In-the-pink and pastures new (but never leaving pastures old, obviously)
Remember
this?
It was neglected (again) for several months what with Christmas, and then moving (twice), and then a lovely lengthy holiday, but it called to me a couple of weeks ago and after some intensive ribbing knitting I reached an exciting moment last weekend. Look at it now!
I'm essentially guessing the whole bottom-up-seamless-set-in-sleeves process (I haven't found instructions anywhere else), but it seems to be working just fine so far. I did the maths first, months ago, about when to do decreases, and I tried this on last night to check the fit now that the arms have been joined to the body and it fits
perfectly (I'd show you, but it involved so much wrangling with extra circs and trying not to stab myself in the eye that I failed to capture the moment on camera). All I have to do is get the neckline to work the way it looks in my imagination, and I'm hoping to have a self-designed jumper that I actually want to wear. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
In other news, I am almost embarrassed to show you the other things I've been working on recently. Because doing so will highlight a woeful gap in my knowledge and experience to date.
But what the heck.
Yes, it's (yikes) crochet. It is my first crocheted swatch! Aww.
I should 'fess up and say that, crochet and me, we've always kept each other at a wary distance. The only crochet I've done, prior to last weekend, is rows of chain stitches for provisional cast-ons, and you know what? I've always hated doing that.
Turns
out, I was holding the yarn wrong and the hook wrong, and actually when I do it properly crocheting is kind of a delight. Given that Debbie Stoller held my hand through the re-learning to knit process a few years ago, I thought I'd see how she got on with teaching me a whole new skill, and thus far her
Stitch'n'Bitch crochet equivalent has been pretty ace (though sadly none of the patterns take my fancy much, but the instructions and stitch patterns are tip-top). Hooray! I no longer have to skip past the cool crochet patterns on Ravelry and in my knitting library. Ooh, what project shall I crochet first?
That said, I foresee a number of extra coasters in our flat's future until I'm happy with my technique.
Labels: crochet, in-the-pink
Noah -- December 2007 - January 2008
What's better than one baby elephant?
This is Noah (slightly arbitrarily named, but I didn't want to have two Elijahs). Neither photo shows the colour properly but he's kind of mint-green, and could probably have been so all over but I was wary of running out of yarn so used some scraps left over from elephant #1 and gave him blue feet. I think it works, don't you?
Elijah was transported to Essex and given to his new owner at the weekend, and Noah was put in the post today and despatched to Vietnam where a friend of mine has some contacts in an orphanage and a children's hospice. I quite like the fact that they've gone to such wholly different countries, but that the children on both sides still like toys to cuddle at night. I hope that this little guy brings a little cheer to someone who deserves it.
Details: As
before,
Elijah by
Ysolda, knitted in RYC Cashsoft Baby DK on 3mm bamboo double-pointed needles.
Labels: elijah, FO, FO 2008, noah, toys
Elijah -- December 2007
So the
bag's not my fourth finished item of 2007 (it is meandering along, about halfway there I reckon), but I have something else to show you instead.
Last year my Christmas project (Christmas being the only time of year, really, where I have several days for uninterrupted knitting -- I do love coming home to the family fold at this time of year!) was a pair of
raspberry cabled socks, and the year before it was
rainbow ones (my first pair, no less). But this year, I made this little fellow.
I LOVE HIM. Unfortunately, much as I want to, I can't keep him because he's not for me -- he is a Christmas present for my goddaughter (she of the
alphabet blanket -- in lovely serendipity I had just enough of that same yarn left over to make Elijah, and I have been keeping it ever since the blanket until I found an appropriate way of using it up, hurrah!).
The pattern is just brilliant (Ysolda, if you see this, you are a wonder!) and making him has been so tremendously satisfying. Each section is completed as you go, so he literally grows under your fingertips and once done, no finishing! My whole family has enjoyed watching him take shape: head, body, a leg here, an arm there. The ears were the most fun but the whole thing was lovely to make. There is a good chance that I will make another one.
Until I have to give him up, though, I'm going to have fun with him while I can.
Elijah the engineer
Elijah the friend-maker
Elijah the warmDetails: Elijah by
Ysolda, knitted in RYC Cashsoft Baby DK on 3mm bamboo double-pointed needles.
Labels: elijah, FO, FO 2007, goddaughter, toys
Percy.... is a rubbish name for a bag
Ah, sorry little blog. I have been neglecting you for ravelry, haven't I? Still, them's the breaks, *is unrepentant*.
Anyway,
here's a project that ravelry knows I'm doing but you don't.
It's weird that I haven't knitted a bag before. But then, it's weird that I only have
three finished items for 2007,
and that they're only two pairs of gloves and a scarf. That is pretty shit, isn't it? Tsk. Let's see if I can make it four this year, anyway. (Three things?
Three? What have I been doing this year?
The first year I started knitting properly I managed four jumpers, a scarf and a pair of socks. Sheesh, no wonder I never post in this thing.)
So anyway. It's alright, this bag. I've spent the last few nights working the endless strap (60 inches of double knitted-on i-cord and k1p1 rib... sorry, dulled myself to sleep for a moment there) but I'm done with that and have hit the pocket this weekend. And I went to John Lewis on Friday and treated myself to that beautiful, vibrant silk lining, which makes me glow every time I look at it. I'm in love with the colours I've chosen for this bag, really.
Plus the
yarn? £1 a skein. Less than that, even. If I were in the US and didn't have to pay £8 for postage, the yarn for this bag would have cost me a fiver. In your face, Rowan.
Labels: bag, percy, yarn
In-the-pink back on track
Check it out! OK, it's been
two three months since my last post, but look! That, baby, is a knitted on
body hem. Not just a cuff hem, ohhh no.
Now, I started the body back in June. It's 202 stitches around, and I really wasn't feeling the love as I inched, painfully, through the hem. I picked it up, I put it down. I knitted a row. I put it in the cupboard. I felt the guilt and knitted two rows. Etc. But once I'd turned the hem and knitted past it a few weeks ago I was suddenly feeling it all brilliantly again. Plus it's autumn, and knitting in autumn is just so utterly lovely, isn't it? Cosying up on the sofa with the radio or the TV while contently knitting onwards is a recipe for happiness (especially when you're sharing the moment with someone especially lovely).
But I know what you're thinking: 'Sure, she's got past the hem, but what does it all
mean?' Right?
Here you go. Still, granted, a fair way to go. But I am making progress! I'm still deciding on what I'll do with the neckline, but I think I have some grace time before that decision becomes critical.
Labels: in-the-pink, wip
Hooray For Me gloves -- July 2007
Must, must, must get my FO posts up a little closer to the time I actually, y'know, finish something.
Anyway, these lovelies did the trick perfectly for cheering me up and being nice and neat and swift. I made some little modifications to the pattern (specific left and right gloves, rather than having them identical, was the main one) but basically stuck to it. Of course the pattern is
designed for self-patterning sock-yarn, which this Koigu, hilariously patterned though it is, is not. But that's fine. I'll make some more one day -- frankly, I can never have too many fingerless gloves in my life. (Yes, it's summer, but only barely.)
Details: Hooray For Me gloves, knitted in Koigu KPPPM on 2.5mm double-pointed bamboo needles.
Ooh, you know what? These gloves managed to squeeze themselves out of just the one skein of Koigu. Which means I have a spare skein in this colourway left (my lovely SP9 sent me two skeins of this over Christmas). Would anybody like it? Preferably to swap with a random skein of something else nice, but if you think you can win me over by describing exactly what awesome thing you'd make with it, feel free (and if you live in the UK, I might not even charge you postage). Much as I love the colours in this, I can't see myself making a second pair of fingerless gloves with it, and it'll only stretch to one sock. So, takers?
Labels: FO, FO 2007, gloves, HFM gloves, yarn
A little light refreshment
I'm a little overwhelmed by mystery knitting projects at the moment, so felt the urge to pounce on something small and swift. Voila, half of one pair of Hooray For Me gloves knitted in silly rainbow Koigu. Started last week and done in snatched moments between outings. Second one's on the needles.
Labels: HFM gloves
Just a little more clarification
Wow, I'm in love with Ravelry. It has me hooked already. I've just photographed and categorised my whole stash. I'm such a loser. But it's addictive! I feel tremendously organised now.
Anyway.
Kate said she got a little lost halfway through my last (proper) post (which, I grant, was just a big mess of bullet points), so maybe this picture will help. Or not.
Here's the step immediately after the middle picture from the last post -- undoing the provisional cast-on (carefully!), picking up the stitches left from that cast-on on another needle, and then knitting (or purling, because it's ribbing) those stitches from the other needle along with the working stitches on the main needle. In this picture I have already done the stitches from the first of the three working needles, and am just starting on the stitches from the second needle.
Clearer? Hope so. Ignore my scribbles in the background.
Work progressing enormously slowly, but when I pick it up I fall in love with it again. Must pick it up more often. So, both sleeves completed up to the arm-shaping, and body... Well. Body is not past the hem yet. But it's getting there.
Labels: in-the-pink, ravelry
Ravelry!
I have posts of actual content and everything, honest, but in the meantime: I
am on Ravelry! I know I'm years behind all the cool kids. But if you're there, come and find me? I am just tentatively stepping around at the moment.
Labels: ravelry
little glance, big ramble
Here's a sneak-peek of something new. Could it be... a ribbed sleeve with
ribbed facing at the cuff? (is it, though? you can't actually see the facing, can you?)
The photo doesn't really do it justice, but I'm enjoying this one a lot. The hem/facing thing is tremendously satisfying, as is the knitting in the round and adapting bits of one pattern and ideas from elsewhere to fit with a whole new yarn with a whole new gauge and behaviour. But let's start with the little things first -- how glorious is it to have knitted a sleeve right up to the armshaping with no seaming to be done and
no ends to be woven in? Well OK, there was the end from the very beginning of the first round, but I wove that sucker in before I knitted in the hem, and god it's so beautifully neat.
I'm not starting from the beginning, am I? Right. For those of you who haven't come across Ysolda's blog, she's
well worth a look. A while back I was very impressed by a project where she'd incorporated a knitted hem with a different colour for the facing. Around the same time, while diligently following the pattern for my own Ribby Cardi (still, sadly, languishing in my knitting basket and awaiting the re-knitting of the two front pieces and then finishing, collar-knitting, and zip-inserting...) several thoughts started nagging at me. Wouldn't it be good to knit the sleeves in the round? What about knitting a version in some kind of gorgeous cotton blend? How about making it into a jumper rather than a cardigan, and knitting the body in the round too? Never really been satisfied with the standard cast-on I've always used when it comes to ribbing (unless it's k1p1 ribbing, obviously, where the tubular cast-on is king) -- wouldn't it be ace if I had a knitted ribbed hem, which would look neat and stretch as much as all the rest of the ribbed material?
Wouldn't it, though?
So. Ysolda demonstrates a
beautiful knitted hem with a gloriously vibrant hidden facing. I thought long and hard about how I could do the same with ribbing, but ultimately there's no getting around the fact that different colours will bleed together if any variety of purl stitches are involved. No concern -- let's make this project all in one colour.
Now, if one were inclined, one can do all sorts. So here's what I did.
- First step -- knitting maths to see how my yarn (Cotton Fleece), with its gauge of 5.5 stitches per inch when using 3.75 needles, can be used to follow a pattern inspired by good ole faithful Ribby (requiring a gauge of 4.75 stitches for inch). Maths, my old bete noire, appears to have been defeated this time around. Ha, take that, sums! I win. But I digress.
- Provisional cast-on with one more stitch that I needed for the cuff of my sleeve. I wanted the sleeve to be 48 stitches around at the cuff, so I provisionally cast-on 49 stitches. Knit one row on a needle a size or two smaller than your main one (my main needle size is 3.75, so I'm using 3mm for these inside hems).
- That extra stitch is worked away after the first round -- the last stitch is knitted together with the first stitch of the first round. This makes the edge of my circular knitting nice and neat, and it helps everything look even more fabulously neat later on (see four points below).
- Work the stitches in k2p2 rib, but the reverse of the way the stitches will go on the actual cuff (we're working the inside of the cuff here, remember). I did 13 rows of k2p2 rib on 3mm needles. With the first round of knitting I'd done this makes 14 rows. Then a purl row (this'll be the turning row), still on the 3mm needles.
- Switch to the larger needles, and work the k2p2 rib the correct way for the outside of the cuff. (Is this making sense? In essence, for the inside I did p1, *k2p2 to last three stitches, then k2p1. For the outside it was k1, *p2k2 to last three stitches, p2k1. 'K?)
- Work 12 rows of ribbing in total on the larger needles. At this point, weave away the end of your yarn from when you first cast-on. You're not going to have the opportunity to do this ever again, very shortly, and I like to be neat even if I can't see the neatness, so weave weave weave.
I could leave it like this... but I won't.- Then comes the fun bit. We're going to remove the extra yarn from the provisional cast-on, transfer the exposed stitches onto additional needles, and then knit (or purl) the working stitches along with the provisional ones. Fiddly? Yes. Worth it? Hell yeah. This is another point where that extra cast-on stitch comes in handy. When you unravel the provisional cast-on, you get one less stitch that you originally cast-on. But how convenient would it be if you'd originally cast-on one more extra stitch than you were ultimately going to need? Ah ha ha!
- Once you've achieved the fiddly bit, the hard work is done and you can just keep on knitting up that sleeve. The attractive, stretchy, and fabulously neat hem you've just created will keep on smiling at you all the way.
The keenly observant among you will have realised that the ribbing can't match up exactly on the inside. There's no way to avoid this -- the stitches picked up from the provisional cast-on are all half-a-stitch out of synch from the main ones (you're really picking up the stitches
in between the ones you originally created). If you're knitting in stocking stitch it doesn't really matter because you can't tell, but it's quite obvious in ribbing. However this doesn't faze me -- I still think it looks brilliant, and the off-centre nature of the ribbing just illustrates the fact that this is the inside of the cuff.
Planned future episodes: set-in sleeve vs raglan; adventures in seamless set-in sleeves for the foolhardy; choosing the right collar type (zip, no zip, hood...?); will I run out of yarn; do I really like pink..?
Labels: in-the-pink, technique
Gypsy drop-stitch scarf -- March 2007
Ooh, this won't do, that photo of the Ribby disaster that's been at the top of the blog for a couple of weeks is particularly ugly, isn't it? Let's brighten things up a bit.
Ribbon knitting in all its glory (yarn a Christmas present from
ravicurio last year). I wasn't sure what to do with my skein of ribbon yarn, even if it was 158 yards long and bursting with muted pretty colours. A scarf was basically it, not least because this stitch pattern (4 rows garter stitch, row of double yarn-overs, one row of garter stitch and drop those y-os like hot potatoes) was just the kind of super-easy baby step that I needed to tentatively try out knitting with ribbon yarn. Verdict? Well, knitting with ribbon is, frankly,
weird, and if twisted yarn makes you mad you should never ever get close to ribbon yarn, but I like the 'fabric' it makes and it knitted up nice and fast. Plus, the weather's just about right for a pretty little decorative scarf like this.
Details: Gypsy drop-stitch scarf, knitted in Colinette Giotto (rayon/cotton mix) on -- shock, horror, I can't remember the needle size. This is why I must be a better blogger, people, see?! If I hadn't left it a month before writing up a post I might stand a chance of not looking like an idiot. I think it was 5mm, maybe.. but it's a scarf, it doesn't matter overmuch.
Labels: FO, FO 2007, gypsy drop-stitch scarf, ribbon yarn, scarf
Ribby woe
Hey, check it out, I can plug my camera into my boyfriend's laptop and it treats it just like any other flashdrive --
ravicurio, you were dead right.
Shame, then, that the first picture in five weeks I have to show you is one of moderate disaster. What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of one of those evil knitting laws that nobody tells you about, one which
Ms Bias has also recently had the
misfortune to experience, one which has the power to make you throw down your needles in disgust. The one which says: leave three months between the knitting of one piece of jumper and another, and your gauge goes way, way off.
That's the back on the right, and one of the front pieces underneath it to the left. They should be exactly the same height. They are, as you can see, demonstrably not. I could block the life out of the back, I suppose, but as doing so would bring the botton of the cardi somewhere several inches below my crotch, I'd rather not. I haven't just done one of the front pieces of course, I've done two identically wrong ones. I only spotted the
tiny glitch when I pinned out the pieces for blocking earlier this evening.
So ripping it is. Both the front pieces pulled apart, and then.. knit tightly? Knit on needles one size down, I guess. Bah.
(I was idly browsing old blog posts this afternoon and found
this one, where I innocently mention the joys of knitting a chunky jumper on largish needles, and what a pleasantly fast experience it is. That was only
five months ago.)
I hope this doesn't kill my knitting mojo right dead again. I think it might be time to put Ribby to one side once more and concentrate on something else, except that the something else I've been plotting the last few days is, irony of ironies,
another Ribby. Ahhh, hear my hollow laughter.
Labels: ribby cardi
