knitting – Page 11 – Knit one, read two

Knit one, sew one

September 13, 2009September 12, 2009 Susan2 Comments

Two finished projects to show you today, one knitted, one sewn.

I finished the teddy bear baby blanket. I washed it but didn’t block it in any way, just hung it up and let it dry. It was knitted in Sirdar Country Style DK, which is a machine-washable wool/acrylic blend because I don’t think the friend it is intended for is likely to be handwashing blankets after the baby is born. However, it washed very nicely and is now very soft and snuggly. I just loved this pattern; it was straightforward and quick to knit but the combination of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch is just so effective. The best part of this project is that the baby isn’t due for another 2 months so I can wrap this up and put it away until it is needed and I won’t need to subject myself to the usual frantic week or two of knitting that takes place just before or after the birth!

Second project was a roll/case for my KnitPicks interchangeable needle tips. Despite being only my second sewing project in about 16 years, i.e. since home economics classes in school, it’s entirely my own design. No pattern, no tutorial, just work out what needs to go where and try it and see what happens. This did, of course, result in the odd hiccup. For example, see the small loop of ribbon attached to the left-hand side of the roll in the bottom picture? It’s now a design feature (and I may even have come up with a use for it) but was originally supposed to be the ribbon for keeping it all together when rolled up. Unfortunately, my brain has yet come to grips with the inside-out back-to-front thinking that’s needed when sewing things up and then turning them right way out and the ribbon ended up beautifully sewn in between the lining and the cover.

I’m so pleased with the way this turned out in the end though. It takes all my tips, plus some crochet hooks and my sewing and needle gauges. The striped flap (shown lifted up in the picture) keeps everything from falling out no matter how thrown around the roll gets in my bag and everything is just so much better organised and easier to find than in the pouch that they came in. I’m considering making another one, incorporating the lessons learned from this one and some ideas I’ve had since and if I do, I’ll put up a tutorial on how I did it.

The more I use this striped fabric the more I love it; things made from it are just automatically appealing and make me smile when I see them. I’ve got some left which I might make into a holder for my interchangeable cables or a pouch for my stitch markers since there is nowhere for them go in here. Do I really want an entirely co-ordinating set of knitting project and notions bags though?

From shawls to blankets

September 4, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

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.

It’s shawl go around here

September 1, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

(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.

Q: What’s round and beige and goes on forever?

August 5, 2009August 2, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

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.

What I did on my holidays – Part 1 – Yarn

July 20, 2009 Susan1 Comment

A series of posts coming up on some of the best bits of our recent honeymoon trip to Hawaii. The first and last posts are even going to be craft-related!

I had decided before the start of the trip that I wanted to bring back some souvenir yarn and my plan was to buy a couple of skeins of laceweight to turn into a shawl. Since Hawaii isn’t known for its yarn production, my only preference was for an American yarn that isn’t readily available in the UK. I checked KnitMap for yarn shops in Hawaii, compiled a list of possible options and then promptly forgot to take my list with me.

Fortunately, Steven had his laptop and we found a wireless connection that I could use and towards the end of the trip, while we were staying in Hilo on the Big Island, I managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the Bernina Yarn Basket. It wasn’t the most attractive or best-organised yarn shop that I’ve ever been to (I still have no idea if there was any system behind where the yarn was stored or if it just got stuck wherever there was space) but I did find a couple of yarns to take home with me.

First up were two skeins of Knit Picks Gloss Lace in colour Chipotle.

Closely followed by three skeins of Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Lace in the snappily-named colour 2055.

I’ve added so many shawl patterns to my Ravelry queue since bringing these yarns home and I still have no idea which ones I’ll end up using. Watch this space.

We heard a great story from the sales assistant in the yarn shop when she found out that we were Scottish. Apparently, her husband’s grandparents were Scottish and emigrated to the States in the early 20th century. They were booked to be travelling out on the Titanic but her husband’s aunt (who was 4 at the time) caught chicken pox the week before they were due to travel and his grandmother refused to travel until she was better. It’s not often chicken pox are considered lucky.

Another amusing story: as we were driving away from the yarn shop, Steven asked if I’d bought enough yarn. I launched into a long explanation of why, even though it was much cheaper than in the UK, I didn’t want to spend much money or have to carry lots of yarn back in my suitcase, etc., etc. When I finally finished justifying ‘only’ buying 5 skeins of yarn, Steven carefully explained that he was only checking I’d bought enough of the ones I wanted to actually make something. Oops!

How time flies

June 18, 2009July 4, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

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.

Left brain vs. right brain

April 19, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

I’m pretty much a left-brain type person, i.e. good with numbers, logical, structured, except for when I’m very much a right-brain type person, i.e. creative, intuitive and a bit of a dreamer.

Studying for actuarial exams is about as left-brain as it gets and my right-brain appears to have gone into creative overdrive by way of rebellion. First, there was the coffee cosy:

Then the pirate eye-patch:

Then a new banner for the blog:

I’m quite proud of the banner which is the product of my own photography and GIMP skills. I’ll never be a graphic designer but it’s fun to play every now and again. (All the books in the banner have been digitised, by the way, and are available from Project Gutenberg. The large brown ones are the “Letters of Charles Dickens” and the smaller green ones are the “Fascination of London” series.)

To top it all off, my notebook is bursting with scribbled ideas for new projects and I’ve started swatching for a Spring scarf based on the pattern of raindrops on a window (did I mention the bit about being a dreamer?) and a tea-cosy. In fact, that’s the swatch for the tea-cosy in the banner.

Some day, by which I mean after the exams, I might even be able to put my left-brain to work writing up the patterns for these projects!

Not your usual Easter crafting

April 12, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

It feels more like Hallowe’en around here this weekend than Easter. There are no eggs or chicks or bunnies, instead we have pirates and bluestockings.

Pirates because Steven is attending a stag weekend next weekend that requires a pirate costume. Fortunately, we live close to Greenwich which is a good place for buying general pirate stuff and we whipped up a quick eye-patch as well. (Expect a how-to post with full details shortly.)

Bluestockings was a term coined in the 18th century to describe educated, intellectual women and, with the amount of studying I’m doing at the moment, I think I qualify and now I’m knitting the socks to match.

These are the “Evening stockings for a young lady” from Knitting Vintage Socks and are a great example of what I love about Ravelry and what I don’t like about Knitting Vintage Socks. There are several lacey sock patterns in the book but none of the socks in the book are photographed being worn. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to see the lace patterns at their best. So, when I decided to knit a pair of lacey socks, I narrowed my choice down to two by looking at the book and then logged on to Ravelry to see what they actually looked like worn. This actually helped me to decide that I didn’t want to knit either of the patterns that I had short-listed but did want to knit these ones instead. I had never considered knitting these socks based on the photographs in the book but I’m absolutely loving them.

A close-up of the beautiful open-work pattern:

FO: Golf socks for Mum

April 5, 2009 Susan3 Comments

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!

Bless your little wool/nylon blend socks!

March 29, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

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.