2009 Big Knits: The conclusion

Well it’s official, the hats are on the shelves!  Check JosieKitten’s picture Here.  I didn’t see any of my hats on THAT shelf, so I wonder where in the world they might be?

 

Mum wants to knit some long hand/arm warmer thingies with the leftover yarn from her jacket (of which there is plenty) and wanted a plain pattern to work from, so I spotted Toasty, on the A Friend To Knit With blog.  I’m just hoping she doesn’t struggle with holding the DPNs when it comes to doing the fiddly thumb part, else I’ll end up having to do it for her!

The Almost Finished Jacket

Well here it is, my mum’s Jacket all knitted and sewn up!  It’s just missing the zip which my mum has offered to do on the sewing machine, since I’m “sew” bad at it!  She’s using the tutorial on the Pickin' and Throwin' Blog, which includes both hand and machine sewing techniques.

This is the front, Sorry for the blurry image!  It’s not meant to be yellow, thats just the way it looks because of the lighting in here.  If it helps, the background is meant to be white!  The front is pinned together at the moment from lack of zip.


This is the back, note the hood! First time I've knitted a hood and boy was this a strange method!  I had to cast off either side, and then knit a middle bit, and then sew it all together afterward!  That answered my questions about why I had to pick stitches up for the border – the stitches were picked up from an assortment of side and cast off stitches.  I guess you could say how much I now appreciate the value of a short-row hood!

• The Pattern: Stylecraft Life Aran 8259
• Yarn: Hayfield Bonus Aran from Kemps Wool Shop
• Needles needed: 1 pair 4mm straights, 1 pair 5mm straights (although i used circulars for comfort’s sake)
• Other stuff needed: cable needle, row markers, row counters, measuring tape, pins, sewing needle, chocolate
• Knitting Time: Roughly about a month, on and off
• Amount of sewing up to do: quite a lot, it took me about a day, all told

Inherited talent

Even though I never knew my Maternal Grandmother, she still passed down her talent for fibre arts to me.  Every year my mum and her brothers would get a new cardigan or jumper knitted for them, but what survived is not her knitwear but her crocheted doilies.
The pictures that follow are just a small sample of the variety of colours, patterns and sizes we have.  They are all made in silk and I’ve pinned them out as best i can without putting stress on the yarn. 













According to my mum, my nan and her neighbours, friends and female relatives would all come for tea and cake and crochet or knit – just goes to show that despite the internet and all our mod-cons, time hasn’t really moved on!
In sharing these I was hoping that some clever and observant soul could possibly point me to the pattern so I would at least have a name for it!

Progress Report

This is just a quick one to let you all know that I’ve not dropped off the face of the planet, and that I’ve now finished the back of my mum’s cardy/jacket thingy and I’ve picked up for the hood and knitted about an inch!  Hoping it’ll speed along as it’s just stockinette stitch.  Strangely I have to cast it off and then pick up these same stitches for the border, I can’t quite work out why.  If someone could enlighten me on that point I’d be delighted!  Can’t upload pictures again and this time it doesn’t seem to be a size problem, otherwise I’d impress you all with my very neat and almost invisible seaming!

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!

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!

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!