This is another one of those “I was gone but now I’m back” posts

It’s true, I’ve neglected this blog AGAIN.  The truth is that I’ve been really busy, and I’ve been meaning to write, but never did.  Yesterday I read an article about a site called 750words.com, which basically encourages you to splurge 750 words in complete anonymity and privacy with the aim of increasing productivity and inspiration.  So over the past two days I’ve written over 1500 words, and some of it did indeed have some real gems to post here!

So, between the last post and this one, I’ve knit two hats, a scarf, a hoody for a little’un, a dog jumper and I’ve started a tunic for my mum!  I did say I’ve been busy!  Sadly I took zero photos, so there’s nothing to show here for my efforts, but I can at least tell you about them!

I knit a hat and scarf set for my auntie in February just before we had that sudden cold snap – right when you want to have just received a knitted gift!  I knit it in a simple basket stitch, from a red shiny yarn by Patons i think.. helpful i know!  It was very soft though and I was very happy with such a simple knit.

The second hat was in a chunky variegated blue yarn which i also knit in a sort of basket stitch, this time for my mum.  Again i cant remember the name of the yarn, I may have had the time to knit but not the time to write all this down!  I had just under half the yarn left so i started knitting a hat for myself, but havent finished it yet.  I had a horrible suspicion that I would run out of yarn, so i did what every sensible knitter does – put it to one side in case it magically spawns more yarn!

The next thing I knit was a hoody for my sweet little niece.  It was using some yarn I was gifted – already knit up into something else so I can claim I never actually knew the brand of yarn!  I designed a top down raglan cardigan with moss-stitch button-bands and cuffs, and a lovely King Charles Brocade through the body.  And of course it had a hood, with the same moss-stitch border around the edge.  I finished it off with some lovely pastel-coloured flower buttons.  I’ve been intending to write up the pattern for this but not got around to it yet!

The last thing I’ve finished is a wee jumper for Rosie.  She’s been feeling the cold of late – after all she is quite a slight little dog, so I butchered a drops pattern that was meant to include all kinds of intarsia and fanciness which didn’t get included in my version.  I used a striped yarn (Striped, not self striping – so the resultant effect is  more like awful camouflage) and knit the size meant for Chihuahuas, but it is still a bit too big!  I will probably knit her another one but this time not do as many rows before the split for the leg holes comes, and also the small strip that goes between the legs (and eventually is picked up from for the leg-cuffs) needs to be 2-4 stitches narrower.  She really is tiny!

Next time I will show you (with pictures, I promise!) the tunic I’m knitting for mum.  It really is going extremely slowly, possibly because I’m comparing it to my last few FO's, which have all been quite small and quick!

Long Time No Post

So, almost two years between posts…  At least there is a lot I can tell you about!  In a nutshell, there are a lot of finished projects, started projects and hibernating ones.

Sleepyhead, and a Finished Object

I went to a really good gig last night, my significant other was doing some filming for a band called Freaky Age who were headlining at the Mello Mello in Liverpool (look them up, they’re huge in Belgium!), so me and some friends tagged along. The trouble is we didn’t get back home until the small hours and now I’m utterly exhausted! I’m not used to being out so late any more!
Anyway I promised some finished objects so here they are.
Pattern: Baby Sophisticate by Linden Down
Yarn: “Jarol Baby Rambler Aran” in pale blue
Techniques involved: Some short rows, increasing and picking up stitches
Comments: I was asked to knit two of these, one for a baby boy born about a fortnight ago, and another for a boy due next April (nothing like getting ahead of the game!). The pattern was really quick to knit – both took a total of two days! I think what made it a little quicker is that garter stitch is substituted for the usual ribbing, but ultimately there is no making up to do - just a few loose ends to weave in and the addition of some buttons and it’s all done!

Back Again!

This is me blogging again after quite a holiday. Although I’ve still been knitting throughout, we had a double bereavement (my uncle and my horse), which was tough. But I'm back and (hopefully if it works!) blogging to you from my new Blackberry! I love new gadgets! Talking of new, for my birthday I was bought a “knitpro symphonie” starter set and I love it to bits! For Christmas I'm going to be asking for lots of the expansion sets! I've got a whirlwind of finished objects to share, like this little item:

but more about that next time!

I'd lastly like to thank Josiekitten and SnoopyDog for the lovely comments on my last post, and congratulations to Josiekitten for having her blog featured in Yarn Forward Magazine!

Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone from Virgin Media

Summer Hiatus

So I've not updated this in a while, do we see a theme emerging?

That baby jumper, although it was well received, was a bugger to sew up because of that blue stripe - took two of us to do it!  Must find a baby raglan pattern for future projects, any ideas?

I've not really been knitting over the summer (hence the silence), it's just been far too hot!  Instead I devoted most of my time to my horse, my new puppy and my other hobby - Family History.  Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll get my act together and start blogging about that too.  I finally picked the needles back up when I went for a weekend of relaxation in Sunny Suffolk, and I knitted away at my Great American Aran Afgan.  I Promise I'll go into it in more detail in a future post, hell - I could devote and entire blog to it!

While knitting squares for my afgan, I was also cruising for ideas for a new winter jumper (preferably one I could wear away from the farm!). The idea for my current project was born when I came across "The incredible Custom-Fit Raglan Sweater".  Now as anyone who knows me will agree, I'm quite skinny and I find it hard to find patterns that include my size, so i thought I'd have a bash at this one.  My plan is to knit a plain yoke, but start the ribbing a lot higher than normal, and intersperse cabling within the ribbing, similar to the Palindrome Scarf I finished last year.  I'm also going to add a polarneck using that pattern, so lets hope I have enough yarn!  Speaking of yarn, I've decided to use Patons Caressa DK in Cream (4550) which I found at http://www.kempswoolshop.com/ for 59p per 50g Ball - a huge bargain given it retails for about £3.50!  Keep your fingers crossed for me on this one though, it's the first time I've mashed patterns together like this so I'm in completely new territory.

Woosh!

Well, soon after I finished the last post I'd actually cast off on both sleeves, and now I've just finished the back and front of the wee little jumper!  I think by next week I'll actually have finished and photographed it!  I love baby knits, they're even faster than socks and you can do whatever the hell you want on them - stuff that would look crazy on an adult only ever looks cute on babies!

Had a bit of a find today - about 1.5gb worth of knitting patterns appeared on my computer, ones I swear I've never downloaded or even seen before!  Been doing some catalogueing and I'm slowly adding them to my collection.  They're all 70's and 80's style patterns for kids (so far!)but there's some really cute things in there, like little chequered jackets ad lace christening  shawls.

My tip for using up your leftovers...

Find a baby, and knit it a jumper!  Seriously, baby jumpers are tiny and if you have a range of colours and a bog-standard jumper pattern, then the world is your mollusc!



I had quite a lot of white yarn left over from knitting a blanket, and some sparkley white from some other baby clothes, and some blue from knitting that teddy.  All Acryllic and all DoubleKnit, so I've started knitting my friend's 7-month old nepphew a jumper.  The pattern I'm using is for the jumper in leaflet number 4273 by Stylecraft, which is plain stockinette stitch and is already intended to be knit using different colours.  I cast on both sleeves at once, so I could be certain they matched, but I have cast on the front and back seperately, since I don't have straight needles long enough to cast on both!



The plan for the body of the jumper is blue cuffs and neckline, and two blue stripes starting below the sleeves with the white sparkley stuff between them.  I've even drawn it all out on graph paper!

Update

As normal, Ive been meaning to update this but just havent gotten around to it.

Finished a few bits and peices and have finally uploaded the photographs for it! So, in no particular order:

The little baby hat I knitted ages ago and didn't post photos for... if it looks an odd shape it's because its perched on a spindle of cds! I think you can just about see the yellow flecks in the bobble, it came out quite well really!




This is the palindrome scarf i half-knit on holliday in about 3 days, the other half took another 2 weeks! It's made from wendy serenity Aran and is in colourway purple haze. I never ever take it off, it's just too warm. Oh, and it's 6 foot long! A quick note to anyone considering the pattern - there is so much cabling that your hands will fall off. Seriously.





This bookmark took me about 2 hours to knit in total, although i did it in little bits because 2-stitch cabling is hell on my fingers, and I'd already knit enough cables to last me the year when i made my scarf! I used a stitch pattern from a dictionary, and added the border, a tassle and an eyelet to feed it through. If anyone wants the pattern, I'd be willing to pass it on, I prudently wrote it down as i was doing it!



These are my first pair of socks I've knitted - I bought a lovely set of 5 2.5mm dpns called "purple pins" from Knit n Caboodle (prompt delivery, didn't charge until dispatch) which have been my inspiration, after all you need to have the right tools to start with! I knit them with the super expensive chi sockyarn which i bought at The Natural Dye Studio open day thingy i went to in the summer, and they're so comfy, but i feel so guilty about wearing them cos they're handwash only... The surprising thing about the yarn though was that i only used 45g of it to make this pair of socks, so I've just started a second pair...

This is little blue teddy, the first of two i intend to knit (one in blue, one in fawn). This little chap is for a little boy being born in early january, and will be sent off along with all the other little things i knitted. The pattern is from jean greenhowe's Traditional favourites - The knitting was as easy as pie but the sewing up was another matter. The head, no matter how hard i tried, would not go on straight. I matched up seams to the best of my ability, but after sewing around the neckline, looked more like one of those tortured teddies that end up being used as some sort of voodoo doll for children! I eventually managed to get the neck so that he was looking in a more healthy direction, but it's still not straight and I'm not unpicking it again! The scarf was made from some white acryllic, couldn't tell you what it was though except that it was the first ball under my questing fingers. And thank god I've always got half a ball of some sort of black yarn lying around! Now all i have to do is work up the motivation to get the other one done too (will be posted to a lovely friend who is attempting to help me through my degree, more on that later!)

Thats all my finished objects... now i look back I've actually done quite a lot!

Update on shawl - it's still not finished - the sewing of the border has gone badly, it is in the naughty corner and will probably stay there til after christmas now. After hours of faffing about and arguing with my mother about how the corners should be sewn, we finally decided on a corner shape. The long and short of the problem is in the fact that she got the measuring tape out, made lots of precise calculations about how much of the work to use for the corners and how much would be needed in between, then completely disregarded them and pulled a different number out of thin air. Guess what? It doesn't fit. I don't want to talk about it anymore, it makes me sad.

Been planning as a future project a pair of rather theatrical armwarmers from some mohair that Mo sent me, with pointed cuffs that come down over my hand, and a big thick ribbon to lace it up the side, since I'll be knitting it straight I think. Unless i pull off the 3 rows i knit to start a top on my 4mm circs... Now there's a thought!

In other news, my love life still sucks and will remain in such a condition because there is no such thing as men when it comes to the equine industry, seems like what few there are go into hiding or something! It's gotten so bad now that i have various family members keeping their eyes peeled for me!
My degree is confusing the crap out of me but that isn't anything new. It's not the learning bit that is confusing, it's the process of organising to take exams and do coursework and the general administration of it all. I'm not the best person for getting out there and talking to people, and when i get worried about things i have a tendancy to get over-emotional about it and panic over nothing.
And I've still not had my refund from angelyarns yet. And it's been 2 months. Not Happy.

Bugger

This will probably be a really short post today, as I've not been well for the past week and a half. I appear to have come down with some sort of stomach bug, and feel like I've been kicked in the tummy several times by a rather irate mule.

The baby hat I knitted has finally been finished!. My dad made a bobble for it (I think he secretly enjoyed doing it too) and instead of it just being plain white, he put some strands of yellow yarn through it that i had lying around. It looks really pretty, but I've not managed to take photos, on account of spending most of my time curled up in a ball, or in the bathroom! I promise I'll have pictures of it by next week!

When I have managed to knit, I've done more of the triangles for this Christening shawl I'm making. I'm knitting the 5Th at the moment, although I've a horrendous feeling I've counted the rows wrong and it will have to be frogged and started again. It's not so bad, it was only the 30Th row, and there was only as many stitches on the needles anyway. I think to about the tenth row there is barely 15 stitches on the needles, so it's pretty quick to knit in the early stages. By the time I reach the 94Th row, I will have roughly 98 stitches on the needle, so better that I spotted the mistake now rather than later!

The second triangle I knit for this project was a complete disaster and had to be frogged twice before it would knit up right. The first time I got roughly half way through the second repeat of the diamond pattern when my mind just went blank and I couldn't remember what row i was doing, didn't recognise any of the stitches I'd knit, or where i was up to in the pattern! I decided to tink back the stitches I'd just knit, but then lost a stitch off the left needle when trying to undo a PSSO on the right (don't ask!). Plan B was then to frog back until the purl row before the diamond pattern started, but then i couldn't get the stitches on the needle properly and row after row was torn out, until I just kept pulling at that yarn, with wild abandon... Second time wasn't so bad, just a silly mistake like I've just done with the latest triangle, miscounted the rows (I was watching telly again!) and missed two out :(

It's weird that when you frog, the first few rows you rip out are like ripping out your own heart; every stitch screams to you as it disappears into the puddle of yarn on the floor, and even though you'll probably reknit those rows, it'll never be quite the same stitch, or quite the same bit of yarn. But after the first few rows it's like each stitch ripped out releases the pride you placed into it, and that changes into the hope that next time you will do it right, and it WILL work out...

I did have another slight misshap with the shawl though, and I'm sure you can guess what I was doing when it happened! I was sewing together 4 of the triangles (i wanted to see how it came together) and it's not rocket science to do it either - all you do is mattress stitch the little looped edges together. Very quick and simple, ideal for someone like me. WELL. I sewed all four peices together, it looked so pretty, the little flower in the middle and the completely missmatched diamond patterns around the outside. Argh! I spent most of last night watching "Strictly Come Dancing", and picking the thing apart :( I'm in two minds now whether or not to leave the sewing until before i knit the border, but i can't help worrying i might do something wrong which i would discover sooner if i sew each triangle together as i knit it...

In other news, the BFL open day is this weekend and I can't wait! I really hope I'm better by then since i don't think coffee and scones are a happy bedfellow with a tetchy stomach :(

A Busy Week

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Firstly I’d like to thank everyone who visited my blog last Monday, and it was lovely to read the comments that were left. I had such awful thoughts that nobody would read this and I would be blogging to myself! I hope everyone comes back to read this weeks episode and that I can keep you all entertained a bit longer. I’m really intending for this to be a weekly blog, and so I will try and post on a monday to keep it regular.

Over the past week, I’ve finished two items - the baby jacket I was struggling to sew up, and also a very cute heart-shaped key ring. I have to admit defeat on the sewing up front however, my mother kindly offered to do all my sewing for me, which was a great weight off my shoulders!

The jacket I knitted from James C. Brett “Baby Shimmer” (as I did with the rest of the set from this pattern) and although it’s turned out lovely I do think the yarn is maybe a little too rough (even after washing) for next-to-skin usage. Although I’ve knit with acrylic yarns before, this was by far the roughest and I don't think I’d knit this pattern with this yarn again, maybe saving it for household items such as hot-water bottle covers and tea cosies.

The pattern called for two borders (one with button holes) and a collar that were all knit from stitches picked up along the side of the two front sections, but I found it difficult to pick up enough stitches evenly without it looking a complete mess. So I cheated!

The two borders were simple enough; I just cast on the required stitches and knit an extra row which would be used for seaming. The collar required a bit more thinking. The pattern asked for 22 stitches to be picked up along the neck on one side, then the live stitches on the stitch holder were to be slipped onto the needle and then another 22 stitches picked up on the other side. What I ACTUALLY did was cast on and knit 22 stitches, then slip onto the same needle the live stitches from the stitch holder, then cast on the remaining 22 stitches and knit them onto the needle holding the rest of the stitches. I broke the yarn and used a knitted-in join to knit the pieces together on the next row. So what I had at the end of this was two flaps of collar with an extra row to seam to the respective sides, but no extra rows in the middle, so it all evened out in the end!

My other FO is intended as a birthday present for a friend. I found a pattern for little stuffed hearts at http://mochimochiland.com/weblog/2007/02/free-pattern-hearts/ and I had some lovely pinky-purpley-blue eyelash yarn leftover from a project I finished many years ago. Unfortunately I’ve lost the ball bands for the yarn so I’ve no idea about its details. The heart was stuffed with leftover yarn ends from seaming my other projects, which makes an ideal stuffing for little objects such as this. When I (meaning my mother) sewed it up, the key ring chain was sewn into the seam to make it a little more secure. The whole thing must have taken me about an hour and a half, and it makes a lovely little present to give to someone without having to spend loads of money, which is great considering we’re all counting our pennies at the moment.

I started another part of the set that goes with the jacket; it’s a little hat with a pompom on top. I haven’t made pompoms since I was in Brownie Guides, (many years ago!) so it will be quite a re-adventure for me, after the yards and yards of 2x2 ribbing I feel like I’ve already completed! Just the mittens and bootees to go, although I think it’s very probable I’ll run out of yarn before I complete those. The yarn I bought must have different yardage per ball than the one that the pattern recommends because I definitely bought the recommended amount in grams, and there’s not that much variation in my tension. It’s just a shame really as the balls I bought were on sale for 89p per 100g and I doubt I’ll get more for that price if I go back!

In other news, there is a fibre event happening in Chester at the end of this month, and I shall be attending (although I've not a clue where it is!). I've already arranged for a babysitter for my horse and I fully intend on having a good day out wool shopping, and then possibly venturing into chester itself. From what I've been told, one of my favourite online yarn shops http://www.thenaturaldyestudio.com/ will have a stall there, and the whole event is apparently hosted by http://www.bluefaced.com, although as hard as I look, i can't find anything about it on their website! I will post any other information as i find it incase it is of interest for anybody.