Tag: knitting

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.

I don’t like the jumper I’m knitting. There. I’ve said it.

I still love the look of the finished jumper in the pattern pictures and I really like the fabric that’s coming off the needles but I can’t stand the pattern. It uses complicated increases and decreases that I don’t think I’m doing properly so I’m not getting the look that they’re supposed to achieve. Also, they’re so complicated that I’m having to stop and read the instructions carefully every time I come across one, which is currently four times a row.

I’ve been trying to work out why I’ve barely knitted since Christmas and it wasn’t until I spent some time on Ravelry this afternoon looking at patterns and projects and starting to get enthusiastic about the idea of knitting again that I realised that it’s not that I don’t want to knit, it’s that I don’t want to knit this jumper. And, since it’s the only project I have on the go at the moment, that translated to me not wanting to knit.

So, I’m going to frog it, reclaim the yarn and start on something else. I’ll put the pattern back on the shelf and come back to it another day, making sure I take the time to properly work out and learn the increases and decreases so I get the result that I want.

Of course, this means that poor Steven who has had a respite from me knitting for the past three weeks (which he needed after the stress of my Christmas knitting) is going to have to put up with it again.