Tag: knitting

I’m ill, Steven’s ill and we’re almost out of coffee.

At least there’s yarn!

… isn’t a bad thing for a girl to grow up to be but was also the colour scheme (according to the yarn company names for the yarn) for  the latest baby jumper I knitted. The yarn is Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK, which is my go-to yarn for baby clothes. It’s soft, snuggly, machine-washable, reasonably-priced and holds up well to washing.

The pattern is the Seamless Kimono Sweater. The pattern for the 3-6 month size is available for free or you can buy the pattern for newborn up to 6 years. I made a few changes to this pattern. I worked a few rows of garter stitch at the neckline, and worked this and the cuffs and bottom edge in a contrasting colour; I braided yarn for a tie instead of i-cord and I worked paired leaning increases for the raglan for a nicer (in my opinion) line than the kfb in the pattern.

The irony here is that this kimono-style jumper was knitted in the UK for a baby girl in Japan. It was only after I had finished it that it occurred to me that this was possibly a “coals to Newcastle” type situation and I should maybe have knitted something else. I’ve just received a lovely thank-you card and note though so it seems it was appreciated anyway.

I have mixed feelings about this pattern (which seems to be a theme around here at the moment).  Again, I wasn’t terribly keen on the way the pattern was written. For example, the list of materials doesn’t explicitly say that you need 4 ply yarn for the embellishments and cord, which left me thoroughly confused when I started making i-cord with DK-weight yarn that clearly wasn’t going to fit through the eyelets. (I ended up braiding three strands of DK yarn instead.) The designer’s note in one section about how the instructions had “caused some people significant angst” also rubbed me up the wrong way. The instructions are not complicated but they’re also not intuitive so I can understand why people were nervous about just following them without being able to “see” what was going to happen.

Having said all that, there is no denying that the finished jumper is absolutely adorable and I can see myself making many, many more of these.

…or not as the case may be.

I had big plans for last weekend – three days of sewing, knitting, painting (doors, not art!), and the photography and final edits for my shawl pattern.

Instead, I ended up with some sort of stomach bug or possible food poisoning and spent three days on the sofa watching DVDs. I did get some knitting done:

This is the progress so far on my Diamond Serape Shawl, which I’m knitting in the Wollmeise that I bought at Knit Nation last year.

This is definitely going to be a project where the enjoyment comes from the product and not the process. Even after several repeats, I haven’t really gotten into the rhythm of this design and I keep making mistakes. So far, they’ve been easy to spot and fix so I haven’t been discouraged from keeping going. The pattern itself is full of spelling errors and typos, which annoy me in a pattern that I’ve paid for (particularly when there are so few words in it). The chart is correct though, which is all I really need now that I’ve started.

It doesn’t help that I’m undecided on my opinion of the yarn as well. Opinions on Wollmeise seem to vary between “I love it because the colours are so beautiful that I don’t care about anything else” and “I hate it because it’s so string-like that I don’t care how beautiful the colours are”. At the moment, I fall pretty squarely in the middle. I absolutely love the richness of the blue (which the photograph above doesn’t really do justice to) but it does feel a lot like knitting with string. The texture doesn’t seem to matter so much when it is knitted up and I’m hoping that it will soften a little with washing. Also, I’m knitting it into a shawl so I don’t need it to be particularly soft and would rather it was more string-like if that means it will be less likely to pill and wear.

In other words, the jury is still out on this one and I’ll let you know when the final verdict comes in.

I don’t know where I got the idea that I needed six buttons for the Lesia Loop. The pattern quite clearly says that you need five and I had only knitted five buttonholes. Fortunately, only needing five buttons when you have six is a much smaller problem than needing six when you only have five.

For all my recently-declared love of blocking, I’ve decided to leave this shawl unblocked as well. The lace pattern is airy enough without being stretched and, since I didn’t swatch, I just kept knitting the shawl till I thought it was big enough, which means that it would probably end up enormous if I blocked it.

I love this shawl but, unfortunately, the buttons that I’ve used are just slightly too small. I managed to get them to stay buttoned long enough to take this photograph but until I manage to get new buttons, I’ll just have to stick to wearing it as an ordinary rectangular shawl.

One of my favourite things about this shawl is that it squashes up really, really small so can be squeezed into a bag when it’s not being worn. I have a woven pashmina that I carry around a lot in case I need a little bit of extra warmth but it takes up far more space than this will.

It’s just occurred to me that I have some black and white fabrics that would make a nice little pouch for this. Hmm, I think I feel a sewing project coming on!

Wollmeise Lace-garn in Blaue-tinte – Diamond serape shawl.

BC Garn Allino –  Summer Trellis shawl.

Debbie Bliss Rialto 4 ply (I think) –  secret project (sorry!).

I love blocking. I tend to think that I don’t because it requires time and patience, both of which I tend to be in short supply of. When I do find the time though, I find it quite meditative and you can’t really complain about a process that turns this:

this:

and this:

into this:

The corners look ruffled in the picture above but it is actually an optical illusion caused by the yarn striping.

The yarn is Knit Picks Shadow Tonal in blue-violet and this is a second version of my Japanese-inspired shawl, which (after nearly a year!) I have finally finished writing up. I’m tidying up some bits and pieces and waiting for my camera batteries to re-charge so that I can upload the rest of the photographs I took. Then it will be off to be edited and, with any luck, published by the end of the month.

My Simmer Dim is finished! It has actually been finished since March but I didn’t blog about it because I was waiting until I had blocked it.  It’s still not blocked but it turns out that I love wearing it this way so I’m not going to bother with blocking for the time being.

The yarn is the Fyberspates Thick Nef Lace that I bought at Knit Nation last year. It’s wonderfully soft and I love the blend of greys.

Gudrun’s pattern was excellent as always. Clear instructions, straightforward knitting and a beautiful result.

I had hoped to end up with a simple, elegant shawl that I could wear to work: mission accomplished!