Fresh off the needles

Just finished the Fresh fingerless gloves during "Maria". I'm very pleased with them, they were good fun to knit, the cabled rib at the cuff is extremely cute and has great elasticity. I've just cast-on and completed about 4 rounds of the top ribbing of Pomatomus in the green cashmerino. I ground to a bit of a halt on the Koigu Poms midweek - partly due to a realisation that I was going to run out of yarn, partly due to not being able to work out how to make the heel fit me. It just seemed far too wide when I followed the pattern and I was worried about the instep and sole mismatching if I continued to decrease much further. This is as far as I got before starting to rip back (just to prove I can cope with Chart B)

I've cast on the second attempt with 3.75mm needles, which suddenly strikes me as rather a dumb thing to do since I'm going to need those to knit the International Sock of Doom. I've just been reading some of the comments on Yarnmonkey's blog. I'm slightly scared that people have been swatching. I generally don't for socks. In fact I just don't. I've decided on Artesano Alpaca in (I think) cream (soo beautiful) for my sock, hopefully it's not a lace pattern as lace patterns really don't show up in that stuff so I'll have to get down to the yarn store on Monday to check yardage. I'm so excited, by my reckoning it should all be kicking off on Friday!

More yarn than you can shake a hand-crafted birch pointy stick at!

I wandered into my somewhat infamous local yarn shop on Thursday evening with the fairly firm intention of buying a couple of balls of Alpaca Silk DK with which to knit the gorgeous Seaside fingerless gloves on the cover of September's Magknits. Instead I came away with a single ball of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in a tea/turquoise colour, the simple reason being that they have expanded their stock! They have cashmerino aran in all the gorgeous colours and they have Rowan! This is very exciting for a girl for whom previously the nearest source of Rowan was eight miles away. They have wool cotton, and kidsilk haze and big wool tufty and tapestry and I'm so excited. They also have the needles out on display. Until now you had to know that they stocked needles and ask for them. "I've heard you stock knitting needles." "Shh..do you want the police round here." It was like the prohibition knitting shop. Only the initiated got to see the good stuff. And it is good stuff. As well as the regular Pryms (in themselves fairly fantastic in a town that otherwise only sells Pony) there are Addis and Brittany's. See how restrained I was in only coming away with a single ball of yarn.

I was still keen on the idea of fingerless gloves though so I am knitting Fresh from the summer issue of Knitty. Like the intro says, these are a weekend knit. I cast on on the train this evening and am already one hand-warmer down and am nearly at the first cable round on the second.

They're very cute and I've already decided who will be receiving them for Christmas. I'm pretty sure I'll knit some more, possibly using two balls of wool and making them a bit longer in the wrist and hand.

Pottery goodies

Last week (thanks to Sara and Aliki) I got back my glazed and fired piggy bank and mug from our session at the Pottery Café. I'm very happy with the pig, a bit less so with the mug I'm OK with that as I kind of felt at the time that it wasn't going to be a great design.

The cake BTW is Nigella's Winter Plum cake from Domestic Goddess. This is a fantastically versatile cake which can be made with practically any tinned or fresh juicy fruit (i.e. not bananas). The great thing is that it tastes just as good (better maybe) with the tinned stuff.

@!*&#* &%# !*#?* Pomatomus socks!

My confidence that I would be able to knit a short row heel and then merrily return to the pattern at the start of Chart B appears to have been ill-founded. I hit snags almost immediately and ended up with far too stitches at the end of the needle. It was at this point that I discovered that these socks are an absolute arse to unknit, let alone rip out. I mean the ripping is easy enough, but getting the damn stitches back on your needles again... After much cursing and after going back about four rounds I finally managed to get 71 stitches. Freakily I was counting along one of the needles and saying "23, that's not enough" seconds before one of the code breakers in Enigma said the exact same thing—of course he was talking about U-boat contacts but the principle's the same. Between tracking down my missing stitch and trying to find the right place to start off again I may have missed some of the finer plot points but I did enjoy the film.

Enigma (2001)
Dir. Michael Apted
Dougray Scott
Kate Winslet
Jeremy Northam
Plot complexity rating*: easy lace

* i.e. the level of knitting you can cope with whilst still being able to follow the plot

Finished objects - Patsy socks

It's really hard to take a good photo of your own feet. The pattern shows up quite well in this one though.

Fish & Flowers

On Saturday, after an uncharacteristically inexpensive trip to Hobbycraft (I spent 25p on ribbon for the bootees!) and before the big game, Mum and I dropped in on the St. Paul's Astley Bridge Flower Festival. The festival was to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Bolton floral group and part of the money raised will go to the Bolton Hospice. The church looked great with every possible surface covered with flowers. I loved the pillars which had been garlanded with hydrangeas and the pew ends which were decorated with lilies.

I also liked "Mary's Garden" in the Lady Chapel which was an installation rather than an arrangement.

My favourite piece was the memorial tree which had been arranged by the Bolton Junior club on which visitors could write a label and hang a red rose in an individual vase in memory of a loved one. I thought it was a lovely idea and the effect was stunning.

Also on Saturday I finally got the hang of Pomatomus after ripping back the first two rows a couple of times. It seems that actually reading the pattern carefully really helps. I'm a bit nervous about running out of yarn (due to the Koigu bootees) so I'm only knitting two repeats of Chart A for the cuff. I haven't decided yet whether to stick to the pattern for the heel. Short rows would be easier with just the four needles and use less yarn and I prefer the fit, but I'm a but nervous about going off pattern as Chart B looks very scary. I love the way the pattern is turning out too but the tension (due to the twisted knits I think) is still pretty tight so it's quite tiring to knit. It's never really a good sign when you can hear your wrists clicking alongside the needles.

Get these!

What every cool baby around town is wearing..Koigu bootees!
The pattern is the cabled circular seamless baby bootees pattern by Megan Mills which I have knit a couple of times now in its various incarnations with an added picot cast-on (a strange choice admittedly for someone who does not overly love casting-on with 2.75mm needles—so fiddly). They are a pretty quick knit (about 3 hours per bootee) which meant that I was able to more-or-less complete the second one on the train this evening. They still need a tie to weave in and out of the eyelet holes at the base of the cuff. Hopefully I can find some ribbon at Hobbycraft tomorrow, otherwise it wil have to be i-cord. Now I love making i-cord (who doesn't!?) as much as the next person but I have other plans for the remainder of my yarn which was after all bought with the original intention of making socks for myself.
Namely Pomatomus. I've cast on the 72 stitches (again with the tiny needles) and completed a couple of rounds of the twisted rib cuf but it's tough going. However, I will persevere, at least until I can prove to myself that I can master the charts. For some reason I have this strange sense of inadequacy which I suspect will linger until I actually knit one of the many intricte sock patterns which I have printed out from Knitty.

3 days to Sock Wars!

That is 3 days until sign-up closes and yarn and needle requirements are published. I'm very excited about the whole thing. I've been checking out this gorgeous yarn online with a view to knitting my Sock Wars socks in it. The only concern is that it's just too pretty. How will I feel about sending off a pair of socks in this yarn with deadly intent to a complete stranger? How will I feel if I get 'killed' before I finish them and have to send them off unfinished to my assassin? It doesn't bear thinking about. The obvious solution is to buy a double quantity. One for Sock Wars and one for me. It saves on P&P in the long run!
Back to the yarn though, I especially love the Alpaca/Silk 4-ply/sock. The orchid colourway is soo lovely.
I've also been thinking about needles. Much as I loved the idea of Addis it turns out that I'm just not that comfortable knitting with them. I'll have to check with Katie (the guru when it comes to knitting two socks at once) that I'm using the right size but I find it so tight and uncomfortable, especially when I have to do anything more complicated than knit or purl. This puts patterned socks completely out of the question. I think I'll even put the socks I started on the addis onto DPNs as I'm just getting nowhere.

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood..

He doesn't actually have a ring at the end of his nose, but he is excessively cute. And also definitely a 'he' despite the hearts and flowers. I really cannot recommend Pottery Café enough. The café is situated on the Fulham Road near to Parson's Green tube station. The studio fee is £5 and you pay for any items that you paint. They have some really great pieces to decorate from Bridgewater Pottery and from their pottery on the Isle of Wight and you can paint anything from a cat to a dinner plate. There is a wide range of colours and paintbrushes as well as thin tubes for piping and pencils for writing. Best of all there are sponges cut in many different shapes (stars, flowers, tractors, bumble bees to name a few) so even the artistically challenged can create a masterpiece. The only drawback for those not living in London is that the pots have to be glazed and fired so you can't take them away with you the same day, however, they will hang on to the stuff for several months if you can't pick it up immediately. The café serves drinks but you can also bring your own. The only danger is the recurring urge to dip your paintbrush into your glass instead of the mug of water!

In other news I have nearly (by which I mean about a hundred stitches to go) cast-off the double potato chip scarf. I actually think I preferred it as a single ruffle but I'll see how it looks when it's completely finished. Either way, there's no way I'm ripping out all those stitches!

Finished Objects - Jaeger alpaca socks

In a fit of inspiration I finally finished off the second "Patsy" sock on Tuesday evening. Given that I cast this on during extra time in the England–Portugal game this sock has been hanging around on my needles for a long time. I think the reason it took so long is that the yarn is so light and fine that the needles (3.25mm dpns) seem disproportionately heavy and so the inactive needles are always pulling on the stitches. However, it was worth all the discomfort as I've been wearing them all day and they are super cosy and a lovely fit. I should probably me a little depressed that it's cool enough for alpaca socks already on the last day in August but actually I'm thinking "bring it on!". I already have plans to knit the "Birch Leaves" socks in the remainder of the grey alpaca. I had planned to do these with the green baby cashmerino but it's just too chunky really. On Wednesday evening with the support of the Bluestockings I finished knitting and cast-off the 720 stitches of the first half of the potato chip scarf in the Be Sweet mohair. After wearing my half a scarf home and trying it on with the jacket I decided that I wanted to knit the double ruffle scarf so picked up ninety stitches along the short edge in the chocolate mohair. I'm so happy with the way it's turning out that I may knit another one as a Christmas present. I think either a single ruffle in the same yarn or a double ruffle in a (slightly) cheaper yarn. Keen as I am to support independent yarn stores, I'm not that keen.
On the pottery front the pig has been picked up from the Pottery Café (thankyou Sara) and we may be reunited next week. I'm very eager to see how it's turned out after the firing.

Potato chips

Last night I cast on the gorgeous Be Sweet mohair boucle which I bought at Loop on the hen day. Amazingly it is just as lovely on the needles as in the ball (that almost never happens to me) and I can't wait to finish and actually wear the scarf. I'm knitting the Potato chip scarf found on the Knitpicks site (just Google for it) and it's perfect for the yarn. The only fly in the chardonnay is that I wussed out of buying a 7mm circular needle between Bowness and Windermere (my boyfriend was giving me dirty looks due to the fact that we were 1 mile up a steep 1½ mile hill carrying 60 litre rucksacks on our way back to the station). This means that I cast on 90 stitches on 2 straight needles and am now up to 720 stitches (which seems too many to be right but my maths assures me it is) over 3 straight needles. I definitely need that big circular needle, if only for the safety of those around me! The lack of photos is getting embarrassing so here are the black Jaywalkers which I gave to my Dad for his birthday at the weekend.

Photos at last

The beautiful Be Sweet boucle mohair (mohair boucle? I don't know which order those two go in) which I bought from Loop!

The finished article! The jacket isn't quite this shiny in real life.

What I did on my holidays...

For a start, I knitted. Lots and lots.
On the train up north I cast on the Baby Cashmerino socks on my new Addis and started to get to grips with knitting two socks at once. However, when I say grip, I suspect that the deathlike vice in which I held my needles may not have been the most conducive grip to ensure even tension and avoid cramping. So far I'm not finding it the most comfortable experience but I hope to persevere. I think part of the problem is that the sizing (60sts on 3mm needles) already appears a little large. I didn't plan to knit that many stitches, but between being unable to work out what kind of pattern to knit and trying to keep the number of stitches on each sock even (stitch markers to mark the beginning of each rounf are in order here I think) I just ended up with that many. The problem now is that I'm not sure I can bear to rip back both socks (the hidden pain of knitting two socks at once) and start over.
Two trains and a bus ride later we had arrived in Grasmere and I was feeling the pangs of RSI. With autumn lurking just around the corner I felt inspired to pick up the Anna Bell Argyle sweater again. Over the long weekend I managed to finish the front and knit about 6 inches of sleeve (yay). The front has a slight (unintentional, though happily symmetrical) variation on the pattern. I somehow managed to miss the instruction "on RS" when decreasing for the neck shaping so it's more of a heart- than a V-shaped neck. I think (fingers crossed) that it will still look and fit ok and as the pattern is correct throughout I don't think that I'll have too much heart burning over it. I'm really looking forward to adding the ribbed edging around the neck and I might skip ahead to do that.
And whilst I knit (knitted?, knot?) I listened to the new series of Cast-On (yay). I am so happy that Brenda is back after the break and I can listen to her fantastic show whilst I knit and travel up and down the country by train. The new football season has already started so I'm going to be making a lot of trips up north to watch home games and the journeys just seem to whizz by with a couple or three episodes. I also downloaded a couple of episodes of CraftSanity including the Debbie Stoller interview which I really enjoyed. I'm especially interested to see the two new books which Debbie mentioned.
Of course I didn't spend all the time knitting and listening to podcasts. I went for two really great walks near Grasmere with my boyfriend. We stayed in a really great B&B called How Foot Lodge just outside the village on the road to Ambleside so on the Wednesday afternoon, just after we arrived, we walked back down the road until we came to a footpath to the lake. Then we just kept on walking up zig-zagging footpaths until we reached the trig point on the top of Loughrigg fell. On Thursday we kind of did the same thing. We walked up to Easedale tarn which is a beautiful walk and one that I know really well. When we'd got to the tarn it was still only 11am so we walked past the tarn and up the valley following a troop of walkers we had seen heading that way. And we just kept heading on up the path, past another tarn and up some pretty rocky slopes, until we reached one of the peaks, Blea Rigg Crag which had great views of Stickle tarn below and Windermere and the Langdale Pikes and (I think) Elterwater and Morcambe Bay across to Wales. The weather was just gorgeous and I wore my new Aran tweed walking socks (which weren't at all scratchy despite the bleak prognostications of the yarn shop owner when I bought the tweed). They were, alas, somewhat felted when I finally took them off after 6 hours of walking, but that's to be expected and it just adds to the cosiness. The view behind the socks (pictures will follow) is of Codale Tarn above Grasmere.

General Loopiness!

On Saturday I travelled to London for a friend's hen-party which was an extremely civilised affair starting off with a trip to Loop (for the yarn-obsessed amongst the party) and continuing on to Pottery Café on Fulham Road in order to drink fizz and paint plates and mugs and, in my case, piggy-banks.
I went into Loop with the intention of buying something sensible like sock-yarn or Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in order to knit Fetching from Knitty Summer 06. Instead I came away with two balls of Be Sweet Boucle Baby Mohair in Heather and Chocolate with which I will be knitting a ruffled scarf (for which as yet I don't have the pattern or the needles) to match the brown velvet jacket to which I finally succumbed. Pictures to follow (as I used up my flickr allowance for this month already). I also (much more practical) bought two sets of 3mm by 40 cm addi circular needles in order to learn to knit two socks at once. I feel that this is a vital skill to possess if I'm not to crash out of Sock Wars in the first round. I will be casting-on my first pair of practice socks this evening in the DB Baby Cashmerino and attempting to adapt the Birch Leaves pattern by Nancy Bush from Gathering of Lace.
I'll write more about the pottery painting when I've uploaded the photos.

TGI Wednesday

I love Wednesdays! Mostly because Wednesday is the day the Oxford Bluestockings knitting group meets up. Today I have a nearly finished Aran tweed walking sock in garter rib stitch (the yarn just did not want to Jaywalk) and three-quarters of a pair of actual Jaywalkers in the Lorna's laces to take along. I also have the right front of Elspeth if I'm feeling ambitious. It's not really a great knitting group project as I have to count rather than talk in order to keep up with the pattern and the decreases/increases at the same time. I also have a couple of balls of Baby Cashmerino which I bought a couple of weeks ago to "show and tell". Hopefully I can work out how to adjust the Birch leaves pattern for the larger yarn gauge and make a start on those soon.

Jaywalkers (yay)

I'd intended to post one long post about all the things I'd done this weekend (made lemon tart, visited a friend, started Elspeth, eaten ice-cream by the river) but blogger is playing up at the mo'. So this is my nearly completed first Jaywalker sock knitted from half a skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Jeans (thus dispelling the myth that you need two skeins of the stuff to knit a pair of socks). OK they're only ankle socks and the Jaywalker pattern is surprisingly stretchy lengthways but still. I do really love this pattern. It's fast becoming my "I want a new pair of socks and I want them now!" stand-by as it's so quick and easy. I'm already planning a pair of "Jayhikers" out of bright green Kilcarra Aran Tweed for my trip to Grasmere at the end of the month. The pattern's just as appropriate for hill walking in the Lakes as it is for dodging traffic in the city as you really can't walk in a straight line up a stony mountain path.

Elspeth

On Sunday I did lots of housework (trying to hoover up all those 2 inch pieces of yarn that infest our flat), some more training for Sock Wars (i.e. the Lorna's Laces Jaywalker sock) and cast on a new project. This is taking my WIPs count (see right hand column) dangerously high again I know but the yarn has been just sitting there for weeks and I couldn't take it any more. The pattern is Elspeth from Rowan 37 and I'm knitting in Rowan Calmer with size 5mm needles. I'd read a few comments about how tricky it was following the pattern from the chart but didn't find that too tough. What I was surprised by though was that the pattern nowhere warns you that if you follow the chart exactly you can end up with unmatched yarn-overs which gives you unexpected increases. I'm hoping that I can get around this by just knitting the very edges plain unless there is both a yarn-over and a matching decrease.

River socks

After being intimidated by it for some while, on Monday I finally started to knit with the Lorna's Laces sock yarn. And after a few false starts on different sizes of needle I came up with this.
The pattern is taken from the Rowan River stole and I really like the way the pattern works with the colours in the yarn, although because of the variegation it's a little indistinct.

However, there's a really wide zig-zag up the back because I hadn't really taken the pattern edging into account. I tried knitting a second sock to a slightly different version of the pattern. This worked out less well. Decreasing the number of stitches to 13 per needle meant that the pattern stitches kept travelling and I felt like I was improvising too much and wouldn't be able to duplicate it for the second sock. At the same time I was really loving the colour repeats on the underside of the sock and kind of getting Jaywalker envy from my knitting buddy who was knitting a pair at the same time. Soo, I think I'm ripping the first sock, knitting Jaywalkers and saving the River pattern for a plain yarn.

More finished objects

On Sunday evening I finished off two pairs of socks which had been languishing in my knitting bag for a few weeks now and learnt a couple of valuable lessons along the way.

1. There will be knots in your yarn at the most inconvenient places. I had congratulated myself on finishing the first black Jaywalker sock with about eight inches of yarn to spare, thus avoiding adding to the stock of 10 yard balls of sock-yarn in my stash. However, by the time I reached the second knot in the ball of yarn I was using for the second sock I started to worry that I'd cut things a bit too fine. It all worked out in the end, but only just.
2. It is not a good idea to knit black socks in the cinema. That one I really should have figured out for myself before I dropped a stitch somewhere near one of the double decreases and had to rip out about ten rounds.

Anyway, the black DK Jaywalkers and the Mistake Rib Alpaca socks are now neatly paired up and can be added to the sock-pile (my bid at pre-emptive Christmas knitting). The picture of the black Jaywalkers didn't really do them justice but they are beautiful (in a very subtle sort of way).

Almost too hot to knit

It's been scorching this week and I've finally had to give up on all of my wool-based projects. There's something intrinsically wrong about knitting socks in black merino double knitting when it's 33°C outside. The cashmere cardi is a little better for the heat and I got lots done last weekend whilst watching the final round of the Scottish Open (golf and knitting just really seem to go together). However, the sad truth is that, beautifully soft as it is once washed, straight off the cone it's rather string-like and my hands were beginning to cramp up.
So I'm knitting with cotton, Rowan cotton tape to be precise. I'm knitting a scaled down version of Clapotis, partly as a trial run to knit a full-size version with the Colinette Tagliatelle that's burning a hole in the drawer under my bed (where I keep the stuff I feel really bad about never managing to knit with), partly because I'm not sure quite how much cotton tape I actually have or will need.

New project

I started work on the cashmere cardigan on Wednesday and am about a third of the way up the back. I really like working in cashmere as it has really nice stitch definition although it is prone to splitting, I'm already a little worried about whether this will make it difficult to pick up the stitches for the collar. The pattern is from the Debbie Bliss Baby Knits book and I plan to add a shawl collar like the one I saw at Stash at the weekend.

Although I'm not usually one for swatching at great length (or at all sometimes) I actually knitted, washed and blocked a proper gauge swatch as the owner of the yarn shop warned me that the gauge would change after washing.