St Brigid - Post 1

I've started a new sweater.

It's St Brigid by Alice Starmore.

I'm using Rowan purelife in the shade Madder, which is a light terracotta-ish orange.  It's lovely and soft, but has good cable definition, but it handles a bit like a cotton or cotton/wool mix yarn, which I found a bit weird at first.  I bought it on sale at Black Sheep Wools and paid £26.something for 16 balls, which made me happy!

Although the pattern says that the small size is designed for a 32-34" bust, the finished measurements is 42" at the underarm, so I decided to go with that one as the next size up should end up being 45" which is a bit voluminous for me.  I also did a quick swatch (yes, I know I should have made a bigger one and washed it before starting the sweater, but I'm impatient and it's designed as a bit of a Sloppy Joe type sweater, so, hey-ho!) and got tension on 3.75mm needles, which I thought would be the case as the tension's measured over double moss stitch and moss stitch always comes out a bit looser than stocking stitch.  I also decided to knit the front and back in one piece, up to the underarm.

So, I cast on.  Because of making it in the round and so that I could balance the dbl moss st, I cast on 4 sts fewer than the pattern said, which  meant 286 sts.  Two reasons for this.  Firstly because, knitting in the round, there's no need for the stitch that would be used for seaming and secondly because for the small size, that meant that the dbl moss st would be knitted over 10 stitches at each side, which means that on rounds 1 and 2, it's (k2, p2)x5, k2 and on rounds 3 and 4, it's (p2, k2)x5, p2 so that panel is symmetrical and I like that!

After I'd done the second round and done a few stitches of the third, I realised that I'd twisted the stitches when I joined them into the round, so there were a few choice words uttered.  My fault.  I'd been lazy and not gone upstairs to get a longer cable for my KnitPros, but thought I'd get away with an 80cm.  Obviously I was wrong as the stitches were a bit too bunched up to see properly.  So, I took one tip from the 80cm and put it on the 100cm, using the KnitPro purple stop thingies on the other end of the cable, then I tinked back a whole round and a few stitches onto the 100cm cable.  Now I was able to stretch the stitches out a bit more, I was able to see what I was doing, so joined them again ---- this time successfully.  I carried on with the 100cm for 3 or 4 rounds before switching back to the 80cm.  Once I started the cabling and the stitches were pulling in a bit, the 80cm was better for manoeuvering them around the cable than the 100cm (still with me?).

Anyhow, I'm happy with the yarn, especially the way it looks when cabled and I'm, erm, more or less happy with the pattern, although there are a couple of little things that are niggling me, but I'll cover those in my next post.

It's taking me about an hour to do four rounds as every other round involves cables.  I'm hoping I'll be able to speed up a bit once I'm through the first couple of repeats.  It's not a difficult pattern, but it is quite detailed and involved.  Most of the time I'm able to do the cabling/travelling stitches without a cable needle, but there are a couple of instances where I'm using a 3.25mm dpn as it's easier.  One modification I've made to the pattern is to mirror the braid cables either side of the central panel.  It's an 8-row pattern, so the braids to the right of the central panel I've started at row 1, but for those on the left of the central panel I've started them on row 5.  I've also made a spreadsheet and printed it out so that I can mark off each row of each pattern repeat as the double moss st is a 4-row repeat, the braids are an 8-row repeat and the twisty vine-type panels are a 22-row repeat (the chart is 24 rows, but the repeats are rows 3-24).

Anyway, here's a progress picture.  I've done a grand total of 16 rounds - in two days.  But, that's 4 hours of knitting, not including the casting on and the cocking-up and re-doing bit!

On my monitor the colour's actually coming out quite accurately - I was a bit worried that the yarn would look too orange.

In other news, I'm halfway through the King Cole Galaxy scarf, but will take photos once it's finished (I did about 8" while watching Angels & Demons last night).  Haven't picked up the socks I've got OTN except to move them from one bag to another and I've done about 2 rows of my Claudia scarf, so that might be something to do this evening (unless hubby gets home at a decent time and is in a chatty mood).

Before I go, I urge you to have a look at the new Brooklyn Tweed Fall11 pattern collection.  I've been drooling since I saw the look-book (at the bottom of Jared's blog post) and have The Wanties for the Bedford sweater and Tinder cardigan/jacket.  If only someone in the UK would stock and sell the BT Shelter yarn, although New Lanark aran might work nicely for Tinder, especially if I decide I want the fabric to be quite firm so it's more of a jacket than a cardigan.

Anyway, I've rattled on again (as usual) and I've a carpet that needs vaccuuming, as well as a smallish pile of ironing to get through before the girls get home from school in a couple of hours.

I'll keep you informed of how St Brigid is going and take another photo once there's a fair bit more to see!

Three Crocheted Cushions

Over the years, I've accumulated a fair amount of DK acrylic.  Some of it is whole balls and some of it is left-overs from other projects.  It was all in a bag upstairs with the rest of my yarn stash.  There was also a separate bag of Wendy Peter Pan DK which I must have bought with a project in mind, but can't properly remember now (it might have been for DD1 when she was going through her short-lived 'I want to knit and crochet as well' phase).  I used up some of the Peter Pan on the Ruffled Cushion I blogged about last month, but still had quite a bit left.  I also had a 50cm square cushion pad and a rectangular one that's 50cm x 30cm, both cover-less.

I'd also looked at the African Flower crochet motif several times and admired the way other Ravelry users had made it up into bags, throws, blankets and cushions and decided that I'd make some African flowers into a cushion cover for the square pad.  However, it didn't work out that way.  As it grew, I decided that I'd prefer to make it into a rounded hexagon shape.  I made 20 flowery  hexagons in total - 19 for the front and 1 for the back.  The 19 were sewn together and then I went about the business of filling in the gaps.  This turned out to be a bit tricky and after several aborted attempts, I used short-rows to fill in the shallow triangles between each hexagon.  This is the front:

For the back, I used the 20th hexagon and then crocheted rings around it.  Mostly treble crochet (UK) with with the odd round of doubles as well.  I just kept going until it was the same size as the front and then crocheted the two pieces together using double crochet.  

Although this was a stash-buster, I ended up spending nearly £20 on a 24" circular cushion pad!

After that, I still had bag of yarn left and still had two cover-less cushion pads.

Via the Tangled Happy blog, I'd seen a pretty baby blanket on the Tarekices blog and decided to use the pattern, but working it in rounds using up various colours.  I used lighter-coloured shades on the treble-cluster rounds and darker/brighter-coloured shades for the dc rounds.  I crocheted a chain that was slightly less in length than the width of the cushion pad and worked the first round by making the clusters first in the top loop of the chain then turning the work and doing the second half of the round along the bottom edge of the chain.

I'm rather pleased with it:

and here's a closer-up pic of the stitch pattern:

After that, I still had a bag of acrylic yarn, so I made a simple, striped treble-crochet cover for the rectangular pad.  As with the square cushion, I made a chain slightly less than the width of the pad, then crocheted across the top and bottom of the chain and carried on from there so it was like a bag.  Once it was big enough, I put it the cushion pad and slip stitched the top edge closed.

So, there we have it.  Three cushion covers made over the last couple of months:

And I've still got half a bag of acrylic to use up! 

I might use it to make BSJs with wide stripes.

I need to finish off the baby cardigan I've got on the needles as well.  This is a Feb Baby top-down cardigan, but will be short or three-quarter sleeved due to yarn constraints. 

A long-overdue update

I admit that crocheting takes me longer than knitting does.

Which does make me wonder why I decided to crochet a scarf using laceweight yarn and a 2.5mm hook, but I did (mainly because I didn't know what else to do with the yarn - I'd tried knitting a Kadril Estonian lace-type scarf, but it wasn't really 'me' so I frogged it).

I'd completed 57 rows and was thinking how well it was all going, so thought I'd weigh the ball of yarn so I could get an idea of how long the scarf would be if I used it all up.  I know that I started off with 50g (which is 500m according to Ravelry).

Those 57 rows?  They'd used 10g of yarn.  Yes, only 10g.

Still, the yarn's 100% cashmere and the scarf is beautifully soft and the pattern was easily memorised, so I guess I've just got to plod on with it and hope that it's not spring by the time I finish it!

Here's a closer-up pic taken with the flash on so you can (hopefully) see the stitch pattern better.  The pattern's the Claudia Scarf by Rebecca Jackson and is a cluster of 5 trebles then treble-chain-treble between each cluster.  It's going to need blocking when I've finished.

In other news, I started another scarf yesterday.  It's for DD1, who is 11 and has just started High School, so her other scarves, which are generally of the pink/bright colours variety just aren't going to cut the mustard now that she's practically a grown-up!  I spotted the yarn in my LYS.  It's King Cole's Galaxy yarn, which is 65% Acrylic, 31% Wool  and 4% Soft Payette.  I'm not entirely sure what Soft Payette is, but I think it's the thin sequinned thread that runs through the yarn.  Yes, that's right - sequins.  Little irridescent shiny ones, every 20 or so centimetres. Link to King Cole - http://www.kingcole.co.uk/knitting-yarns/dk/galaxy-dk.html - I'm using the Neptune shade. 

My camera and laptop appear to have had a(nother) falling out, so I shall show you some photos and give more details in a few days, once I've knitted a bit more than the few inches I'd done so far and to give some more stats on the scarf.  It took me ages just to get the two photos above uploaded.  One day I shall treat myself to a new camera - but not this month as I got the bill for DD1's music lessons this morning and now that DD1 is in High School, I think we're going to have to buy a new printer (the old one can just about manage to print text, as long as we don't mind it being rather fuzzy).

I can find time for my blog and to actually knit a whole row without risk of interruptions now that the school holiday are over and hubby (who very kindly decided to take a few days off work starting the day after the girls went back to school) is back in his office, at least for the next week and a bit.  Phew!  The last seven weeks seem to have gone by very slowly.  Not that I don't enjoy their company, but it was lovely this morning to be able to have a bath without someone coming in to talk to me!

I've also got a couple of other FOs to show and tell, but those will have to wait too as there's something I want to finish off so I photograph them all together.

Do you ever have one of THOSE weeks?

I'm sure you do.

This week has been one of THOSE WEEKS for me.

It all started off well.  Sunday night we went for a family meal (15 of us!) to celebrate my Dad's 80th birthday.  The restaurant had said that no problem, they'd be able to cook something gluten and dairy free for DD2 so I didn't need to take anything food-wise with me for her.  We chose food for her and it arrived, but it wasn't until she was halfway through her starter of chicken and salad leaves (an adaptation of a Caesar salad!) that I realised the leaves had dressing on them and that the chicken was coated with something.  This has meant a very up and down few days and nights with her, with more pronounced autistic characteristics than usual and very disrupted sleeping patterns for her, which means I'm sleep-deprived as well.

The knock-effect is that I've been making some really stupid mistakes in my knitting and crocheting, so don't have anything to show this week.

I started an African Flower motif cushion a couple of weeks ago.  The flowers themselves have turned out really well and I'm so pleased with them.  The motif is hexagonal and my plan was to sew them together to make a big hexagon and buy a circular cushion pad.  However, once I'd sewn them together, I realised the other day that I'll have to come up with a wide but not very high triangle to fill in the gaps and I can't work that out at the moment.  I've tried three times so far and all that's happened is I've got frustrated and irritable and have shouted at the dog.  So, I'm leaving that for a bit and am working on the back side of the cushion cover, which I decided would be one flower motif in the centre and then just plain stripes all round that central hexagon until it's big enough.  Maybe by the time I've done that bit I'll have worked out how to fill in the front gaps (I might post a request on Ravelry for that one).

To cheer myself up, I decided to cast on some socks using one of the two skeins of Malabrigo sock yarn I bought a while back.  I chose the skein of Lettuce and the Go With The Flow socks which were in my queue.  I decided to convert the pattern to toe-up - something I've done with other patterns.  Halfway up one 15-row repeat, I had a look and thought to myself "that doesn't look right".  'That' was about ten rounds further down, so I checked and it was wrong, so I ripped back.  Not too bad, except the pattern's a zigzag rib and I hate ripping back ribbing because the purl stitches try to escape.  Off I went again and got up to the gusset, which was no problem, then the heel turn - again, that went without a hitch.  Then came the heel flap (with toe-up gusset+heel flap socks, the gusset stitches are incorporated into the heel flap by ssk and p2togs as the flap is worked up).  In the pattern, the cuff and sock leg are worked, then the heel flap, which is half-linen stitch, except that after the heel flap's been knitted, the whole sock's turned inside out, which makes for a pretty heel flap.  "Oh, I can do that in reverse" thought I and, indeed I could.  Instead of knits, I did purls and instead of sl1wyif I did sl1wyib.  Only, once I'd finished the heel flap, I didn't like the way that there were ladders between the p2togs and the first stitch of the linen stitch bit.  By this time, I'd done a couple of rounds of the leg as well.  That was yesterday, late evening, so I decided to sleep on it.  This morning I took one look and then it was rip, rip, rip, all the way back to the end of the gusset.  I've now re-done the heel - with Eye of Partridge stitch and it looks much neater.

I also got caught up in the Beekeeper's Quilt excitement and as I've got a lot of sock yarn leftovers, bought the pattern and started making little hexapuffs.  Seven puffs down, I thought about joining them together.  Tie them at the corners as in the pattern?  Hmm  - not sure about that.  Seam them with whip stitch?  A bit too bulky.  I finally came up with something that's more or less mattress stitch, but that leaves the cast on and cast off edges.  Long-tail cast on means there are bumps at the bottom and a 3-needle cast off means there's a ridge at the top (never mind the little 'ears' caused by loose stitches at the ends).  I might have to resort to Kitchener Stitch ---- or I might just mark this one down to experience, tell myself I should think before I get caught up in the latest viral knitting pattern hoo-ha because, quite honestly, even if I did finish a puffy quilt, I have absolutely no idea what I'd do with it.  I've already got a mitred square sock yarn blanket on the go and there are some very pretty crochet patterns for sock yarn leftovers that I've been browsing through as well.

To cap it all, today the dishwasher died.  It had been struggling to clean the dishes, even though I've only had it 3.5 years or so (it does get used quite a lot; at least 12 loads a week) and had been leaving gritty bits on glasses and bowls, despite being topped up with dishwasher salt and rinse aid, the filters cleaned out, a Finish dishwasher cleaner run through it and Mr Muscle put down the kitchen sink and left overnight.  Today, I noticed there was water coming out of the bottom and when I pulled it out to have a look, I spotted a tear/hole in the water-out hose.  I put it on a pre-wash to see how bad it was, but I must have caused more damage than was there previously when I pulled it out from under the worktop as it suddenly stopped working and all the electrics tripped (which meant the Wii went off, which meant DD2 had a hissy fit).  Out came a screwdriver and I took the bottom of the dishwasher off and water had got inside.  It's now been disconnected and I've paid a ridiculous amount of money (£35) to have a new dishwasher delivered tomorrow.  Just what I needed when I've still got DD1's train and bus ticket for school to pay for, plus her music tuition fees for the autumn term.

As I said - it's been One of Those Weeks.

Hopefully next week will be better and I'll be able to show you some knitting and crochet goodies!

More Hooking than Knitting

I seem to have more crochet WIPs than knitting ones at the moment, which is unusual.

This morning, I had 3 crochet WIPs (Granny Stripe Blanket, Claudia Scarf and Ruffled Flower Cushion) and 1 knitting WIP (a Feb Baby cardigan but without the lace pattern).

This evening, I have 2 crochet WIPs and 1 knitting WIP, which means that one of my crochet WIPs has been promoted to an FO!

Here it is:

The front:

The back:

Then DD2 wanted to get in on the act (she always appears when I get my camera out) but Jess our not-yet-two-year-old labrador decided she wanted to get on the sofa with DD2 (you can just see the dog on the right of the photo):

and all was a bit bedlam-ish for a while as DD1 (for whom I made the cushion) was worried that between them DD2 and the dog would spoil her new cushion.


(Relative) calm was restored so DD1 asked if I'd take a photo of her with her new cushion:

And then the cushion was taken upstairs to her bedroom, out of harm's way.

Cushion details:
Yarn - Wendy Peter Pan DK (various colours - I used 156g in total)
Hook - 4mm metal one
Pattern - via the Attic24 blog
Size - 40cm diameter as I already had a circular cushion pad that size
Modifications - none except that I added a button to each side to cover the centre hole

A New Iron

On Saturday when hubby came back from wherever it was he'd been, Jess (our labrador: not yet 2 and still rather bouncy) got Very Excited that he was back.  So excited in fact that she jumped up and put her front paws on the kitchen worktop so that she could bring him a tea towel as a present (it's usually tea towels, dishcloths or socks that she brings him).  Unfortunately, she managed to knock the iron off the side (where it had been left to cool down).  The iron broke - and it was a pretty pink Morphy Richards one - so I spent the next few minutes picking up bits of pink and white iron from the floor.  There were also some words spoken along the lines of 'bloody dog'; I'm sure you get my drift.

So, on Sunday morning hubby went off to Argos to pick up a new iron.  I'd already looked online, chosen the iron I wanted (a Breville retailing at £29.99), reserved one and had the reservation code sent through to hubby's mobile phone.  All seemed well.

Except.... when he got home, he hadn't bought that iron at all.  He'd forgotten to take his phone with him and hadn't thought to ask one of the sales assistants to help him get it.  So, he'd looked at the irons in the catalogue and bought a different Breville one.  An iron that cost £59.99, so £30 more than originally planned and he could have given me that £30 so I could stalk the Wollmeise website in the hope of an update (if I could be bothered, which is not likely, it has to be said).

This is the one he bought:

It's digital.  It says it has "easy use digital interface" but I'm suspicious of things that say they are "easy use".  Buttons have to pressed to set the temperature I want.  It's black and grey and from the look of the picture, lights up blue when it's switched on.  At the time my nice, basic, pink Morphy Richards iron got broken, I had one load of laundry in the washing machine and one in the tumble dryer.  Three days later, I still haven't ironed those two laundry loads.  I haven't even plugged in the new iron.
 
Truth be told?  I'm a bit scared of it. And also a bit disappointed that an iron that cost £59.99 needs human input to make clothes crease-free!  As it's obviously a bit of a posh iron, what if it takes offence at a. the ironing board which has a cover that's seen better days and b. the fact that most of the clothes it will be required to make crease-free are of the t-shirt variety and that the one item it's been used on so far (a John Lewis double-cuffed shirt*) is not the norm around here?

I might have to cast on for a new pair of socks to get up the courage to plug it in and work out what buttons to press.  I wound the Malabrigo sock yarn for them a couple of nights ago.

*I rarely iron hubby's shirts since the time he told me that I didn't do them that well and certainly not the way he'd been taught in the military and I told him if that was so, he could do the bloody things himself.

Pretty Pale Pink

When I go to my knitting group on a Friday morning in the nearby village of Dedham, I sometimes pop into the chemist/gift shop (I think the post office is in there as well) just along the street from the pub where the ladies and I meet up.  On the surface, that seems a reasonable thing to do, except that as well as the pharmacy and gift section, they sell a small amount of yarn.  King Cole acrylic yarn.  Three or four shelves of it in fact.  And I often come home with a ball or two in my bag - just because it's there.  This happened a couple of months ago and I came home with two balls of pale pink King Cole Comfort DK (quite a nice, soft acrylic). 

As my girls are nearly 9 and 11-and-a-half, two x 100g balls of yarn aren't enough to make anything for either of them, so this yarn was destined to be a baby cardigan or two for the box of knits for Romania that I contribute to (I can indulge in my love of knitting baby things and then they go off to where they're appreciated, so it's a win-win situation really).

First off, I cast on for Elizabeth Zimmermann's 'February' Baby Cardigan, from the Knitter's Almanac, which I borrowed from the library (although I think the whole book's available to read on Google Books).  It didn't take long.  I modified it by doing the body before the sleeves, then picking up stitches at the underarm and knitting the sleeves magic-loop style in the round.

The sweater took 88g of yarn (I weighed it).  The buttons I bought from The Range.  Not in their haberdashery department, but in the craft dept.  They sell them as craft buttons (they were on a circular stand) and cost £1 for a pack of quite a lot of buttons.  This pack was red and pale pink buttons, but they also do light and dark blue and then green and grey.

On my Ravelry queue, the first project is a pair of socks, but I've already got a pair on the needles (and if I don't finish those before I cast on another pair, they'll never get done).  Second on the list was the Pimpelliese scarf.  It's very similar to the Baktus scarf, but has a lace edging which is knitted as you go.  I read some of the comments about it on Ravelry and some of them seemed to suggest that this was a bit complicated in parts.  So, I read the pattern to see if I could visualise it in my head.  I couldn't.  So, I thought I'd cast on with the remains of the Comfort DK from the Feb Baby just to see how the pattern worked.  The next thing I knew, I'd done 5 pattern repeats.  As I had another 100g ball of the same yarn, I decided that I might as well carry on and see how far I got.  A week later and 19 repeats on each side of the scarf, I cast off!  This will also go in the Romania box and hopefully it will keep a teenage girl's neck warm this winter.  As I said to someone after she commented that something was too nice to be given to charity, "it may be for charity, but it doesn't mean it can't be stylish".

I'll definitely make this again, in the yarn I'd originally intended for it - Fyberspates Sparkle Sock.  That one will be for me because, well, you know, you can never have too many scarves - can you?

This afternoon I shall be casting on the second of my pair of socks in Wendy Happy yarn as I finished the first one this morning, in between ironing piles.  If I ever mention that I'm considering buying this (mis-named) yarn again, please shout at me online or track me down and hit me with a wet fish.  I like the colours, but the yarn is splitty, slippery and has very little stretch.