Knit one, read two

Christmas cards 2010

December 12, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

I mentioned last weekend that I had made a prototype for this year’s Christmas cards but didn’t include a photo. The reason for this was that the best photo I had taken of it looked like this:

For me, prototypes really are prototypes. They are the first attempt to see if it is even remotely possible to physically create something that in any way resembles the vision in my head and maybe, if I’m really lucky, work out some of the initial kinks in the process. Believe it or not, in my world, this is a photo of a highly successful prototype.

However, since I doubted that anyone would find that photo terribly interesting or inspirational and thought that most people would probably pity my poor family and friends for having such ugliness inflicted upon them, I thought I would wait until I had moved past the prototyping stage and made at least one finished article.

Doesn’t that look better?

(In a fit of craft-related productiveness, I even managed to remember to take photographs of the process and have put up a tutorial on Yellow Ginger showing how it’s done.)

The things we do for love: part 2

December 10, 2010 Susan4 Comments

The Argyll vest is finally finished. Actually it’s been finished for ages. It has proven difficult to get pictures of it though due to the fact that it has been worn almost constantly. (You would think that might make it easier to get pictures but apparently not.)

The duplicate stitch was surprisingly easy to do and I found the precise, repetitive nature of it very soothing. Putting together a tutorial on how to do it has been added to my increasingly long list of “things I want to do but have no idea when I’ll get around to it”.

Unfortunately, the recycled cashmere jumper that formed the first part of “The things we do for love” has never been worn. I picked up too many stitches around the armholes and, when worn, they flare in an extremely dramatic fashion (think bad 70s sci-fi costuming). My plan is to rip them out, pick up fewer stitches, double the yarn and use larger needles. Hopefully this will mean that they won’t take quite as long to knit this time around.

It felt like a lazy Sunday…

December 6, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

… and yet I have a new pair of socks and a prototype for this year’s Christmas cards. It turns out that all I need to motivate me to finish the second of a pair of socks is six inches of snow on the ground. The snow is nearly all gone now (from London anyway) but it is still easily cold enough for the socks to come in very handy. (Apologies for the picture but daylight is in short supply around here.)

The pattern was the Lichen Rib sock from Knitting Vintage Socks and I didn’t make any modifications. I don’t know if it was me or the pattern but there were a couple of bits where I ran into trouble with the instructions for how the stitches should be arranged on the needles. Everything worked out in the end though so I didn’t bother trying to track down any errata or work out what the actual problem was. (Insert rant here about patterns that not only assume you’ll be using DPNs but assume you’ll be using a specific number of needles.) That aside, I did enjoy the pattern and the socks are a great fit and, most importantly, warm!

And now for the obligatory photograph of a blizzard in London:

Exceedingly nice notions

December 4, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

Sewing notions rather than knitting notions, for a change.

Steven and I visited the East London Design Show in Shoreditch last night and loved the sewing notions from Merchant and Mills.

The quality of the packaging and design is at least matched, if not exceeded, by the quality of the notions themselves. The sidebent tailor’s shears, in particular, feel absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately, the gift box of notions and the shears are going to be a Christmas present for someone who isn’t me so I don’t get to keep them. I did treat myself to some proper tailor’s chalk but might have to pay their website a visit to stock up on some other bits. (You can never have too many pairs of really good scissors, right?)

There are lots of other awesome designers at the show (Steven managed to do most of his Christmas shopping in just one evening) so it’s worth a visit if you’re in the area. (You can get a 2-for-1 entry voucher by signing up for the mailing list on the show website.)

Don’t panic!

November 23, 2010December 15, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

At about 10 o’clock the other night, while knitting in front of the TV, I threw down my knitting, announcing that it was completely ruined due to a “bloody great hole” in it. I then explained to Steven that I wasn’t sure I could fix it because it was “enormous”, “I haven’t put any lifelines in” and I didn’t think I’d be able to put an afterthought lifeline in “because of the pattern”.

Having left the shawl alone for a day or so, I thought I would take a look this morning to see if I could fix it. The picture above clearly shows the “bloody great hole” and the dropped stitch that caused it.

What do you mean you can’t see a “bloody great hole”? Take a look at this next picture. See that loop sticking up?

That’s a dropped stitch from what must be a whole 3 rows back and has clearly left a “bloody great hole”. Still can’t see it? Let me zoom out and show you the whole shawl.

Well, um, okay, maybe it’s not a “bloody great hole”, maybe it’s just a little bit of a hole and, rather than being “impossible to fix and I’ll have to re-knit the whole bloody thing”, maybe I’ve already fixed it with a crochet hook.

Lesson learned? Don’t panic — at least not until after you’ve had a good night’s sleep and looked at the problem in daylight.

The shawl pattern is my own design, which I will write up and publish eventually, except that I keep changing my mind. I’ve already frogged and re-knitted the first version completely. This was supposed to be a copy of the second version as a present for my mother-in-law but I’m going to do something different with the border, which means that I’ll end up re-knitting a large part of the first one again so that it actually matches the written-down pattern. Here is a close-up photo of the body of the first shawl, which was shown as a sneak peek in an earlier post.

Snapshots from Devon

November 23, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

My returning to posting would have been more effective had I waited until after Steven and I got back from a week’s holiday in Devon staying in a cottage with no internet access or even phone reception!

The cottage was the Priest’s House — the same Landmark Trust property that we spent a week in after our wedding and you can see lots more pictures of it on my gallery page.

It was lovely going back. We had so many happy memories from last time that just walking in through the front door made us happy.

I knitted a sock while we were there — the lichen ribbed sock from Knitting Vintage Socks in good old Regia 4-ply. I discovered whilst packing to go away that, while Steven has a vast pile of woolly socks (some hand-knit, some not), I have almost none. The lesson, of course, is that if you want woolly socks to wear in Devon in November you have to start knitting them before you get there. Since London is currently feeling even colder than Devon did, I’m sure I’ll cast on for the second one very soon.

One of our favourite things to do in Exeter is to walk down to the quayside to browse the antique, craft and gift shops. This time I spotted this pretty vintage knitting needle gauge. The text says that it is THE “PEACOCK” KNITTING PIN GAUGE but I haven’t been able to find anything else out about it yet. I might have been heard to claim that this would be a useful tool and not just a pretty thing to own but, since the sizes on the gauge are all imperial and I haven’t yet memorised the conversions from imperial to metric, that might not have been strictly true. I must at least clean the fingerprints off it!

We had planned to re-visit the Eden Project on this trip but unfortunately it was closed due to flooding. We did take a trip into Cornwall however and spent part of the afternoon exploring Tintagel, legendary birthplace of King Arthur. The medieval ruins were interesting but the real highlights of the day were the rainbows. If you look closely at the picture below (or click through to Flickr for the full-size version) you can even see the secondary bow.

Now that we’re home, posting should resume on a more regular schedule!

Getting back on the horse

November 5, 2010November 22, 2010 Susan1 Comment

It seems to take a little longer after each exam session for life to get back to normal. I tend to go quiet (electronically speaking) at first because I’m studying so hard that there isn’t time for blogging and everything else that I do online. After the exams, it takes a while for the stress to dissipate and for me to feel like getting back on the horse. All of which is long way of saying that I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long but I’m back now!

As this is just a quick post to get me going again, here are some sneak peeks of some of the projects that I’ve been working on while I’ve been offline and that I’ll be blogging about over the coming days.

The things we do for love: part 1

September 17, 2010 Susan1 Comment

It only took one bad cold, one week on the sofa and 4 seasons of Buffy, but the armbands on Steven’s cashmere jumper are finally done.

Lots and lots of 1×1 rib at a very, very small gauge got very, very boring but I’m really pleased with the results.

I ended up doing twice as much ribbing as I had originally planned. A single layer seemed a little flimsy so I knitted out to twice the required length, folded the bands over and sewed them down. Rather than casting off and then sewing the cast-off edge down, I just sewed the final row of stitches down from straight off the needle, which saved a lot of time and gave a much neater finish.

I am thinking of putting together a tutorial on how I worked the edging but it will need to wait until I am feeling better!

New (recycled) knitting containers

September 11, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

I love containers — boxes, bags, baskets, I love them all. I’m less good at the part where you actually put things in them to keep the place tidy but let us not dwell on that. I’ve recently acquired some brilliant new containers for knitting-related stuff. The containers themselves aren’t new but that is half the fun!

This little tin originally held a miniature fruit cake. It’s the perfect size for holding knitting notions. I can fit in all my stitch markers, a packet of darning needles, my measuring tape and a reel of dental floss. These all used to live in a little zipped pouch but I find it much easier to get things out of the tin than out of the pouch.

These bags originally held giant cushion covers but I still find it hard to believe that they weren’t originally designed for carrying knitting projects.

They are the perfect size for small or medium-sized projects, and would probably work for jumper projects up to the point where they get too big to carry around anyway. They are waterproof, have a carrying handle and even have a little inside document pocket that, while not big enough to tuck a pattern into, would certainly do for notes. I’m looking forward to packing my knitting into these for our trip back to Scotland for Christmas and New Year rather than my usual selection of plastic carrier bags!

Let the season of procrastination begin

August 29, 2010 Susan1 Comment

My next set of professional exams starts in less than five weeks so I’m getting stuck into the traditional period of pre-exam procrastination. I’m frequently amazed by the things that I’ll find myself desperate to do instead of studying. As of today, I am banned from painting walls, tiling walls and re-arranging furniture (on a moving everything from one room to another and vice versa scale). This is on top of the usual bans on video games and Distributed Proofreaders. Fortunately for Steven, knitting is not banned and it turns out that I would rather sew jumper seams than study (which, considering my earlier post, shows you the lengths I will go to to avoid studying). Hence, all the seams have now been sewn on his argyll jumper and even some of the duplicate stitch started — I did try to convince him that he didn’t really need the raker lines but it didn’t work.

If he’s really lucky, I’ll even manage to get it finished before the exams start and the desperate urge to do anything other than study fades away.