Category: Knitting

Holes

A few days ago I discovered what happens if you move twice in the course of a few months, shove things (including worn but not washed woollens) randomly into bags and then leave the bags untouched for nearly a year.  There may be consequences.  And the consequences are m-m-m.ths. See exhibit a:

moths

Now this is a lovely cardigan I knitted for my son using Twilley’s Freedom Spirit wool and EZ’s Tomten design.  The wool has pilled a bit, but otherwise it’s a nicely shaped cardigan.  I would like my daughter to use it.  Firstly though I needed to repair the holes (I seem to be blogging a lot about repairing holes!)

Fortunately I happened to keep the wool I didn’t use.  All two meters of it.  See exhibit b:

totherescue

So, I pulled together my best grafting technique and grafted the holes shut.  Now they are not perfect, but I think on the back of a child’s jumper it won’t be too noticeable (exhibit c):

repaired

Sadly this is clearly a boys cardigan.  With long dark blue cuffs and long welt at the bottom of the cardi (as he had grown so much in the time I was knitting it).  At the moment this would drown my daughter (exhibit d):

current

So, I’m going to remove all the dark blue and add cuffs and trim in a more girly colour.  I found yellow in my stash (exhibit e):

yellow

Saint Swithin’s Day

Today we went shopping in a field.

boots-2

Nevermind!  We still had fun at Fibre-East.

It was lovely seeing my friends’ stalls in particular Secret Spinner and FibreTastic at Spindependance and CamiKnitter at Outward Images.

There was sheep shearing (AKA child entertainment).

My daughter’s knitted dress was admired.  I was asked for the pattern and got the details wrong! I said it was “Crazy Waves”. It’s actually the “Crazy Wavy Toddler Dress” from “Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders”.  Here’s my daughter wearing it about a year ago:

crazy-waves-dress-2

I didn’t quite follow the instructions when making it – I decided I didn’t fancy picking up 128 stitches on one side of the waistband and 160 odd on the other! Therefore started by casting on 128 stitches and working 1 row 1×1 rib and 1 row knit for a few rows to give the waist band.

I bought a weaving book that I thought was out of print (I always manage to find a gem on the P&M woolcraft stand!) and a beautiful rim weighted IST spindle (it spins forever!)  My son was shown how to ply on a beautiful Turkish spindle.  However, he was bought a peg loom and as it’s only a week until the school holidays… I can see peg loom bags and scarfs being this year’s summer holiday projects!

As for St Swithin’s Day?  Well I’m pretty sure it’s rained for the last 40 days (at least).  It’s now gone 11pm and so far I don’t think we’ve had a drop…

Knitting my own yarn

It’s taken a while.  It’s over a year since I carefully photographed the yarn in a greenhouse at the local botanic gardens.  But I’m finally knitting the yarn into something.  It’s great fun watching the colours change and seeing how they look in the pattern.

What am I knitting?  Something of my own devising that I will share when it’s finished!  This means you will have to be very patient as I’m a slow knitter (and spinner).  And though I frogged the first attempt, I think I’m going to see version 2.0 all the way to completion.

Finishing Things

I currently have a quite large selection of unfinished projects (the ones I can recall are):

  • a woven shawl with overshot pattern.
  • a pair of brightly coloured socks – I’m knitting these simultaneously but they are still stalled half way through the feet.
  • a green jumper for my husband to my own design.
  • a pi are square shawl in very chunky yarn.

I realised, as I worked towards the finishing line on my daughter’s knitted dress, that I often stop working on projects when they are very close to completion.  The woven shawl, for example, is stopped half way through the second band of patterning (there is a wide band at each end of the shawl).  I probably only have another 6 inches to work and it’ll be off the loom.  So why have I stopped?

I realised that somewhere near the end of a project, I start to doubt that it’ll be as good as I imagined it at the start.  So, instead of facing disappointment, I simply stop working on that project and move onto the next one.  This is daft, because when I do finish things I’m usually delighted at the result.  If I’m not delighted then the item can usually be modified or embellished or given away (if it’s a poor fit for the original intended recipient).

Anyway, I was motivated to finish my daughter’s dress because:

  1. If I didn’t finish it quickly it would be too small.
  2. It’s a one ball project – so I wanted to use up as much of the yarn as possible.
  3. I wanted to see what the wavy pattern would look like once it had been blocked.

cropped_toocropped