it all together, for each stocking, I sewed the two sides together. Then I made a lining out of the red fabric, which was basically just another identical stocking. I attached the lining by sewing around the top, with wrong sides facing outwards. I left a little gap then turned it inside out, pressing and topstitching around the leg opening. I also put in a little hanging loop cut from a ribbon, cos obviously that's a fairly necessary feature for a christmas stocking. I think the results were pretty good - both stocking recipients seemed pleased with my handiwork, for the whole 5 seconds they admired it before diving in for the presents inside.

Anyway, hope all my blog readers enjoyed the festive season. Happy New Year everyone!

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