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!

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!

Six pretty hats all in a row

So these are the hats I managed to do whilst I was away.  Mum did a few and i did a few, mostly I'm trying to get rid of the icky cottony yarn stuff I've got!  My favourite is the one that looks like a little sunhat, second from the left.
My jumper still defies all attempts to count its stitches, and to calculate total number of stitches into some sort of pattern! It's well and truly in the naughty corner now!

2009 Big Knits

I'd say it was that time of year again, but actually it's past that time of year again and I'm a bit late!  i'm going away for the weekend tonight with Jennie and mum, and we've decided to do our bit by knitting as many of the big knit hats as we can.  We've all got lots of scraps lying around that can be put to use, and frankly, I keep looking at my jumper and feeling guilty that i dont want to work on it just now.  More about that when i get  back!

Which cable should I cable?

I'm at that stage now where not only have I seperated for the sleeves (yay!) but I need to decide on what cable to include in my ribbing.  I was digging through some of my books and decided that as pretty as some of the designs were, I was going to have to do this over and over across many rows.  Some of the designs would have taken YEARS to finish!
So I have opted for a mock cable, which basicly looks like a cable but is made my cleverly increasing and decreasing in the right places.  I've picked the mock cable pattern from a pattern in Stefanie Japel's "Fitted Knits" called "Saturday in the Park Perfect Dress".  My idea is to have the "cable" alternate with a plain rib, hopefully it will look a little less busy and be a little quicker to knit!

I've actually added a lifeline before i start the cables and ribbing, which is a peice of yarn threaded through all of the stitches on my needle and means if I need to rip back to where I started, those stitches with the yarn threaded through won't undo and I can reinsert my needle without having to worry too much about dropping stitches.  It takes the pressure off, worrying that this might not be the right combination of cables, and means i can go back and pick another if I need to.

Thinking forward

When i bought the yarn for my jumper (which i'm close to seperating the sleeves for) I knew I'd have some left over.  I'm not so sure how much yet, but I've a feeling it'll be about the same as when i knit "Amused" at the beginning of the year.  Thanks to Yarn Harlot's sudden mitten obsession, I've been thinking along those lines, but for gloves.  I found these on ravelry - they're by Drops Design, and they come with Drops' trademark lack of imagination when it comes to a name.  I  think they'd look quite nice in the slightly fluffy yarn I've got, and the cream would look so wintery, but be superwarm too!

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.