These seeds are cursed!

So I thought it was about time that I gave an update about my Seeds of Change jumper. I’ve finally got a sleeve written and knitted up after much procrastination and one failed attempt. Here it is!

Ok, it’s not a terribly exciting picture (and it’s a bit blurry) but considering how long it’s been in the making, I think it merits a bit of a showing off. Look it’s even got a bit of a bell curve!

My initial attempt looked a bit trapezoidal, so I frogged it and went back to my notes from Knitty. They didn’t seem to be helping much, until I realised I needed the 3rd article from the series! Check it out here.

And incidentally, if you ever thought to yourself when you were in math class ‘When am I ever going to need to use Pythagoras theory?’ …well now you know! Seriously I think I’ve used more ‘real’ math in knitting than I’ve ever used in my life (adding and subtracting doesn’t count, cos everyone has to do those).

Back to the sweater. So I think it’s been almost a year since I originally started this project. And I thought that I might get lucky and finish it up by the end of the month. Except being me, I had to go and check that my calculations and math had actually been worth it, so I sewed in the sleeve (why make 2 mistakes when you can get away with just one?). Except it looked terrible. For some reason that I still can’t figure out, none of the seams seem to line up properly. I tried fudging a few rows here and there but there just seem to be too many on one side and too few on the other. Even though they’re identical in shaping (well, the sleeve is anyway).

I considered leaving things the way they were but it was much too stressful. So I’ve unpicked all the seams (and the border I crocheted around the neck. Which maybe isn’t a bad thing, I might come up with a better idea for that) and I’m planning on blocking all the pieces separately. I’m not really sure if it will make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but at least I can say I did all I could even if it still insists on going pear-shaped.

So I guess the fact that I’ve done all the hard maths-y parts that I can say I’ve actually gone and designed my own jumper.  Yay! I’m so proud of me, even if it does end up looking hideous. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that blocking might help though. Stay tuned to see what the final result will be!

Sick, sick, sick little knitter

I’ve decided that I’ve officially lost my mind. I think I’m most definitely certifiable. ‘What brings on this insight?‘ I hear you ask. Well dear reader, despite having projects awaiting completion, I have decided to cast on MORE Christmas knitting. It is absolutely ridiculous to assume that by the time the big day rolls around I’ll have finished the 2 pairs of socks that are currently awaiting partners, and the cape that I only cast on for 2 days ago, but I’m currently trying to figure out how I can also squeeze in a headband, another pair of socks, a lace scarf and maybe another pair of socks if I’m lucky.

Lucky?! Even if I knit solidly from now till Christmas without sleep, social life or eating on What PLANET could I ever get that all done in time??!

I don’t know why I feel compelled to knit so many presents. I’m pretty sure that like all the Christmases that have come before, the gifts of yester year will become a blurry non-memory. ‘Just buy a gift voucher‘ my sensible (and lazy!) self insists. ‘I don’t have time for shopping!‘ the knitter in me says ‘How the hell will I get these presents done otherwise?!‘ How indeed.

I find myself cursing the train driver in the morning at how quickly I seem to have arrived at my destination. I wolf my lunch down in the hopes of getting down a few more rows. I find myself wondering if maybe I shouldn’t go to Stitch and Bitch because less bitchin’ means more stitchin’! (The latter hasn’t transpired yet due to the fact that knitting the foot of a sock whilst alone makes my eye start twitching at how tedious it gets after the first inch in between the heel and the toe. I need to make friends with people with freakishly small feet….).

The only thing keeping me going at the moment (apart from insanity!) is how excited I am at the prospect of being able to cross off projects from my queue, yarn from my stash and the extra room for more yarn I’ll soon have. Call me crazy but it might just happen…

Oneness

So I’ve noticed as of late that I’ve cast on a lot of projects that are meant to be in pairs only to find that they remain single for the time being. The ‘black socks’ (as they shall be referred to until presented) for instance. Is it because I tried to make one many moons ago, only to have to frog back after a needle malfunction? Or the Ballet School Dropout socks which are the more successful cousin of an earlier model which had to be abandoned during production? Perhaps it comes down to not wanting to have to work the same pattern twice, even though this time around they’ll be better than before? Either way both socks are currently without a partner, and getting terribly lonely.

the solitary sock

And the oneness isn’t just consigned to socks, it’s affecting the mitten world too. Having made one (wicked!) Peekaboo Mitten did I cast on for the second straight away? No, of course I didn’t. Instead I moved on to another project and having finished (the first part of) that, I’m contemplating the next project I can cast on.

the melancholy mitten

Every night I look through my knitting journal, at the list of all the things I want to make and seem to be surprised that I haven’t finished anything to be able to cross it off my list yet. ‘Well really,’ I tell myself ‘What am I supposed to expect if I start projects here there and everywhere?!’‘

Today, perhaps as a way to help my organisation along some ways I pulled out my knitting and crochet magazines and scoured them for patterns that I planned to make from them. I then entered the name of the pattern, the magazine it came from and the yarn required to make it into my journal. I am quite surprised to say that there are at least 57 patterns that I’m wanting to make from those magazines covered so far (and that’s not including potential items I may knit in the future if I hear someones having a baby). Imagine how long it would take to knit all that. Then add to that all the projects I’ve downloaded into my Ravelry library. Then add that to all the patterns out there that I haven’t come across yet. Seriously God, just 24 hours in a day?! When are we supposed to fit it all in?! Which kind of brings me back to ‘oneness’. If we only get one shot at this lifetime, I’ve got a lot of knitting to do!

Ravelympic entry

So to mark the 2008 Olympics, some lovely people on Ravelry teamed up to conjure up the Ravelympics.

The rules: To start and finish a knitted item during the summer games. The only condition is that the project needs to be something that will challenge you (it’s not really that big a deal if it’s just something you can do in an afternoon in front of the TV).

I’m currently competing with Team S&B London in the Laceweight Long Jump and the Scarf Stroke with my project the Haruha Scarf. Only 2 days into the games, and I’m quite proud of how much I’ve completed so far! It currently measures 15 inches unstretched (and I think it will need a severe blocking when I’m done knitting).

Which brings me to blocking wires. Why are they so expensive and obscure to find?! I’ve currently been using the ’stretch string’ method, but I find that it tends to come ‘in’ at the middle of the pieces needing blocking which can only be remedied by placing a pin to get it back in place, therefore creating a scallop which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place. I’ve searched around for some welding rods, which are considerably cheaper, but not managed to find any at the hardware stores. If you’re in the market to donate any blocking wires get in touch! (although I don’t recall seeing any blue moons lately….)

I’ll be off at my festival (FINALLY) in a few days, so I don’t expect I’ll be able to post for a while, but I hope the next time might show me at the knitted ‘finish line’ with my scarf held high! Until then thanks for reading!

What doesn’t kill you only slows you down

Lots of people have been asking how my jumper’s been coming along, so I thought I’d give a brief update. It hasn’t really progressed too far because of the story I will tell you now.

After Christmas, due to my hinting not quite working out as I’d hoped, I placed an order with Rowan for one years membership. To sweeten the deal, Rowan were giving away a free project kit, which looked pretty cool too. So I remember getting to the final stages of my order and being asked to select a colour. The colour choices were red, white, blue and purple. I didn’t much like the white or the blue, so I was obviously left with the choice of red or purple. Here’s where it gets hazy, did I order the purple, like I think I did OR did I order the red because I thought it would be a lipstick red, rather than the rusty red that came in the post? Who knows, all I know is that I hated the rusty red and my invoice didn’t specify what choice exactly I had made.

Despite this, I thought I’d push on and make the project. I thought I’d go for the shawl option, thinking ‘Someone’s bound to like it if I make it, and what the hey, it’s free right?’ Except, I’ve found if I hate the yarn for a project, I’m just not going to make an effort to get the pattern right. 2.25 balls of the hideous yarn in, I see it, the completely impossible to ignore mistake. Now the dilemma, do I keep going and hope no one notices the mistake with gleaming neon lights around it or pull the needle out and try and fix it? I’d come so far. If I carried on, I’d never wear the shawl, so how could I expect anyone to love it as a present? So I pulled the needle out, frogged back and it all went pear shaped. My attempts to catch the stitches failed and the lace started to come apart before my eyes. Nooooo! I’d spent so much time on this bloody thing and now it refused to be saved!

So I frogged it. All 2.25 balls worth of knitting that I’d hated every minute of. Then I felt a pang of sorrow for my jumper, left neglected because I didn’t want to make a mistake from lack of concentration. I immediately searched online for someone looking for the yarn in question and offered it up to them. This supports my theory of ‘deny, deny, deny’. If it doesn’t work out, hide all evidence you tried.

On the plus side the lack of the evil project and yarn means that I’ll be able to work on my jumper. And I’m taking a lot more care with this one.

Seeds of Change

What do you think of ‘Seeds of Change’ as a name for my sweater pattern? I thought it had a nice ring to it firstly, because of the autumn orange colour of my yarn, which makes me think of ‘changing seasons,’ second, because it’s a sort of play on the fact that I’m using a seed stitch border and finally because if it works out well, I hope it’s the first of many patterns to come.

Here’s a pic I took of it in it’s early stages…

I love it so much I can’t stop wanting to work on it! I only stopped last night because my wrist started making that weird clicky sound again, that makes me think it’s either going to snap or solidify so I can never knit again! I consider that reason enough to take a break.

I have to admit though that it wasn’t all plain sailing from the word go. I cast on and knit about 11 rows before I realised that something was VERY wrong. It seems that when I knit my gauge swatch, I had a different tension to when I was making the actual jumper. I was only about a stitch off (curse those fractions of stitches!) but it was clearly enough to mess up my calculations. Anyway, I re-measured and re-jigged and it seems to working out well now.

I am still a little worried though about whether my waist shaping is going to end up in the right place, haha! According to the schematics it should be ok, but when I hold it up next to me, things seem a little off. I’m hoping that it’s more to do with the fact that it’s on a straight needle, and that the edges keep curling in than because it’s actually wrong.

I’m also not sure what I want to do with the neck. First I was going to go with crew, but then decided that the yarn didn’t really suit that plan, so I agreed on a vee. (Yes I had an extensive debate with myself in my head. No I don’t consider myself nuts. Yet.) Now though, I feel myself leaning towards a slash neck. I kind of don’t want to go with a slash neck, because my books don’t really offer any advice on how to proceed with them, but at the same time, it’s not like there’s much shaping or anything involved with them! I think I just see mself as binding off too early and messing it up. And while many a lesson can be learnt from messing up, I don’t want it to happen this time, the yarn is just too nice.

Anyway, that’s all for now, but I hope to keep updating soon. Thanks for reading!

Extended edition

It’s nearly April and my draft entry has become irrelevant since I saved it. Perhaps this blog was in fact meant to be monthly?

I’ve managed to squeeze a lot of knitting in lately. I’m not sure if that means I’ve been hiding away from the outside world more, or if the grim weather has just been the perfect opportunity to hide away with a pair of needles and yummy yarn.  Either way, there’s lots of new projects to see and read about.

One of the first is my 1930’s style sweater. I’m not sure how true it is to the original pattern, there wasn’t a photo, only an artist’s impression. I made some changes to the  pattern because I thought using 10mm needles would result in a fabric the was too loose, even on 8mm needles it still seems a bit floppy.

I like it mostly, but I think I made a mistake with the crochet edge. The pattern didn’t specify the hook size needed and I think I used 6mm. In hind sight I think I should have just gone with 8mm like the main body. I thought about redoing it, but I don’t have enough yarn and it doesn’t look so bad.

I finally finished up the black beaded scarf I’ve been working on seemingly forever. I decided in the end to call that project ‘Sloth’. It took so long, and I spent ages trying to avoid working on it, hence ‘Sloth’.

I made my cousin socks for her upcoming birthday and for the Selfish Knitters KAL on Ravelry. I love the colours in this but if you look closely you can see that the socks are fraternal twins only, rather than identical. (which is why I only took a photo of one!). It also meant I got to use up some of the oldest sock yarn in my stash

I did ruin my yarn diet a little though by buying some Noro yarn to make what I have dubbed ‘Ponchirto’. The yarn didn’t stay in my stash long, I finished the project the same weekend I bought it, but I’m still kind of annoyed that I couldn’t stick it out. But anyway, the pattern was for ‘Ponchette’ by Bonnie Knits, but I figured it would kind of make a cool skirt too. (Poncho + Skirt [Ponchskirto] = Ponchirto!).

 

I learnt how to do Purl long-tail cast on for this. I didn’t expect it to have made a big difference but it was a really good result. I figure I could take this with me when I go camping. I bet it would make a good pillow as well as keeping me snug when I’m chillin’ (no pun intended) in the evenings.

Speaking of camping, I finally bought my sleeping bag. It’s so exciting, I’ve never had one before so I had to try it out as soon as I could. I could fit about 3 of me in it but I still think it’s great! Needs a pillow though

Next a tale of woe. My ‘Scat’ that I made with my Christmas yarn was dismantled to make way for an alternative project. Too many people laughed at it and I lost the confidence to wear it anymore

All is not lost though. I kept the pom poms and made a pair of Super-Comfy Slippers instead. I like them a lot and think they’re much nicer than my store bought pair which only make my feet feel sticky and not necessarily warm (eughh). I forget I’m wearing them after a while too.

(Do you like my socks? I know it seems like I have a pink stripe obsession with this pic but it was just coincidence)

I’ve made some progress with my baby blanket too. It’s plodding along, I’m pretty sure that years from now when it’s done there’ll be a little bambino to gift it to.

Finally, I cast on for Wisp. I got a bit bored of my Kool Aid dyed shawl and Wisp is so easy to memorise. It’s my ‘Sheffield yarn’ and I’m really pleased with the way it’s worked in this pattern. I’m actually trying to talk myself out of buying any more Kidsilk as I’ve got plenty of lace weight to get rid of already.

I think the yarn and pattern complement each other really well in this project. I’m hoping to get some shell buttons in purple to finish it off. I even found some crushed velvet ribbon too that I can use to make the ‘hood’.

I’m looking forward to starting up some new projects too, I’ve got so many plans for the rest of my stash, it seems almost cruel that I can’t knit any faster.

I hope this entry makes up for the lack of news for a while but thanks for reading and hope you’re back soon.

When will it end?

Ok, it’s been quite some time since I’ve had the chance to do a proper entry but life, it seems, doesn’t want to hang around long enough to let me catch up.

There’s not too much been going on on the project front, because of the life reason mentioned above, but I have managed to get onto the last part of Lillith. So hopefully my next entry will be one of finished victory. Woohoo!

I’ve also noticed that most of the projects I’ve been working on lately are ones that require lots of patience and aren’t the sort of thing that’s only going to take a night or two. In light of this realisation I thought I’d check out my project queue and see if I could find something I could knit up really quickly. It turns out my queue is quite lacking in that department. So let that be a lesson to all you people thinking of buying more lace weight yarn before going on a yarn diet. I’ve got some great plans but they all require time and love which I just can’t give them at the moment

On the plus side I have got a bit more organised about things. I printed off all the patterns waiting in the wings so that when I finally decide I want to cast on it can be ‘full steam ahead!’ (rather than ‘oh maybe I’ll wait till tomorrow when I turn my computer on’). I even got some nice binders for all the loose bits of A4 floaing around. Now if only I could fit another book case into my room….

Oh yeah, I just remembered, I did get 2 projects completed in the time I’ve been away. One was my second green sock and I made this head scarf to

a) use up the leftover yarn and

b) to use when I go camping in case the whole experience makes my hair a bit rubbish. (I’m so excited about it!)

Well anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!