Category: knitting

Somehow amidst the DIY and the moving and the not having a blog up and running, I managed to get quite a bit of knitting done.

First, I finished knitting my Tubey and discovered a major problem with adapting pattern for a ribbed top that requires you to pick up stitches to start your ribbing. If you don’t pick up stitches and instead knit it in two separate sections, how do you know how far to stretch the ribbing before you sew the two sections together? This isn’t an entirely rhetorical question, if anyone has any sensible suggestions, please let me know. At the moment, the two sections are held together with safety pins to allow me to try them on. Trying it on, it looks great but it’s currently sitting on a shelf waiting for me to work out how to sew it together. The current plan involves Steven basting me into it so that I can them seam it and adjust as necessary so if anyone has any better ideas, I really would love to hear them. Plan B is blocking it to approximately the right size and then seaming and adjusting but I’m worried about stretching the ribbing too far this way.

I really love this jumper on and will probably make another one at some point. Not quite yet though as the endless ribbing in the round is pretty boring.

Next was Celestine, which is going to be a christening present for our neighbours’ baby boy. It’s a dodecahedron (twelve-pointed star) knitted entirely in the round. Each point is knitted by picking up stitches along the edge of the previous point so there’s no seaming. Yup, that’s right, no seaming whatsoever. I couldn’t face the thought of knitting this on DPNs so decided I would attempt to learn Magic Loop. This was, at least in part, also because my DPNs are still packed in a box somewhere, yet miraculously I had a long, flexible 2.5mm circular needle unpacked.

This turned out to be an excellent project to learn Magic Loop on. Plenty of practice at casting on and off and short enough rows that I hadn’t forgotten how to rearrange the stitches by the time that I got halfway through.

I definitely prefer using Magic Loop to using 4 or 5 small needles so I’ve decided to attempt another pair of socks using it. Partly because I bought some pretty sock yarn to celebrate the grand opening of the new I Knit store and partly because the sock knitters nearly have me convinced that I’m missing out on something because I don’t knit socks. The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill supersock merino in the Moody Blues colourway. (You might spot a bit of a blue theme to this post!).

Continuing the blue theme, I had some yarn left over from Celestine and since it was Easter weekend and Steven had bought me a fabulous TARDIS Easter egg, I decided to continue my adventures in Magic Loop and knitted him an Easter egg.

I’m not sure he knew exactly what to make of it but it did at least raise a chuckle (although that might have been at my expense). The arcane scribblings in the photo are my attempts at studying for my upcoming exams and, no, I don’t know what they’re supposed to mean either.

Finally, I got back to working on my Double Vision blanket. I’ve now knitted 16 squares out of 100 and am desperate to get to the end of this section (19 squares) so that I can start working with the next colour. Since the entire project is simple garter stitch, the fascination comes from seeing how the two strands of different colours combine. I’ve seen all the combinations for the first colour now and want to start seeing the rest. I really must try and get some decent pictures of this blanket taken.

I’m a happy knitter this morning. Last night, I finally got around to trying on the body section of my Tubey and, wonder of wonders, not only does it fit but it is going to be really flattering as well! The colour change is going to land at a nice flattering place just under my chest and the large ribbing, which I was worried about, makes my curves look great.

After the initial problems that I had with gauge on this project, I’m almost amazed that it’s going to fit as well as it will. The best bits though are that, for the first time, I will have successfully adapted a pattern to do what I want to do and I will have recycled a previously unworn finished item into something that I hope I’ll get plenty of wear out of.

Now all I have to do is finish knitting it!

My Knitpicks Options arrived from GetKnitted in the post yesterday and I’ve started knitting with them already. So far so good. I switched them into my Double Vision project so I could compare them directly with the Addi Turbos that are my usual favourite circulars. They’re sharper than the Addis which has meant that I’ve had to adjust my knitting style slightly. I usually use the tip of my finger on the tip of the needle to slip a completed stitch off but that’s now a little painful so I’m trying to use the side of the needle tip instead. It’s not uncomfortable but it’s also not quite engrained in my head yet so I’m still occasionally stabbing myself! The Knitpicks options are also a little grabbier than the Addis, which I think is probably a good thing since I sometimes had problems with projects falling off the Addis.

I’m a little disappointed that you don’t appear to be able to join two cables together to form a longer cable (at least not with the set that I got). The cables are sold in lengths of up to 1.5m so I guess I’ll just have to buy longer ones as and when I need them. I’m also a little disappointed that I got the plastic wallet rather than the binder for them but really these are both minor niggles and don’t detract from how pleased I am with the needles in general.

I’m going to take a little longer to test-drive them but am already considering “donating” my existing needles to my sister, at least in the sizes that I have Knit Picks tips for. With a house move on the very near horizon a little decluttering is definitely called for!

The Double Vision project itself is going brilliantly. The photographs that I took didn’t come out well so I’ll try and get some better ones at the weekend. The project is a blanket comprised of 100 squares. Each square is coloured by knitting together two strands of yarn chosen from ten basic colours giving a total of 55 different colours with 45 of these being repeated on the other side of the square. (The ten that aren’t repeated are the squares made by knitting together two strands of the same colour which form the diagonal.)

I really hadn’t appreciated when I decided to knit this pattern just how big a 1.4 m square blanket would be; my brain hasn’t updated from imperial to metric yet. I did want it to be a long-term, relatively mindless project, which is just as well, since that’s exactly what it’s turning out to be! Given that it’s formed of 100 squares with some contrasting edging, it’s very easy to calculate just how far through it I am. So far I’ve knitted 6.5 squares which translates to (very roughly) 6.5%. That’s not bad for 5 nights’ knitting but means that, at this rate, it’ll take me another 62 nights to finish knitting the squares, never mind the edging and the sewing together!

I haven’t knitted in the round for a while and had completely forgotten how to do this so thought it worth posting about.

Most knitters will find that their gauge is different when knitting in the round rather than knitting back and forth. This means that knitting a flat swatch for a project that will be knitted in the round may not give usable results. However, casting on, and then knitting, enough stitches to be able to knit a swatch in the round will take almost as much time as just starting the project and ripping it out if the gauge isn’t right. (Ask me how I know!)

The solution is to knit a swatch half in the round. Cast on, using the needle(s) that you’ll be using for the project, enough stitches for a decent-sized swatch (a 5-inch square swatch should give you sensible results). Knit the first row in the stitch pattern specified by the gauge instructions in your pattern. Instead of turning the work around to work back across the row, as you would when working flat, slide the stitches to the other end of your needle(s) and, loosely stringing the working yarn across the back, knit the next row in the same direction that you knitted the first one. This is similar to the method of knitting i-cord but unlike when making i-cord, it’s very important not to pull the extra yarn tight across the back of the swatch as this will pull the edges of the swatch together and distort it.

Repeat this until you have a swatch that’s large enough for you to measure and calculate your gauge. As with all swatching, this has the potential to save you large amounts of time and energy!

Wow! The vast majority of the yarn that I ordered earlier this week arrived this morning. (Note to self: ordering things on Thursday to arrive on Saturday morning when you might actually be in is a good idea.) A couple of the colours that I chose for Double Vision are out of stock but I’m still impressed that everything else was available. I took the obligatory pictures, introduced Steven to the idea of making a really cool throw based on mathematical principles and then showed him the yarn. Now all I have to do is find somewhere to put it before he realises just how much there is of it.

I can’t wait to cast on and get started. I think I’ll start with the Tubey since I’ve had the shrug hiding in the wardrobe for over a year now without ever wearing it. Also, I need to think about how I want to arrange the colours for the Double Vision and I can’t really do that until they’re all here.

The Internet is evil and must be stopped. I haven’t done this in a while but today I succumbed and went shopping online in a spare 5 minutes at work. I really ought to know better by now.

To add insult to injury, I discovered that there was money sitting in my PayPal account that I hadn’t realised was there. It was, of course, impossible for me to use their simple option to transfer it directly into my bank account. No, I had to find somewhere to spend it.

Fortunately, there are a vast range of places on the internet which accept PayPal as payment and some of them even sell yarn.

I started with a PDF pattern from Woolly Thoughts (more about which in a post to come) and followed that up with yarn from Cucumber Patch to make said pattern. Except that I discovered that Cucumber Patch also had some discontinued Jaeger yarns at prices that I couldn’t resist.

I have a shrug that I knitted in Jaeger yarn some time ago and have never worn because shrugs just don’t suit me (not that that stops me knitting them!). There isn’t enough yarn in it for it to be worth frogging it and re-using the yarn but I discovered a pattern in Knitty that adds a stretchy body tube to the shrug to create an entire top and have been meaning to do this for ages. In the meantime, however, Jaeger discontinued their yarns so I had basically given up hope of getting the same yarn in co-ordinating colours for this project. I was over the moon today then to discover that not only did Cucumber Patch have the yarn that I wanted, in colours that would look good, they also had it in sufficient quantities!

The only fly in the ointment is that this, together with the yarn for the throw from Woolly Thoughts, adds up to a lot of yarn and I’m due to move house in about five weeks. True, I’m only moving two doors down and two flights up but I think the yarn is going to need a box or suitcase all of its own.

Oh well, at least the money isn’t sitting doing nothing in my PayPal account any more.

I finally got around to uploading the picture of my Mum’s Christmas neckwarmer so here it is.

I’m really lucky that my family always appreciates handmade things and this and my Dad’s Henry scarf were really popular at Christmas. I completely forgot to get any pictures of Dad’s finished scarf, which, considering the time and effort that went into it, is very frustrating. I think I’ll need to get him to take some pictures and send me them!

In the end, I really liked the way the So Called Scarf pattern came out, even though I’d used solid colour and not variegated yarn like everyone else seems to. Fortunately, my Mum spotted straightaway that it was supposed to be a neckwarmer and not a full scarf and didn’t need it explained.