fuelled by sugar

I’d intended this post to be published on Monday, but my attempt at installing a portable Live Writer app on my USB stick failed miserably, and although I could have used blogger to post, I just don’t like the way it publishes my pictures. I can be incredibly fussy about some things!

So here it is, 4 days late. A Sunday fuelled by sugar!

Stroopkoeken and tea. Always a good combo, especially when there’s a bit of knitting action going on too!

We brought these back from Amsterdam with us, and they are delicious! They’re almost like rich tea biscuits sandwiched with caramel. Perfect for dunking. We did bring stroopwafels back as well, but since we can get those easily in the UK we didn’t bring back as many as we did stroopkoeken. That sounds like we did a massive import, but in fact it was only one packet of stroopwafels and two of stroopkoeken.

I even managed to fit some knitting in, when I wasn’t stuffing my face with deliciousness.

The cowl has come on leaps and bounds. Not that it’s hard, it’s a very straight forward pattern. I did feel like I was in a black hole of knitting for a while, and then all of a sudden looked down and realised that I’m nearly finished! I think I’ll carry on with the spirals for another inch or two, and then finish off with the garter border. I should still have a bit of yarn left over, so I’m plotting what I can make with it already! I’m a little tempted to buy a second skein of it and make a luscious thick shawl.

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In the Boneyard.

I finished my Boneyard shawl!

I actually finished her a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t gotten around to taking any decent pics yet, and since I wanted to blog about it I snapped a couple of quickies when I got home from work a few days ago.

 

Boneyard Shawl by Stephen West

Yarn: Rowan Amy Butler Belle Organic DK
        Stylecraft Ethical Twist 70/30

Ravelled here.

I love it!! It’s actually not as huge as I thought it was when it was all bunched up on the circular needle. It’s still a large shawl, but it’s a pretty respectable size, although I haven’t blocked it yet and I do suspect that it will grow a little when I get round to it. But that’s ok!

I love the stripes, I love the colours, I love that this feels like a hug of wool around my neck. And I’ve just realised that both the wools I’ve used have been organic. What a bonus!

Both the yarns have been absolutely wonderful to knit with. The Ethical Twist is soft and lovely, but it does shed a bit and it is a teensy bit prickly. I should really have gone with the 80/20 baby alpaca mix, but the 70/30 was already caked up from a previous project so I took the easy option and went with that. The Amy Butler yarn is pretty darn dreamy too. It’s soft and silky and has a wonderful drape. My only qualm, and it’s a minor one, is that it’s a little bit splitty as it’s made up of 7 2ply strands plied together. I picked up the Amy Butler on sale in John Lewis a little while ago and didn’t see any other colourways so I assumed it was a discontinued line, but I’ve since seen the whole line selling Hobbycraft (including my colourway!) so I guess it’s not discontinued in the slightest. Which is good news as it’s lovely to work with, and there are some seriously pretty colours!

But back to the shawl, I can tell already that it’s going to be The Shawl for me this autumn/winter. It’s just so cosy, and warm, and comfortable, and easy. I can tell that I’m going to be getting a lot of wear out of it.

 

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t.v. knitting

I’m loving nice squishy simple stocking stitch at the moment. The Boneyard shawl is just perfect t.v./toss-in-my-bag-and-take-everywhere-with-me project.



I started off using a random stripe generator for the stripes but I soon got sick of having to refer to the “chart”, so now I’m just making it up as I go along.






  















I love how it’s working up, but although I’m not entirely convinced that the colours are very “me” they do remind me of Casey, who is the kitty cat that lives with my boyfriend’s parents, so I’ve become rather attached. He is such a sweetheart, but he’s sadly getting rather old and ill now.



Back to what’s on the needles now, and the rabbit is now an ear-less head, as I’m procrastinating picking up the body stitches (this project is taking far longer than it should…).



I finally picked up the socks that I’ve been designing since February, and managed to knit to the heel. I’m trying to write the pattern up as I knit because I know that if I leave it to the end to write up, I’ll never decipher my notes!



And finally a WIP that’s very much not in progress right now. Once you get past the toe these socks start to require a bit of stitch shuffling, which is perfectly fine but makes knitting them two at a time on the same needle a bit of a mistake. I should really relegate one of the socks to a stitch holder or another pair of needles and get on with knitting them separately, but frankly these socks are taking up far too much mental energy at the moment. They don’t seem like a particularly difficult knit, but I feel like I’m tied to the pattern which is something which I really can’t be bothered with right now (currently in squishy simple stocking stitch mode!), so these socks are being retired until I feel like I can give them the concentration they seem to need from me.

Until I wrote this I was sorely tempted to frog them and use the yarn for the current Solid Socks mystery, but I think I’ll keep them on the needles for now and go stash diving for some yarn for the mystery instead (I peeked and saw cables. Yum.)



And just for fun, the current nails. Which are now a little chipped.

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Ode to Squishbel

Off the needles at last.

Ishbel by Ysolda Teague

Yarn: 54g of unpsun pure silk Mawata (silk hankies)

Ravelled here.

 

I am so in love with this shawl. I wish it was for me (I think I say that about all my knits!), but it was made for my Mum. I can’t remember how many repeats of the pattern I did, I pretty much just kept going until I got fed up!

I did think that this would have been bigger, but it’s still a fairly good size (26 inches from neck to tip, 52 inch wingspan).

As much as I love this, I completely failed to do it justice in the photographs. I’ve been putting off writing this FO post because it was really hard to get a decent picture of the whole thing. In the end I resorted to taking a ton of gratuitous macro shots and decided to put the post up anyway, perhaps I’ll have another go at taking better pictures on a day that isn’t completely overcast!

Silk is one of my absolute favourite fibres. I love the dichotomy of it: cool to the touch and yet unbelievably warm, so delicate and yet such a strong fibre.

I’m also completely obsessed with the lustre of it.

Squishbel blocked out a lot better than I thought. This is the first time I’ve knit with pure silk, and my google-fu told me that as strong as dry silk is, wet silk is a whole lot weaker, so I was very wary of overblocking and breaking stitches. Especially since I’d  drafted some of this silk a little too thinly in places.

I love the rustic charm of the thick & thin stitches.

I needn’t have worried too much. Either silk is stronger than I’d thought (and it is really strong – perhaps my technique is way off, but I built up a couple of little calluses on two of my fingers from trying to draft out the silk) or I managed to be slightly less cack handed than usual with my blocking, because it went without a hitch and blocked beautifully.

It did lose a little bit of its squooshy-ness after blocking but washing it really brought the lustre out. It also has the most amazing drape.

It might be a while before I want to knit another Ishbel, but I’m definitely looking forward to knitting with pure silk again. I think an obsession with mawatas has well and truly been born!

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Bunch of Grapes

I finished this last Friday, but didn’t get around to photographing it for that FO Friday, so here it is for this week!

Moonlight Sonata Scarf or Shawl version 2 by Shui Kuen Kozinski

Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft 4 Ply

Ravelled here.

Mods: - Knit a 3 stitch garter edge rather an a 4 stitch edge.
         - kfbf for the double increase instead of the method stated in the pattern because it was easier.
         - Omitted the picot edging and bound off purlwise after 6 rows of garter stitch.

I’ve called this my “Bunch of Grapes” scarf because I folded it up while I was mid-way through and thought that the way the circles puckered up, it looked rather like a bunch of grapes. The colour really added to it…

I’m so inventive, ha!

This is the cream coloured Kemps yarn that I blogged about dyeing a little while ago. I absolutely adore how it’s knitted up. The majority of the shawl is lovely warm purpley grape colour, but there is the odd splash of maroon and lilac scattered here and there.

 

I think semi-solid yarns are my favourite. I’m generally not a big fan of multi-coloured, variegated yarns, they’re a bit too crazy for my tastes. But give me a nice multi-tonal semi-solid and I’m happy. I just love the subtle breaks in colour. It keeps things interesting without being too outlandish.

To be honest, I really wasn’t sure about this pattern at first. I was swinging between this and the Oaklet Shawl (Rav link), and in the end plumped for this since it was a little bit different from your average stocking stitch body and lace edging triangle shawl. Although I loved the Midnight Sonata shawls I’d seen in the project galleries on Ravelry, I was distinctly underwhelmed by my version at first, and was even tempted to frog it and try a different pattern on a few occasions. It definitely grew on me though, and I’m glad I stuck with it. Watching the circles form was quite fun, and it was surprisingly easy to remember the pattern after working a few repeats. The charts were a lot easier to follow than the written instructions, and this is definitely a pattern where it helps if you can “read” your knitting.

I was thinking making it a little larger, but in the end decided to stop at the eight repeats suggested in the pattern. This shawl is a gift for my Chinese friend who was teaching me Mandarin, and since 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture I thought it would be a nice touch to stop there. I did subject it to a pretty severe blocking which opened the lace up wonderfully, and it’s ended up a great size for a little scarflet/shawl (about a 50 inch  wingspan and 26 inches from neck to tip).

This is also a pretty fast knit. It took me 2 weeks to finish, but there were quite a few days where I didn’t work on it at all. I think if I had knit a few rows every day it could have been finished in under a week – perfect for a last minute gift!

The reverse stocking stitch side is supposed to be the right side, bit I think it looks great either way!

Check out what everyone else has finished with Tami’s FO Friday!

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Squishbel

I’m working on yet another Ishbel.

 

This one is knit with little puffs of pure silk and feels like it’s made with wisps of cloud.

 

I luffs it.

 

 

Head on over to Tami’s blog to check out what everyone else has on their needles for WIP Wednesday!

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Ribbit.

6 rows of garter stitch frogged. Last nights movie knitting down the drain.

My own fault – I forgot to move up a needle size for the garter border. Thought I could get away with 3 rows with the smaller needle and the last 3 rows with the larger because I was feeling too tired and lazy to frog back.

I couldn’t.

This morning the difference was bugging me. Again I tried to ignore it, but after three attempts at binding off with three different bind off techniques and each one looking as messy as the one before, I bit the bullet and ripped it back. Plus, this is a gift, and I feel like it wouldn’t mean as much if I hadn’t given it my best.

So on again with the garter (and the right size needles this time!) and a new approach – instead of 6 rows of garter and a purl off, I’m going to try 7 rows garter and a knit bind off. Here we go again…

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FO Parade part 2

Continuing on from yesterday’s FO post, a little show and tell of my FO’s so far in 2011.

 

Holden Shawlette by Mindy Wilkes

Yarn: Skeins Superwash Merino Laceweight

Ravelled here.

I was a little unsure about this shawl as I was knitting it, it seemed a little too frothy and frilly, and yet too plain at the same time. However, it’s blocked out beautifully and I have decided that it’s light and airy and delicate and warm, and like most things I knit to gift, I wanted to keep it. But it was a birthday gift for my boyfriends mother, and off to her it went.

The pattern was written for a slightly heavier weight yarn, so I modified it slightly by knitting a larger stocking stitch portion and more repeats of the lace pattern. More details are on my Ravelry project page, if anyone is interested. The lace pattern was easily memorised, although a little bit dull after so many repetitions. I did pull the yarn snug after every repeat, but it still seems to have laddered between the repeats, which you can see in the photo above. This annoyed me at first, but then it struck me that the laddering was faintly reminiscent of a stitch pattern I’d seen in an old stitch dictionary of mine called “Eiffel Tower Stitch”:

and so I decided to tell myself that this was an intentional design feature :)

I was intending to dye the yarn, but then my boyfriend told me that his mother had been hankering after a cream shawl she’d seen in M&S, so I decided to leave it as it was and she seems quite thrilled with it. After seeing it his sister asked if she could have a shawl for her birthday, which is quite handy since I was going to knit her one anyway!

 

Mongolfiera Socks by Corrina Ferguson

Yarn: Zettl Valbella

Ravelled here.

These are the November/December Mystery socks for the SolidSocks group on Ravelry. They took a bit of a back seat while I tried to catch up on all my gift knitting, but I managed to finish them by the end of January.

Mongolfiera, says the designer, is the Italian word for hot air balloon, and these socks are so named because she designed these socks to look like a hot air balloon! From the basket at the foot, to the strings that attach the canopy, and finally to balloon itself with beautiful diamond brocade and lace “swags”. I love the attention to detail that has gone into translating this concept into a sock pattern, and how it really does look like a hot air balloon! It appeals to the child in me, and I find it endlessly amusing :)

 

Filey by Ingleside Belle

Yarn: Woolcraft Superwash Sock Yarn

Ravelled here.

These are the latest socks off the needles. Aran inspired cables and diamond brocade for the boyfriend. I mirrored the cables, but I think that was the only big change I made, although I did somewhat stop following the pattern towards the end, finishing off the foot and toe in a way that suited my fancy. In fact, I did change the toe to make it more rounded. So that’s two changes. And I twisted the single knit columns in the ribbed cuff. Three…

This yarn is quite sproingy and elastic, which makes for quite a snug and cosy fit. It’s very much a budget yarn, so it’s not particularly soft, but it’s not too hard on the hands and I actually quite enjoyed knitting with it. I’ve used the lighter colour of this yarn to make a few socks for me, and I think I much prefer knitting with the grey as it seems slightly softer, although I think that both are a bit too rugged to use for anything other than socks. 

I’m not entirely convinced that it was the right yarn to show this sock pattern off properly though. It’s quite a dark charcoal, and the pattern ends up bit lost in it all. The boyfriend seems happy with them though, and I suppose that’s what matters.

 

So that’s me all caught up with my finished projects!

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