Azzy's Crochet

Blog is moving - please change your links

2010-05-23T17:35:00.004+01:00

Well it's time for an announcement - my blog is moving.

I've set up a little business called Kooky Kat Kreations - after our crazy kitty. As mentioned in a previous post I'm going to be selling handspun, handknits, patterns... anything that springs to mind.

To this end, I'm in the process of creating a whole new online identity, that I want this blog to be a part of, and so it's moving with me.

I'm still going to be Azzy, or AzzyWazzy, depending on where you know me from - my main email address won't change, and my Twitter and Flickr and Ravelry accounts will stay as they are - because they are about ME. But for patterns, selling, and blogging about crafting, we're going to move over to Kooky Kat Kreations.

So for anyone who subscribes or follows me, please adjust your links to point to http://kookykatkreations.wordpress.com/ as I will no longer be updating here. At some point soon I will purchase a domain and the address will be: http://www.kookykatkreations.com/blog - so you might want to bookmark that address too, to ensure you catch it when I update.

See you on the other side!

First handspun singles

2010-05-22T16:41:00.005+01:00

Been doing some more spinning this week! Managed to complete another project in the space of two days - this time it was 4oz of Spunky Eclectic Club Fibre. It's the December shipment, which was Wensleydale in the colour way Cold Front:

Most people seemed to have more blues in theirs, particularly dark blue. Mine is a much lighter selections of greens and sea-blues.

There's been a lot of people spinning this up as singles - due to Wensleydale being a longer staple fibre, you don't need much twist to hold it together. It's also a heavier fibre, which means that you wouldn't get massive amounts of yardage if you plied it. So singles make sense.

I split my fibre into 3 bits, lengthwise, to try and give as many colour variations as possible. I was aiming for somewhere between laceweight and fingering weight, and wanted to try and fit it all on a single bobbin. Here's it while I was spinning:

My concern with singles, is that when I took them off the bobbin, that they'd be a curly mess - all twisty and crazy. After I'd skeined it ready for it's bath, it did twist a bit, but the main thing that amazed me was the crimp:

So it's more curly, rather than twisty - you can almost imagine the sheep, with loads of massive curly locks. The hope was that "finishing" the yarn would fix this. To finish it, I ran a sink of very hot water and a bowl of very cold. I then proceeded to dunk and swoosh the yarn around, alternately in each bowl, squeezing the water out before changing bowls and finishing with a hot bowl.

Put it in a towel and squeeze the water out, smack the wrapped yarn-towel against the bath, take it out, and then put my hands inside and snap the yarn tight, to even out the twist.

The result was a yarn that hung perfectly open in a loop - with a gorgeous fuzzy halo. Behold the finished skein:

Pretty happy with this - they've got enough twist to hold together, and the yardage is reasonable. I've got approximately 440 yards of fingering-lace weight singles, which would be enough for a scarf or shawlette.

Full specs:

Singles: approx 16-20wpi
Spun: sort-of long draw
Plied yarn: not plied - kept as singles
Finishing: light fulling - hot/cold/hot/cold water shocking, whacking & snapping
Finished yarn: approx 16-20wpi, 440 yards, 116 grams

Spun on: Kromski Mazurka
Started: 17th May 2010
Finished: 18th May 2010

This is a skein that I think will go up for sale, rather than be kept - the colours aren't very me and it's a bit itchy for me personally. That makes 3 finished skeins ready to go up for sale - I'd better get a move on with the store!

To change my blog, or not to change my blog?

2010-05-18T17:13:00.002+01:00

I've come to a point where I need to make a decision. I've decided to start up a little venture where I'm going to sell handmade items - be it handspun, hand knits, dyed items... patterns... no idea.

To this end, I've set up a new email address on Gmail and created some cards I can hand out and attach to items I'm selling. I may also buy the domain name and set up an Etsy store... all things to think about! What I can't decide is what to do about my blog. I quite like this blog. I've had it for a few years now, and even though it isn't all about crochet anymore (hasn't been for a while really), it's quite representative of who I am.

I need to figure out whether I want to leave this blog here as it is, or port it over to the new name. Never mind the whole hassle of hosting...

Advice? Tips?

Preparing for Winter

2010-05-17T20:23:00.003+01:00

It might seem a little counter-intuitive for me to be having a blog post with this title in the middle of May, but due to how cold this house is, I've been getting a move on with some projects that will help once the weather begins to turn.

I've recently started on Ysolda's Hap Blanket. I've just finished the centre square and have started on the edging. I'm making it using some yarn I bought from Baa Ram Ewe - I have the biggest 400g ball of yarn I've ever seen in the grey.

It won't be the warmest blanket as the yarn is mostly acrylic, but it'll be a nice extra layer when the weather turns.

Last weekend I finished another Ysolda project - the Icing Swirl Hat. Was making this from a random 100g of bulky yarn I had laying around. I bought it on a whim about 2 years ago and have been desperate to use it up for ages. It's in a colour that doesn't suit me, and it contains alpaca, which makes me itch, so it's a funny one.

I got about 2/3 way through making the large size of the hat and felt pretty sure I was going to run out of yarn, so I frogged back. It's a good thing I did, as I bound off with about a foot of yarn to spare - and that was despite missing out the final knit row.

The colour of the hat in real life is actually much darker than this, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like. Not sure what I'll do with it long term - probably gift it to someone.

Frustratingly, all this winter knitting and spinning and using of thicker yarns means I've made zero progress on the socks for Trev I started a month ago.

I'm a few rows short of starting the gusset on the first foot, but I'll pick them back up soon. I have another Knit Love Club parcel arriving at the end of the month and I haven't knitted up the last one yet, so I need to get my skates on so as not to fall behind.

There's amazingly another FO! I've finally got around to knitting myself a pair of Fetchings. I've knitted so many fingerless gloves and I've only ended up keeping one so far (Vintage Endpaper Mitts). So I had some leftover yarn from knitting the Ribbed Baby Jacket and thought the 1.5 skeins would be perfect to use on these.

Normally the project only uses 1 skein, but they make for quite short narrow gloves. Since I wanted to add in a proper thumb gusset and make the gloves longer at both the top and the bottom, the extra half a skein would be ideal. I also hoped it would give me the opportunity to practice cabling without a cable needle.

I'm not going to go into all the mods I made here - you can find them all listed on my Ravelry page.

I'm pretty happy with these - other than the few niggles I've mentioned on Rav, churning out a snuggly squishy pair of gloves in a day and a half makes me very happy!

Shame all knitting can't be this quick :)

Getting to grips with my wheel

2010-05-17T18:42:00.005+01:00

Had lots of fun on Saturday playing with my new wheel. Here's some wheel p0rn:

I've mastered the art of rewinding bobbins and love how they look once they're done. I did this with a load of stuff this weekend - old projects and those in progress. Take a look at a bobbin before and after rewinding:

Love how perfect it looks!

Plying the above two bobbins is next on my list. No idea how much laceweight this is going to be. Fingers crossed I'll get a decent yardage.

The below is one third of some Spunky Eclectic fibre I started to spin up back late last year. It's going to become a 3-ply of some description - maybe about DK weight?

But I actually managed to start and finish a whole new project this weekend! I spun up a bump of this fibre last year and it came out terribly. Very overspun. So now I acquired another bump of it, I wanted to give it another go. I wanted to spin something bulkier with not as much twist, so give me something squooshy. It went from this:

to this:

to this:

Here's the full break-down of the yarn and the specs (also available on my Rav page):

The Yarn Yard Fibre Club February shipment.

Inspired by the rhododendron outside Natalie’s window and the fibre is Texel. It’s staple length is similar to BFL, but is slightly coarser - but should still make good socks, mittens, hats etc.

I got given a second bump of this fibre, so now attempting to spin it up on my wheel as something chunkier and squooshier.

Singles: approx 20-24wpi
Spun: semi-worsted (I think)
Plied yarn: 2 ply, using tensioned lazy kate
Finishing: hot water, whacking & snapping
Finished yarn: 8-9wpi, 118 yards, 97 grams

Spun on: Kromski Mazurka
Started: 15th May 2010
Finished: 16th May 2010

Disappointed with the yardage here - maybe Texel is denser than other fibres? It’s not as soft as I’d hoped it’d be and I may have put in more twist than it needed to hold together.

A tough one.

Better pics to come when I get the chance and the right light.

Despite not being entirely happy with it, it is better than anything I spun on a spindle, so there's room for improvement. Maybe I need to go from not pre-drafting at all to doing some? Let's see how I go with the laceweight and what kind of yardage I get from it.

Really enjoying having my wheel though! Love that it also has pride of place in my living room :)

Some House TLC

2010-05-09T13:19:00.002+01:00

I promised an update on housey bits so here it is!

It's been a busy few days and a productive weekend. Taken all the pics I wanted to and now sitting down to the Formula 1 and some well deserved knitting. Just finished an FO, and about to cast on something else, but I'll save those bits for another post.

So, you know that bathroom floor I mentioned in my last post? We started to clean it yesterday and probably did about a quarter of the floor. I took a great pic that shows you before and after:

Yummy, eh? Of course I now don't want to tread on the rest of the floor, but we'll get it clean over the next few days.

We've also been cleaning up one of the lovely little bits we like about the house. We've got this huge great big cupboard in the kitchen that goes from the floor to the ceiling:

You'll notice the nice ornate fingerplates on the doors. Check out this close-up:

So, lovely, but covered with over 100 years of grime! We reckoned that these would be brass underneath, but you can see as we start going at it with the Brasso, that they're actually copper. Here they are now:

So we've managed to get to the copper on the left-hand one, but there's so much patina and grime build-up that it might take a while to totally uncover them. In any case, we think we might put them back up as they are now, as they look MUCH better and we kinda like the worn look that they have now.

I also mentioned that we bought a few bits and pieces for the house. First thing we bought was a massive candle for the living room. It contains 4 layers of smells, so it changes as it burns.

Nom.

We also bought one of those old-fashioned metal signs - this one for the bathroom. It is reproduction, rather than antique, but the style is exactly what we are after:

At the moment it is in the bathroom rather than on the bathroom door - not sure if we'll move it or not. Tempted to get one that says "Laundry" for our little utility room, or a couple of larger ones for the kitchen. What I really want for the kitchen are some of those old adverts for Kit-Kat or Cadburys from the Victorian era, and get them framed as posters in the kitchen. I think they'd look amazing.

The final thing we bought was for the kitchen. It's got a nice country-kitchen feel to it, which is exactly what we wanted.

It's more of a cream colour than in the picture, and we now have it up on the wall - it looks amazing. We haven't bought any chalk for it yet, so it will be a while before I can write Trev to-do lists on it, but it's a start :)

The main things now to think about are curtains - particularly for the front door which is VERY draughty. Carpet for the wood in the hallway is also a must - as there's no radiator there and it will get very cold. But for the main rooms we're also going to think about secondary glazing. There are places which sell acrylic panels which act as second panes of glass that provide insulation, both from cold and noise and we think these are going to be essential in the run-up to winter. The house is cold, even at the moment in May (although in fairness it hasn't been that warm), so unless I want to spend a fortune on heating, it's going to be a necessity.

As it more knitting and stashing. After all, I can use fibre as insulation, right?

How time flies...

2010-05-05T21:53:00.003+01:00

I can't believe how fast the last couple of weeks have gone. I'm writing this post from our new living room - we moved house on Saturday and are now the proud renters of a lovely Victorian terrace house in Leeds. Next to a bakery no less, which is run by our landlords who are the most amazing lovely people.

We're still in the process of trying to get straight and sorted - we had my parents come up to stay from Saturday until yesterday, which was great in terms of getting everything moved, but not so good for getting unpacked and sorted.

I still can't believe that it's exactly a month since we moved to Leeds (or it was on Sunday) and we've already moved house again - but at least this is a much more permanent move and we should be here for a long time. The previous tenants were a bit disgusting and messy (to put it politely) and we've got our work cut out to get everywhere totally clean. Case in point, we were just cleaning the bathroom floor which looked semi clean, after the cat had messed on it, only to see the sheet after sheet of dirt which was coming up as we wiped. Trev knows what he's doing tomorrow!

Because it's a lovely period property, there's lot of little features and things that just make a place like this. We've got a beautiful fireplace in the lounge, high ceilings everywhere and gorgeous wooden floors. But we also have single glazing, which means it's very cold - so the run-up to winter is going to involve lots of handknits and curtains and possibly some DIY-double glazing. Watch this space for more housey-related posts.

It's so strange going from a one bed-flat to this massive house - once we're a bit more sorted I will definitely do a picture tour. We went out today and bought a few little bits and started to polish up some of the accents the house has. Will definitely post pics of these at the weekend as I'm back to work tomorrow. Such a nice feeling to give a beautiful house like this some of the TLC it deserves. And I've got more space for craft stuff, which can only be a good thing :)

I have a wheel!

2010-04-25T21:55:00.003+01:00

I am the proud owner of my first spinning wheel. I've bought it from our housemate and it's a Kromski Mazurka in Walnut. She did me a fantastic deal on her wheel, as well as some books and fibre that I couldn't turn down. Especially since I'd been playing with the wheel for the last week or so and just seemed to click with it.

I promise I'll take some better pictures soon!

I've already been a little productive with it. I spun up some Ixchel Bunny Angora/BFL that was a club package last year into some terribly plied aran weight-ish yarn. I spun a single and then chain-plied it very badly using Sarah Anderson's technique here. The way she does it is brilliant - my use of it, less so. But I have a few ideas for how to improve it next time, so it's all good.

Initially this came out a bit overplied - ran it back through the wheel to remove some twist and now it hangs perfectly level. It has plenty of overtwisted and kinky bits in it, where the yarn got tangled up, but for a first proper wheel attempt, it's not bad.

Took 3 hours to spin the singles, and probably about another hour to ply.

Full skein info:

Singles: approx 20-24wpi
Spun: semi-worsted (I think) - used short forward draw but didn’t smooth twist back into yarn
Plied yarn: chain-plied using Sarah Anderson’s video technique
Finishing: hot water, whacking & snapping
Finished yarn: 10wpi - 103 yards

Spun on: Kromski Mazurka
Started: 16th April 2010
Finished: 21st April 2010

I have another project on the wheel already. Spinning up more club fibre, this time from the Yarn Yard, last year. It's Peregrine fibre (25% nylon 75% superwash merino) in a colour way called Red Squirrel. I was planning to make this into sock fibre, but it seems to want to be laceweight, so that's what I'm going for.

Getting a lot of colours from a top that wasn't actually that varied. Didn't think I'd like it, but it's growing on me.

Got about another 4 in progress spinning projects that I think I might finish up on the wheel. Two are laceweight (Hobbledehoy batt and LGJ 800 yard challenge fibre) and two are thicker (Spunky Eclectic Romney Socks and Spunky Club DK) - so I'm hopefully in for a very productive few weeks if I can resist the lure of other fibre. Only got 4 bobbins, so I need to be relatively disciplined with how I spin. Will be nice not to have any more unfinished projects lurking around! Will then spin up some thicker stuff, as all this laceweight is taking me forever.

And in other news, we are actually moving house again in less than a week! Long story, and I'll have more info next week after we've moved in, but we've found an amazing house just around the corner which is huge and an absolute bargain to boot. Really looking forward to it. Already got a spot for the wheel picked out :)

Hope everyone had amazing weekends! Only a few more sleeps till the bank holiday weekend.

Finished Objects & A Trunk Show

2010-04-10T19:02:00.003+01:00

Been a busy week! Can't believe that it's almost time for me to go back to work. But I feel like I've got a lot done.

Had to reorganise my stash bookcase today as I had a few new arrivals (more below). Always very scary to see how much you actually DO HAVE when you lay it all out on the bed and see it all in one place. Hmmm. But it's all packed away again now and I don't have to face the enormity of how much there is to use! :)

But I've got a few bits done this week. Got 2 FOs and some new fibre.

First up, the finished baby jacket:

I think my tension still looks like crap (despite blocking) and I wish I'd put the button and buttonhole further down, but overall I'm quite happy with it. Haven’t made any changes to the bottom edge, as while it curls a bit, it’s ok. I also don’t mind the curling on the cuffs - I like the way it rounds the edges and looks almost intentional!

Followed the pattern exactly as written, except for adding a one-row buttonhole. It was the first time I’ve done it, and I used the video from Knitting Help, found here.

Only other small change was when I picked up and knit the ribbing. I picked up 3 stitches for every 4 knitted stitches/rows until I had a multiple of 4+2. Pretty happy as the ribbing lines up exactly from side to side and looks quite good.

Used mattress stitch to seam the sides (I’m pretty happy with these - the only complaint would be that the seams are a little bit bulky.

Underarm seams I knitted using a “fake grafting” technique - worked much better on one arm than the other, but came out pretty well. If you have the first SnB book, instructions are there, or I’m sure you can find something similar on Ravelry.

Used about 3.5 balls of the 5 I purchased - may use the rest to make a hat or some matching booties or something. But need to get my skates on as friend is due in 6 weeks!

Second FO is a scarf knitted from the angora laceweight yarn from Baa Ram Ewe I mentioned in a previous post. I wanted to knit it up into something lacey and lovely - Trev said the yarn reminded him of me (being pink, feminine but not too girly - HA) so it had to become something for me.

I managed to make a couple of mistakes, at the beginning and the end, on the set of YOs in the middle - typically. Overall though, I'm pretty happy with it. My cast-on was way too tight so the bottom end doesn't look as good as the top. But I hoped blocking would fix that and it has. I decided not to totally wet-block it, on the advice of Verity at the shop. Instead I pinned it out and misted it and waited for it to dry. Has definitely done the trick. Looks lovely now! Just a shame (well not really) that the weather is warming up and it's too warm to wear it now.

I bought some new fibre for the first time in ages (club fibre doesn't count!). I bought some more fibre from Limegreenjelly on Etsy - a lovely merino/camel/silk blend that looks divine:

I think with this fibre I'll try a technique for turning combed top into rolags - so I can spin something light and lofty and attempt to use long draw :) Technique info can be found here.

I also went to my first knit night at Baa Ram Ewe on Thursday which also happened to be a Fyberspates Trunk Show. Jeni from Fyberspates came up to chat to us and show her wares - I resisted the charms of the yarn (although I've queued a lovely pattern that she had a sample of in her yarn - Alchemy cardigan), but succumbed to fibre. I bought some Falkland and Superwash Falkland - can't wait to spin these up.

Definitely want to do some more spinning. I've got more fibre stashed now than yarn - which is a MASSIVE problem :) I need to crack on with the spinning and make a dent in the stash. And definitely must NOT buy any more fibre that isn't club.

Huh, yeah. Like that's going to happen!

A New Home

2010-04-06T21:09:00.002+01:00

Well, it's been 4 days since we moved house and I think we're pretty much settled in now. A lot of our stuff is in storage, but what we need on a day-to-day basis has moved with us to our house-share.

Our housemate has very kindly given us the largest bedroom for all of our stuff, so I've got space for my craft bits and to have some private space to ourselves, which is great. All in all, should be brilliant until the lease ends in a few months and we all go our separate ways. We've got a few areas we are thinking of to move onto, so will be fun to do some exploring and see where we want to go.

Been doing our best to keep active, the last few days - it's very strange going from an area that is totally flat, so a place built on hills - my legs certainly need the exercise and I've probably dropped a couple of pounds already - between the walking and cooking proper food again (last 2 weeks was spent living off junk food!). Overall we're really happy. As mentioned in my last post, there's a few things I'm unsure about in terms of my new job, but it's been so long since I started anywhere new, I'm sure most of it is just nerves.

So, since we don't use a dishwasher any more (although we've brought it with us and it's in storage), I've been working on a few things to make washing up by hand more fun, more hygienic and easier.

Enter the tawashi.

Tawashi can be knitted or crocheted - it's basically the Japanese word for "scrubbing brush". Some tawashis can be used ta-washi-the-dishes, some can be used as face or body cloths. They're great because they're washable - so can be better cleaned than sponges or normal cloths. Plus they just look so cool!

My first attempt didn't come out too well. It's 100% aran weight cotton, but Trev's already earmarked it as a face scrubbie, despite it being wonky. It was made from a Japanese pattern, using charts.

My next few were a pattern called Scrubbie Dots (check out Rav) made with doubled DK yarn, again using a 5mm hook. Made them in a few different colours of acrylic I had lying around. I have since crocheted the edges of two together using slip stitch, so I have a thicker double sided-scrubbie, but these have come out pretty good:

The third pattern is also a Japanese one for a spiral tawashi. My first attempt was rubbish, as I forgot to sc through the back loops only (so the piece has no texture) and then I couldn't figure out the finishing instructions. So instead of a spiral, I got this:

Um, yeah. Second attempt was a bit better. Thanks to some useful photos on Rav, I was able to work out how to put them together. And I ended up with this little cutie:

I also added a little loop so we can hang it up:

Will definitely be making more of these spiral ones. Need to work out a way to make them even bigger for better scrubbage. Tried them out on the washing up this morning and they did really well. Want to get some very bright funky coloured yarn to make super interesting ones.

Also trying to finish off a few more projects this week before I start work. Got a few more bits and pieces to do too, like adjusting addresses and sorting out insurance etc. All takes time... and I already don't know where the time has gone since Friday! Scary.

Another update hopefully later this week :)

Things I'm going to miss about London

2010-03-24T20:12:00.003Z

So, it's official. I have a job, and we are moving to Leeds on April 2nd!

I didn't get the job mentioned in my last blog post - but have since been offered 2 others, one of which I've accepted. It's a nice step up for me, and exactly in the line of work I'm doing. A few things I'm unsure of, such as client base, but I'll see how we go.

So. London. Leaving it. In truth, there's not that much I'm going to miss about London - I'm a real country girl at heart. I can't wait to be in a little stone cottage and maybe acquire a few chickens and some bees. And spin in front of an open fire. And be near proper countryside. You couldn't really get further removed from the hubbub of Oxford Street where I work.

Having said that, there are a few things I'm going to miss. I wanted to put a small list together - to give me reasons to make the effort to come back down to London every so often when we come and stay with my lot in Peterborough.

Hummingbird Bakery - the most amazing cakes and cupcakes I've ever had. I am going to buy their cookbook and replicate lots of red velvet gorgeousness at home
Eagle Bar and Diner (a lot of these are going to be food related) - American style diner with burgers, hot dogs, huge bowls of skinny fries and the BEST milkshakes. OMG. Went there for lunch again today - divine.
Busaba - (Busaba Eathai) - a chain of Thai restaurants. Amazing food, served really quickly. Thai chicken curry with jasmine rice and veggie vietnamese spring rolls FTW. Nom.
Afternoon tea at the Lanesborough - VERY expensive, but totally worth it - if you can get past feeling so utterly out of place! I don't drink tea, but the iced tea is incredible and you get sandwiches, cakes and of course, scones with clotted cream and jam.
Great buildings - I love the architecture of buildings such as St. Pancras train station, the Liberty building and so many other places in London. It's full of amazing buildings and so much history. One of my favourite things that I have on the way to work every day are the little blue plaques on certain buildings that say which important people in history lived, worked and sometimes died there. I love history and feeling a connection to the past. Needless to say one building I won't miss, is Centrepoint. I have to agree with Helen from the AnswerMeThis podcast who once said, "Centrepoint's a f**king ugly building". 'Nuff said.
Last, but by no means least, my friends. I have some great friends at work and on Twitter (even though I haven't met some of you!) who I'm going to miss like crazy. It's been a pleasure knowing and spending time with you and hope we can all keep in touch. You guys are the main reason I'll be coming back to London - even though most of this list is food-related.

Should have time to do a knitting-related post this weekend. Getting so behind! Got packing to do and an unlimited amount of stressing. I'm the kind of person who stresses when there's nothing to stress about, so now there IS actually something, I'm my own worst enemy. Fingers crossed once I don't have to do the 4 hour commute anymore, I'll resemble a human being more than a nervous wreck :)

Changes Part 2

2010-03-01T21:17:00.002Z

So, an update on my earlier post where I spoke about moving to Leeds. The first interview went really well and I went back for a second interview on Friday. I had to do a 30 minute presentation and also be interviewed by the MD. Unsure about how it went - was hoping to hear back Friday or today, but no news yet. Fingers crossed!

We spent the whole weekend in Leeds - going up Friday and coming back last night. We stayed with Sarah, who we will hopefully be moving in with. We had a nice night in on Friday, went to Salvos for dinner on Saturday and did a nice bit of shopping on Sunday in Leeds city centre - getting to know the place.

I'd forgotten that Leeds has hills - given that it's in Yorkshire and whatnot. I know at this point people are probably thinking, "hills? Where did you GO?" - but I'd remind everyone that I live in Peterborough. On the edge of the Fens - where the highest point is something crazy like only 2 metres above sea level - and hopefully you get the idea :)

Salvos was one of the high points of the weekend - it had always been popular (and you can't book - you just turn up and queue) - but since it won best regional Italian on Gordon Ramsay's the F Word, it's been even more mental. We made our way over at about 7pm, expecting a wait of about an hour - oh no. Two and a half hours was the waiting time - they wouldn't be able to seat us until 9:30. Wow.

So, we went away, drank a bottle or so of wine, and came back about 9. Picked our food, got seated at 9:25, while watching other people STILL queueing to be served at 10:45. Mental.

But, I can see why. The food was AMAZING - quite possibly the best food I've ever eaten. It was all amazing - and I've never seen a kitchen quite so calm. Considering how rammed the place was, there's was no panicking, no stress. And if you ever go, have the Mars Bar Fondue for dessert. OMG. That is all.

One of the other highlights was my first trip to Baa Ram Ewe - my soon to my local yarn store. I succumbed and splurged on some beautiful Orkney Angora laceweight. There was a beautiful sample in the store knitted into a scarf and I'm determined to copy it. There's a lovely selection of yarns in there and I know I'll be back very often once we move. There's a knit night every Thursday which might become a regular fixture.

Piccies of the yarn to come soon (once I get some time at home in daylight), along with some of other yarn I've acquired for baby projects.

Busy busy busy!

Rumpled

2010-03-01T21:01:00.002Z

I have finally finished the Rumpled socks :) I actually finished them on February 20th but haven't posted until now.

The second sock has come out very slightly bigger, as they always do - but weirdly I
have 12g of yarn left again! So I have a total of 24g left to use on something else which is brilliant as the yarn is divine.

Despite my cankles, the socks also happen to look ok on me! First pair of socks ever for me!

I've immediately cast on for my pair of Firestarters which aren't going so well. I'm using the following gorgeous yarn, but I have a problem:

My gauge is off. Waaaaay off. Instead of 41 rows per 4 inches, I have about 48. So despite doing an extra repeat of the cables to fit my longer foot, I've started the gusset and am only here:

I need to rip back and do at least one more repeat (if not two) before I start the gusset. So these have been temporarily relegated to the naughty corner while I get on with a few other bits, which will follow in a non-sock related post :)

Changes

2010-02-12T21:59:00.002Z

There's lots of change afoot in the Azzy Wazzy household. We're moving, at a date soon to be determined, changing jobs, and basically flipping everything upside down and starting again!

I've got a job interview on Wednesday, after a phone chat that went really well this week and hope it works out. Would mean the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place after I managed to arrange the sale back of the flat we're in at the moment, plus accommodation once we move. 2 down, 1 to go. Now the fun of dealing with mortgages and conveyancers all over again!

Fingers crossed for Leeds here we come.

Knit Love Club

2010-02-07T11:57:00.004Z

Time for some Knit Love!

I mentioned back in August I think it was, that I had entered the ballot to get a space in the Socktopus Knit Love Club. I entered, won a space, and paid my club fee for the year - and last Monday, picked up my first package!

The way that it works is that we get 6 parcels a year, with luscious yarn and custom-designed patterns. There will be a package roughly once every 2 months, which gives me plenty of time to get the socks knit - especially as I can do a sock in a week when I put my mind to it.

So with no further ado, here is all the gossip on my first package. If you don't want to see any spoilers, don't go past the spoiler owls (aren't they cute?):

I had heard tales of shiny silver parcels containing yarn. But I had no idea that they were mirror-reflective shiny.

The first pattern is called "Rumpled" and looks far more complex than it actually is to knit. The yarn is Alchemy Juniper - a yarn I had never used before and comes in the colourway "Rumpelstiltskin".

I adore the yarn. It's so soft and feels like knitting with velvet. I love the colourway too - it isn't one I would have chosen, but it's like sunshine. Knitting in the sun, it looks absolutely beautiful. If you want to read more about the Juniper yarn, there's a great article here. It's a slightly splitty yarn, but with care, it knits up wonderfully.

The pattern speeds along quite quicky too. It has twisted stitches, yarn overs, and it's a cuff-down sock with a heel flap and gusset. It's my first sock of that type, and so far it's gone quite fast.

I sped through the first sock in 2 days, getting to the heel flap but then managed to make a major boo-boo when starting the gusset. The pattern called for doing decreases on every other round, but I managed to miss the "Round 2" instructions and decreased on every row - giving me a gusset that would not fit as it was too steep. So I had about 10 rows that I needed to frog back but was scared to do - as I didn't want to drop stitches and was worried about having to rip the whole thing up and start again.

After some careful thinking about help from the group on Ravelry, I decided to try and carefully insert a lifeline about 10 rows back (on the row where I picked up the heel flap stitches) and run this all the way round so that I could rip back to this point and then pick my stitches up again. It was hard because I needed to pick a non-lace row, but also needed to choose a row where I hadn't done more decreases than I needed to - which left me with only that one point where I could do it.

It took forever to do, but there was a nice feeling of satisfaction when I was done. Makes me feel like I am improving as a knitter and that I needn't be as worried as I used to about things being beyond me.

I quickly completed sock 1 on Monday and have been on sock 2 since then. It's taken
me much longer to make good progress on sock 2 (always does, for some reason) but I should have it done within the next week or so. Here are my socks so far:

They need blocking, and hopefully that will help them fit a bit better on my leg. The fit around my ankles but are a bit tight - although the foot fit is fine. I love how well the flap and gusset fit.

The next pair of socks I want to make also feature a flap and gusset, although they are a toe-up pattern. I want to make a pair of Firestarter socks and I already have the yarn in mind.

Watch this space for more socky news :)

WIP Wrestling!

2010-01-24T16:11:00.005Z

The name of this post is stolen from an event that they have in the Ravelympics. What is the Ravelympics, I hear you ask? Well it's a giant crafting "thing" that takes place alongside the normal Olympics - so the summer version in 2008 and for 2010, the winter ones. The basic premise is that you start and finish something during the duration of the games, although there are also specific challenges that you can choose to tackle depending on your level of madness. The one that appeals to me, and I'm going to start already (as I don't want to wait for Feb), is WIP Wrestling, where you try and finish as many of your half-finished projects as you possibly can.

In my case, I had 8 WIPs outstanding at the beginning of the year, most of which have been sat there for a goodly while and need to be finished. So my aim, as well as finishing other projects, is to get all of these done so I can be free of the guilt of seeing them in my stash when I cast on for something new.

The culprits are:

Husband Socks - update on these below
Boose's Booties - also an update on these
Trev's Gloves - started and finished one, last weekend - need to get the second one done so Trev can enjoy non-frozen hands
Fiddlehead Mittens - finished the first one of these really fast - stalled on the second, and still have to knit linings for them too
Otto - this got put to one side after I had a serious falling out with the sister whose child it was intended for. Rubbish excuse I know, but I need to finish him and then decide what to do with him
Hourglass Jacket - started this because loads of people were, did about 4 rows and then got distracted by other stuff
Central Park Hoodie - did the back quite quickly, and then most of the left front, which I then had to frog for using the wrong size needles. Need to get smaller projects out of the way so I can focus on spending a big chunk of time on this one
First Handspun Socks - spun up the yarn for this which is a bit overtwisted and seriously tough. But need to give it a go on sufficiently large needles just to see how they come out

Sooo, I promised an update on 2 projects above. The first one is Boose's Booties, which I don't have an updated photo of, but instead some progress. I've finally found some buttonholes that I liked for these. I tried the sewn buttonholes, but just couldn't get them looking even and nice. So instead I crocheted a small chain, then slip-stitched back along it and fastened it in place. Also bought some cute buttons from John Lewis - so the first shoe is totally finished (even if it is too small) and the second one should be quicker work.

In terms of the Husband Socks, these are finished - after a massive knitting binge yesterday. I've wanted to get these finished, so that when I pick up my first Knit Love Club parcel tomorrow, I don't have socks-in-progress to guilt me out of doing these ones. I had about 60 rows to do, which I more or less managed yesterday. And after blocking and drying last night, here they are:

I think they look pretty good, despite the problems with instep tightness I mentioned last time I posted about them. And now they've blocked, they've really softened up and fit Trev really well. I didn't experience any bleeding of colour in the water as some have found with this yarn - just a massive amount of dirty water! Clearly my toting them around as my commute project, whilst it's been good for productivity, isn't good for cleanliness. Here's the vital stats on the socks:

2.25mm needles.
Use Judy’s Magic Cast On: 16/32 stitches.
Worked up to 72 stitches for the foot.
95 rows before turning the heel. (Work until 16 active stitches left.)
70 rows of the leg before starting the cuff.
20 rows of 2x2 rib.
Finish off with Jenny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.

Simples!

So much for nice simple stockinette socks. I've seen what the pattern for my first Knit Love Club parcel looks like and I'm very intimidated. I'm sure I'll be longing for stockinette before long!

New Year's Knitalutions 2010

2010-01-10T13:46:00.002Z

Well, time to review my knitalutions from last year and see how I got on and maybe make some new ones.

Learn to knit socks (and how to knit them 2 at a time as I already know Magic Loop)

I managed the first part of this - knitted 2 and a bit pairs last year and subscribed to a sock club. As for the 2 at a time bit, well I can try that this year.

Be a selfish crafter - knit and crochet more for myself than I do for other people

Don't think I did too well on this one - didn't really finish much for me at all, other than a few hats and pairs of gloves. But I did lots for Trev, which is technically selfish, as it makes me happy.

Learn how to seam knitting properly - I HATE seaming crochet and I'm no good at it, so I need to learn how to seam knitting, especially with my CPH on the needles at the moment

Nope! The CPH is still on the needles, so this hasn't happened. I know how to do mattress stitch in practise, but in reality, ummmm...

Learn to spin! I'm looking at a couple of courses in shops in London. I love the idea of a wheel, but will try out both wheels and spindles to see which I prefer

Yay! This was probably my first achieved goal last year, as I learned to spin in January. Not spent much time trying out a wheel, but have put myself on the list for a Journey Wheel and acquired 7 Bosworth spindles in the process. Still not that prolific a spinner, but hopefully that will come with time.

Learn colourwork/stranding/Fair Isle - not too sure I want to learn Intarsia (maybe in 2010) but would love to make a funky Fair Isle hat or something. Thinking Endpaper Mitts (here on Ravelry) to learn?

Done! The stranding part, anyway. Made the Endpaper Mitts and started on the Fiddlehead Mittens which are also stranded. In terms of Intarsia, unsure whether or not I'll attempt that this year.

To design something knitted, and maybe something hairpin lace

Not yet - having too much fun and learning knitting other people's patterns first.

Learn the "raglan" style of making sweaters - learn how to make stuff top-down and seamless

Still something I want to learn - haven't finished my first sweater yet, so might be a while before I give this a go.

Learn more about how garments are constructed so I can make changes and amend things to fit me

Also on the "still to learn" list.

Learn how to do short row and other shaping to allow for a proper fit in the boobage/waist/hip area

I've learned a little bit about short rows and how they pertain to socks, but in terms of actual garments? Still not there yet.

Learn all my knitted increases and decreases and more ways to cast on/off

I think I made pretty good progress on this. I know most of my increases and learned lots of different cast ons, such as tubular, german twisted, long-tail, cable, invisible, Judy's Magic, etc. Cast offs haven't been quite so many, but plan to add to this - done standard bind offs, sewn bind offs and recently learned Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off which I adore!

So in terms of aims for this year? I think I should be a bit less ambitious, especially as we are likely to have quite a lot on this year - we are thinking about moving up to Leeds, which involves selling the flat and my finding a new job - so that's likely to eat up a chunk of time. But here's a few, hopefully more achievable things:

Finish everything I currently have in Ravelry as a WIP
Knit all my Knit Love Club socks this year
Spin more - try and finish at least 6 full skeins of yarn
Make another jumper/cardigan of some kind for myself
Continue to be a selfish crafter - but remember that this means I can knit for other people as long as it makes me happy
Make sure I save up at least half the money I need for my Journey Wheel
Try and be more disciplined when it comes to finishing projects - I want to suffer from attacks of finishitis, not startitis.

I think that's enough for now. The socks should keep me more than busy enough for most of year, along with trying to spin more and finish another garment. I know I've got a couple of baby garments I'm going to want to finish, so that should be good practise for making garments of my own.

I'm already making good progress on the WIP thing - will set up another post about this in a sec as I have another FO to show off :)

Piccies as promised

2010-01-10T09:16:00.002Z

OK, so it's not Saturday, it's Sunday. But in fairness I did take all the photos I needed yesterday :)

Time to have a little photo catch-up of some of the other things that have been going on.

Finished Ripley:

Made the standard medium size - the only change I made was to kitchener the band as soon as I had finished knitting it, rather than at the end. I found I was able to minimise holes and get a cleaner result this way.

Baby Booties:

My colleague who stole my black Ripley on account of her being pregnant (she was very cold when we went on a business trip to Madrid and in fairness I did lend it to her and she fell in love with it) will be getting a few handknits from me! I've started on these booties but the first one has come out super tiny. So unless she has a small baby, I don't know what to do with them.

I've made a change to the pattern where I've used an applied i-cord to make the straps as I think it gives a nicer looking result. Just need to do the buttonholes on this first one and then knit the second. Cute, despite being too small.

Trev's house socks:

Just past the toe on the second one now. Annoyingly, his socks are still quite tight on him across the instep - but not as much so as his Koigu socks. Next pair I try I'll use a gusset and heel flap and see if that makes things fit any better. Of course the next pair of socks I knit will be for ME, but due to my massive cankled feet, I can still try out this technique :)

Hobbledehoy Handspun:

I've wound my 2-stranded plying ball - will ply it later this week once everything has settled down, to make it easier to ply. No idea what sort of yardage I will get from it, but should be a semi-decent amount.

Time of the Month Handspun:

As mentioned before this is the first 2oz, and came out to just over 100yds. Tried to long-draw in places, but didn't really work - so this is a hybrid of lots of different drafting styles. Chain-plied it to preserve the stripes - think it looks good! Not too sure what the WPI is - somewhere between a DK and a sockweight, I think.

Limegreenjelly 800 yard challenge:

I mentioned this challenge in passing in my last post, but here's some more info :) On the LGJ group on Ravelry, we were inspired by a member who spun up a beautiful skein of laceweight using LGJ fibre and got a yardage of over 800 yards. It was then suggested that we all try and do the same, with a prize for the winner.

I've been a bit late to the game, esp considering that I am using a spindle, but I started on Wednesday and have already spun up about 10g or so, I reckon. In some ways I think I will be quicker with a spindle than with those on a wheel, as it's easier to insert lots of twist, fast, but still need to get a move on before it takes me forever.

I'm using some 70/30 merino/silk blend I bought from Jo called Lhuna and so far it's coming out like this on my Pink Ivory Mini:

When I'm totally finished with it I'll do a blog post on how I spun it and the full details, but for now pretty pictures are enough :)

Right, off to do some more spinning and knitting!

Welcome to 2010!

2010-01-07T19:52:00.002Z

Welcome everyone to this year! Sorry I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front. I had over a week off work and didn't get round to writing a post. Oops. I blame it on too much walking, eating, drinking and sleeping.

Not been overly productive on the knitting or spinning front! But here's an update on each.

Knitting:

I finished the first of Trev's Cherry Tree Hill house socks - pics to come once I've finished them both, or once I can take a pic in daylight of the one that's on the blocker. Come out well, and fits him good, which is great.

I also knitted 2 hats - a simple grey beanie for Trev and a new Ripley for me. I needed a new one because my black one got hijacked by a cold pregnant colleague on a business trip. So I cobbled one together out of leftover bulky yarn, but don't really have a picture to show yet. I do however have a pic of Trev's new hat:

I created a garter stitch band 8 stitches wide. S1, k7, p1. Then the same until I had 64 stitches on each side.

Joined in the round and picked up and knit a stitch in each on the first round. On the second round, did k1, kfb all around to give a total of 96 stitches.

Knit in the round until hat measured 5” from start of work.

Began decreasing 8 stitches every other round until I had only half my stitches left, then decreased 8 stitches each round until left with 8. Cut thread, and pulled through remaining stitches.

Simples!

Spinning:

Bit more to report here. I've had 2 Spunky Club shipments arrive and I've already started spinning up one of them. First off, is November's - 4oz of South African Fine in a colour way called Istanbul sunset. This is the one I've started to spin into a 3 ply yarn:

December's - 4oz of Wensleydale in a colour way called Cold Front. The colours are actually more vivid than this, but my camera doesn't like taking blues:

I also had some new toys turn up. I signed up for a Journeywheel package that was being put together to celebrate Abby's new book, Respect the Spindle. It consisted of a copy of the book, a special 46g batt of 55% merino, 30% tussah silk and 15% cashmere and finally a birds eye maple mini spindle with a Bocote shaft - the Batt, Book and Birdseye pack. Because of the weight I was after, I instead went for a featherweight spindle. And here we are:

The spindle is a gorgeous 18g and the batt is quite possibly the softest thing I have ever touched. With this one, I also ordered a Walnut Maxi - as I don't have a Maxi yet and I've always wanted a Walnut spindle too. Here's some more gratuitous spindle pictures:

In terms of actual spinning, I've not accomplished much. I finished spinning and plying the first skein of the Romney Time of the Month sock yarn for more socks for Trev - came out to about 100yds for the first 2oz and I guess I need to take a picture of that oo!

I've also spun up all the singles from the Hobbledehoy batt but just need to ply it. You can also see the Istanbul Sunset fibre I've started to spin up above and because I just can't help myself, I've also started to spin up some fibre for a challenge - more details later.

Right - I'm going to make myself a little list of things I need to remember to take pictures of to show you next time:

- New Ripley hat
- Romney TOTM sock yarn
- Hobbledehoy batt yarn
- Challenge spinning
- Trev's socks

I also need to report back on my New Year's Knitalutions for 2009 and how I did! I also need to make some new ones for 2010 but I promise I'll do that on Saturday :)

Ishbel

2009-11-30T19:25:00.003Z

So I can officially call myself a lace knitter now! After finishing the Ripley hats, I cast on for Ishbel. I've been planning to knit it for ages and finally persuaded myself that I might be able to manage it. I'd also been saving my Koigu for something other than socks, and this seemed ideal.

So we went from this:

to this:

I had some issues at the very beginning of section A and had to frog back to my lifeline (how I love lifelines) but other than that I seemed to have no problems throughout the rest of the pattern. I think counting every single row helped with that A LOT. The only slight fubar I had was where I'd missed a YO on a row but I was able to pick it up later on and it doesn't seem to have caused any issues now it's blocked.

Blocked it last night, and now finished, it looks like this:

Here's the few mods I made:

For cast-on edge did the below instead:
Cast on 3 sts, 1st row, P3, 2nd row K1M1 twice, then K1, 3rd row P5. 4th row K1M1 4times, K1. You now should have the required 9sts, and your next row is the first purl row of the stocking st instructions.

For the yarn-overs:
Make my first one with k2, yo, k1 for the k3, yo at the start of the row and then end with k1, yo, k2 instead of yo, k3.

I made the small stockinette with small lace version and only used just over 250yds of yarn. So I think with the 440yds that I have in my Knitting Goddess Luxury Sock, I should be able to knit the large stockinette and small lace - make it a bit bigger and warmer.

This one is lovely and warm (I have no pics of it on me, unfortunately) and I've already gifted it to my Mum who was oohing and aahing over my knitting prowess when I saw her at the weekend. We've both had a crappy few days with family (collectively they've ruined my day off today) so I wanted to give her something to cheer it up. She was very grateful :)

But I guess now this means I have to knit another! Oh dear.

I also ordered some more yarn this week. I had a voucher from The Yarn Yard to spend in the shop so when Natalie did a shop update this week, I grabbed the below:

Yarn Yard Clan, in 1331, Happy, Botanic and Electric. Trying to work out what colour combos go best with what (I love the yellow but it's the hardest one to pair up well). I might knit some colourwork mittens... or who knows. I guess I need to stock up on my stash in 2009 so I can try and use it up in 2010!

Ideas on the best colour combos and patterns to use them would be much appreciated. It's all sock weight yarn, by the way :)

Ripleys

2009-11-30T18:22:00.003Z

Ha ha did you see what I did there? Like the second of the Alien film was called Aliens and because there are 2 Ripleys in question... well yeah.

The Ripley that I initially cast on in my last post, I had issues with. I couldn't get gauge and it was going all wrong. I managed to find some information about upsizing the hat for aran weight yarn (although technically my yarn was the right WPI) and ended up with this hat for Trev:

As you can see, it's a bit too big - next time knitting on smaller needles might help I think. And I should probably do some proper gauge calculations rather than just knitting on regardless! :)

But then I cast on for a second hat using thicker yarn (some chunky cashmerino from a frogged hat I never wear) and managed to be able to follow the pattern directions - although I had to use a 7.0mm rather than a 6.0mm needle. Here's the one I came out with:

It's very warm and soft and I've basically been wearing it every day since. Although I know it will pill like there's no tomorrow, I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I've also had more fibre and yarn arrive:

I bought this from Diane (Knitting Goddess Luxury Sock) - I think it might become an Ishbel, rather than socks:

I also had some Spunky Club Fibre arrive (October shipment called Ribbons):

I've also been doing a teeny bit of spinning: here's part of a batt that I'm spinning up quite fine on my Moosie:

This is all stuff done a while ago now, so I'm going to do a second post with info about what I've been up to recently!

But yeah, my first Ysolda projects and I think they went well!

PS - While we are on the topic of hats, here is the finished Turn A Square that I knit for Trev:

The raglan decreases have left slight bumps on the top of the head that can resemble little horns, but I think it's cute :)

Mojo gone

2009-11-04T19:58:00.002Z

Just a quick post from me while I snuggle with the kitty - she's just come back from the vets after having a tooth out.

Not much to report at the moment - my crafting mojo seems to have gone entirely. After finishing the first of my Fiddlehead Mittens, the will to knit or spin has just completely gone. I'm meant to be testing a sock pattern for someone and I've not been able to get 3 rows past the cuff. Just don't know what it is.

I've cast on for a Ripley hat tonight, for Trev as I bought Whimsical Knits 2 by Ysolda Teague (also bought the first volume which came in the post today! Woo!) as it's quite simple and will hopefully help me get back in the swing of things.

I guess I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the knitting and stuff I want to do. Work is also quite stressful at the moment - and combined with the 4 hour commute every day, just leaves me exhausted. I've also had a lot of family crap to deal with - which dragged on for over a week and I'm still dealing with the aftermath of having some very nasty things dredged up that I didn't want to think about ever again - yet in the name of trying to assuage other people's guilt and make them feel better I have to do - despite being quite happy to never see most of my family again.

Plus I don't feel too well at the moment - so I guess it's all compounded into this horrible pity-party of a post. I just need to get away somewhere quiet and just be left alone with only Trev and Kooky for company.

Going to go eat some chocolate, watch some Project Runway and see if I can figure out how to move past the band on this hat.

Moosie Moosie Moosie!!!

2009-10-18T20:16:00.002+01:00

My Moosie came on Wednesday :) So so glad to have it finally here!

It's part of the October herd - whorl number 25 which was technically my second choice, but was actually my first choice when I really sat down and thought about it. My first was one with mouse nibbles, which I picked purely on account of the nibbles - but this one is far more beautiful

It's pin balanced on the underside and with the long Bocote shaft, weights just 25g. Moosies are dense for their size, so even though this one looks a bit strange having such a long shaft on such a small whorl, it spins beautifully.

Technically it's: White PB, heavy mottles in rings, green undertone on 1 side

It's absolutely gorgeous. I struggled to truly capture how beautiful it is, but here are some more gratuitous pics, just in case:

I also took a couple of family shots with all my spindles together. Love this shot:

This is probably it for big crafting purchases for me, for a while. I have enough spindles and things. I could do with getting a ball winder and swift, but other than occasionally getting some new Knitpicks tips, I'm sorted. Got my monthly fibre sub coming from Spunky Eclectic and I also got a place in Socktopus' Knit Love Club for 2010 - so I'll have yarn and socky goodness coming to me regularly too!

I tried to do some spinning with it this week, but the mojo just wasn't there. Tried spinning a couple of different things, but it wasn't happening. Will try again in a couple of weeks once I've got some other stuff out of the way.

Happy happy :)

Koigu Socks!

2009-10-18T20:02:00.003+01:00

At last I have finished Trev's Koigu socks. Finished them yesterday, so unfortunately I suck and they are 2 weeks late.

Here they are:

Not matching, due to the difference in skeins, but they make a good pair of fraternal twins.

Used Jenny's Super Stretchy Bind Off on both socks and did a slightly better job of it on the second sock as it's looser and easier for Trev to get the sock on and off.

Here's the low-down on what I did:

Cast on 24 stitches using Judy's Magic Cast On.
Increased to 64 stitches - 32 each for sole and instep.
3x2 rib on instep with 2 purl stitches either side.
Knitted 96 rows before turning heel.
Decreased to 10 stitches on the short row heel - used Priscilla's method for this.
20 rows of stockinette on needle 2 before beginning ribbing all the way round on cuff.
Added one stitch at centre of needle 2 to allow for ribbing to flow uninterrupted - totalling 65 stitches.
68 rows of the cuff (once starting ribbing all the way round) before binding off using the Super Stretchy BO.

These are really tight on Trev across the instep - I wonder if I should try a heel flap next time? Don't know if that would help with the tightness. But I'm testing a sock pattern as my next knit, so I'll see how that goes.

Overall, they're ok, I guess. Could have done a better job of them, but they're the same size, and whilst they're a little bit too small, they generally fit him.

So I finished those yesterday, and then cast on a hat for Trev yesterday afternoon - which I finished today! Only fgot a WIP picture of it, but it's the Turn a Square hat pattern. Went very fast - used a tiny bit of a grey ball, and just over half a blue ball. Might try and do a slouchy beanie for Trev from the remainder of the grey.

But before I do, I have a couple of other knits for me. First these test socks, some Fiddlehead Mittens and maybe a hat. I also need to finish off my long overdue CPH - the left front of which got frogged the other day. Full update on that to come whenever I get back onto it again.

Got some Moosie pics to follow now! :)

Running

2009-10-18T10:54:00.003+01:00

I, lazy-bum extraordinaire, have taken up running. Well, I don't know if I can say "taken up" yet as I've only done 2 sessions and the one I just finished nearly killed me! Feels like it anyway.

We've started doing the Couch to 5K programme as it's meant to be an easy way (easy? Huh who are they kidding!) to build up from doing nothing, to being able to run 5k (3 miles ish) within 9 weeks.

So we plan to do sessions 3 times a week. We did the first one on Friday - despite my not getting home from work until 7:30pm and being knackered and hungry, because Trev was really keen to get started we went out and did it.

Wasn't as bad as I thought, actually. Had some shin ache, which I almost always do when I exercise, and apart from a stitch that I got during the first run that then went away, it was all fine. Covered a surprising amount of ground - a little over 2 miles I think, which was far more ground than I ever expected to cover.

Bit achy, as to be expected after the session. Calf muscles feeling a bit tight (might have to try and do some Pilates on the off days to ease that up in general) but overall pleasantly surprised.

So like a mug, I got up all happy to try and run this morning and OMG... death! I don't know whether I was intentionally running faster than last time, but I really struggled today. More my lungs being on fire than my legs being unable to take it. Despite stopping a couple of times we covered more ground, which is great. But it was so much harder - I was surprised. At this rate, I may want to repeat week 1 before moving on to week 2, but we'll see how we go.

As I type this I'm still bright red (which seems to happen whenever I exercise) - so hopefully the fitter I get, the less red I'll become - which will be nice. Makes it very hard to feel dignified when you exercise. Although I now feel part of some little jogging club, since most of the other runners we crawled past said hello. Awww.

Update to come after session 3, provided it doesn't kill me!

Anniversary Presents and Stuff

2009-10-03T11:23:00.004+01:00

Been shameful on the blogging front recently. Only one post in the whole of September? I must have been busier than I remember. Or lazier.

But all in seriousness the last week or so has been mentally busy. I had this whole week off work, on account of it being my birthday on Monday and wedding anniversary yesterday. We went to visit some friends in Germany on Saturday, and came back Tuesday which was brilliant fun. Will post some pictures later but we had a great time. We went to a beer/wine festival, drank loads, ate loads and played a ridiculous amount of Guitar Hero, which we have since purchased since getting home. That's too much fun.

Trev's also decided he wants to learn German and I'm going to teach him. We bought some books and things to help him while we were in Germany (from the German as a foreign language section in a very nice bookstore in Mannheim) and a few bits for me to help refresh myself - which I badly need. We're yet to sit down and have a proper lesson yet, but I've put together a lesson plan for him, so at least that's a start.

On the knitting front, we had a few problems with the postal strike eating up post and things we were waiting for, including yarn, fibre and anniversary presents.

Firstly, here's the Koigu I bought from a fellow Raveller. I love it! In some ways I think it's too pretty to use for socks - I'm better off using it for a shawl or something. But I'm undecided. Gorgeous though:

Also had a couple of lots of Spunky Club Fibre arrive. The first lot I'm about to show you, took nearly a month to get here. Most impressive:

That's 4oz of Falkland called Zombies. It's so soft. I love it!

The September fibre only took a few days longer than normal. It's 4oz of BFL called Rolling Hills. I'm not so keen on this one - may try and swap it for one of the other months that I like:

The final missing fibre is some Peregrine from the Yarn Yard in colourway Red Squirrel. This is a 75%/25% merino/nylon mix. It drafts beautifully and feels so soft. Not too sure what to do with this one. Sarah and I used it for some sampling when in Germany, so I've probably got only about 90g left now:

Finally on spinning, I got to pick my Moosie selection last week. Hopefully my finished Moosie will be posted out on Monday and will be here by next weekend. Got no idea which one I ended up with, or which colour shaft I'll have as I asked Sheila to choose for me. So excited though - I've been after a Moosie for ageeeees.

Expect lots of photos when it gets here.

Soooo, onto anniversary presents.

Trev wanted to get me something useful, so I suggested sock blockers (Succaplokki). We found some I liked on Etsy and ordered them along with some stitch markers. Unbeknownst to me, Trev had then also ordered me some mitten blockers that I said I liked as I'll soon be knitting my Fiddlehead Mittens. (For anyone who is interested, the store is Succaplokki on Etsy).

Here's another picture of the Mitten Blockers (Tumbbuplokki) with the little pop-out thumb blockers:

Absolutely beautiful. I love them! The stitch markers are also cute and you almost always get a freebie of some description with each order, so I have a little keyring and 4 extra stitch markers from the 3 orders we've made.

So I've been working on socks for Trev as his anniversary present. Unfortunately I didn't get them finished in time, due to going away and then having my left arm swell up due to a scary mosquito bite, but here they are so far:

I used Jenny's Super Stretchy Bind-Off which I must have done too tight as it's stretchy, but not massively so. Trev can only just get the sock on. But it fits, which is the main thing. When I'm done with them both I'll note down all of the finer details of the socks.

Now off to watch some Futurama and do some German!

My firstest ever pair of socks

2009-09-14T21:20:00.006+01:00

Please excuse the excitment - I am dead chuffed at having finished my first ever pair of socks! Given that socks were the reason I finally learned to knit, I am super excited to have managed this.

I finished my Mum's Lemon Express socks on Saturday and gave them to her on Sunday. I cast on for Trev's Anniversary Koigu socks straight away.

But without further ado, here are my socks modelled by my younger sister Emma:

You'll have to excuse the slight bagginess on her - she's a small size 6, as opposed to the chunky size 8 with cankles these socks have been knitted for! But she does a good job of modelling, with her legs and ankles which are FAR SKINNIER than mine. Hmph. But hopefully my new sock blockers will be here soon which will help negate that :) (Negate needing to model on my legs or Emma's, that is. Not my cankles. I think they are beyond help.)

So overall I'm pretty happy with them. If I had the chance to knit them again I'd probably go down a needle size or two, and increase the stitch count to 68 or 72 (these were knitted with 64 stitches) as I didn't like the stitch definition - although blocking fixed a multitude of sins. I'm also not a huge fan of the the yarn-over short row toe and heel. I'm trying a new version for Trev's socks and liking it more so far.

And my bind-off was also too tight - despite using EZ's Sewn Bind Off. Well I say too tight - I couldn't pull the socks up as high as I wanted as the bind off just wouldn't stretch any more, but you can get them on your foot easily enough.

I've just seen a new stretchy bind off in the new Knitty - Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off - which I think I will try for Trev's socks. I'm all about new techniques at the moment. I've used Judy Becker's Magic Cast-On for his socks and I'm in love. It looks amazing, although I had some small holes at the end of the first row - anybody know why? Strange. I'm also going to try a new heel type for his socks - want to learn as many new things as possible.

Here are his socks so far:

Simple 64 stitch sock on 2.5mm needles - 3x2 rib on the instep (with a 2 stitch purl edge on each side) and cast on 12 stitches for the cast on. Got about twice as much of the ribbing knit by now as shown here - the sole is plain stockinette although the ribbing will extend around the whole leg once I get past the heel.

I do love so many of Cookie's patterns, which are top-down and quite frankly, scare me. But I may try knitting a pair of Monkeys, which I will give to Emma if they come out too small.

I have some Koigu on the way from the States - bought from a Raveller, which seems to have been swallowed up by Royal Mail. We had a load of strikes here in Peterborough which means my Spunky Fibre has also not turned up yet. So I got them sent to work in London thinking that would be ok, and then they started to strike there. So it's lost amongst approximately 2 million other items of post. Yay.

I've also entered the ballot for the Socktopus Knit Love Club - which would let me have 6 fabulous new patterns and yarns in 2010 along with other fun stuff - hope I get one of the spots. More news on that next week.

But for now I'm off - Trev has gone to see his sister in Cardiff and I'm all on my lonesome with only the kitty for company. Time to be all crazy-cat-lady ish and retreat to the bedroom with knitting and Kooky.

Night all.

P.S. Also seen this pattern in the new Knitty - looks good as it comes in huge foot sizes, so I may have to give this a go. Will be a while before I feel comfortable fiddling with patterns to make them fit my feet.

Socks!

2009-08-31T12:20:00.005+01:00

The last couple of weeks have been good for socks. I stuck to one of my 2009 Knitalutions and have learned how to knit them! Having said that, I haven't finished my first whole pair yet - the second sock is struggling with Second Sock Syndrome and will take a while before it's finished.

Anyway.

I had these 2 skeins of Zitron that had been custom-dyed for me to use for some Endpaper Mitts.

The mitts were frogged as the colours just didn't work, so I put the yarn to one side for socks for when the time came. And despite having a load of WIPs that I need to finish sooner rather than later, I cast on last Wednesday night with the lemon Zitron. I thought these would make good socks for my Mum as I know she likes the colour and I already had a pattern in mind - Express Lane.

I finished the toe in one sitting on Wednesday night and by the time I got to work on Thursday morning had 2 pattern repeats complete:

By the time I got home, I had 5 repeats done:

Because I'm Magic Looping these, I'm having some issues with a bit of laddering either end, but blocking should fix this as it's nothing major. I'm also not too happy with the stitch definition - looks too loose to me and just generally a bit crappish. Next time I knit with this yarn, I may go down a needle size to 2.25mm from 2.5mm as it's a very lightweight yarn. My gauge was coming in at 8.25 stitches to an inch, rather than the 9 inches called for in the pattern. This is not necessarily a bad thing as my Mum and I both have huge feet, so these needed to be bigger than the pattern anyway.

Didn't take long to get the point where I needed to turn the heel, the doing of which was much easier than I thought. There's no pictures after this one, since I couldn't take any I liked that didn't make my cankles look horrendous. Seriously, I suffer from major cankle-age. Not a good look. I need to buy some sock blockers as a priority as there's noooo way I can use my feet for modelling:

So first sock was soon finished - used calf shaping on every pattern repeat on the back of the leg and finished off with EZ's sewn bind off. Despite trying to leave this loose, it's still a bit tighter than I would have wanted, but it's ok.

Trev is quite enamoured with my sock making so I suggested that I could buy him some nice yarn and he could have some as an anniversary present (it's our 7th in a month). So we went to Socktopus on Friday and came home with 2 lots for him. He was only meant to pick out one lot, but he couldn't make his mind up.

We ended up buying my first Koigu (it won't be the last!):

2 fairly non-matching skeins, despite being from the same dyelot. Weird. His was a surprising choice here, as I didn't think he was a big fan of orange and this has got pink in it too! But he'll be wearing them at home, so it's no big deal. Just strange.

The second choice was some Superwash Cherry Tree Hill in much more predictable colours:

I've only promised him one pair for our anniversary. Both if I can manage it, but definitely only 1. He's also getting some hats and gloves as part of general knitting, which I may try and get done by then too, so he can have a little winter warmer box, but we'll see how we go.

I did get myself something small while at the shop - a little WPI counter as I'm tired of using a ruler and guesstimating the thickness of my handspun:

I also had the second shipment of my Ixchel Fibre Club arrive - 160g of super angorino tops:

I'm still waiting for a YarnYard Fibre Club shipment (postal strike seems to have sucked this up) and for the latest Spunky Eclectic Club to arrive, along with the yarn that I bought from New Lanark for the aforementioned hats and gloves. Fingers crossed there'll be some Koigu for ME in the near future, but I need to deal with an issue that cropped up on Saturday - some buttwipe scamming my bank account - leaving me without money and access to whatever is left while they send me out a new card. With today being a bank holiday in the UK, it's unlikely that I'll get a new card for at least a week which is super frustrating :( Boo hoo! Scumbags. Some people just have no decency. So WHEN I get my money back, it's going to be spent on luciousness to make me feel better.

But I was cheered up by an email I got Saturday night telling me that my Moosie is about to be started. I was in the November herd, but I must have been bumped up as it's going to be started in September hopefully for mid-October shipping. Yay!

All the while I've been writing this, I've been able to see the second sock out of the corner of my eye. Back to knitting, I think...

Moooore fibre!

2009-08-18T21:22:00.002+01:00

I completely forgot that I had more fibre come that I forgot to blog about :)

I have completely stalled on the knitting front. I'm desperate to cast on for some new projects or try and finish off some UFOs, but until I get Otto the Bear done I don't feel like I can. I've finished one arm, so he just needs a second arm and a face!

As mentioned in my other post, I swapped the July Spunky fibre club with a fellow Raveller for the June club. Here it is and it's gorgeous:

Because I got a little bit of extra money at work, I also treated myself to a new braid of fibre and some yarn I've had my eye on for a while.

From the lovely Limegreenjelly, I bought some yarn which I intend to chain-ply and make some super sexy stripy socks from. It's 100g of BFL:

The yarn is from Spindlefrog - I had this particular one favourited in my Etsy for ages and was very worried someone else would snag it. So when I saw it was still available I had to have it. It's sock yarn - 100% merino. I think I will probably make socks with it, but maybe a small shawl or cowl or something. But probably socks. Not that I've gotten on to sock knitting yet! Need to pull my finger out.

Speaking of sock yarn, I've started to spin up the Time of the Month fibre:

I'm spinning it up on one of my spindles at the moment. Trying to spin it to be a bit more lofty - sort of long draw, if at all possible. Although I need to get out of the habit of drafting above my head and start to draft lengthways. Although that's hard with a great big tail of fibre hanging down.

I also gave my first spinning lesson the other day. I had a friend come over from Germany who wanted to learn to spin. So I gave her a lesson and some fibre and a spindle. She picked it up annoying quickly, I have to say :) Very jealous of her first yarn compared to mine. No pics - but maybe she will share some if she wants!

I'm now going to go and do some spinning. Or maybe knit a swatch with some sock yarn so I can work out gauge for the toe-up worksheet from Knitty for my first pair :)

Catching Up

2009-08-06T20:50:00.004+01:00

I'm due a blog post or two :)

I still haven't gone through my photos of Vienna and uploaded them yet, or blogged about our trip to Burghley. But unfortunately I've had other things to tackle! I've only just gone back to work this week after 2 weeks off work with Swine Flu! I'll spare you the unpleasant details but I fell sick when visiting my sister and the new baby 2 weeks ago. I spent a week with the flu, but unfortunately the Tamiflu I took caused some nasty side effects and I spent last week off work too.

Unfortunately it didn't give me any extra knitting or spinning time as I couldn't sit or be up for long enough to do anything. It's only now that I feel well enough to actually do stuff!

With getting paid last Friday and starting to feel a bit better, I treated myself to some new bits, which I'll show at the weekend after I can take pictures of them. But I've bought some new yarn (when did I last buy yarn?!?), some new fibre and then done a trade for some Spunky Club fibre.

I also had the arrival of a new toy I've been waiting for, for a while:

A package from the Bosworths! It's my Pink Ivory Mini with an Ebony shaft that I've been waiting on for a little while and a copy of the new book, Productive Spindling. Plus a tub of Wood Beams for good measure. Here's some more piccies:

I adore this spindle. Not done much spinning on it yet, except for sampling, but it's gorgeous. Beautiful wood grain and it's just a dream to use. It weighs 27gms/0.96oz, which is perfect for sock weight singles - just what I wanted it for.

I've started to spin up the Time of the Month fibre that I bought into socks and once I've got the hang of it I'll use this to start to spin up some sock yarn for myself.

I also had my first proper shipment of Spunky Eclectic Club Fibre arrive - a beautiful merino/bamboo blend called Beach Day.

It's a 60/40 mix and there's 3oz of it. Unfortunately I'm not a huge fan of the colours, so I've already swapped it for the June fibre - which I'll show in a later post once I've taken piccies. I'm just not a big green fan - some people seemed to have more blue in theirs, but since I can't think of what to do with it, I shouldn't just spin it for the sake of it. Plus I love the June fibre more - was gutted to miss out on it :)

So just a quick update for now - I'll take some more pics at the weekend of the new arrivals - so far 2 x fibre and 1 x yarn. I need to get my knitting mojo back as it will be winter before I know it and I haven't finished my hoody yet... Shocking!

Back at the weekend :)

My First Proper Skein

2009-07-13T21:13:00.003+01:00

I am stupidly excited by this. Yesterday I finished my first proper skein of yarn. I began with this 100% merino top from Shunklies on Etsy:

Initially I thought this might make good laceweight, but I spun up an 18wpi chain-plied sample and didn't like the look of it. So I wanted to try my hand at spinning something thicker. I can't spin thick to save my life at the moment, so wanted to try a proper 3-ply and try and get it to come up to aran weight. I prefer the look of a 3-ply to a 2-ply, and this was the first proper one I've done.

Here is a WIP pic:

I had spun up my first ply (on the ball), still had one left to spin and was half-way through the second (on the spindle) when the picture was taken.

My plan was to put them all together into a great big 3-stranded plying ball. This I managed, eventually. Finished spinning the last of the singles on Saturday night. I spun some of this in public including at Burghley House on Saturday (pics from that to come in another post) and attempted to wind the 3 stranded plying ball Sunday morning. Took both me and Trev to manage it, but we got there in the end.

Plying took me about 1 1/2 hours and in the end I had a cop that looked like this:

This is the whole 100g of fibre on my 34g Bosworth Midi Zebrawood. I didn't wind the cop very well - mainly because I knew it would fit on there easily and I didn't make as much effort as I should have.

Here's some pics of it finished:

Finished!

Here's my skein info:

Split fibre into thirds and spun each third as a single ply.

Singles: approx 20-24wpi
Spun: semi-worsted (I think) - used short forward draw but didn’t smooth twist back into yarn
Plied yarn: approx 10-12wpi - approx 100 yards
Finishing: hot/cold/hot/cold water, whacking & snapping
Finished yarn: 10wpi - 98 yards
Spun on: Bosworth Midi Zebrawood - 34gms
Started: 21st June 2009
Finished: 12th July 2009

The yardage isn't as much as I would have liked - I was hoping for over a hundred yards, and maybe a bit thicker too. I don't think I've put too much twist in this, but I could perhaps have got away with a little less. I am happy with it though - my first proper usable yarn as the Texel I spun was very high twist and that ate up the yardage.

Going to try my hand at 3-ply sock yarn next. I seem to be able to spin consistently thin yarn quite well, so hopefully this will come out alright. I have a project in mind too:

4oz Romney from Spunky Eclectic in the Time of the Month colour way. This was the part of the swap that I mentioned in my previous post. Ironically, Trev really wants me to make socks for him out of this.

I also had the first part of the Ixchel Fibre Club #2 come on Friday - despite the best efforts of the Royal Mail and the postal strike to delay it.

It's 60g of silk, angora and baby camel. I love the colours, although I may try and trade for one that has more red/purple in it. It's beautifully soft. Have no clue what to make from it, but it's obviously desperate to be laceweight of some kind. Perhaps a very light, soft cowl or something.

Let's see :)

Fibre Update

2009-07-05T11:52:00.004+01:00

In this post, I promised an update on some spinning bits and pieces I've been doing.

Not least of all, I broke a month-long fibre diet, twice in quick succession! Both times from the lovely Limegreenjelly.

Here is the merino/angora I mentioned in that post. It's called Dignity and is beautifully soft and snuggly (although the angora does tend to fly up your nose):

I was then stalking Jo's Flickr a few days later and saw this (called Hot Stuff) in the update. It's my favourite blend of merino/cashmere/silk and I had to have it:

Gorgeous! I think probably my favourite colourway of Jo's so far. I then realised that I have 9 lots of Jo's fibre - none of which I've started to spin yet. Whoops.

I traded away the Yarn Yard Falkland March club shipment. Just a bit too brown for me - I struggled to think what I would use it for.

So I swapped it for this - the May Spunky Eclectic Fibre Club shipment called Pansy. It's Romney and it will be the first time I've used it. I can't wait to spin this - probably into socks:

My swapper also included a Hobbledehoy batt in the parcel - this is the December batt, I believe.

I received the Yarn Yard April shipment this week - it's BFL superwash and is gorgeously soft. Inspired by weeds - it reminded me of dandelions:

I'm not a huge green fan, so I may use this for sock-weight spinning practice. I think it begs to be chain-plied, to preserve the colour changes.

Because I wasn't hugely keen, I offered this fibre up in the ongoing swap thread on the UK Spinners forum, after snaffling some more Spunky Eclectic fibre - this time it's more Romney in Time of the Month colour way (yes, it IS really called that). Pics to follow when it comes :)

I also offered some other YY fibre in case people weren't too keen on the green. This was the 70/30 merino/silk blend I bought at Socktopus on a whim:

This was the one that was snapped up, so I'll still have the BFL superwash to play with, which is perhaps the best turn-out :)

Last but not least, I finished spinning up the first half of the orange merino! As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I was going to follow some of Abby's advice and try to make my cops look more pregnant, in an effort to pack more on. After spinning up the first bit (no idea of how many oz this is) I was amazed at how little it looked on the spindle:

What amazes me, is that the spindle in the next few pics is resting on the 2nd half of the fibre and it looks like loads! I would never have guessed that I'd already spun up a whole half of it.

Maybe because it's so thin, it compacts itself more when you wind it on.

Took FOREVER to wind this off onto a toilet roll - felt like it anyway. That's a lot of yardage. I imagine plying it will be interesting!

I'm still working on spinning the Shunklies merino. Half way through it now - so spun one of the plies and half of the second one. No clue what weight it will come out too - but trying to make it very soft and squishy, unlike my attempt at spinning the pink Texel.

That's it for fibre and spinning updates! Off to do some more spinning.

Finished Vintage Endpaper Mitts

2009-07-05T11:44:00.003+01:00

Well I actually finished these babies over a week ago now, but I have shamelessly forgotten to blog. I don't know where last weekend went, and this week has just been crazy busy at work... anyway, no excuses.

Bizarrely, my second mitt came out a bit tighter and longer than the first one - maybe because I hadn't tried it on as many times? I don't know. As mentioned in my other post, I'm not 100% keen on the way the pattern stretches across my palm - I'm going to make the large size next time I do these. Plus it should give them a bit more stretch overall. Now I've blocked these I can get them on and off without too much difficulty but I'd still like more room in them.

Anyway, let's have lots of gratuitous FO pics:

We went out to the lake to take these pics - I have some non-knitting lakey updates, which I'll save for another post :)

The only amends I made to the pattern were that I picked up 5 stitches over the thumb instead of 3, since I thought there would be too many holes otherwise.

Made the size medium - think I might make these again but I'll get a bigger circular needle so that I can do 2-at-a-time.

First Finished Endpaper!

2009-06-16T08:21:00.004+01:00

Dead chuffed with myself as I've finished the first mitt. I took it on the train with me on Friday and did the top part of the ribbing on the train and bound off too. Wove in all the ends on the way home and did the thumb that evening. Voila:

They are a bit tight, and I don't like the way the pattern is a bit more stretched across the main part of my hand, but hopefully blocking will help this.

Didn't get to start the second one this weekend unfortunately. Been completely snowed under at work and I was working this weekend - clocked up a mighty 16.5 hours and nearly 60 for the whole week! Which left no time for knitting. Got a bit of spinning done while waiting for things to upload, so didn't feel entirely wasted. I'm taking Friday and Monday off in lieu, so hopefully can get the mitt done then :)

Nearly finished spinning the first lot of my orange merino! Amazed at how small the cop looks, versus the amount of top I've been spinning. I'm still not a massive fan of the colour, but other people seem to love it. As it's getting a bit warmer I'm felting the end of the roving slightly (oops) due to sweaty paws, but it still drafts well.

Been inspired by this post from Abby on her blog to try and pack my spindles a bit fuller and to experiment more with the shape of my cop. Going for a "pregnant" cop at the moment. Hopefully will get some pictures tonight when(if!) I finish spinning up the last bit.

Should have some new fibre from Limegreenjelly arrive today. I broke a month-long fibre diet to buy something on Saturday night as I think I deserved it after all the hard work I'd done! It's a lovely merino/angora mix - pics when it comes.

I also prepared for my next spinning project last night. Split my pink Shunklies merino into thirds to try and spin a nice 3-ply.

Did a test last night - wanted it to come out about aran weight. If I'm lucky, it was DK. AAARGH! All I wanted when I began to spin was to be able to spin fine - now I want to spin the 9wpi yarn I was churning out in the beginning, I can't! So annoying.

And that's all for now! I have promised a pair of Endpapers to someone - I had an Australian colleague help me out with some work on Saturday night and since it's apparently very cold over there (I call 14 centigrade, spring-like, but I guess antipodeans never see much the wrong side of 20) she's in need of some fingerless gloves at work. I should have enough yarn to make a pair in the reverse colours - especially since she has teeny tiny hands and I'm only going to do Chart A once before moving onto Chart B.

OK - got to crack on with some work now - there'll be a post with more pictures this weekend, I promise!

Vintage Endpapers

2009-06-07T20:38:00.003+01:00

Been a nice productive weekend! I initially wanted to do some work, to try and get myself a bit ahead for this week - but just thinking about it was stressing me out and I just really needed to relax. So I gave up and instead concentrated on my knitting :)

Finished the iPod Nano Sock last night - and realised that my Kitchener looked so awful on Otto's ears because I was doing it wrong. I kept alternating each move from one needle to the next, rather than doing the knit, purl on the first needle, and the purl, knit together on the second. Got it right this time and it looks good. So cute and tiny:

I also finished plying and washing the last of my Texel sock yarn today! I reskeined it etc this morning and it's now sat pretty alongside it's fraternal skein. I also took some pictures during the finishing process, so you can see how it went from curly mess to reasonable looking skein.

Cop on the spindle:

Wrapping the yarn in preparation for a bath:

The curly mess it became as soon as it was released from tension:

After drying:

You can see that even after drying it had some kinks and was still twisting, by about one full revolution - means I slightly overplied it. Whoops.

After reskeining it a second time, it became apparent that I have the same terrible yardage as the first skein - between 80-85 yards. The twist has really eaten this up!

Here's the 2 finished skeins:

Now to knit this up at some point! I'm much happier with the second skein in some ways. As you can see from some of the pictures as I'm getting it ready to tie, that the stripes look pretty good! When I finishing the 2 singles into my stranded ball, there was only a yard or so difference in both lots of singles - my best result so far.

And finally, what the post is all about - my new Endpaper Mitts! I cast on for these last night - took about 4 tries to get the tubular cast-on right this time - drinking wine and trying to watch Kill Bill 1 at the same time clearly didn't help!

I got about 4 rows done last night, but did the rest of the ribbing and looooads of colour-work today. These go quite quick - already I am up to Chart B - although it will be slower going now I've got to do the increases and pay more attention to the charts.

But I adore my colour combo and so far, they do fit! I did the ribbing with 2.5mm needles to give it more stretch and dithered over whether to do the colour-work with 3.0mm or 3.25mm needles. In the end I have gone with the 3.0mm needles again as I reckoned that any potential tightness can be fixed by blocking.

Don't know how quickly I'm going to be able to finish these. They aren't really a train project, esp as I don't have a print out of the chart, so I may have to do my best to finish this in the evenings and at weekends. Hopefully I can get the first mitt finished this week and can start on the second one this weekend. Just hope I can get my gauge to match so they turn out the right size!

It's a nice feeling when you feel like the weekend has been productive, yet restful. Been good! :)

Endpaper Mitts

2009-06-06T11:55:00.003+01:00

Well I cast on for my Endpaper Mitts last weekend! My yarn came on Saturday, which I obtained in a trade for my Antique Luxury Spinner's Set from Spindlefrog. The lady I swapped with offered to custom-dye some yarn for me. Whilst the pink/purple multi yarn came out a bit lighter than I thought, it still looked lovely:

It took a loooong time to wind these into balls, I can tell you!

So I cast on for the Mitts last Saturday. The tubular cast-on went really well and did give a lovely finished edge on the 2.0mm needles as I hoped it would. However I found that the yellow wasn't contrasting enough when the pattern started to form:

You can't really see it. So I took the really hard decision to frog and try again with some other yarn. I though a purple would make a lovely contrast colour, but I didn't want to mix yarn types, so I bought this yarn on Thursday morning and it came yesterday:

Rowan 4 Ply Soft (I'm so sad this has been discontinued) in Victoria and Tea Rose. I wanted something purple and pink and I think this colour combination is quite nice and elegant - not at all garish.

I did find the first Mitt I started very close fitting. I don't think I will do the ribbing this time on 2.0mm needles - I think I'll use 2.5mm to give it more stretch as I do have big hands. Then for the main part of the glove I am tempted to use the 3.25mm needles as I don't want them to be super tight. Snug is ok, but I don't want the circulation in my hands to be cut off!

So after frogging the gloves I kinda lost my knitting mojo this week, and Otto has stayed looking like this:

Although he does now have ears, I've not been very motivated to start his arms and finish his face. Feel like I've made such a bodge job of the ears, but we'll see how he looks when finished.

So I reckon I'm going to turn both lots of that sock yarn, into socks! Been trying to find patterns that will work for my big, wide feet. Doesn't help that I have a problem with my calves swelling up at the moment too, which makes it harder to find socks that fit. But let's see how we go.

In the meantime, I wanted to try a smaller knitting project, just to get used to sock yarn and teeny needles. So I've started a little sock for my iPod Nano:

I also finished spinning up the last lot of singles of the Texel sock yarn, which is great! Just need to ply it and finish it now. It's suddenly occurred to me that I have rather a lot of projects on the go... so I'm deliberately going to try and not buy any more fibre and yarn until I've got some stuff done - with the obvious exception of the yarn which just arrived :)

Otto so far!

2009-05-28T12:46:00.002+01:00

This has been a good few days for learning new techniques. I practised the Italian tubular cast-on yesterday in advance of casting on for my Endpaper Mitts.

Voila, sample:

I'm hoping it will look better on 2.0mm needles and sock yarn, as opposed to the aran yarn and 6.0mm needles I used here. I used a couple of Youtube vids to help me:

Video 1, Video 2.

It looks ok though so hopefully I will be alright.

And I bought and cast on for Otto yesterday! Made good progress throughout the afternoon and the football in the evening and Otto now looks like this:

I'm not entirely happy with him. I've just realised that his head is upside down for some reason. Don't know how I managed that. Probably because I followed some other people and did less decreases and repeats on the nose than called for, to avoid him looking too "snouty". Either way, he should still look ok. I only did 2 repeats of rows 43 and 44, making 6 rounds altogether for the nose decreases.

I'm stuffing him with pillow filling to make him baby-safe and washable - another tip from Ravelry. Thank you!

Learned lots of things so far on this bear.

Rather than doing the recommended cast-on as I couldn't get my head around it, I used Emily Ocker's cast-on, which uses a crochet hook and is very similar to the magic cast-ons I do in crochet when making hats or amigurumi.

I've also learned how to do m1r and m1l increases and how to graft, aka Kitchener Stitch. I had to Kitchener his nose and it was going well until I somehow lost one stitch in the middle and then had to bodge the rest of it. I should be able to make it look a bit better when I embroider his nose on. Hopefully.

About halfway through the body at the moment - the directions for the the legs and crotch gusset make zero sense to me right now. Hopefully if I just start "doing" them, it'll be fine.

Soooo annoyed with myself! But I'll carry on with him today and see how much I can get done. Hopefully he'll be a quick project and I can have him done by tomorrow night.

Amelia's Bootees

2009-05-27T10:15:00.005+01:00

Well I've finished my first ever pair of knitted bootees:

Cute eh? I used a pattern called Saartje's Bootees on Ravelry which has over 5,000 projects linked to it so far. I can post the link to the pdf for anyone who doesn't have Rav access - just let me know. On the other hand, why DON'T you have Ravelry access yet? Huh? Come on people :)

Anyway! I really enjoyed this pattern. It's quick and cute, despite there being a lot of ends to weave in. Couple of things I wasn't too happy with on the project:

My sewing up of the seams - I officially cannot seam garter stitch. Grr.
My button loops. They were terrible. Although I found a tutorial after finishing the first bootee, I had to make the second shoe equally terrible. Will fix next time and use this tutorial from Ysolda instead - Sewn Button Loops.
The straps. These straps are not fun. One of them in particular on both shoes didn't come out very well - I think it's the one where you CO 10 stitches and then knit the remainder. On the second bootee I managed to do it the wrong way round so the strap raced the wrong way entirely. After a scream, the shoe went flying out the window. Trev retrieved it later however.

I did learn how to do a kfb increase though - previously all I've learnt has been a few different decreases, so along with learning how to yo on the Odessa hat, I'm building out my decrease repertoire :)

So I will definitely make more of these, but not sure when or for who.

As I needed buttons, I went to my Mum's and raided her button stash - she's been collecting buttons since she was 6 and learned to knit. So many of the buttons had appeared on cardigans and things she made for us all when we were kids - such a trip down memory lane - recognising all these old buttons. In particular I remember and I loved some Jemima Puddleduck and Hunka Munka buttons we found. I have since come to the conclusion that I need a button stash too. Let's see how that goes.

I raided a toggle from Mum's stash too - with the intention of using it on a Calorimetry. I think I may knit one from the Falkland that came as this month's YY club shipment. What do you think?

I have decided that at some point in the future I need to knit Otto. I think I may knit this for my sister (nephew due in 5 weeks) instead of a pair of bootees. She isn't a very bootee person and I think a little bear would be cute.

Hopefully I will have some more news for you soon on my Endpaper Mitts, but that's enough for now :)

Watch this space!

Baby Geese!

2009-05-25T20:47:00.004+01:00

Happy Bank Holiday everyone :)

I am pleased to report that I am no longer in pain! I went to my gym induction on Monday and we tried out some machines and worked out the sorts of things I should be doing. Unfortunately until I get used to exercise, everything is going to hurt, pretty much.

However I am in love with Pilates! I went to a class on Tuesday and could do it, despite struggling a bit. Did the beginner's class on Friday and had a great time. Really want to improve. It's amazing how good you feel after stretching! Positively bounded down the stairs from the gym on Friday - although the fact it was my last day at work for a week might have had something to do with it :)

I also have an FO to report! Woo! Not had one of those for a while.

Unfortunately I finished this had on Thursday night as I wanted to give it to a colleague (more on that later) and so it hadn't dried by Friday morning. I took it to work and plonked it on the windowsill of our office (so it got a nice dose of Oxford Street pollution) but whilst it dried, I didn't have my camera with me. So relied on a colleague's mobile phone, with said colleague also modelling hat:

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. The yarn was as splitty as hell - much easier to crochet with than to knit. But it's come out ok. I made a few mistakes with the decreases on the last few rows but thankfully it's close enough to the top to not be noticeable.

Despite the lack of stretch (I used a cotton yarn) it's beautifully soft next to the skin due to the silk/viscose content.

Normally I would have dried the hat at home and waited till after my week off to give it away. However as this hat was something I'd planned to knit for Trev's mum in case she wanted to do chemo and then didn't... I needed to knit it as therapy and then get rid of it.

I've also finished a pair of baby bootees - I just need to add some buttons and they are all done. They're for my new niece, Amelia Louise - Trev's elder sister had her first child last Thursday. So I had to make something :) Will also knit a pair for my sister who is due to have a baby boy in 5 weeks.

Watch this space for piccies - hopefully buying some buttons tomorrow.

So now onto some cute stuff! We've had some lovely weather the last few days and today was SUNNY! Almost unheard of for a Bank Holiday in this country. Normally the days before and after would be nice, but never today. But it was :)

Kooky has been availing herself of the sun and sunbathing at every opportunity - I give you the cuteness:

Today we went for one of our walks down the lake. The geese have had a load of babies recently and I love to go down and see them every spring when they're so tiny!

There's also a swan which has built a nest just near our flat. Apparently it's done this every year for the last 4 years. We couldn't get too close to take a picture as the male was getting a bit angsty, but here's a pic:

We also took LOADS of photos of the baby geese. There's too many to list here, so have a nose at this set which will comprise photos of all our local lakeside wildlife while I give you a few highlights :)

I love that last photo - the little goslings so sleepy and tucked under mum's wing.

I'm cracking on with some more spinning this week - trying to decide whether or not to cast on for a new knitting project or finish off a WIP.

Going to say goodnight now and watch Kim Bauer totter around in her high heels chasing terrorists in an airport!

Night x

Owweee

2009-05-17T21:15:00.003+01:00

Well I finally joined the gym. My office does corporate membership to the Virgin Active over the street for a bargain price a month and since I'm horridly unfit, it makes sense for me to join.

So I went for the first time on Tuesday. My plan is to do classes - I don't enjoy plodding mindlessly on a machine for half an hour and I think a class will be a better way of dealing with things. So I was at the timetable, looking at the classes. I didn't want to go on my own the first time, so I asked a friend to come with me. I fancied the idea of Pilates, but she didn't want to do that. So we opted to go to Powerplate (Google it if you're unsure of what it is). It's only a 20 minute class - how bad can it be - I thought?

Oooh boy I was wrong. It's Sunday night and I'm still sore. I was crippled as soon as the class finished and it got much worse over the next few days. Going to the loo was agony! My bum and thighs have never been in so much soreness. Things didn't ease up until we went to a Stretch class on Thursday, which is a sort of yoga-stretch thing. I thought it would kill me more, but it actually really helped. So I'm going to have my gym induction tomorrow (to work out how unfit I REALLY am and the sorts of classes I should be doing) and head off to Pilates and Yoga this week. I'm going to stay away from Powerplate for a while!

All this pain has meant I've been unable to spin - which has been very disappointing given the loveliness that has come my way this week.

Lhuna arrived from Limegreenjelly. I know I posted a pic of it last week, but here it is now it's come:

I also purchased something else from Jo this week as I was having a terrible week again (work is very stressful at the moment). It's a merino/bamboo blend and I think it's going to make the coolest, funkiest, stripy socks in the world. I give you Carousel:

I love it!

I've had a couple more bits of fibre come this week. Here's the latest Fibre Club Shipment from the Yarn Yard. It's Falkland, which I haven't spun before and the colour way is Dogwood:

Pretty huh? :) I think it might make a lovely colour for the Fiddlehead Mittens. I bought the pattern today having seen a beautiful version that someone on Ravelry did using handspun. Here's a link to the project. Gorgeous huh?

This has got me thinking about projects I want to make for winter. Obviously I'll need to finish off my CPH, but I think I'll make myself a pair of Evangelines and a matching Gretel hat - slouchy version. Got tons of projects I want to make before that though, so I need to get my skates on over the next few weeks. I have the week after this off work, so I should be able to get plenty of knitting/spinning done.

The final thing to arrive this week was my second spinner's set from Spindlefrog in Pink Pony. I love it. It's so pink and I think it will blend together beautifully. I plan to get some handcards at some point so I can blend things myself.

Here it is:

We ordered our new Ikea bookcases the other week and they came on Friday. I put mine (just for stash) together on Friday night. Behold my Stash Case:

I need to buy 4 x baskets to store my fibre and yarn in but we'll get those the next time we can make it to a store.

I need to try and do as much as possible on my Odessa hat this week. Might even try and do some now, providing the LOST season finale doesn't distract me too much :)

Happy May Day!

2009-05-04T19:01:00.006+01:00

Happy May Day everyone :) And naturally, here in the UK it's raining. We got soaked walking back from my parents which is exactly what you'd expect on a day like today.

Anyway, down to prettiness. I've had a whole host of fibre goodness arrive this week, with 2 more (3 more including YY Fibre Club) yet to come. 1 of these packages I've just ordered in a moment of weakness, which, if I think about it, applies to the first one as well, which I ordered on Friday after I promised myself I'd go on a fibre diet.

Whoops.

This was Friday's purchase:

More fibre from Limegreenjelly. This is a merino/silk (70/30) mix called Lhuna.

And I accidentally bought another Luxury Spinners Set from Spindlefrog. I listed the first one I bought on my last blog post and when I saw this pink one tonight, I knew I had to have it. Despite the fact I'm meant to be on a fibre diet right now!

Now these ones I might blend together as they are much more one colour - my Antique set might look a bit muddy if I blended it together. I'll deal with that dilemma when it turns up :)

Here's the fibres I posted about last week having ordered from Jo.

Velvet Snow - 50% merino, 25% silk, 25% cashmere

I LOVE this blend. As I explained in my last post, I had to have the fibre when I heard what Jo had named it.

Careless Whisper - 70% merino, 30% seacell

This is the first time Jo has worked with seacell - it looks beautifully soft and shiny. Can't wait to spin this up. I think it would be a beautiful laceweight shawl.

I had a few dollars left after buying these 2 and my spindle (pics of that to come) I had a few dollars left so I made my first purchase from Shunklies on Etsy:

This is superfine merino that I've called Flumps - as it reminds me of the marshmallowy things we can get here in the UK.

I think that covers off the fibre purchases! Many and varied though they are. Ahem.

Right, are you ready for some spindle p0rn? Lots and lots of it? Here's some pics of my new 12g Canarywood Featherweight with birch shaft. All of these are with Limegreenjelly fibre. Purple fibre = Pink Cashmere. Grey = Careless Whisper. Plum/Orange = Maybelline.

All done! Purty huh? And I've been busy with it too. Been spinning up some of the orange merino Yoshimi gave to me, just to practice spinning super-fine. Currently coming out at about 60wpi:

I'm going to 2-ply this into a nice thin laceweight. Don't know what I'll do with it, but the main thing is to practice.

And for a change, I actually have a spinning FO! Well, kinda. Half of one. I've finished half of my Yarn Yard Texel that I was spinning into sock yarn for my Mum. I'm pretty happy with how it's come out. It's the right weight, but because I've overspun (and therefore overplied it) I only have about 80 yards? Anyhow - here's a pic. I've being playing with fds Flickr Toys making picture mosaics. Think it looks cute!

And on the knitting front I've been finally making progress with my Odessa hat. I'm on my 3rd try... the first time I cast on too many stitches. The second, I managed to lose some stitches and it was coming out completely wrong. So the third time, I'm using pins every 10 stitches as markers and it's going well. Phew. I have cathartic reasons for wanting to knit this hat, but I'll go into those later.

Thank goodness for 3 day weekends! Just a shame I have to go back to work tomorrow :)

Hourglass Jacket

2009-04-26T11:15:00.008+01:00

Whoops it's been 2 weeks since I blogged. Very bad of me. But whilst I haven't been blogging, I haven't been entirely idle! I've still been spinning and crocheting. I even tried a new bit of knitting which ended disastrously, but more of that in a minute.

I started to swatch for the Hourglass Jacket last Monday and I was able to get gauge, so I cast on. I'm finally using up my Rowan Calmer that I bought ageees ago for making Cupcake with, which then got frogged. I've done 6 rows now and am working on the armhole increases.

Here's some pictures after 4 rows:

This will be a nice project to work on during the weekday evenings when I don't fancy spinning for my Mum's socks.

The only knitting I've done this week was to swatch for Arisaig using my new teeny needles which arrived (thank you Hubster - also for spare cables and other bits and pieces we ordered at the same time) and my Rowan 4-ply yarn. However I have severe issues with picking up my yarn-overs when I go back along a purl row. I need to have a go with chunkier yarn and bigger needles until I get comfortable with it. Grrr.

Speaking of the socks, I finished off spinning the singles for one sock yesterday. I wound both singles in a 2-stranded plying ball and will leave them to rest for a few days before I ply. I don't know whether to start the other singles now, or wait until I've plied the first lot as I only have the one spindle to use.

Also on the spinning front, I've been doing a bit of purchasing!

I was browsing Etsy the other day and happened on Spindlefrog's shop just after she had updated it with Luxury Spinner's Kits. I snagged one called "Antique", where the colours are a change from my usual pinks and reds - although they do feature some purple. It's 6 x 1oz of various luxury fibres. Here's mine all bundled up and then broken out:

From left to right, I think the fibres are:

Mohair
Alpaca
Camel
Angora
Cashmere
Silk

It's lovely :) To spin the cashmere and angora properly I need a lighter spindle, so I bought a 12gm Featherweight Bosworth in Canarywood which will hopefully come this week. I bought it from a seller in the UK as Sheila is away at the moment and the exchange rate isn't really working in my favour! I'll still get special orders direct, but whilst there's stock in the UK I should make the most of it.

Unfortunately my Pink Ivory spindle came up a duff. Both blanks they turned were uneven, so they're going to try again for me in May. So I HAD to buy another spindle as I had the money burning a hole in my pocket.

Because of said hole in pocket, I've also recently bought the following from Limegreenjelly on Etsy:

This one is called Maybelline and it's 103g of 50% merino/50% angora loveliness.

I also bought 2 items in her update last night. I don't have them here yet, so you'll just have to have a nose at Jo's shop listings:

I had to buy Velvet Snow as Trev and I were talking about songs we'd like to turn into fibres and what they would look like. We thought Velvet Snow (after the Kings of Leon song) would be grey with purples/blues in it to symbolise the snow and the velvet. There would also have to be some cashmere to make it feel suitably velvety. Imagine my surprise when Jo told me there was something just like that in this week's update. So I had to snag it :)

Right, we'll I'm off to watch the F1 and cast on for Odessa - I want a train project to work on and I have nothing at the moment. Plus it's in cotton, so it's nice warm weather knitting. We're having a spell of beautiful weather at the moment.

Ta ta for now :)

Spinning for Socks

2009-04-12T20:32:00.005+01:00

I'm finally spinning up a whole bump of "nice" fibre. When we had the Spin-In talk last week, we talked about making spinning pledges for the upcoming week. I pledged to spin up a whole bump of fibre, rather than just making samples. Although given that I'm using a spindle, I knew I wouldn't be able to get the WHOLE bump done - just wanted to start on it.

And I have! I was at Socktopus on Tuesday and had Diane help me for a bit, to start on my Texel. I want to turn this into socks for Mum - I've already mentioned that she loves the colour and the fibre is perfect for socks.

While in Socktopus, I also bought sock needles! I tried to cover a range of sizes that I know I need for different projects and bought Knit Pro Symfonie Fixed Circulars, in 2.50, 2.75, 3.00 and 3.25mm, in an 80cm length. I then realised that most of projects also need the 2.0mm and 2.25mm needles for Arisaig and the Endpaper Mitts... so Trev bless him, has ordered those for me too.

I'm now finished with my first ply for the first sock - here's an in progress pic:

So, still have 3 plies to go, but I'm getting there!

I'm concerned that it's coming out too thick - the first part I've measured the wpi on, and it's pretty much spot on. The later bits, I'm not sure on. But hopefully we're ok.

I'm also worried that I'm overtwisting it a bit. But I hope that plying and finishing should sort most of the issues here, as I want it to be a bouncy yarn.

The only other thing I'm worried about, is yardage. I've wound the first single onto a felt ball I made, and it doesn't seem anywhere near the yardage for a sock! It would need to be what, 180-200 yards? But it doesn't even seem 100! I guess we'll wait and see what happens.

As an aside, I planted a chilli plant on Friday. We bought a little kit from Tesco and hopefully in a few months, we'll have chillis! I shall keep the blog updated with regular updates, but here we are on Day One:

Watch this space!

Finished Arsenal Starghan

2009-04-12T20:23:00.003+01:00

Well it's done :) I finished it on Monday and gave it to Eu-Wen on Tuesday to give to the parents in question.

I know I said I might make this one more than 28 rounds wide, but it got to the point where I couldn't be bothered. It was taking over an hour to do a single round and I'd had enough of it!

Here it is:

It didn't lay completely flat in the photos, but it's since had a blocking and is a bit bigger and more even. It also feels quite soft - surprising since it's 100% acrylic.

Pretty happy with it! Now onto spinning and knitting :)

Yarn Yard Fibre Club

2009-04-05T11:17:00.002+01:00

Super excited - my first shipment from the Yarn Yard Fibre Club arrived the other day. Unlike a lot of clubs, you don't sign up for a fixed period. As long as you sign up by the last day of the month, you get a package of 100g-ish fibre the following month. From then on, you just make a payment on the same day each month, and you'll continue to get fibre until you decide you want to leave!

Natalie's clubs have been spoken of very highly by a number of people on Ravelry and as she often uses different fibres in the Fibre Club, it's a great way to get to use some fibres that I wouldn't normally think of.

Take a gander at the March shipment:

The colour is called Rhododendron, as it's inspired by the plant outside Natalie's kitchen window. The fibre is Texel, which is predominantly a breed used for meat, but it also has a usable fleece. The staple length is similar to BFL, but it's a bit coarser. So whilst not the softest fibre, it would be good for socks, hat, mittens etc...

I actually plan to make socks with this - I love the pink shades in the fibre, but not too keen on the "plant" sections in the green and browns. My Mum however (as I thought), loves it, so I'll attempt to make her a pair of socks from it.

This weekend I've also been working on my baby blanket, and I'm making some good progress:

I've done the first 20 rounds. My last blanket came out at 28 rounds and I think I might make this one a bit bigger. I'm on round 24 at the moment... each round is taking an hour or so - starting to border on tedious! But the sooner I get this done, the sooner I can get back to my other knitting and spinning.

Thanks goodness I have a week off now :)

Spinning Update

2009-04-01T20:22:00.004+01:00

Here's my spinning update I promised you! And today is good timing as I've had more fibre arrive and be purchased!

First of all, new stash :) I'm still awaiting my first shipment of the Yarn Yard Fibre Club, but that should be here tomorrow. My postman cleverly decided to deliver the post 3 hours early the other day, which meant neither of us were here. Great. But I can't wait for it to come tomorrow.

But, I did today purchase some more Yarn Yard fibre instead! I popped to Socktopus in Fulham for the first time to drop off Diane's wheel that I'd borrowed. Being me, I couldn't leave without buying something, and it was either buy some fibre for the bargain price of £10, or spend MUCH more on purchasing sock needles and sock yarn. Oh yes. I could have a field day in that shop :)

Here's the gorgeousness:

70% merino, 30% silk. I'm thinking this might make a lovely main colour for the Endpaper Mitts rather than the Merino Whisper I was planning initially. Alice showed me a pair of those she was working on and they were lovely. I also got to spy on her taking photos for the March Sock Club. Gorgeous pattern and yarn - I'm totally in awe.

When I got home, my fibre that I ordered from Limegreenjelly on Etsy arrived. Jo, aka FreestyleFibres on Ravelry dyes up the most gorgeous stuff and I'm overjoyed with my order.

I ordered 2 lots of things. The first thing I noticed was how cool the bag looked with the purples and greens/blues all mixed together:

My first choice has a lovely added bonus - there's 120g of it, rather than just 100g.

Behold, the Pink Cashmere:

It's a blend of 50% superfine merino, 25% cashmere, and 25% silk. As you can see, it's in beautiful shades of purple, pink and charcoal. Love it. Don't know what I'm going to make from it, as right now I just want to pet and snuggle it. Probably something laceweight? Would be very warm and soft.

And because I can't just buy one thing, I bought something to make socks for Trev from. He picked the fibre himself - there were several he liked, but he liked this one best. It's 2 braids of 70% superfine merino and 30% silk which I think if plied properly, will make a beautiful stripy sock yarn.

Experiment No. 6:

And here's a shot of all my new fibre all snuggled together:

So, now onto the spinning I did a week and a bit ago. I was spinning some more samples of my Ixchelbunny Angorino, to try and decide what to do with it and I was ending up with the most beautiful 40wpi singles:

Here's some spindle porn taken whilst spinning:

Definitely my favouritest spindle in the world! Until my Pink Ivory Mini with Ebony shaft arrives, that is.

Now, despite having spun up all these tests, I'm no closer to deciding what I want to do with all this fibre! I think some might be turned into socks, and then maybe some into laceweight for something.

Here's my little 2 ply sample (which unfortunately ended up under-plied (see third pic) as the single sat for a few days before I plied it, although I know how to fix that now) and what I turned it into.

Used a 2.5mm crochet hook and so it's come out proportionately bigger than my thread bookmark. I think the yarn has come out thicker than thread, but not by much.

Funny how much I enjoy spinning with my spindles. I think I can continue spinning 40wpi singles and then 3 ply them into sockweight, which is perfect!

Really enjoying this spinning malarkey :) Now just to get better at it!

Thank you

2009-03-30T20:54:00.003+01:00

Hey Guys

I just wanted to say thank you for all of the kind comments, messages and even cards through the letterbox we've had since Saturday. Trev and I really appreciate them all and there's no words to express how much it means to us.

I thought I'd add to some of the pictures I posted on Saturday. Here are some more pics. The little blonde terror in one of the photos, in case you hadn't guessed, was Trev as a baby. Wasn't he cute? Time for more cuteness! (Full sized photos here, btw.)

Trev is going to hate me for sharing these with the Blogosphere, but what the heck :) He has asked me to share the other photos we have of him with his mum, but that doesn't mean I have to exclude the dodgy ones of him with one shoe on and his shirt tucked into his underpants!

Tears

2009-03-28T22:37:00.004Z

I was going to do a spinning update today, a post I should really have done last week. However things have gotten overtaken by some family matters.

Some of you may remember my mentioning a few weeks ago that Trev's mum was very ill with pancreatic cancer.

Well today, she passed away.

She went home last week but was taken back into hospital yesterday, having drastically worsened in the space of a week. It was told to us that she'd have less than a month left. The rest of Trev's family were going to be around today, so yesterday he made arrangements to go.

When he got there this morning, it became apparent that less than a week was most likely. Yesterday I booked Wednesday afternoon off to go and see her one last time. Turns out I wasn't quick enough.

The nurse came in to see everyone at about 3:45pm and told them she didn't have long left. She's been in a state recently where she doesn't know who she is, or where she is. She didn't recognise Trev this morning when he came to see her. She was also refusing all food and fluids - so they were just giving her pain medication.

A few minutes after they all entered the room, Trev put his hand on her forehead and the nurse said that his mum had taken her last breath.

I'm just glad he was able to be there when it happened. I feel sorry for his brother and SIL who had popped out to the shops shortly before the nurse came in - they weren't there when it happened. The worst estimate we had been given before that, at only 3pm, was tomorrow night, or maybe Monday, so for it to happen today was very sudden.

Trev is staying over there tonight, so I'm here on my own. I was over at my parents this afternoon, but it wasn't the most harmonious of atmospheres and I felt very uncomfortable. As much as I don't want to be on my own, I don't want to be there. I was sat there playing music as loud as I could through my headphones anyway to try and drown out my thoughts.

So it's just me and the Kookybear. I've been pretty useless today and spent most of the day crying. In fact I'm still crying. I think my iTunes is trying to conspire to deliberately play songs that it knows will make me cry.

It's ironic as I went to my parent's earlier today to scan some photos for Trev, of him and his mum from when he was younger.

I'm just shocked at how sudden it's all been. She only started to be sick a little over 2 months ago and now she's not here.

Here's a photo taken of her when they came up for the day in November:

And here they are in one of the photos I scanned for him earlier today:

Goodbye Carole x

Knitting and Crochet catch-up

2009-03-21T15:41:00.005Z

Been over a week since I blogged! Naughty me. We've been very busy the last couple of weeks. After going to London 2 weeks ago, we spent last weekend helping my parents do some painting... which left me too tired on Sunday to do anything other than sleep!

But that doesn't mean I didn't do any knitting!

On Friday I finished the gloves for my Mum. I took them to her house and finished off the thumbs whilst there, so I could get her to try them on while I was there.

It took me a little while to do the thumbs, but they've come out really well:

Made a couple of changes aside from my usual mods. I cast on an extra 4 stitches to allow a bit more room - so they're a better fit for both me and my Mum who have bigger than normal hands. I also made a conscious effort to knit looser, so these are a bit longer than previous gloves, too - which is great.

For the thumb this time, I picked up total of 20 stitches, did 3 rows of 20, on rows 4 and 5 decreased 2 stitches each, giving me 16. Knit 16 on row 6 and 7, then on rows 8-12 knit 2x2 ribbing.

I then cast on for another Boyfriend hat on Saturday - this one for me! Finished it on Monday - it was my train project so I got plenty done during the commute.

This is made from the same Rowan Cashsoft Chunky as Trev's hat, just in black instead of blues.

I added more length to this one, doing nearly 7 inches before starting the decreases, so it more or less covers my ears. But I could probably have added yet more length quite comfortably.

I made a mess of weaving in the ends of yarn where I had to add in a new ball of yarn - I pulled it too tight and there's a puckered bit in the hat - but at least it's towards the back.

I'm a bit meh about the hat to be honest - I don't think it looks great in just one colour, and it reminds me of the hat I had to wear then they threw me out of a plane. But here's another pic with it modelled on Trev:

Took the opportunity to take another photo of Trev's hat:

That's been it in terms of knitting!

When it comes to crochet, I had a request from a friend to make something for a friend of his who is having a baby in May. I suggested a starghan and asked for favourite colours. The bloke in question is an Arsenal fan, so red and white spring to mind.

So I picked up some more acrylic yarn and started this the weekend before last. Not done much during the week on this - but am hoping to do more this weekend. Making good progress:

I've done 16 rounds so far, and want to do between 28 and 36 rounds to make it a good size. It's already gotten to the stage where doing a single round takes about 40 minutes... so it's a good thing the baby isn't due until May.

Once I've gotten this out of the way, I'll finish off my CPH and then start work on my broomstick lace Hourglass Jacket. It's funny how I've got more knitted stuff in my queue now than crocheted. Still need to start on socks!

New treat!

2009-03-09T08:23:00.004Z

I forgot to mention, during my mammoth post yesterday that I've ordered myself another new gift.

I saw this spindle online a little while ago and fell in love. Given how much I love my new Rosewood Mini, I think another Mini is in order. This one is Pink Ivory with an Ebony shaft (this one isn't mine - I wish - but it's what I want mine to look like):

I've asked for my Mini to also have the longer shaft... and I have plans for perhaps a sibling in Purpleheart?

I've been seeing lots of other people's spindles online and at some point I think I would like to try a Golding, and a couple of Spindlewoods (one of the square ones - Diane has a really nice Tulipwood one with Ebony shaft, and one of their round ones). So I'm not a total Bossie devotee (YET!) but I do love them.

When my new Pink Ivory turns up, that will be my third Bossie and my fourth spindle in um, less than 2 months? And Moosie in December will make 5. Never mind what else I might get in the meantime...

I think I might have a problem.

Presents to myself

2009-03-08T13:31:00.002Z

As promised late last night, here is my new shiny blog post featuring lots of pictures! I've just had a message from Trev to say he is on his coach back from Victoria now, so he'll be back in Peterborough sometime around 4pm. At last I can breathe! :)

On Tuesday my yummy angorino fibre arrived at my office. It helped make up for the horror that was the night before (run in with the in-laws, dontcha know). I got it home, plaited it, and here it is in all it's glory:

Gorgeous huh?

Now staying over in London on Monday night, meant that I missed the postman trying to deliver my new Rosewood Mini spindle from the Bosworths... so instead I had it redelivered on Thursday when I was working from home. Isn't it beautiful?

More pics in my Bosworth Spindles set on Flickr.

So, this is a Rosewood Mini with Bloodwood shaft. I went for the 9" rather than the 7.5" shaft, due to the whorl being heavier. It's 24gm/0.84oz and is part of the February 2009 Special Stripy Spindles run.

It came attached with the loveliest bit of Ashland Bay Merino on it - which I have since spun up into my first laceweight yarn. I'm unsure of the wpi or yardage - I need to sit down and work that out later. It's a baby mini-skein, but gives me an idea of how fine I can spin and let me know that I can also spin from the fold! :)

I spun the single and then turned it into a 2 ply using the handy-plying technique found here on Knitty.

I've also been doing a bit of knitting. One of Mum's Evangeline gloves is nearly finished (just need to add the thumb). They're coming out ok - but I don't think this yarn defines the cables very well (it's Rowan Cashsoft Aran):

They don't look bad, by any means, but there just isn't the definition there I'd like that other gloves have had.

To give me a break from knitting I'm going to start another crochet project - another Chromium Star Blanket. Making this one in Arsenal colours (red and white) for a friend of a friend who is having a baby. I know it's not selfish knitting, but a) it's crochet and b) babies are inherently knitworthy. Will also do some booties if I have the time.

Off to start that now! Should be nice to do a bit of crochet again :)

Falling Behind

2009-03-07T22:06:00.002Z

I meant to blog today. A proper post. With a ton of pictures and words. I had some new presents to myself arrive in the week and I did some spinning I was quite proud of. Unfortunately, today has been rough.

I went to London with Trev to visit his mum (he's been a few times already, but it's the first time I've gone) and it was hard. I didn't stay for long - Trev was staying overnight so he can help his dad with a few things tomorrow (they moved house in the week just gone) and after a fiasco we had when I stayed over on Monday, we decided it was best if I didn't stay this time. So I was at the hospital for an hour, and then headed home.

His mum looked better than I thought she would, but it was still extremely hard. It's hard not to feel guilty about it being so long since we saw them, but it's difficult when you live so far away. And she's resigned to the fact that her cancer is terminal, which is quite upsetting when you hear her talk about it so frankly. Was very hard to keep it together. In addition to which she had a small stroke just over a week ago as a result of her medication which makes it hard to understand her sometimes and it just makes her sound so sad. She cried when I left.

So, tonight has been hard. I don't know where the time has gone - I guess I've just been wandering around aimlessly like a little lost sheep which I am without my Trev here. I did a few rows of knitting, but wasn't really in the mood for much despite all my grandiose plans of how I was going to spend the evening.

So it's only 22:10 now, which isn't that late but I'm shattered from spending goodness knows how many hours travelling today and this post has already ended up being longer than I intended. I guess it's a result of not wanting to go to sleep, which I don't since I'm on my own in the flat for the first time since we moved in over 18 months ago, and even the cat doesn't want to know me right now (she's sitting on the back of the sofa shooting me evil glances). And I can't bear to sleep in the bedroom without Trev, so I guess I'm sleeping on the sofa :)

I'll be back in the morning - I'm sure in a much better state of mind as I know Trev will soon be on his way home to me.

In case you read this babe, I love you x

Ooooh stash!

2009-03-01T18:53:00.004Z

I come to you with a much bigger stash than a week ago:

This is a mix of Corriedale, BFL, merino and silk. Lots of what you see here was very kindly gifted to me by Yoshimi and I had great fun plaiting all my existing fibre to make it pretty to photograph.

And thanks to Diane, in addition to some dyes to try (still yet to try those) I have the loan of this:

Diane is going back to Melbourne for a month on Wednesday and whilst she's away I've been lent an Ashford Joy to try. I got some great looks bringing this back from Fulham to Peterborough. Yoshimi came round the other day when I got back with this to help me get to grips with it and I managed to spin up something semi-decent. The attempt I've done today has come out a bit better, but behold the glory of my first wheelspun:

We also got Trev to have a go on the wheel. He was able to produce this:

Annoyingly good.

I also got round to taking pics of my most recent Navajo plying attempt that I mentioned in my last post. I am annoyed at the pathetic yardage I got out of it, but never mind. It's starting to look better!

Really love my Bosworth spindles. I was able to try the most beautiful Mini that Yoshimi has - Bloodwood whorl with a Walnut shaft. Absolutely exquisite. I want one. (Although my Rosewood Mini has been posted and should be here in the next day or so - woo!) I did wonder if she'd notice if I snuck it into a pile of fibre somewhere, but I think she would. She gave me a sample of some lovely superwash merino to spin up (I think this was from the Yarn Yard fibre club) from which I was able to make this:

My first cabled yarn! I was so proud :) It's a 2-ply then plied again. I was dead impressed with myself as I was able to get mine to look almost the same as the bit Yoshimi spun up in terms of gauge and feel. Happy :)

Unfortunately I did make use of the "drop" part of spindling a bit too much. My floor is made of terrible crappy wood anyway, but the spindle came off the best in several clashes they had together. I definitely need to get a rug for my living room - for the sake of the floor, rather than my spindles. Jonathan and Sheila, you should be proud of your work! :)

I treated myself to some lovely fibre from Charly in Oz which will hopefully come tomorrow. I've ordered 2 lots of the Princess Buttercup which I know will be super soft and lovely to spin. I also signed up to the monthly fibre club at The Yarn Yard. I blame Yoshimi. She brought around lovely fibres and made me pet them. But at least I can rest assured in the knowledge that my stash will be growing steadily every month.

Here's the lovely angorino on it's way to me from Charley:

Oops - that came out a bit big.

To conclude, here are some pics of my stash close-up and nicely plaited :)

Corriedale, in white and brown/black:

Some silk hankies. I'm not too sure what I think of spinning with these yet:

My merino - in white and Whisper. This is what I'm thinking of making Endpaper Mitts with:

Orange Merino gifted from Yoshimi:

The rest of it is all BFL:

Now a whole bag of Jacob's Fleece! I'm a bit scared of this:

I really need to start blogging more than once a week so I don't crash everyone's connections with too many pictures. Sorry! Once we get more daylight I'll be able to take more pictures :)

CPH Back!

2009-02-22T22:14:00.003Z

Finished the back of my CPH last week, but after blocking it, it took a while to dry and this is the first chance I've had to take pics. Unfortunately because I used clothes pegs to pin it into place there are a few flat bits, which will hopefully even out once I block the whole thing after seaming etc.

Please excuse my clothes - it's Sunday and I'm slobbing around! I also don't look this large normally - I promise. It's the angle Trev's taken the photo from. Honest.

I also managed to finish spinning up the stuff I was doing on my Bossie this week. Seemed like it was taking me forever to do the single and I thought the spindle was getting relatively full. However I've taken it off and Navajo plied it, and there's only about 17 yards. Bit disappointing! It's about worsted weight - approx 9 wpi I reckon.

I'm going to try and spin up the yarn to make the Endpaper Mitts. I have the pretty merino Whisper that I wanted to use for something, and I think this and the white merino I have will be perfect for a pair. I've been told that 2 ply is best for this, but I still need to get my singles down to about 32wpi.

In other spinning news this week, I'm going to attempt some dyeing! Diane has a really useful post on how to dye in your oven which I'm going to use as my instructions. I've got some more plain Corriedale I can use (need to keep my white merino white, to use for my mitts) for dyeing and can maybe buy some more plain stuff as it's so cheap if my first attempt goes well. I'll pick up some cheap equipment from Tesco so I have dedicated dyeing bits.

My other bit of news is that Diane is going to lend me her Ashford Joy whilst she's in Australia! She goes away next week until April and she's said I can borrow it until then. I have to make sure it's back as soon as she gets home, but that should be fine :) Although given my first attempts at spinning on the Joy last time, I'm not filled with confidence, but I should be ok with practice. Might try and spin up the Endpaper yarn on the wheel. I love my spindles and I'm happy with the yarn I can spin, but it just takes so long! I know that's down to practice and I'm sure I'll get there, but right now I just want to be spinning more than 30 yards a time.

I reskeined all my yarn so far so you can see it a bit better:

I've not taken any pics of my most recent Navajo attempt. I'm quite happy with it (could be more consistent, as always) so will take some pics when I can.

I've also been promised some dye from Diane and some fibre from Sarah, so this week should be a very interesting one in terms of crafting!

I still hate Royal Mail... just a little less!

2009-02-13T19:24:00.004Z

After my ranting and railing last week about Royal Mail, they bought me a couple of presents this week.

The first was a book - Spinning in the Old Way by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts. Bought this as a bit of a reference guide for my spindling. Especially good since the book focused on top-whorl spindles, which are the only sort I have.

The second present came on Wednesday. Unfortunately I got home from work very late on Wednesday and we were very late coming home yesterday (more snow - so lots of road accidents and we got stopped by an accident ahead of us at one point and had to walk part way home) so I didn't have the chance to play until today.

Behold my gorgeous Bosworth Midi in Zebrawood:

Lots of pictures I know, but I went slightly crazy trying to find the perfect picture and showing off the gorgeous wood to best advantage.

The fibre in the picture is my Whisper merino that I bought from World of Wool. I'll need to buy myself some more yummy fibre to pose my Rosewood Mini with, when it comes. I've already set up a whole Flickr set for my Bossies as I plan to own many more and just add to it in future :)

Here's also a couple of pics at my first attempt spinning on it. It seemed to want to spin finer yarn than I tried initially - to begin with I think I was trying to spin too thickly and it kept wanting to backspin on me. With thinner yarn, it seems much happier. Tried to improve my drafting technique a bit and make things more consistent and I seem to be getting there slowly.

This is probably slightly overplied (I used the Andean bracelet technique to 2-ply it) but washing and whacking should sort that out.

There's only 4-5 yards of what looks like fingering weight, wound up into a mini-skein, and it does look more consistent now it's plied (apart from my overplied bits) but it shows progress at least.

Read a slightly worrying post today in which someone talks about a book where the author reckons it takes 10,000 hours of practice before someone can attain true mastery of something. That's 2.5 hours every day for 10 years. I really hope it doesn't take me that long!

Had the day off today, so now I've done some spinning I'm going to do a bit more knitting on my CPH (want to get the back finished this weekend and then start on both fronts together) and maybe do some more spinning later on tonight. Been a lovely day off so far!

A Hat Fit For A Husbeast!

2009-02-07T20:43:00.003Z

Been a little while since I blogged. Not been much going on in our household, knitting or otherwise until this week. Picked up some more yarn to finally make the pair of gloves my Mum has been nagging me for (she'll get these and then that's IT!) and at last got around to knitting my first hat.

Trev's been after a warmer hat for a while - as much as he loves the crocheted beanies I've made for him they're not desperately warm, and since the 100% wool ones grew when I washed them (doh!) he's not had a warm hat to wear. So on Thursday, when it snowed really badly overnight and I couldn't get to work, he looked like this when we went out for a walk:

I was warm - although something about the snow makes my hair look red instead of blonde:

Here's some more pics of the snow we were blessed with - easily 5-6 inches of snow. Cool.

So yeah, it was pretty bad! I had been laughing earlier in the week at the snow London had - how it brought everything grinding to a halt, but that in Peterborough we were fine. This was my office roof on Monday morning:

I think the snow got it's own back on me for laughing.

So today, I finished this for Trev:

Based on the A Hat Fit For A Boyfriend pattern, I followed it as much as I was able considering I was using chunky yarn instead of aran. Cast on only 80 stitches instead of 100, and used 6.0mm needles instead of 5.0mm. As I don't have a 16 inch circular, I magic-looped the whole thing using my Knitpicks Harmony Interchangeables. I did about 6 and a bit inches before starting the decreases, making this a bit longer as well.

The one thing I'm not happy with is how weird the stripes look on the purl sections. I used up one ball of each colour, pretty much, so I still have one ball of each left. I may try making another hat with larger colour sections and seeing if that looks better.

Also did my first attempt at Navajo plying on my spindle the other day. Didn't go very well - I understand there's meant to be little lumps where you start a new chain, but mine were quite big. I'm sure it's just a practice thing, but I need to do a "proper" 3-ply and see which I prefer. Both have their uses I'm sure. No pic of the attempt, as it's too pathetic for public viewing!

Also been trying to buy some new spindle goodies. I bought a Zebrawood Midi Bosworth Spindle over a week ago now, and thanks to the incompetence of Royal Mail trying to initially deliver it on Trev's first day at work (the first day that he will no longer be at home for the post - geniuses!) and then not turning up with it today like they were meant to, despite delivering post in the worse snow yesterday, it's not here.

So I've consoled myself with ordering another special spindle off the February list. I already have a Moosie on the way, which will come in December, but I've asked for a Rosewood Mini with a Bloodwood shaft. Hope to have it here by the end of the month.

Anybody wondering what the hell I am on about can find out more info here. Spindles are for spinning yarn by hand.

And finally, unfortunately, we had some bad news. Trev found out on Wednesday (after a tough first day at work, bless him) that his mum has advanced pancreatic cancer. Over the last few days we've found out more information. It's spread to the liver, which makes it terminal, rather than curable. And his mum is in the 85% of people who can't be operated upon. It's only been there about 2 months, so it's very aggressive :( She'd been very sick - constantly vomiting and unable to keep any food down. Unless this improves, she won't be able to start chemo and that shortens the prognosis. In any case it isn't great :(

We were going to try and see her on Thursday, but with the snow, we couldn't get to town as the buses weren't running, and neither were cars/taxis. Trev's hoping to go and see her next Friday. His work are very good about him having had the last 2 days off - his manager has been in a similar situation with her mum but wasn't able to see her before she died, so she's been very sympathetic which is lovely.

Trev isn't great and I'm doing what I can, but just feel totally useless, as there isn't really anything I CAN do.

Sorry if I have depressed you all - wasn't the intention. Just good to talk about it. Hopefully the amount of pretty (hopefully) pictures before this help a bit :)

Finally finished those gloves!

2009-01-25T21:27:00.003Z

At last, I've finished those gloves I needed to do. Still need to do those ones for my Mum, if I'm going to do them.

Anyway - here they are:

Made the same mods as before. Somehow I managed to miss a stitch when picking up the thumbs, so have a total of 13 stitches instead of 14. I also did 21 rows of cuff ribbing instead of 20 as I accidentally did one too many and couldn't be bothered to rip back.

I'm glad these are done. I didn't enjoy knitting them at all because it felt enforced and like work.

I've really wanted to do some spinning this weekend as I had some new fibre arrive (pics to follow) and wanted to learn some new techniques, but I've been struck down with this horrid gastro-thing and have been in a fair amount of agony over the last few days. Can't lean forwards or bend over, so spinning would be pretty tough. Grr. Have got to get back to work tomorrow as I've got so much on, but really don't feel better. Went to see the doctor on Friday and he was useless. Until I've been ill for a week, they won't treat me, and he focused on ONE of my symptoms, ignoring the pain and the history of bowel cancer in the family. Oh well. If I don't feel better within a couple of days, I'll go back.

Anyway, let's look at some scrummy fibre I bought:

2 x White Corriedale that I bought for practice:

2 x Brown Corriedale. Might make Mum's gloves from this if I can get my consistency ok, or a hat for Trev or something:

Some 23mic 64's Merino Top. Might try and dye this once I've spun it:

A blended colourway of the above Merino called Whisper. Will make something scrummy for myself out of this:

Got a few pics of my most recently spun yarn too. I span this... last weekend? I can't remember. It was a while ago and I do need to do some more spinning soon. There's about 30 yards of it. Span 2 lots of singles, plied together, then washed and whacked it. No idea what weight it is. Guess I don't mind too much since it's probably not enough to make anything from.

Here's a pic as my handspun has developed:

Newer handspun at the top, first attempts at the bottom. Definitely improving, even though it's not as consistent as I'd like.

Want to learn to Navajo ply next. I've decided I don't like plying very much. I can see why a lot of spindlers buy a wheel just to do plying. Especially if I learn to Navajo Ply on the Fly, once I'm done it's done!

Also been having a look at some new spindles. I want to get some Bosworths - might put my name down for a Moosie as I'm feeling very sorry for myself still being poorly.

Right - back to watching LOST - been very odd so far!

New yarn!

2009-01-21T20:25:00.003Z

As promised here are pics of my new stash. I meant to post these at the weekend, but got a bit carried away with spinning.

I hopefully have some new fibre coming tomorrow, so I'll post some pics of that soon too along with some more yarn I spun at the weekend. I managed to get it come out a bit more even, and there's about 30 yards of it once plied, which is pretty good. I soaked and whacked it, and it's nice a balanced. Unfortunately there's not enough of it to use for anything, due to yardage and it's still a bit thick/thin. I might try and dye it, I think.

Anyway! Stash!

This is the yarn I want to use for Arisaig - a nice Rowan 4 Ply Soft. I cleared out John Lewis and had to order some more online:

There's a couple of different dye lots, but I should be able to make sure I use the same lots on each section of the top. Hope I can add a bit more length to it too.

Some random Rowan Cashsoft Aran:

I was tempted to get a darker lilac in chunky weight, but bought 5 balls of this. Don't know what I'm going to use it for, but worth stashing up on anyway!

Some black Cashsoft Chunky:

This is for some gloves for Mum - 3 balls

Both balls of this (got 2 in each colour) are for a hat for Trev - Cashsoft Chunky again:

Also had a colour card come from Coldharbour Mills:

Looking forward to a ton more knitting!

Third yarn!

2009-01-15T23:14:00.003Z

I know it's late, but I couldnt' resist. This is the other bit of what I span at Diane's class, and I've just plied it together off the spindle.

It's still uneven, but more even than anything I span so far. There's different bits of yarn on here. The purple is mohair, the green is merino/silk and the plain I think is Polwarth. Besides the ends, it's generally plied together quite well.

Time for bed I think, and more spinning tomorrow!

Spinning! Eeek!

2009-01-15T22:06:00.003Z

Well, today I had my first spinning lesson today. And I think it went ok! Had 2 hours booked with Diane Mulholland and I learned to draft, spin on a spindle and attempted to spin on a wheel, which was not pretty.

Here's some pictures of my first yarn (I'm so embarrassed) and some of the other goodies I've come home with.

All my bits of fibre:

Some washed fleece:

I think this is Wensleydale:

This is a silk/merino mix:

My spindle! It's made from cherry wood. The purpley stuff on it is mohair, underneath which is some plain fibre, I think it's either Polwarth or BFL.

Another shot of my spindle (the fibre on it is my third attempt at spinning):

My first yarn! I forget how I span this - may have just been on my leg. One end of it looks ok, best to just ignore the rest:

My second yarn attempt! This is a 2 ply plied from a centre-pull ball. Looking a bit better, but still pretty awful :)

I managed to cause Diane lots of amusement. My main problem that I have to watch for whilst spindling is letting the roving get tangled in the spinning area and all getting spun together. Aaagh! I did this so many times it was annoying.

My other issues: trying to draft with my hands waaaaay too close together and wondering why drafting was nearly impossible!

Other problem, when using the wheel, moving my hand back down towards the wheel and fluffing up the fibre so it doesn't lay flat. Whoops. That was the one thing I did that Diane referred to as evil :) At least there was only one thing I guess!

My wheel spinning unfortunately went well until I started to treadle. I could draft and feed the yarn onto the bobbing quite well, but the minute I had to treadle as well, I lost it completely! Practice will make perfect, but I need more time on my spindle first.

The other thing the session confirmed was that I really want a Majacraft Rose. Got a good look at Diane's and it's beautiful. Gotta have one :) She had the cutest little Bosworth spindle too - I forgot to ask what weight it was.

All in all, a really good day. I'm going to try and do some practice before I go to bed.

I went to John Lewis on Friday and bagged a load of yarn that was still on sale. Don't have any photos yet, so I'll post about that at the weekend when hopefully some of the extra yarn I ordered will arrive.

Yay!

52 books in a year!

2009-01-11T21:22:00.003Z

A whole lot of people I've seen on the interweb are setting themselves the target of trying to read 52 books in a year.

Since my purchase of the 100 Classic Books for the DS, I think I might attempt this as well. There's so much Dickens and Austen and Bronte and Shakespeare that I want to read and have never got round to. I downloaded the extra 10 books that are available via the Wi-Fi connection and so now I have 110 books to get through! Well, 109 if you take off Emma, which I just finished reading, and less still if I count down the books I've already read.

Because of all the reading I've done this week, especially on the train, I haven't done any knitting at all. I did a few rows of a cuff for one of Gywneth's gloves, but I just have zero motivation. Like I said in my last post, what I want is to work on my CPH but I can't whilst there's other stuff outstanding.

I've not felt very well this weekend (not too sure what's wrong with me) but Trev is cheering me up - he's planning a trip for us to go to Canada and see polar bears in October. Perhaps not for this year, but maybe a treat for our anniversary next year. The costs of trains from Winnipeg to Churchill are extortionate if you go sleeper class (which I'd want to, as it's a 3 day journey!) but I'm sure it's well worth it.

He's been doing lots of potential holiday planning this week (whatever we do will be our first big holiday for a few years) - to spur him on for his new job which hopefully starts in a week or so once he gets the health clearance. He's got an appointment tomorrow which will decide for definite if he gets the job or not. Hope it all goes well for him :)

Still looking forward to my spinning class on Thursday. Hope I'm not completely useless at it!

Hard work!

2009-01-07T21:32:00.002Z

First of all, Happy New Wotsits everyone... I know I'm a week late, but who cares :)

So yeah, hard work! Both in work and knitting terms. Today's been tough at work - this week in general has been hard since going back (you get used to 2 weeks off work!), but today was not good. All I'll say is that I'm glad to see public flogging hasn't gone out of style! :) And that's all I have to say about that (ala Forrest Gump).

Unfortunately when it comes to knitting, I've lost my groove a little bit. I'm getting a bit down about being pressured to do a ton of knitting for other people. I really want to work on my CPH but feel guilty while there's stuff outstanding for other people. Oh well.

In addition over New Year I consumed too much crap... and far too much whisky (we had a bottle of Glenfiddich rattling around - whoops)! So need to get myself fit and motivated...

To that end I have signed up to spinning classes! Yarn, not bikes! (Me on a bike? Yeah right.) I have booked a couple of hours with the lovely Diane Mullholland next Thursday. Taking a half day off work and going for 2 hours lessons. Really looking forward to it!

The Chewie booties went off in the post today to the newly born Gemma Irene and a super adorable baby she is too.

To end, some restful pictures of sunsets we took last week when I was off work and we were walking around the lake.

I love the last one - as it's the view from my living room window :)

Small but cute

2008-12-29T21:38:00.003Z

I finished these last night which were a bit of a triumph for me:

First 2 times I tried to make these, it was awful as I couldn't get the hang of working with the fun fur. Third time round, I carried a strand of brown DK yarn along with the fun fur.

They need a bit of brushing to help the fur all lie in the same direction, but I think they're pretty cute. They're called Chewbacca Baby Booties and are destined for a bump that has been nicknamed "Chewie" :)

The other thing I've done today is teach myself how to mattress stitch:

It's come out ok - the bottom (which I did first) isn't as good as the top but overall it's ok I think. I'll get plenty of practice when working on my CPH and this was just to ensure I got the general idea.

I also heard back from New Lanark yarns about their bulky weight yarn that I enquired about. Like the Aran, it's also only £2.95 per ball but it's less yardage at 132yds. It only comes in certain colours, Cherry, Sky, Heather, Blossom, New Natural and Limestone. I quite fancy bright cherry red something... maybe a Vivian which I bought the pattern for the other day.

The final thing I heard about today (you can tell it's everyone's first day back at work after Xmas) was a spinning (fibre, not exercise) course at a shop in London. There is one course I was keen on, which several ladies in my SnB group have gone on - they speak very highly of the teacher, but it's on a Sunday and not easy for me to get to. So there's another store in East London (which lets Trev go and visit the in-laws) which do a 6 hour course on a Saturday for only £45! Bargain! They have dates in Feb, March and April, so I'll try and go at some point soonish.

Very sad to be into my final week off! My mum rang me earlier and requested 2 more pairs of Evangelines to go with different coats of hers... I'm sort of pleased that she likes them enough, but a bit peeved that I have to buy the yarn and find the time to make them. I may not have that much time on my commute since I bought a DS cart that contains 100 classic novels, most of which I've wanted to read for years. I'm such a geek :)

Bits and pieces

2008-12-28T16:00:00.003Z

Been a bit of a strange day today. Haven't really accomplished much in some ways, but in other perhaps have got a great deal done!

First of all, I'm going to post the most recent photo of my CPH - which shows that I have made definitive progress on something.

So I'm up to the armholes and have done all the decreases that I need to do and bound off all stitches etc that needed it, and I now just need to work in pattern for 8.5" then I can do my short rows for the shoulders. I had to spit splice and add in a second ball of yarn yesterday - it spliced sooo well and I have absolutely no clue where the join is now. I do love this yarn.

I decided that I'd take a small break from my CPH, to do some unselfish projects for other people so I could get to revelling in my selfishness. So out came the stash box, to pick yarn for said unselfish projects and I've unfortunately spent the last couple of hours doing not much. (In fact it's probably 3-4 hours if I'm honest.) I've been tweaking things in my queue, deciding whether any UFOs need to take a trip to the Frog Pond and generally just fiddling.

I've done some major sorting of my queue on Ravelry and am determined to stick to it as much as possible. Needless to say I've also added a few things to it and it currently stands at 50 items - some of which may come off when I get back to looking at it later.

I've been trying to work out uses for some of my stashed yarn and think I've worked out how to use up a lot of it, which is great - especially the dreaded Lion Brand Microspun. I've decided to frog the Lotus Camisole that I was working on (a crochet hairpin lace project that I've already made a dress version of). Well not frog, so much as just bin. It was coming out ok, but I'd made a few mistakes on it, hate working with the yarn and just couldn't be bothered with it anymore. So that only leaves one unfinished Microspun project - the Hairpin Lace Cardi Wrap on which I think I just need to do the sleeves and block it.

I think that once I use up some of my stash, I won't feel so bad about buying yarns for selfish projects. So here's what I'm thinking:

Monster Baby Booties - (these have a deadline) using the Fun Fur I bought along with random DK and aran bits from stash
Amigurumi monkey - not sure whether to make this in DK or aran size - don't have enough yarn in the "correct" colours to do either, so need to have a think on this one
Evangeline gloves for Gywneth - got chased on these again today :) Use up last of Almerino Aran
Hourglass Jacket - Broomstick lace pattern in Rowan Calmer - may need to buy an extra ball to finish this
Possible the Short and Sweet - in Microspun, to use that up.

Definitely need to do the first three before I go back to my CPH, although the gloves are a good project for on my commute once I go back to work. The bottom two are ones I'll do afterwards. Everything else in my queue I need new yarn for and will have great fun buying it!

I've blogged a lot recently... I've realised. Probably a combination of making more of an effort and having lots of time off. It's been nice, although anyone who actually reads this is probably sick to death of me by now :)

New Year's Knitalutions

2008-12-27T14:16:00.005Z

I've shamelessly stolen the idea from this post from the good ladies of the Stitch n Bitch London group on Ravelry. There's a thread from last year where people listed all their "knitalutions" and are now saying what they managed to do and what they'd like to do next year.

Because I couldn't knit or crochet this time last year, I'm going to put together a little list of my own for things I'd like to achieve in 2009. Here goes:

Learn to knit socks (and how to knit them 2 at a time as I already know Magic Loop)
Be a selfish crafter - knit and crochet more for myself than I do for other people
Learn how to seam knitting properly - I HATE seaming crochet and I'm no good at it, so I need to learn how to seam knitting, especially with my CPH on the needles at the moment
Learn to spin! I'm looking at a couple of courses in shops in London. I love the idea of a wheel, but will try out both wheels and spindles to see which I prefer
Learn colourwork/stranding/Fair Isle - not too sure I want to learn Intarsia (maybe in 2010) but would love to make a funky Fair Isle hat or something. Thinking Endpaper Mitts (here on Ravelry) to learn?
To design something knitted, and maybe something hairpin lace
Learn the "raglan" style of making sweaters - learn how to make stuff top-down and seamless
Learn more about how garments are constructed so I can make changes and amend things to fit me
Learn how to do short row and other shaping to allow for a proper fit in the boobage/waist/hip area
Learn all my knitted increases and decreases and more ways to cast on/off

I could probably think of a few more things, but I think that's enough to be getting on with, don't you? And of course, I need to finish my CPH as quickly as possible so I can wear it :)

Making Progress!

2008-12-25T23:54:00.004Z

Today has been a good day. Not because it's Christmas, bizarrely, as we don't celebrate it and so haven't done anything Xmas related today. Well, we went out for a curry for lunch (I was told it was Xmas Day, then on Saturday Mum told me it was Xmas Eve... and then we had it confirmed for today) which was lovely. Speaking of which, I gave her the Evangeline gloves to give to Gwyneth, but she has decided to keep them herself as they fit and to save me knitting another pair, which is fine. More time for me!

The restaurant was surprisingly busy busy - clearly lots of people not keen on cooking today! But they did serve everyone free tandoori turkey which I didn't try - Mum swiped it to give to the dog. This dog (who is much bigger since this was taken):

Speaking of dogs, yesterday until this morning we dog-sat this little 'un of my sister's.

They were away in Egypt on holiday and not getting back until this morning. He was staying with my Mum/Dad and their dog, but weren't getting on, so Monty went into kennels and we were asked to have him for the final day.

He came to us in the morning and was super stinky, so we gave him a bath. He was still stinky afterwards (he's a dog, so I guess it's inevitable) but much less so. But very cute. Unfortunately he and Kooky didn't get on, but I'll spare you all of the details. She was ok with him whilst he was sleepy and quiet, but this pup has more energy than Usain Bolt and tended to be like a crazy boisterous thing most of the day which she couldn't handle.

Thankfully we got to give him back this morning (after which I promptly de-doggified the place as he piddled on the floor and was generally a bit stinky - after all I'm used to nice clean cat) but not before we'd taken a few pictures.

Straight out of the bath:

Playing Wii with Trev:

Cute sleepy pictures:

So, back to the knitting!

Been making good progress on my CPH once I finally cast on. Opted to make the 40" size, so it will be snug-fitting, as I think the 44" would be way too big. I may have to make the sleeves from the 44" though, as the dimensions in the schematic are very small - although a lot of people have remarked on the sleeves being tight, so I'm not surprised. Not that I have fat arms or anything, but I don't think mine will fit into the ones I'm meant to make.

Here was my progress this morning, although I'm now 4 and a bit cable repeats up the body now:

I'm really happy with how it's coming out. Perhaps if I make another one, I'll do the ribbing in the same sized needles as the body as it is going to need to stretch a LOT to fit around the ol' hips. But it will fit, especially with blocking.

Enjoying working on it though, just hope I can get lots done over the next week or so. Need to get some Wii playing in though as I have oodles of games I need to finish, despite lending some out. Sometimes I hate having so many hobbies :)

Ooh Selfish Knitting!

2008-12-23T14:39:00.003Z

Here is my first FO since I decided to become a selfish knitter:

My finished Evangeline gloves! Yay!

I finished these yesterday morning, when all I had to do was finish off the thumb. The main body of the glove was finished on Sunday. The thumbs always seem to take me forever to do... I don't get it!

As stated in a previous post, this was my first proper Magic Loop project and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I love the portability of Magic Loop, and the fact that I can't poke myself to death with a series of double-pointed needles :) It's also easier to avoid the horrible saggy purl stitches that you can get at the sides of a cable panel. There is a little bit of looseness here, but nothing major and they certainly look much better than my previous attempt.

Here's a list of my mods:

4 cable repeats instead of 3
20 rows of ribbing at the cuff
10 rows of ribbing at the fingers
Started thumb on the 3rd knit stitch away from the cable panel, not the first
Knit 5 stitches for the thumb on waste yarn - same method as used for Fetching gloves and picked up 22 stitches in total, decreasing to 14 for final rounds
Made the thumb longer - 12 rounds in total, with 4 rows of 1x1 ribbing at the top
Used EZ’s sewn bind off for stretchiness
Magic looped them and had the cable panel, plus an extra 2 purls and 2 knit stitches on each side (total of 24, to prevent saggy purling), with 16 knit stitches on the second needle

These did take me longer to do than I wanted... I would have them done much earlier in the week if I hadn't had to frog back almost all of the cabling due to some mistake I had made.

Wore them out last night and whilst they are beautifully warm and soft, but I have a horrible feeling that I'm allergic to either the alpaca or the merino in the gloves. They were a bit itchy to wear and when I took them off last night, I had what looked the beginnings of little round itchy patches on my hands. Hives, maybe? So sad as they are so pretty! :(

I haven't tried washing the gloves yet, to see if that helps, but they are a little tight across the palm and could probably have done with some more stitches being added there, so I may give them to a lady my parents know who was eyeing them up last night. She tried them on and clearly didn't want to take them off.

My Mum was also in love - she wants me to make her some but in a bigger size/gauge so that she can wear them over other gloves when walking the dog. Not entirely sure how I'll do those... probably go up a needle size and still add more stitches across the palm. Maybe 4 or 8 more. I'll pick up the 22 stitches for the thumb again, but not do as many decreases. So I'll cast on for those soon.

And to cheer myself up, I am going to go and cast on for my hoodie now. I wore the swatch tucked into my bra last night just to make sure I'm not going to have a reaction to this yarn :) Maybe I can make some more Evangelines out of that later.

Plans for the Holidays

2008-12-20T12:53:00.003Z

As of today, I have two whole weeks off work. Super excited - it's the first time I've had 2 weeks off together since I left school and got married - 6 years. So, I've been planning all of my holiday knitting!

I was thinking that I might cast on for my CPH today but then it occurred to me that if I get started on that, I'm not going to want to make anything else. So I've got a few smaller projects that I need to get done and out of the way first, and then I'll start work on my hoodie.

Hopefully I'll finish my Evangeline gloves this weekend - there was a bit of the glove that looked a bit dodgy, which resulted in my frogging all the cabling I'd done back to the cuff - and it was three-quarters done, which is annoying. But hopefully I'll get them finished tomorrow.

My Mum popped round briefly today, so it was a chance to give her back the 5.0mm needles she lent me - felt slightly sad to see them go!

We don't celebrate Christmas ourselves (religious reasons) and neither do the immediate family on both sides, so there's no plans for presents etc, but what we are all doing is meeting up for a curry on Xmas Eve, which should be quite nice. We all love curry and I don't think we've been to the restaurant so I'm looking forward to it. Although I can't pretend I'm keen on spending lots of time with certain members of my family, I guess that's what Christmas is all about!

So, sitting down to watch the Strictly Come Dancing final, and then I'll see how much of my other glove I can get finished. Can't quite get it into my head yet that I don't have to go back to work on Monday...

Started my CPH! Well, swatching at least...

2008-12-17T19:14:00.004Z

Yup you got it! Last night during Stardust (I love that film! Robert de Niro dancing around in drag to the Can-Can has to be one of the funniest things ever) I started to swatch for my CPH. I dug out my 5.0mm inters and a cable and cast on.

Before I blocked it, I got 19 stitches and 24 rows to 4 inches (the rows was to 12 to 2 inches... just doubled it). I soaked it in some Soak and laid it out to dry on top of the tumble dryer.

Just gone and remeasured it now, and my gauge is.... 17 stitches and 24 rows! Yay! Spot on :) That's the first time EVER I've been able to hit gauge.

Miracles do happen!

I'll start on this once I've finished my gloves. Ironically, the colour of my glove yarn matches my hoodie yarn almost perfectly, so I guess I know what I'll be wearing with my finished CPH :)

Trev took himself off to A&E today as he'd been having some severe pains in his appendix area... thankfully it turns out it's not appendicitis, just a severe viral infection. Bless him.

Magic Loop!

2008-12-15T20:49:00.004Z

I know I posted yesterday about attempting to magic loop my Evangeline gloves and I did indeed make progress!

Here was in the morning:

And here they are tonight!

All I've done today is the ribbing on the top and picking up the thumb stitches. All the rest was done yesterday and all done using the circ.

I've already decided I want more cables and needles - I'm going to want spares of some, and I need to get the other tips in the set. Also tempted to try some of the metal tips for some speedier knitting. Could come in handy for my CPH.

Anyway... made a lot of mods to the gloves that I'll explain when I finish the second one. Just so glad these fit me - I have big hands and making the effort to knit loosely and making my mods has really helped. Also, using magic loop has stopped the really saggy purl stitches you can sometimes get at the sides of cable panels.

Yay! I'm in love!

Unfortunately Trev bless him has been a bit worse today. Hope he perks up soon. Am working from home tomorrow so I can keep an eye on him :)

What a day...

2008-12-14T11:58:00.002Z

Well yesterday was a bit of a strange day. Trev has been struck down with "man-flu" for the last few days and so went to bed early on Friday night and slept through most of yesterday.

I had a rude awakening by the postman, who arrived bearing my new Knitpicks Interchangeables (yay!) but most of the rest of the day was spent nursing a very poorly hubby. So as a result I didn't get much knitting done, and haven't yet swatched for my CPH, which I was a bit nervous to do anyway as my new needles looked so dainty and delicate and I was worried about breaking them.

Anyway. Later in the evening, Trev collapsed whilst standing up, and once I got him sat down on the sofa, promptly fainted and was out for about 2-3 minutes - scaring the crap out of me because I couldn't wake him up. I called NHS Direct, who after talking to a nurse, decided to send an ambulance round.

So, somewhere between 11pm and midnight, we had a paramedic turn up, shortly followed by a 2-man ambulance crew, just in case we needed to take him to hospital. He'd been running a really high fever - he'd been burning up all day, with chest pain, and a severe headache.

The 3 men promptly started debating whether or not it was man-flu and whether they should shave Trev in order to attach the little sticky pads to him to do an ECG. After a lot of careful monitoring, they decided not to take him in, but I was left with strict instructions to call 999 in the morning if he wasn't better.

A lot of paracetamol, water and bedrest later, he seems much better, which is great. The 3 blokes did a really good job - I feel bad that they work 12 hours shifts (6pm-6am in this case) and after leaving us said they'd probably be off rounding up drunks all evening. Can't be a fun job. But I am extremely grateful for them coming round and taking good care of the mister.

So as I mentioned above, I had a little play with my Knitpicks yesterday, but not much. I'd ordered the little cable needles to go with them, which look super cute:

I was really worried about starting to use them for something chunky as they do look so dainty and delicate and the last thing I wanted to do was break them. So instead of starting to swatch for my CPH, I've decided to attempt something smaller, still for me, and try out Magic Looping at the same time. I've started a pair of Evangeline Fingerless gloves for myself in the Rooster Almerino Aran. Not made much progress on them yet, but hopefully will do today.

Here are some glamour shots of the needles:

Finished Trev's Scarf

2008-12-13T11:48:00.000Z

Yay! I am ashamed to admit that this has taken me 6 weeks, but I'm glad it's finally finished.

It's long, warm and soft. Blocking evened out the stitches beautifully, so where I had some wonky changes in tension between knitting sessions, it's now impossible to tell. I did notice during blocking though that this yarn does bleed a bit into the water - I found that when I washed all of Trev's hats last week, made from the same yarn. Plus they grew a bit, which I wasn't happy about.

The yarn isn't the softest in the world, but it's amazing what a few hours soaking in Soak will do for it.

In the end I bound the scarf off using Elizabeth Zimmermann's Sewn Bind Off which is meant to be very stretchy and great for ribbing. Which it is. However I think I bound off a little too loose, which has caused the edge to flare out slightly, but it's nothing too bad. At least I know for next time.

Overall, pretty happy! Back to selfish knitting now :)

I realised I forgot...

2008-12-12T20:18:00.002Z

... to post pictures of the new yarn! Still no needles yet - really hope they'll turn up tomorrow.

It's probably a bit darker, more purply and less red in reality, but it doesn't do a bad job of showing off the yarn.

Been a busy few days, knitwise. Posted off Caroline's Fetchings yesterday - hopefully she'll get those soon. I'm waiting for my needles, and I finished Trev's scarf today - I'll blog about that over the weekend.

I've also been teaching a colleague to knit. We went to John Lewis to pick up some stuff a couple of weeks ago and we've been having one lesson a week during lunches at work. Needless to say EVERYONE who walks past laughs at us, but 3 or 4 female colleagues have expressed a desire to learn as well - especially when they see the Fetchings that I gave to her (the purple Cashmerino ones) and are told that they could make these too!

Last week we learned to cast on and knit, and today we covered purling and cables. I might knit a test swatch over the weekend to show her all of the basic stitches. I won't bother with increases and decreases because I don't know them myself yet and the KnittingHelp site explains it so much better than I could.

Have to go and take care of a sick hubby - he really isn't well today. Been feeling faint, dizzy... all sorts. He's occasionally coughing but generally just making really odd noises as he tries to sleep. Bless him. At least the cat is ok - Kooky went back for a checkup today and all is well.

Caroline's Fetchings

2008-12-11T21:06:00.003Z

I posted these off to Caroline today - I took some photos of them whilst working at home yesterday.

I've already posted about the mods I made in another post, so this post will be just for pics :)

I blocked these gloves before sending them out, just to get the yarn to settle and to soften them up. Some of the colour bled out into the Soak water, but for some reason these photos have come out REALLY faded. In real life they're not like this at all - just as vivid as the Evangelines I started for her and the beanie I made.

Not looking too bad I think! Hopefully they'll keep her hands warm whilst she plays the piano.

I'd hoped my Knitpicks Interchangeables would have arrived today - hopefully tomorrow or Saturday at the latest so I can start to swatch for my CPH :) Then I have 2 weeks off over Christmas when I can start work on it and hopefully make some progress.

I'm looking at using short row shaping and a three needle bind off for the shoulders (based on info from Ravelry and Knitty), but I'm still trying to get my head around that. Can't decide which size to make either - either the 40 or 44 - 40 might be a bit snug as I'm a 38 round the chest, but 44 might be too big?

Finally, our Kooky bear was at the vets yesterday to have her teeth cleaned as they were in a bad state. She had to have a small tooth at the front out, but they're now pearly and white. It was quite cute watching her stroll around the flat like a drunk thing last night - swaying from side to side and falling asleep standing up. She didn't make a sound ALL night until I woke up early this morning to find her curled up on my tummy purring :)

She's been much more herself today which is lovely and she's currently snuggled next to me as I type - no she's not - she's off now Trev's gotten up to get a drink. She has got these funny little shaved bits on her chest and both her front legs where they must have taken blood or inserted the drip - looks quite weird!

Funny how worried you get about them - I couldn't relax yesterday and it wasn't the same here without her. Due to her age I was worried how she'd deal with the anaesthetic, but we'd paid for her to have blood tests prior and fluids during so she was fine. The vet said she was a star - very well behaved and pretty. Ironically, in the morning before the op, Kooky was sat facing the outside of the cage - to see what was going on. AFTER the op, she laid down with her back to everyone. Sounds like my baby! 100% stroppy. But that's why we love them. I think.

Right, I'm off to browse the latest issue of Knitty and maybe to go and re-watch Wall-E - and cry again.

YAY!

2008-12-08T19:41:00.002Z

Yay my yarn is here! For some reason Royal Mail delivered it at nearly 6pm tonight - despite there being a label on it that said "Redeliver Saturday 6th". Muppets.

I was so depressed about the lack of yarn this morning I bought myself a set of Knitpicks Interchangeable Harmony Needles (the full site) and a matching little set of cable needles - even though I'm going to try to learn to cable without using an extra needle.

The yarn is lovely - purple with bits of purple and red. I can't tell you how soft and snuggly it is because I haven't opened the clear packet yet that contains the 10 balls :)

Hopefully my needles will arrive in the next few days and I can start to swatch!

I feel like a right proper little knitter :)

Consoling myself...

2008-12-07T21:23:00.005Z

In advance of purchasing my Knitpicks Interchangeables (hopefully this week) to knit my CPH with my as-yet non-existent yarn, I treated myself to a present today.

I mentioned Ysolda's patterns in a previous blog post - besides knitting her Vivian hoodie pattern, I'd like to knit this pattern: Snow White. Sooo, four of my Great British Pounds were plonked down this afternoon and the pattern is now mine. Hope to print it off tomorrow and start to highlight the bits I need.

I may also buy the pattern for Vivian once I've finished my CPH, but I'll knit it after finishing Snow White and my CPH, so I don't have too much in my queue at once.

I also managed to get another WIP off the needles this evening. I finished off Caroline's Fetchings. As I thought I might, I had to start to rip back the second half-finished Evangeline to finish it off, but at least it's done now.

With these I added an extra stitch to the thumb on each side when picking them up, making a total of 19 stitches, then over the next 4 rows work 3 decreases to end with a total of 16 before binding off.

Wove in the ends as usual around the thumb, although the holes weren't so bad this time, due to the increased stitches being picked up. I bet this could be eliminated completely if I was to pick up yet MORE stitches.

The gloves are blocking now - hopefully I'll get to take some pictures in the daytime before posting them off to Caroline some time this week.

Back to the grind in the morning!

I hate you Royal Mail!

2008-12-07T10:54:00.004Z

As hoped on Thursday, my CPH yarn arrived. Or rather, it would have arrived if one of us had been at home to answer the door. As it is, I came home to the red "While you were out" card that Royal Mail like to try and leave.

So, we called the number on the card to arrange a re-delivery - cue being left on hold for 10 minutes and getting fed up.

In the end, we decided to place the re-delivery request online - which we did. We asked them to re-deliver on Saturday when we'd both be home and I got an email back confirming this would happen.

Cue Saturday - no yarn. Not happy :( I wanted to start swatching for my CPH - well not swatching as such because I don't have the needles, but I wanted more new yarn to squish :(

At least on Friday I had a skein of Lion Brand Fun Fur arrive (because at least that could be shoved in our post box) which wasn't quite what I expected when it turned up... bit straggly and not at all how it looks in people's finished project photos.

Well I have something in mind for that - may work on it today, although I have about 5 WIPs that I need to finish...

I'm going to go and fondle my yarn colour chart... since it's the closest I can get to the real thing at the moment!

Bought my CPH yarn!

2008-12-04T09:18:00.005Z

My shade card arrived from the New Lanark Mill on Tuesday and so yesterday I ordered my yarn for the Central Park Hoodie.

I've decided to go for the Bramble colour in the 100% wool mix:

I did go slightly overboard and buy 12 balls - I should only need 9-10, but I want to add some more length to it and hope to have enough yarn left to make some matching gloves or something.

Am hoping it will arrive tomorrow (or maybe even today if I'm lucky) - came to less than £42 for all the yarn, including £6 for delivery. Bargain.

However I still need to buy my needles... something tells me I may have done my purchases in the wrong order. Oh well :)

My Rooster Almerino Aran also arrived yesterday. 6 25g balls in Spiced Plum so it works out to be 3 normal sized balls. I love this yarn - used a load of it in a baby blue colour earlier in the year. Just need to decide what to do with it now!

I seem to be developing a bit of a thing for purple... just as well it's "in" this season. First time I'll have ever done anything fashionable - intentional or otherwise!

Gone all Continental!

2008-12-02T19:58:00.003Z

I made a discovery on the train home tonight. No, not that the trains are massively overpriced and overcrowded.

Oh no. (I think we all know that already.)

I discovered, that despite earlier attempts, I CAN knit Contintental! Woo!

I was working on Trev's scarf and getting sick and tired of how slow it can be to do 2x2 ribbing when you throw the yarn and so I thought I'd try it again, based on the videos I've seen on KnittingHelp.com. And I could do it!

Purling is much trickier, but I'm getting the hang of using the middle finger to push the yarn down so that you can pull it through the stitch. Working the first stitch is hard too - because pulling the yarn with the left hand twists the stitch round and makes it hard to work.

But now I just need to practise so I get a bit quicker.

Might actually manage to get Trev's scarf finished before the end of winter :)

Found scrummy new yarn and patterns!

2008-11-30T16:59:00.003Z

It hasn't been a particularly productive weekend (as I type this I'm watching Return of the Jedi - a measure of how much I've done). Slept in very late on Saturday, which I blame on the couple upstairs having a VERY loud and protracted argument that ended at about 5:30 in the morning. Was difficult to make out what they were yelling about (after all, if they're rude enough to argue this loudly and at this time of the morning, then we're rude enough to try and listen) but we heard several female shouts of "I hate you" in a particularly shrill voice - so I doubt very much they were arguing about what video to watch or what to make for dinner that night.

Anyway, as a result I got up somewhere resembling lunchtime and the day was gone before I realised. Didn't do any knitting... or anything. Spent most of the day on Ravelry where I was queueing things and discovering new patterns.

I've been eyeing up patterns designed by the lovely Ysolda Teague - have a look at her site here or look her up on Ravelry. She is super talented - recently turned 23 and a knitting wonder! I have to admit to being more than a little bit jealous :)

I found her through an online pattern magazine called Twist Collective, where in the latest issue she has a beautiful design called Vivan (Rav link here). It's a hoodie similar in style to the Central Park Hoodie that I want to work on, but kicks it up a notch in terms of complexity and cabling. Needless to say I won't be tackling this one for a while - but it's in my Ravelry queue. I don't think I'll be buying the recommended yarn - as gorgeous as it is, I balk at paying over £100 for the yarn for one item. I was hunting for some good substitute yarn, which brings me onto my second discovery of the weekend!

On Ysolda's blog, she talks about a visit to New Lanark and the mills and yarn to be found there. She also made a mention of it being CHEAP. Cue a visit to their shop! At the moment they stock some lovely organic Aran and DK weight yarn in scrummy colours. I've ordered a shade card to help me pick the colours I want for the projects I have this yarn in mind for:

Central Park Hoodie - the Aran weight yarn - possibly in Bramble, or maybe Heather
Snow White (a Ysolda design) - will go for the slightly more luxurious silk/wool Aran weight - not sure on colour
Vivian - when they bring out a bulky weight yarn (which I've heard they will) this should be the perfect weight for this project

I'm sure I'll be able to think of plenty of other uses - especially for the DK weight. And it's SO cheap! 100g of Aran weight yarn (approx 176yds) is only £2.95! I'm in love. Can't wait for my shade card to arrive because I'll then definitely treat myself to some CPH yarn. I've seen a few people knit it already using this yarn, so makes me feel a bit more confident.

Also debating whether or not I can afford to get my Knitpicks Interchangeable Needles this side of Xmas. We've decided to sell our Kings of Leon tickets for the gig at Wembley. I know :( I'm gutted. So desperate to go, but we can't really afford it. The extra money for transport and food etc for the night out, is a bit much, and tickets are currently going for a small fortune on eBay, so it makes sense. Kooky needs to have some work done at the vets, and so we need the cash.

But there's always the chance for more gigs - that's what we're telling ourselves :) It would have been my first ever gig - alas, it's not to be. But if they sell for enough money I might have a little bit of yarn money, so there's definitely a silver lining here.

There is one other pattern from the Twist Collective that I have to share. It's the Sylvi hooded coat. (Rav link here.) I saw this and it screamed Little Red Riding Hood to me. Love it. Oh to have the knitting skills worthy of this and Vivian.

Started on the second glove for Caroline's Fetchings today, so will get as much of that done as possible. Might be able to finish off most of the rest during my commute tomorrow. Am also having a think about changing my blog name. Needs a lot of though, that one. The only other yarn-related thing I've done today has been to frog the neck sock I made back in August in order to use the yarn for something else. I though I had about 100 yards (was thinking Fetchings!) but after measuring it, I only have 57yds. Have cleaned it in some Soak, and it's hanging off the bedroom door with a hangar to weigh it down a bit.

Right, back to Star Wars. (Speeder fight scene just about to start - woo! Reminds of how fun this bit is on Lego Star Wars. Love that game)

Finished Fetchings!

2008-11-28T21:01:00.004Z

Well they're finished, but I didn't give them to my niece. I gave them to a colleague at work who really liked them and has smaller paws than me.

Here are some pics I took of them finished - not in daylight unfortunately as I'm now out of the house during daylight hours during the week.

The actual colour of the gloves is somewhere in-between both sets of photos. I bound the second ones off as tightly to make them consistent. I did manage to get both gloves out of the single skein - with a few yards left over. Obviously if I managed to make these to fit ME, no doubt I'd need to go onto a second skein.

I started a second pair in the week. The extra yarn I needed to finish Caroline's Evangeline gloves (Rowan Pure Wool Aran in Cedar) arrived so I've started a pair of Fetchings from that for her too. (Many thanks to the lovely Viknits who also makes lovely yarn!) They're coming out MUCH better than the first pair (although the yarn doesn't work as well for them - cable definition isn't as good and they're not as soft) as I'm making a conscious effort to knit more loosely and the first glove (which I finished last night) is bigger and a better fit - must be nearly on the gauge.

If I don't have enough yarn to finish the second glove AND the Evangelines, I'll frog the Evangelines and just send her these, rather than both pairs. These have come out much better than the Evangelines and would rather send these if I have only have yarn enough for one.

Off to start the second now.

Fetching!

2008-11-23T12:12:00.002Z

I keep calling these Fetchings because I'm making 2 and it just seems right to say "Fetchings", although the pattern is called "Fetching". Anyway.

I started knitting these yesterday - took a bit of work and practise to work out what the "cable cast on" was. It has nothing to do with cables, but I really like the way the edge looks. I had trouble bringing the yarn through, so used a trusty crochet hook to help me cast on.

The crochet hook had to come out again when I realised I'd somehow managed to drop one of my purl stitches a few rows down. Managed to successfully retrieve it and carry on knitting, so it's all good. Getting there slowly but surely. Also finally starting to recognise when stitches are on the needles the right way, and when they are twisted.

Definitely my most successful project so far in terms of how it looks. I've only finished one glove but it looks lovely.

It looks lovely, but doesn't fit me very well. As you can see from the pictures below, the gloves are both short and too tight. The tightness at the top is definitely my fault - I followed what other people had done and did 9 decreases on the row before binding off, to make the top tighter. Like a numpty I then bound off very tightly too, hence the squeezing going on at the top.

I didn't swatch for these - and just went ahead and did them on 4.0mm needles. I don't know how much of the issue here is my gauge - whether it runs small like it does when I crochet, or whether it's my having huuuuuge man sized hands. Either way, I'll definitely knit these again, but I'll use bigger needles.

I think I've got more than half the ball left so I should have enough to make a second pair on bigger needles once I'm done with these.

I'll probably give these ones to my niece - she wanted some fingerless gloves after seeing me work on my Irish Hiking Armwarmers, preferably in pink, but I think she will like these.

Such a shame these don't really fit me, as I was looking forward to wearing them :( I need them to be looser and longer.

Evangeline annoyance!

2008-11-23T11:21:00.003Z

I had initially planned to blog on Friday - the post was going to be called, "Why I Hate Commuting aka National Express are Bar Stewards". I was angry, needless to say. Let's say no more. What had no doubt added to my anger over the previous couple of days was running out of yarn for the Evangeline gloves I was making for Caroline.

Managed to get all the cabling done and then worked out that I would run out of yarn approximately 2 rounds before the end of the ribbing and without doing the thumb. So I probably need, about another 10 yards, tops. Super annoying. So I wasn't able to get these finished to give to her along with her hat on Tuesday. Thankfully she a) loves her hat, and b) has given me her address to post them to later!

I've found a lady on Ravelry who has some spare yarn which I am going to buy from her - so I should be able to get these done and also send her some Fetching gloves from the same yarn at the same time - so Caroline can pick and choose the ones she wants to wear.

I'm not desperately happy with how these have turned out... I feel like I've made loads of mistakes on them and that they don't look good. Hopefully a blocking will fix it all.

I've been working on other gloves this weekend and have an update to give shortly. But it's becoming very apparent that I either have issues with my gauge (too small), or that my hands are waaaay too huge for normal patterns. I think it's a combination of the two...

This is why I hate knitting!!!

2008-11-16T22:02:00.003Z

Grrr sod it! I have decided that this is why I might end up hating knitting.

Frogging.

In crochet, this is super easy. You frog a stitch at a time, so there's never the risk of the whole thing going irretrievably wrong. Unlike in knitting - at least for me.

Working on my second Evangeline glove today for Caroline (MUST be done by Thursday as that's when she leaves) and somehow, when I got on to the first cable row I managed to cross my cable to the front rather than the back. I blame Top Gear - I was rather engaged in the team trying to make some crappy Renault as fast as a Mitsubishi Evo 10.

In any case, I couldn't figure out how to fix it, and then frogged the whole thing. So I'm starting again.

I really need to get better with the whole "fixing my mistakes in knitting" thing. SOOOO easy in crochet. A nightmare in knitting.

Poop.

On a fingerless glove binge!

2008-11-09T13:16:00.006Z

I thought I'd probably make some more Irish Hiking gloves at some point (which I will), but I'm a bit of a thing with other fingerless gloves in general.

I've always like the look of Fetching gloves (here on Ravelry, or here for non-Ravellers) and they looked pretty easy, so when Trev took me to John Lewis on Thursday night and said I could spend a bit of cash (awww bless him) I had planned to get a sock kit. But then I saw that the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino was only £4.50 or so, and they had dpns for only £2 a pair.

So I bought some and a pair of 4.0mm dpns and a cable needle. I also bought a pair of 4.5mm dpns to make a pair of Evangeline gloves using the yarn that will be left over from Caroline's beanie. Fingers crossed I'll have enough yarn to make a pair of the wrist length gloves.

So I finished the thumb on the first glove this morning!

They are a bit tight on me but I do have massive man-sized hands. Caroline's paws are smaller than mine, so hopefully they'll fit her well. First complex cables I've done - only my second ever cabled project, and second knitting project.

I'm not desperately happy with how the thumb turned out - there are holes at the side from the way the stitches are picked up - I've managed to hide most of it by weaving the ends in the right places. I also bound the thumb off a bit tight, so it is a bit snug, but if I can get them on my huge hands, Caroline should be ok.

Just hope I have enough yarn to do the second one! I do seem to generally have issues with binding off neatly, but I'm hoping a good blocking will ease the fit problems and some of the issues.

For some reason my purl stitches to the right of the cables are ok - nice and tight despite changing needles but the ones to the left are all loose and saggy - despite me pulling the stitches tight to stop this happening. Thankfully once they're on, you don't notice it because they stretch to fit anyway.

They are a bit shorter and tighter than they should be - which is probably a gauge issue. I didn't swatch for these - which I will have to do for Fetching, to make sure I don't run out of yarn.

Love fingerless gloves :)

First knitted scarf - taking forever!

2008-11-09T13:03:00.004Z

I can't remember whether Trev said that he wanted a scarf to match his Greeny Beanie... well in any case, he did.

So, I've started knitting a 2x2 ribbing scarf for him in his 2 hat colours.

Seems to be taking ages! According to how long he says he wants it, it's about 1/3 done at the moment.

This is currently my commuting project - although it's been interrupted by a crochet project that I'm doing for a colleague who is leaving in a few weeks.

But here it is so far:

Trev really likes it, although he wishes I had more brown yarn left so that I could have done brown and green stripes, or something.

So this is using the Praline leftovers from Trev's 2 beanies, and it's using the ball and a bit of Sage, also from his beanies.

I want to hurry up and get this done, so he can use it before it starts to get super cold.

Irish Hiking Armwarmers

2008-11-09T12:46:00.005Z

So much for blogging on Monday when I said I would... double ooops.

So, without further ado, here is my first knitted project! I love cables :)

I'm fairly happy with them - my seaming was crap (I hadn't given mattress stitch a go and just seamed these using back stitch) and I made a few mistakes with binding off on one of them.

For some reason as well, the second one feels a bit tighter than the first one, but I'm sure it will stretch with wear.

I wish these had a thumb, but I didn't have any dpns to do that with at the time - although I do now, so I guess I can add that in. I think I'd also do 2x2 ribbing instead of 1x1 at the top, and maybe add some ribbing at the bottom too.

Some of the stitching doesn't look great, but hey, they're my first pair :)

Onwards and upwards!

Ooops

2008-11-03T09:18:00.004Z

It just occurred to me whilst I'm sat here at work typing, wearing my new knitted fingerless gloves/armwarmers, that I haven't blogged about said gloves! I took a ton of pics of them the other night but somehow have completely forgotten to blog about them.

Oh dear.

I will do that later - maybe at lunch if I get the chance, otherwise once I get home tonight. They've turned out ok - not 100% happy with them, but they are my first knitted project, so I can't expect them to be wonderful. The yarn isn't great either and is getting all fluffy etc after a bit of wear.

My niece wants me to make her some in pink - I need to see if I have a suitable yarn kicking around somewhere. The only yarn I do have, I think might be a bit too chunky...but I'll see what I can think of. (Plus it's a nasty acrylic and I don't know how well that will knit up on plastic needles...)

Currently working on the scarf for Trev - it's probably about 25-30% done (he wants it to be long) and this is helping to wile away some of the time on my commute. My tension is coming out a bit funky... i.e. not great, but hopefully this will improve the more I do.

Anyhow this was only meant to be a short post because I'm working (or meant to be!). Double oops...

Trev's Greeny Beanie

2008-10-24T18:09:00.005+01:00

You know how I said the other day that Trev wanted a khaki green beanie? Well I didn't think the colour they had at Liberty was what he'd like - however upon showing him pics, he changed his mind and said that colour would be ok!

So cue a little excursion to the shops on Wednesday (and I had a longer wander around the rest of the store this time... omg, what a place!) and bought some more yarn!

I went with a colleague who is leaving us in a month to go up to Leeds, get married and live happily ever after - and I want to make her a leaving gift. We've decided on a One Skein Scarf and I let her pick whatever yarn she wanted. So here's what she chose (although it looks a bit greener in reality):

And here's the yarn for Trev:

I started the beanie Wednesday night and got up to the first colour change during the 2 episodes of Heroes before stopping. On the train to work on Thursday I managed all but the last 2 rows of single crochet which I finished whilst on the bus to Oxford Street! Sorted :) Ends were woven in the bus home (which got me a few funny looks, but I don't care).

I tried this hat on and was amazed by how warm and snuggly it was! I guess with making all these things for other people I've not been using the nice stuff on myself - need to change that :)

Here's the directions I followed this time:

Worked 7 rounds of increases.
Rounds 8 & 9: 70 dc all the way round.
Round 10: added 3 increases (one at each side and one at front).
Rounds 11-13: Worked 73 dc
Round 14: Started stripes with CC.
Ended hat with 2 rounds of sc in the MC, first round in the back loops of the CC, second round just standard sc.

And ta-da! Here's the finished hat. (First pic is me modelling the hat for Trev when I got to work on Thursday):

I bought 2 balls of the green yarn, because I plan to use the remainder of the brown yarn and all the other green yarn to make Trev a matching scarf for his hat. The scarf however will be knitted - probably just simple ribbing.

Talking of knitting, I'm making good progress on my first knit project - more to be revealed soon!