clean slate

Well here we are, well into the second week of 2013. I hope everyone had wonderful festive period. After months of anticipation it slipped away far too quickly for my liking. Is that what happens when you get older?

2012 was a rollercoaster of a year. There were some amazing highs, and some utterly crushing lows. It was a landmark year for me, and I miss it already, but I can’t say I’m not glad to be moving on.

I’ve had a thousand false starts with this post, and in the end I decided to just draw a line under all of them and just start afresh. After all, isn’t that what new years are about? There’s a lot of finished projects that I haven’t shared here, but I’m going to trickle them through gradually and keep things simple for now.

Clicking away on my needles at this moment, is a Featherweight Cardigan. It seems like everyone else has already knit this (4793 projects on Ravelry, and counting!), but I’m a little late to the bandwagon. The truth of it is, I’m on a bit of a cardigan binge. I start a new job on Monday, and the office attire is stated as being business casual. There seem to be so many different grades of business casual that I’m not sure where to land on the sliding scale, but I figure I can’t go wrong with smart trousers, simple, long sleeved plain tees, dressed up with a pretty cardigan. This has caused a bit of a cardi queue-fest on Ravelry, and Featherweight seemed a nice simple one to kick things off with! I’m knitting it a heavenly squishy merino laceweight from Colourmart in a beautiful soft charcoal, and it’s knitting up surprisingly fast for such a fine yarn! I cast on (for the third time! I’m all about the false starts at the moment.) last night, and I’m already a good 5 inches into it. I’m hoping that I’ll be up to the sleeve division by tonight… The Boy is seeing some friends after work tonight so I’ve got a nice solo evening planned with tea, knitting and Damian Lewis in Life. Yum.

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cheating…

I cast on for a new project a few days ago, and it wasn’t a sock!

I do feel like I’m cheating on Socktoberfest, but I’ve been wanting a new not-too-slouchy hat for a while, and when I saw the new Cloudy Apples pattern collection, the Puffin Apple hat by the lovely Jen Arnall-Culliford seemed perfect. The name alone is too adorable to pass up!

So I went behind my socks’ back, dug up some cream aran in my stash, dyed it up and cast on. Working with tiny needles and skinny yarn so much, I often forget how quickly thicker yarns knit up. This is a super quick and satisfying knit, and I’m completely in love with the gorgeous texture and cable pattern!

I’m sure the socks will get over it.

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notes from the weekend.

I sat in the garden in the morning sun with some knitting and a book,

I cast on for new sock,

and I cooked a roast dinner and baked some yummy pumpkin muffins.

These things are seriously good I enjoyed one this morning for breakfast, along with a mug of apple cinnamon tea. Oh how I love autumn.

The only thing I changed from the recipe was reduce the sugar slightly (I used 1/2 a cup rather than 3/4), but the next time I make them I think they’d be lovely with a handful of chopped nuts or some chocolate chips. It’s a testament to how yummy they are that 21 muffins came out of the oven yesterday afternoon, and only 14 remain today….

Back to the socks, I really can’t decide how I feel about them. I cast them on wanting something plain, and although I like the subtle variegation part of me feels like it’s missing a bit of texture. I’m half tempted to rip back to the cuff and start again with Hermione’s Everyday Socks, but I’m almost at the heel and I’d hate for all of my weekend to have to go to waste!

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ennui

Sorry for the extended absence this past month, but I have been suffering from some major ennui lately. I think it was possibly sparked off by how crazy things got towards the end of May when my godson decided to put in a very sudden and unexpected appearance a whole two weeks early! This was immediately followed by the Queen’s Jubilee, I had to go on a course for some volunteer work I’m doing, and then there’s my new found motivation to get fit and finally lose the pounds that I’ve been packing on over the past six years, and amongst all that the needles have been strangely silent. Even my reading slowed down; I’m still on the fifth Game of Thrones book!

I’m slowly finding my feet again though. I started a new pair of vanilla socks for some cinema knitting, and after an agonising yarn stash deliberation I settled on a predictable grey but thought I’d spice it up with some bright yellow heels and toes. Of course I didn’t have quite the right shade of yellow, so out came the dyes…

… and whilst I was at it, why not stick some roving in as well?!

And this is what I pulled out of the dyepot in the first picture. I love it so much that I’m dyeing up some more to stick in the shop, as it’s looking shamefully bare in there at the moment.

I’ve got a couple of recipe posts lined up, but here’s a little sneak peek for now!

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inconceivable!

I found myself without any active WIPs on the go yesterday. Since I found the idea of not having any socks on the needles inconceivable (anyone out there who can say that word without thinking of the Princess Bride needs to go and watch that film NOW!) so I cast on for these Cheery Littlebottom socks. It’s the April/May mystery KAL pattern for the SolidSocks group, and I thought of this Regia yarn from my stash as soon as I saw it. I’ve been meaning to cast on since halfway through April but never quite got around to it so I’m glad to finally have it on the needles at last. I think it’s safe to say that I’m not going to get these finished by the end of May!

My Baby Surprise Jacket has been off the needles for well over a week, but it’s still lingering as a WIP since I still have all the ends to weave in and all the buttons to attach. I better get a move on though, the baby is due in a couple of weeks and I still have soakers to knit and onesies to embroider!

I used an applied i-cord to bind off, and I love how it turned out. I always thought that i-cord borders involved knitting yards of i-cord, followed by painstakingly sewing on said i-cord, which sounds like an incredibly tedious thing to do. Not so with an applied i-cord! You’re knitting an i-cord, attaching it, and binding off in one fell swoop, and it gives a lovely polished edge. I’m a definite convert.

There was also a bit of spinning action that went on this weekend. I hand-dyed this fibre a few months ago, and perhaps it’s a touch of Jubilee fever but I thought it looked a tad patriotic (if you squint, and imagine that the purple is actually blue….).

It was a quick spin, started on the Saturday night as a Champions League football avoidance measure, and finished on Saturday afternoon. I didn’t have an exact picture of how I thought the colours would look spun up, but I suppose I thought there would more prominent sections of the undyed white so I was initially a little surprised by the levels of pink. Of course, if I’d bothered to apply any common sense at all I might possibly have realised that white and red obviously blend to make pink, which is why the finished skein has such an overwhelming pinkish hue!

It’s about a 4ply weight, and I was quite pleased that I managed to keep my singles fairly consistent, especially since I was balancing my kindle on one knee and reading at the same time! What can I say, I just can’t put down the whole Game of Thrones saga. I’m not typically a fan of this sort of epic fantasy genre, but this stuff is engrossing! I read the first book out of sheer curiosity from all the hype, and I was completely hooked. I’ve been devouring them all in quick succession and I’m now on the fifth book of the series. Not looking forward to finishing it and having to wait such a long time for the last two books to be published!

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so near and yet so far

I feel like I haven’t been making much knitting progress lately. I started a little swatch a couple of weeks ago, but it hasn’t progressed beyond a rectangle because I need my 4mm needles, and they’re currently still occupied by…

… my Stripe Study shawl, which is still slogging along. I’ve knit all twelve contrast stripes and I’m now about two thirds of the way through the border, but even though I am so close to finishing, I can’t seem to bring myself to knit more than a few rows at a time. I still love this shawl, but my current feelings towards it are echoed exactly in Pinkundine’s recent post. At the risk of repeating what she has already written, the rows are just so long now, and there is none of the excitement of short rows or stripe segments left to break things up. It’s just become a bit of a slog, and if it wasn’t for my current rush to free up these needles it would probably linger on for quite a while!

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WIPs & KALs… acronyms, ahoy!

My current muddle of WIPs. The ever present socks in progress and my current love, the Stripe Study Shawl.

I could have sworn I bought a red with a hint of orange for the contrast stripes, but the more I look at it the more it seems to be just straight up orange. No matter, it all works with my beloved grey.

Although I cast on for Stripe Study a couple of weeks ago I shied away from working on it much as I knew it would consume me and shunt my twisted socks to the background if I let it. However, since we’re all agreed that the foot is the fly-by home stretch, I felt that since I’d turned the heel it was “safe” to finally plough on with some lovely garter stitch. Oh, how I love garter stitch. It has such a rustic, squishy cosiness to it. Delicious. The pattern is a whole lot easier than I thought it was going to be, although it’s been a while since I worked on anything other than socks so the 4mm needles felt awkward and clumsy in my hands at first.

I had a brief dalliance with some other short row methods (shadow wraps and Priscilla Wild) since I’m not usually a fan of a standard wrap & turn, but ended up ripping them out and going back to basics. The wrap & turn method included in the pattern really is the best match for this project. I should have listened to Veera!

Still on the topic of the Stripe Study, Nat over on Misadventures in Craft recently blogged about a Stripe Study KAL that she and Crafts from the Cwtch have organised so I’m going to be joining in with that. There’s an FAQ about the KAL here (far too many acronyms going on in this sentence!), so if you fancy joining in then head on over to find out more! There’s even a discount code for Nimu Yarns for all you bargain hunters out there.

And on a completely non knitting related note, but you all know how I love to flash my nails, here’s what I’m currently sporting. I’m ashamed to say that my last mani only came off the nails at the Easter weekend (yikes, a whole month with the same mani! Gross. I am most definitely ashamed of my slobbish approach to nail grooming). I don’t think it’s a colour I would have normally picked up but it was given to me by my bestie when she was having a clear out during a house move. She said she never wore it because it was too bright for her, and although it doesn’t look too day-glo in the bottle, my goodness was she right. This pink looks a little muted in the photo but in reality it’s almost bordering on neon. I do love it though. It’s a perfect warm weather colour, although there’s very little of that happening in the UK at the moment. Incidentally, my bestie’s 2-year old daughter calls nail polish “nail badges” (although I at first I though she was saying “nail badgers”. Yeah, I can be kind of slow like that.). How adorable?!

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shades of grey

I cast on for a Stripe Study shawl. I’ve been wanting to knit one for so long! I bought the yarn for it at the tail end of last year but for some reason I’ve been putting off casting on. I’m still working on the twisty socks, but I just couldn’t wait any longer for a Stripe Study!

I’ve worked about three inches further along the foot with the sock since I took this photo. I always find working on the foot the most enjoyable part of a sock. I love doing the heel flap and picking up the gusset stitches, but once you’re onto the foot it feels like the home stretch. Of course it doesn’t hurt that by the time you’ve made it this far you’re already pretty familiar with the pattern, and being able to knit plain stocking stitch for half of the round feels like a lovely welcome treat!

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twisted stitches

This sock is full of them. It’s taking a while, partly because I keep getting too engrossed in Catching Fire, and this isn’t exactly the best reading knit out there! More than once I’ve missed a mini cable out and had to drop down a few rows to fix it. I’m definitely getting some cable fixing practice in with this sock.

Still, I love how crisp the twisted stitches look, and I am absolutely loving how this yarn is knitting up. I was really unsure of how it would look after I’d dyed it, but I’m finding the little flecks of orange that pop up against the grey so much fun!

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nothing quite like…

… a freshly caked skein of yarn.

Now that I’ve finally finished the Galileo mystery socks I can finally cast on for the March mystery socks in the UK Sock Knitters group!

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oh no, she’s not a secret now

Last night my new found love, my bamboo 9inch Hiya Hiyas, snapped.

There it is, the crime scene photo, all it’s gory detail captured on my phone. And ever since, this song has been stuck in my head.

It’s the first pair of needles I’ve ever broken, and in true sod’s law fashion the breakage didn’t occur where the swathes of stocking stitch were, but right where my column of yarn overs lay... Thankfully I only lost a couple of stitches, and it wasn’t too difficult pick them up, but I still swore enough to make a sailor blush. Dark yarn + bad lighting does not make for a particularly easy stitch rescue. Still, at least they didn’t break over the cables!

More cursing followed my frantic search for the steel tipped needles I’d bought in the same order as the bamboo (so that I could see which tips I preferred. Pack rat mentality comes in handy sometimes!) but the crisis was eventually averted, and I’m now 1.5 pattern repeats and a toe away from the finish time.

If I’d had these needles for a few months longer and if they’d been well used I would have just sucked it up and forked out the cash for a new (steel!) pair, but I’ve only had these since the end of January/beginning of February and this is only the second time I’ve used them, so I emailed the vendor I bought them from straight away at about 9pm, certainly not expecting to get a reply until at least the next day. A little over 2 and a half hours later at almost midnight(!) a reply landed in my inbox apologising for the breakage and offering a replacement. How’s that for customer service?! So thank you Linda at Tall Yarns ‘n Tales for such wonderful customer service!

She did say that this is only the second time she’s been informed about a broken needle, so I certainly don’t want to put anyone off buying the bamboo Hiya Hiyas. They’re fabulous little needles, and bamboo will always remain my first love in terms of needle material. However, the steel ones do feel a little sturdier, so when I stock up (and I will be stocking up on a few more of these 9inchers, I’m head over heels with them!) I’ll probably stick with the steel.

In other news, the Boy and I are off to see Doug Stanhope tonight. I don’t find him quite as amusing as the Boy does, so my plans for this afternoon include sorting out a sock project to bring along so that I can clickety click the night away…

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if the sock fits

It’s been a hectic week round these parts. I had a volunteer job interview, my Mum booked a very last minute trip back to Singapore, there was baby sitting, and there was a long overdue catch up with friends, but at long last sock 1 of my mystery socks is finally off the needles! It turns out that all that fretting was for nothing. Although I think I could probably have gotten away with making the medium size, the large still fits nicely, and the cables really pop along the foot. I did have a bit of a toe issue – the two pattern repeats I did of the foot pattern didn’t quite give me the length I needed, and as I just wanted to get them off the needles I thought I could just work an extra few decrease rows. Er, not quite. Three extra decrease rows did give me a sock that fit, but it came at the cost of  a ridiculously pointy toe. I decided that there was no way I could live with a toe that stupid looking so I unpicked the kitchener, ripped back the toe and knit five plain rows before starting the decreases. Perfect.

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lazy days

I’m having a super lazy Saturday. I spent some time catching up on some Playful Day podcasts whilst I painted my nails, and I LOVE how my nails turned out! They’re gold scribbles on a baby blue base.

I have a heel for my mystery sock.

And I’m thinking of casting on for another mystery sock, despite being so woefully behind in the other one, in some of my hand dyed yarn. This skein is a complete experiment. I was dyeing a semi solid grey when I accidently tipped a whole pot of grey dye stock all over the yarn. Luckily the darker section doesn’t look too bad, I dunked it in water immediately so it’s blended out somewhat.

I did then decide to dot some orange dye around to see what it would look like, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s going to knit up too well! I’ve a feeling this would have looked better with yellow instead of orange, but I won’t know until I try. The pattern I have in mind for this has quite a few cables and travelling stitches, but now I’m in two minds about whether to knit this up as plain vanilla sock instead. I probably shouldn’t because I’ve already got a vanilla sock on the go, but I’m just so indecisive!

And just because I love my nails so much right now, and I really like the way the gold looks in the sunlight!

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!

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slow going

I feel like I was a knitting speed demon a couple of weeks ago, and it’s all come grinding to a halt. I’ve (yet again!) fallen behind in the mystery sock KAL. I’ve only just started Clue 3, which is the heel, and I’m really enjoying knitting a heel flap again after all the short row heels I’ve been doing lately! I’m a little disappointed in my yarn choice though. It’s not the yarn itself that bothers me, the Zettl Valbella is a fairly decent workhorse yarn, but the colour. Even though the designer said that the pattern might work better in a lighter colour, I chose an inky navy blue, and the more I knit the more I’m disappointed in how the dark colour obscures the pattern detail, and there’s a lot of detail in these socks! More than once I’ve been tempted to frog and restart them in another colour, but the fact that I have no idea what other colour I’d like to see this in, and that it’s taken me a month to get this far stops me every time. I’m hoping that they’ll improve after blocking and wearing them…

There hasn’t been a whole lot of progress on the self patterning socks either. I knit the heel and a couple of inches past it sometime last week, and I’ve only managed a couple of rows here and there since then.

There’s a rather strange ridge on one side of the toe of these, which I think was caused by my provisional cast on being much too loose. These were cast on for cinema knitting, and I didn’t notice the ridge until enjoying a coffee about half an hour before the film (The Descendants) by which time I was in no mood to frog and restart, so I forged on thinking that it might come out after a bit of blocking.

I did a little bit of a test block when I got home and the ridge doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere, but I love seeing how much of a difference blocking can make. The stitches on the foot of the sock were really quite uneven looking because I was using frogged yarn that was still all kinked up, and you can really see how the stitches have smoothed out after a quick block. The sock that I’d frogged only got as far the heel, so the post heel stitches on this sock are nice and smooth again, but I didn’t think that such a small detail could make such a big difference! I have absolutely no intention of frogging this sock again, so I’ll just have chalk it up as a character ridge and hope that a multitude of wears, washes and blocks will even it out over time.

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