Category: knitting

The weather has taken a turn towards Autumn around here this week and my knitting appears to be following suit.

My oldest friend is expecting a baby this November and since the bump’s grandmother and great-grandmother have already started on piles of shawls and jumpers, I thought I’d make a blanket.

The pattern is the Teddy Bear Baby Blanket and is free from Crystal Palace Yarns. The squares are clever combinations of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch to form the bears and the seed stitch border is perfect for pulling the whole thing together and stopping it curling.

It’s knitted with two strands of DK yarn held together which means that it is also a very quick knit. I cast this on over the weekend and am already two-thirds of the way through. I guess I’ll have plenty of time to knit something else for the baby before it arrives!

I also hereby declare my intention to finish my Double Vision blanket before the end of the year.

 

It is half complete and the strips get shorter and easier from here on in. Also, exam season is approaching rather quickly and I’m feeling the need of some relaxing brainless knitting. All I need to do is find where I “tidied” all the unused yarn to.

(For the record: I don’t really like puns but sometimes they get stuck in my head, particularly for blog titles, and I just have to let them out.)

I have two finished shawls to show off today. The first is the River that I knitted for my grandmother, being admirably modelled here by my wardrobe. I finished knitting this back in June (in time for her birthday) but was terrified of blocking the Kidsilk Haze so put off doing it until this weekend. In the end, I blocked it the same way I block everything else (soak in cold water and then pin out on towels) and it was fine. This really is a gorgeous shawl when it is finished and blocked and it was hard to part with. I have enough yarn to knit another one for me but the pattern is quite boring to knit and I don’t really like Kidsilk Haze so it might be a while before I get around to it.

 

I got a phone call from my Gran last night to say that the shawl had arrived and was “really lovely” so that made it all worthwhile!

 The other shawl is my finished Adamas, which was finished and blocked in record time because I was so keen to wear it. It was knitted using the Knit Picks Gloss Lace that I brought back from Hawaii. It turns out that this is a fantastic everyday laceweight yarn. It is 70% merino wool and 30% silk and I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t softer/silkier to the touch when knitting. However, it’s nice and soft to wear and unlike my silk lace shawls feels like it will stand up to some heavy wearing. (Ignore my strange wind-swept fringe in the photograph, I need to get my hair cut.)

This is my first triangular shawl and has completely cured me of my fear of looking like a little old lady when wearing them. I foresee many, many more in my future.

A: The Bell Curve skirt that I’m knitting.

I love the pattern, I’m even liking the way the Sirdar Just Soy yarn is knitting up (which I was worried I wouldn’t), I just wish it was done already.

When you get right down to it, it’s acres of stocking stitch in the round in beige yarn with the only excitement being the star stitches every fifth row. (Just between you and me, I don’t even think they look like stars; they’re pretty and I like them but I don’t think they look like stars; shells, maybe.)

Fortunately for my sanity, my other active project at the moment is another Celestine. It’s quick and interesting and definitely not beige! At the moment it reminds me of some of the orchids that we saw on Hawai’i.

There hasn’t been a lot of knitting going on around here recently but I do have a couple of finished projects.

First, my evening socks for a young lady.

Despite being a really enjoyable knit, these are a little disappointing as finished socks. One of these days I will start listening to my instincts when they tell me that socks are going to be too short and too tight around the calf. I may unpick these from the top and knit a new longer, stretchier cuff. In future, if I want knee-high socks they’ll be knitted toe-up.

They look great though and the 5-row pattern repeat made them very quick to knit; it ends up being ‘just one more repeat’ rather than ‘just one more row’.

I’ve also finished my River although it still needs blocked and there’s no point trying to photograph an unblocked lace mohair shawl! Just picture a black amorphous blob here.

There hasn’t been much progress on the crochet baby blanket but since I’ve just head that one of my oldest friends is pregnant with her first baby expect a lot more baby knitting to come.

There was going to be a much nicer picture of these socks (which are the Pom Pom Peds for my Mum) to go along with this post. It was going to be nicely posed with props (golf balls!) since I found the remote control for my camera yesterday. Unfortunately, it seems that the remote and my mini-tripod can’t be in the same place at the same time since I now can’t find my tripod. Also, the battery in the remote control is dead and since it takes a watch battery, I don’t have a replacement in the house. Add to that the fact that I couldn’t find a single golf ball despite there being dozens of them somewhere in the house and I decided that a nice photo of the socks just wasn’t meant to be. Hence, the lying_on_the_floor_with_feet_up_on_the_sofa pose.

I do seem to be turning into the sort of knitter who can’t knit a pattern without changing something. With these, I lengthened the cuff slightly and used a completely different toe so that I didn’t have to do any grafting. I know grafting isn’t difficult but I do find it fiddly and I actually prefer the finish of a non-grafted toe. This toe is the French Toe as described in Knitting Vintage Socks.

Now I just have to wrap them up and send them to my Mum with my fingers crossed that they will fit!

From looking at this first photo and, indeed, from looking at the project itself at first this could easily be mistaken for a baby sock. Looking a little closer reveals that it is actually adult-sized. In fact, it’s the first of a pair of socks that I’m knitting for my Mum as a belated Mother’s Day present. She wears a lot of these little trainer liner socks when playing golf so I’m hoping these will get lots of use.

The pattern is Pom Pom Peds from Purlbee. I haven’t decided whether or not to make the pom-poms yet. I know my Mum has a strong preference but I can’t remember whether it is for pom-poms or against. I wonder if there’s any subtle way I can work the question into a conversation!

And here’s one I made earlier from the same pattern with some leftover Opal sock yarn. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have enough yarn to do the pair but since I still don’t really like the stripes, maybe it doesn’t matter.

These are a really quick knit, that’s one and half socks since Friday.

Now, I’m generally considered an intelligent person but like many other intelligent people, I occasionally do things so lacking in common sense that people wonder how I’ve managed to survive as long as I have.

So, recently there was a weird confluence of events. I finished my Katje cardigan without having planned what I fancied knitting next; Birdwoman was talking about knitting lace; I had been raiding my stash/unfinished projects and reclaiming yarn from projects that I was never going to finish.

Next thing I know, I’ve cast on for a River with some Kidsilk Haze that I’ve had for a long time. It was going to be a shrug but I finally admitted that I was never going to wear the shrug and I should use the yarn for something else.

Now, one of the reasons I was so keen to move directly on to a new project was the fact that I have my next set of exams in less than a month and I needed something to distract me.

Note to self: knitting lace in fluffy mohair does not help relieve stress. I don’t think I’ve made this many mistakes in a project since my first garter stitch doll’s blanket when I was 7.

Some times it flies along with no problems at all and then there are nights like last night when it takes me half-a-dozen attempts to get to through a single row.

Never mind, I’d still prefer this

to this

any day!