Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Knitting for Mothers

Remember me telling you about the Cardigan/jacket that i was knitting for my Mum? Well, I give you the Left Front! 
I cast on the two sleeves together using the side-by-side method, not the fancy one behind/inside the other technique that you can use for socks.  I should have done this for the fronts too – hindsight can be a wonderful thing!  I’m about half way done with the sleeves – another set of increases to go which takes me up to the elbow, and then it’s just back and forth for a while without having to worry!  I’m beginning to think it may have been a bad idea to knit this in pieces as my experience with Kaiden’s jumper (read about that here, here and here) is coming back to haunt me!


The pattern is relatively simple - a diamond with moss stitch inner, and bobbles at each end which I’ve memorised already.
After the sleeves, and not including the mountain of sewing I’ll have to do, I still need to cast on for the back, right front, and hood (which is picked up from the back and fronts, rather than cast on).  I keep telling myself it won’t take long at all, but I think I might be wrong!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

It’s Picture Time!

Well hopefully I have that weird photo problem sorted out, so now I would like to present to you my Cream Jumper!

It still has no sleeves, which will be quick and plain with plain ribbing (famous last words!) and no collar to match the cables at the bottom.  I’m concerned that I’ll need to add a few stitches to the collar so I can get it over my head, I’d forgotten how much cables pull the fabric together – much more than ribbing does!  Still, I love the way that it pulls in and shows off my figure! 

The cables made my fingers ache by the end so it stops just above my hips but even then I had to add little flares at each side so that it didn’t ride up so much.

Knitting on this has paused while I try and get the jacket done for my mum.  I’ve done the left front before (of course) realising I should have done both at the same time to get them equal.  I’ve learn my lesson though and I’m about a quarter of the way through knitting both sleeves together!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

A strange one

Strange because, well, windows live writer appears to not want me to show you the 6 inches of cabling I’ve done on my jumper, so unfortunately you’ll just have to take my word on it until it’s fixed!  I’ve got roughly another 6 inches left of cabling and ribbing to do, and then I have to start the sleeves and collar.  The sleeves should be pretty straight forward as they’re just vanilla stocking stitch and ribbing cuffs, but the collar will have the same cabled design.  Hopefully with less stitches it wont take so long though!

I took my mum shopping on Tuesday, and on a rare visitation to an actual Yarn Shop (instead of just the online variety), she actually found a pattern she liked!  It is pattern number 8259 from the “Stylecraft Life Aran” range – it has a hood, can be used as a jacket or a cardigan, and it has a zip.  I’ve just ordered two 400g balls of Sirdar/Hayfield Bonus in Granite Tweed (tweed is very fashionable this winter!) so fingers crossed they should arrive on Monday.

My actual reason for going into the yarn shop was for something entirely different.  I’ve settled on a shawl to knit – Shipwrecked from Spring ‘09 Knitty.  Luckily I wont be starting this project soon because not only is the yarn eluding me but so are the beads!  Firstly I can’t decide on what colour yarn to buy - I’d like to knit it in turquoise, or possibly a sea green, but I need beads that will either accent or contrast the yarn.  I’ve spent days just looking for the right sized beads, let alone the right colours!

Finally, I have a little project up my sleeve that may bring in a few pennies but it remains a secret still for a few weeks until I get some other projects out of the way!

Friday, October 2, 2009

The Incident

Today I was going to post a picture of two or three inches of cables and ribbing.  That is how much I’d gotten done in the two days since taming those stitches!  I’d devoted a whole afternoon to counting and recounting my stitches, making calculations, recalculating, test knitting and convincing myself that it was going to work.  That was before I picked up my needles today and found a large, gaping and slightly damp hole just above the lifeline I’d added to save myself from my OWN mistakes.  This is the price I pay for having a small puppy. So today I spent the afternoon ripping back yarn with a small mohair content (there is fluff everywhere), not fun.  I got it back to the lifeline, and tried it on as I hadn’t done before “The Incident” and have now decided it needs another two inches (ish) of plain stockinette stitch before i start the ribbing up again.  I can’t complain, stockinettte is easier than cabling and 2x2 ribbing and by the time most of you have read this I’ll have already started cabling again!