Category: knitting

Knitting Update…

Owl Wrist Warmers

The run-up to Christmas is always the same for me. Deciding far too late that I want to knit something far too ambitious, and then wrapping it up in such a hurry that I forget all about taking photographs. This year I did remember to take pictures of a couple of things, so here they are!

These are the Owl Wrist Warmers from issue 21 of Mollie Makes. I’m not a regular reader of Mollie Makes, but I saw this pattern on the front and knew it would make a lovely Christmas present, so I snapped it up. They’re made from one ball of Sirdar Click, and the only alteration I made was to mirror the cables on each cuff. (I’m fussy like that.) The hardest part (apart from wrestling double-pointed needles, which I still dislike) was sewing on the little buttons so that the owls didn’t look too cross-eyed!

Childry Shawl

This is Childry, from Issue 100 of Simply Knitting – well, from the booklet of extra patterns that came with it. The recommended yarn is Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply, which I didn’t have, so I went for 2 balls of Regia sock yarn in one of the Kaffe Fassett colourways. You can wear it either way round – with the point at the front it’s ideal for filling in the annoying little gap at the top of a coat.

Childry Shawl

This way round, it’s held together with a sparkly little hairclip from Accessorize. I must admit that I thought I was going to die of boredom while I was knitting this. Because it all garter stitch all the time, it’s wonderfully easy and the self-striping yarn does all the work of making it look pretty. But the row where you start with 250 stitches and then work k1, yo, k1 into every stitch, leaving you with a count of 750… that ruffle took some getting through. And then, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to do a picot cast off! Which looks lovely, and I’m very pleased with it, but it took three evenings to get the shawl cast off and finished.

And of course, being a sucker for punishment, I immediately cast on to make another one for myself. Mine will be made from some Mystery Colinette that I’ve tried to knit a bunch of times without success, but which I think will be perfect for this.

7/07/2012

I also finished knitting these socks…

Stripy Sock

and these socks…

Noro Kureyon

but not these socks. I’m about half way through the second one, and they’ll hopefully be a birthday gift if I can get them finished in the next ten days.

Currently on the needles are:

  • The Noro socks above
  • The aforementioned Mystery Colinette Childry shawl
  • A black and silver sparkly cardigan
  • A complicated lace jumper that I can only knit when alone in the house
  • Two horrible peach shawls that I’m probably going to unravel soon

That should keep me busy for a while… until I decide I’m bored of them all and cast on something else!

Knitting catch-up

Luxury Tweed Scarf

Look, I have been doing some knitting, and I’ve finally finished a few things! This is Paul’s scarf, which I started when we got back from Waltz on the Wye. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed, and it sort-of-almost matches Paul’s Felted Tweed hat and fingerless gloves that I knitted a few winters ago.

Luxury Tweed Scarf

The pattern is Yarn Harlot’s one-row handspun scarf, and it took two skeins of yarn to make it roughly waist length. I wanted a pattern that was reversible (because it bothers me when you can see the back of a scarf), and one that was very easy to remember so I could just keep knitting without having to think too much. Sadly I didn’t manage to get it finished before Paul went to Canada, but it turns out that Ottowa’s warmer than Reading, so it didn’t really matter.

Marian (pink)

This cowl is a direct result of the fact that the yarn (Rowan Biggy Print) wouldn’t fit into my new tidy stash. So I decided to knit it, and move it into the “Someone Else’s Christmas Present” pile instead. Much more satisfying.

The pattern is Marian by Jane Richmond, with a slight modification. My only 15mm circular needle was longer than specified, so I cast on 65 instead of 45 stitches, and kept going until I’d used up three and a bit balls of yarn. You can either wear the cowl as-is, like a great big scarf that can’t fall off, of you can double it over and wear it like a giant neckwarmer.

Marian (thunder)

I liked it so much that I made another one. This got rid of an ill-fated cardigan that I’d knitted but never worn. Much nicer!

(The dress, by the way, is Simplicity 1755, just waiting for its collar and buttons.)

Neat and tidy

Almost tidy stash...

Last month I took a weekend off work, to celebrate my birthday. I’d decided to have a picnic, but in case the weather was bad, we had to be able to move everybody indoors if necessary. This involved tidying the house to within an inch of its life. The main thing making the living room look untidy was my yarn stash, so the next day we bit the bullet and did something about it.

The wooden box is actually a toy chest, from Argos. I’d have liked something larger, a proper blanket box, but this was the biggest piece of furniture that we could fit into the space and still open the door. All of my yarn has now been sealed into freezer bags (to prevent moths) and squished inside. As you can see, not all of it fits, but I’m knitting as fast as I can!

The paper bags at the front house the projects I’m currently working on*, plus some yarn that absolutely wouldn’t fit in the box. The decorated chest on top of the box contains, yes, you’ve guessed it, more yarn. The little bag on top of that is for my current sock-in-progress.

Tidy needles!

I have a long orange plastic box that holds most of my straight knitting needles. I inherited it from my Aunty Val. The ones that are too big for the box are stuffed decoratively into a glass pasta jar. This work of organisational genius however, is the brainchild of Lettice. All of my double-pointed and circular needles are now neatly sorted into DL size plastic wallets, courtesy of WHSmith. These fit sideways inside a CD storage box, alongside my needle sizing gadget. All I need to do now is label the wallets with the sizes of the needles inside. Perfect!

The stripy tin holds all the little gubbins that don’t fit anywhere else – scissors, stitch markers, tape measures, cable needles, that kind of thing.

There is one more box of yarn, a canvas one that zips closed, bought a very long time ago from Muji. That houses knitted things that are waiting to be unravelled, and some extremely chunky wool that I don’t really like to knit with any more but is too nice to get rid of. And then there are the four balls of yarn that Paul brought back from Canada for me, which won’t fit into the toy box or the treasure chest. Or the canvas box. Oops.

Best get knitting then, I suppose!

 

*By “currently working on” I mean “haven’t finished yet”. Including a little cardigan that I started knitting in 2007. I’m hoping that being able to see these projects all the time will encourage me to actually finish knitting the damn things.

My husband went to Canada…

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…and came back with some slightly confusing yarn.

I’d asked Paul not to bring me any chocolate home from his business trip (having recently received a mountain of very fine choccies for my birthday) and suggested that yarn would be an appropriate substitute.

As everybody* knows, souvenir yarn doesn’t count towards your stash, so it’s an excellent gift. But in order to make a good souvenir, it should ideally be something that you can’t just walk into a yarn shop and buy locally. So I sent Paul yarn shopping in Canada, with these criteria in mind, plus a couple of Canadian brand names in case of emergency.

So, you may be wondering why the yarn in the top picture is very clearly labelled “Zealana” and “Kiwi”. Apparently New Zealand’s in Canada now. Perhaps the lady in the Ottowa yarn shop, who sold this to my poor unsuspecting husband after he’d explained that he wanted specifically Canadian yarn, is in need of a little geography lesson.

But, it is a yarn I’ve never seen locally, it’s super-soft, and it has the exciting new-to-me ingredient of possum, so it definitely works as an excellent souvenir!

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Bless him, once Paul had realised that the first yarn was definitely not Canadian, he went yarn shopping again!

This, which is done absolutely no justice by the photo (the purple yarn is much more of an aubergine colour), is the softest yarn on earth. This is by no means an exaggeration, I spent a good half hour last night just stroking it. It’s Illimani Royal 1, and it’s made IN CANADA, from the finest 1% of the fleece from Bolivian alpaca. The colours above are hot pink (of course!) and eggplant.

Softest. Yarn. Ever.

It’s crying out to be some kind of scarf or cowl I think, so I can snuggle my face into it as often as possible. Or I might just leave it sitting on the arm of the sofa, so I can stroke it like a soft little pet. (What? The knitters know what I mean.)

I don’t know yet what I’ll make with the Zealana. I was thinking originally of socks, but the cotton content (organic cotton, no less!) gives it such a nice drape, I’m thinking that maybe a little lacy shawl might be in order.

I do need to catch up with a few knitting photos though, as I have managed to find the time to actually finish a few things lately! This is good, as all the things I’ve finished are intended to be Christmas gifts. This has the added bonus of getting some of the yarn out of my house and into other people’s, which I’m sure Paul will be really pleased about!

 

* By “everybody” I clearly mean “knitters who are looking to acquire more yarn without the attendant guilt of purchasing it for themselves when they already have a cupboard full at home”. By which I mean all of them.

Noro Kureyon Sock

Noro Kureyon

I’ve been knitting rather a lot of socks lately, mostly with Regia yarn, because that’s what’s easiest to get hold of at my local shops.

I’ve been resisting the lure of Noro Kureyon sock yarn for quite a while now, mainly because it’s usually out of my budget. But the colours are just lovely, so as soon as I spotted some in the John Lewis sale I couldn’t resist.

When I was winding the skein into a ball I thought I’d bought the impossible – a ball of Noro without a knot in it! Sadly with a mere five grams to go, the inevitable knot appeared. But at least there was only one, which is a massive improvement on any other ball of Noro I’ve ever bought. It’s still full of bits of twig though, which seems ridiculous. If I’ve spent all this money on a ball of  yarn, I don’t want to be picking bits of vegetation out of it as I knit!

It’s also really oddly spun. Very thick and very thin in places, which makes it impossible to achieve a nice smooth fabric. This is going to be one lumpy sock. So twisty, too. The yarn is full of energy, and absolutely desperate to ply itself as you knit. And then there’s the texture. So rough! Having just worked on one sock with some scrumptiously soft String Theory Colorworks yarn, this Noro feels like horrible scratchy rope.

Everyone who’s seen me knitting this sock has been absolutely entranced by the colours, but immediately disappointed as soon as they’ve touched it. I’m assured that the socks will soften once they’ve been through the wash, and I really hope that’s true! I was going to give them to a friend as a Christmas gift, but I don’t think “I thought you’d like a pair of scratchy, lumpy socks” is quite the message I want to convey!

Silky Tweed Clapotis

Silky Tweed Clapotis

This is my fourth Clapotis, in Rowan Silky Tweed. It’s taken me more than a year to knit it, because I kept getting sidetracked by more interesting projects along the way. I wore my Rowan Tapestry clapotis ever such a lot over the winter, but it doesn’t quite go with all my clothes. This nice neutral grey should hopefully fill in the gaps. Although it’s a bit heavier than the Tapestry, the silk gives it a lovely drape.

I knitted this one back-and-forth on a circular needle, and that helped to alleviate the terrible wrist pain I’d had from the previous one. Because you can keep the weight of the weight of the knitting in your lap rather than on the needles, it’s a lot easier to manage.

Silky Tweed Clapotis

I was spurred on to finish this one by the fact that I’m going on holiday soon, and I’m going to be spending quite a lot of time outdoors. I’d rather hoped that in the middle of May I might need to be taking sandals with me, rather than an enormous scarf, but this is England, and the weather’s nothing if not unpredictable. I should probably thankful that I’ve also knitted a matching hat.

Sock Addict.

Stripy Sock

I always thought it was a bit silly when people learned to knit socks and promptly gave up knitting anything else. I’ve made a few pairs for other people over the past couple of years, but it wasn’t until I made a stripy pair for myself that the bug really bit. As soon as I’d cast them off, I started the toe of this one straight away.

This is another Regia colourway, and I rather like the pink, red and orange stripes. I couldn’t tell from looking at the ball quite how the pattern was going to develop, but I’m pleased that it’s turning out so regular. I’m using my usual toe-up pattern with a slip stitch heel, and I’ve just reached the stage of increasing for the instep. This means I’ve just realised that the stripe pattern’s going to be disrupted as I keep increasing and when I work the heel. I’ll find out how much that bothers me as I go along. One solution would be to work the toes and heels in another colour. This avoids the pattern disruption to a certain extent (although the stripes will still get thinner as you work the gusset increases), and it also means that the toes and heels can easily be pulled out and re-knit when they start to wear out.

I have plenty of stashed Regia waiting for me, most of it earmarked as Christmas Socks for friends and family. I’ve also thought of a few basic pattern variations, so I don’t go mad from knitting the same socks over and over again.

I’ve also started looking at different sock yarns, although there’s not much available in the shops where I live. Noro sock yarn feels kind of scratchy, and I’m not sure I’d like to knit with it. I’m looking forward to seeing how my Schoppel Wolle Flying Saucer comes out. I’m on the hunt for some extravagantly purple sock yarn for a friend (recommendations welcome!), and I’ve spent a while looking for the perfect green-and-white self-striping yarn. Thanks to the Yarn Harlot I found it this morning, and have now ordered the last ball of Clorophyll from String Theory Colorworks. I also picked up a mini skein of plain white, specifically designed for the toes and heels.

So, I’ve just spent twenty-five pounds on the materials (and international shipping) to make a single pair of socks. For a friend who hasn’t asked for socks, doesn’t know they’re getting socks, and has no idea how long a pair of socks takes to knit. Clearly this isn’t a gift for them, it’s a gift for me.

I’m turning into a sock addict.

Louisa Harding Ginerva

Louisa Harding Ginerva

Issue 34 of The Knitter dropped though my letterbox a couple of days ago, and I was immediately smitten by this lacy dress pattern. It’s Ginerva by Louise Harding, and it’s so new that there are currently only 2 projects for it on Ravelry. (One of them’s mine!)

I decided straight away that I didn’t want to make a dress version, but a shorter jumper would be perfect. A few sums and a day later, I found myself in John Lewis buying two balls of Kidsilk Haze Stripe. This is the Forest colourway.

I’ve started with the sleeves. That way I can see how much yarn they take up, and then hopefully figure out how long I can make the body afterwards. I tried to pick two balls of yarn that looked as though they’d been wound the same way, in the hope that the stripes won’t be too all over the place on the finished jumper.

So far I’ve managed the set-up rows and one repeat of the edging. The pattern says to repeat the twelve row lace pattern until the work measures a certain length (depending on your size), and then you get into the tricky business of trying to work shaping at the same time as keeping track of which pattern row you’re on. I know from experience that I’m very bad at following more than one set of instructions at once, so it seemed like a good idea to make myself a chart. That way I can simply tick off each row as I work it, without having to scribble incomprehensibly all over the magazine.

I thought it would be nice to share it, so you can have it as an Excel file, or a PDF.

Please note that this is NOT THE ENTIRE PATTERN. That’s obviously copyrighted to Louisa Harding and The Knitter. This is just a way of keeping track of the lace motif and the shaping, for both the body and the sleeves. You’ll need a proper copy of the pattern for the rest.

Also, these are only the instructions for a size 14. If you need a different size, I recommend downloading the Excel file and using the original pattern to update the stitch counts for each row. (The central lace motif stays the same for each size.) If you’re already making a size 14, you can just download the PDF.

I’m rapidly discovering that this is the most complicated thing I’ve ever knitted, mostly because the lace motif is worked from both sides. This is definitely going to be slow going because of all the counting and tracking required. Not one to sit and knit in front of the telly, or to take out and about with me. Thankfully I’ve cast on another sock for that!

Stripy Socks

Socks

This was something of an exercise in nail biting – would it be possible to make a pair of socks from just 80 grams of yarn? The answer turned out to be yes – if you don’t mind them being short, and you’ve got a little bit of something else to use for the heels!

The stripes are just less than a single ball of one of Kaffe Fassett’s colourways for Regia. I didn’t think I’d matched the repeat when I wound the yarn into two balls, and had resigned myself to knitting fraternal rather than identical socks. I’m thrilled to bits that the stripes actually match! The heels are a little bit of Opal which just happened to match the purple stripes perfectly.

The pattern is Wendy D Johnson’s Slip Stitch Heel Basic Socks. I knitted them from the toe up on two circular needles, starting with a figure eight cast on and ending with a Russian cast off. I have a high instep so I like socks with a heel flap and gusset, as they give a little extra room. I also like the way that the slip stitch heel provides a thicker fabric where the socks will wear. I might experiment in future with slip stitch toes!

I bought new needles for these – Addi 30cm circulars with angled tips. I’d been using 40cm Pony circulars, but found the extra cable a bit annoying. I’d say that the 30cm needles are the perfect length for knitting socks in the round, especially with the angled tips, but I did find the purl rows a little fiddly when I was working on the heels. My gauge is much better for socks on 2.5mm needles – nice tight fabric, and minimal holes in the short-row heels. I might buy a couple more, so I can have more than one pair of socks on the go at once.

I think the only thing I’m not completely happy with is the cast off. I know from experience that I tend to cast off tightly, so I looked around for some stretchy solutions. Unfortunately I think I’ve gone too far the other way, and the socks are very slightly baggy around my ankles. Mind you, if the socks were longer the ribbing would be around a wider part of my leg, so the cast off would probably be just fine. Perhaps I’ll give it another try before I decide against it altogether.

I may have had a little falling down in the Hobbycraft sale just after Christmas, which resulted in rather a lot of half price Regia coming home with me. Looks as though everyone’s getting socks for Christmas, now I’ve got the hang of making them!

Peachy Shawls

Tulips Shawlette

Now that these shawls are finally finished and have reached their recipients, I can safely show them to you all!

The Tulips Shawlette, above, is by Anniken Allis, and the pattern’s in Issue 36 of The Knitter. The moment I saw it, I reached for the first 4-ply yarn I could find in my stash, and started knitting. It was quite a while before I realised that I had no earthly use for a peach lace shawl, but I was enjoying knitting it so much that I didn’t really care. Eventually it occurred to me that it would look lovely on Paul’s grandmother, and it became her Christmas gift.

The yarn is Rowan Cashcotton 4-ply, now discontinued. I usually prefer not to work with cotton because it hurts my hands, but this is soft and lovely. Unfortunately the angora does shed – working with this on my lap made me wonder whether Bond villains need shares in lint rollers, to get rid of all the fluffy white hairs.

Tulips Shawlette

I hadn’t knitted any lace quite as complicated as this before, feather & fan being about my limit. But the two designs fitted together really well (being an 8-row and a 16-row repeat) and the pattern was written out as well as charted. I followed the written instructions for the most part, because I find a row of text easier to keep in my head than a row of symbols. I used a lot of sticky notes to mark my place, and it took me a long time to really understand how the pattern worked.

Tulips Shawlette

I did use the charts for the edging pattern, mostly because I couldn’t seem to get the written instructions to repeat properly. I’m not terribly keen on the edging, it doesn’t seem very definite, somehow. But I do like the shawl as a whole, and I feel a bit braver about working from charts now.

Peach Wall of Shawl

Because the Tulips pattern required a lot of concentration, I wanted another project to work on that was much simpler. I also wanted something that could also work as a lap blanket. This one is Wall of Shawl, by Martina Patricia Munroe. I think this design looks much more interesting in a handspun or multi-coloured yarn, but I thought it would be nice to make a “matching” gift for each of Paul’s grandmothers, and I was really enjoying working with the Cashcotton.

In fact, I was enjoying it right up until I came to knit the edging. That yo row (the decorative holes near the bottom) doubles the stitch count, at which point I thought my head might explode with boredom. I didn’t count the stitches on the final row, because I didn’t want to know!

The only thing I don’t like about this shawl is the way that the edge curls up. It’s a natural feature of stocking stitch, so there’s not much I could have done to prevent it. The pattern suggests knitting the ruffle about 3” long, which probably helps, but I was running out of time and patience. I could also have cast off on the wrong side, which would have turned the edging inwards, rather than out. But the shawl itself is a lovely size, and the fabric drapes beautifully.

I still don’t have any real need for a peach lace shawl, but I have quite a lot of this yarn left, and The Knitter seems to be going through a phase of showing me lots of lovely patterns that I really must knit as soon as I possibly can! I’m resisting the urge at the moment though, while I knit my fifth Clapotis – a nice simple one in Rowan Silky Tweed. After that, perhaps I’ll cast on for something a little bit more complicated.