Friday, April 30, 2010

Change of direction

Me and the cross stitch have had an argument, so I’ve gone back to the GAAA.  More Wordless Wednesdays to follow!

Obligitory Puppy Pic:P4300006

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Boyfriend Socks v2

So I’m thinking of knitting Boyfriend Socks again, this time for my dad.  Cygnet do a nice 4ply yarn that’s good for socks, so I’m trying to pick between the manly (read: dark and plain) colours of Navy Blue, Pine Mix, Grey Mix and Black.  I’m concerned the Navy and Black will be too dark to show the pattern so I’m leaning towards the grey – it goes with most things after all!

As you may remember, last time they came out a bit on the small side, lovely as they were, so I’m making sure I have the right measurements before I begin!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Another Cross Stitch Update

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This is what I’ve done since my last update.  It’s seems to be going pretty quickly!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Naughty Knotter

P4130012 It’s done! The knots don’t look as scrappy as I was worrying they would, and the white corner looks kind of quirky, in a patchy way. Still, i don’t think poppy will notice, photos of her reaction coming soon!

Really Glad I can put this project behind me as its been a bit of a long slog and it means i can spend some more time worrying about my other projects!

Friday, April 16, 2010

The other thing

This is what’s been keeping me away from my knitting recently:

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It’s a cross stitch of a house, and there will be flowers around the edge of it too.  I love new challenges and apart from the ones you do as a kid I’ve never tried cross stitch before and really wanted to have a go.  I’m doing quite well apart from the odd miscounted block of stitches that I've had to unpick.  I’ve learnt not to stitch bits that are really far away from other bits because it’s hard to make sure they’re in the right place until it’s too late!

I plan on putting the finished article on my wall in my new home, and it’ll be the first home-made thing I’ve done for this house, so I’m quite looking forward to that!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Blood Shawl

Well that's it’s official nickname now, because it feels like that's what it’s going to take to knit it.  Let me tell you the story.

The pattern, Garden Path Shawl, by Shui Kuen Kozinski is gorgeous and takes just under 1000m of worsted weight yarn (that works out to be one kilometre!).  I chose not to use the recommended yarn but went with Rowan’s Pure Wool Aran (in the shade “blood”, I’m sure that was an omen!), and calculated how many balls I’d need to make up the 1000m.  According to my calculations (which I checked and rechecked quite a lot, because I tend to worry about these things anyway) I should have had about 3 quarters of a ball left over, if not more.  You can guess where I’m going with this can’t you?  Believe it or not, by my guesstimates I’m short by maybe a ball and a half.  Now I could imagine using half a ball more than stated, because I may be knitting quite loosely, but surely not by enough to make that sort of difference?  The long and short of it (no pun intended) is that I’ve cast my net far and wide but I can’t for the life of me find balls in the same dye lot that are the same or even similar, so I’m stuck with having to reknit it, maybe on needles a size smaller and maybe missing out a few rows, which I’d really hate to do.

But that’s where I'm up to with the blood shawl, and it’s still sitting in the naughty corner because every time I look at it I think of all the hard work and concentration that went into it, and how much is still left to go.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Ten Stitch Wonder

Well it’s been a while, readers, about which I apologise. Since my last update I have moved house though, so I feel it’s not all my fault! In truth I’ve had a number of knitting failures and it’s left me feeling a little uninspired to knit. I’ll go into more detail about that at a later date but for now I’ll show you something I feel a little proud of!

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P4110009This is the Ten-stitch Blanket I was working on that Poppy decided was for her. Those are my toes, for a sense of scale! I’ve nearly finished it, in fact this is how far I am from the end, but ironically I’ve run out of yarn! I’m hardly about to go out and buy any more of this stuff so I’m weaving in the tails I’ve left as I’ve joined new balls, and then using the off-cuts to knot into one big length to try and get a bit more of it done. After that if I’m still short I’m just going to have to use some white acrylic double knit to finish it off. I doubt Poppy will complain anyway!

In other news, the Garden Path Shawl I started in January has ground to a halt and I’ve started to design a new lace scarf. I’ve also recently started my first cross stitch project, which is going well apart from some fixable mistakes! I’ve not started any new afghan squares, but it’s on my list of things to do. I think I’m about half way through that now, it’s an epic project!