Progress despite the obstacles

Posted on October 26, 2012 by honey

This week will be a week of posts, as tomorrow I am off to my favourite LYS, Purlescence, to do a workshop on Continental Knitting and Norwegian purl! So I’ll write about that soon.

However, right now I want to update on a couple of other things. First, in this post I want to let you know what I’ve been upto. Plugging away slowly I have managed to finish a crochet shawl, and a knit shawl and start on another small project.

First up I finished my recuerdos de la niebla shawl. This seemed to take forever, as I am used to crocheting much faster than my hands currently let me. That and the never ending ball of yarn. Seriously, the pattern said use about 50% before starting the border. I used 75%. Then I did three rows of border. You are supposed to get 7 rows of border total, so I weighed how much I used in row 4 – 4grams – and I had 23 grams left. 20/4 is 5 rows plus a little bit left over. I got 11 rows. And another 2 rows of SC across the top edge before giving up with another 4grms of yarn left. Not entirely sure how that works, but that is why my beads aren’t on the last row of the edging, but 2 rows in. I think it worked out pretty well!

After that marathon, and my hands being a pain, I wanted a project that was quick, that was knit and that used up some of the yarn that I had been gifted in the last 12 months. After lots of fussing and indecision I went with the beautiful ‘the age of brass and steam kerchief’ (a free pattern on Ravelry), done in the gorgeous DK weight Debbie Bliss Andes. I had been gifted 2 skiens last year for my birthday in a lovely deep, dark red. The beaded sections were a bit of pain (literally) but easy enough – particularly if you decide to knit together and *then* bead the resulting stitch. My first beaded row I tried a pass2, pass 1 over, bead the stitch and then knit it. It worked, but not as well.

Once blocked the yarn bloomed slightly, softened even more and is just the right size to sit in the V of a coat and give lovely warmth. The yarn has lovely stitch definition as well, and it was such a joy to work with I picked up some more in chocolate at the Ally Pally show.

Delighted with having a ‘fast’ project (a little under two weeks all told) I wanted another one. I have some gorgeous yarn staring at me, and a hankering for some cabled fingerless mitts, but I’m not quite there yet, so instead I broke out another gift.

I was given some beautiful handspun last July, and have been dreaming of the perfect project. I wanted something that I could use both yarns together, and something that would show off the yarn. The grey is a thicker, bulky type weight and the cream a much finer closer to 4ply weight. A pair of 6mm needles, and a bit of ‘constructive swatching’ (known to others as ‘that’s not right, I’ll start again’) I’ve started a cowl.

I’m doubling the cream yarn to give a little weight so it’s similar to the grey, and I’ll go as long as I can before using a kitchner stitch bind off to have a seamless loop (hence the odd green bit at the bottom. It’s lovely and soft, and has a sort of ‘rustic’ look which goes lovely with my new full length wax jacket! If this goes well I think I might look at working some cabled mitts over a longer period of time!

Knit & Stitch Show – part II

Posted on October 15, 2012 by honey

With plan in hand, day 2 went smoother (though we didn’t get as far as room3 this time).

It was as busy as Friday at points, but we arrived early, when it was quiet, and stayed till it got quiet again. There were some interesting overheard conversations, my favourite of which concerned a beautiful natural pure British wool yarn, which was being fondled by a woman and her pal…

Woman1: this is a pretty colour, but it’s very rough
Woman2: (glances at label) yeah, it’s *British* wool, that’s why.

It really made me think about how spoilt we are now with such beautiful soft fibres like silk, mohair, alpaca etc… Though I hadn’t thought of British pure wools being any more or less ‘itchy’ than other pure wools.

So I bought some beautiful fyberspates lace to make the gorgeous Tirrold sweater, I also got 2 lovely tunisian hooks, some pure British wool (of the above conversation from Woolyknit.com), two hanks of Debbie Bliss Andes, the beads needed to finally start on the Queen on the Night, two gorgeous green&black superwash merino/buffalo blend and a drops pattern book (for £1!)

I also picked up several bits that have nothing to do with crafting – a gorgeous waterproof backpack from Bergs Designs (which will be perfect for walking to work over the winter months), a lovely teapot coaster that contains oat and spices that fill the room with amazing scents when the hot teapot is put on it, a fashion book, a couple of Christmas presents (shhh 😉 and lots and lots and lots of flyers and business cards. Oh, and a free mini tote from the Irish tourist board.

I could have easily spent twice as much as I did but I’m happy with what I got, and my only regret is that I’m not rich enough to sit at home all day and knit pure alpaca dresses or scrumptious aran weight tunic jumpers (I have to make that at some point though).

I now have lots (more) projects to add to my ever expanding list, but I can at least start on a couple of long standing ones – and I got lots of ideas for existing stash, which I am quite excited about.

More about that next week…

Breaking Radio Silence

Posted on October 13, 2012 by honey

I know, I’m sorry. I have left you all alone for far too long. How are you? Come in, pull up a chair and I’ll put the kettle on.

The status quo has been maintained on my hands, thank you for asking. Currently we are at the following: it isn’t Arthritis, it isn’t Carpel Tunnel, it isn’t any of the blood things they have tested for. It *might* be tenosynovosis in my wrists, but they are not sure, and that doesn’t tell me what is wrong with my fingers, and the next appointment is 15th November. In the meantime I am wearing splints every night – which is helping somewhat with the wrist pain. The lovely Dr who did my EMR tests for Carpel Tunnel suggested I see an osteopath as it might be something in my neck – which is interesting and I’m following that up separately.

I have a whole notebook page of blog posts to go on here, but my hands have been bad enough the last few weeks that either I haven’t been able to type, or I have been able to type or craft and I’ve picked the crafting for 15 minutes instead. We seem to be coming out of the worst of it now, so maybe I’ll get some of those other blog posts written up and on here!

So what has prompted this currently characteristic whittering? Yesterday I went to my first Knitting & Stitching show at the beautiful Alexandra Palace. I’ll be honest, I had no real desire to go – a mild curiosity maybe, but several friends had said in previous years it was heavy on the ‘Stitching’ in the title with lots of cross stitch and embroidery and precious little yarn. However, my mother-in-lieu (she’s not quite the Mother-in-Law yet) wanted to go, so I offered company.

It worked out to be almost as cheap to buy 4 tickets as 2, so I’m going again tomorrow with another friend, and frankly, I’m glad I’ve got a second day to go at – this show is HUGE. The smallest hall contains 42 exhibitors, a ‘try your hand’ area and a fashion catwalk. The ‘mid’ hall is about twice the size again, with exhibitors and stalls of display work – some of which I didn’t ‘get’, some of which is stunning and all of which shows more creativity and skill than I possess. The ‘main’ hall is about twice the size of the medium hall and given over almost exclusively to exhibitors – and there are several workshop rooms as well, and 3 separate galleries of displayed finished work.

We arrived at 10.45 (doors opened at 10) and stayed till 5pm (doors close at 5.30pm) with 20 minutes for lunch and didn’t see everything. It was a knackering day, but I’ll do my best to convey highlights and things I remember most. There may well be another post tomorrow (with photos – lots of things said ‘no photos’ but I think I’ve sussed the bits Ican photograph).

The Galleries. There were 3 separate presentations. The first, as you walked through the door, was a carnival tent with unfinished projects decorating the sides (donated by members of the public). Inside the tent were the stories of FO’s. Emotive and moving it was a little sad to see some things that were a few stitches short of completion that had obviously taken hours to get that far. But it was also gratifying to know I’m not alone, and to see just how many people must have started those hexagon fabric quilts in the the 80’s!

The second was a display of embroidery on the theme of ‘Gold in the Seam’ (I think) – again there were some amazing pieces with astonishing attention to detail, and some from very young crafts people (the youngest was 5!).

The third was a knitted village, again knitted and donated by people attending the show. There was several churches, a fire engine, house and crew, lots of houses, pubs and even a scout troupe. It was very witty and fun, and prizes had been awarded by Rowan Yarns for the top 3. (Though, amusingly, I did overhear one lady complain that Rowan had won everything, and they shouldn’t have been allowed to enter)

The Exhibitors. There was an amazing mix of exhibitors – and yarn crafts were well represented with everything from £1.25 a ball acrylic to £(deep breath) Quivat. The quivat lived up to it’s reputation for being insanely soft. I can’t even begin to describe how soft that stuff was, in an 8 year old ‘demonstration’ scarf that was foisted around my neck. I think it feels how I imagined clouds to feel when I was 4. However, at £110 (yes I typed that right) for just short of 400m (50g) it’s not happening in this life time. Lots of stalls had pure breed yarns and butter soft natural fibres (thicker yarns – DK, Aran and Bulky) seem to be coming back – and cowl necks are everywhere for this season. Black Sheep Yarns caused a melee by dumping 10 skien bags of all sorts on the floor of their unit – 10 hanks of Noro for about £65, and 10 hanks of Debbie Bliss Andes for £30 anyone? Fyberspates had beautiful yarns (as always) and though I can’t afford to buy the yarn for one of the jumpers (I worked it out as £130 for the yarn) I am buying the yarn for a different one tomorrow. The Mother-in-Lieu (MIL) may have cracked at this point and bought two skiens of laceweight to make the adorable Hethe cardigan from the first Scrumptious Collection. The Little Knitting Company had some fun snowmen kits that could be made into juggling balls – and almost every stall we passed had some form of advent calendar kit.

Quilting is not going away anytime soon, judging by the pure number of quilting stalls there were – beading, cross stitch and embroidery were also well represented. There were a couple of odd ball stands – rain coat anyone? and a couple I could have lived without (why do those market-like stalls selling cheap cotton scarves show up everywhere?) but the day was heavily biased towards craft and I’ve got plenty I want to go and check out tomorrow. This is turning into a really long post, so I’m going to stop and update after my second visit (including everything I buy)

Olympic Efforts

Posted on August 1, 2012 by honey

While I got a few days of what currently constitutes ‘normal’ for my hands last week, this week they have been particularly difficult. I’ve got a date for my scans though – next Tuesday evening, so I’m hoping something comes from those.

The Olympics got off to a very British start, being very eccentric, but Danny Boyle gets points for:
a) getting the Queen involved (she’s a good sport isn’t she?) and
b) the pure *genius* that was the Olympic Flame Flower.

Ravelry is having it’s own simultaneous competition, in which individuals challenge themselves in a variety of fun events. For myself I leapt into the lead during the opening ceremony by entering the Frogging Trampoline and finally frogging my beaded cape which had been lying since March 2011 look at me accusingly. I loved the pattern, but I’ve finally had to conceed that the yarn I was using didn’t want to be that project. I’ve already got my medal for that!

I’m also trying to finish my ‘Jan Sweater’ (as part of the WiP Wrestling, or I could put it in for the Sweater Triathalon though the yarn itself is about a week too young to qualify for the Syncronised stash busting as I bought it at KnitNation last year).

A jumper for all seasons?

I’m thinking of renaming the project from ‘August Sweater’ to ‘Calendar sweater’ as I have now being working on it longer than a year! This is the sweater I’m doing in the Portuguese method of knitting (which is great for my hands) and I’m really enjoy it. I particuarly love the fact that every time I pick it up I am reminded of the meeting I gatecrashed to meet a fabulous group of people – including strikstrik who taught me the method, V (who has been mentioned previously) and *the* Stephen West!

I’m also trying to design, make, write up and publish a ‘shawl’ in the three weeks of the olympics. It’s going to be more of a ‘receipe’ than a ‘stitch by stitich’ pattern. The inspiration for this is the lack of relatively easy ‘confident beginner’ patterns that aren’t rafts of SC or DC. I wanted something that had a bit of interest (visually and mentally), that was unisex and could be easily modified without being too hung up on the ‘precision’. I’ll be entering this in the Shawl Sailing, Single Skien Sprint and possibly Balance Beads. I’m using a ball of Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball in fuchsienbeet that Needlemania (who I met for KnitNation 2011) sent me at Christmas. I’ve made a reasonable start…

sneak peak..

Gosh, I’ve just realised how involved KnitNation 2011 is in my choices – the yarn, the techniques, the people!

D.I.Y. Yarn Club

Posted on June 7, 2012 by honey

Back in November of 2011 I was starting to ponder Christmas presents for myself (my birthday is the 23rd and I invariably get lots of people asking me what I want) and I was looking at all the beautiful different yarn clubs available. Ones for sock yarns, ones for lace, ones for sock patterns, ones for shawls, ones with a theme, ones for a particular type of fibre, ones for indie dyers… it was all so overwhelming.

I also felt a bit like I was cheating on my existing stash – and I had a couple of unanswerable questions about the yarn clubs (what if I didn’t like the colour, or the pattern, or needed more, or if I fell behind?).

What I ended up deciding to do was my own ‘free’ yarn club. I would bundle up my existing yarn with the pattern I wanted to make from that yarn, with maybe a surprise and then a ‘sketchy’ note on the outside such as ‘quick’ or ‘laceweight’ or ‘rustic’. Then each time I finished a project I could ‘adjective’ dive and pick out a surprise lucky dip type package. Of course life isn’t quite that smooth, so I didn’t get chance to wrap up everything before December, but I did get to give a number of yarn/pattern pairings to a dear friend. I say a number because I genuinely can’t remember how many. His instructions were to add a *small* surprise if he wished (he is forever buying me little treats) and to hand them back at some point in 2012 to be decided by him.

We meet up for dinner every month(ish), and this month I got an extra bag! My beautiful forest green Wollmeise was returned to me, along with my signed copy of Franklin Habit’s Giovannina Stole (both of which I had completely forgotten I had handed over in the first place)

do-it-yourself stole kit

along with 2 bars of Lindt chocolate (nom) and a wonderful collection of 1940-1980s patterns (knit and crochet) which he had found in his mothers loft (who used to own a haberdashery).

anybody else feel old?

(sorry about the blurry quality – I will take some better ones I promise!). I’ve had a ball reading the Woman’s Weekly from Sept 1980, and some of the yarn pictures are genuinely terrifying – the Paton’s green boarded one you can see on the right has the entire family dressed in the exact same green cabled/lace jumper (though ‘his’ buttons the other way) – no wonder the dog needs two people to hold onto him!

The yarn is sitting staring at me, and I have managed to photocopy my own ‘abuse’ copy of the pattern. Now I just have to get up the courage to start!

The State of the Nation

Posted on May 30, 2012 by honey

As we roll up in bunting drenched vehicles ahead of the Diamond Jubilee this weekend, I can’t believe that it’s been nearly 4 weeks since my last post, and it’s been very busy! I shall add a note to my diary to write a post at least once every two weeks 😉

I am still awaiting results of tests of the (spreading) pain in my hands – I’ve finally managed to get referred up the chain, but there is the usual 6-8 week wait now to see a consultant.

Crafting time therefore is still very limited, but I have achieved a couple of small successes. I finished my version of Eva’s Shawl, Starry Starry Night, a beginner level shawl which I ‘pimped’ with beautiful Unique Sheep Eos yarn and some serendipitous beads. I’m really pleased with the resulting gorgeousness.

The soft changes and multiple skeins of colour phase yarn worked really well in crochet (so many variegated yarns don’t work for crochet) and the whole is light and very warm.

I also managed to pick up and make a concerted effort on the front of my Jan sweater (by the adorable Susan Crawford, from Stitch in Time vol II) – I’ve been working on this since JUNE 2011 (gasp!) and had finished the back last August then ran into a variety of interesting excuses as to why I couldn’t start the front. I finally cast on the ribbing in November, and then, at the change point I suddenly couldn’t find the energy to find my 3.25mm needles (and crochet got in the way, and then I was teaching and, ya know, ‘stuff’) so I dug out the needles, and my Portuguese pin (sorry, I don’t think I mentioned I’m trying to do this entirely Portuguese style – add another skill to the box) and did another set of rows – now I’ve started the main body of the front hopefully I’ll get a bit further along on this one…

I finally managed to get Part 1 of my Crochet Chart reading tutorials up and on this site. I promise not to take so long with the other parts! I’d love to hear what you think – and of course there are the PDF’s as well.

This month (as in next month, June) I’m hosting a CAL (crochet-a-long) over on Ravelry for the beautiful Recuerdos de infancia – the yarn I wanted to use I don’t have enough yardage for (isn’t it always the way?) so I think I might be going down the laceweight path and stash diving (after all, it’s not like I’m short of yarn here, and I really can’t justify buying any more without making something from stash first).

Tuesday Fortnite

unraveling the yarn

Tag Archives: knitting